Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  She pressed her mouth into a hard line and seemed to force herself to hear him out.

  “Alighieri’s back in the Fist,” he informed her.

  Immediately, that pretty mouth of hers gaped open with a disturbing mix of terror and astonishment. She looked ill and if her eyes had widened any further, Rick was pretty damn sure they would’ve popped right out of their sockets.

  “He managed to slip out of PO Clancy’s grasp,” he went on, feeling his mouth tighten with animosity against Rachel.

  Deeply concerned, Angel asked, “Is she okay?”

  “Who? Clancy?”

  “Was she hurt?”

  Rick took a moment to study the particular brand of fear that had washed over Angel. “Why would she be hurt?”

  “Dante has his… ways,” she said darkly.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I didn’t willingly help him, Sheriff,” she insisted. “I have no hope that anyone will ever believe me on that, but I was forced to help him.”

  “How’d he force you?” he asked curious. “He threaten to harm a loved one?”

  “No, you don’t get it,” she said, turning away and holding herself even tighter.

  He took her by the shoulders and helped her back around. She refused to meet his gaze, but he didn’t give up. “I’m here to listen,” he promised. “How did he force you?”

  She angled those big eyes up at him, but the color was no longer there. “He’s an expert in mind control, Sheriff. He turned me into a puppet.”

  Rick made a concerted effort to keep his expression neutral, but it wasn’t easy. This was some far-fetched hysteria if he’d ever heard it, and he was glad for Angel’s sake that he was giving her this opportunity. Christ, if she ever said anything like that to a prosecuting attorney, she’d be burned at the stake.

  “But you knew what you were doing?”

  “I did. It wasn’t like the woods and the amnesia that came over me then.”

  “Dante was the reason you wound up out in those woods behind your house?” he questioned. When she nodded affirmatively, he asked, “Well, hell, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Because I don’t really remember. But that was the inciting incident. After that, Dante was able to get me to do whatever he wanted—”

  “Okay, okay,” he allowed. They were getting off track. “You need to tell me where he is.” As soon as she opened her mouth, the glint in her eyes looking helpless—he feared she was about to make the colossal mistake of insisting she didn’t know—he cut her off at the pass and reminded her, “If you give me information that leads to my boys finding him, then you’re free. Careful, now, Angel. I want you to think good and long and hard about this. Where can I find Dante Alighieri?”

  For the second time, Angel pressed her lips together and pressed them hard. She was really thinking now, wracking her little lady brain. Good girl, he thought as he kept his eyes on her. Her brow knit together, but she didn’t say a word.

  “Take your time,” he encouraged even though he felt the cold, clamping hand of father time tightening around his throat. Time was most certainly running out. He could feel it. But pressuring her would do him no good. “He must have said something, indicating some places where—”

  “Sheriff!”

  Rick turned to find Officer Clancy waving to him from the other side of the bullpen. She was at the front desk counter, the other side of which contained one irate looking washed-up man.

  “A little help, please?” Rachel called out.

  Rick turned to Angel and said, “I’ll be right back. You keep thinking on it, sweetheart. Let’s get you out of here.”

  He hoped he’d convinced her, drilled into her head how critical this was for both of them. He turned and started through the bullpen, his gaze locking on the wiry, middle-aged man on the civilian side of the front desk counter.

  Washed-up, indeed. Even from the middle of the bullpen, Rick caught a whiff of the man’s ripe scent. He smelled like rotting onions and greasy hair, but it was nothing compared to his rank breath that wafted across the counter as soon as Rick took up where Rachel had been standing.

  “This is Larry Hardcastle,” she introduced.

  “Delilah Dane’s stepdaddy,” he informed Rick in what sounded like an exasperated tone.

  The name was familiar—Delilah Dane—and it took Rick a second to remember that his Whitney had been concerned about the girl.

  “She’s up an’ disappeared,” Larry spat, “an’ I know just who’s done it!”

  “Done what?” Rick asked him as he glanced at Rachel.

  She looked skeptical about whatever Larry Hardcastle had insisted to her upon his dramatic entrance into the precinct. But, relaying what Larry had told her, she said, “Killed his step-daughter.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Rick to Larry. “Hold your horses. Now,” he cut his eyes at Rachel, “You get a Missing Persons’ form?”

  “Right,” she said, because she hadn’t. Rachel shuffled off to do just that.

  “You say Delilah disappeared?” he questioned Larry.

  “Yessir! And I know who done it—”

  “First things first,” he told him as Rachel returned with the form. He took it from her since all she was good at was proving her own incompetence. Then he plucked a pen off the desk and pressed its tip to the form. “When did you first realize Delilah was missing?”

  Larry looked perturbed as if his lifestyle had never required him to know the year much less the date. He screwed his face up some then guessed, “Three, four, five days ago.”

  Christ.

  Rick recalled the first time his Whitney had brought Delilah up with him, so he noted that exact date on the form.

  “Her age?” he asked.

  Larry looked just as thrown.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Rick complained. “You don’t know how old your stepdaughter is?”

  “I know she’s a whore,” he spat.

  That got Rick’s attention right quick, but there wasn’t a line on the form to note the information. “I understand she works at Yellowstone?”

  “Who the hell cares where she works. Look, she’s up an’ gone missing. I’ve known it for days now, but with her being an adult and me knowing about them days that have to pass before you can even report a person missing—” He cut himself off, huffing out of breath or disturbed, Rick couldn’t decide. “Then that Quinn boy been messing with me and the next thing I know I got Delilah’s dress all bloody as hell in the back of my Buick!”

  “Whoa!” Rick barked out again, trying to slow the guy down. He had to ask, even though he knew it might incite more drama, “You been drinking, Sir?”

  “Have I— Have I been—?” The guy was so pissed at the accusation, he couldn’t get the words out. “Well, hell! Me tying one on don’t mean my girl wasn’t murdered!”

  He had some semblance of a point there, but Rick wouldn’t be able to take any degree of a statement if the guy was tanked.

  “You listen here, Sheriff, an’ you listen good,” Larry insisted as he angled a dirty finger up in Rick’s frowning face. “Delilah’s been whoring with Shane Quinn and Shane up an’ killed her for it.”

  Hearing Shane Quinn’s name in all of this cut Rick straight through the heart. He didn’t like the guy. He didn’t like any of the Quinns. But Shane in particular had been sniffing around his Whitney. If Shane was after whores and had it in him to kill—Rick wouldn’t put it past the guy, Christ, he acted like he was ready for the apocalypse and clearly had a screw or two loose if not missing—then Rick would kill him himself to keep his Whitney safe.

  But he had to ask, “What makes you think Delilah is dead?”

  “The dress!” he insisted as though he’d already gone over this a million times. “I found Delilah’s dress soaked in blood in the back of my Buick.”

  “That don’t mean she’s been killed.”

  “Well, it ain’t good!” he roared back.

 
; “Where’s the dress?” Rick asked.

  “I gave it to Shane!” Larry said like it made all the sense in the world. “You see, he tried to plant it on me, you know, make it look like I’d done something to Delilah and as soon as I seen it in my car I said, oh hell no! I drove it right on over to Shane’s and threw it at him!”

  “You sure it was Shane?”

  “That I’d thrown the dress at? Of course!”

  “No, I’m asking if you’re sure that Shane was the cause of Delilah’s disappearance. You have reason to believe that he harmed Delilah in some manner that bloodied her dress?”

  “I just said,” Larry wheezed, out of breath. “They’d been whoring.”

  Rick and Rachel exchanged a quizzical look.

  Rachel offered, “I can put an APB out on Delilah Dane, go pay Shane a visit?”

  Rick gave her a firm nod and she started off towards her desk to get started.

  “Why’d ya give the dress back to Shane? Why didn’t you bring it in to the station?” he asked Larry.

  “Why’d I move from beautiful Alaska to this Godforsaken hellhole?” he countered.

  Why, indeed?

  ***

  Whitney wasn’t safe.

  Shane could feel it in his bones.

  She’d been feeling watched. Someone had stalked around her cabin, and though they hadn’t made a move against her, Shane suspected that they’d made more than one against him. Whatever Delilah was wrapped up in, it linked back to Dante. Shane was certain of it now. If it had been Dante spying on her, if the real devil of Devil’s Fist had been the one who’d sniffed around her cabin that night, then Whitney was in grave danger.

  She was important to Shane. More important than he could’ve ever imagined. He didn’t just want her. He didn’t just feel drawn to her. He was starting to feel like he needed her, like he’d only recently started to make sense, to feel complete, now that she’d entered his life.

  He watched her as she sat on the couch and pulled her sneakers on. She’d dressed in her short-shorts and a loose-fitting tee shirt, her wild red hair damp and wetting her shoulders. Shane had pulled his clothes on, as well. He was due at Damned Repair. But he wasn’t going to leave without Whitney…

  …and there was only one way he would be able to bring her.

  Conor had been right to be concerned. What had happened to Kaleb hadn’t entirely been the work of Dante’s mind control. When the pack had turned against Kaleb for having revealed to Lucy Cooper the secret of their existence, yes, that had been Dante at work, but the principle would’ve been the same even if the rogue werewolf hadn’t taken control over the entire pack. Kaleb had violated a cardinal rule—never tell a mortal of their existence in the Fist.

  Shane was not about to make the same mistake.

  As Whitney rose to her feet, he neared her and took her by the wrist.

  She smiled at him, perhaps anticipating another series of hot kisses, but her expression turned instantly confused when he tightened his grip and brought her inner wrist to his elongating fangs.

  She tried to jerk free as he breathed, “Forgive me.”

  Before she had a prayer of understanding what was happening, he sank his werewolf fangs into her inner wrist, biting hard until her blood flowed. She winced and whimpered and tried to twist free, but he had her locked in his grasp too tightly.

  He tore out of chunk of his own flesh—sinking his fangs into the inner wrist of his free hand—and then slapped their wounds together.

  She screamed at the sting and grimaced. She punched at him with her free hand, but it was no use. He had to turn her, whether she liked it or not, whether she agreed or not, whether or not she would hate him for the rest of her immortal life.

  “What are you doing?!” she finally managed to voice, a raw scream clawing its way up her throat.

  “It’s the only way,” he told her as he held their flowing blood together.

  Suddenly, her eyes widened with horrified understanding and she really began to fight.

  “It’s the only way, Whitney!”

  “I didn’t ask for this!”

  “It’s for your own good!”

  “Let me go!” she screamed, punching at him, but he hooked her around and held her hard in a constricting hug from behind. He’d let their bleeding wrists come apart, but the deed had been done. Their blood had mixed—mortal with werewolf—and she now had his darkness creeping its way through her hot veins.

  Whitney screamed, “It feels like my bones are breaking!”

  He felt anguish for her. The first transformation was brutal, he knew it. Right now, it felt like her bones were turning to glass and shattering, shards piercing through her muscles. Her skin felt like hot-ice, blades of fur slicing through pores and follicles.

  Shane rose to his feet, breathing heavily as he watched her writhe on the wooden floor. She winced and grimaced as the most otherworldly shade of auburn fur broke out across her body and she slowly and painfully shifted into the form of a wolf.

  When the transformation was complete, she was a lean, medium-sized auburn wolf, green eyes gleaming with all the brilliancy they had when she’d been human.

  Whitney glared up at him, her snout peeling back as she snarled hatefully.

  “I had to, Whitney,” he told her. “You had to become one of us. It’s the only way to keep you safe.”

  She growled and barked at him then growled deeper, stalking towards him, readying to lunge at him and attack.

  “My pack would pose too great a threat,” he insisted as he backed away. “They’d kill us both.”

  She leapt at him and in a flash, he shifted into his own wolf form just as she attempted to sink her fangs into his leg. He was upon her now, leaping on top of her, clamping his fangs into the scruff of her wolf neck to subdue her. He overpowered her, wrestled her onto her side, clamping hard until she whined in submission.

  She growled, lashing out at him, but he didn’t let up, not until her entire wolf body relaxed, having given up.

  When she did, he padded back away from her and sat on his haunches. He was much larger than her. She would never have a prayer at fighting him or hurting him.

  She sat up, no longer growling or whining. The true feeling of power was now taking hold, flowing through her wolf veins. The pain had receded and there was nothing left except for the exquisite feeling of otherworldly power and insatiable hunger.

  He shifted back into his human form and ordered her, “Shift. Become human.”

  She did, but as soon as she turned she collapsed from standing to her knees on the wooden floor. Her palms slapped down and she hung her head then sat fully on the floor.

  “What did you do?” she trembled as she slowly lifted her head to stare at him through her eyebrows, her wild mane of red hair falling in her face.

  “I did what I had to.”

  “You didn’t warn me. You didn’t ask.”

  “I’m flawed, remember?”

  “You bastard,” she spat.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her then the words that followed seemed to completely bypass his brain, “I love you.”

  She was on her feet in an instant. She slammed both fists against his chest—hard—careening him backwards. She glared at him, then took another running pound at his hard chest.

  “This isn’t love!” she yelled, furious. “It’s a sorry excuse for an apology!”

  “It is love!” he insisted as she rammed into him again.

  He took it. If she wanted to beat him until she ran out of strength, he’d let her. She could do anything she wanted. She was safe. Safe enough.

  He would’ve really liked to have made her his one true mate, but he’d gone outside of the code as much as he was comfortable. Only becoming his one true mate would save her from Dante’s dark reach. But this would have to do. For now.

  “I don’t want your twisted love!” she yelled, locking eyes with him.

  “Yes, you do,” he informed her as he watched her chest ris
e and fall as she fought to catch her furious breath. He dared to ask her, “Do you love me?”

  “What!”

  “Do you?” he pressed.

  The rise and fall of her chest calmed and as she shook her hair off of her face the glare of her hardened eyes relaxed and an emotion that looked an awful lot like love washed over her.

  “You should’ve asked. You should’ve warned me.”

  “Do you want to be mine forever?” he challenged.

  “You have terrible timing.”

  “Do you?”

  “Shane,” she breathed. “What have you done?”

  His worst? An evil thing? A selfish act? He had a million reasons, but none of them would quell the hatred he saw rising up in her all over again.

  “It’s time to meet the pack,” he said, taking her by the arm.

  “Get your hands off of me!” she exclaimed, jerking free.

  Though she did, she walked with him out of the cabin.

  When he opened the passenger’s side door of his truck for her, she said, “You’re a sick son of a bitch.”

  “But you love me,” he informed her before he tossed her inside. As he slammed the door, he muttered, “And I love you. This is only the beginning.”

  Chapter Twelve

  WHITNEY

  Shane leaned in and whispered into her ear, “You have a solid few weeks before the full moon.”

  “Gee, what a relief,” Whitney said dryly from where she stood in the salvage yard of Damned Repair with her arms folded and her expression sour.

  Shane had wrapped a protective arm around her that she was trying not to enjoy.

  She was seething with anger. Furious. Actually, furious didn’t even begin to describe the emotions raging through her veins. To say that Whitney was murderously enraged would have been the understatement of the century. She felt violated. It was almost impossible to wrap her mind around how devastating it felt to have had her mortality—and innocence—taken away from her the way Shane had stolen from her the person she knew herself to be.

  She could feel him inside of her—his blood, the darkness of his damned soul. She would’ve never guessed looking at him that the werewolf deep inside was a creature of hell, but that’s what she felt within herself now. The part of Shane that now coursed through her veins was something from an underworld she hoped she never had to journey to.