Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  And again.

  If it was the last thing she did, she would get out of here.

  And if Dante came back…

  If he came back, she would fight…

  …to the death.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  TROY

  “Dean!”

  Troy ran down the side of the mountain, his eyes locked on his fallen brother through the trees.

  Dean was on his knees, bracing his shoulder that was bleeding profusely.

  As Troy came to the clearing, he saw Shane rush up to Dean, sliding to his knees. His black shirt was already off and he used it to stop the bleeding, pressing the bundled garment hard against his brother’s shoulder.

  BANG!

  The brothers ducked then began scrambling to the line of pickup trucks. Shane pulled Dean around the back of one of them as Troy scanned the terrain to see where Dante was firing from.

  When the third shot rang out, the bullet cracking the windshield of the truck where the two brothers had taken cover, Troy got an immediate sense of where the assault fire was coming from.

  He dropped, shifting into his wolf form, and took off sprinting through the woods, coming around the far side of the mountain to circumnavigate the area and take Dante from behind by surprise.

  Where were Kaleb and Conor? Maybe they heard the gunshots and had approximated the origin as well. The three of them could ambush Dante, but Troy reasoned that if he didn’t cross paths with his brothers, he wouldn’t hesitate to jump Dante alone.

  Rage filled his chest as he came to a stalking walk, having spied Dante yards and yards ahead through the trees.

  What if he was too late? What if Dante had forced Reece to… He couldn’t stand the thought. It felt like his blood was boiling in his veins. If Dante had forced her, if he’d turned her, she would be forever lost to Troy. One of the damned in Dante’s army. If that was the case…

  Every muscle in his wolf body hardened with fury. He felt his snout peel back, fangs exposed, and a growling snarl began rumbling out of him as he stalked farther and farther through the trees, closing the gap between them.

  Dante had the upper hand. The high ground. A rifle. Troy caught sight of a handgun snugged down the back of the traitor’s slacks.

  He was going to enjoy this. Sinking his fangs into the scruff of Dante’s deformed neck. He padded slowly and soundlessly closer.

  Snap.

  His front paw broke a twig and the sound had alerted Dante.

  The half-breed whipped around, pulling his rifle up just as Troy lunged at him.

  BANG!

  The shot sang out through the wilderness and Troy was so amped up, adrenaline flooding his thick veins, that he couldn’t tell whether or not he’d been hit.

  It didn’t matter. If he had been, it hadn’t slowed him down.

  He pounced on Dante, clamped the length of the rifle between his fanged teeth, and flung it out of his grasp.

  Wrestling ensued, Dante punching and tearing at Troy with his claws, Troy sinking his teeth into his half-shifted forearm, tearing flesh from bone.

  When another shot fired, this one a tight pop, Troy was momentarily confused. Had Dante gotten a hold of the handgun he was carrying?

  Officer Rachel Clancy shouted, “Freeze!”

  Troy and Dante stopped tussling, but Troy couldn’t see where Rachel was.

  She could certainly see them, though—a massive, raven black wolf attacking a human.

  This didn’t look good.

  And Troy had loosened his grasp on Dante just enough for the man to wriggle out of his grasp and take off through the woods, fleeing the officer.

  If Troy shifted back into his human form, Rachel would see. She would know.

  So he took off as well, sprinting in the direction Dante had fled.

  If it was the last thing he did, he would tear the life from that devil.

  But Dante had gotten too much of a head start.

  ***

  Sheriff Rick Abernathy, entirely unconcerned with the gunshot wound to Dean Quinn’s shoulder—Shane had served enough years overseas to tend to his brother without Rick’s help—spotted something odd.

  He knew a staged scene when he saw one and the way those dead tree branches were angled against the cliff-side of the mountain was a dead-ringer. As sirens began blaring in the distance—Rick had called it in as soon as he’d come onto the scene, summoning an ambulance for Dean as well as backup—he pulled the branches aside and found a stone slab set in from the rugged, earthen side of the mountain.

  “I’ll be damned,” he breathed as he tested the weight of the slab, pressing his palms against it and pushing hard to see if it’d budge.

  Not only did it budge, the damn thing fell straight backwards and landed with a dust-billowing thud.

  The cloud of dusty dirt it kicked up nearly blinded him. He coughed and waved his way into the cave.

  “Help!”

  It was Reece.

  Rick didn’t have to wait for the dust to settle to know he’d just become a hero.

  “Reece?” he called out, wading cautiously into the space, gun drawn and senses heightened.

  “Help me, Sheriff! I’m over here!”

  As he stepped out of the settling cloud, he saw candles. Lots of them. Then realized that this was no ordinary cave. Someone had been living here, and they’d been living well.

  Reece was shackled up inside of some kind of cage and he rushed to her. She looked bruised and exhausted, but he assured her, “You’re safe.”

  “He might be coming back! Hurry!”

  “Who?”

  “Just get me out of here!” she pleaded, pointing to an antique table on the other side of the room. “The key! Oh shit!” she spat. “I think he took the key with him.”

  “Who took the key with him?”

  “Dante! I don’t know his last name.”

  Rick assessed the padlock, the cage, the chains that were holding Reece. He’d need a serious pair of heavy-duty wire cutters at least, so he pinched the radio that was clamped to his shoulder.

  “Clancy,” he barked. “Get me them wire cutters out the back of my SUV.”

  Rachel’s voice came covered in static through the radio. “No can do, Sheriff, I’m in pursuit!”

  “You best get your ass to my vehicle, Clancy, and do as you’ve been ordered!” He released the radio from his fingers and shouted, “Medic!” over his shoulder. “Don’t you worry now, Reece. We’ll have you out of here in no time. Promise.”

  ***

  Troy had lost him.

  Dante had cut this way and that through the wilderness, heading deeper and deeper into the old Halsey land. And with Officer Rachel Clancy closing in on him from behind—damn, the woman was fast—he couldn’t risk it.

  She might not have equipped her Glock with silver bullets, but she also hadn’t hesitated to fire at him time and again. Thank God her running aim was terrible. But he hadn’t wanted to press his luck.

  Shifting back into his human form, Troy doubled back through the forest and eventually spilled out into the clearing where the Sheriff’s SUV, two police cruisers, and an ambulance had pulled in behind the Quinn brothers’ line of trucks.

  Three of his brothers—Kaleb, Shane, and Conor—were huddled around the back of Shane’s pickup and as Troy neared them he saw his other brother, Dean, seated in the back. Shirtless, his shoulder had been wrapped in bandages, which were already saturated in blood.

  “We’ve got to get him to Sasha,” Shane told him in a discrete tone. “Look how ill he is.”

  Dean wheezed out, barely conscious. “Had to have been silver.”

  “Fuck,” Troy cursed. “How the hell are we going to get him out with all the red tape these officers are going to put us through?”

  “Let me handle that,” said Shane. “We don’t have much time.”

  Troy’s gaze had locked on the back of the ambulance.

  Reece.

  She was seated in the back, two m
edics tending to her, a woolen blanket draped over her shoulders.

  “Do it,” he told Shane. “Whatever you have to,” he added as he started over to Reece.

  All he could think was, had Dante done it? Had he turned her? Had he claimed her?

  Troy felt his teeth clench, jaw tightening and hands balling into fists, as he neared her.

  She lifted her green eyes and the second she saw him, those eyes of hers brightened and she sprang to her feet.

  “Troy!” she exclaimed, breaking free of the medics’ care and throwing her arms around his neck.

  Holding her felt so good, like coming home, but had he?

  “I’m okay,” she breathed. She pulled back so that she could look up into his eyes.

  “Did he…?”

  “He didn’t,” she blurted. “He didn’t.”

  A rush of relief whooshed out of him and he jerked her back into his arms, holding her tighter than he’d ever held anything or anyone in his life.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he told her. “Reece, if something ever happened to you—”

  “I thought I’d lost you, too, when I heard those shots,” she said, looking up into his eyes again. She searched his dark eyes for a long moment then asked in a whisper, “Did you get him? Is he dead?”

  Troy grit his teeth and slowly shook his head. “He got away.”

  The look of sheer terror that came over her drained all color from her face.

  “He’ll be back,” she said in a quivering voice. “He’ll come for me.”

  “If and when he does,” said Troy with a wealth of conviction in his tone, “I’ll be ready for him.” He caressed her cheek for a long moment, gently tracing the bruised laceration around her eye that broke his heart. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you ever again. I love you.”

  She didn’t say it back.

  His heart sank.

  And just as he was about to say more, the sheriff stomped over with an air of authority, his fists on his hips, and said, “She needs to get to the hospital, Quinn, and I’ve got more than a few questions for you.”

  When he glanced back at Reece, she was already climbing into the back of the ambulance, and she didn’t look at him through the rear windows after the medic closed the doors.

  “Care to explain to me how in the hell it was that you knew to come out here?” the sheriff asked with suspicion.

  “I don’t have to talk to you,” Troy barked as he turned for his pickup truck.

  But Rick had him by the arm.

  “To the contrary,” said the sheriff, shoving him back around. “And I’ll hold you down at the station if I have to.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  REECE

  After being poked and prodded in Jackson Hole, after several tests had been run, blood had been taken, and x-rays had been scanned, Reece was released from the hospital, but not from her obligation to answer what had felt like endless questions. Sheriff Rick Abernathy and Officer Rachel Clancy had come at her from both sides, effectively, Rick kneeling in front of her wheelchair—hospital policy, she hadn’t actually needed one—and Rachel hovering with a pen poised to her police notepad. There had been too many questions. Questions she couldn’t answer, and others that only raised more in her mind.

  “When did you first encounter Dante?”

  “Do you know his last name?”

  “Did he mention where he might have gone?”

  “What was Angel Mercer’s role in all of this?”

  Angel…

  That was the biggest mystery of all creeping out from the confused corners of her mind. Why had Angel Mercer, diner owner, upstanding citizen, former beauty queen, lured Reece out into the woods and delivered her to a man who she had to have known would kill her, maybe not by ending her life, but certainly by changing it forever? She’d known Angel her entire life. She’d eaten pancakes at Angel’s Food every Sunday with her parents when she was growing up. She’d studied there during her high school years, Angel refreshing her mugs of coffee and complimenting Reece for her studious nature. Years and years and years worth of memories. She’d had every reason to trust the woman. Reece had even given her the benefit of the doubt after their encounter in the back of Troy’s pickup truck…

  …and Angel had betrayed her.

  Why?

  “Sheriff, I’m sorry. I’ve already told you everything I know, and I’m extremely tired right now,” she’d said, as Troy had waited patiently behind her, his grip on the handles of her wheelchair so strong that she feared he might lunge over her and tackle Rick.

  Rick hadn’t pushed it. He’d accepted her responses, the few she’d provided him, and he’d risen to his feet, stood to the side next to Rachel, and watched Troy roll her through the whooshing automatic doors of the hospital’s exit.

  It felt like a very long drive back to Devil’s Fist, Troy silent behind the wheel, staring out farther than the high-beams of his truck’s headlight could illuminate, Reece balled up tightly with arms and legs crossed in the passenger’s seat, chilled to the bone despite the heat blasting from the vents. Troy had brought her a sweatshirt and yoga pants from her cottage, making the long round trip as soon as he realized Dante had torn her other clothes to shreds. But the garments couldn’t warm her from the inside.

  “Where do you think he is?” she asked in a quiet, nervous voice as he pulled west onto Berry Street, heading in the opposite direction of her cottage.

  “I don’t know,” he said through clenched teeth. “But it won’t be safe at your place. I’m taking you to my cabin.”

  “Will it ever be safe at my place?”

  Again, he told her, “I don’t know.”

  She hadn’t said it back. I love you. He’d said those words to her so easily when she was seated in the back of the ambulance. It had poured out of his heart straight to her ears. But she hadn’t said it back in that moment and still hadn’t throughout all of the hospital tests that had seemed to take hours.

  Was that why Troy was clammed up, tense and silent? Or was his only concern the fact that Dante, a man who had almost singlehandedly exposed his entire pack to ruin them and this town, had gotten away in those woods?

  Troy angled the pickup truck towards a modest, two-story cabin, coming to a bumpy stop, and turned off the headlights, pulled the keys from the ignition.

  As Reece slowly popped her seatbelt free, he rounded the hood of the truck and opened her door, then helped her out.

  She’d never set foot in his cabin, which seemed odd considering the emotions that had been building in her heart for him. You couldn’t fully know a person until you saw their home, and as soon as Reece stepped inside the handsome log structure, it all made sense.

  The cabin felt like Troy. It smelled like him, freshly cut wood and smoky embers in the fireplace, all gently masking the lingering scent of male musk.

  He flipped on a few lights and the décor struck her. It looked exactly as she would’ve expected, all cracked leather and dark mahogany, creaky floors and vacuumed throw rugs, animal heads mounted on the walls, artistic paintings of wolfs and full moons in-between.

  “He wants to overthrow you,” she told him in a hollow voice as he placed freshly cut wood in the fireplace and began balling sheets of newspaper to stuff in.

  As he lit the fire, he said, “I know.”

  There was something about his response, the fearlessness in it, the way he seemed to accept the impending danger, the weight he carried because of it, that caused her heart to swell for him. This was a strong man, perhaps the strongest she’d ever encountered, and she knew she loved him. She’d known it for a long time now.

  And this setting, being here with him, alone in his cabin with the fire burning bright, was starting to feel like the perfect place to…

  Suddenly, an overwhelming need flared warm and willing in her chest.

  Troy stepped back from the fire, watching it burn brighter and brighter, flames licking and lapping up around the charring pieces
of wood, kindling and newspaper crackling and crumbling. But Reece’s eyes were locked on him, not the fire he had built.

  She neared him and placed her hand on his cheek, pulling his eyes to her.

  He turned, facing her and looking down into her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she breathed.

  “Rick’s the one who saved you,” he reminded her.

  “We both know that’s not true,” she assured him. “But that’s not what I’m thanking you for.”

  “What are you thanking me for?” he asked as he took careful hold of her slender waist as if expecting her to vanish as soon as he touched her.

  But this was real. She would show him how real it was for her. They had all night.

  “For choosing me,” she whispered and watched the corner of his mouth tug into a subtle grin.

  He gripped her waist a little tighter and asked, “Have you chosen me?”

  “Yes,” she breathed. “I’m ready to be with you. Completely. Forever. I want to.”

  “You do?”

  He hadn’t so much questioned her with doubt as asked her in a tone that revealed his immense vulnerability.

  “I’ve wanted it for awhile now,” she confessed. “I was just scared.”

  “Are you still scared?”

  She considered her answer for a long moment before she felt brave enough to admit, “A little.”

  He caressed his large, warm hands around to the small of her back, pulling her in until their hips aligned, then his hands traveled up the slender length of her spine and down again, and a warm rush of relaxation came over her.

  “I’m scared, too,” he said, and she laughed.

  “What do you have to be scared of?”

  “This will change my life forever as well, in ways I couldn’t even begin to explain to you.”

  “You’ll have to,” she told him. “No more secrets.”

  “No more secrets,” he agreed as he leaned in and brought his lips to hers.