Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  But he was right.

  She hated that he was right, but she also couldn’t deny it.

  She loved him.

  Somehow, someway, somewhere during their short stint of days together—days that had felt like an eternity, having gotten so close to one another—she’d fallen for him. She had been filled with an angelic wash of loving warmth towards him, but now that love seemed at war with the darkness that he’d placed inside of her.

  What had she become?

  And how could she resist the swell of power that had filled her as soon as the piercing daggers of torturous pain had lifted from her bones and muscles upon that gruesome shift?

  She wanted to feel it again, the superpower wash of becoming a wolf. It was addictive and by comparison, her human body seemed flimsy, numb, and subdued.

  But she’d never admit that to Shane.

  She was goddamned furious at him.

  The pack was gathering, or so Shane had informed her. All she saw was dozens upon dozens of residents filter into the salvage yard, faces she recognized. They were all werewolves? There were so many of them. And when they saw her they began to point and converse worriedly in each other’s ears.

  Then Troy arrived, staring through the salvage yard with Reece, who Whitney hadn’t seen much of around the Fist recently. Coming up behind the newlywed couple was Conor Quinn and the youngest brother, Dean. As the men neared Shane, he greeted them with firm nods and ignored the questioning looks they shot Whitney’s way.

  “She’s one of us now,” was all Shane offered, but it didn’t seem to quiet the rising questions in their minds.

  Lastly, Whitney saw Lucy Cooper entering the yard with Kaleb Quinn.

  Their eyes locked—Whitney and Lucy staring at one another—and for a flickering moment, Whitney felt like being turned might have been worth it.

  Lucy actually smiled at her. She broke free from Kaleb and neared Whitney at once.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Lucy with light in her eyes.

  Whitney was tempted to use a sarcastic, eye-rolling retort to blame Shane, but something came over her and she stated proudly, “I’m a werewolf now.”

  Lucy looked both thrown and ecstatic, and she asked simply, “Shane?”

  “It all happened so fast,” said Whitney.

  She would’ve said more, but Lucy threw her arms around her and squeezed her in a warm hug. “I’ve missed you so much!” Lucy exclaimed as the elderly woman that Whitney recognized as Grandmother Sasha neared all of the Quinn men. Another older woman was with her. The older woman had long, white hair and wore a lavender dress that looked bohemian and earthy, sandals on her feet. It was Shane’s mother, Nikita Quinn. “I can’t tell you how happy I am for you,” she said, urging Whitney back so that she could look her over.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I always thought you and Shane were meant for each other,” Lucy smiled.

  “Oh, but…” Whitney stopped herself. Lucy was happy for her because she thought that Whitney had mated with Shane, that they’d bonded and would be together forever. She glanced at Shane. He hadn’t done that. They weren’t bonded. And Whitney suddenly felt cheap and second rate. “That’s not actually what hap—”

  “Listen up!” Troy announced, cutting Whitney off from correcting her friend’s impression.

  As Troy stepped out, addressing the entire pack, the Quinns fell in a cluster behind him, Kaleb and Lucy beside Grandmother Sasha and Nikita. Behind them, Conor and Dean with Reece, and as they formed, Shane pulled Whitney all the way to the back of the Royal cluster.

  “Dante Alighieri has been seen in the Fist. Conor found him in Devil’s Advocate on Main Street—”

  “And he let him get away?” barked a greasy-haired, middle-aged man with dirt under his fingernails and motor oil smeared down the front of his tattered jeans.

  “That’s Curt Wilson,” Shane informed her, speaking low into her ear. “He owns this place. He’s always giving Troy a hard time.”

  “Wilson!” Troy returned, silencing the critical man who had stepped out in front of the semi-circle of werewolves to shout. “If you’d been listening at these meetings and not just waiting for your turn to complain, you’d know that one of us wouldn’t be capable of taking Dante down ourselves. Conor did the right thing.”

  Curt looked put off. He huffed out an irritated snort and stepped back in line with the front row.

  “We can assume the law is after Dante as well. That doesn’t help us. Reece has done—”

  “What about the Astral one, there?” Curt interrupted again and Whitney realized he was pointing at Lucy.

  The Astral one?

  “Can’t she kill him with her powers?” he asked.

  Powers?

  Whitney stared at the back of Lucy’s head and she must have felt eyes on her, because Lucy turned around and mouthed the quiet words, “I’ll explain later.”

  She might not have to, thought Whitney. Whitney had seen her out on those streets in the dead of night. She’d seen Lucy face-off with a polished-looking man, who she now realized could only be Dante Alighieri. Lucy had lit up like a ball of light, so to hear that she had powers only confirmed what Whitney had witnessed with her own two green eyes.

  Another disgruntled werewolf stepped forward, another rugged looking man, in Curt’s defense, “Yeah! Why don’t we send the Astral Goddess out after him?”

  Curt wasn’t done complaining. “If she’d have focused on Dante that night, instead of—”

  “Instead of what?” Lucy shot back, stepping out through the Quinns—Conor and Dean had moved forward—to respond. As she did, her skin and blonde, flowing hair began to glow with an otherworldly light. “Instead of saving Kaleb’s life? Is that what you would’ve liked?”

  The man shrank and didn’t have the gumption to meet her glaring gaze. He stepped back sheepishly and piped down.

  “I tried fighting Dante that night,” she reminded them. Whitney had never seen Lucy so poised, so strong. The sweet, mild-mannered and often folksy waitress who she’d come to know closer than anyone else in the Fist over the course of her adult life looked suddenly regal and fearless, like a queen confronting her queendom. “I didn’t succeed so it wasn’t a hard choice to tend to Kaleb’s dire circumstance when he was shot.”

  Whitney slid her eyes to steal a peek at Reece. She also looked regal and fearless, and not at all the meek librarian Whitney had always known her to be. Whitney knew both Lucy and Reece had become werewolves. They were the one true mates of two Quinns after all. And she now understood that it had transformed them, not only into wolves like their mates, but into something much stronger.

  Whitney could have that, too, couldn’t she? Shane had mentioned the option, hadn’t he?

  Her heart sank a touch remembering. Shane had only mentioned the one true mate scenario as a tactical measure to keep both of them safe from Dante’s long, dark reach. He hadn’t proposed it. Not seriously. It had been a theoretical option, one he—when push came to shove—hadn’t chosen.

  Instead, he’d turned her werewolf without her permission. He’d given her the darkness without so much as a glimmer of the light. All the monstrous qualities without any of the power or protection. She felt hurt and furious all over again. Why hadn’t he convinced her to be his? Why hadn’t he gotten down on one knee and begged her to become his one true mate, explaining fully everything that would come along with it? Why didn’t he want her?

  She felt a sad sigh escape her throat and her gaze lowered lower than her mood as the answer came to her. Shane hadn’t made her his one true mate, because it wasn’t what he wanted with her. And he’d had the audacity to try and patch her resentment with three hollow words that she now knew he couldn’t have possibly meant—I love you.

  He didn’t, did he? Shane didn’t truly love her or else he would’ve fought for her to become his. And as for Whitney’s feelings towards him? How could she love a man who could do this to her? She didn’t lo
ve him. If she thought she might, and she certainly had—mistakenly—she’d only been confused by lust and infatuation and the small, shimmering hope that she’d perhaps found someone who was just as wild and untamable as she was.

  Whitney realized she’d lost the thread of the discussion and hadn’t been paying attention until Curt Wilson locked his dark gaze on her, pointed violently at her from the front line of werewolves, and yelled, “That’s the shooter! That’s the girl who tried to kill Kaleb!”

  “Hey!” Shane barked, leaving Whitney to meet Curt eye-to-eye.

  Before he could defend Whitney and explain everything, another werewolf shouted across the entire pack, “She’s the sheriff’s daughter!”

  Whitney saw Shane give Troy an extremely worried look.

  Shane maintained, “She’s one of us now! A werewolf! You can trust her!”

  “Quiet!” Troy barked when the gathering broke out in concerned, murmuring speculation. “Whitney Abernathy should be of no concern to any of you!”

  “Why should we trust her?” Curt Wilson demanded on behalf of the entire pack.

  Lucy stepped up, glowing with a brilliant white light that intimidated the crowd enough to subdue them, and said, “Our one set of eyes and ears on the sheriff has been locked in a jail cell. Jack Quagmire can’t report back to us everything that Rick Abernathy is thinking, plotting, and about to do.” She had their attention. “There’s only one other person in all of Devil’s Fist who can take on that position and perform it even more effectively than Jack.”

  It was a strong point and Whitney watched as the werewolves’ expressions opened up with relieved understanding.

  But Whitney was far from relieved.

  Was that really the plan? The point of her being here?

  Was that what she would be expected to do? Spy on her father? Report back?

  Oh, God! She suddenly realized that this could be the reason that Shane had taken an interest in her in the first place. Was it? Had Shane only ever meant to use her for the information she might be able to relay back to his pack? Was that why he hadn’t made her his one true mate?

  “I’ve known Whitney for a very long time now,” Lucy informed them. “I trusted her with my secret when she was mortal, and I trust her even more now!”

  It was another strong, effective point, but Whitney knew it wasn’t entirely true. Not by a long shot. Whitney hadn’t known about Lucy’s secret, not for very long anyway. Seeing her fire up into a ball of light out on Main Street had only been a few days before Shane arrived at her cabin. Sure, Whitney hadn’t told her daddy about Lucy or any of them, or about what she’d seen out on Main Street, but it wasn’t out of loyalty to Lucy. It had been because PO Rachel Clancy had pleaded with her and Courtney. Rachel had only asked for a few days to sort through the mystery of it all, and Whitney, sympathizing with Rachel’s determination to make detective one day soon, had agreed to oblige.

  Lucy’s point, however, was accepted and she was able to step back beside Kaleb so that Troy could take the floor once again.

  “I know you’ve all been frustrated,” he began, “as frustrated as I have been that my gift of foresight has been murky at best. I’ve been honing it in. It’s expanding. And I wish that Jack Quagmire and Angel Mercer were here, because if they were, I would tell them that I’ve seen in my meditations a way for them to be together.”

  Whitney wasn’t entirely sure of what he meant, but it was no secret around the Fist, even among the mortal residents, that Jack had been pining for Angel since what felt like the dawn of time. She’d finally returned the sentiment and they’d been at each other’s sides for weeks now, maybe even months.

  The pack was thrilled by the news. They broke out in applause and hugged one another.

  Troy went on, “Many of you have questions and have come to me privately with your own inquires that I wasn’t able to offer advice and insight on. I can now.”

  “Will your gift help us put an end to Dante?” Curt challenged.

  Troy looked him dead in the eye and stated with the utmost conviction, “Yes.”

  A hush fell over the pack. Everyone’s eyes widened. It seemed no one wanted to so much as breathe; they were so poised to hear from Troy what the plan would be.

  “Dante Alighieri is out on the old Halsey land,” he informed them all. “He seems to favor that abandoned, undeveloped acreage.”

  Whitney recalled with clarity that it had been the old Halsey land where Reece Gladstone had been found locked in a cage inside of a hidden cave. The sheriff and all of his policemen hadn’t gone back to the land since.

  “I need as many of you as I can,” Troy went on, “to scour the acreage with me and my brothers.”

  “But what’s the plan, Troy?” Curt demanded. “If we find Dante, how will we take him down?”

  ***

  “Yooo-hooo!” PO Rachel Clancy sang out as she neared the cabin window beside the front entrance door just as, on the outskirts of town at Damned Repair, Shane was wrapping his arm protectively around Whitney. Shane was precisely who Rachel was looking for. She didn’t know he’d stolen away to the automotive repair shop a mere five miles south. All she knew was that his pickup truck wasn’t parked outside of his cabin. “Anyone home?”

  She knew no one was, but there was something called due diligence and she’d never been one to shirk her responsibilities.

  The hot, Wyoming sun beat down like the devil himself. Wearing long sleeves and starched slacks, along with a heavy utility belt replete with a gun, nightstick, flashlight, and other tools wasn’t helping matters. She’d been sweating like a pig ever since she’d climbed out of her police cruiser. The sun made it damn near impossible to see into the windows, the glare was so bad. But Rachel soon got the sense that every window was curtained.

  It wasn’t quite a wild goose chase, but her gut was telling her this might soon turn into one.

  Larry Hardcastle hadn’t struck her as someone who was playing with a full deck, that was for damn sure. She’d taken an oath to keep the whole of Devil’s Fist, and all of its many residents, safe and sound, and that certainly included the likes of Larry Hardcastle, but she didn’t exactly trust the guy. His judgment had to be way off. He’d seemed paranoid, fixated, and worse of all, drunk when he’d stormed into the precinct. The way he’d insisted that Shane Quinn was responsible for his stepdaughter, Delilah Dane’s, disappearance had been crazed, and that was putting it mildly. But his determination that Shane had full-on killed the girl was categorically outlandish. No body, no murder. It wasn’t rocket science, and yet here she was, stalking around the outer perimeter of Quinn’s cabin, doing as she was told, tracking Shane down so that she could question him on behalf of the drunken, rambling resident that had insisted.

  Her time would be better spent hunting Dante Alighieri down, she thought, even though the prospect sent a fresh slice of chills down her otherwise sweaty spine.

  If she wanted to make detective, she knew she would have to build an ironclad case against Alighieri, link him to all of the strange wolf attacks that had been plaguing the town, and deliver the man, in person and with a bow wrapped around him, to the sheriff. It would be another challenge to present her findings to Rick in such a way—such a public way—that he wouldn’t steal credit for her hard work. That was the plan, the objective that would earn her a detective’s badge. It would be the scariest endeavor she’d ever made in her police uniform, but that was what Rachel was prepared to do.

  Why had she failed so magnificently in Devil’s Advocate when she’d had the chance to haul the criminal in?

  She hated how Rick had looked at her, having learned of her failure. It had twisted her stomach in sour knots of shame. She wasn’t about to fail twice, but thinking back, a dark sense of doom came over her.

  Dante had done something to her, some kind of hypnosis or something. He’d put a spell on her that had completely derailed her determination, and worse, she cringed even now to recall, standing before him in
the little souvenir shop, she’d actually felt drawn to him. Attracted.

  It was creepy.

  She came to the rear side of the cabin. Shane wasn’t much for keeping the lawn mowed, that was for damn sure. Rachel had to high-step it through the overwrought weeds to stay close to the cabin siding so that she could peer into each and every window, curtained though they were. She hoped to find movement within, but there was none.

  This was getting her nowhere. Shane wasn’t inside, she determined. Larry Hardcastle was a damn fool. He only suspected that Shane could have had something to do with Delilah’s disappearance, but the fact of the matter was, though Rachel hadn’t known the girl personally, she had heard the rumors. Delilah wasn’t especially reliable. She’d gone days if not weeks skipping out on her job at Yellowstone. She was a drifter of sorts, though not as egregious about it as her stepdad. A wild goose chase, indeed.

  She sighed when she reached the far side of the cabin and turned to face the expansive backyard that at this point looked more like a burly, budding forest. There was nothing but wilderness to her right, though she knew that Berry Road was somewhere out there, winding its way through the northern-most edge of the Fist. To her left, in the distance through the thin saplings of trees, she saw another cabin that she understood was either Dean’s or Troy’s or maybe even Conor’s. All the Quinns lived out here, five cabins flanking the dirt road.

  Conor Quinn, she thought, shaking her head. What a distraction. She’d almost gotten caught up in emotion where in came to Conor, but she’d been avoiding him like a champ ever since, both around town and mentally, the latter of which had been far more challenging.

  But Conor was back on the brain. It didn’t please her. But she hadn’t been able to shake the thought of him since he’d swept into the souvenir shop and—Christ, what had he done? Protected her? Or sabotaged her?—saved her from Dante Alighieri’s dark spell.

  She hated to admit to herself that she’d liked the feel of those strong arms of his wrapped protectively around her. It wasn’t great, of course, that she’d essentially collapsed into a fit of tears in his arms, but that’s what had happened and he hadn’t shied away from her roiling emotions.