She hadn’t told Avery about it yet. She wanted to be sure she knew what she was talking about. Anyway, whatever Sullivan said might be completely nuts, and she wasn’t sure if it even meant anything. Once she’d had time to put it all together, she’d run it by her partner.
Maybe tomorrow. Right now, she just wanted to go back to her apartment, possibly eat something, maybe go for a run, look up Sullivan on the computer. Nothing too crazy.
But when she arrived at her apartment door, Hollis was waiting for her, carrying his briefcase. He waved.
Dana did not want to see him. She almost told him to go away, but considering their last interaction, she didn’t think it was a good idea to be rude. She needed him to like her again if he was going to publish nice things about her. That meant that she at least had to be polite.
She tried a smile. “Hollis.”
He smiled back, but, even though his dimples popped out, there was something cold about his smile. “Hi there, Dana. We need to talk.”
She sagged against the wall. “Gosh, Hollis, this is a really bad day. I thought you said that you had everything you needed from me. If it’s only clearing things up, could we maybe do it tomorrow?” She gave him begging eyes. “Please.”
Hollis laughed. “Oh, there’s a lot we have to talk about, Dana, and you’re not going to want to wait until tomorrow to do it.”
That sounded ominous. She opened her apartment door. “Well, come in, I guess.”
Hollis stalked inside, still grinning his cold smile. He settled on the couch in her living room and made himself comfortable, opening his briefcase and taking out several folders. “I guess you don’t have any beer.”
“You know I don’t drink.”
“How about a soda then?”
God, he was bossy today. He was demanding refreshment, huh? “Sure,” she said, getting some out of her refrigerator. If he didn’t shape up, she was going to have a lot of trouble continuing to play nice.
“You lied to me,” he said as she handed him the soda.
“Excuse me?” she sat down opposite him. What had he found out? Certainly, there were things she’d left out. How was she going to explain it to him?
“The reason you said you couldn’t be with me. It had nothing to do with controlling your wolf.”
“Hollis, I’m sorry that I don’t have feelings for you anymore,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “at least you’re a monogamous kind of girl. One guy at a time.”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“You let Cole Randall fuck you when he had you tied up in his basement. And you liked it.”
“I did not,” she said, standing up. Her face felt hot and anger was pulsing through her. The wolf perked up, eager to be let out. She drew an unsteady breath. “I think maybe you better leave.”
Hollis was still smiling. God, would he ever wipe that smug, cold expression off his face? He took something out of one of his file folders and slid it across the coffee table to her. “Explain this, then.”
She picked it up. It was a copy of a receipt from a drug store. She’d purchased a pregnancy test. She’d only been free from Cole for two weeks. She crumpled the receipt in one hand.
“I have other copies, you know,” said Hollis.
She glared at him. “How do you know I didn’t get it because of us?”
“Because we never had sex, darling, in case you’ve forgotten that.”
“It wasn’t never, Hollis. It was just... rare.” She folded her arms over her chest. “You’re going to publish this?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Dana. I want the truth. I don’t get it. If he raped you, wouldn’t you have had a rape kit in the hospital? Wouldn’t they have checked then?”
“He didn’t—” She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Right,” he said, “because you liked it.”
“I...” She sat back down. “We didn’t even... I mean, not really...”
“Here’s what I figure,” said Hollis. “You had a big crush on Cole Randall in high school. Watched him from afar. Then he rescued you, and you got this huge, grateful girl hard-on for him, so when he kidnapped you—”
“Stop it,” she said. “That’s not true.” Maybe it was closer to true than she wanted to admit.
“Admit that you found him attractive. That you still find him attractive.”
“On the record? I don’t think so. You print whatever you want, but I’ll deny it all.”
“Fuck the record, Dana. Admit it for me.” He leaned forward. “I have the right to know that you dumped me for a serial killer.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“So, what happened? I asked you all kinds of questions in our interviews. How much of it was true?”
“All of it,” she said.
Hollis picked up one of his folders and flipped through it. “Funny. I don’t remember you telling me anything like this. ‘I knew that I should be disgusted by him, but for some reason, while I was chained up there, I found myself longing for him to touch me again.’”
Her own words! “Where did you get that?” She’d only told that to—
“Guess.”
“Chantal,” she breathed in realization. “You broke into her office? You’re the person who ransacked everything.”
“Well, that’s a theory,” said Hollis.
“You can’t print any of that. You obtained it illegally.”
“I need a source to confirm it for me on the record,” he said.
“I won’t confirm it,” she said.
“You weren’t the only person there.”
Oh, God. Cole. He was going to interview Cole. And Cole was a cocky bastard, who would have no problem bragging to the world about what he’d done to her. Hell, he’d probably show Hollis the bra she gave him. Dana covered her face with her hands.
“I can see that you know it’s true,” he said.
Panicked tears were threatening. “Look, Hollis, you don’t have to do this. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I’m ashamed. I’m seeing a psychiatrist because I need help. I’m mentally ill.”
“And yet you’re back at work,” he said.
A tear slid out of one eye. She brushed it away, annoyed. “Please, don’t.”
“The crying’s a nice touch, but it’s not going to soften me up.”
“You don’t have to ruin my life,” she said.
“And you didn’t have to be a complete and total bitch to me,” he said. “I thought we had a really nice relationship. I thought we were going someplace. But you didn’t care about me at all. You like a guy who kills people more than me.”
“I don’t like him,” she said.
“You just like his cock.”
“Shut up.”
He read from his folder again. “‘I fantasize about him while masturbating. If I don’t think about Cole, I can’t get off.’” He looked up at her again. “Who knew it would only take a guy who was trying to kill you to make it easy for you to come?”
She stiffened. “Don’t.”
“What? We’re being so open about you right now, I don’t see why it’s a big deal to point out that it was always a really big production to try to give you an orgasm.”
“Hollis, please.” He was horrible. He couldn’t let anything go.
“You said it wasn’t my fault.”
“It wasn’t. It’s always been difficult for me. It’s difficult for most women, you asshole. And Cole never...” Well, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? There was that time right before she shifted, when he was stroking her and maybe she’d kind of... “Look, it was always easier for me to, you know, do things to myself than it was for someone else to do it. Besides.” She glared at him. “You never seemed to mind.”
“I’m not saying I did,” he said. “I’m not a total asshole. Of course I was willing to do whatever I could to get you off. You were my girlfriend. I cared about you. I could have even fallen i
n love with you. But now... this.” He laughed bitterly.
“It’s not my fault. Chantal says it’s Stockholm syndrome, she says the fantasies are about taking back my power.”
He snorted. “Not your fault? That make you feel better? To blame someone besides yourself? Instead of accepting the fact that you’re sick and disturbed?”
She hung her head. “I know I’m disturbed.”
“You’re telling me, darling.”
More tears leaked out, dripping down her cheeks. She didn’t bother to wipe at them. “Please don’t write about this Hollis. Please don’t.”
“Answer me one question honestly, and I’ll think about it.”
“Think about it?”
“No promises, darling.”
“What’s the question?”
He took deep breath. “Did you fuck him or not?”
“Hollis, Jesus.”
“Why the pregnancy test if you didn’t? Tell me the truth, Dana. The fucking truth. For once.”
“I...” She twisted her fingers together. She hadn’t told anyone about this, not even Chantal. It was too weird, too strange, too awful. “We didn’t really mean to.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
* * *
Six months ago, she was a wolf, and she knew it. She’d never felt anything like it before, being aware of herself in wolf form. She was herself, she could think her own thoughts, but everything felt heightened. Her senses were keener, more intense.
She whined. Her paws were chained above her head. It was uncomfortable and unnatural. She didn’t like having her underbelly exposed. It felt like danger.
“Dana, can you hear me?”
She turned her head, but she realized she didn’t need to. She could smell him. He was a tantalizing mixture of scents—spicy, earthy, and dangerous. But also... strangely... like home.
Cole.
She belonged to him.
“Make a noise if you can hear me,” he said, standing next to her without his shirt on, looking so vulnerable and small in human form.
She whined again and rattled the chains above her head.
Cole grinned. “You did it.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a key. “I’m going to let you out of the chains, and then I’m going to shift as well.” He fitted the key to the lock that held her chains in place. “Once we’re both wolves, we fight. If you kill me, you’re free. If I kill you...”
He lowered the key, looking troubled. He sank his hand into her fur, stroking her. “Oh, Dana.”
She only wanted out of the chains. He could do whatever he wanted then. Killing each other, though. Out of the question. She could no more kill Cole than gnaw off her own leg.
He put the key to the lock again, and, in a moment, she was finally free.
She landed on her front paws, giving a little bark of pleasure at the sensation. Things were right again.
Cole was peeling off his pants, and she could already see the wolf shift taking over him, dark, dark fur overtaking his body, rippling over him like the tide.
She waited for him to change.
When he was fully a wolf, she leapt at him playfully. It was better to be this way, not in human form. Things were easier now, more straightforward.
He growled at her, baring his teeth, the hair on his neck lifting.
Silly Cole. He was still thinking that he could kill her. She knew better. She rubbed her head against him, her muzzle deep in his fur, his Cole-scent strong and intoxicating.
When he was human, he smelled the same, but less so. It was muted, quieter. So she knew the smell. The smell spoke to her, drove her, called to her, and it told her what she needed to know.
Cole swatted her away with one paw, but she could already see that he wasn’t trying to hurt her.
He yipped at her, seeming confused.
Her wolf body knew the movements deep in its marrow. It was like a dance, ancient and primal, something she had always known. Something that was waiting to be let out.
Cole drew himself up, opening his jaws. His teeth glistened white and deadly. He was preparing to spring at her.
She wasn’t having any of it.
She moved, turning her face away from him, lifting her tail. She wasn’t aware of what she was doing in that she did it without any real intention. She didn’t set out to accomplish anything. Instead, it seemed that instinct had just taken over, told her how to move and what to do.
But now the air was thick with the potent Cole scent. He was close, and she had presented herself to him, made it clear what she wanted.
She knew it was right. They were connected. She knew that he wouldn’t resist. The dance had been started. Cole would play his part, because his instinct told him how to. He would be ruled by his body, by the undercurrents of their nature. It had begun.
This knowledge filled her with bursting joy and a feeling of absolute rightness. She suddenly felt connected to everything—to the moon, the trees, the sky, the basement.
To Cole.
He was responding now, performing his own steps in the dance.
She felt his teeth at the back of her neck, not biting into her, simply holding her in place, helping him to keep his balance.
Because he’d mounted her and they were connected then, quite literally connected.
She was pierced by him, held in place as he took her, and it was...
Exactly right. Her whole being sang with the perfectness of it, how she was meant to be here, under Cole, around Cole, taking him inside her. They belonged to each other. She knew this better than she knew anything else. He was her mate, her only one.
It was natural to give herself to him. It was right. She felt whole and luminous, as if she’d completed a great task that she’d struggled to finish, as if she’d been searching all this time for some part of her that was missing and that she’d found it now.
They were flesh and fur, bone and teeth. They were a fury of movement, savagery, primal and animalistic. They were growls and howls. They were part of each other, part of everything else. They were moving the way they had always meant to move, the way the great deep urge of the universe directed them. She had sunk into something so much bigger than her. Power flowed through her. She didn’t own the power, but it flowed through her as long as she kept on this path, as long as she didn’t fight.
This glorious world was hers. She could find it any time she wanted. She simply had to let out the wolf.
* * *
“That’s disgusting,” said Hollis.
Dana shuddered. “I know.”
“I didn’t even know that werewolves could...”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Once we shift we have fully functioning wolf parts.”
He grimaced.
“It was an accident, Hollis,” she said. “The wolves did it, not us. Cole wanted to kill me not...”
“Do you doggy-style?” His grin was ugly.
Dana went to the door. “Get out.”
“If you make me leave right now, I’ll go to press with everything I have. It will be bad, Dana.”
She was shaking. “I don’t care. Do your worst. I don’t want to look at you anymore.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bang, bang, bang. Avery rapped on the outside door to Tom Hathaway’s house, the second potential to have received correspondence from Cole. “SF, open up!”
They’d been knocking for about ten minutes without getting an answer. Tom lived in a trailer at the edge of the woods. There were two rusty three-wheelers in his driveway. A folding chair sat next to his front door, with a card table next to it. The card table was covered with beer bottles. The beer bottles were all full of cigarette butts.
“He’s not here,” Dana said to Avery.
He turned to her. “Can I break in?”
“You broke in at the Shirley house,” she said, thinking about Avery using his shoulder to bust the door open.
“Yeah, but we were tracking a rogue. We were saving li
ves.”
“We didn’t save any,” she said.
“I know that,” he said. “But this is different. There might be different rules.”
“We’re trackers,” she said. “We’re not supposed to do stuff like investigate and talk to people. We’re supposed to track werewolves.”
“Yeah, well, we can thank your boyfriend for changing all of that.”
“He’s not my—”
“Sorry.” Avery leaned against the door to the trailer, and it swung inward, creaking on its hinges. He straightened. “Huh. It’s open.” He walked inside.
She followed him. “Seriously, Brooks, do not ever call him that again.”
“I’m sorry, Gray. I’m tense. I shouldn’t have—holy shit.”
“What?”
She peered around him. The back door of the trailer was open, leading out of the kitchen.
There was an angry red trail leading outside, smeared on the linoleum floor. Dana could smell that it was blood, and that it was werewolf blood. “You think that belongs to Tom?”
Avery scrambled out of the door, sniffing the air. “Could be Tom. I’ve got the scent. I’m tracking this.”
She went after him. She guessed that was what she got for making comments about how they tracked things, not investigated. The universe had given them something to track. Poor Tom Hathaway.
The trail was short. Only about twenty feet into the woods, they came upon the body of a young man. He was propped up against a tree, his skin waxy and pale. Flies alighted on his body in a small swarm. There was a round, red hole in his forehead, a little off-center.
“Someone shot him,” said Dana.
“That’s not our department, is it?” said Avery.
* * *
Sheriff Miles Hanley looked pretty pleased with himself as he stood outside his car in front of Tom Hathaway’s trailer. “Well, he was murdered by a human, so it’s our jurisdiction. I don’t see how it matters one way or another if he was a werewolf.”
“We’re not concerned with why he died or how he died,” said Avery.
“Unless we find something that makes us think it’s connected,” said Dana.
“All we want is to search the trailer. He was in contact with Cole Randall, and we want to see those letters. That’s all we want,” said Avery.
“That trailer’s a crime scene,” said Hanley. “He was obviously shot inside. I can’t let you go in there and poke around. You might destroy evidence.”
“It looks like he was shot in the kitchen,” said Dana. “We’ll stay out of the kitchen.”