A slow tsk tsk clicked on the other end of the line. “Not very police-like behaviour, detective. What would your commander back in Sydney say?”
Jackie grinned, a cold expression of deadly calm she felt all the way to the centre of her being. “I’m not coming after you as a cop. Tasmanian tigers may not be the fastest creatures on the planet, but we are the most tenacious.” She let her icy hate flow into every syllable she spoke. “And I’m nowhere near as old as you, elf. I will wear you down until you don’t have the energy to run anymore and then tear your throat out.”
Silence stretched over the connection, nothing but a faint series of crackles and pops to tell her Einar still held the line open.
“How many times have you fucked the werewolf?”
His voice sounded strained and Jackie grinned again. She wanted him strained. Unsettled. Easier to track prey that way. She shot the bathroom door a quick look, the noises of Marshall showering wafting at her across the distance. She should tell him who was on the phone. She should let him know.
She turned away from the door, lifting the phone’s mouthpiece closer to her lips. “Why would I tell you that? I didn’t realize you were a pervert as well as a gutless pixie.”
Einar hissed and Jackie’s grin stretched wider, cold satisfaction threading through her fury. Unsettled and agitated. Good. Very good.
“Is Agent Rourke a good lover?”
A throaty laugh escaped Jackie. “He was your partner. Surely you know how thorough he is. How determined to achieve what he sets out to do. Imagine that skilled relentlessness in a sexual partner, and I’m sure you have your answer.”
Silence followed her taut, and then Einar said, “You should be more selective about who you mate with, Detective Huddart. It was, after all, Agent Rourke who sent me the information about your existence in the first place.”
Numb shock stole over Jackie. She blinked once, her pulse pounding in her neck. Was it true?
No. Why would Marshall do that?
To draw Einar out in the open? What better way to catch a hunter than present him with that which he truly wants: prey.
She blinked again, turning to stare at the open bathroom door. Marshall’s tall, lean form moved behind the cloud-blue shower curtain, like a shadow moving through mist. She frowned, her pulse growing faster. Louder.
Bait? He’d used her as bait?
Do you really believe that, Jackie? Do you?
“I look forward to seeing you soon, detective.” Einar’s smug voice slid into her ear. “Give my regards to the werewolf. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a dire wolf. I always remembered them being…bigger.”
He killed the connection and Jackie stood frozen, Marshall’s phone still in her hand. She stared at the Texan’s silhouette through the shower curtain, numb disbelief chilling her.
“I’m no threat to you. That’s all I can tell you.”
“If I could answer those questions I would.”
His words came back to her, whispering inside her roaring mind. Answers to her questions that were not answers at all.
She drove her nails into her palms, remembering exactly what he’d said when she’d pressed him about who had Delanie. “Someone wants something from you. Your friend unfortunately has been caught up in the trap.” And when she’d questioned further all he’d said was, “It’s better I don’t answer.”
Ambiguous answer after ambiguous answer, topped off with the most ambiguous of all, “I’m the man here with you now, not the man holding your friend. Remember that.”
She stared hard at his shrouded form, her breath shallow. He’d never given her a single answer. No matter what she’d asked.
A sick emptiness rolled in Jackie’s stomach. He’d used her as bait. He’d set a trap for Einar and Del had been the innocent victim.
Grief—cold and painful and dark—twisted through her chest. It sank into her stomach. Marshall’s phone slipped from her fingers, striking the worn carpet at her feet. She dropped onto the edge of the bed, the musky scent of their earlier lovemaking a faint memory on the air, mocking her. Deep within, her thylacine bristled and even that felt scornful, as if the animal derided her human stupidity.
“Jackie?”
Marshall’s voice jerked her stare back to the bathroom door and she found him standing there, looking at her. Water beaded on his smooth skin, a towel wrapped his lean hips and his gaze roamed her face, worry in his sharp blue eyes. “Darlin’?”
Her chest tightened. Your life mate. The lying bastard.
Something broke inside her. She frowned, numb still and yet, torn apart with pain unlike any she’d imagined. Empty pain. Like the death of a dream.
He studied her, taking a step forward. “Is Del…?” His eyes widened. “Christ, is Delanie—”
“Did you tell Daeved Einar about my existence?” She cut him off, the question passing her dry lips with calm ease. “Did you use me as bait?”
Marshall stiffened, a barely perceptible tensing of his muscles. He swallowed, his jaw bunching, his gaze locking on her eyes. “I wanted to tell you.”
Blistering fury detonated in Jackie’s chest. She stared at him. “I hate you.” The statement left her in an emotionless monotone.
“Jackie—”
Marshall moved toward her but she shook her head, snapping to her feet and looking around the hotel room. Clothes. She needed clothes.
“Please, let me—”
She leapt at him, slamming him to the floor. Her knees rammed under his armpits, her fingers gripping the tops of his shoulders, digging into his flesh. “You used me as bait, Pacman.” She glared at him, her blood roaring in her ears. “And Delanie was hurt because you did. What is there to explain?”
He stared up at her, making no attempt to move. “There was no other way.”
She punched him. Hard. Her fist hit his jaw with a dull crack. He took the blow, rolling his head with her punch before turning back to her, his stare seeking her eyes. “I didn’t plan on any of this, Jackie. I didn’t plan to mate with you. I didn’t plan to fall in love with you.”
Her chest constricted at his words, but she ignored it. Her thylacine snarled and she closed her eyes, unable to look at him. “You used me.”
“There were no other options,” he answered simply.
Acrid grief hit her and she scrunched up her face, shaking her head. Mated for life to a lying bastard. Did she kill him? She opened her eyes and stood, giving him a flat stare where he lay between her feet. “There are always options, Agent Rourke.”
She stepped away from him, snatching his jeans from the bed as she did so. She needed clothes and his would do. After all, he’d taken everything she had from her. Her best friend, her anonymity. Her heart. It was only fair she took something from him in return.
Marshall straightened to his feet, watching Jackie prowl the room. She yanked on his jeans, the item of clothing ridiculously loose on her tiny frame, the waistline barely touching her slim hips. She hauled his backpack from the floor and upended it, grabbing at his spare white T-shirt before it could finish falling onto the bed. She pulled it over her head. It was too big for her, way too big. She looked lost in its size. Lost and angry.
She has every right to be angry.
A lump filled his throat and he dragged his hands through his hair, the damp strands a taunting reminder that but a few moments ago they’d been in the shower together, their bodies pressed against each other, their desire tangible. Undeniable.
“Jackie…”
She refused to look at him, dropping instead onto the edge of the bed, her attention locked on the hem of his jeans as she rolled the right leg shorter in savage flicks of her wrists. She was getting ready to leave. He could see it in the strung tension in her body. Leave, or hit him again.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, his gut churning. Shit. What did he do?
“Let me…”
She started rolling up the other leg, her stare fixed on her hands.
He let out a ragged breath, wiping at his mouth. “While Daeved Einar was a P.A.C. agent,” he said, keeping his voice level, “he dissected a lycanthrope alive in Virginia who had been using a local old-aged care home as a buffet bar. He tied the man spread-eagle to a bench in the kitchen and proceeded to cut into his stomach—while he was conscious—demanding to know the whereabouts of his pack despite intel telling us there was none.
“In Quebec, Einar proceeded to flay a selkie alive in an attempt to force the creature to reveal the location of his den. We had orders to bring the selkie in for questioning, not because he had harmed anyone, but because he had been linked, albeit tenuously, to a gang who were skinning shape-shifters and selling their coats as mystical aids. In Ireland, he stuffed a banshee’s mouth with rotting meat, choking her until she confessed to aiding an attack on a school camping trip. In Tokyo, he beat an Oni until it could no longer stand, because he didn’t like the way it looked at him.”
He paused for a moment, the memories of his time as Einar’s partner turning the saliva in his mouth to bile. “At first, I didn’t try to stop the brutality. I’d been appalled, disgusted even, but being partnered with the famous, revered Daeved Einar had blinded me to the wrong being done. P.A.C. had a fierce reputation for bringing to justice any paranormal being stepping out of line. Einar’s reputation was fiercer still. As uncomfortable as I was with my new partner’s behaviour, I followed the man’s lead.”
Sour disgust coated Marshall’s tongue and he let out a low grunt. “When Einar ‘questioned’ a succubus suspected of feeding off tourists, I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. He called me weak, gutless. He justified his extreme treatment by pointing out how many unwitting victims the demon had sexually devoured in the last year. None of those victims had been killed or physically injured in any way and we could find no residue of any of them in the succubus’s croi, but that didn’t stop his violent attack. It was one atrocity too much. I was forced to subdue him and reported him to the commander as soon as we returned to P.A.C. headquarters.”
He stopped. His stomach was a knot of self-contempt. He turned his gaze from Jackie, still bent over her legs with her hands gripping the hem of his jeans, to look out the hotel room’s sole window. “Einar’s argument at his review consisted of the words ‘The world is a better place because of what I do to the perversions of nature.’ Just those words. Nothing more. My report saw him stripped of his record and ‘retired’, the worst outcome I could imagine. The moment he walked from P.A.C.’s building, any professional restrictions he’d abided by were gone. He was free to hunt any non-human he chose. Free to kill them in any way he saw fit, which he did. And every kill he makes, he sends me a small token of the ‘prize’—a talon, a fang, a horn, an eye. Christ, once the genitals of a being I still can’t identify—as if to say thank you.”
He stopped again, dragging his hands through his hair as he turned back to Jackie. She was looking at him, studying him with unreadable eyes, her expression just as neutral. But looking at him all the same. Not hitting him, not running from him. It was something.
More than what you deserve.
“I have been trying to right a wrong for a long time now, darlin’,” he said, meeting her unwavering gaze. “My hands are stained with the blood of every creature Einar has executed since his retirement, whether good or bad—and quite a few before that. More than I care to admit or think about. I set him loose in this world and I have to bring him in. You were the only way I could do so, a target too tempting, too unique to resist. I learned of your existence listening in on the P.A.C. Chatter Squad. An off-handed remark by the werewolf Declan O’Connell in a telephone conversation with his human wife about a shape-shifting cop from Tasmania, and I knew I’d found the perfect bait.” He let out another sharp snort. “But it all went wrong from the very moment I saw you in the airport. From the very second your scent filled my nose.”
Jackie’s chest rose, a swift, silent breath the only reaction to his admission. He shook his head and turned to the window once more, staring at the pale morning beyond the glass and faded curtain. “I didn’t mean to mate with you. But the moment I saw you, smelt you, I knew I wanted to. Wanted it so much I could hardly think straight. Knew I didn’t have the strength to resist the elemental—shit, the primitive desire you awoke in me. I didn’t mean to fall in love with you either, but goddamn it, I wouldn’t change a thing if it meant that I didn’t.”
He looked back at her, his chest heavy, his mouth dry. She hadn’t moved, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad. But at least she was listening, and he had more to say. “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am Delanie got caught up in all of this. I will spend the rest of my life, however short or long it is, doing whatever I can to make amends, but if you ask me to apologise for coming into your life, I can’t.” He took a step closer to her, palms out, stare meeting hers. “Full disclosure, Detective Huddart. I am a two-hundred-and-fourteen-year-old shape-shifting dire wolf, an ancient breed of canidae canis thought extinct for over ten millennia and, like you, the very last of my kind. I have killed over two hundred and forty-two ‘hostile’ non-humans as a P.A.C. agent and am slated for promotion to assistant commander six months from now. I live in Central Park West, New York, in an apartment overlooking the park itself and I will give it all up and move to Australia and become a beach bum or a security guard or a dog walker with just one word from you.”
He took another step forward, Jackie’s subtle scent lacing into each breath he took, making his head spin and his pulse quicken. She was his life mate. He was bound to her for the rest of his life, and he had no idea if she hated him or not. “I love you. I will love you forever, and I ask you to help me catch Daeved Einar so we can start our lives anew.” He paused. Swallowed. “Whether that is together or apart.”
Jackie stared at him, silent, her eyes revealing nothing. He waited, his blood roaring in his ears, his heart a sledgehammer in his chest. Say yes, darlin’. Please, say yes.
His phone rang, vibrating into sudden life on the floor near the lamp table. Without a word, Jackie leant forward, her hair tumbling over her shoulder in a chestnut cascade he longed to bury his face in. She picked up the vibrating black device and straightened, holding it out to him with a steady hand.
Marshall swallowed again, the urge to take the phone from her fingers and smash it against the wall thick and powerful. He bit back a growl, flicked it open and pressed it to his ear instead. “Rourke.”
“This is Hillerman, Agent Rourke,” a deep male voice rumbled in his ear and Marshall saw Jackie stiffen, the skin around her eyes growing stretched. She’d heard.
He clenched his jaw, not liking the formal address the undercover P.A.C. agent had used. “What’s going on, Hank?”
Silence echoed through the connection for a still moment and the pit of Marshall’s stomach rolled. Ah, shit. Not good, not good…
“I’m sorry, Marshall,” Hillerman finally said, and Marshall’s stare snapped to Jackie’s face. “Delanie McKenzie didn’t make it.”
Chapter Twelve
Jackie’s stomach dropped. She stared at Rourke, unable to breathe. Grief choked her. Suffocated her. Took her heart in an icy fist and squeezed until her vision blurred. Del. Del was dead?
The fist of ice crushed her heart again, harder. Slower. She looked at Marshall, a raw cry trapped in her throat. Dead hatred flooded through her and she spun on her heel and ran across the room.
She had to get away from him. She had to go. Before she—
“Jackie!”
Marshall’s shout cracked the air, but she ignored him. She had to go. Now.
Yanking open the door, she ran from the room. Grit and stones jabbed into her bare soles as she sprinted across the hotel’s car park, tiny shards of pain spearing into her numb grief and empty hatred.
Del…
She ran, the bitumen cool under her feet, the early morning sun stabbing at her eyes. A soft buzzing thrummed against her ears
and she sucked in a deep breath, pushing herself harder.
Where are you going?
A shout dusted her back. Marshall. Calling her name. She ran faster, the buzzing in her head growing louder, like a swarm of bees. Angry bees.
Dell was dead.
She pushed herself into a faster sprint, the burn in her muscles beginning to gnaw at the numb fog consuming her, the pain in the soles of her feet spiking into the crushing void.
Del was dead. Her best friend. Her constant.
Her thylacine stalked the edges of her consciousness, angry. Agitated. Seeking release and freedom. Seeking escape. She understood all too easily, but couldn’t succumb. Not now. Maybe when all this was over. Maybe losing herself to her Tasmanian tiger was the only way to escape the pain? What else did she have?
The buzz in her head roared, angrier.
Dead. Killed. Killed by…
She surged forward, the muscles in her thighs screaming, a stitch stabbing into her side. She ran faster, aching for more pain. Anything to destroy the numb grief. Anything to silence the buzzing in her head.
Del was dead. Killed by…
The buzzing turned to a deafening roar. The crisp morning air lashed at her, tore into her flesh.
Killed by…
The roar beat at her head, flayed at her mind. Growing hotter, hotter. Louder.
A gut-wrenching sob choking her, she crumpled to the ground. Oh, God, Del was dead. Killed by…
Einar.
The name stabbed into the numb void, pierced the burning roar, a poisoned blade of hatred. She threw back her head, a howl of tortured rage tearing from her soul.
High above her, a flock of galahs screeched, startled by the wild cry. Jackie watched them erupt from the gum trees around her, her tears blurring them into pink and grey smudges. She tracked their flight through the pale sky, envying them their simple existence—no betrayal, no deception, no heartbreak.
Stop thinking about the birds, Jackie, and look at where you are.
Frowning, she lowered her gaze, surprised by what she found.
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