As he looked to the closed door, Cameron wondered if whoever owned this place would need to lock a stranger in, or if he’d be free to roam around. They had told him his recovery might take a while, but time was of the essence. Abby was out there somewhere, alone. She might be searching for him, and he couldn’t breathe or move his feet.
“Where am I?”
Since the voices he’d heard here had been friendly, possibly they had brought him to the cottage behind Landau walls where earlier tonight he had met Wilson’s friends. In that case, and if the door was locked, he might be able to use the window for his escape.
He hadn’t been out of it long. The moonlight streaming in meant that it was still dark. Hopefully, it was the same night.
He made his way toward the window by placing one hand over the other and working his way around the bed. But even then, he had to take breaks.
“No good to you like this,” he said to the image of Abby that ruled every thought he had, pictured in an ongoing, continual loop. Abby as he’d first seen her, magnificently defiant and brave. Abby, naked and in his arms. Abby at the bar, looking pale and frightened. Abby, with moonlight on her bare skin and a pleading look in her eyes.
Sick or not, he wanted her so badly he was willing to forgo a little healing in order to reach her. He had to reach her. It had become clear that as Dana Delmonico had said, he and Abby were a couple. They had imprinted man to woman, wolf to wolf, soul to soul. Theirs was a trinity of connections. A triple threat to the heart. And his heart hurt without her.
“Abby,” he whispered as he pushed off the bed and grabbed hold of the sill. “I will find you. Never doubt that.”
Inwardly, he added, It might take a little time.
“Silver be damned.” Needing air, Cameron reached for the shutters. He looked out of the window to find the ground a full three stories below. That ground was populated with more Weres than he could imagine existing in one place, even in anyone’s worst nightmares.
* * *
Abby didn’t know if she was being saved, freed or captured. As the wolves led her through the dark, deserted grounds of the eastern border of the park, they hadn’t slowed or glanced behind them. If these wolves were connected to Cameron’s friends, surely they’d use more caution and be attentive to the hunters prowling the moonlight. But no, they marched in the open, not seeming to care.
Fear began to spread through her, snarling and deep. Where was Cameron? She swore she felt him thinking about her. He wasn’t very far from here. Maybe if she tuned in, she’d find him.
She could use her knife on at least one of these wolves if they turned out to be from the wrong side of the tracks, and if they’d free up her arms. The silver knife throbbed against her bare leg, its hilt touching newly sensitive skin. She hadn’t been able to reach it while trapped in that damn net.
Something with a whooshing sound went by. Abby ducked, pulling one of the wolves down with her, listening to a second silenced shot ring out.
The wolf on her right fell to one knee. Blood and splintered bone fragments spurting from the wound made it roar. The other wolf let go of her and ran, leaving Abby to the mercy of Sam’s sudden approach, and behind him, the hunter that had earlier been by his side.
Sam’s boot came down hard on the wounded werewolf’s chest, and held firm as the beast writhed. “Dose it quickly,” he barked to the other guy. “And call it in.”
Abby’s ankle lay beneath the wolf’s heavy leg. It took her a minute to free herself as Sam grinned down at her.
“I knew you’d be of use,” he said.
Standing up straight, Abby faced him defiantly. She had werewolf blood all over her, and a downed wolf by her feet.
“In fact,” Sam said, “you’ve turned out to be exactly the kind of bait we’ve needed to hurry things along.”
Her voice shook with anger. “Bait? Are you saying you left me in that net on purpose to attract your prey?”
“Not entirely, but your punishment had an added benefit.”
“Sam,” she said, her voice low. “Do you think so little of me?”
“Of course not, daughter. Do you think I’m totally without feeling? We didn’t leave you there. We circled around and kept watch. Those monsters couldn’t have harmed you. We wouldn’t have let them.”
“How certain you are, Sam. But what if they hadn’t meant to harm me at all? What if they were trying to get me away from you?”
Sam waved that suggestion away as nonsense with a drift of his hand. “That’s what I meant by being off balance, Abby. Can you hear yourself?”
The hunter Sam had led to this spot knelt by the werewolf. From his back pocket, he withdrew a syringe.
“What’s that?” Abby demanded.
“Something to ease his pain.”
“Temporarily, or forever?”
Sam’s hand on her elbow made her shiver. Her father led her aside and said calmly, “Haven’t I given you nearly everything you’ve wanted? Did I ask for much in return?”
Actually, Abby immediately thought, he had given her something. Cameron. Due to Sam’s games, she and Cameron had met. What grateful daughter wouldn’t stop to appreciate that particular twist of fate?
Should she tell Sam right that minute, exacting her own sort of revenge, how like the beast on the ground she was, or soon would be in the future? Although the claw had retracted, she felt it there beneath her fingernail, ready to spring.
Inside her, wildness existed, and had grown stronger. For all she knew, she had more in common with the beast on the ground than with Sam Stark, who would “take care of that” for her if he knew about the wolf connection.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” she said, “for so many things.”
“I told you we’d have discussions later. Right now, I have business to tend to. You can see that.”
“Where will you take...” She’d almost said it, with regard to the beast, but only because she wasn’t sure of the werewolf’s gender. There hadn’t been time to find out what their intentions had been, or where the two wolves had been taking her.
What if they had been Cameron’s friends?
Bad wolves or not, a wave of sadness engulfed Abby. Too many possibilities for blame and for shame brought a rush of anger to the surface. Getting away from Sam seemed like an impossible task.
“What now?” She eyed Sam fiercely with her hands balled into fists behind her back.
“You mean since you can’t be trusted to leave the park where you’d be safe, and will continue to get in the way of a damn good outing?”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
“You’ll have to tag along.”
“I don’t feel much like being used as bait.”
“Then consider it a favor for your dear old dad.”
She heard the hunter using a phone to call for help in moving the werewolf they had shot. Closing her eyes, inhaling the smell of wolf blood, Abby had to rein herself and her anger in...at least until her father turned his back.
Chapter 18
The door behind Cameron opened. Turning to look at who stood in the doorway took far too many seconds of the time ticking away in his head.
“Going somewhere?” Wilson asked, wearing only his jeans. No black T-shirt, no shoes, belt or badge. His hair was mussed, as if he had just changed back to this shape in honor of this visit.
“She’s out there,” Cameron replied. “And she’s in trouble.”
“How can you be sure?”
Cameron looked at Wilson directly. “Do you have a mate?”
Wilson nodded.
“Then your question makes no sense.”
“Problem is, my friend, that you aren’t ready to go out there, into a night full of hunters and God knows what else.”
&
nbsp; “Then maybe you’ll bring her here,” Cameron said. “Help her like you’ve helped me.”
“Funny. We were just about to do that very thing.”
Cameron waited out a few beats of silence before saying, “Who are those guys in the yard?”
“They’re my pack.”
“Do they mind if I see them?”
“I’m not sure they’ll show you their faces yet, but they’re ready to run up against a hunter or two.”
“Because you asked them to?”
“Nope. Due entirely to Dana’s insistence.”
“Delmonico.”
“Dana seems to believe that your Abby needs protecting from the very people she’s helped in the past.”
Cameron did his best to nod his head. His muscles quaked. “What is it with silver?”
“It hurts like a son of a bitch, doesn’t it?”
“Said from experience?”
“Shot in the forearm a few months ago.”
Cameron took that in.
“We’ve gotten wind of wolf blood being spilled on the east side,” Wilson said.
Cameron stiffened.
“Though that’s not close, we have to check it out.”
“Because you’re cops?”
“Because it’s in our best interest to do so as cops and Weres and decent beings, human or otherwise.”
“I can go along. I can...”
“Stay here and heal up,” Wilson interrupted, “so that you’ll be ready to do your share some other night.”
“I’m no good here.”
“We will find her, Mitchell. Don’t worry too much, or Dylan’s mother will put you to sleep. She’s in charge of this sick bay, you know, and she’s fiercely protective of any wolf that lands in this room. She takes it as her own personal mission to set things right.”
“I need to thank her, Wilson, and all of you.”
“Oh, Mrs. Landau will be back any minute now. You can count on it. She’s too formidable for the use of a first name. Trust me on that. And I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done in my place. None of us did.”
Wilson had more to say. “I checked your files. I hope you don’t mind.”
“And?”
“The files told me that you have no immediate living relatives, since your parents died in a car accident a few years ago. You’re a Florida native, and live alone in a place bordering a bad area, probably due to those huge paychecks we’re handed each month.”
“I could have told you all of that.”
“Maybe having no family to worry about is what makes some people better cops and more willing to risk their health and lives for a cause,” Wilson said. “It’s true, then? You’re alone in Miami?”
Cameron nodded. “More or less.”
Wilson turned and said over his shoulder, “I’m here if you ever want to talk. I’ll leave you now. Stay put and take the cure. You were a lucky bastard that the bullet didn’t reach anything vital. We’re pretty sure Sam Stark didn’t take that shot, or you’d be hanging in his basement by a hook instead of enjoying that pretty bedspread beside you.”
Wilson didn’t smile. Cameron didn’t, either. And then Matt Wilson closed the door behind him without waiting for Cameron to formulate how to better word his thanks.
Cameron leaned heavily on the windowsill. He watched Wilson leave the house and join six others on what Wilson had insinuated to be Dylan Landau’s manicured front lawn. He had seen Wilson shift once before, and this transformation was equally as fast. One minute Wilson was there, and the next, he was a werewolf among six other werewolves of varying size and color, all of them tremendously big, strong and dangerous.
Sam Stark would wet his pants if any of these guys caught up with him. These Weres were a beautiful, intelligent, lethal pack comprised of cops and detectives and who knew what else. Cameron’s wolf gave an internal bark of acceptance. His body shook with the desire to be out there with them.
Lucky?
Hell, yes, he was lucky. And he hoped, as he watched the silent, furred-up Weres jump the wall, that Abby would recognize a friend when she saw one. And that it wasn’t too late for them to find her.
He growled his displeasure over the situation, and then growled again. Each rumble in his chest sent shocks of pain through him, but he would make it, and heal miraculously, someone here had said. He’d be out there before he knew it.
Just not right that minute, he thought as he rested his head on the wall.
* * *
Abby smelled wolves before she and Sam had covered three yards. Her body’s response was to cough up an immediate growl that she slapped down with a chokehold on her throat.
What she didn’t know was if these new wolves were on Cameron’s side, or feral animals intent on doing harm wherever they could. They were precariously close to the boulevard, where lines of cars paraded in each direction, and people gathered near several popular nightclubs. All sorts of odors from the city vied for her attention, but wolf remained potent among them.
These wolves smelled like wet dogs.
They weren’t like Cameron. Neither was their scent anything like the smells clinging to the leather jacket loaned to her by the big brown wolf Cameron had followed.
This started to make sense to her. She was now reasonably able to differentiate between types of wolves by scent alone. Plus, good guys probably wouldn’t have trespassed so close to the tourists, and likely geared themselves toward minding their manners in public.
Bad guys were on the move.
Sam’s cell phone vibrated. She heard it, felt that buzz as though the phone had been in her own pocket, though they had paused near a big palm tree that slightly diffused the moonlight.
Between the approach of rogue wolves and the light dappling her face, Abby felt the strangely familiar shock of separating skin. One claw again began to pop, easing its way through her fingertip. She had to squeeze her eyes shut against the immediacy of the pain, and to keep from shouting.
“Here,” Sam said in a decibel above a whisper.
Abby threw him a look. Sam had no idea how sensitive a werewolf’s hearing was. Any of them between the park and the street would have heard Sam’s directional cue.
One did.
“Too late,” she said as Sam whirled to face the oncoming werewolf—a beast with the corded musculature of a bodybuilder on steroids.
Sam now had a rifle. It came up quickly, and calmly, Abby thought as Sam took aim. But the werewolf didn’t seem to notice Sam or the weapon. This monster had eyes only for her.
It came on intently, with its gaze fastened to her face—a huge sucker, a freak and much too large for a normal Were’s range of fast moves.
Sam fired off two rounds in quick succession before the beast got close. The first bullet struck its left shoulder, the second its right knee. The monster kept coming, growling menacingly as it stumbled forward to reach for Abby.
“Damn freak,” she heard Sam say before a third bullet hit the wolf between its eyes and the thing went down.
She’d been holding her breath. When Abby finally looked to Sam, it was to find his rifle pointed at her chest.
“Sam?” she said, only then noticing that all ten of her fingers sported lethal claws, and that her hands shook from the trauma of birthing them.
Sam stared at her in silence, in much the same way as the monster had stared.
So this is it.
Abby stood tall as she faced her father and somehow found the ability to speak. “I suppose this will need to be part of the discussion you’ve postponed?”
With her heart in her throat and her knuckles pulsing, Abby heard the well-oiled rifle trigger start to compress.
The wind whistled around her as if alive and urging her to move.
Only it wasn’t the wind. It was the slipstream of a werewolf barreling in at top speed.
Furred and fanged, the wolf rammed into Sam, knocking him back a few steps and dislodging his hold on the rifle. A second werewolf rushed in to pick up the weapon. That wolf’s hands slowly rose to show off a set of threatening claws.
These werewolves didn’t hurt Sam. Though he might have killed her tonight, right there where his team had taken down so many others, their concern seemed to center on her.
Abby remained upright, swaying as if Sam had fired the rifle, unable to process what had almost taken place.
Sam knew about her.
Sam had seen the claws.
Having been manhandled by numerous people tonight, she shook off the brown wolf’s sudden grip on her arm, and looked into his eyes. The damn Were inclined his head to her after shifting his gaze to check out her hands and the claws scraping her thighs.
He truly wasn’t going to hurt her. This werewolf smelled like the leather jacket she wanted to draw back and cuddle into.
Acknowledging that, Abby let him lead her a few feet away from Sam and what might have gone down if this wolf and his friend hadn’t arrived in time.
The wolf’s companion, a paler, larger version of werewolf with bright, intelligent eyes, waited with those eyes on Sam, who hadn’t budged from the spot he’d been knocked back to. Sam’s harsh, irregular breaths lent a horror-movie detail to the tense, overheated atmosphere. Sam Stark faced the werewolves he had been hunting, and they were granting him life.
She wondered if that would change anything for Sam. But he shook his head and spoke to her with a terrible slowness. “Just like her.”
There wasn’t time to wonder about that. Everyone present seemed to sense the approach of another hunter—an angry human, and very bad news.
With Sam’s rifle in hand, the paler wolf took off. The brown wolf at her side gave her arm a tug. There wasn’t any point of remaining to find out what Sam had meant by his remark. He had already proved himself an uninterested husband and a lousy father figure. Instinct warned that he actually would have shot her.
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