by Elle Thorne
True, but Bruiser wasn’t…this. All this. The she-devil on one shoulder argued with the she-devil on the other.
Where the hell was her angel when she needed her?
CPS man was silent. Watching her. Just watching.
“Well? Did he?” She’d kill Bruiser for his daddy having done this. If Bruiser weren’t already dead. “Is Paul MacIntosh after Cash because Bruiser’s dead? Because Cash is my son. Not his. And he had his chance with Bruiser. And he can’t have mine with Cash. It’s my chance to raise my son. Not his.”
CPS—or maybe not-CPS?—McHottie’s mouth had dropped open. “Beau’s dead?”
A moment of clarity hit her, in the madness that her thoughts had been swirling in, one single thought of lucidity. How did he know about Bruiser/Beau? “How do you know about Bruiser-slash”—she actually made a slashing motion with her hand before she realized what she’d done—“Beau’s name? Why would CPS know or have that?” She clutched Cash even tighter.
Cash started bawling. Screaming his head off. Was her son sensing her emotions, or was he hungry? She’d tried to feed him when he was Cash-wolf-pup, but maybe it hadn’t been enough? She groaned her frustration.
“I’m calling the cops.” Why’d she think to say that? She wasn’t sure, but the man’s demeanor changed.
“Ms. Malone. Let me explain.”
“Explain what? Let me see your ID.” Didn’t CPS have to carry some sort of ID? Maybe a badge? God, she was so bluffing now. Yeah, time to ratchet the pressure up another notch. “I’m getting my phone.”
Chapter Eleven
Judd could not believe this shit. First of all, Beau was dead. Second, what the hell happened to Maisie Malone? He couldn’t believe it.
Flat-out. Could. Not. Believe. It. How did everything go south so fast?
One minute, he had it all in hand and was making progress, had her believing he was with CPS and was hopeful he could make headway toward getting the kid—and her, by default—to Paul’s, and now—shit on shingles—everything had gone awry.
What had he been thinking, anyway? He’d forgotten about one very important piece of the puzzle. The dead family. He wasn’t sure about what Paul wanted anymore. Not if he’d sent that bear shifter down to kill the Roberts family.
He held up his hands. “Sure, I got ID.” He did not. He had no such thing. “Let me get it for you.” What the hell was he going to pull out of his wallet? He had no clue. He did have an expired bounty hunter ID. Maybe that? If she didn’t eyeball it too closely, he could possibly get away with it?
Except, that was when everything went from the frying pan to the fire.
The front door crashed in.
And who else would walk in but a big ass bear shifter?
The big ass bear shifter. That’s right. The one. The very fucking one.
Oh, Judd knew it was him from the scent. He was the killer that took out the Roberts family. And why was he here now?
Judd squared off, appraising the man. He was big. Bulky, for sure, but not all of it was muscle. He was probably slow, though strong. So the key would be to stay out of the man’s grasp.
The bear shifter snarled, shaved head, tatted up—full sleeves, neck, even a design on the side of his head. “Walker.”
Since Judd didn’t know this guy from Adam, there was only one way he’d know his name. He had to have been sent by Paul. How else would this guy know his name? “And you’re the one who did the damage up the road, aren’t you?”
He didn’t want to be more specific. Clearly, Maisie had no idea her friend was dead, and Judd didn’t want her finding out this way.
The bear shifter smiled—and it wasn’t exactly a friendly smile—then glanced at Maisie and Cash. “Thanks for finding them for me.”
Maisie’s gulp was audible, loud even, to his shifter hearing. Baldy Bear Shifter’s smile grew. Clearly, the bastard fed on fear.
“Maisie,” Judd kept his voice low and controlled. “Take Cash and go wait in the red Dodge pickup outside.”
“Wha-? No. Why would I do that?”
“Just do it.” He heard the snarl in his voice and realized how close to the surface his wolf had risen in light of the danger Baldy Bear presented.
“I won’t. I—”
Dammit! Did the woman have to pick this very moment to be argumentative? “Now,” he said through clenched teeth. “Out the back door. I’ll take care of this one.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Maisie heading down the corridor toward the back.
He squared off against the bear shifter.
Baldy shook his head, cracked his knuckles, and hunkered low, ready to rush him. “MacIntosh is going to be disappointed when he finds out you’re not doing the job you’re being paid for.”
“Am I being paid to help you kill someone?” With one ear, he listed for Maisie’s departing steps until they’d gone far enough away for him to be sure she was safe.
“Nah. You’re being paid to find someone. The killing part’s all up to me.”
“So, if you’re trailing me, how’d you beat me to that family?”
“Paul’s got connections. The email had an IP. I wouldn’t have killed them all if only they’d made it easy for me. The mother didn’t seem to have a will to live after the rest of her family was gone. And she fed me some bullshit story about where the boy and his mother were. Sent me on a wild goose chase to another county. Bitch. That’s when Paul said to leave it up to you to find them.”
Fuck Paul. Judd was pissed. That son of a bitch knew Judd wouldn’t help him hurt anyone.
“I’ll have to kill you now and go drive that truck away. With the packages you were just kind enough to instruct to wait for me.” Wicked, toothy, fang-y smile again. “Paul wants his grandson. He said even if Beau don’t want him, he does.”
Except it seemed Beau was dead, and yeah, Judd wasn’t going to discuss this with Baldy. “You’re not killing me.” He had a weapon of his own. A wolf might not be able to beat a bear on brute strength, but Judd had speed and agility. He could fight circles around the thug. And he didn’t plan on shifting. He’d do it in his human form. Not to mention, after seeing the gunshot in ol’ Dink Roberts’s forehead earlier, Judd decided to carry his own weapon, with a silencer on it, too.
Baldy lowered himself and rushed him. Judd waited until the very last second, then leapt into the air and flipped up and over Baldy’s back, driving a fist into a kidney that wasn’t quite well protected by the muscle and fat over it.
Baldy grunted.
“What? Not as easy to take me out as it was to take a teenager out from behind while he had earbuds on, motherfucker?” Judd didn’t hide his disgust for the bastard. He leaped on his back, and, wolf fangs extended, he bit into the bear’s shoulder, right above his collarbone, digging in deep, crushing bone, tearing muscles, tendons, and sinew.
Baldy roared and reached over his back. Taking hold of Judd’s shirt, he pulled him over his head and slammed him into the floor, straight through the decrepit floorboards. Beneath Judd was the concrete pad the trailer was sitting on.
He turned his head just in time to see Baldy raise a booted foot to jackhammer into Judd’s face.
Judd twisted away, spring-boarded to his feet, and delivered a kick to Baldy’s jaw, driving him backward, one foot still raised to stomp on a face that was no longer there.
Baldy roared and began to shift into his bear, hair sprouting from his skin, claws extending from his fingertips, his face lengthening into a snout filled with deadly teeth.
Judd couldn’t let the guy shift fully. The last thing he needed was the commotion a bear would cause. He ripped the Ruger from his holster and popped the bear twice, both times in the chest. He wasn’t sure if what he’d delivered would kill the bear. Shifters didn’t die easily, but at least it would keep him down long enough for Judd to get the hell out of here, get to the truck and whisk Maisie and Cash to safety.
What did safety look like?
Shit. O
ne step at a time. One step at a time, Judd Walker, he reminded himself.
He ran out the door, headed to the truck, limping like a sumbitch from the injuries the bear had delivered. He was tucking the pistol back in the side holster when—
Fuck.
Maisie and Cash weren’t in the truck.
Double fuck.
A scream, loud and long—almost a wail—ripped through the quiet of the trailer park.
Triple fuck.
Chapter Twelve
A scream had Judd snapping to a standstill and looking around for the source.
A scream had Judd snapping to a standstill and looking around for the source.
Maisie.
Shit. She found the dead bodies.
He cocked his leg back then catapulted himself into a running speed, shifter-fast. He knew he was nothing more than a blur to anyone who was watching. They’d not even be able to fully discern what they were witnessing, should they see him. He blurred down the street, around the corner of the Roberts’s trailer, vaulted over the raised deck’s railing, and slid into the back door, which was already open, confirming his suspicion it had been Maisie who’d screamed.
Fuck.
Sure enough, standing there, holding her baby, her mouth was open in a scream still, her eyes wide, her entire body shaking. “A-A-Angie’s d-d-dead. H-her whole f-f-f-f—” She collapsed to her knees.
He swooped over, snatching Cash from her arms so he wouldn’t hit his head on the coffee table.
“Give him to me!” Her voice was shrill. Panicked. “Now. Give. Him. To. Me.”
“Here. I just didn’t want him to hit his head.” He handed her Cash.
She sat there, crouched, holding the child, weeping. She was no longer screaming. In fact, she’d gone deathly, scary quiet. Finally, she turned tormented eyes in his direction. “Did you do this?”
“What? Me? Hell, no.” Had she lost her mind? “Why would you even think that?”
She half-crab-walked, crawled away from him, using her knees and one hand while the other arm held on to a crying—more like bawling—baby. “Why wouldn’t I think that?”
“Who the fuck do you think just saved you from that fucking bear shifter?” Irritation at her question got the best of him, though his wolf was howling for him to comfort her.
“I don’t know. I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”
“We need to get out of here. That bastard may not be dead. Probably isn’t dead. And I don’t think he wants you breathing.”
“Why? Why would he want me dead? What have I ever— My car broke down.”
He sent a prayer to the god of wolf shifters—nah, there wasn’t such a thing, but he didn’t know who to send a damned prayer to right now—that he would have the patience to not knock her out and take her and the baby out of here.
Then she’d really hate him, wouldn’t she?
But she’d be alive, he argued with himself.
“Look. You can ask yourself all the damned questions you want. When you are out of here and alive. Got it? Now, let’s go before that bastard comes at us again. If he gets a chance to turn into his bear, I’m not sure my wolf can take him.”
“But I—”
Then, as if things weren’t fucking bad enough, little wolf decided to make an appearance. Seconds later, creaking, stretching, a whine and a whimper, fur poking through, and Cash Malone was back to the same little adorable wolf shifter pup he’d been when Judd first found them.
“Fu-uck.”
Oh, shit just got worse.
A sound that was the last thing he’d wanted to hear reached his ears.
The sound of a bear growling and snuffling. And though it was yards away, it was too close for comfort.
Chapter Thirteen
Maisie tried to hold squirming Cash-wolf-pup, but the little lupine was difficult to keep a hold of. He slipped free of her and ran straight into McHottie’s legs, winding his way in and out and all around the large man. Though he wasn’t as large as the bald guy she’d left him to deal with in her trailer.
“Cash, come here. Baby, come back to your momma.”
Cash wasn’t minding. Not one bit. That little wolf pup just kept on revolving around McHottie’s legs.
“We’re going now.” McHottie leaned down and scooped Cash-wolf-pup in one arm then reached out his hand for Maisie. “Now. There ain’t no time to waste.”
He jerked her to her feet a little rougher than she’d have liked, but she forgave him the second she heard a growl from the other side of the trailer’s thin walls.
“This way,” she whispered to him. She led him out the front door, and then they booked it, running as fast as they could—how the hell was he so much faster than she was?—all the way to the truck. He had Cash-wolf-pup in the middle of the bench seat and was shoving her in before she could process he’d been nothing more than a blur as he’d run.
Rawwwr!
She turned around. “Shit.” The largest bear she’d ever seen was in a lumbering run, heading their way, blood pouring out of a wound in his shoulder. “Go. Go. Go.”
The pickup roared to life. Tires screeched. The man peeled the truck out of there, heading deeper into the trailer park, hitting speed bumps that were making her hit her head on the ceiling.
She grabbed Cash-wolf-pup a little too tight so he wouldn’t get hurt, what with all the bouncing.
He yipped his protest at being held so firmly.
“Sorry, little fella,” she told him. “Can’t have you flying through the windshield.”
What she wanted to do was ask him why he’d run to the man after shifting. Why had he done that? What did the man have to offer him to make him do that? Speaking of the man—thinking of, actually—she took a moment to study him.
“Best way out of here? I don’t want the bear cutting through trailers and getting to us.”
“Turn left there. No, there, after that trailer. The blue one. Then make a hard right. There’s a dirt road. It will take you to the highway.” She examined his face. He seemed honest, decent. He hadn’t hurt them. He’d actually tried to protect them. But…
She took a moment to review. He’d said he was CPS but hadn’t actually shown her an ID. He’d seemed less than thrilled when she said she’d call the cops. In fact, it seemed like he was going to try to talk her out of that. Those were marks against him. Marks in his favor, he hadn’t killed them and—the next one was a biggie in her book—he’d protected them from the bald giant. But still, something niggled at her brain. Something she was missing. Then it hit her.
“How do you know anything at all about Paul MacIntosh or Bruiser?” Because really, a CPS caseworker wouldn’t have that info, would he? Or maybe he would. Her head hurt. And it didn’t help that Cash-wolf-pup was back to squirming again. She let him go since they were past the speed bumps and on the dirt road leading to the highway. She glanced behind them. No bear. No bald giant. “We’re safe for now.”
Cash-wolf-pup scampered across the seat, jumped into McHottie’s lap, and cuddled there.
She wished she could ask him one thing. You can’t be serious, little man—wolf, whatever. How was her son suddenly cozying up to a stranger?
“Where are we going?” she asked McHottie—man, she needed a name for him. This McHottie thing wasn’t working. “What’s your name? And you’re not with CPS, are you? Who do you work for?”
He rubbed his jaw then let his hand fall idly to Cash-wolf-pup’s head, scratching lightly then running his fingers through the fur on his back. “Name’s Judd. Judd Walker.”
“And?” she prompted. “Tell me something, Judd. What’s your deal? What are you doing here? I mean, with us? Why were you at my house”—she took a shot—“pretending to be a CPS agent?”
“I’m not sure anymore.”
And funny thing was, he seemed so honest. There was something about his blue eyes, with their grayish-silver slivers, that made her feel she could trust him.
“So, where
are we going, then? Where are you taking us?”
“Yeah, not sure about that.”
She heard a vibrating sound. And she didn’t have her phone, soooo… “You gonna answer that?”
He exhaled then clenched his jaw as he fished a cell phone out of his front pocket. “I guess so,” he said through gritted teeth. He swiped to answer but said nothing, holding the phone to his ear.
He was quiet, listening, and Maisie couldn’t tell what the person on the other side was saying. It sounded like the teacher on a Charlie Brown special. “Wah, wah, wah.” Yeah, definitely meant nothing to her.
Then after several minutes—an eternity of listening—Judd spoke into the phone. “You didn’t say anything about killing them.”
More listening.
“I don’t kill people for you.” He turned off the dirt road and onto the highway.
She found herself slumping in relief. Wait, he said I don’t kill people for you. For you. For you. For you. Did that mean he killed people, but not for him? Whichever him was on the phone. Was that Paul MacIntosh? Did he know Bruiser was dead?
“Is that Paul?” she whispered.
Fuck, Judd mouthed and put a hand over her mouth. He shook his head, as though disgusted. “Don’t worry about who’s with me. Just a girl. No, I don’t know, but consider me off the job. I don’t roll like that.”
Silence, while the other side was more, “Wah, wah, wah.”
“Nope. You can’t pay me more. Yeah, I know you know how to find me. You’re better off saving your people because the last thing you want is to start a war with the Crooked Arrow.”
More “Wah, wah, wah.”
Then, “Whatever,” and Judd swiped to end the call. He turned to her. “You should have kept your mouth shut. It would’ve played a lot easier if I’d said you got away.”
“Slow the truck down, and I can make it play exactly like that.” She didn’t appreciate the way he was talking to her one damned bit. He wasn’t the one who saw his friends dead. And they were more than friends to Maisie. The Roberts were family.