by Amy Green
Ethan ordered coffees for both of them, without asking what she wanted, and sat them down at a small table for two. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know for your nice little magazine?”
Alison bristled in defense of her nonexistent employer. “I told you, we want to write a story about this. If there’s going to be trouble with the shifter population, it’s important.”
“Here’s the deal,” Ethan said. “We had a killer werewolf a few months ago. Ripped a guy’s throat right out.”
“I heard about that,” Alison said, thinking of Devon Donovan. She pretended to look at her notes. “The dead man’s name was Christopher Wagner, also known as the Silverman. But my sources tell me he was a murderer who had just killed a cop.”
“Which means he should have been arrested and put through due process,” Ethan said, stirring sugar into his coffee, “not ripped to pieces by some animal. The same animal that probably killed two humans before that.”
“That wasn’t him,” Alison said. When Ethan gave her a look, she backtracked. “My, um, sources say that the two previous murders could be traced to the Silverman as well. He made them look like werewolf kills.”
“The evidence is inconclusive,” Ethan said, “and considering the lead on that case was Sheriff Walker, who then left town to go live with her werewolf boyfriend, it’s considered suspect. Her motives were definitely compromised.”
Despite herself, Alison was shocked. No, she wanted to shout. Nadine would never compromise an investigation like that. But she wasn’t supposed to know Nadine, so she said, “I hear that Sheriff Walker had a pretty good reputation before she left.”
“You hear a lot for someone who just came from Denver,” Ethan said. Alison gave him a vague shrug, and he nodded. “You’ve been doing your research, I see. It sounds like you don’t need me at all.”
“I need you to tell me what the mayor meant when he said he had new evidence.”
“Ah, that.” He gave her his charming grin again. She wondered if he had any idea she was immune to it, or if he cared. He wasn’t bad-looking, maybe, but she’d take Brody’s dark, serious looks over his any day. “Well, I’ve already written and filed my story with the mayor’s okay, so I can tell you. You’ll be reading about it by morning anyway. There’s no way you can scoop me.”
Alison felt her spine prickle with unease. “I’ll be reading about what?”
“There’s a doctor from the Falls,” Ethan said. “His name is Carson Dunne. Got arrested for dealing drugs to his patients—caught red-handed, in fact. Not good for him at all. But it turns out he used to be a doctor in the Falls. He was close to the old alpha. And he offered a deal.”
“A deal?” Alison breathed.
“He has inside information. Something about how the shifters plan to take over Pierce Point,” Ethan said. “All of Grant County, in fact. The new sheriff is my cousin-in-law, and I’ve known him for ten years. He says this doctor is willing to spill every secret he ever learned about those filthy animals in return for his freedom. So the sheriff’s office is more than happy to make a deal. They’re working out the details with his lawyers, and then he’ll give a full deposition. Hey, you look pale. Are you okay?”
“A full deposition?” Alison said, the words sticking in her throat. It felt like the world was swirling around her. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Alison, that the doctor is going to sing,” Ethan said, laughing. “He’s going to sing until he can’t sing anymore. And with the evidence he gives, the Feds and the state can put an end to the shifters forever. I hear through the grapevine that the plan is to round them up and put them in a detainment camp until they can find somewhere for them to go. A reservation, maybe, or out of the country completely—who cares? Not a damn soul, as long as they’re gone for good. Then the mayor wins his election, everyone is safe, and we all live happily ever after.” He grinned again. “Unless you’re a shifter, of course.”
Carson Dunne. The doctor who had done the postmortem on Charlie Donovan. Carson Dunne knows, Brody had said. He’d left town, but he obviously hadn’t gone far enough.
Carson Dunne knew about Charlie’s plans, his many years of unpunished crimes, everything. He knew that Brody had murdered his father.
What if Brody learned about the deal? Learned what was on the horizon?
No. No.
“I have to go,” she said, pushing back her chair and rising on shaking legs.
“Hey,” Ethan said. “We didn’t finish. I wanted to know if maybe you wanted to go out later.”
“I have to go,” she said again, picking up her purse, her useless notebook. Seriously, this guy could not take a hint. Shifters never pushed themselves on women who weren’t interested. “I told you, I have a boyfriend.” Who might commit murder if he hears about this. If I don’t stop him.
“Give me your number,” Ethan said.
But Alison was already running out of the coffee shop, pulling her phone from her purse.
Brody didn’t pick up. She called again, then again. She left a message—“Call me”—and texted him. Call me.
Sitting in her car in the City Hall parking lot, she tried to think. He wasn’t calling her back, which was bad. She didn’t have any of the other brothers’ contacts on her phone, because they all hated their phones and barely used them. She didn’t have their mates’ numbers either, and there was no such thing as a phone directory in Shifter Falls.
“Damn,” she muttered aloud to herself. She should be there. She should be there, instead of two hours away. Then she remembered she had the number of the Shifter Falls police department, programmed into her phone because of those late nights working at the Four Spot.
It was Nadine who answered. “Shifter Falls police, Nadine here.”
“Nadine, it’s Alison.”
“Oh, hey.” Alison could picture Nadine at the shoddy desk in the tiny old police station, her uniform on, her dark brown hair tied back in its usual braid. “What’s up? How’s Pierce Point?”
“I need Brody,” Alison said. “He isn’t answering his phone.”
There was a second of silence.
“Nadine?” Alison said. “Do you know where he is?”
“No,” Nadine said. “But I’m going to find him. Right fucking now.”
“That’s weird, right?” Alison almost felt relieved. “That he isn’t picking up? I’m not overreacting?”
“He’s your mate,” Nadine said. “Mates always pick up the phone.”
“Something’s wrong,” Alison said.
Nadine didn’t question that. She had a mate, too. “I’ll call you back.”
“Get Devon and the others,” Alison said, starting the car. “I’m coming back.”
15
It started to rain an hour out of Denver, the clouds lowering and the skies opening up like they were angry. Brody drove with the wipers on full blast, the phone beeping on the passenger seat next to him until he finally turned it off.
He couldn’t talk to anyone. Not while he was doing this. Because he’d have to lie, and he didn’t want to lie anymore.
He couldn’t bear to think of Alison, her lovely face, her gray eyes, her perfect skin. That red hair that he’d seen spilling over the backs of his hands. She’d been excited to go to Pierce Point, her eyes sparkling. And her text this morning: You’ll be so proud of me.
He hadn’t been able to answer. Because he was proud of her. But he had the feeling she wouldn’t be proud of him if she knew what he was doing right now.
Still, he argued with himself. This had to happen. It had to, and it had to be him that did it, no one else. This was part of what an alpha did for his pack—saved lives, prevented war, even if he had to sell his own soul to do it. His soul wasn’t worth much anyway.
It’s worth something to me, Alison said in his head.
And this, he wasn’t used to. Since he’d become alpha, he’d only ever considered himself and the pack. Nothing else mattered. But now Alison m
attered, more to him than either of those things, and he didn’t know what to do about it. Didn’t know what to do when what was best for the pack was not the thing that Alison would want.
He solved the problem by avoiding her, avoiding his brothers, and driving to Denver with his phone off. He was saving their future. So why did this feel like the most cowardly thing he’d ever done?
Inside him, his wolf howled. For perhaps the millionth time in his life, Brody wished he could cut into himself and excise his wolf, cut it out like a cancer and throw it away. He wished he could be whole, like other people. He had no idea what it felt like not to be at war with yourself, not to be fighting yourself day and night. Because his wolf wanted to kill Carson Dunne. His wolf was ready. In fact, his wolf relished the job.
This is not sport, he reminded himself. This is not a hunt. This is the pack’s future, and nothing more.
His wolf panted for blood and ignored him.
As the rain pounded harder, he drove on.
It wasn’t hard to find where Carson lived; the case had been a high profile one. He was in a gated community outside of Denver, on a big house built into the side of a hill. Brody parked his SUV in a construction site nearby, where they were building yet another gated community. Humans, forever building themselves fortresses to keep each other out.
It was dark now, full night. Brody took off his shoes and socks, dropped his baseball cap onto the driver’s seat. He got out of the car and walked through the driving rain and construction mud to the chain link fence a hundred feet away. He vaulted it easily and walked into the woods, climbing the hillside and approaching the house from the trees.
He could have done this as a wolf, but his wolf body wasn’t right for this work. He needed stealth, the ability to climb and open windows. He needed not to be naked. And, truth be told, if he was going to end a man’s life, he wanted to look that man in the eye as a human. It only seemed right.
He’d looked his father in the eye, after all.
Carson’s house was surrounded by a high wrought iron fence. Inside was a guard dog, a big Doberman, whip-fast and mean. It barked once when it sensed Brody’s approach on the other side of the fence, then went silent when Brody raised a finger at it. Quiet. The dog backed up, retreated, then lay on its side, belly exposed in complete surrender.
Quick and quiet, Brody shimmied up the wrought iron fence and over the top, dropping down in a soundless jump, his bare feet hitting the soggy lawn. Drenched now, he eyed the house. There was a light on in an upstairs bedroom, the flicker of a TV. No other lights. Brody rounded a corner, used a drainpipe to pull himself up the side of the house, and stepped out onto the roof of the back patio, moving until he had a view of the bedroom with the light in it.
A TV, playing to no one. A bed, the covers rumpled. A glass of water on the bedside table, half full. Someone had been in here, and then left. Which meant Carson knew he was here.
Still, it didn’t matter. He forced open the bedroom window and stepped in, the soaked cuffs of his jeans dripping onto the fine carpet. The first seconds inside the room told him everything he needed to know. This was Carson’s room—it smelled of him. There was a medicinal smell beneath the human smell that Brody didn’t understand but filed away for later. Carson himself was in the hallway, giving himself away by his scent, his heat, and the faint creak of a step. Over the noise of the TV, Brody was so attuned he heard Carson’s inhale of breath.
He took a step forward, then another. Walked to the bedroom doorway. Raised a hand and intercepted the baseball bat that was coming down toward his head. Wrested it from Carson’s grip, let it drop to the floor, and pinned Carson against the wall, his wrist up between his shoulder blades, his body unable to move.
“Was it the dog that gave me away?” he asked.
Carson’s hair had gone partly gray, that salt-and-pepper look that some women liked. His face was heavier, the beginnings of jowls along his jawline. Carson was tall, naturally beefy, and in his grip Brody felt the same strength from old times, layered over by a little age and fat but still vital. If Brody had been any human, his head would be split in half right now.
“Hello, Brody,” Carson said, his cheek pressed against the wall. “And no, it was the security cameras. Barnabas is just extra protection.”
“You thought a dog would be protection against an alpha wolf?”
“No,” Carson admitted. He was calm, considering the situation he was in, but then he had spent many years in Charlie Donovan’s pack. “Barnabas guards against the reporters and other riffraff. I like her. You didn’t kill her, did you?”
“No.” He’d never kill a dog. He’d kill a man, he’d kill Carson, but he’d never kill a dog. It didn’t make sense, but there it was. “You know why I’m here,” he said.
Carson huffed a laugh, which came out strangled due to his position. “I always thought it would be Devon coming after me,” he said. “Charlie’s big, mean enforcer. I didn’t think it would be precious Brody. Though I should know better. You always did do your own killing.”
Brody wrenched Carson’s arm higher between his shoulder blades, making him moan. “The cops in Pierce Point,” he said. “What did you tell them?”
“We had a nice talk,” Carson said. “We got along like a house on fire, Brody. Turns out the mayor has a thing about shifters. The sheriff, too. They’d both like to do you in. A few little charges are nothing to them. They’ll make them go away. So I told them there was a plan to take them over. You should have seen their reaction. They practically creamed their pants.”
“That was Charlie’s plan. Not mine.”
“Who cares?” Carson said. “Not me, and not them. You’re Charlie’s son. To them, you’re no different. You’ll just carry on Daddy’s legacy. An animal is an animal to them, especially in the middle of the election campaign. They can sell it—and believe me, they will.”
“You’re full of shit,” Brody said. “And you’re a drug dealer. Why would they believe you?”
“Because they know my history. They know I spent all those years with Charlie. Poor Charlie, who lay down to sleep one night and never woke up. Everyone was so relieved that no one questioned it.” He grunted, struggled, but Brody held fast. “Well, they’re going to question it now.”
“And you don’t think there will be blowback to you?” Brody said. “You falsified a postmortem, Carson. That makes you an accessory. You really think those particular charges are going to go away?”
“I’m safer in prison than out here with wolves.”
“You get me sent in with you, you won’t be safe there either.”
Carson laughed softly, the sound dark in his throat. “You don’t care about that,” he said. “You don’t care about your safety or your life. You never have. I know you too well, werewolf.”
Brody gritted his teeth and said nothing.
“You’re not here to save your own skin,” Carson continued. “You’re here for your precious pack. Those piece of shit brothers you call kin. You’re trying to save them, when every single one of them would let you die without thinking twice.” He laughed again. “You always were the sensitive one. Ever since that day with your mother. Poor sweet Brody, living alone and moping. The only thing that can make him mad is a threat to his precious family. Charlie always did know how to keep you in line.”
“Yeah, well,” Brody said. “He didn’t keep me in line in the end.”
“You don’t care about dying,” Carson said. “You think I care about dying? Use that precious brain of yours, son, and think.”
Brody ran through it in his mind. Carson was getting at something, which meant there had to be something different, something he’d missed. The medicinal smell—it was the only unfamiliar thing. He could smell it even more powerfully this close, and he understood it. “You’re sick,” he said.
“Dying,” Carson Dunne agreed. “Cancer in the prostate—and I tell you, I’d give a million fucking dollars to have a shifter’s immunity.
But I don’t. I’m dead meat, Donovan. You doing what you came here to do—that just does me a favor.”
Brody yanked him back from the wall, then slammed him into it again, hard enough to make the plaster crack. Kill him, his wolf growled. Kill him, kill him. “Why?” he shouted at Carson, his voice hoarse. “Why are you doing this? Why go to the police with all of those old crimes? Why dig up Charlie’s ghost again? Why are you making me do this? What the fuck do you want after all these years?”
“Do it, Brody,” Carson said. “Kill me.”
He squeezed Carson’s hand, nearly hard enough to break the wrist. Carson moaned in pain but didn’t move. Alison, Brody thought. I have to do this, Alison. I have to.
No, she said in his head.
It’s only my soul. That’s all.
Too high a price, she replied. She was watching him, her gray eyes unwavering. Don’t pay it. Find another way.
I have to. I have to.
“You should have sent Devon,” Carson said, reading every second of Brody’s silence. “Devon wouldn’t hesitate.”
Devon had hesitated. He’d been Charlie’s enforcer, but privately he’d warned most of his targets to leave town before he could get to them. Devon looked like a killer, but secretly he’d saved a dozen lives, maybe more.
Unlike Brody, who looked like he wasn’t a killer—yet had taken his father’s life.
“Shut up,” Brody said to Carson. He passed their words through his mind again, again. This was too important. “You’re lying about something. There’s something you’re not saying. Tell me, or I’ll make it slow.”
For the first time, Carson looked uncertain, like he was about to make a gamble he wasn’t sure he would win. “I might be willing to back out of the deal with the cops,” he said. “For the right price.”
Brody stared at him in shock. “Money?” he said, incredulous. “After all this, you want money?”