Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Ronnie nodded as he cowered next to Larry.

  “She was your daughter,” Whitney said, glaring at the drunken excuse of a man who’d dared to submit to Dante, the stepfather who was actually stupid enough to think that if he did, he’d be safe.

  “She ruined my life,” he said in a hollow, soulless tone. “So, I ruined hers.”

  “By killing her?” she cried, feeling a raw surge of rage and sorrow for Delilah. “She tried so hard to turn her life around! She was struggling with her demons! She would’ve made it! She would’ve overcome them! But you killed her! You stole her wild, beautiful spirit! How dare you? How fucking dare you?!”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Larry said. His dark eyes went dead, his expression long.

  “It was you, then?” she asked Ronnie, glaring up at him through her tear-blurred vision.

  Ronnie looked down at her as well, but he was slowly shaking his head.

  “Liar!” she screamed.

  “I didn’t kill her, Whitney!” he insisted before cutting his accusatory eyes at Larry Hardcastle. He stated darkly, “It was so much worse than that.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked in a small, fearful voice. She could feel their darkness. Pouring out of their eyes. It chilled her to the bone, but she knew they were being truthful. It was because she sensed their honesty that panic tore through her flesh and bones. She was terrified to hear the truth, but had to. “Tell me what happened.”

  Ronnie’s mouth twisted into a harrowing frown and he sobbed out, “Dante put his dark seed in her.”

  “He got her pregnant?” she breathed.

  “Yes,” he gasped out on a quaking sob. “She didn’t want that. He turned her werewolf. She didn’t want to be one of his damned, like us, like so many others who he’s controlling.”

  Larry snorted an unsympathetic laugh and said, “That’s Delilah for you. It wasn’t hard for Dante to lure her with cash, get her used to turning tricks, she was doing that anyway—”

  “Don’t you speak of her like that,” Whitney hissed through clenched teeth.

  “You want to know what happened?” Larry challenged. “Delilah set her sights on Dante, thought he’d be the perfect John. You think she didn’t tell me all about it?”

  “You were one of Dante’s and you let her walk straight into that trap?” she accused.

  “No!” Larry barked, irritated with the interruptions. “Alls I knew at first was that she had a rich mark. That’s how she put it. A filthy, stinking rich chump. I said good. Told her to get as much as she could out of the guy before he got bored with her. Next time I seen Delilah, she looked crazed. She lured me out onto the old Halsey land. That devil son of a bitch turned me.”

  Ronnie regretted to inform Whitney, “Delilah lured me out in the same way. I was turned, too.”

  “She’s no angel,” Larry spat.

  “When was all of this? How long has Delilah been one of Dante’s damned?”

  “For months,” Larry told her.

  And Shane didn’t smell it on her? Whitney thought to herself, feeling a fresh swell of terror at Dante Alighieri’s power.

  Larry went on, “Dante chose Delilah to carry his dark seed.”

  “He got her pregnant,” Whitney stated. She’d suspected someone had.

  Ronnie cried, “She couldn’t live with it. Couldn’t live knowing that she would birth a monster who would become Dante Alighieri’s heir.”

  Whitney gasped, her mind barely grasping the dark truth.

  “She tried…” Ronnie couldn’t get the words out, they were too painful. He tried again, “She couldn’t live with it so she—”

  “She first started rebelling,” Larry told her. “But Dante put her under a hard spell.”

  Whitney placed the information into the timeline of pictures she’d collected from Shane’s cabin. The fight. Shane had told her that Delilah had come to him. Had she begged for help? She must not have told him the whole story, that she was under Dante’s control, that he’d turned her, that he’d gotten her pregnant. Shane had kicked her out—that terrible, violent photo. Then, when Dante caught up with her, he placed a hard spell on her—the photo of Delilah unconscious on Shane’s couch.

  “Dante had us take photos,” Ronnie told her, interrupting Larry. “Build evidence against Shane Quinn. Dante wants to take out all of the Quinns, but not kill them. He wants to torture them. Steal their freedom.”

  “Put them all in jail,” she supplied, understanding.

  “But Delilah broke free of Dante’s spell!” Ronnie said triumphantly.

  “Worst mistake that girl has ever made,” Larry commented. “The second her mind was her own, she flew into a crazed, desperate panic, and stabbed herself right in the belly.”

  Ronnie seethed at Larry, “She didn’t want that devil seed in her!”

  “No, she didn’t,” Larry agreed. “She tried to stab the life out of that fetus, and she had no idea the deep cut would take her own life as well.”

  Whitney gasped, tears stinging her eyes, and breathed, “She killed herself?”

  “Bitch should’ve just carried Dante’s baby, if you ask me,” Larry chuckled, shaking his head.

  Furious, Whitney spoke on Delilah’s behalf, “She was used to being controlled, wasn’t she? She was used to being mistreated, abused, by you!”

  Larry seemed proud of the accusation and sneered down as he stood over her, “Delilah was a dark temptress. Even as a little girl. She liked everything I gave her, came back for more in fact. She could’ve lived anywhere in the world, but she came to my town. Devil’s Fist suited her because that’s what she’s always been. A little devil herself.”

  Whitney was pained for Delilah. She hadn’t asked to be abused. Larry had trained her, probably started abusing her the second he got inside her mama’s house. Whitney didn’t blame Delilah. She felt sorry for her and also proud. In the end, her wild spirit had won. Delilah had been determined to live free or die. God bless her.

  “Girl really fucked it up for me,” Larry commented as he paced away. “She could’ve had a royal heir with Dante’s blood in her. I could’ve been sitting pretty nine months from now. But the spiteful bitch fucked it up for all of us.”

  A silky-smooth, deep voice boomed through the apartment, stating, “Now I need another woman to carry my child.”

  Whitney startled and the second she saw Dante Alighieri appear in the room she began scrambling, trying to get to her feet, off the floor, but it was impossible. The ropes were far too tight.

  Dante slowly stalked towards Whitney, a slimy grin on his face, and eyed her as if he was considering her worthiness.

  “Stay away from me,” she breathed, but he ignored her.

  Crouching down, he ran the backs of his fingers down her damp cheek, the grin on his face growing.

  “Beautiful,” he commented, “and strong.”

  “I’m a werewolf,” she growled. “I’m a Quinn.”

  “Ah, but you aren’t, my dear. You’re no Quinn. You’re no Royal. Shane hasn’t made you his one true mate. So, you’ll become mine.”

  “No!” she protested.

  “I’m not sure you’ll have much of a choice in the matter,” he said easily. “And when we mate, I’ll put my dark seed in you, you’ll carry my child, and we’ll populate the entire town with our were-babies.”

  She grimaced, feeling hot bile stinging the back of her throat. She thought she might throw up.

  “Or you could refuse,” he offered, but she knew a trap when she heard one. Dante snapped his fingers and in response, Larry pulled the Polaroid photos from his back pocket and held them up. Ronnie retrieved the fat plastic bag, which Whitney knew contained Delilah’s bloody dress. “Whitney, would you like me to send Ronnie back to the police station with these items?”

  She cursed herself for having taken the photos and dress from her cabin. She cursed herself for having the foolishness to assume Shane had really done it. How could she have thought such a thi
ng about the man she’d fallen in love with? If she hadn’t had those items on her when she’d fled her cabin and jumped in her Jeep, then Dante wouldn’t have all of them now.

  “The choice is yours,” Dante told her. “Either you can be my one true mate and carry my child, succeed where Delilah has failed. Or your lover, Shane Quinn, will spend the rest of his life in prison. So, my dear, what will it be?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  SHANE

  “You think she’s right here on the old Halsey land?” Sheriff Rick Abernathy demanded as he jogged beside Shane across the field.

  Shane could barely think straight. His stomach was sour with twisting, stabbing knots. His head was pounding with a hard rush of blood. But nothing hurt more than his heart. He could feel it tearing in two right down the center. It felt like part of it, the half that Whitney had seeped into, was dying. Withering and shriveling and breaking off. She had become the light of his life, a fiery red flame that had been burning in his heart, giving him strength and purpose, filling him with love, real love. The light to his darkness. And that flame was flickering out.

  He couldn’t stand it.

  He couldn’t lose her. He would fight to the death for her. But an edge of darkness was rising up in his soul, one that brought with it a harrowing premonition—Whitney, the love of his life, was in grave danger of being swallowed by the devil who was determined to take Devil’s Fist and everyone in it.

  “Shane!” Rick barked, taking rough hold of his arm and jerking him around. The sheriff was out of breath as he asked, “Could she be out here somewhere? I spoke with Angel Mercer. She told me a number of Dante Alighieri’s hiding places. Do you think he has my Whitney?”

  “I don’t know,” he said darkly.

  “Yes, you do!” When Shane fought to catch his breath, Rick cursed. “You said you love her?”

  Shane looked at him and felt his heart pierce with emotion.

  “That’s what you told me! You told me you love her!” he yelled. Shane could see the intensity in Rick’s eyes. Sheriff Rick Abernathy was a lot of things, most of which Shane hated, but all of his negative qualities were canceled out by the immense love he had for his daughter. There was no mistake, it was written all over the sheriff’s face. He loved that girl more than life itself. “Prove it! Prove to me you love her! Get your goddamn head out of your ass and talk to me!”

  “Yes, I love her!” he barked. “I didn’t exist before I found her! I was dead inside, all these years, dead. She brought me back to life! And I let this happen, Rick!”

  Shane felt a rash of tears sting his eyes so he turned away, shielding his raging emotions, but Rick didn’t let him, not for long.

  Rick pulled him back, jerking him around so that he couldn’t hide his face.

  “I know you do, son.”

  Shane clenched his jaw, molars grinding to hold back the tears that were threatening to spill down his cheeks.

  “I know you love her,” Rick assured him. “And I’ll be damned to say it, but I know my Whitney loves you, too.”

  “How could I let this happen?”

  “You think we’ve got time to stand around here while you blame yourself?” he yelled.

  The next thing Shane knew, the sheriff was back-handing him hard across the face. He grabbed hold of his tank top next and gave Shane a little shake to wake him up.

  “Snap out of it!” Rick ordered. “Pull yourself together! We’ve got to find her before she suffers Holly van Dyke’s fate! Or Leeanne Whitakers! Or, God forbid, Pamela Davenport’s! Now, should we hunt through this land? Is she on the Halsey acreage?”

  Shane shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the purple amethyst crystal that his Grandmother Sasha had given him and all the Quinn men. It was stone cold. But had the rules changed?

  “No,” he determined. “She’s not out here.”

  “Okay,” Rick huffed. “Good,” he commended. “Then where in Christ is she?”

  Shane pinched his eyes closed, focusing on the feeling in his heart. Rick must have been able to tell that Shane was concentrating on something important because he refrained from delivering another hard slap across the soldier’s face.

  When he opened his eyes, he told the sheriff, “I think she’s in town somewhere.”

  “Alright then!” exclaimed Rick as he took off at a fast clip through the field.

  Shane ran after him, heading straight for the Sheriff’s parked SUV.

  ***

  “Angel,” PO Rachel Clancy warned as she held a long swab stick in her hand, filling the open jail cell doorway. “This is part of the deal.”

  “I didn’t agree to this,” Angel maintained, refusing for the second time to have her cheek swabbed.

  Rachel needed the DNA and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  “Your release depends on you complying,” Rachel reminded her. “You done real good by giving the sheriff locations on the old Halsey land where he might find Dante Alighieri. You held up your end so Rick’s going to hold up his. But I need this swab, you hear?”

  “For what?” she challenged even though both of them knew why she needed it.

  “Angel,” she said again, this time in a leveling tone. She’d be straight with the diner owner. It was for Angel’s own damn good, anyway. “You haven’t remembered what happened to you out in those woods. Residents have been turning wolf. And they’re dropping like flies. You want to be one of them?”

  “You want my DNA so that Whitney Abernathy doesn’t up an’ shoot me?” she asked.

  Rachel didn’t like the sarcasm in her faulty logic. She asked her pointblank, “Are you a werewolf?”

  Angel held her head high and dared to challenge her, “What if I am, Officer? What are you going to do about it?”

  “Are you?”

  “What if I am?” she repeated strongly.

  “Well, Christ, Angel! Are you?” When Angel pressed her mouth into a hard line, refusing to let Rachel angle the swab against her inner cheek, she let out a frustrated clip of a sigh and pulled the hand-scrawled map of names she’d been compiling out of her slacks. Once she’d unfolded it, she turned it so Angel could see. “I got the Quinns on one side of this war, and Dante Alighieri on the other.”

  “My name is under Dante’s,” she observed.

  “You want to be on the other side of the page then you gotta work with me on this.”

  “I am on the other side of the page,” she insisted. “Jack and I are.”

  “Alright then,” Rachel allowed. “Let’s prove it.”

  “You don’t understand,” she insisted but held herself back from elaborating.

  “What don’t I understand?” she demanded. “Make me understand.”

  “I can’t,” she said in a small voice.

  “Then you aren’t getting out of here,” she threatened.

  “But I held up my end of the deal!” Angel cried.

  “You’re either a werewolf who’s working for Alighieri, or you’re an innocent resident of the Fist,” Rachel told her.

  Angel stepped in close and the light behind her blue eyes went dark as she informed her, “We’re all wolves.”

  Rachel gasped, her mouth parting open in astonishment. She furrowed her brow and stared down at her map. Then her tight, discerning gaze snapped back up to Angel.

  “All of you?” she breathed, horrified. “The Quinns?”

  “Take your damn cheek swab,” Angel told her. “And let me the hell out of here.”

  “Even…” Rachel could barely get the question out. It felt like her mind was bending, about to snap in two. “Even… even Conor?”

  But Angel didn’t answer. She opened her mouth wide and waited for Rachel to run the cotton end of the stick across her inner cheek.

  ***

  “Pull over!” Shane exclaimed as Rick drove like a bat out of hell down Main Street.

  The amethyst in Shane’s hand had warmed.

  Rick swerved towards the curb and nearly ju
mped it, the front tire of his SUV bumping against the lip of the sidewalk. He slammed on the brakes in front of Acorn Fashion and Accessories, parking at an awkward angle, the rear end of the vehicle jutting out into traffic.

  The men jumped out of the SUV, but Shane wasn’t sure which direction to take off in.

  “Well?” Rick demanded.

  Shane could feel the sheriff’s urgent eyes on him as he stared down at the crystal in the palm of his hand.

  “What is that thing?” asked the sheriff as he planted his fists on his hips and caught his breath. “Hidy-ho,” he said without enthusiasm as a few residents passed them by on the sidewalk. “Fine weather we’re having.” When the residents slipped into the little boutique, he demanded, “Well?”

  “It’s a tool,” Shane said.

  “Looks like a wishing stone, if you ask me.”

  “It heats up when Alighieri is near,” he explained.

  “It heated up?”

  “It warmed,” he corrected and Rick frowned. “I think we overshot it.”

  Shane scanned the length of Main Street and then it hit him.

  Dante had been in Devil’s Advocate. Delilah’s apartment was right above.

  Shane took off at a jog, darting across Main Street and heading west. Rick was at his heels and asked, “We goin’ to the stationhouse?”

  Shane ran past the police station and it was enough of an answer that they weren’t.

  “Devil’s Advocate?” he realized, as he followed Shane into the little souvenir shop.

  “This is where Delilah lives—”

  “Dante killed her, didn’t he?” Rick asked.

  As they cut through the store, surging towards the employees-only door, Shane told him, “Well, I sure as shit didn’t.”

  He whipped the door open and the men flew through the breakroom, coming to another door that was unmarked.

  This time, the unmarked door wasn’t locked.

  Sensing danger, Rick drew his weapon and held the handgun firmly between both of his large hands, keeping it aimed low, as Shane eased the door quietly open.