She had been through hell, and had made it back.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand in his. “Time to go.”
With a grip that no one on the planet could have made him loosen, Cameron led Abby to the car, got her inside and climbed behind the wheel. He figured that five or six people might have seen her furred-up when they drove by, but there were plenty of wacky phone calls to the department, everything from alien spaceships to ghosts.
What difference would a lone werewolf beside a bar make?
Chapter 30
Werewolf gangbangers knew where he lived, which meant he’d have to relocate sometime soon. In the middle of the morning on a weekday, Dylan and the other Landau pack members would be at work, maintaining a distance from one another and from things that went bump in the night. They weren’t apt to be up for another rescue today.
Motels were everywhere in Miami, plenty of them by the ocean offering scenery and fresh air. But he was minus his wallet, and Abby looked as if she’d been in a train wreck. She shook as if she’d been frozen in ice cubes. Her face was pale enough for the lacing of fine vessels beneath her skin to show as blue streaks.
He thought about taking her to the department, where she’d be surrounded by cops and safe, and he wondered what kind of questions might arise if he did, in the state they both were in.
No, as he saw it, there was only one way to go, and he had abused that welcome a few times already. However, Abby needed care, food and a shower, and Dylan had said the words any time, so maybe he’d be allowed to get through the gates. He’d head for the cottage on the property, or the garage, leave Abby in one of those secure places, then gather his stuff from home and find a new location to take her to, where she’d be comfortable and he’d feel relieved.
The Mercedes took the roads effortlessly. Cameron had automatically memorized the route, for personal reasons and to return the car. Abby rode in silence next to him, with her head against the seat. She lacked the energy to speak, he supposed. Perhaps she just wasn’t ready.
The road took a turn through wide-open spaces, and then doubled back. Big stone gates appeared, closed. When he pulled up in front of them, the Mercedes emitted a beeping sound that brought a man out from behind one of the gates’ statuesque pillars. After looking through the windshield, the man waved them on, and the gates opened.
So, the Landaus had guards. Wolf guards dressed in black, no doubt packing heat. Dylan’s family wasn’t taking any chances on intruders getting inside.
So far, so good.
Cameron had time to look around as the driveway meandered through a grove of trees. In the sunlight, the estate looked different—slightly smaller and less imposing. Freshly watered lawns sparkled. Flowers bloomed in beds along the driveway, adding pops of vibrant color to a place that had started out as part of a nightmare.
It all seemed so normal, so refined. Just another mansion among mansions that not too many people got to see up close. Its secrets seemed ludicrous bathed in yellow, but it only took a sideways glance at Abby for Cameron to remember how different and difficult life could be beneath any surface. Sam’s building had a false floor, accessed by a trapdoor. Abby’s beautiful countenance housed a wolf with the ability to shift without a full moon.
And Cameron Mitchell? He was a cop, a defender of the weak and a wolf. He was a man who wasn’t really a man, in love with a woman who wasn’t a woman.
Yes, he loved Abby, and dreaded every minute they were apart. He loved her so much that the word love didn’t begin to describe his feelings. And this, Cameron thought as he turned the car toward the garage, read more like science fiction than reality.
So, what was the world coming to, and where would these things end? Well, a good start in that direction would be to help Abby deal. Help her over the hump that remained as a last temptation for trouble. Finding Sam Stark.
“I’ve never thanked you,” Abby said, bringing his thoughts back around.
“For the ride, or the great bedside manner?” His joke, meant to lighten the mood, didn’t result in a smile. “I haven’t helped much,” he added soberly. “I wasn’t there today.”
“How could you have been there? I left while you were sleeping.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better about what just happened,” he confessed without bringing up what he thought about the stupid, dangerous move she’d made by running out on him to face Sam alone.
“I had to go there,” she said.
“I know.”
“He kept my mother in that terrible place. I don’t know how he killed her, or how he got away with it. I don’t understand how anyone, crazy in the head or not, might keep someone in a cage.”
“What about you, Abby? Tell me about you.”
She fell silent, seeming to mull over his question.
“You shifted, and shifted back,” he said, as if she didn’t know that.
She turned her head toward him as they drove into the coolness of the garage. “Lycan. I get it. It’s not about pelts or money for Sam. That’s a cover-up. He’s not like the rest. For Sam, it’s about revenge.”
“Revenge for what?”
“Loving someone he considered inhuman. Loving her so much, her Otherness drove him insane.”
Cameron sensed Abby’s reasoning powers hard at work. He wanted to hear about what had happened, and feared pushing her too far. Abby might be Lycan, and therefore a kind of werewolf royalty, but she was newer to this wolf business than he was. She looked thin, ragged and hungry. She looked haunted. Not in the way she haunted him, more in the manner of having had a ghost walk over her grave. Her mother’s ghost.
She’d shared only pieces of what had happened to her. He didn’t fully understand what she’d said, though he had a good idea about Sam’s treatment of wolves after seeing that hidden room. Sam had likely hurt her mother before killing her. He had hurt Abby in ways that were going to be difficult to repair.
“They won’t catch him,” she said.
“We will. We’ll do our best.”
“He’ll be waiting for me.”
“Why? Hasn’t he done enough?”
“I don’t remember what my mother looked like, but I must resemble her. I probably smell like her. When Sam sees me, he sees her. He...”
“He...what?”
“He thought I was her. Am her.”
“Your mother is dead. Surely he’d remember that.”
“I’m not certain. He’s unstable. I believe he won’t rest until I’m in the ground with her.”
“We will find him,” Cameron repeated. “And then it will be over.”
“Yes.” Abby’s voice had grown weaker. “Over.”
Cameron pulled the Mercedes into its slot and shut off the engine. He didn’t open the door. He liked things this way—just Abby and himself. The coolness of the garage offered a respite from the heat outside. Leather seats were the ultimate luxury for weary bones. Sooner or later, though, Abby had to be seen by somebody better able to help.
Although his thoughts raced, the interior of the garage was serenely quiet. A mint julep would have been a bonus, or a cold beer. Cameron had no idea when he had last eaten a meal, and doubted if Abby had had enough sustenance in the past seventy-two hours to sustain her for much longer. She had been slender before all this had started. Now, she was rail-thin. The bones of her shoulders jutted out beneath her shirt. Her jaw had the quality of carved marble. Looking at her hurt him in ways he obviously had yet to discover. If anything more happened to her, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Good thing full-on humans didn’t have to contend with this imprinting thing, or insanity might rule the masses.
And heaven help him, with that last thought, it was clear that he had begun to differentiate between what he had been, and what he had turned into
.
“We need to see if Dylan’s mother is at home,” he said at length.
“I don’t want to talk about what happened,” Abby said.
“I’m guessing you won’t have to. If my instinct is correct, everyone here has secrets and is adept at keeping them. They won’t bother to pry into anyone else’s.”
Abby faced him again. “Are we a pack now? You and me?”
“Only if I can be the leader.”
Abby smiled briefly. Because of that smile, Cameron figured she’d be okay. Gauging the magnitude of his relief over that was next to impossible.
He would keep things light and honor her timetable for providing him with more pieces to the puzzle that consumed her. Impatience was a cop’s daily staple, and had to be overcome. Abby had to have her mental space, for now. Physical space was altogether different. This cop planned on sticking to her like glue, or gluing her somewhere safe, while he picked up his weapon, his wallet and his badge, items he’d need in the search for serial torturer Sam Stark.
“Time to go in,” he said as he opened the car door, hoping against better judgment that he’d get to carry her again, and for a few minutes more keep her close to his heart.
* * *
Abby had never felt so weightless. If a stiff wind had blown, she might have drifted away. The heaviness of her wolf had been decreased, or dispersed...whatever the hell it did when not showing itself. But the wolf hadn’t gone completely. She felt its nearness. On her fingers, the phantom imprint of claws made her nerve endings tingle.
In a self-protective gesture, she reached for Cameron’s hand, relieved when his fingers closed over hers. Handholding was a human thing, and she desperately wanted to feel human.
Cameron led her over the grass, taking a shortcut to the house. The scent of the freshly mowed lawn seemed to her like heaven, and drowned out the stench of Sam’s cage. She wanted to lie down and roll in the grass, cover herself with greenery, immerse her senses in normal, decent, everyday smells. Many kinds of animals did this, and she now understood why.
Nearing the house brought on anxiousness, a slight movement of the beast within her, as well as a ton of regret. She had been offered help here, and had run away in search of her destiny.
Finding some of the answers to the questions she’d asked added light to the dark hole of her past, yet a few questions remained. Why had Sam killed her mother? How had he done it? Something had finally pushed him into the abyss.
Sam had to be taken off the streets.
Landau’s front door opened before they had reached the steps leading up to it. A gray-haired Were woman that Abby barely remembered advanced. Dressed in pale gray slacks and a matching silk shirt, their hostess extended a hand first to her, then to Cameron. Gray eyes, inquisitive and wide, gave her a quick once-over.
“We don’t like to intrude. Are we welcome at this hour, Mrs. Landau?” Cameron asked.
“Of course you’re welcome here. We hoped you’d make it back sometime today,” the woman replied in an aged alto. “Dana has been calling every half hour. I hope you need breakfast, because everyone left this morning without eating, and the food will go to waste.”
“Breakfast,” Abby repeated. The word had a foreign ring to it.
“Do you always eat breakfast together?” Cameron asked, voicing the question she’d been thinking about.
She was fascinated by the idea of a family—or in this case a pack—spending time together over a meal of any kind, or for that matter, any reason, as if they liked one another, and as though they got along. She had ached for that kind of closeness, dreamed of it her whole life.
“Only when there are things to discuss,” Mrs. Landau replied. “My son and his mate often stay on the property, in the cottage by the wall. The others drop in fairly regularly. We usually have a houseful.”
“Is your husband at home?” Cameron asked.
“He’s in court today.”
“Court?”
“Yes. He’s sending down judgments all afternoon.”
“He’s a judge?” Cameron asked, then blinked as if he’d asked a stupid question. “Of course. Judge Landau. I’ve heard the name.”
Abby hadn’t, but Cameron’s hold on her hand produced a small electrical charge that passed from his fingers to hers, letting her know the judge was somebody special and well-respected. Cops might have to know things like that.
She wouldn’t have been able to come here on her own, Abby realized as they followed their hostess into the house. The silk and the pearls, the black shutters and the wide expanse of lawn, were a glimpse into a world far removed from hers.
Breathing in scents of polished wood, grass and faint traces of lemon brought up the dichotomy of other recent odors: blood, fear, metal bars and silver chains. She wasn’t sure if she could afford to leave those terrible remembrances behind for the time it took to eat a piece of toast served on a china plate.
On the threshold of the Landau house, Abby turned to glance at the sky, needing no wristwatch to tell her how many hours there were until nightfall. Her wolf’s intuition had all the aspects of a well-oiled sundial.
And then what? Why did she suddenly fear the dark?
“What is it?” Cameron asked with his mouth close to her ear.
“I’m a freak.”
“Welcome to my world.”
The way his lips brushed over her hair, the familiar warmth of Cameron’s breath, made her heart and her wolf jump. The truth? She wasn’t alone. And she had never been a weakling. Now wasn’t the time to forget that.
She also had her knife. Sam, who didn’t have the benefit of wolfish senses, hadn’t picked up on the blade strapped to her leg.
She had more questions—a bucket full. But glad to have the support of Cameron’s hand on hers, Abby closed her eyes as she entered the home of Sam’s enemies, her body soaking up the wild wolf vibes underlying its contradictory genteel exterior, her inner wolf beginning to claw at her insides, craving freedom now that it had had a taste of what freedom was like.
Buttered toast wasn’t going to satisfy either of them.
Chapter 31
Cameron entered the room assigned to Abby without bothering to knock. She would be expecting him.
He had observed how restless she’d been all day, while awaiting the return of the others in the Landau pack. She had paced continuously inside the house and across the grounds, making sure of his closeness with guarded glances, though she didn’t have to look at him to be assured of that.
They both were aware of the bond tying them together, as well as the exact distances separating them most of the time. That special sense of togetherness had deepened after her first shift, as if there were now four beings attached at the hip and securing the bond, instead of just two.
Cameron heard water sounds that came from the adjoining bathroom as he entered her space. Abby would probably relish a shower and be trying to cool off, unused to full-on Were heat in a city that topped a hundred degrees on a daily basis.
He didn’t envy her the months ahead of getting to know her wolf side. But Abby seemed to have passed through her Blackout phase with few visible scars to show for it. He wondered how bad it had been, without wanting to linger on the thought. She had shape-shifted in a cage, and had managed, which said a lot about the toughness of her character.
Maybe he’d join her in the shower.
Quietly, Cameron closed the door behind him and looked around her room. Abby’s old clothes lay in a pile on the floor. She’d want to burn them, and he couldn’t fault her on that.
New clothes were spread out on the bed next to the rumpled blankets she had tried to curl up on. A shirt, some loose pants, fresh underwear in an unopened plastic package and a pair of rubber sandals that might have been close to her size were yet another offering f
rom the Landau family.
A tray sat on the nightstand, with a bowl of melting ice and a pitcher of the tangy lemon drink he had chugged at breakfast in an attempt to coat his blazing insides. Abby had eaten nothing. Drank nothing. This worried him.
He glanced up, and looked to the bathroom door, relieved to sense her there. For a minute, he’d been unsure.
Cameron leaned against the doorjamb, searching the bathroom, knowing that for he and Abby privacy was no longer an issue. The shower curtain was clear. The small room was devoid of frills of any kind. This kind of sparseness would suit Abby, he thought. Her apartment above the bar had been modern and spare.
Feeling a bit like a voyeur, he watched her from the doorway, able to see every angle and line on her ultralean body. She stood under the showerhead with both hands on the tile wall, motionless, allowing the water to cascade over her. Rivulets ran down her shoulders, over her breasts and belly and between her thighs. In spite of the hurt inside her, and having been mentally abused, she was the sexiest female he had ever seen.
And she still wore the silver knife, in its sheath, strapped to her calf.
After making a sound he hadn’t planned on making, Abby turned her head. Through the flimsy barrier of the shower curtain, their eyes met with a stunning, fiery impact, igniting sparks that spread through him.
He had been physically desirous of her before she formally acknowledged him, but grew harder when she did. This wasn’t the time to show her what he thought of her, of course, and yet he wanted nothing more. It was always that way when he saw her.
“Abby,” he said. “I...”
She turned fully, and swept the wet hair back from her face. He saw hunger in her expression that matched his. Maybe she needed to be lost in the sheer physicality of their union, and to exert pent-up energy that had nowhere else to go. He sure as hell hoped so.
He drew back the curtain, and didn’t reach to turn the water off. A light spray of water hit both him and the floor.
She reached out to him, grabbed hold of the front of his shirt and tugged. Like everything else here, the shirt belonged to someone else, but it was too late to worry about that, and how many he’d already borrowed. The look in Abby’s eyes did him in. The way she wanted him overruled everything except the need to be mates.
Harlequin Nocturne May 2015 Box Set: Wolf HunterPossessed by a Wolf Page 24