“I just thought you should know before you make any life changing decisions,” he added in a small voice.
All of a sudden, she whipped around, her brown eyes furious and glassy with tears.
“Why tell me that?” she demanded angrily. “Why say something like that to me?”
Taken aback—confusion slammed into him at her overreaction—he told her, “It’s information I thought you should know. You need all the facts before you make such a huge decision.”
“Because you don’t want to turn me, is that it?” she yelled, overcome with emotion. “You thought you wanted me when you thought I could be your ‘one true mate’, but now that you know that’s not our destiny, you don’t want me!”
“That’s not true!”
“Then why are you discouraging me?” she demanded hotly. “Why are you throwing it in my face that we shouldn’t be together? After the night we had, I can’t believe you!”
“I’m not throwing anything in your face!” he defended, raising his voice. “And I never said we shouldn’t or couldn’t be together! I want to be with you! I was heartbroken when Troy told me it wasn’t written in the stars for us! But I don’t care about that, Rachel—”
“Then why tell me at all! Why crush me like that?!”
“I never meant to crush you!” he returned, feeling suddenly terrible.
“You know what?” she said as she tore through the living room and threw the door open. “To hell with you!”
“Rachel!”
She slammed the door without looking back and Conor was left with his head spinning and his heart sinking.
What had he just done?
Chapter Twenty
RACHEL
Dusk settled over the Fist as Rachel walked, unseeingly and with no destination in mind, along Berry Road. She needed to get away from Conor. She needed air and space, but it felt like the cooling, crisp air she was trying to breathe deeply wasn’t reaching her lungs. There might have been space all around her, the vast wilderness of Yellowstone behind her, the mighty Tetons beyond it, nothing but a desolate road lined with evergreens and pines and the occasional herds of deer in front of her, but she felt like the walls were closing in, crushing her.
Had she been slowly and gradually losing her mind ever since Conor had slammed into her life? She hadn’t noticed. She’d been too caught up in the thrill of him. Too focused on the unusual mix of magnetic attraction and a feeling of stark connection to him, to notice that all the while she’d been slowly slipping away, losing more and more of herself, while pieces of Conor had wedged their way into her heart. But she had lost her mind, hadn’t she? It had been impossible to concentrate at work. She wasn’t able to handle the criminal events she’d encountered in the same way she used to, with a level-head, pragmatism, and a sharp drive to discover the truth. Her every thought and movement had been clouded in a dreamy, Conor-induced fog, and the worst part was that she’d enjoyed it.
What had she been thinking?
She felt another tight clench in her chest, a crushing heaviness on her heart, as his admission cut through her mind again. They weren’t meant to be together.
She was devastated. It felt like her brain was scrambled, like her emotions were running so high that she could barely think straight. She kept trying to be reasonable. She tried so hard to grasp the precise reason for why his words had been so hurtful. Hadn’t she conveyed the same terrible instinct to him when they’d been sitting in the diner? She’d felt it too, hadn’t she? So, why was she now coming apart at the seams?
It was his timing.
Or perhaps the weight in his eyes as he’d expressed the information.
Rachel realized as she walked along the grassy shoulder of Berry Street that curved and winded in dips and bends along the north side of the Fist that Conor had broken her heart because he was right and she knew he was right.
Another tight clench squeezed her heart, knocking the wind out of her, and the next thing she knew she was sobbing.
She had felt certain about the critical importance of becoming a werewolf. And Conor, seeing her determination, hadn’t been able to let her go through with it.
It hurt.
It hurt so badly and it was so much bigger than not allowing her to become like him.
It hurt because Conor had been looking for his one true mate, a woman who would have to become a werewolf in order to be with him. And when it fully came down to it, when his back was against a wall, he wasn’t going to let Rachel become something that wasn’t meant to be.
Rachel could have gone on lying to herself about that dark feeling that had swept through her in the diner. She could have ignored the nagging instinct that had been trying to tell her that she and Conor would never work out. She didn’t know they weren’t meant to be together. She had no way of confirming it one way or the other. There was no proof to find, no evidence, and that would have been enough for Rachel to choose him. To listen to her heart and ignore her gut and take a leap of faith and choose him.
But Conor had found out the truth from his brother, Troy. For Conor, that was proof and evidence he could trust. He believed it. And the fact that the information was enough for him to use to stop Rachel dead in her tracks, told her everything she needed to know about Conor Quinn.
He wasn’t going to be with a mortal who wasn’t destined to become his one true mate.
When he’d told her, when he’d then discouraged her from wanting to be turned, he revealed his true feelings towards her. Whatever he’d thought he felt for her had somehow vanished the second Troy told him Rachel wasn’t destined to be his.
And now, consumed with regret and grief, Rachel couldn’t deny that she believed him. She believed he was right. Everything was ruined.
Why couldn’t he have kept it to himself? Why couldn’t his love for her been bigger than some stupid werewolf rule? Why couldn’t he love her so much that he refused to believe his brother and never breathed a word of this to Rachel? Why couldn’t he have fought to be with her, even if doing so would have gone against the stars and the universe and fate itself?
All Rachel felt was a profound sense of loss. The tight feeling in her chest was still there, but her heart felt hollow, like a bottomless pit that she didn’t have a prayer of filling up.
And she only had herself to blame. That was the worst part, wasn’t it? She’d lost her head. She’d completely fallen for him. She’d never questioned for a second that the rug she was standing on could be ripped right out from underneath her.
Her vision had blurred over with tears so she wiped her eyes and looked around, trying to get her bearings. How far had she walked? She couldn’t even tell how long she’d been out here.
Ugh, she groaned. Conor hadn’t even come after her. He hadn’t chased her down and whipped her around and made her believe that he still loved her.
Well, that said everything, didn’t it?
She saw, up ahead, a little cottage and knew where she was. The lone cottage at the end of a long, dirt driveway used to be Reece Gladstone’s home. Night had closed in on the Fist, accentuating the lights that were on inside of the cottage, brightening it with a sweet glow. Some family had moved in after Reece left. Ordinarily, seeing a sight like that would fill Rachel with a cozy sense that all was right in the world. But not tonight. Tonight, it seemed like nothing could reach her.
Rachel wasn’t a jealous woman. She couldn’t say she’d ever felt envy in her life, not outside of a healthy sense of competition she often felt at the stationhouse when she was eager to solve a case. But that’s how she felt now. Bitter and jealous that a woman like Reece Gladstone had made the impossible work. Why had she been so lucky? She was just born destined to become Troy’s? Easy as that, huh? Lucy and Whitney, too?
Rachel had honestly never thought about destiny in her life. She didn’t believe in fate, either. All that stuff sounded like predestination, which she thought was hogwash. A person made their own fate. They reaped what they sewed
. If you wanted something in life, then you were going to have to go out and earn it. That’s how she’d been raised. And maybe that’s what she thought she was doing with Conor, creating the magic of love with him where before there had been nothing but space. It should’ve been a beautiful thing, making a relationship where one hadn’t existed before. But now she just felt foolish and shortsighted. Why had she even bothered?
It was fast approaching the hour. Rachel had devised with the Quinns, Lucy, and the professor to execute their plan to capture Dante in forty-five minutes. There was no way in hell she was going to ride over with Conor in his pickup truck. She needed to pull herself together, focus, forget about him and the mess he’d created in her heart, and push through the plan that she, and only she, had come up with.
How long had she been fighting to earn her detective’s badge? She was so close she could smell it. Disempowering Dante and hauling him in to the station would force the sheriff to promote her. She’d wanted this for as long as she could remember. Even as a little girl, she had dreamed of being a detective. She wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way.
She was suddenly filled with anger. The good kind. The kind of fury that cleared the head and made a person act. She could use it. She would put this hard emotion to work and let it guide her. She needed to be single minded, think of nothing but receiving her detective’s badge, and execute every step of the surefire plan that would lead to her own, personal happily ever after.
Being single wouldn’t be so bad if she felt fulfilled at work.
With that in mind, she resolved to cut south through the fields. She hadn’t touched her car since Conor had come into her life, but all that would change now. She recalled she’d parked it near the rubble heap that had once been Devil’s Advocate. If she cut through the field, it would hook up with Trout Street in the heart of the Fist, and from there she could find her car and drive south, meet everyone there.
But when she turned from the shoulder, walking out into the grass, headlights from an oncoming car blinded her. She would’ve kept going except that the car’s brakes wailed and it pulled off onto the shoulder, the passenger’s side window rolling down.
The man behind the steering wheel leaned over and called out, “Looks like they’ll let just about anyone out on bail.”
She almost didn’t recognize him, but then realized it was Harry Marple.
“Good to know you can get away with murder in this town,” he added.
“The sheriff has no case against me. It was self-defense,” she told him, holding her ground though she kept at a safe distance from the idling car.
“Wasn’t for me,” he said, surprising her. He had a strange grin on his face as he admitted, “I did it. Both crimes. Killed my boy and set the store on fire. But look at me, free as a bird and I’m fixing to stay that way.”
He just confessed to a police officer? What was his angle?
“What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded, nearing the car.
“I’m talking about whatever the hell I want to talk about. There’s a new sheriff in town and so long as you’re on his side, you can get away with just about any old damn thing.”
A new sheriff in town?
“Good ol’ Rick is going to drop all charges,” he informed.
“Why would he do that?” she challenged.
“He knows how to follow orders?” Harry guessed then let out an evil-sounding chuckle. “Like I said, new sheriff, new rules.”
“Rick isn’t new,” she informed him. “He’s been the sheriff of Devil’s Fist for over thirty years.”
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“It seems that way.”
Harry turned dark and serious. “Rick’s been turned. Just like I have. Just like most of this town has. Like I said, there’s a new sheriff in town.”
“Rick is one of Dante’s?” she asked, stunned. It felt like her entire world was tilting off of its axis. The ground and sky were suddenly spinning. She felt a rush of heat surge through her head and she couldn’t think straight. Not Rick. He couldn’t be. Then she remembered his fever, his trip to the hospital in Jackson Hole, and she murmured, “No. No, he couldn’t be. Not Rick.”
From out of seemingly nowhere, Rachel suddenly realized that a Buick was coming to a stop behind her, having jerked onto the shoulder of Berry Road. Its headlights hadn’t been on.
In an instant, Larry Hardcastle and Ronnie McDowell jumped out of the Buick.
Rachel reached for her holstered Glock, but she wasn’t wearing her police uniform. She wasn’t armed. She had nothing to defend herself.
The men advanced on her, as Harry jumped out of his car, and Rachel turned for the field and started sprinting.
But she didn’t get far.
Hands clamped onto her shoulders and she fell with the weight of three men on top of her.
Her head slammed against the grassy ground and in the blink of an eye, she was knocked out.
Chapter Twenty-One
CONOR
Conor felt sick as though the pain in his heart from having watched Rachel storm out of his cabin was now manifesting as physical symptoms.
He should have gone after her.
Well, really, he should have never told her what he’d learned from Troy.
What had he been thinking?
Conor had meant well. He hadn’t wanted Rachel to push herself to become a werewolf for the wrong reasons. He’d only meant to slow her down a little, give her all of the information so that she could make an informed decision. But he’d read her all wrong. Rachel was a smart, unemotional woman. She was an exceptional investigator, extremely strong. She thought things through. She proceeded with pragmatism and also wisdom. But, good Lord, why on earth had Conor assumed that when it came to matters of the heart, she would function with the same level-headed, unemotional clarity? It had been the error of a lifetime that he’d assumed she would have. Of course, she would be emotional. Their hearts had bonded, not their intellect, for God’s sake, and he had acted as though her own heart was a case and the information he was giving her was just straightforward evidence. As if she’d investigate the situation of their love like she would a crime scene.
What the hell was wrong with him?
As he played and replayed how badly their conversation had gone, he cringed time and again. No amount of beating himself up could balance out the heaviness he felt having destroyed everything.
When he thought about it, it seemed that he’d made one mistake after the next. He should have followed his own heart. He hadn’t wanted to know the truth. That’s why he’d been avoiding talking to Troy about Rachel. He didn’t care about what was written in the stars of destiny for them. Conor knew how he felt about Rachel. He’d known all along. Why had he been so weak as to need his brother’s validation? Why did he think he wanted the so-called truth to permit him to do what he already knew he wanted? He wanted to be with Rachel. How on earth had that not been good enough for him?
It was so clear to him now that his effort to give her all of the information had been a slap in the face and a blow to her heart. Reflecting on it, he could see that it must have looked like he was pumping the brakes, trying to slow things down if not end them. That had been the absolute last thing he’d meant. But that was how Rachel had taken it, and it was all his fault.
Of course, he wanted her to become a werewolf. He wanted to make her his. In order to be together in a real and lasting way, she would have to become like him. He wasn’t prepared to watch her age and die as he barely aged himself. He didn’t want to have to go on living for hundreds of years, knowing the love of his life had passed away. That would have been an inevitable future if she wasn’t turned.
Conor felt sickeningly conflicted as he thought it all through. He was filled with shame, but still there was a little voice inside of his head that maintained he’d done the right thing. When he’d looked into her big, brown eyes, he’d known that she was in
sisting to be turned werewolf in order to become impenetrable, in order to no longer be vulnerable and fall prey to what so many residents in the Fist had, in order to save herself from being captured and turned by Dante Alighieri.
That wasn’t a good enough reason.
But then again, who the hell was Conor to decide? Maybe it was a good enough reason. Maybe he’d taken her pragmatic decision and turned it on its head, twisting the conversation into an argument that centered on their relationship and the futility in it.
Christ, he was a jerk.
And that’s why he hadn’t gone after her. He had nothing to say. There would be no way to take back or undo what had happened between them. He had no excuses. And he’d been too filled with shame to look her in the eye again.
But he hated that he’d let her go. He didn’t want her rushing off blindly into the wooded roads of the rural Fist.
Night had fallen. He’d been keeping an eye on the time as he beat himself up. He needed to get going. Rachel’s plan was an excellent one. And he told himself that he would see her there. Once they got through this, once Rachel and him and all of his brothers with the professor’s help had captured Dante, he would talk to her. He hoped that by then he would know what to say.
Maybe it would as simple as telling her—no, convincing her—that he loved her and wanted to be with her no matter what.
He was willing to do it the mortal way, with a diamond ring and human vows. If she still wanted to become a werewolf, he would turn her. If she decided she didn’t want that, then he would respect it. Having fifty or sixty human years with Rachel would be far better than having none at all.
With that hope in mind, he locked up and left his cabin, climbed into his pickup truck, and drove to the southeast side of the Fist.
Rachel and his brothers had all arranged to park on an old abandoned dirt road that was almost a mile from Adelaide Marple’s cottage.
At this very moment, Angel Mercer was in the throes of using the power of her mind to energetically reach out and tap into Dante’s dark, soulless heart.
Quinn Security Page 99