Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Then the real fun would begin.

  Angel Mercer had been easy.

  Lucy Cooper, on the other hand, had been a harder nut to crack, but eventually he had penetrated her mind as well. He couldn’t say it hadn’t irked him how stubborn the ethereal blonde had been, mentally that was. He had wanted to seep into her mind like he had with Angel, pull her into a zombie-fog, control her like a puppet from within, and turn her just like he had the diner owner, but it hadn’t been possible.

  It bothered him.

  Greatly.

  Angel had been a success, though.

  Count your victories, not your losses, he told himself.

  He’d been able to enter her mind from outside her house. She’d just stepped out of the shower after her long day at Angel’s Food. She’d pulled on her nightgown, and just as she’d emerged from the steamy bathroom, he’d snapped himself right into the forefront of her mind.

  It had only taken a few minutes of dream-like coaxing and she opened the front door of her house for him.

  He’d taken her out into the woods.

  She’d fought him. Mentally. Here and there, she’d shoved him out of her head and broken into a panicked sprint through the acreage. But he’d always regained his control, subdued her, and caught up.

  She hadn’t been able to do a thing when he’d turned her but whimper in a paralyzed huddle on the forest floor. One deep scratch to her thigh had done it. He’d torn off a hunk of his own flesh, sinking his fangs into his forearm, then mixed their blood. That was all it had taken.

  It was an untraditional method, but as rogue as he was, he still respected the greater laws of the universe. Angel Mercer might not have been meant for him. She wasn’t destined to be his one true mate. She wasn’t meant for anyone, just a boring mortal who could’ve lived the extent of her natural life never having known about the existence of werewolves…

  But she was his now.

  One of the damned.

  An unclaimed werewolf.

  Illegitimate in her origin.

  Immortal now thanks to the blood he’d given her.

  It was only a matter of time until Angel’s bloodthirst would take over. Then there’d be more than one rogue wolf terrorizing this town. And he wouldn’t stop turning them, one after the next, pulling them onto the side of the damned, until all of Devil’s Fist became his loyal subjects. Until every last one of them served him as their king for all of eternity.

  Lucy Cooper should’ve been number two, but she’d been nearly impenetrable.

  Nearly.

  He knew what it meant. She was destined to be someone’s one true mate. She was already claimed in the eyes of fate. But that destiny could be broken if he was able to find and kill the werewolf she belonged to.

  His To Do list was growing by the day.

  He’d made the most of her, though, planting in her mind proof of werewolves, giving her the vision of Rick Abernathy and his late wife on the porch. Sally-Mae had known about the presence of werewolves in the Fist. Lucy had used the vision he’d planted to convince Rick that werewolves truly did exist. It would gnaw at him. Perhaps slowly. Maybe quickly, but sooner or later Rick would become obsessed, and Troy Quinn’s precious pack would soon feel the walls closing in as residents turned one after the next, and Rick used his police force to hunt them down before his entire town shifted to the side of the real devil.

  It was only a matter of time.

  And he was already enjoying it.

  From where he was prowling in a stooped hunch in-between the smelly dumpsters behind Angel’s Food, he could look across Bison Road, but the street was sleepy. It wasn’t ideal. He would’ve preferred to be able to go inside Angel’s Food and keep his dark eyes on Reece Gladstone. But he hadn’t fully shifted into his complete human form. For now, he’d have to sense her from outside. He knew she was due at the library soon. Troy would leave her, assuming she’d be safe.

  And as soon as he was fully human, he would go inside the library and have himself a little fun with the woman who meant the world to his nemesis, Troy Quinn.

  ***

  Mrs. Yeats was in quite a mood and had been all day, as far as Reece could tell.

  It must have been the weather. The damp chill of rain must have seeped into old Mrs. Yeats’ joints, causing her to turn increasingly snappish all day. It seemed Reece couldn’t do anything right when it came to this woman’s standards, but today had been particularly rough. She didn’t much appreciate being talked down to, but she knew that when it came to Mrs. Yeats, defending yourself would only incite the bitter woman. There was only a half-hour more to go before she would be able to punch out and meet Troy in front of the library.

  Reece was already counting the minutes.

  At least there had been a steady stream of patrons floating in and out of the library all day. It had been keeping her busy, which was always preferable, but her romance novel was really starting to suffer because of it. She didn’t want to risk it, though, today of all days, considering Mrs. Yeats’ foul mood. She hadn’t pulled her laptop out of her tote bag all day, and instead had tended to one patron after the next. Each one of them, however, seemed to be curious about more than just the books on the shelves.

  The gossip mill had really started to churn.

  There was a great deal of idle speculation about what had happened to Angel Mercer, and like a child’s game of telephone, the details had really swelled, truth mixing in with lies, facts becoming clouded with fiction, and poor Jack Quagmire’s reputation was getting dragged through the mud with tall tales of date-rape drugs and sinister motives. Reece was glad that Angel was still at home and wouldn’t be exposed to these inflated rumors, but she knew the diner owner wouldn’t stay tucked in that quaint house of hers forever.

  Complicating matters was the Lucy Cooper development. Between Lucy, Whitney, and the sheriff, it seemed that in less than twenty-four hours since the girls’ jog along Eagle’s Pass the whole town knew about the “werewolves” hypothesis.

  Luckily for Troy and his pack, but very unfortunately for Lucy, most everyone had decided on their own that the girls had gone to Yellowstone that evening to experiment with drugs they’d perhaps bought over in Jackson Hole. No one was readily buying the existence of werewolves, which Lucy was convinced of, but that didn’t mean that the talk in the town wouldn’t eventually turn with the tides of ultimately believing her.

  The rolling cart behind the front desk was practically overflowing with precariously stacked towers of returned books. With most of the patrons floating down the aisles and none of them in immediate need of her assistance behind the front desk, Reece pushed the cart out from around the counter and proceeded to creep down one aisle, then the next, returning book after book.

  “Excuse me,” she heard a man behind her say.

  There was something about the icy edge of his deep tone that cracked through her even though he hadn’t spoken very loudly.

  “Yes?” she asked, turning around to find a tall, wiry man of about fifty-five or so who was dressed slick like he worked in real estate. His eyes were dark and of indeterminate color and his gelled-back hair was even darker. Raven black, it seemed.

  She’d never seen him before, and her first impression of him was that he didn’t seem like the sort who would have occasion to visit the library.

  “Can I help you?” she asked when he hadn’t launched into his reason for needing her help.

  She felt a touch queasy. There was something off about him, something creepy, even though he looked like the sort of gentleman a woman like Angel Mercer might like to date. Polished, poised, professional.

  “I’m hoping you can,” he said, good-naturedly with a handsome grin that set her teeth on edge. He looked like the kind of wealthy man who could get away with rape and maybe even sue his victim for defamation of character should she dare to go to the police.

  All of Reece’s female-intuition alarms were going off.

  He neared her, which s
ent a stinging jolt of trepidation down her spine, and said, “I’m interested in doing a little light reading while I’m here in town. I gravitate towards biographies. I’m a non-fiction man,” he clarified with what she was sure was meant to sound like a charming chuckle.

  She was hardly charmed.

  “I often entertain myself with docu-dramas on TV. I love the ones about murder and killers. I’m hoping to read something like that. Could you recommend a biography I might like?”

  “Ah,” she began stammering as she tried to remember a title he might be interested in. It was hard to wrack her brain, however, because she was distracted by what his interest in such subjects might be. “Well,” she started quickly, “if you follow me, I can show you to that section of the library, and we can see if something jumps out at you?”

  “I appreciate it.”

  Leaving the rolling cart in the aisle, she led him through the library to the back where a number of historical biographies sat.

  “We also have a lot of historical fiction,” she offered over her shoulder as they came to the section she had in mind. “Erik Larson is very popular nowadays.”

  “I’d prefer an authentic biography, perhaps one about the most notorious psychopaths in American history. Fiction is simply too far removed for my taste.”

  “I see,” she said in a trembling tone. Her hands were a bit shaky as well, but she did what she could to steady them as she plucked a particular title off one of the shelves. “This is Jeffrey Dahmer’s biography.”

  “The cannibal?” he asked with great interest.

  She handed him the book and immediately cut her eyes back to the shelves to select another title for him. The sooner she did, the sooner she could get him out of the library. The man was giving her the heebie-jeebies, big time.

  “You might like this one,” she commented, offering him a book about Ted Bundy.

  “I believe I would,” he said, reading the title and skimming the jacket cover.

  “You’re just visiting the Fist?” she asked cautiously, though she wasn’t sure why. Bonding with him, even over small talk, irked her. She wanted him gone.

  “I travel quite a bit,” he said illusively. “I’m in town from Jackson Hole.”

  “Let me guess,” she said, managing a friendly smile. “Real estate?”

  “Ha,” he laughed, but to Reece’s ears it sounded both dark and forced. “I’m flattered. I actually grew up around Devil’s Fist. I know Yellowstone like the back of my hand.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “There’s no greater beauty on earth,” he commented before leering at her, “other than a woman’s.”

  “Well,” she said, disturbed. She supposed she ought to act flattered, but instead she changed the subject, “Back when you grew up here, I bet the Fist seemed even more sleepy. Am I right?”

  “You have no idea,” he told her dryly.

  After an awkward silence, she offered, “Can I get those checked out for you?”

  “That would be appreciated,” he said politely and she led him through the library to the front desk.

  “We might have to get you a library card,” she mentioned as she pulled up the new member form on the computer. “Can I have your first and last name?”

  He didn’t respond and when she lifted her eyes to him, it looked as though he was furious.

  That look of his, however, only lasted for a fraction of a second and the next thing she knew he was pulling his cell phone from the front pocket of his slacks and checking something that seemed like an urgent matter.

  “Excuse me,” he said without meeting her gaze.

  He turned for the entrance door, but when he reached it, he didn’t leave, only pressed his cell phone to his ear as though he was either getting or making a call.

  But there was something performative about it. His cell hadn’t vibrated in his pocket. There had been no beeps or buzzes, no voice coming through from the other end of the line.

  She tried not to stare, but she couldn’t help herself.

  By all accounts, the man hadn’t wanted to give her his name.

  Why?

  Chapter Thirteen

  TROY

  The rain was really coming down by the time Troy pulled his pickup truck along the curb in front of the library, windshield wipers flapping hard. The sky was dark, nearly black with an incoming storm, even though the sun wasn’t due to set for another few hours.

  He killed the engine and approximated how fast he would have to run across the sidewalk in order to not get completely drenched.

  The amethyst crystal in his pocket that his Grandmother Sasha had essentially given him felt cool in the front pocket of his jeans, as though it had taken on the damp chill in the air. But when he quickly opened the door of his truck, jumped out into the rain that was coming down in thick sheets, and started at a jog for the entrance of the library, the crystal flared hot against his thigh. Even with the cotton material of the pocket separating it from his skin, it felt like hot iron, metal so seared from a stoked fire it’d turned orange.

  Just as he reached the door, it swung open, a middle-aged man in a suit with dark eyes started out into the stormy night.

  Troy only touched eyes with him, keeping his head down and squinting up through his eyebrows so that rainwater would stream down his face, but even in that brief moment, he felt a searing heat cut through him. It was the same temperature and energy as the fire-hot amethyst in his pocket, and it would’ve given him pause if the rain hadn’t compelled him to dive inside the library’s foyer.

  When he turned to get a second look at the man, the polished professional had already disappeared into the rainy night.

  Reece looked ready to head out when he neared the front desk. She was standing behind the counter with her tote bag slung over her shoulder, but old Mrs. Yeats, crotchety as all hell, was demanding something about the trash.

  It was always something with that woman.

  Troy helped Reece gather the trash bags from around the library and after Troy had deposited all three in the dumpster behind the library, insisting that Reece wait inside, they sprinted out through the front of the library and jumped into his pickup.

  “Long day?” he asked her as he gave her damp, skirted thigh a little squeeze from across the console.

  She always smelled of flowers, but it seemed that tonight the moisture in the air had enhanced that scent.

  “I was going to ask you the same,” she said.

  She seemed a bit clammed up. Disturbed. But when he looked at her, drinking in the dewy sight of her to make sure she was okay, she gave him a breathy smile that put him at ease.

  “Have there been any developments?” she asked, as he pulled out onto Main Street, heading towards Bison Road where he’d make a right then another right onto Berry, which would take them all the way back to her cottage on the northeast side of town. “The library was bustling with gossip.”

  “Same around town,” he told her. “It doesn’t bode well.”

  “Any word on Angel and how she’s doing?”

  Troy had avoided the subject of Angel Mercer as best he could with Reece. He’d already told her more than he should’ve and didn’t want her to know that the pristine diner owner had been turned werewolf out in those woods.

  “She’s fine,” he said flatly. He didn’t like using a dismissive tone with Reece, but he couldn’t encourage this line of questioning. It was in her best interest at this point to remain in the dark. “Anything unusual happen at the library?”

  Even without glancing over at her, he could tell that a dark cloud had settled over Reece, but she didn’t address her lowering mood. Instead, she simply told him, “Not other than the tall tales of gossip and rumors that were floating around.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, Troy’s large hand draped over her leg and Reece’s delicate fingers draped over his.

  The amethyst crystal in his pocket had cooled, but he hadn’t forgotten about the inten
se heat it had given off. It had felt like a warning, and yet, when he’d entered the library there had been no immediate danger.

  He wondered what it had meant.

  Angling his pickup truck towards the little, white cottage, he came to a stop, killed the lights, and pulled the key from the ignition. He was tempted to lean over the console and pull her in for a kiss, but knew that once he started, he wouldn’t be able to stop. Might as well save it for when they got inside. He hadn’t made a single move on her last night, too overwhelmed with the Angel Mercer development, but now that the dust had had a chance to settle on the matter, he felt more and more poised to get to know Reece in a far more intimate manner than he’d already dared.

  The lingering question in the back of his mind that he knew would never ever go away was, could she be his one true mate?

  Maybe tonight, he would find out.

  Inside, as they veered into the living room, Reece kept going, rounding into her bedroom where Troy heard the sound of her plopping her tote bag on the bed and sliding open the closet door. She returned a second or two later with a bundle of clothes in her arms.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she informed him. “Get this sticky chill off of me.”

  As she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, Troy sat on the couch and debated calling one of his brothers, Shane. The Quinns hadn’t made a dent of progress in locating the rogue werewolf. Discovering his identity seemed even farther out of reach, and no one felt more perturbed by that than Shane, who’d never been shy a day in his life about showing his fury or frustration.

  He stared at his cell phone, listening to the sounds of the shower beat down over Reece’s turning body through the closed bathroom door, and tapped his thumb over the LCD screen absently.

  Shane wouldn’t have as many suggestions as he would complaints, and he certainly wouldn’t appreciate hearing that the sheriff was probably aware of the existence of their kind in the Fist, whether Rick actually believed it or not.