by Terry Spear
“Wouldn’t be half as satisfying.”
He kissed her again and gave her another warm embrace, not wanting to let her go, but he had to take care of this matter with her brother. “Come on, Rourke. Let’s get this done.”
She gave Hunter a concerned smile. Afraid for his safety? Or that he wouldn’t learn who Bethany’s murderer was? She had a lot more than that to worry about.
He and Rourke headed outside and into the woods, wary of signs of danger in the form of three lupus garous. Although if Leidolf was right, there were six of them he’d eventually have to contend with.
Praying they wouldn’t encounter any trouble, Tessa watched Hunter and Rourke until they disappeared into the woods. Cara coaxed Ashton inside. Tessa couldn’t understand why he was behaving like a spoiled child.
Meara cleared her throat. “They’ll be all right, Tessa. Let’s go back in the house.”
In one respect, Meara acted as though she wanted to keep Tessa safe. But on the other hand, she didn’t seem to care for Tessa and Hunter’s relationship. Although why it would matter to Meara was a puzzle.
Leidolf was another mystery, the way he tore into the house, roaring about like he was in charge, when if he’d known Lord Hunter at all he would have realized Hunter was always the one in charge.
Tessa turned to Meara. “What did Leidolf mean about Hunter’s people being in Portland and that they had to leave? Was he talking about more of your relatives? Why does he act like he owns the place? Sounds like he’s head of an organized crime ring in the city.”
Her expression indifferent, Meara shrugged. “A couple of Hunter’s friends must be causing trouble in Leidolf’s business.”
“What does he do?”
Meara paused too long before answering, which made Tessa suspicious.
“He has a…bar in town. You know, the guys probably have been drinking a little too much and stirring up trouble.”
“So…why does Hunter have to take care of them?”
“They’re friends from way back. You know.”
Meara and Cara exchanged looks, and again Tessa felt like an outsider, while the women who’d never met each other before shared some dark secret. Fine. She’d ask Hunter when he returned.
Tessa unloaded the dishwasher while Meara and Cara put away leftovers from a hastily grabbed breakfast. Tessa thought she heard Ashton stacking more wood by the fireplace. But Cara suddenly dropped the napkins she’d gathered on the table and dashed through the house and out the front door.
“Damn, Ashton!” she yelled. “You come back here this instant!”
“We could go after him,” Tessa offered, although why he was acting the way he was, she didn’t have a clue. Unless he felt hurt that the “boys” were leaving him out. Probably didn’t want to be tied down to babysitting the women.
With tears in her eyes, Cara closed the door and shook her head. “No, we can’t leave. It wouldn’t be safe for us.”
Meara actually looked sympathetic.
“I can use the rifle, so don’t worry.” But of course Tessa did worry about Ashton. What if the wolf attacked him again? No. She had shot it and it was probably half-dead somewhere in a pile of snow.
Remembering she’d neglected to write the suspect list and glad for the diversion, she grabbed a piece of paper. Except for Michael, Ashton, Rourke, and half a dozen of her brother’s artist friends, she couldn’t think of anyone else that visited regularly. A man cleaned their chimney once. An electrician checked their heater when it kept flipping the circuit breaker. A plumber had to repair a frozen pipe. That was it.
“Hot cocoa, anyone?” Meara asked, while Cara watched out the front window.
“That would be great.” Tessa considered her list. “The chimney sweep didn’t look like the guy Ashton described—dark haired, same approximate build as Hunter. Michael had dealt with the electrician and plumber so I didn’t get a chance to see either. I think I was selling photographs to shops in Portland at the time.”
“Hell,” Meara said in the kitchen.
Tessa dropped the list on the coffee table and hurried to join her. Ashton was pacing on the back patio. “What’s wrong with him?” She had never seen him so agitated, except for maybe the time he was drunk and had attacked her.
“Uhm, Cara!” Meara said. “Ashton’s back here. Why don’t you take care of him?”
Cara raced from the front window to the back door. She bolted outside, slammed the door shut, and grabbed Ashton’s arm, but he shook loose. Tessa couldn’t hear their words, but his face was red, his brows furrowed, and he snarled back at Cara when she tried to calm him.
Then he started tugging off his clothes as if he had gone totally mad. Tessa’s mouth gaped.
Meara seized Tessa’s arm. “Come on, we don’t want to watch this. Cocoa’s ready.”
But Tessa did want to watch. What if Ashton had rabies? What if Cara was in danger? “Wait, Meara. Cara could be at risk. We need to get her away from him.”
“No, she’ll be fine.” Meara tried to yank Tessa toward the living room, but she was rooted to the floor. “Finish your list. I’ll bring—”
Ashton stretched his arms upward toward the gray clouds, his face began to distort, elongate, and his naked lean body began to change, his back arching. Pale gray hair, no it was more like…fur, began to cover his body, the whole thing happening so quickly it was like watching a movie playing at triple speed or more in a blur. He dropped to his…his paws, no longer a man, but a gray wolf. A beautiful creature, wild and dangerous.
She barely breathed. If she hadn’t seen the sudden transformation with her own eyes, she would never believe it. Even now, she had a hard time accepting it. Every inch of him looked like a real wolf.
Her heart pounding and her head swimming, Tessa’s knees buckled. Meara was still holding her arm and when Tessa collapsed on her knees, Meara fell with her. “Ohmigod…did…did you see…what happened to Ashton?”
Meara watched Tessa with wide eyes.
“Cara! We’ve got to get her away from him.” Tessa scrambled to her feet and peered out the window, clinging to the kitchen sink for support.
Shaking her finger at him, Cara scolded the wolf—Ashton. For a couple of seconds, he listened to her, but then bolted for the woods.
Turning, Cara saw Tessa watching. Her face turned pasty despite the fact her cheeks had been cherry colored from the cold. Tessa stepped away from the window, her heart thundering.
Cara was one, too. She had to be. Had she turned Ashton last night when she seduced him? Turned him? What was she saying? They were shapeshifters?
Tessa bolted for the door and locked it.
“Let me in, Tessa. I don’t have my coat on and it’s freezing out here.” Cara half-coaxed, half-demanded, rubbing her arms with her bare hands.
Tessa couldn’t find her voice. What if the wolf that had bitten Ashton was the culprit and not Cara? But then, why wasn’t Cara surprised when Ashton shapeshifted?
Tessa didn’t realize how much she was shaking until Meara touched her arm. “It’s too cold out. We’ve got to let her in.”
Tessa stared at Meara. She saw Ashton turn into a wolf. She observed the whole thing and wasn’t surprised.
What if she was one? And what did Ashton say about Hunter? He saw him naked in the freezing weather before he dressed and charged up the hill after Ashton for shooting him. Why? Because Hunter had been shapeshifting beforehand? Ashton hadn’t been drunk. She groaned.
“Tessa, we have to let Cara back in.”
“You’re one of them.” Tessa’s eyes misted. “You’re one and Hunter is one and he bit Rourke. Leidolf is, too, isn’t he? Everyone but me is.” Her heart beating too rapidly, she backed up.
“Tessa, you’re just imagining things.” Meara took a step forward, cautious, concerned.
Where had Ashton left the rifle? In the living room?
Tessa dashed for it just as the back door squeaked open. Meara was letting Cara in.
; The door shut and the lock clicked, but no one said a word. They didn’t need to. They’d share one of those conspiratorial looks that said it all.
She grabbed the rifle and headed back into the kitchen where Meara was pouring Cara another mug of hot cocoa. “I want you both to leave, now. Get in your vehicles and drive away. I won’t say anything to anyone. Hell, what could I say? Anyone would think I was nuts. But I want you out of here, now.”
“We can’t leave,” Meara said, softly. “Hunter would kill us if we left you unprotected.”
“He would kill his own sister?”
“In a manner of speaking. He’d be angry, and I don’t want to go there. You know how upset he was with me for taking off with three other guys. Believe me, this would be worse.”
“Do you want to know why, Tessa? Because that intruder who’s after you is also one of our kind,” Cara piped in. “We can’t leave you to face him on your own. If he manages to get you alone now, he’ll change you.”
Tessa sat down hard on the dining chair. “The one who bit Ashton, was he the same man/wolf?”
Meara sighed. “I imagine he’s the same one.”
Everything that had happened in the last few days ran through Tessa’s mind—Hunter being naked on the beach, the way he knew the man had been in her bed, and that it was him and not some other man. He knew things he shouldn’t.
“Tell me what you are, exactly.”
Meara shook her head. “You know too much already. In most cases, the pack leader would have two options. Kill you, or turn you. Hunter won’t want to change you.”
“Why not?” Not that Tessa wanted that option, no way, but death wasn’t the greatest choice either. Not that she would go willingly either.
“He doesn’t believe in it,” Meara said. “We haven’t known anyone personally changed by a bite. It’s just something we prefer not to do.”
Tessa gave a haughty laugh. “Yeah, right. He changed Rourke, didn’t he?”
“By accident.”
“So then he’ll have to kill me. That’s why he said the relationship would never work.” Tessa swallowed a lump in her throat. “Will he at least get my brother free first?”
“I don’t believe he’ll want to eliminate you. But enough said. Like you mentioned, people will think you’re certifiable if you breathe a word of this. So here’s the deal. You don’t ask questions or learn anything more about us, and when we free your brother, we all will…” Meara snapped her fingers. “…disappear. You’ll never hear from us again.”
“Unless Hunter wants to terminate me.”
Meara took in a ragged breath. “We won’t tell him.” She cast Cara a warning look.
Cara bowed her head slightly.
In disbelief, Tessa stared at Meara. “Why?”
She shrugged. “He’d want to eliminate all of us for putting him in this bind. It’ll be our little secret.”
Keeping secrets from Hunter was like trying to drive a car across the ocean. Tessa knew she would sink and drown before she got anywhere.
“Want some cocoa?” Cara put on a fake smile and offered Tessa a mug.
Tessa had known something would go terribly wrong after she had come home from Michael’s trial, but she never guessed the nightmare could get this bad.
Rourke looked over the edge of the cliff where the men had pushed Hunter. “I don’t know how in the hell you managed to survive. The tide must have come in just at the right time.”
Hunter examined the nearby trees, looking for signs of a struggle. Half a foot of snow had fallen, so the ground would yield no clues.
“Looks like you gave them a hell of a time.” Rourke twisted a broken branch back and forth.
“I still can’t figure out why they would have attacked me. If I came into a wolves’ territory unannounced, the pack leader would either welcome me, or tell me to leave. The only way he would fight me with the intent to kill was if I had seriously violated pack laws, killed one of his wolves, tried to claim a female he had other plans for, or threatened to take over his pack. Maybe I was headed in the direction of Tessa’s cabin and Yoloff, the one who wants her, got riled, thinking I was after her.”
Hunter led the way to Bethany’s log cabin. Like Tessa’s place, the house sat cliffside with a view of a rocky beach, woods all around, and no sign of any other homes.
“Why she would live out here by herself is what puzzles me,” Rourke said. “I can understand Tessa’s situation. She and her brother lived together and had inherited the house. But Bethany?” He shook his head as Hunter unlocked the door. “She was kind of a loner, like….” Rourke stopped dead inside the house. “It’s him, isn’t it? The smell of Tessa’s stalker.”
“Yoloff, yeah. He’s been here. His brothers, too. And recently. Did they have a key to her place also? No broken windows.” Hunter checked over the two-bedroom, one-bath house. “She wasn’t killed here.”
“No, the coroner said she’d died when she fell to her death on the rocks.”
“But why not here? Why a mile away?” Hunter searched through her bedroom drawers.
“She loved to take walks in the woods. That’s what Michael said at the trial. He didn’t like it that she was taking them alone. Of course, it sounded like a perfect alibi since no one could confirm that she was seeing someone behind his back. Either this phantom guy did it, or some stranger. Neither the sheriff or his deputies bought Michael’s story.”
“Sheriff’s been here. So has Ashton. And three of the wolves that had been around Tessa’s place? They’ve been here, too. Which meant they were tied into her death, or curious possibly.”
“And a ton of other humans. Coroner, deputies. But I wouldn’t know whose scent I’m smelling unless I got a whiff of them now.” Rourke motioned to the house. “What did you want me to look for?”
“Any sign of anything out of the ordinary.”
“You won’t find her diary. The D.A. kept it as evidence. But there was nothing incriminating in it about Ashton. Or anyone else for that matter. Just Michael. They fought concerning her seeing someone else, but she never confirmed it one way or another.”
“Ashton said he kept a pretty low profile,” Hunter said.
They moved back into the kitchen. Rourke pulled open a cabinet door. “Yeah, he didn’t leave any clothes in the house. Nothing personal to tie himself to her.”
Hunter paused. “Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“What? He didn’t want Michael to learn that he was here with Bethany on the sly. Ashton still valued his friendship, even if he wasn’t showing it in a very loyal way.”
“Unless he had some things here and got rid of them after he’d murdered her.” Hunter pulled open another drawer.
“I thought you believed the grays had killed her.”
“I’d considered it. The one might have wanted Michael out of the way so he killed Bethany, and then Michael was blamed for it. Tessa would be left unprotected.”
“But why not just kill Michael?”
“The wolf’s a beta. If he’d been an alpha, he would have killed Michael and taken Tessa. But he didn’t. He’s stalked her, waited, watched, for what? He couldn’t get up the nerve. Maybe he cared for her too much and was afraid if he turned her and things didn’t work out, he’d have to destroy her. On the other hand, what if the guy couldn’t even kill Bethany? What if Ashton did it? But now Bethany’s murder played into the gray’s hands, and he had a chance to make Tessa his. Only he still stalked her, worried about her acceptance of him.”
“Then you appeared on the beach.”
“Right. And he got anxious. Started playing games. Showing how he could get in, leaving his scent on her sheets, wanting to claim her, getting more and more rash.”
“And then he bit Ashton to…? ”
“I believe at that point he wanted to kill Ashton so he could get to Tessa since you and I were gone. Even more desperate, he took a bigger chance, but when Tessa got the gun and started shooting, he tucked tail and ra
n.”
Rourke shoved his gloved hands under his arms. “What if the gray did it? Or Ashton for that matter? We can’t prove either did because they can’t go to prison. Not when they’re werewolves.”
“We just have to find the evidence, and I’ll sort it out from there.”
Rourke took a deep breath. “All the evidence points to Michael.”
“He didn’t have an alibi?”
“Nope. He was supposed to be home sick with the flu, but nobody was there to verify he’d stayed home in bed either. Tessa had run to the city to get supplies and sell some more of her photographs. When she arrived home, the sheriff had already arrested Michael and taken him in for questioning.”
Not that Hunter wanted to believe anything bad about Tessa, but his wolf’s wariness instantly made him suspect anyone and everyone. “How long was she in the city?”
“Four hours.” Rourke’s eyes widened. “Oh, no. Don’t you go thinking Tessa had anything to do with it. Between receipts and store personnel and surveillance tapes at the stores where she sold her work, she had an airtight alibi.”
“For all the time?”
Rourke looked out the living room window. “Yeah.”
“Not for all the time. You’d make a lousy liar, Rourke. Don’t try it with me.”
“All right. So she had enough time. But she wouldn’t have done it.”
Hunter smelled the air. “She’s been here before.”
“Sure, Tessa has. She was friends with Bethany, too, damn it, but she didn’t do it.”
“Did the defense think she might have?”
Rourke looked at the floor.
“Did they, Rourke?”
“Yeah. Michael’s defense attorney said she had motive because the attorney was trying to cast doubt on Michael’s supposed guilt. Tessa suspected someone else was seeing Bethany, too. That’s what the defense attorney said. That as loyal as Tessa was to her brother, she could have killed Bethany in a fit of rage. Two police officers had to restrain Michael to keep him from hitting his attorney, he was so pissed. His temper didn’t help his case.”
“Did Michael always have a temper?”