by Terry Spear
“When she died, I’d inherit everything that she was to get. And you know how it is. When a human learns of our existence, they either have to be turned or die. It’s our way. No way in hell was I making her one of us. So it was the perfect solution. Kill her off in a hostage-taking situation, and I would get the inheritance.”
Meara stared at him in disbelief, unable to fathom how someone could hate a sibling that much. “So you planned the whole affair? Had the women taken as hostages so you could get the money? But you didn’t intend their release?”
“That’s about the gist of it.”
She couldn’t imagine anyone so unfeeling that he would kill for a handful of money. “What did your sister ever do to you?”
Cyn narrowed his eyes at her. “My parents didn’t like me, didn’t like what I was doing, and when they died, they left every bit of their million-dollar estate to my sister. Hell, I received a dollar to show they hadn’t forgotten me in the will. A frigging dollar!”
Meara took a deep breath, wondering how his parents had died and what he had done to deserve being cut from the will. “Why did you send the message to Hunter to change the location of the beach landing?”
“Hell, I didn’t do that. I certainly didn’t have his email address. One of your own pack members did that. Chris Tarleton was the defector.”
She still had a tough time believing Chris could be behind all this. Chris had always been quiet and had absolutely no sense of humor, but he did a good job as one of Hunter’s sub-leaders. “Why had he been involved in all of this?”
“Hell, Meara, think about it. Hunter hasn’t been around that much over the years, off fighting one cause or another. Chris is tired of playing second fiddle, so to speak. He kept thinking Hunter would get killed on a mission, and that would solve that, but the Navy SEAL just wouldn’t die. And then when the fire destroyed your home in California, Chris had the perfect opportunity to convince a bunch of the pack to mutiny and—”
“Chris did that? He split the pack up completely! Damn him.” Even now the pack was split up, with some living in southern California without any plans to return.
“Yeah, well, he hadn’t exactly meant for that to happen. Those who went to southern California weren’t supposed to. Chris would have succeeded with the group he took off with if they hadn’t wound up in a red wolf’s territory in Portland. Leidolf, I think the pack leader’s name was, wasn’t about to put up with your pack’s encroachment. Chris was forced to return to the coast with the rest of the pack. Then Hunter had the trouble with that gray pack, and Chris thought that would be the end of him.”
“But Hunter survived.”
“Yeah. He always managed to survive. And he took up with that woman photographer. It looked as though he was giving up his contract work and staying here with her for good. No more missions. No more leaving the pack under Chris’s control. And that wouldn’t do. So Chris contacted me. Said he’d pay me again to gather a group of men and get rid of Hunter and his team for good.”
“So this wasn’t about me.”
“Hell, yeah, it’s about you.”
About revenge for her not wishing to see him further, so he thought. “The two of you concocted the hostage crisis?” she asked.
“Me and my own team and Chris. We wanted the money. Chris wanted your pack. You were up for grabs.”
Right. As if she’d go along with it.
“What about the Knight of Swords?”
“The what?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Although she suspected that Chris was the Knight of Swords, she wanted to know if Cyn knew for certain. “Someone left the tarot card as a calling card of sorts with Allan when he was shot.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
Feeling chilled with the cool ocean breeze whipping across her skin, she asked, “Didn’t you have Allan shot?”
“No, Chris did.”
Finn would kill Chris if Hunter didn’t do the job. She felt nauseated all over again. How could they have missed the signs that one of their own pack members had been a traitor? “So you hadn’t intended for Hunter and his team to die on the beach?”
“Hell, yeah, we had. If I’d been with the team, I would have been the only survivor. Somehow I don’t see Hunter as the kind of guy who would have allowed me to take the ransom money after making sure my sister was dead. Some of the women would have made it out with me, so I would have gotten all the honors. I would have been a team leader instead of just a team member, and the ransom would have been paid to the bad guys. Which would have been me and my men.
“Only it didn’t work out as planned. And we didn’t get any of the ransom money. My sister had changed her will so that charity would get every dime of her inheritance, should she die. I hadn’t planned on that. Not only that, but she left a message that if she died an accidental death, the investigating officer should check me out because she suspected I had killed our parents.”
“Had you?”
He smiled. “In any event, she was killed in a terrorist activity, and no one suspected me. Although you can’t imagine how angry I was that she had changed her will and I didn’t receive anything from it.”
He waved his weapon at the trees. “During the operation, Finn returned fire and hit me in the leg, although he didn’t know it, and then rescued the women who were still alive. It took me a while to recuperate, devise the forest-fire plan, and then come after you and Hunter.”
“And Chris?”
He shrugged. “What can I say? He couldn’t fight Hunter fair and square as a wolf, but he has been running the pack. Then Hunter mated, planning to settle down and really run the pack full time. The last straw was when Hunter accidentally turned that reporter, decided to go on a honeymoon with his mate, and stuck Chris with baby-sitting Rourke. You don’t even want to know how mad Chris was about that.”
“Hunter would have continued to watch over Rourke. He really likes the guy. He wouldn’t have given the job to anyone else in the pack except someone he really respected.”
Cyn shook his head. “Maybe so, but Chris didn’t see it that way.”
“Who set the fire?”
Cyn ground his teeth and looked in the direction of the wolves growling. He turned back to Meara and said, “I meant to get Hunter and his whole blasted pack that time. I came to get you, and then some wolf was skulking around after a woman who was taking pictures of the fire—the woman who became Hunter’s mate. When the wolf saw me in the vicinity, he chased me off. So I missed my opportunity.”
“But Chris couldn’t have wanted you to set the fire that destroyed all of the pack members’ homes.”
“No, he didn’t know I’d set it. But he did take advantage of the calamity and convinced Hunter’s pack to mutiny.”
Bastard. “So this all started with coveting money, wanting your sister to die because she’d learned your plans and gotten all of your parents’ inheritance, and wanting to get even with Hunter for not taking you on his team. And revenge against me because you thought I chose not to see you any longer.”
“That about wraps it up.”
“So now what?”
His eyes took on a maniacal gleam. “You come with me, or you die here.”
Meara didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t strip and shift and have a chance against an armed man. She couldn’t run away. She couldn’t fight him for the gun and wrest it away from him. Not when he was a SEAL, trained for any kind of confrontation.
“Come on, Meara, you really don’t have a choice here.”
She knew that, damn it. All but one. She’d never believed she’d need someone as much as she needed Finn now. Nor that she’d do what she was about to do. Not when she was a wolf. The pack leader’s sister. A woman who had rescued others when they had needed her help. But it was her only choice. And if she could, she’d kill Cyn herself for making her do this.
She filled her lungs with air and screamed.
* * *
Finn ha
d tried to poke his nose through the wolf door to Hunter’s house, but it was locked. Damn it. He could hear the growling inside, two wolves fighting, and he feared for Rourke’s life. But when Hunter and his mate had gone on their honeymoon, he must have locked the wolf door. And Finn couldn’t get in.
Finn suspected that Chris hadn’t locked the door after he most likely picked the lock. So wasting more time, Finn shifted into his human form and grabbed the door handle, twisted, and found the door locked.
Without a lockpick, and seeing nothing on the patio that wasn’t bolted down, Finn was fresh out of luck.
“Hold on, Rourke,” he muttered under his breath, naked as the day he was born and headed down the path to the beach to locate a good-sized rock he could use to break a window.
His heart racing with concern, he was at the bottom of the steep incline before he found a rock he thought might do.
Rock in hand, he headed back up the steep path. Halfway up it, he heard a woman’s blood-curdling scream. He froze. His first thought was that it couldn’t be Meara. Never in a million years would she scream about anything. But there was no one else out here. He shifted into his wolf form, silently apologized to Rourke and prayed he’d last until Finn could return, and dashed back to where he’d left Meara all alone.
* * *
Meara’s heart was still beating a million miles a minute as she screamed and ran into the woods, shoving aside branches, climbing over a fallen tree trunk, and traversing limbs torn from trees in a recent storm. Okay, so she didn’t think she could run away from an armed nutcase, but she did think that Cyn might just chase after her and not shoot her.
She was right. The only sounds were his heavy boots clomping on the woodland floor, his heavy breathing, and his heartbeat accelerating as he quickly closed the gap between them way too fast. He was six-two, and his lengthy stride was gobbling up the ground in a hurry, nearly giving her heart palpitations.
In the horror movies, the woman always looked back just before whatever was chasing her got her. She wouldn’t look back. She was afraid he’d strike her in the head with the butt of his weapon, knock her out cold, and then haul her off to some undisclosed location. But she wouldn’t look back.
Not until she heard the sound of a wolf in rapid pursuit of Cyn. He was quiet, but still she knew the sound of a wolf running on four padded feet, knew the way he moved when he was chasing his prey, knew beyond a doubt that he would kill Cyn before he had a chance to turn and fire off a shot.
But if Finn didn’t reach him in time, Meara had to ensure that the shot Cyn tried to fire went wild.
She looked back and saw Finn racing to her aid, his fur swept backward from the breeze and the run as he tore toward her. Or toward Cyn. Finn’s gaze met hers for a second, as if making sure she wasn’t injured, as if telling her she had nothing to worry about, his tongue hanging out of his mouth, panting hard, his eyes narrowed with anger.
Cyn had stopped and rapidly turned and, in a SEAL way, readied his weapon to kill his pursuer.
Meara had to stop him. She couldn’t slam into his hard body and make any difference, she didn’t think. She grabbed a sturdy branch lying on the ground, probably torn off in the last big storm they’d had, and ran up behind him. He heard her, but he ignored her, knowing the real threat was the wolf in front of him.
She swung the branch at Cyn’s head with all her might, connected with his ear and head, and distracted him just enough to make him miss his shot.
She was sure he wanted to kill her now, but one pissed-off wolf lunged at him, and Cyn didn’t have a chance.
Finn’s jump knocked Cyn on his back, and Cyn dropped his weapon. He reached for a sheathed knife, but Finn was too quick, biting him in the throat, and ending his murderous reign. For a moment, he sat panting over the body, but then he looked at Meara and then again at Hunter’s house.
“Rourke,” she said.
She raced toward the house, but Finn woofed, then headed to where his clothes were. She turned and watched him, confused. He poked at his pants, and she ran back to where he stood over his clothes. When she found his lockpick, he bowed his head and raced back to the house. She ran after him, trying to catch up and fearing Rourke would never make it on his own. She was damned glad to hear the growling in the house, which meant he was fighting for his life but still alive.
* * *
Chris bit Rourke in the cheek, causing sharp pain to rip through his face and pissing him off. What if he was disfigured for life?
He snarled and growled and fought tooth to tooth with the sub-leader. He tasted blood, his blood and Chris’s.
That made him even angrier. What if he chipped a tooth or, worse, lost one?
He hadn’t fought wolf-to-wolf much, but thankfully, the instinct came to him naturally. When Chris growled at him again, Rourke gave an even lower, deeper bass-sounding growl, rumbling from low in the belly. He pulled back his lips and bared his sharp canines. And when Chris clashed with him, the two stood on their hind legs, forelegs thrashing for a better hold, heads swiveling to get a bite in where it would count.
This was not a game, like he’d played with the other wolves, which had just been a practice for a real hunt. This was a battle to the finish.
Oh, if only he could be the victor and write about it in a news story!
Rourke bullheadedly shoved Chris out of the bedroom where he’d been confined by the bed and dresser. Now in the more open living room, they bumped into a table, sending a candy dish and pale-pink and green candy squares flying. Next, they upset another table and sent a lamp to the floor where it broke with a loud crash. Rourke realized now how important having a place of his own could be, not an apartment where next-door neighbors could hear the disturbance, if he ever again had the chance to get into another wolf fight, and call the police.
Chris was a tenacious bulldog of a wolf, though. He kept going for Rourke’s throat, and Rourke kept twisting his head around to counter the attack, biting and snarling even more aggressively than Chris. He thought it was because Chris was always quieter. But the growling made Rourke feel more at home with being a wolf, more in control of his situation, better equipped to fight another wolf who wanted him dead.
They both banged into the couch and then the coffee table. Rourke kept trying to get hold of Chris’s throat, but the wolf was as adamant about keeping him from doing so as Rourke was about protecting his own throat. They danced again on their hind quarters, sparring and fighting, then down again with Rourke persisting, pushing, and trying to wear Chris out. But Chris wasn’t wearing out, damn him. Rourke was.
Somehow they’d ended up back in the bedroom.
But then Rourke got a lucky break. Chris backed into a clothes tree, and it began to fall on him. When he turned his head slightly to see what he’d run into and probably where to go next to continue the fight, Rourke had his chance. And took it.
With Chris’s head turned, Rourke grabbed for the sub-leader’s neck and bit down hard.
* * *
Meara reached the back door where Finn circled her, anxious to get inside Hunter’s house to rescue Rourke. She was so nervous that she fumbled with the pick, finally managing to unlock the door and shove it open. Finn rushed into the house, both of them expecting the worst. Finn would have to kill Chris, and Rourke would already be dead.
The place was a wreck: end tables on their sides, a candy dish broken to pieces, and the remnants of pastel after-dinner mints scattered all over the carpet. Chris and Rourke’s scents and the smell of blood wafted into the living area as soon as they entered. But there were no sounds of anything. The place was quiet as death.
Then Finn ran down the hallway and entered a guest room. Meara waited, expecting to hear more growling as Finn fought with Chris. But then Finn poked his nose out of the room, smiling like only a wolf could.
“Rourke,” she cried. He had to be all right. She rushed to the guest room as Finn headed through the living room and exited the house. As a wolf, Rourke w
as panting on the carpeted bedroom floor, while Chris’s dead body lay near the bedroom window, a clothes tree on top of him.
She wiped away annoying tears and wrapped her arms around Rourke, pressing her face against his cheek. His tail thwapped enthusiastically against the floor. She didn’t want to give him ideas and finally released him. She also didn’t want Finn to see her hugging Rourke when he returned and get any wrong ideas.
She wiped away more tears and smiled at Rourke. “Thanks for learning the truth, and…” She choked on the words and gave him another hug. She was still hugging him soundly, so grateful he was alive, that she didn’t even hear Finn come into the room.
But Rourke saw him and immediately rose, as if getting ready for a new confrontation.
“Where’s the evidence, Rourke?” Finn asked, fully dressed and looking relieved that Rourke was alive but angry about Chris and his evil doings.
The papers. She’d forgotten all about them. Rourke licked her hand, then hurried out of the bedroom and down the hall to the living room. She suspected he couldn’t shift back.
He poked a paw at the couch, and Finn shoved his hand between the cushions and pulled out a handful of evidence—plane ticket, tarot cards, photo, financial statements. He handed them to Meara, but she shook her head. “Let Hunter see them.”
Then with new worry, she ground her teeth. “Hunter.”
“They’re fine.” Finn pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Hunter said two men hit them at the house, but everyone’s fine. Except for the two men. And the house.”
“What happened to the house?”
“The two men were demolition experts. They blew it up.”
Meara gaped at Finn.
“Of course, Hunter’s more than furious that Chris was involved. He and the others are driving up here—all but Bjornolf—and Hunter will take it from there.”
“Bjornolf had already left, I thought.”
“Apparently not. He hung around to make sure the guys didn’t need his help. And then he heard there was a runaway teen in the pack and he wanted to look into the kid’s disappearance.”