Hunted by the Dragon (Captured by a Dragon-Shifter Book 4)

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “Sean!” Duncan yelled. “Come here. We have something.”

  Hearing the tone, he instantly changed course for the dining room. Duncan held a cellular phone to his ear, nodding as he wrote something down. The smell of roast beef, potatoes and corn on the cob filled the air. Only Rory touched the food, slowly picking at a dinner roll only to toss squished bits of it into his mouth. Energy coursed through Sean, making his limbs jittery as he waited for Duncan to hang up.

  Seeing Sean’s expression, Fillan said, “Hector’s in town.”

  Duncan continued talking in hushed tones.

  “What about your bond?” Rory asked. “You still have that drug dealer out.”

  “Actually, I checked,” Brian inserted. “A patrol unit picked him up for driving under the influence. So he’s back where he belongs.”

  “Good. That was my last one.” Sean tried to answer and listen to Duncan at the same time. “But I have a few more coming up I could use help on.”

  “I’m game. I could use the extra cash,” Rory said.

  Duncan flipped his phone, shutting it. “That was Rohan. The truck stop reported vandalism, but nothing more. The crime scene guys are there now, and Columbia PD is on alert for the trucker’s body. We’ll let Maryland deal with it. We gave them the name of their killer.” Duncan paused, leaning to glance into the kitchen. When he saw Jules wasn’t there, he lowered his voice. “There’s no reason to get Jules involved unless we have to. At most, she’ll have to testify, but I hope it won’t come to that. I’ll keep you out of it. For now, let’s take care of our problem here first.”

  Sean nodded in agreement. “Hector.” A sick feeling knotted his stomach. Part of him felt like he should’ve just killed all of them when he had the chance while they lay helpless on the floor. The only problem was he wasn’t a murderer. No matter how much they deserved it, he couldn’t kill someone when they couldn’t defend themselves. If it were in him, he’d have gone after the guys who beat up Jules years ago. They would never have made it to trial.

  “Rohan’s sitting on their house,” Duncan said. “Hector showed up. He had two guys with him.”

  “What do we do? Sit and wait for them to make a move?” Rory asked. “Or do we try to draw them out?”

  “I’m not using Jules as bait,” Sean said.

  “Where is Jules?” Duncan asked.

  “She said she wanted to say hi to someone outside,” Myrna answered.

  “Who?” Duncan demanded.

  “I don’t know. I saw no one.” Myrna frowned. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t think she’d run off, do you?” Teresa inquired. “Once a person starts running, it’s sometimes hard for them to stop.”

  “Damn it,” Sean swore. Yes, actually, he did think that. He ran out of the front door to search the sidewalk. He took a deep breath, trying to catch her scent, and narrowed his eyes to focus on the distance. Jules was nowhere to be found.

  “Shit, Sean, watch your face,” Rory said, moving to block him from the view of the street. “You can’t do that out here.”

  Sean didn’t care if he was exposed. He needed to find her. Now.

  Chapter 20

  Jules slipped the cab driver a couple of bills and stepped out of the car. All she had on her were the clothes Myrna loaned her and the wad of cash she’d stolen from Sean in her pocket. It had been a long ride from Southie to the isolated area of East Boston and regret filled her even as she knew she couldn’t remain with Sean. If she stayed, she’d only put them in danger. It wasn’t fair to him. He had built a life in Southie, and it was clear the Flahertys had made him part of their family. She cared for him enough to leave him. If and when she finished this, she could consider a future.

  Though several new restaurants and condominiums were going up along the harbor, rent had increased more slowly in East Boston than in other parts of the city. It was what she could afford on waitressing wages. Her apartment was a block away from where the cab pulled over, but she wanted to sneak in without being seen. The tenants all knew the secret way in.

  Jules ventured down a side alley and began the long trek up the fire escape of the building next to hers. Once to the top, she climbed over the side, crossed the roof and then paused. She looked over the edge, feeling her stomach lurch a little at the long drop. It wasn’t a far leap to the top of her building, and she’d done it once before, but the danger of the fall caused her legs to shake.

  Jules took a deep breath and pushed off. Her body flailed a little as she flung through the air. With a hard thud, she landed on the other side, stumbling forward on the loose gravel.

  A woman with a cigarette met her eyes from the far corner. She sat, hidden by the landscape along the roof’s ledge. Jules recognized her as a fellow tenant, though she had little contact with her in the past. Not saying a word, the woman watched her while taking a long drag off her cigarette. Smoke curled over the woman’s head, dissipating quickly at it caught in the chilled breeze.

  “Hey,” Jules said, by way of greeting, angling her jaw slightly. “How’s it going?”

  The woman answered by taking another puff. Dark, intense eyes ringed with heavy black makeup stared in hostile boredom.

  Normally a person would have to fit through a narrow window with a broken latch to sneak inside, but the smoker had placed a brick in front of the roof access door, and Jules was able to get in unhampered. Hurrying down the narrow stairwell, she stopped to listen for people on the other side of the door before entering the top-level hallway. The faint trace of corrido music radiated into the hall from one of the apartments, warring with the steady thump of hip-hop from another. Since most people took the elevator, she went to the stairs.

  She’d lived in the building for several years, and duly recognized it as home, yet Jules still felt removed from her surroundings. The familiar yellowed walls and the slightly moldy smell of the stairwell no longer permeated with safety. She’d been hiding here, away from life, away from Sean and anyone else who mattered from her past. Though she made new friends, found a new life, it wasn’t a full one and the people she met were never close. Jules had successfully managed to keep them at arm’s length, putting a wall up so they never really got to know her.

  She thought of Sean. There was something incomplete about his life, though not nearly as drastic as hers. Jules had fought so hard to demonstrate she was strong that she had stunted herself in a whole new way. Her emotions had been blocked, and her obsessive vigilante mission to prove she wasn’t a victim had taken over her life, creating an overwhelming contradiction, as she became a victim yet again.

  Coming out of the stairwell on her floor, she hurried down the hall toward her apartment. Part of her expected to see the door off the hinges and the place trashed. The door was intact. She hesitated when she realized she didn’t have a key to the place. Knowing there was no way around being seen by at least one person, she went to her neighbor’s and knocked. The hardwood creaked, and a young girl stuck her head into the small opening. Wide, brown eyes looked up at her from a pretty face.

  “Como estas, gata?” Jules leaned down, smiling. She kept her voice quiet.

  The four-year-old grinned as Jules called her a cat. “Miau,” she meowed like a kitten by way of answer. When her brothers and sisters went to school, little Adelina had no one to play with during the day. She’d taken to pretending to be a cat since they weren’t supposed to have pets in the apartments. “Is mama home?”

  “Miau,” she answered, nodding.

  “Is she sleeping?”

  “Miau.” Again a nod.

  “Let’s not wake her, gata.” Jules glanced up and down the hall, making sure no one saw her speaking to the child. “Do you remember those keys I gave to mama?”

  The child nodded.

  “Do you know where she put them?”

  Adelina shrugged, tilted her head to the side and thought about it, then nodded excitedly. She took off into the apartment before Jules could ask her to get
them. Jules heard rummaging and a loud crash. She grimaced, and pushed the door to the apartment to make sure Adelina was all right.

  The child stood on a stool, her arms reached to the side, her mouth opened wide in surprise. Pieces of porcelain, remnants of a white pot and its contents, lay scattered on the floor—coins, paperclips, a small pocketknife, and cigarette lighter.

  “Ade…?” A sleepy, panicked Dania ran into the room to check on her daughter. The woman worked nights while her husband was home with the kids. Her only time to rest was while the oldest were in school. Despite the busy schedule, her house was tidy. Seeing her daughter on the stool, she tiptoed through the porcelain shards to get the child down, all the while speaking in low, scolding words of concern.

  “I’m sorry, Dania, I asked her if she knew where my spare key was,” Jules said.

  Dania jolted in alarm as she turned with her daughter on her hip. The two were definitely mother and daughter with the same round eyes and softly curled hair. Her softly accented voice might have sounded breathy, but Jules knew the woman had a set of lungs on her when called for. “Jules? Where have you been? How are you?”

  “It’s a long story. I stopped by for my key.” Jules leaned over and began picking up shards, placing them into her hand.

  Dania carried her daughter to the couch and set her down, telling her to sit and not move as punishment for opening the door without permission. Adelina pouted her lower lip and growled the cutest sound. She sounded like an angry feline. She crossed her arms and refused to look at her mother as she stared at a wall.

  “I don’t have your key,” Dania said, coming to help Jules pick up. She piled shards on her palm. “Your brother was here. He wanted to know if I was the neighbor who had your key and asked to be let in.”

  “Brother?” Jules frowned.

  “He’s not like I would have pictured,” Dania continued. “But, then, that might be why you never speak of him.” Suddenly, her expression fell. “It was all right that I gave him the key, wasn’t it? He said you had emergency gallbladder surgery and sent him to my door. He knew my name, your work schedule… He was supposed to get me the hospital room information so I could stop by, but…”

  “I don’t have a brother,” Jules said, all the pieces she’d picked up slipping off her hand back onto the floor. “When did he come?”

  “A few days ago. I saw him leave with a bag in his hands. I thought he was bringing you a change of clothes.”

  Jules didn’t know whether to cry or scream.

  “He knew everything about you, Jules,” Dania insisted. “I didn’t just give it to a stranger. He knew… No te entiendo. I don’t understand what is going on.”

  Jules didn’t hear the woman’s words. Her heart pounded hard and heavy in her chest, nearly choking her. She crossed to a small window on the far side of the room and opened it, taking a deep breath of air.

  “Lo siento,” Dania said. “I’m sorry, Jules.”

  “It’s all right,” Jules assured her, even though she didn’t feel it. Dania was a friend, though they weren’t close. She’d kept her distance, even when Dania tried to connect.

  Jules crawled out of the window onto the ledge. She looked down, wobbling nervously at the height.

  “Jules? What are you doing?” Dania demanded, trying to grab hold of her arm.

  “I’ll be fine,” Jules assured her. A tight feeling cinched her gut as she saw the alleyway several stories below. For a moment, she wondered what it would be like to fall, the air hitting her face, twisting her hair. She took another step, edging toward her apartment as she hugged her back along the side of the building. Jules wasn’t the kind of woman to jump.

  She carefully bent over and peeked inside her home. Nothing immediately appeared out of the ordinary. The hard stone bit into her hand as she held the precarious position, watching and listening. Maybe whoever broke into her place didn’t find what they were looking for.

  “Jules?” Dania asked, leaning out of her apartment window. “Is everything all right?”

  Jules nodded, moving to slap her palm against the window frame. The vibrations in the wood made the catch jiggle until it loosened and swung open just as she knew it would. She pushed up, letting herself inside. The window wouldn’t stay up without help and once it lowered the air surrounding her became stale.

  A tremor worked over her body. She looked over the living room. A small television sat on the coffee table she’d shoved against the wall. Before bed, she always put the remote to the right of the unit. It now sat on her quilt-covered couch. Next to it, she saw the faintest outline, a recess in the quilt. The indentation could be that of a person’s backside? Could it belong to Jules’s mystery brother? The idea of Hector or one of his goons in her apartment desecrated her sanctuary and the home no longer felt safe.

  As soon as she retrieved the recording, she intended on packing what she could and getting out of there. Jules grabbed a bat from against the wall for protection and stealthily made her way through the house. Confirming she was alone, she set the bat aside and went to her bathroom.

  The great thing about modern technology was that everything had become much more compact. Instead of a giant VHS tape that required a monstrously sized camcorder like when she was a kid, the slim look of her recorder with a built-in memory card fit into her palm and hid with ease.

  She kept the lights off and crawled onto her sink basin. Hanging from the ceiling on a chain, the light fixture swung back and forth when she bumped it. A decorative metal plate covered the base, and all she had to do was turn the screw a couple of times to get it to slide over the side. The metal plate covered not only the wiring but also a much larger hole in the plaster. Reaching inside, she felt the cool texture of a plastic bag and pulled the handheld out. Jules replaced the plate and hopped down.

  “All this trouble over a little thing like you,” she mused, studying it to make sure the unit was still intact. Then, remembering the death it showed, she sobered.

  Jules hated to think of what she’d witnessed. The scenario had played itself in her head several times since it happened. For the most part, she could compartmentalize her feelings and push the details away. But now, as she held the recorder, she remembered the women’s whimpers, felt their fear as she forced herself to stay and watch.

  Why hadn’t she tried to stop it? Jules should have known they’d shoot the girls. She replayed it over and over in her mind. Did she miss a detail? A look? A signal? All she wanted was to catch the two siblings confessing their human trafficking and other numerous crimes on tape. Instead, she’d recorded a murder.

  “Don’t worry, girls. I won’t let you down again.”

  Chapter 21

  “Do you see anything?” Sean craned his neck to look around the East Boston neighborhood. This wasn’t his part of town, and he only vaguely recognized a few of the landmarks. “I should get out of the car. You go home to your family. I can take care of things from this point.”

  Brian learned Jules’s address from the police station. Rohan watched the Velázquez house. Teresa and Myrna waited at home. Rory, Fillan, and Duncan were checking out places in Southie—gas stations, taxis, the main roads. So far there was no sign of her.

  “I’m not leaving you. Stop trying to send me home.” Brian turned the car and slowed, glancing from the road to the passing buildings. With the busy streets packed with cars, it would be a few minutes before they found parking, even with the siren sitting on the dash of his unmarked black sedan. Under his breath, he added, “We’re all tired of seeing you unhappy.”

  Sean frowned. “What are you talking about? We who?”

  “Your family,” Brian answered.

  “Galen…?” Sean frowned.

  “I mean us, Sean. We are your family. Can’t you see that? You are like a brother to me. I’m not leaving you to deal with this on your own, just as you wouldn’t leave me if I needed help. Jules matters to you, so she matters to us.”

  “Yes. You are my fa
mily, and Jules is my life.” Sean looked out the window, unable to believe he’d admitted it out loud. “I can’t lose her again. I should have found her last time, but this planet is so…different. I know more now. I can be more to her now.”

  “Does she feel the same way?”

  “I don’t…want to talk about it.” Seeing the address they were looking for, he reached for the door handle before the car even stopped. “There it is.”

  “Sean, wait.” Brian pulled Sean’s jacket to keep him from jumping out. “Let me park the car.”

  “You park. I’m finding Jules.” Sean hopped out as Brian hit the brakes. He landed with a slight stumble but didn’t stop as he made his way to the front of the building. Grabbing his wallet, he pulled out a lock pick and opened the front door in a few smooth movements. The weighted front door hardly provided protection, especially when paired with a broken security camera hanging in the front lobby. The cracked lens would distort any image even with the camera turned on.

  Sean went straight to the elevators. He knew she’d be here. It’s where he’d be if he had evidence hidden of two murders. Jules thought she could protect him by running away. Didn’t she realize he’d always come after her?

  Sean impatiently tapped the elevator button as if doing so would make the machinery move faster. Maybe she didn’t know he’d come. His behavior was not consistent in that regard. He hadn’t gone after her two years ago. He’d just let her run. That was one mistake he would not be making again. This time, he’d fight for what was his.

  Chapter 22

  Jules took the stairs two at a time, making her way back to the rooftop. She still didn’t know how Hector discovered she witnessed the murders. She had seen no one watching her that night, but apparently someone had. There was no telling who looked for her, and she wouldn’t risk walking out the front door. The Velázquez family had people everywhere—from the dealers on the street corners to runners to those who owed them money. Any number of them would be desperate or greedy enough to turn her in for a small fee.