Sadie Hart

by Cry Sanctuary

  He jerked his head towards the pair of women standing in the Shifter Town Enforcement lobby. “I brought them along in case you needed to speak with them personally.”

  Caine held out a picture next. It was of a spunky-looking brunette with a low-cut blouse, overdone makeup, and a warm smile that said she laughed easily. Ollie had to fight the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. If she didn’t find the Hunter, this would be the face of the woman they found dead in five days.

  The Hunter had taken a break after she’d gotten the best of him in those woods eight months ago. For six months he hadn’t hunted, but for the past two he’d come back. Two more bodies. Both werewolves.

  “He’s got a thing for wolves.”

  “No,” Holly corrected, glancing up at him from the picture in her hands. “He has a thing for shifters. Wolves are just his current fare.”

  Caine stiffened at that, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, but Ollie didn’t say any more. The Hunter had killed more wolves than any other type of shifter, but he didn’t have a preference. The animal they shifted into didn’t matter. The Hunter needed a woman, early twenties to mid-thirties. Athletic. Strong. Someone who’d be a challenge. But wolf-shifters were just more plentiful than any other in Idaho, and since he was working under the tight schedule of the moon, the Hunter couldn’t afford to be picky.

  “Have a seat in the lobby, Mr. Morgan. I’ll question your wolves in just a second.”

  She watched him go, back straight, his stiff-legged gait still reading of tightly wrapped anger. Sawyer let an irritated hiss whistle out between her teeth. “Ass,” she muttered.

  “He wouldn’t have gotten away with it if you hadn’t cowered.”

  Ollie turned to give the lioness the argument she’d been building in her head, but Sawyer had the grace to wince. “I know. It’s still automatic. I expect everyone to discredit me, so I let them.”

  “So stop.”

  “Working on it.” She lifted one slender shoulder in a shrug. “Guess I’ll start with one of the wolves he brought along. I take one, you take the other?”

  “Yeah.”

  But it wouldn’t change anything. Ollie stared at the pair now standing next to their brooding alpha. Talking to them wouldn’t do a damn thing to help find their friend. They had bags under their eyes, and even here in the next room, with a door closed between them, she could smell booze and vomit on their breaths. They’d be lucky to remember how much they’d had to drink last night, let alone who’d been in the bar with them.

  He knows how to pick his prey, she reminded herself. Weak.

  ***

  Caine Morgan watched the woman interviewing Lacy Montague, the young wolf looking absolutely miserable under the icy gray-blue gaze of the Hound questioning her. Holly Lawrence. The one person to have seen the Hunter and lived to tell about it. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who’d survived a serial killer. Hell, she didn’t much look like anything. She was pudgy in the gut, short with wide hips, and had wiry black hair that frizzed out of a messy bun. Her face was angular, hawkish.

  He’d always pictured the survivor to be more...well...everything.

  But there was a ruthless edge to her eyes he hadn’t expected. Metallic almost, and she didn’t back down an inch when pressured. That, at least, was something that fit the picture. Fit the image of a woman who could stand up against a killer and walk away.

  Lacy started to rise, her knees clearly shaky with fatigue, and Caine watched the wolfhound toss the legal pad of paper up onto her desk and lean back, head tilted towards the ceiling. She knew. Claire Rawson was as good as dead. Neither wolf had remembered anything beyond Claire needing to use the bathroom, and he wasn’t even sure they actually remembered that. He’d had to drag the words out of them, bit by bit, and he couldn’t remember if he’d accidentally led them into that train of thought, or if they’d actually remembered what happened.

  Holly Lawrence pinched the bridge of her nose, her shoulders rising and falling in a sigh before she rose, heading straight towards him. No sign of the weariness, the defeat. She’d stuffed it away, leaving nothing but strength and confidence on her face. The rest was hidden under a steely-eyed mask as she approached. They’d start looking. Send a pack out to look at the bar, bloodhounds to see if anyone could pick up the trail. He knew it.

  Didn’t mean he had to like it when her pretty little lips opened to tell him as much. “You’ll do everything you can,” he mocked. “Won’t save her anyway.”

  He shoved up out of the small metal chair, and she frowned at him. “Would you like to suggest something better, Mr. Morgan? We’re doing the best we can.”

  “And he’s still killing. Seventeen now. Or are we eighteen? Do we count you as a victim even though you got away?”

  She flinched at that, the first sign of weakness she’d shown him face-to-face as a haunted edge slipped into her gaze. “Mr. Morgan—”

  “Caine,” he bit out on a snarl.

  “Caine. We’re going to do everything we can to find Claire. I’m going to do everything I can.”

  What she didn’t say, and he wanted her to, was that sometimes everything wasn’t enough. Sometimes the bad guys still won. It was a knowledge that lived in her eyes, he realized. A blatant truth that stared back out at him now.

  She extended him a card, a number written neatly on the back. “My card. If you get any more information, let me know. If you can’t reach me here, I’ve also given you my cell phone number.”

  He reached to take it, just as her fingers tightened on the paper. “I want to find this son of a bitch too.”

  The fight leaked out of him as he stared down at her, her wounded gunmetal eyes locked on his. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know.”

  He took her card and gazed down at it, leaving words best left unspoken hanging in the air as he walked away. Wanting wasn’t always good enough.

  Chapter Three

  He’d called three times over the past two days. Nothing. No leads, no tips, not even a fucking goose chase. Shifter Town Enforcement Hounds were left sitting behind their desks while a member of his pack was being prepped to die. Caine lashed out at the man in front of him. Trey’s lean body whipped out range before the punch could hit home. His breathing came fast, heavy, a sign of a good workout, and Caine lunged again just to make his friend sweat.

  This time when Trey pulled back he stumbled, and the punch knocked him squarely in the gut, hard enough that it clicked his teeth shut as he strained to catch his balance. Trey caught himself before he fell and danced backwards, careful to slip out of range, and this time Caine let him. Trey flashed teeth in a hint of a snarl. “Way to hit a wolf when he’s down.”

  Caine laughed, the strain of the past few days easing a notch. “You weren’t down. Yet.”

  “Fair enough.” Trey shoved one hand through the mass of tight black curls on his head, weariness edging into his eyes. “You call?”

  “Same news. They haven’t found anything.” His jaw tightened. For some stupid, girly reason, he’d thought having Holly Lawrence on the case would make a difference. That the one who’d gotten away would be the one who could save Claire. That somehow, having her involved in the case would save him from having to tell Claire’s parents, her friends, the pack that he’d failed. “I shouldn’t have let them go out that night.”

  “Don’t start that bullshit again.” Trey leaned down to swipe his t-shirt off the ground, shaking it out with a sharp snap. “She’d just turned twenty-one. Kids like to go out and get wasted the first night they can. There were a thousand girls out that night.”

  “She just got the shit end of the stick?”

  “Yeah.” Trey yanked the shirt on over his head, then leaned down to swipe up Caine’s as well. “No one could have known.” He pinned his alpha a glare. “Not even you.”

  “She didn’t deserve it.” He sighed. Hell. None of them had. People didn’t deserve to die just so some whack-job could get his rocks off. He snatch
ed his shirt from Trey and headed back towards his house. For the most part, he liked the pack nearby. There were a few members that chose to live out on their own, branching out into the surrounding city, but the vast majority lived right here in Sanctuary Falls. They owned a whole street, mostly acres of forest between the houses, but it kept the pack within reach.

  Where he could keep them safe.

  Where stuff like a wolf going missing didn’t happen. Caine closed his eyes against the sharp stab of guilt. But he couldn’t very well keep them all on lockdown. Curfews and check-ins maybe, but he hadn’t wanted to do that either. Regardless, it was something he’d have to start now.

  “You going out again?”

  “Yeah.” The Hounds might have given up, but he still had time before the full moon. Time to try. He’d be damned if he’d sit around with his thumb up his ass just waiting. “So I’m going to swing by the Balljoint again, see what I can find.”

  Trey just nodded. Thankfully, he seemed to know better than to point out the obvious. Like the fact that every other night Caine had been up there he’d found nothing. Sure, the first day after the attack he’d managed to catch Claire’s scent and that of a wolf’s. It’d started by the building and led out into the parking lot. At the third spot down the row, the scent had died. Vanished inside a car that he couldn’t track.

  “Leaves you in charge again tonight.”

  His second shrugged. “Go find our girl.”

  Caine slipped into his shirt and grabbed his keys. The Balljoint wasn’t more than a thirty minute drive from Sanctuary Falls, all highway and trees. He flicked on the radio to pass the time, but, even under the pulse of music, he couldn’t shake the certainty that they wouldn’t get to Claire in time. And, damn, but he didn’t want to have to bury her.

  She was twenty-one. A kid. Too young to die. The thought of telling her mother made his stomach clench. His hands tightened on the steering wheel as a growl rumbled from him. He eased onto the gas a bit more and let the car speed down the highway, shaving a few minutes off his travel time. The parking lot was already beginning to fill up and dusk stole across the sky by the time he arrived.

  The Balljoint could serve a mean burger, and was one of the few non-shifter joints to draw a large section of the furry crowd. Caine took a spot in the back of the lot and slid out of his car, knocking the tension from his shoulders with a shake before he tugged on his leather bomber jacket and headed up the parking lot. Not to the front door. There was nothing inside. Even from day one, the place had had too many people inside, too many different smells, and he hadn’t been able to pick up a good trail.

  He might have been able to pick up more if it’d been a shifter bar and he could let the wolf out, but that hadn’t been an option. Instead, he strode up to the parking spot where he’d lost Claire’s scent the day after she’d been taken. He crouched, one jean-clad leg brushing the pavement as he inhaled. A hundred or more people had crisscrossed over the pavement since then, and her scent was already faded and nearly gone, but he could still catch the faintest whiff of it. There was something more...

  He frowned just as nails clicked over pavement and he turned to see a large, shaggy gray dog standing at the edge of the lot. The Irish wolfhound circled the Balljoint’s back door, nose to the ground, and then, as if sensing he was watching, she paused, lifting her head. Her ears pricked forward and the dog shimmered to reveal Holly Lawrence standing on the sidewalk in front of him.

  Her long black hair was tied up in a knot behind her head, drawing out all the angles in her face. Harsh. Her cool gray eyes sharpened on his. “I thought I smelled you nosing around here.”

  He stiffened. “I wasn’t aware that was a crime.”

  Holly started at that, momentarily confused, and suddenly she looked soft. Almost vulnerable. “It’s not. I was just stating a fact.”

  Her expression relaxed, the harsh angles easing as she approached, and he could see the dark circles under her eyes, the hollow, almost defeated look visible now that she was closer. “You weren’t kidding about wanting to catch him,” he said softly and watched as her jaw tightened, teeth grinding as she looked away.

  “Every time he kills, it’s another person I could have saved.”

  “That’s an awful lot of blame to put on yourself.” He winced a little at that. Pot meet kettle after all, but still. “No one else has gotten anywhere near this guy. You at least did that.”

  “And I had his gun in my hands; he still managed to get away. I know a lot about blame, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Caine,” he corrected softly. “And so do I.”

  She looked surprised at that, and he shrugged, bracing one hand against his knee as he shoved himself up to his feet. “You forget. She’s my wolf. My responsibility. She asked me to come here that night, for a night on the town.”

  “You couldn’t have known—”

  “And you were lucky you got away from him alive. I’d be thankful for that. You get another shot to catch this son of a bitch. That’s more than you’d have had if you died that night.”

  She watched him for a moment, those cold, gray eyes unreadable in the dimming light, the murky hover of dusk casting half her face in shadow. She nodded. “Fair enough...Caine.”

  He found himself grinning at the tentative way she said his name. Wolfhounds and werewolves weren’t typically on the same side. Normally, Hounds arrested wolves and wolves did their best not to piss off the law. Or, at the very least, not get caught doing it.

  He tilted his head back towards the bar. “Any luck?”

  “No. The bar is dimly lit, it’s packed, and when he grabbed her, he did it somewhere private and she went peacefully. I couldn’t catch much of a scent in there at all, nor could our bloodhounds. But he walked her straight from the back door to his car and then drove away. If she fought, there’s no sign of it.”

  “He picked her up himself. It’s part of the hunt for him, isn’t it?”

  That surprised her. He saw it in the quick flash in her eyes, the slight way her eyebrows raised, then slanted in hard, angry lines again. She wasn’t impossible to read, he decided, just difficult. Subtle. Her anger and frustration over being bested covered every inch of her face, but surprise, warmth, friendliness, that all came in smaller increments. Quicksilver flashes in her eyes, a slight twitch of her lips, a brief crinkle in her forehead.

  The wolf in him picked up on them all.

  “Yeah. It’s all part of the hunt. He likes to cull them from the herd. You’ve done your research?”

  He ignored the question in that statement. She could ask if she wanted; if she didn’t, that was fine with him too. Instead he stepped around the small blue car parked in the slot and leaned down to scent the pavement again, his lips curling at the familiar musk of wolf. For as faint as Claire’s was, the Hunter’s was just slightly heavier. “He might have come back.”

  “The day after.” Her mouth was open as if to say more but the moment he looked up she seemed to catch herself, her lips thinning into a hard line again.

  “Let me guess, a detail you’re not supposed to reveal.” Her head tilted once. A nod.

  Caine wanted to ask, demand, but it was obvious she wouldn’t budge. He was surprised she’d shared as much as she had, actually. Caine couldn’t think of a time when a Hound had worked with a wolf. He turned his attention back to the smooth gray concrete, as unyielding as the woman standing behind him. The bastard had come back and he’d missed him.

  “I knew he was coming and I missed him,” she whispered, her voice an odd echo to his thoughts as she sank down to the curb beside him. The exhaustion spilled over her face then.

  “You were here, waiting.” It wasn’t a question. Holly Lawrence wasn’t the kind of woman to leave this stuff to chance.

  “We all were. Lennox had the whole pack here.” Her jaw tightened. “Somehow, he slipped right past us.”

  “He’s good. You have to be to kill seventeen women, shifters, and get away with it.” Impatie
nce clawed up his spine. Seventeen. He wondered if this was how she felt. Helpless to save anyone while this bastard plucked them off like apples from a tree. Cane started to rise when she stiffened, one hand lashing out to catch his shoulder. A growl started low in his gut, dark with a threat, but it died on his lips when he turned to face her.

  Her nails dug into his shoulder right before the rich scent of wolf hit his nose.

  Son of a bitch.

  ***

  He was here. Ollie recognized the scent of the Hunter instantly, and she twisted to get a look at the forest surrounding the Balljoint, one hand still on Caine Morgan’s shoulder. The last thing she needed was for the wolf to decide to play hero and go charging into the woods. She tightened her grip on him. “Don’t move. You follow my lead on this, you understand me?”

  She fished the phone out of her pocket as she started to stand, one hand still on him, still holding him down. His muscles flexed under her touch and she knew he was thinking about bolting. Caine was more than strong enough to wrench his way loose and do whatever he damn well pleased. She wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop him until it was too late.

  “Trust me,” she said, her voice soft, an ache to it she instantly regretted. Dammit. She hated sounded weak, sounding like she was begging. But in a way, she was. Ollie didn’t want someone else to die because they couldn’t bring themselves to trust her. “I know him.”

  “Let me up,” Caine whispered, and she looked at him. It was stupid, her eyes should never have left the woods, but she turned to see what kind of man could hold such danger in his voice and yet still wait for permission.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I won’t. Unless I see him, I’m following your lead.” His lips twitched into a quick flash of a snarl. She let him go.

  “Thank you.” Ollie held the phone to her ear, unholstered her gun, and started moving towards the woods, breathing deep to inhale past the heavy scent of pine needles and leaf litter, past the booze and greasy food smells coming from the building. The scent of the Hunter still hung in the air. Very recent.