Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  He came to the mouth of the tunnel. With the mountain shooting up from the ground like a vertical wall of earth, and the looming trees overhead, their entwining branches of thick leaves, it was especially dark, and his flashlight would not stop flickering.

  Soon its light would snuff out and he’d be in a real heap of trouble trying to find his way back to the Trail Office where he’d parked his SUV. He considered the flashlight app on his cell phone, which wasn’t a terrible back-up, but it would drain the battery right-quick, that was for damn sure, and how in the hell would he call for backup, should he find something, without his cell phone? He was way out of range for the walkie that was clipped to his shoulder.

  “Like a needle in a goddamn haystack,” he complained just as his flashlight died.

  He shook it something fierce, but it didn’t do the trick.

  After shoving the flashlight into its home on his utility belt, he pulled up the flashlight app on his cell. The light from it shined barely three feet. No, this wouldn’t do.

  Maybe he could rustle the son-of-a-bitch out, he thought. Of course, he had little encouragement to believe the rabid wolf-man was even inside the long and winding tunnel, but he was here and he might as well make the most of it.

  Using the flashlight on his cell phone, he scanned the ground for a baseball-sized rock. He found one the size of a melon and all the rest seemed to be of apricot dimensions.

  Damn, he could use a hearty slice of Angel’s Mercer’s pie right about now…

  He’d been favoring the diner ever since Jack fell of the face of the earth. Rick had never realized that the booze at Libations was only a fraction of what helped him unwind after a long day.

  Picking up a fist-sized rock that would do, Rick heard his knees crack. He wasn’t that old, for Christ’s sake. The Holly van Dyke case better not age him.

  He drew in a deep, belly-filled breath of crisp air, filling his lungs to their full capacity, they hollered, “You-hoooo!”

  Wake the son of a bitch up.

  When he was satisfied, he pitched the rock as far and deep into the tunnel as his stiff arm would allow then listened with all his might.

  Other than some gentle rustling and the squawks of what he identified as a cluster of wild turkeys, there were no echoing growls of a disturbed wolf. No howling. Nothing.

  “Time for that pie,” he told himself, disappointed.

  The diner was quiet. There were a few teenagers nursing root beer floats in a booth in the back that he pegged as an innocent date. A long-haul trucker by the name of Rudy was hunched over midnight breakfast at the counter. But otherwise Angel’s Food was on the outs for the night.

  Removing his hat, he offered Rudy a good-natured nod and sat a handful of seats down from him at the counter.

  Lucy was seated at one of the red vinyl booths, pouring salt into one of the shakers—station work. All the waitresses had to do it before they left for the night. But she popped up and rounded behind the counter to take his order.

  “Evenin’, Sheriff,” she said without making eye contact.

  The girl probably still felt embarrassed about what had happened out on Eagle’s Pass. She’d become the talk of the town, and her statement had spread like wildfire throughout the Fist. Started a chain-reaction of residents freaking out, which was effective every corner of this quiet town. Hell, Rick had heard that even the poor library had gotten slammed with werewolf fever.

  “What you got for pie right about now?” he asked her.

  “Oh, it’s slim pickin’s, Sir,” she regretted to inform him. “Blueberry for sure. And a few slices of strawberry rhubarb, but those’re all crumbled to a loose mess by now.”

  “I ain’t fancy,” he reminded her. “Tell you what, I’ll have a big ol’ slice of blueberry and you can pile on that mess of what’s left of the strawberry rhubarb, how ‘bout?”

  “Warmed up with a heap of whip cream?”

  “Sounds good to me.” As she turned for the kitchen, he caught her, saying, “Hey now, Lucy?”

  Finally, she met his gaze and the vulnerability behind her crystal blue eyes almost broke his heart.

  “You did good, tellin’ me all that you did. I want you to know that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Nothing since has happened to ya, right?”

  There was a strange, guarded hesitation on her end then she glanced worriedly over her shoulder at the kitchen.

  “Lucy?”

  “I really ought to snatch that pie,” she told him and hurried off.

  He couldn’t immediately understand her flighty behavior until he saw Angel in the kitchen.

  The woman looked pale. Her forehead was sweaty, he could tell even from this distance. And there was something about her posture that made her look drained.

  He was impressed that she’d muscled her way back into work. She lived for this diner, that was no secret, but the longer he studied her the clearer it became that she was ill. Feverish.

  Rick, himself, had been one of the library patrons who’d reserved and checked-out a handful of books about werewolves. Twelve to be exact, a volume that Mrs. Yeats had strongly balked at. A detail that stuck out in all the books he’d skimmed, one that seemed to be a growing, common theme, was the feverish pallor of a person that came over them before they turned wolf.

  Had Angel Mercer been bitten by a werewolf that night?

  Was she now one herself as a result?

  When Lucy rounded through from the kitchen with his warmed-up pie and set the plate before him on the counter, he asked, “Hey, girl, why don’t you get Angel on out here for me?”

  Lucy huffed. “Well, I told you the pie wasn’t gonna look so great—”

  “It’s not about the pie. The pie’s perfect. Would you please, now?”

  Lucy disappeared into the kitchen for the second time and after Rick had shoveled a few heaping scoops of warm pie into his mouth, Angel emerged from the kitchen and stood across the counter from him.

  Her gait had been heavy and labored. Her hair, which was immaculately styled in bombshell ringlets, looked shellacked as a Doris Day-styled helmet, and her makeup, though equally immaculate, looked caked, as though she’d tried way too hard to cover something up. Beautiful and ragged, that’s how Angel Mercer looked. And it didn’t help that she was gripping the counter with both hands as though she might fall over if she let go.

  “Angel, now I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but honey, you look terrible.”

  The Angel he knew would’ve sang out a fluttery laugh and come back at him with something clever, but this one just said flatly, “And?”

  “And I wanted to make sure you’re okay, sweetheart. Are you?”

  Her gaze drifted towards the large, picture windows that faced Main Street, but not as though something had caught her eye.

  “I just want my life to go back to normal.”

  “I’m sure it will. Have you taken your temperature recently?”

  “I know I have a fever, Sheriff.”

  “Then why are you in here serving diners? You don’t want to get anyone sick, do you?”

  “Is there anything I can get you?”

  Rick studied her for a long moment. If she would only smile, he’d be able to see whether or not fangs had grown out of her incisors, but the woman was clearly in no mood.

  “No,” he finally admitted. “Pie’s just fine. I don’t need anything.”

  She gave him a heavy nod and then started for the kitchen.

  Something was wrong with her. Without a doubt, something was wrong, so when he caught sight of her unbuttoning the front of her blue uniform dress in the kitchen, he tossed a few bills on the counter to cover the cost of the pie plus a decent tip for Lucy, and readied himself to follow Angel out.

  Of course, she used the back exit. He’d anticipated she would, which was why out on Main Street he cut an immediate left onto Bison and rounded to the back of the diner on foot.

  Spying Angel around the
corner of the building, Rick watched her fumble with her car keys and then give up.

  It crossed his mind to swing on by Libations. If Angel had insisted on going in to the diner, then it was a safe bet that Jack had finally returned to the bar. But the woman’s behavior was too bizarre.

  Then, suddenly, without warning or cause, Angel turned on her heel and started off sprinting like a bat out of hell south on Bison Road.

  “Hot damn!” he muttered, taking off after her.

  Why in the hell was she running?

  He raced after her, but she was fast. Too fast. She cut a wild left onto Evergreen, the south-most street in all the Fist, and Rick kept after her. Soon, though, she was nothing more than a shadowy figure, but it wasn’t so dark that he couldn’t see when she darted left onto Trout Street.

  Where was she going? She would soon come to Libations and the library across the way, but if either had been her destination, she could’ve just as easily walked along Main Street…

  When he turned the corner, terribly winded, his eyes locked onto the shimmering, white haunches of a wolf running up Trout.

  Angel was nowhere in sight.

  “Holy hell!” he wheezed as he grabbed his knees, keeled over and gaze locked on the white wolf sprinting away. “She’s a wolf? She’s a wolf! Christ!”

  His eyes must be playing tricks on him.

  “Angel?” he called out, reasoning that she could’ve seen the wolf, gotten scared, and ducked behind a dumpster or something. “Angel, you there, girl?”

  As the running wolf disappeared into the darkened fog—maybe it had turned on Main Street, or just plain vanished like some witchy thing—he straightened up, took aim with his rifle, and fired off a Hail Mary shot into the night.

  A yelp, distant and miserable, filled the air.

  “I clipped the son-of-a-bitch!” he said excitedly as he took off at a jog.

  But when he reached the end of Trout Street where he’d been sure the yelp had come from, there was nothing there but a small puddle of blood on the pavement.

  He crouched and not exactly understanding why, felt the urge to touch it with his finger.

  It was fire-hot.

  He immediately wiped it off on his trousers then sucked his burned finger.

  What in the hell had he just witnessed?

  ***

  Reece had nearly drifted off in his arms, the vast constellation of twinkling stars shinning down on them. Troy was holding her, both on their backs, her head nuzzled into the crux of his neck and shoulder. She’d pulled her panties back on, and Troy was still shirtless, wearing only his jeans. He stroked her soft, brown hair and she felt her eyelids grow heavy all over again.

  She could easily stay here all night with him. Sleep under the stars. Forget all of Devil’s Fist and what had been unfolding there. She was safe here, safe with him, and she was starting to truly feel that so long as she was in Troy’s care, nothing bad would ever happen to her.

  He’d told her she could be the one. A man had never said that to her before. She hadn’t even come close to hearing it in all of her twenty-seven years. Just thinking about it now, remembering the depth of his sexy voice as he’d told her, warmed her very soul.

  But it also scared her.

  Had a regular man, even a good one, uttered those words to her, she probably would’ve been thoroughly elated. She had no doubt that she felt elated, but the emotion was mixed with extreme trepidation.

  If a mortal was meant to be a werewolf’s one and only, their true love, someone they’d like to spend the rest of their life with, wouldn’t that mean that…

  Reece winced at the thought. She didn’t want to embrace it or even consider it…

  But wouldn’t it mean that she, too, would have to be a werewolf? Would she have to become one herself? What would that entail?

  She feared to imagine, but couldn’t stop herself from wondering.

  Would she one day live her life at the mercy of the moon? Would she go through the trying period of being a Younger? The way Troy had alluded to the other Youngers of his pack, it seemed like a dangerous phase, one where the young werewolf could barely control its ability to shift.

  But it also occurred to her that if she was Troy’s one true love she wouldn’t just have to go through a period of time as a Younger, she would also be a Royal, maybe even a Queen.

  Would she like that?

  She was distracted from deep thought when she felt, through the thick fabric of Troy’s jeans, a sudden and incredible sensation of heat where her inner thigh was draped over him.

  “Yikes!” she shrieked, popping up and scrambling back.

  Troy had hissed in pain as well and, sitting up abruptly, pulled the amethyst from his pocket.

  It dropped with a little roll on the blankets and they both stared at it.

  It was glowing white and the blanket around it began to smoke.

  “Lord,” she blurted, “it’s going to set the bedding on fire!”

  Troy kicked it with his boot so that it rolled to the far side of the truck bed, off the blanket, and onto the metal.

  “He’s here,” she breathed in a terrified whisper and she scanned the darkened plains. “He must be somewhere out there!”

  The grave look that had come over Troy was agreement enough.

  “Stay here,” he whispered as he soundlessly hopped off of the truck bed onto the dusty ground.

  She grabbed his arm and began pleading, “No, don’t leave me.”

  “I have to,” he hissed back. “This is my chance.”

  Tears of terror filled her eyes and she refused to loosen her death-grip on him.

  He handed her his cell phone after cuing up one of his contacts and told her, “Call Kaleb if anything happens.”

  “How is that going to help?” she demanded. They were out in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sake.

  “He’s the fastest.”

  Unless he was faster than the speed of light, she had no reason to trust that calling Kaleb Quinn the moment something actually happened would help either of them, but he didn’t give her time to object.

  As he turned away from the truck, he dropped, transforming in the blink of an eye into his massive wolf form, and in the next moment, he sprinted off into the dark night, leaving Reece to fend for herself.

  It was quiet. Too quiet.

  She glanced at the amethyst, which was stoked white-hot and burning brighter than before.

  “Oh God,” she breathed.

  Her body began quaking as she huddled down in the truck bed, trying to stay out of sight.

  With shaking hands and a trembling finger, she sent the call through to Kaleb. There was no point in waiting, was there? What if Dante penetrated her mind from out in the darkness? What if she fell into a spell again, one she’d never remember? She wasn’t about to wait around for something like that to happen.

  As soon as she heard Kaleb’s voice come through the line, she breathed in a rocky whisper, “You have to come out to the plains.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Reece! Come out to the plains,” she begged.

  A sharp breeze cut across the land and she flinched, but it was nothing compared to how her heart flipped the second a tremendous beast jumped onto the truck bed from out of nowhere.

  She screamed and dropped the cell phone as the white wolf growled at her and slowly stalked in, closing the gap between them. She scrambled away until her back was pressed against the truck’s rear windows. There was nowhere else to go. She was trapped.

  Blood?

  Blood!

  The white wolf was bleeding from its shoulder, the length of its left leg was saturated.

  Reece was too scared to scream or cry, all she could do was whimper and pray it would be over soon.

  The white wolf lunged at her and she shrieked, pinching her eyes closed and covering her head with her hands, but its fangs didn’t find their way into her.

  When she looked up at the sound of a yelp, she
saw a massive, dark wolf—Troy—sink its teeth into the scruff of the white wolf’s fluffy neck.

  It took Reece a moment to understand what was happening. Troy wasn’t attacking the white wolf. He was simply overpowering it like a bitch would her disobedient pup.

  Kaleb’s concerned voice was still blaring through the dropped cell phone and as Troy wrestled the white wolf out of the truck bed and onto the ground, Reece picked up the phone.

  “What are you waiting for? Come now! We got attacked by a white wolf!”

  “Angel?” he asked.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “That’s Angel Mercer,” he told her. “Has to be. I’ll be right there.”

  As Reece dropped the cell phone once again, she stared at Troy as though he was a total stranger even though he’d transformed back into his human form to further wrangle the white wolf.

  “She’s been shot in the shoulder,” Troy told her.

  “Her? You mean Angel Mercer?” she questioned, appalled that he could keep something like this from her.

  Troy met her gaze and, ignoring the accusation in her question, said, “We have to get her to my grandmother’s. There’s no other way.”

  “Your brother is on his way.”

  “His brother is here,” said Kaleb, jogging out from the shadows.

  The second Troy’s brother had arrived, it was like Reece didn’t even exist. She wasn’t informed or consulted. She wasn’t even looked at. And the next thing she knew they were pulling the pickup truck up to a house that was nestled in the side of a mountain.

  Chapter Seventeen

  TROY

  Troy didn’t like the way Reece was looking at him. Staring. Glaring from across the room inside of his mother and grandmother’s home.

  She was seated on the couch, arms folded, mouth twisted into a queasy line.

  All four of his brothers were there, standing near him in a huddle. Jack Quagmire was there, too, pacing worriedly directly in front of the back room’s door. Dean had called him.

  In the back room, behind closed doors, Sasha, with Nikita’s assistance, was healing Angel’s bullet torn shoulder. As far as anyone within the four walls of this living room knew, Angel was still in her wolf form. They would need her in her human form to ascertain who had shot her.