“We’ll head down the street, grab some breakfast at one of those drive-thrus and go on to the safe house. It’s another hour or so from here. Then, we talk.” Her cell went off and she glanced at the screen. “I need to take this. I’ll meet you outside.”
Without a choice, he shut the door behind him giving her some privacy. The hairs at the base of his neck itched, telling him she wanted privacy for her call because there was a man on the other line. A man who meant something to her, and he didn’t like that one damn bit. But why the hell should he let her relationships bother him? Frankly, who the hell was she to him? Even if she really did carry the scent of cat. No matter how much he berated himself for his irrational jealousy—it remained. Worse, he had no idea what to do about it.
It’d taken a little more than an hour but finally, they were settled in a small three room house on top of a hillside in a little town in Fauquier County. Given his attraction to her, Ethan still didn’t know if it’d been a good idea or not to trust Edge. His instincts had never been wrong, even if they were currently confused, but it seemed too late now to have second thoughts. Mystifying attraction and trust or not, he needed help and he thought perhaps she could and would help him.
Seated in the kitchen area with the first-aid kit on the table, he wanted to take a closer look at her arm. He needed to know for sure if his suspicions were true.
But she wouldn’t let him. “It’s okay. I took care of it earlier this morning and I’ll take care of it again, later.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. Her reluctance to even let him take a look only seemed to confirm what he suspected. His nostrils flared, he could smell no trace of blood on her arm dried or otherwise. The only reason for her not to show him the wound, would be if she healed the way he did.
She was a shifter like him. He couldn’t let it go.
Sharon carried no scent of shifter on her even though her grandfather did, but it was there surrounding Edge. Stronger now perhaps ‘cause she had healed. Somehow, he had to see what was or wasn’t beneath that bandage. Get their shared heritage out in the open. To what purpose he couldn’t be sure, maybe to force her to admit she was like him...To trust him.
“Yeah, I’m sure. It’s feeling fine. But still, remind me to kick your stepbrother’s ass the next time I see him.”
“You’re going to have to stand in line.”
They shared a grin, but he also realized she’d neatly changed the subject.
She got up and took down the coffeepot from a cabinet, filling it with water, then found a package of ground coffee. Then, she joined him again at the table. “Now,” she said. “I think it’s time you tell me what’s going on.”
Ethan folded his arms and rested them on the table. “What would you like to know?”
“Your side of the story.”
Ethan hesitated. Not because he didn’t want to tell her, but where to begin. He suddenly realized he wanted to start at the beginning. He wanted her to understand and not judge him too harshly. He had enough regrets already, but he wanted her to get to know him, to trust him. And more importantly, he wanted a chance to get to know her. In the middle of the biggest mess of his life, he’d found the most interesting woman he’d ever come across. Someone he was more attracted to than at any other time in his memory. “Then, I’ve got to begin at the beginning.”
“Wait, coffee’s ready.”
He stood up. “I’ll get it.” He poured out two cups and returned to the table. After he sat down, he told her his history of being the heir to a corporate empire. How everything came easily and naturally to him. Didn’t mean he didn’t work hard for his company and took pride in the people who worked for him. He told her everything at least, almost everything. The parts most people would understand. Not the family legacy about being able to change their physical make up from humanoid to something else. Something anything but human. Something the men in his family passed down through the generations, although it might skip a generation or male or two…it never disappeared. His father couldn’t change, he could as could his great-grandfather.
No, he didn’t tell her that story of his history, even though he thought she might understand. In his world, being sympatric wasn’t good enough, secrecy had been spoon fed to him from the womb. Instead, he told her what she needed to know, enough to make her understand his innocence of the crime he’d been charged with. Even why he’d married Sharon, a woman he didn’t love and who he knew didn’t love him. In his world, that’s what happened all the time.
History hadn’t really changed much when it came to socio-economics and bloodlines. Frankly, bloodlines are still more important. Sharon’s grandfather was a Leo Atrox. Sharon had no idea what that really meant, only instinct urged her to marry Ethan and have his child.
Her grandfather had been the one who’d introduced them, encouraging the union with his blessings and his money. When the time came for Ethan to do his duty, he stepped up and did it. He married to carry on both legacies, the bloodlines and the money. Even though he’d done every ridiculous and dangerous sport in his youth. His way of trying to run from what he saw as inevitable, what lay underneath his skin. He hadn’t fully shifted since he was eighteen. In the end, it didn’t matter. He did what his heritage demanded. There might not be many with Atrox bloodlines left but they seemed to have no trouble finding each other.
And look where that got him.
He kept out the Atrox part of his story, but told Edge everything else, making her think the courtship had been all about money. Then he got to his actual marriage with Sharon. A subject harder for him to talk about—her promiscuity, her bitchiness. A beautiful face but empty inside. Which didn’t say much for his choices. “I’m not proud of any of it,” he said. “And I’m paying for those mistakes.” His parents had a loving respectful relationship, but they didn’t have a soul deep bond. His father had married his mother because of her father’s Atrox bloodline. Oh, they loved each other but they weren’t in love. At the time, he married Sharon he thought it was what he had to do.
When he got to the part about the night he’d found Sharon, Edge placed her hand on his arm and he’d covered it with his. Taking comfort in her presence, holding onto it for the anchor it was.
He took a sip of coffee from his mug. “I’ll never get the image of her lying there out of my head. I still have nightmares about it.” And he did. How could he have been so stupid to let someone come up behind him that night? It must have been Richard, but something nagged at him. The scent of the blood in the room was over powering and why he couldn’t immediately sense anyone else around, but before he passed out he caught a whiff of something else, citrusy cologne.
“Yeah, you were thrashing around in your sleep last night.” She squeezed his arm.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. So, okay after you saw her body, then what happened?”
“One minute I was sitting on the floor trying not to throw up and the next thing I know, Richard is standing over me and the housekeeper is screaming in the doorway while the back of my head feels like someone had taken a jackhammer to it.” The thought just now occurring to him—if he were human, he’d be dead.
“So, you think someone came up behind you and hit you on the head?”
“Yeah, I remember hearing a sound. Maybe I began to turn, but never saw anything or anyone. Whoever killed Sharon must have still been there when I walked in. I never touched the knife they found there but when I came to—the knife lay beside me and my fingerprints were on it. Even though the forensics came back showing the knife wasn’t the murder weapon.” And of course, by the time a doctor examined him, there was no head wound. It’d already healed. This made his claim that someone hit him on the head hard enough to knock him unconscious seem bogus.
“I didn’t read about that part in the papers.”
“No. But it would come out at trial, if there is one.”
“Can you remember anything else?” she asked.
�
��Just—it’s a little strange, but I remember catching a whiff of cologne.” He shrugged. “I have a very sensitive nose, the scent of the blood rested strong in the room, but underneath it, there was definitely a subtle cologne.”
“Richard’s?”
“That’s what I thought at first but it wasn’t a type I’d smelt on him before. It seemed a little on the feminine side. Kinda citrusy but soft.”
“It could have been Sharon’s.”
“Maybe.” He didn’t tell her when Richard had come to the pool house, he’d caught a whiff of his strong cologne then too, and realized it wasn’t the same. The night of Sharon’s death the fragrance he’d smelt seemed more feminine and not one he recognized as Sharon’s. Yet, if he told her that, she would want to know how he’d been able to smell Richard’s cologne if he were inside an insulated house and Richard stood in the pool area. Questions to which he didn’t want to answer. Plus, he wasn’t sure it hadn’t been a new fragrance Sharon bought. Heaven knew, the woman loved to shop for everything.
“So, I know why I think Richard’s a killer, But why do you think he killed Sharon?”
“One sec.” He got up and went back into the living room area where he’d left his satchel. He took out Sharon’s journal and returned to the kitchen. “Here,” he said and placed it on the table in front of Edge as he sat down. “Because of this, and because I know he’s got a temper. My stepbrother has always wanted my life.”
Edge took the journal and began to randomly leaf through the pages, pausing now and then to read an entry. He watched her slender eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline as she read his dead wife’s words.
“Read the last two pages.” Ethan waited patiently for her to finish. Then her gaze shot to his and her pupils dilated, gold flashing in their depths. He could read the sympathy in her soulful eyes.
Chapter Seven
If this woman hadn’t already been dead, Edge might have been tempted to kill her herself. Well, at least give her a good ass whopping. Bitch, didn’t even begin to describe Sharon Graves. Not that the reasons Ethan went into the marriage in the first place weren’t screwed up, but at least he came to his senses and tried to rectify his mistake. To think Ethan had been married to her for almost two years. How could he have put up with it?
He must have read something in her expression. “I didn’t know all of it,” he said. “We were seldom together. We didn’t love each other, just mutual need. I expected her to take lovers, but to be discreet and respectful about it. I didn’t believe in love, I thought mutual benefit would be better. Enough. Thank God, neither of us were ready for kids yet. We had planned it and when the time felt right, she would have to put the other men aside until she conceived my child. All of this she knew.”
Edge couldn’t help but flinch a little at his cold-hearted assessment of his marriage.
“I’m not proud of it,” he told Edge, as he must have read her reaction. “And the truth is I never strayed, partly because I was too damn busy running my company. By the time I realized Sharon was not what I wanted, that I couldn’t live in such a soulless marriage and took steps to end things, it was too late.”
Edge realized that she understood him, more than she could explain. From childhood, her unique heritage had been drummed into her. Along with her responsibilities to the Clan. So yeah, she understood Ethan’s need to marry within his class. Not like she was in any way a proponent of marriage, even she knew if she were to marry, the Clan would expect her to wed another Atrox. The blood had been weakened already, but her family loved her enough to allow her to choose. They would support her decision in spite of Clan pressure.
She got up and poured them each the last of the coffee. They were on the second cup. “It happens.” If she were to ever venture into the marriage mart, it would be forever and God help the bastard if he dared to stray. Once she committed, she would be committed to one man…The end.
Reason enough why she’d never been willing or eager to commit, especially to a man who wouldn’t understand her unique heritage. She loved good-looking men too much, and she’d yet to meet one who didn’t want to put her in a dress. Atrox or not. Well, maybe with the exception of Cole, but he was like a brother, so he didn’t care what she wore. She turned her attention back to Ethan.
He hadn’t shaved for a while, so the shadowing around his square jaw line and lip gave him a dangerous air. She could see the beginnings of growth on his scalp like he needed to shave again, and she wondered what he’d look like with a full-head of hair. Meanwhile hair or not, all she wanted was to push him down on a bed and climb all over him. And he might be Atrox. Yep, she could be more than tempted by him.
“I was busy putting the family finances back together,” he continued, “After Richard’s mother did a number on it, and even lost the money she’d gotten out of the divorce settlement in a very short time. It’s also another reason Richard hates me so much. Beth Ingle Graves, his mother never shared any of her windfall with him. Instead, she listened to other men in her life and ended up losing or being swindled out of most of it. Kind of poetic justice as far as I’m concerned.”
“Damn, I’ve heard of some messed up families, but this stuff comes right out of some seventeenth century romance novel.”
He grinned. “Or thereabouts. If it will make you feel better, for the last six months I hadn’t touched Sharon. I’d had it. I could no longer live that way and began to take steps to extricate myself. It wasn’t going to be easy because our finances are tangled up, and if we divorced, she could take half of the Graves holdings with her.” He ran his hand through his own tangled locks. “But these last few weeks, I was willing to even give her that. I just wanted out. That night when she told me there would be no divorce, and she’d fight one, I did want to kill her. But I didn’t. I walked out of there and went to see Harvey, to tell him to go ahead and file the paper work. He’d already planned on hiring a private detective firm to see what we could dig up on her.”
“Well, what happened when you saw your lawyer?” According to the police report she’d read, his lawyer hadn’t been home.
“I didn’t. He wasn’t home. Harvey was also my alibi but as of right now, I can’t prove that I hadn’t been home the entire time. That’s the problem with my story. My claim I had come home, then left again, only to return and find her dead.”
“Well, how come Harvey wasn’t home? Did he know you were going to stop by?”
“Now, see that’s the funny thing. Harvey claims he had no recollection that I was coming by. He had nothing on his calendar. But he and I had spoken the day before and I told him I would be by that evening, granted it was a little later than usual but not that late.”
“So, why would he say that?”
“I don’t know?”
She scoffed. “Well, didn’t you ask him?”
“Oh yeah, but he just said he remembered we spoke the week before but we were supposed to talk again to get something set up. He’d been at a dinner party that night.”
“Do you think he was lying?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Did he say anything about you filing for divorce?”
He shook his head. “Now that I think about it, no. I don’t think he said anything about that to the police. My defense team knew about it, but it never came up, at least at the hearing. They didn’t think it would have helped my case.”
“From what I’ve read in the papers and heard on the news, the prosecutor claims your wife was having an affair and was pregnant with a baby that wasn’t yours, so when you found out, you killed her.”
“Yep, that’s his claim in a nutshell.”
“I don’t completely agree with your lawyers. Knowledge that you were filing for divorce wasn’t necessarily going to help your case, but it might not hurt it either. It might however, show you were aware of problems in your marriage already, so you didn’t necessarily act in a fit of anger. Did they consider that?”
“They didn’t di
scuss that with me. Besides, with my luck, the prosecutor would think it was premeditated and change the charge from second to first degree murder.”
“Good point. Okay, so here’s what I think we need to do right off. I’m going to go and have a chat with your lawyer Harvey.”
“Fine. I’ll go with you.”
“No. I go alone.”
He began to shake his head, but she cut him off before he could voice a protest. “Yes. Cops are still interested in you, Ethan. This journal is a start but not quite enough to exonerate you. So, you stay put and I’ll go and talk to Harvey.”
He frowned. “What about Richard? What do we do about him? Can’t you have him charged with assault or something?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. I spoke to my partner earlier and told him what happened. He agrees with me that for now, we steer clear of Richard. Cole, that’s my partner, will do some checking for me into Richard’s background and keep an eye on him.”
“Is that the call you got back at the motel?”
“Yep.” She got up and took both of their cups over to the sink. She rinsed them out and placed them in the dishwasher, then returned to the seat across from his. “You know it’s funny that so far, Richard hasn’t reported he’s seen you to the cops or anything. I’d have gotten a text or call from Cole or a friend at the station. It may be he’s waiting to see what we’ll do.”
“But he shot at you.” The flare of anger in his eyes crystal clear for her to see.
“And payback is gonna be a bitch named Edge.”
Ethan’s smile was all teeth. “After I’m done with him. But I still think you should report him.”
“Not sure what would come of it.” More importantly, she’d only be able to claim he’d shot at her, but in another hour maybe less, there wouldn’t even be a scar on her body as proof. “Look, Richard could easily say he was trying to apprehend you and I got in the way. Let’s not forget, I kicked Richard down and took off with you. So at this point, I’m also harboring, aiding and abetting a fugitive.”
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