by Terry Spear
She couldn’t believe how she could hear the slightest sounds, everywhere and anywhere. The heater turning on, a school bus picking up kids, although the bus never came down Allan’s street, the whisper of a breeze stirring an oak’s branches out front. She hoped she would soon get used to it because for now it was wreaking havoc with her sleep. Not that Hunter’s wanting to make love with her throughout the night hadn’t something to do with it also. Ahem, well, some of it was her fault also.
“A patrol car just arrived. It’s Caruthers.”
Hunter joined her at the window and rested his hand on her shoulder in a comforting way. “Time to see your brother.”
Trying to squash her nervousness at seeing her brother in prison, she finished her bagel and looked up at Hunter. “Do you always get that much exercise at night?”
His sexy smile hinted he was ready for more. “Not usually.”
She gave a ladylike snort. “Then you were just lonely and wanted to cuddle really bad, but things got out of hand?”
He laughed and ran his hands through her hair. “Not usually, as in with other women. But with you, I couldn’t keep my hands to myself. Besides, your pheromones are a total aphrodisiac.”
“Hmm, well, yours drive me crazy, too, but jeesh, Hunter, I’ll be walking bowlegged today, and I’ll be yawning the whole time.”
“We’ll take a nap later.”
She shook her head. “Yeah, but will we sleep?”
His grin said that she would have a fat chance at that.
Caruthers knocked at the front door, and when Hunter opened it, the policeman offered them a big smile. “Greta and I are agreeable about leaving here and working on the coast. You might need some backup with three new lupus garous in your pack. Allan and the little lady who’s widowed in your pack really hit it off last night. From the sounds of it, job or no job, he’s joining you, too. I’ll drive you to the prison.” He relocked Allan’s place and then escorted them to his car.
Hunter wrapped his arm around Tessa in a loving gesture.
She glanced up at him, her body warming with his touch, gladdened also that Caruthers and the others would join her mate. “You don’t have to worry about your wayward pack. Looks like you’ve got a whole new one.”
“The others will come back.”
She couldn’t see how he could be so complacent about it. To her way of thinking, they were too disloyal to trust any further. But then again, she hadn’t been a lupus garou long enough to understand their way of thinking.
“I run a fairly democratic pack,” Hunter said. “I’m not an autocratic leader like some are.”
“Except when it comes to your sister.”
Hunter grinned. “She’s my blood relative. And you are my mate. Our offspring will have to mind also.”
“Ah, so those you love best you keep under your rule.”
He kissed her cheek and sighed heavily. “In a pack, it’s called being protective.”
Tessa glanced at Caruthers. “Is that what your pack would call it?”
“Absolutely. Whatever the boss says.” Caruthers winked at her. “Man, does this bring back memories of when I turned Greta.”
Tessa folded her arms and Hunter chuckled.
When they arrived at the prison, Caruthers parked in front and gave Tessa a compassionate look. “Just tell them Allan Smith and Jim Caruthers sent you. I’ll wait out here for you.”
Tessa shuddered. To think her brother was incarcerated in the massive place without any chance of escape unless she could bring the real killer to trial and make him pay for the crime. She hoped to God her brother could shed some light on the case.
Chapter 16
WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT THE PRISON’S VISITING ROOM, Tessa introduced Hunter to her brother. She tried to keep the tears at bay, but Michael’s eyes were as misty as hers, which didn’t help. And he looked thinner than before, the orange jailhouse jumpsuit clashing with his red hair.
He scowled at Hunter. “Why the hell is he wearing my jacket?”
“He was in an accident, but needed a change of clothes. I’ll explain later.” Tessa pulled out Rourke’s phone.
“What news do you have?” Michael took a seat at the table, opposite them, his voice threaded with hope and despair, although he glowered at Hunter again.
“Hunter is looking into the killing. We’ve got some pictures to show you.” She handed Michael Rourke’s phone. “Do you recognize any of these guys?”
Michael considered the photos of the three grays. He pointed to Butch, who had been at his trial, and at the one called Redmond. “They came to our house to check out the circuit breakers.” He looked up at Tessa. “They knew what they were doing. They replaced the bad switch and charged us a hefty bill like electricians always do, and left.” He rubbed his chin and stared at the table. “Although, they were interested in your photographs.” He looked up at Tessa, his expression annoyed. “Not my paintings though. The one asked if you had ever taken a picture of a wolf in the wild.”
Her heart hitched. “What did you say?”
“At the wildlife refuge, but never in the wild. You would have told me if you had.”
Like she didn’t. But as usual he had been too busy painting to pay any attention to her artistic endeavors.
“Did these guys have anything to do with Bethany’s murder?” Michael asked.
“This one was at your trial when the verdict was read,” Tessa said. “This guy called him Butch. The other you named was Redmond. And the one you don’t recognize was Jessup. Butch came to the house with the two other men, and I asked him why he was at your trial. He denied having been there. His hair was long, but I know it was him. Why deny it? Why be there in the first place?”
“I wondered why he looked different. Why were they at the house?”
Hunter tensed and she figured he was worried she might say the wrong thing.
“One of them is interested in Hunter’s sister. So he tracked her to my place and that’s when I met all three of them.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but you have to know in case anything can shed light on who the real murderer is. A man by the name of Yoloff has been stalking me. Hunter had a run-in with one of his two brothers and in self-defense, Hunter killed him.”
Michael’s gaze turned to Hunter, and he swore softly under his breath.
“I’m an ex–Navy SEAL,” Hunter said, “trained to do work like this. The guy didn’t have a chance even though he was armed with a knife. But his brothers went after Tessa, and I didn’t have a choice.”
Michael’s eyes grew big. “Thanks for taking care of my little sister.”
She grunted. He was her younger brother, but because he was several inches taller than she was, he called her little.
“My pleasure.” Hunter took hold of her hand and squeezed. “We’re married. I’ll always protect her.”
Michael shifted his attention to Tessa.
“Uhm, yeah, whirlwind romance.” She hadn’t thought Hunter would bring that up right now. Besides, they weren’t really married as in the marriage license, wedding ring, or marriage vows kind of arrangement. Her cheeks heated and she tried to muddle through. “I found him washed up on the beach after the guy who was stalking me pushed him off a cliff and—”
“Whoa, back up to the guy that was stalking you. I worried someone was, but have you learned who it is?”
She noted her brother’s concern for her, but not about Hunter’s near-death experience. Michael was probably still pissed off because Hunter was wearing his favorite jacket.
“He broke into our house the day you were taken to prison. Hunter protected me from him. Anyway, Hunter thought maybe this guy wanted you out of the way, and so he murdered Bethany so you would be found guilty of the crime.”
Michael pointed to the third man in the photos. “This other guy looks familiar also.”
“Jessup’s the one who’s after Hunter’s sister. Where do you remember him from?”
; “The driver of the electric truck.” Michael frowned and then looked up at Tessa. “I saw him at a number of my art exhibits. Of course, you begin to see the same people at the parties. Avid collectors, people who like mingling with others who enjoy the paintings, philanthropists, novice painters who want to learn how to sell their own works. I remember him because he kept watching Bethany. Do you think he was seeing her behind my back?”
Tessa gritted her teeth. She hadn’t wanted to tell her brother Ashton was the traitor. But if any detail could help them solve the case, he had to know.
“Ashton…” Her voice broke. “Ashton’s the one who was seeing Bethany when you were at your shows.”
Michael’s jaw clenched. “I know.”
She stared at him. “You knew? Why didn’t you say so at the trial?”
“Why? The sheriff would have covered for his son. Ashton would have gotten away with it, as usual, and it would have looked like I was lying.”
“But what if Ashton killed Bethany?”
Michael rubbed his forehead, then shoved his hands in his lap. “I sure as hell considered it. What if she’d wanted to come back to me? Make it up to me? We’d fought that night. She said she’d done some things she wasn’t proud of, although she wouldn’t admit she was seeing someone else. I tried to get her to confess, but she wouldn’t. She just kept protecting the bastard.”
“Then you could have been angry enough to kill her,” Hunter said softly.
“I was angry, but I didn’t murder her. I could have thrashed the guy who’d been seeing her. But I wouldn’t have hurt Bethany. I understood how she felt. I really loved her, but I didn’t know how to remedy our relationship because the more popular my work was becoming, the more despondent she became over it. To sell, I have to promote. To keep my relationship alive with her, I’d have had to give it all up. But it was my livelihood, my worth.” He shook his head. “I didn’t kill her. She always walked along the cliffs when she was angry or frustrated. Supposedly, she went there after I left.”
“Do you think Ashton might have done it?” Tessa asked.
“Why not? He was always getting away with his petty crimes. What if she had told him she wanted to go back to me and he was so angry, he killed her? He didn’t say anything to me about it, but I knew he was jealous of my success.”
“If you knew she was seeing Ashton, did you know if she was seeing anyone else?” Hunter asked.
Michael’s eyes clouded with fresh tears and his shoulders slumped.
Ohmigod. Had Bethany been seeing someone else? A bunch of different guys?
Running his hand through his hair, Michael stared at the table and nodded. “Ashton wasn’t the only one. At least one other guy was seeing her. Maybe two.”
“How do you know?” Hunter asked.
“Hell, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have any real proof.”
“Is that why you said the place was haunted?” Hunter asked.
She couldn’t understand why her brother had come up with such a ludicrous story.
“Yeah,” Michael admitted. “I felt like a couple of people were watching her house. I thought I saw a man in the shadows of the trees one day at dusk. I wanted to check, but Bethany insisted I was seeing things. Later, I wondered if the guy was her lover, and she didn’t want me catching him. It happened again a couple of weeks later. And then another time, I swear someone was actually in the house. A drawer opened in the kitchen. I was half-dressed, but even so I charged into the room and the back door was standing wide open. Bethany said we probably hadn’t shut it all the way. So what could I say? Ghosts infested the place? I didn’t want to make love to her there anymore. Let her stay with her damned ghosts.”
“Did the guy or guys come to your house while she visited you?” Hunter asked.
“Not that I knew of. Why bother? They could see her anytime they wanted to at her place when she wasn’t working her shifts at the Lobster Tail.”
“If some other guy wanted Bethany and didn’t like it that Michael was seeing her, why wouldn’t he kill Ashton for seeing her also? Why only frame Michael for the crime?” Tessa asked.
No one had an answer.
“Okay, what about my stalker? He and his brothers pushed Hunter off the same cliff that Bethany had fallen from. Too much of a coincidence?”
Michael looked back at Hunter. “How in the hell did you survive?”
Finally, some reaction to poor Hunter’s ordeal.
“Navy SEAL training.”
“Oh.”
Tessa cast Hunter a look of admiration, then focused on her brother. “Can you think of anything else? Anything that would help us figure out who did this?”
Michael snorted. “Yeah, the treasure hunters.”
Tessa made a disagreeable face at her brother. Here he was incarcerated, they were trying to get him out, and he was being flippant about ghosts and nonexistent gold.
Hunter leaned back in the chair. “Treasure hunters?”
Tessa folded her arms. “You know how oral history goes. Supposedly, our great-grandparents had a huge stash of gold, and they hid it somewhere on our land. But it’s just a myth, or if it really existed at some time someone else stole it. Our grandparents searched for it, so did our parents. And truth be told, even when Michael and I were younger, we dug all over the place out there, but none of us ever found it. Over the years, we’ve had tons of offers to take the house off our hands. I figured it had to do with the rumors about the gold.”
“Yeah, and you think it was a coincidence our grandparents died in a car accident only a year after our parents did?” Michael asked, one red brow cocked.
“Dad was drunk as usual. And Granddad shouldn’t have been driving, although we know Grandmother hated to drive so she was always giving him the wheel. The coroner said his heart had given out before they went off the cliff. So yeah, it’s a coincidence, but totally explainable.”
“The men who came to the house said they were looking to steal from Bethany’s place. If they thought gold was hidden somewhere on your land, maybe that’s the reason they were there,” Hunter said.
Tessa couldn’t believe he’d even be considering it, but then she wondered if he knew about the gold rumors all along. “Did Uncle Basil think there was gold on our property?”
Hunter’s lips parted.
Hell, he had. So was that why Hunter had turned her? To get her property? “He kept trying to buy me out.” She bit back the bitterness, making it difficult to swallow. Hunter reached for her hand, but she pulled away from him. “Is that why he wanted our property so badly?”
“Leidolf found a couple of newspaper clippings on the guy I killed, pertaining to a dispute Caleb McKnight had with your grandfather over stolen gold. The other was about John Anderson and his killing Caleb McKnight, father of triplets, Yoloff, Ren, and Andreas. So what if they had to do with your family’s deaths?”
“I’ll kill them,” Michael said, his face turning as red as his hair.
The blood rushed from Tessa’s face, and she reached across the table and took Michael’s hand. “Don’t even talk like that.”
“I always thought Uncle Basil had some ulterior motive,” Michael said. “You sure get to know who your friends are. And here he was insisting we didn’t need to stay there because young people our age needed to be closer to the city, especially because of the work we do. Couldn’t he see that nature is what inspires our work? Not city buildings and urban sprawl? Not people? But—”
“Wolves?” Hunter asked.
Michael looked from him to Tessa and she quickly said to her brother, “I didn’t show him the paintings.”
He glowered at Hunter. “Don’t you know not to look at an artist’s work that’s not finished?” He ran his hands through his hair and stared gloomily at the table.
“I just came across them, by accident. Beautiful work, by the way. But back to Bethany’s murder, tons of people had been in her house—the three guys who had to do with trying to take off with m
y sister, and of course the sheriff and his men, the coroner’s office, Tessa, Ashton…”
“The sheriff,” Michael said, emphasizing him over all the rest.
Tessa straightened. “Sure, because he’s investigating a murder.”
Michael shook his head. “He was always cleaning up after Ashton, remember? He’s the one who reported the murder, except because he’s the sheriff, no one considered he might have known who had done the real killing. A sheriff would be above suspicion. Hell, look at how that policeman killed two of his wives and because he was a cop, no one believed there was any foul play. Not until the second one came up missing. But even then, the police force denied he had anything to do with her suspicious disappearance. The family had to have their loved one’s body exhumed so the coroner could determine if there was foul play. And of course, this time, the coroner said yes, she was murdered. So you don’t think a sheriff could cover up his son’s murder and get away with it? Especially when they have me—the perfect patsy for the job?”
“You asked Ashton to watch over me, even knowing what you did about him?” Tessa asked.
Michael took a deep breath. “I figured I kind of deserved it. Sticking with him when I knew he was bad news—getting me into scrapes, causing all that trouble for you. But I also know deep down, the guy’s got some decency in him. Hell, our dad was bad enough with being the town philanderer and drunk. But after Ashton’s mother took off with another man, his dad changed. Ashton kept reaching out, trying to get his dad to pay attention to him, in a negative way. In any way he could. He didn’t have an older sister like you to help him out. And he’s damned good with a rifle. He could protect you if need be.”
“Because you knew there was a stalker. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
She frowned at her brother. “You could have told me. And you could have warned me that Ashton was going to be gunning down anything that moved out by our house. He shot Hunter!”