Chapter Fifteen
Luke Carson looked like a man waiting to die. His face was sunken, pale, the crow’s feet around his eyes were suddenly gouged deeper with anguish and worry. His daughter Janey clung to his hand, her face and red and puffy with tears, and with her other hand she reached out to Caine. Seeking comfort, solace from her alpha. He caught her small hand in his and squeezed. “Hang in there, sweetheart. I’m going to do everything I can to bring your mother and sister home.”
The rumble of tires over gravel alerted him to the car pulling up the drive, and he knew without looking who was here. The engine went quiet as Janey stared at him, so much knowledge in her eyes it hurt. A twelve year old girl shouldn’t look so certain when it came to things like death. “I know.”
Just like she knew they wouldn’t find her mom and sister before the Hunter killed them. Luke gave a low, keening groan, and Caine wanted to punch him. He knew Luke was hurting, worried, but—dammit!—he had a child standing right next to him who needed him to be strong.
But hitting her father wouldn’t make things any easier on Janey, so instead he rose and looked the man in the eyes, alpha to beta. “Take her home. Comfort her.”
Man up and be her goddamned father.
Luke gave a jerky nod and moved away just as Ollie closed the distance between them, her eyes haunted as she watched them go. “Family?”
“Yeah, the husband, daughter Janey, and two other kids. The other two were at a friend’s.” With a frustrated grunt he turned to give Ollie a good look. Her blue jeans lovingly clung to her rounded hips and long, full legs, and her white blouse was wrinkled and mussed with dog hair, but it was still tucked in. She’d probably just gotten home from work, buried that dog of hers in a hug, and gotten his call.
At least, he believed that until he got a good look at her face.
“What happened?”
Her bottom lip trembled, and she shook her head, moving away. Tilting her nose back into the wind, she scented, already moving on to work when he caught her by her upper arm and turned her back to him. “What happened, Ollie?”
“He came to my house, terrorized Nana.” She turned away, blinking rapidly, and Caine could see the effort it took her not to cry. “He tied Nana to one of my kitchen chairs, half strangled Star until he could tie her down with Nana without getting bitten, and left me another note. Then, apparently, he came right over here and picked up two more victims.”
Christ. Caine’s tongue swept out over his lips a second before his other hand slid up to cup the back of her neck, dragging her flat against him. He took her mouth in a rough, haphazard kiss. More desire and frustration than finesse. It wasn’t the kind of kiss meant to woo or seduce. When his tongue slid against hers this time, it was to drown out his own sorrows by losing himself in her mouth. God help him, Ollie kissed him right back, needing the powerful punch of connection and pure lust as much as he did.
She grabbed fistfulls of his shirt, pulling him closer, clinging like she’d never let him go. She didn’t have to worry. Not going anywhere, girl. Then she dropped her head back, yielding, and a growl bubbled up through his chest.
Ollie pulled back on a soft gasp. Her breath hitched, and Caine snagged her bottom lip between his teeth, nibbling until her eyes drifted closed again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered when he let her go. His thumb swept over her pulse. Light, sensual. With one touch he sent a shiver down her spine, and she trembled. “What’d the note say?” he asked, almost absently.
“‘Still think you know me?’” Those plump, pale lips of hers twisted into a bitter, self-deprecating smile. “I never knew him at all.”
“Bull.” Her eyes flew opened at that, and Caine leaned in to nip at her lips again. “Bull, sweetheart.”
“Yeah, well. What I think I know hasn’t saved a soul.”
“Yours. It saved you.” Guilt flared in her eyes at that, steel turning molten, burning with tears, and Caine laid a tender kiss against her forehead. “Some days I think I have you all figured out. I can see the guilt you pile up on yourself, just one heaping scoop after another until I can barely see you over the heap of it surrounding you. Guilt for surviving, guilt for trying, guilt for thinking you failed—”
“I did fail. Every single time he won—” He pressed a finger to her lips and shook his head.
“You don’t fail when someone dies. You fail when you stop trying to catch this man. You fail when you blame yourself for when he pulls the trigger.”
A bird called urgently from the trees, over and over again, like the chime of a cuckoo clock, marking the seconds as they ticked by with her staring up at him. He could see how badly she wanted to believe him, to accept what he was saying as truth.
“It’s moments like this that I think I have you nailed down,” Caine continued. “But what I don’t get, and what I think is the friggin’ core of you, is why? Why him? Why this case?”
Caine ghosted a kiss over her lips. “So what makes you tick, Ollie?”
He could feel her heart pounding against the palm he held cupped around her neck, a steady thud-thud in time with the cry of the bird above. Tick-tock. It raced as the seconds blurred by, one after the other. Her chest swelled as she breathed in, borrowing courage from the forest air all around her, and he looked down to watch as it lifted her breasts, made him want to lay kisses along each delicate curve, but Caine held himself back. Waiting.
She was worth his patience.
“In the Shifter Town Enforcement Academy,” she began slowly, “for your final year, you have to pick one of the big, ongoing cases, see if you can shed new light on it. You don’t get access to any of the actual files, but you’re supposed to dig up news articles, any and all information that you can find, and build a profile. See if you can find any clues that might help solve the case.”
“Sounds fun.”
A laugh flashed in her eyes, damn near twinkling, and he knew she’d really enjoyed the challenge, from digging up the information to trying to solve a case no one else had. A blush touched her cheeks. “It was. At the end you have to present your findings to the class, and everyone pitches in, trying to fill in anything you might have missed. If your findings are deemed helpful, they’re passed to the Enforcement agency covering the case.”
“Has it ever helped solve anything before?”
“Yeah. A few times. Sometimes you need fresh eyes. Sometimes you need that kid gunning for a grade who’s just plain desperate enough to search through fifty stacks of parking tickets and find one that matches the night of a murder.”
Ollie bent her head and he could imagine the memories flashing by in her eyes. “So you obviously picked the Hunter. Still doesn’t answer my first question, why him? What about this one man is so important to you?”
She started to shrink away, pull back, but Caine refused to let her go. She’d hidden from the reasons she’d picked this case for so long, it was time she actually looked at them. He turned her in his arms, fitting one over her shoulders as he tugged her close to his side and moved them towards the stretch of forest between his house and Trey’s.
The pack owned the whole street, more than eighty acres among the lot of them, with plenty of woodland between the houses so they could run to their hearts’ content. Or walk away their fears. Ollie leaned her head against his shoulder with a soft sigh. “I don’t know, I just—”
“He’s not the only serial killer out there.”
She half smiled at that. “No. My brother was dealing with one in Colorado at the time. The Wolfman. I thought of doing that case.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Her shoulders started to lift, then stopped and she scrunched her nose as she looked at him. “You ever wonder why I live with my grandmother?”
“Don’t change the subject, Ol.”
“I’m not. My mom died when I was really little. Brandt knew her better than I did, but even his memory is sketchy. So we grew up with our dad.”
She burrowed in closer and
he felt her take a deep breath, her body giving a slight tremor before she continued. “He used to drink a lot. Constantly. He could barely hold down a decent job for any length of time because he was always wasted.”
Caine caught her hand, fingers entwining with hers. His silent comfort urging her on.
“He took us hunting once. God, I didn’t want to go. I was thirteen and more than smart enough to know that a drunk man unarmed is dangerous enough. Add a gun and I’d be lucky to survive the trip.”
The forest had closed in around them, blotting out the house behind them, the road. Leaving them alone in the quieter birdsong of early evening, only the crunch of their shoes over the forest floor making any real noise at all. “Did he ever hit you?”
“Oh yeah. Brandt took most of it. If he thought dad was going to get violent, he’d piss him off. I used to think he was stupid to do it, all the while so thankful it was him and not me. Then I started realizing he was doing it for me. I tried a few times to help him out, cut him some slack, but Brandt never let me. And by then he was just plain better at pissing our dad off.”
His respect for the other wolfhound went up a notch. Caine would have done the same thing for his little sister, made damn sure she’d never learn how to draw their father’s fire the way he could. Turning his head, he brushed his chin over her hair, frizzy from a long day’s work and barely contained in the messy bun that Ollie wore day in and day out. He breathed her in. The apple blossom of her shampoo, the soft, womanly scent that was just Ollie, the musky scent of her dog-half.
“Please tell me your father’s dead.”
She shook her head slightly, and he nuzzled in closer so she couldn’t see the flare of anger in his eyes. “No, but Brandt and I packed up and left when I was sixteen, and went to live with Nana. A few years ago, she moved out here, and when I got out of the academy I came to join her. Big house, one woman, it just felt right for us to have each other.”
“And you could work this case.”
“Yeah,” she breathed out. Her chin dipped down in the smallest nod. “And when I was looking through those cases back at the academy, trying to make up my mind, I found him and he reminded me a lot of my father. Not the drunk part. But the fact that he obviously liked the hunt. He wanted them to run. He wanted their fear. That’s my dad, all the way to the bone.”
Caine could see the peak of Trey’s house through the trees and angled them away, heading deeper into the woods behind the houses. The last thing he wanted to do was stop her now. Ollie’s fingers toyed with his, squeezing and letting go, tapping against his skin. Nervous.
“My dad never liked a clean kill. He’d shoot just to scare them sometimes. Others, he’d shoot them to make them bleed, and while they ran he’d track them using their blood trail. If he didn’t find them, oh well.”
Monster. Christ, he couldn’t imagine her living with a man like that. “Ollie—”
She shook her head. “So I just couldn’t stop, you know? I had to read on, I had to study him. Know him.” A bitter laugh escaped her then. “So I guess I chose him because I thought I had a unique view to bring to the case, I’d lived with someone like him. Dad hated when Brandt would take his hits without an ounce of fear. I couldn’t manage that. I think in a lot of ways I excited him more because I was scared and couldn’t hide it.”
The growl slipped out of Caine before he could stop it that time, and Ollie paused, twisting in his arms to slide her hands up his chest. Rising on her tiptoes, Ollie pressed her lips to his to soothe him with a kiss. A soft, feather light touch against his mouth. “It was a long time ago.”
Her metallic gray eyes met his, strong, vibrant. The woman in front of him had been forged in fire; the loss of her mother, the abuse of her father, and now, the Hunter. She framed his face with her hands, thumbs sweeping over the shadow of stubble on his skin, and all he wanted to do was lay her down and strip off every stitch of clothing. Kiss her lips, the hollow of her throat, the swell of her breasts. Kiss her everywhere.
With a groan, he leaned in to steal another taste of her when she whispered, “That’s why I was so certain that if they didn’t run he wouldn’t, maybe even couldn’t, kill them.”
Caine paused, watching her. Ollie bit her lip, almost lost in thought. “I was right. He tried so hard to get me to run. He wanted it, and I could see the anger and impatience in his eyes when I kept Rosalie from running, when I refused to run, just like my father with Brandt.”
And there, in those words, Caine saw the spark of triumph. The strong woman she was, before the guilt dragged her down. The woman who captivated him, who wouldn’t give up. Who, in the end, was going to beat this bastard. He watched as she shed the guilt and she damn near glowed with pride. She’d beaten the Hunter that night. Had she saved Rosalie Myers? No. But she’d done something no one else had—escaped, survived—and it was time she relished that.
“Just like your father, he’s a coward.”
The smile that curved her lips at that remark made him rock hard.
“Yes,” she whispered. Looking at her, Caine had never wanted anyone more in his life.
He wrapped his hands around her hips and drew her against him. The hard press of his erection against her belly drew a hiss from him as his lips crashed down over hers. He tried to show her in a kiss what he’d failed to help her see a thousand times with words.
It was soft at times, hard in others, demanding and cherishing, emotions whipping back and forth between him until he didn’t know how he wanted to kiss her, except that he couldn’t bring himself to stop. With one hand, he reached up and pulled the hair tie holding up her hair, and let the frazzled, black waves fall down around her shoulders, only to bury his fingers in the length of it and pull her back.
“And you’re going to beat him.”
Ollie looked up at him, squirming a bit against his throbbing erection. She grinned. “I’m counting on it.”
Caine started to say something, fully expecting to argue, but the confident answer left him stunned. Ollie shook her head, playing pushing at his shoulders. “Don’t look at me like that. As much as it scares me sometimes, as much as the guilt eats at me sometimes, I’m still banking on winning. Someone has to, right?”
The question drew a surprised laugh from him. “Yeah. I’m betting on you, too.”
“You better be.”
He kissed her again then. Hard, deep, and fast. When they broke it was on a rough groan as his forehead leaned against hers. “Stay with me tonight, Ol.”
His hand slipped through her hair to wrap around the back of her neck, massaging. Silently urging her to say yes. Twilight had already begun to darken the forest, painting the trees into silhouettes. Gossamer strands of light still managed to fight through the haze of dusk, but it became filmy, misty, hanging like ghosts between the trees.
Wrapped in each other, Holly’s back still propped against the tree, Caine waited, more than willing to wait until the light left the forest altogether, when a smile touched her lips. “Okay.”
One night. With nothing but the two of them, skin against skin, legs tangled in sheets. He tugged her head back, to nibble over the exposed line of her throat. It wouldn’t last forever. When dawn arrived the next morning, it’d come with the firm reminder that they had three days to the full moon. Three days to find a miracle.
It almost felt wrong to have her now. But she needed rest—they both did—and she needed loving as much as he needed to give it to her.
Caine let Ollie slide down until her feet touched the ground and, taking her hand, led her back towards the house, now bathed in twilight. The darkening sky was slowly beginning to pop with stars, and now that they had emerged from the trees he could see them glimmering against the night backdrop. Ollie leaned against him briefly and then, grabbing his hand with a triumphant grin, began pulling him along towards his house.
She ran her hand up the polished rail of his front porch, took in the small deck landing, the door with the oval window above
it—just another way to let in the natural light. Every inch of this house had been designed and built by members of his pack. Just like every other house on this road.
Caine leaned past her to open the door, welcoming her inside. She fit. The strength that was Ollie blended beautifully with the quiet comfort of his home. It wasn’t anything special, no sprawling mansion. The worn leather sofa stretched out in front of the fireplace smelled like home, the right-hand cushion soft and sagging from the years he’d been sitting there to watch TV.
The staircase leading to second floor turned off to the right, revealing the painting Claire’s mother had done when he’d been out messing around in her back yard in wolf form one day. Ollie caught sight of it and strode over, her head cocked, dark eyebrows furrowed over her silver eyes.
She paused a foot away and looked back at him. “It’s you. Who painted it?”
Caine glanced at the silver and black wolf. The brush of brown between his ears. Afternoon sunlight bathed him in that picture, made him look truly wild, a part of nature itself, with the long willow grasses tickling up the wolf’s belly, shadows of a few pack members lurking in the distance. She’d captured it all with a beautiful, perfect hand. “Claire’s mother. Mrs. Rawson.”
Sadness crept between them, but Caine crossed the room before it could bog her down, touching her chin briefly as he turned her back to face him. “This whole place, every house on this street, it was built by the pack. There are memories of those we lost, and cherished moments with those we love, in every house.”
He turned to the picture, admiring again the way Mrs. Rawson had captured the dark almond of his eyes, lighter as a wolf than they ever were as a man. He turned back to Ollie, hand outstretched, and waited, letting her find her own way past the stab of guilt and back to steady ground. With one last glance at the picture, Ollie took his hand and let him lead her upstairs. Past the spare bedroom he used as a den, past the little half bath midway down the hall, and towards the room that smelled the most of him.
Sadie Hart Page 15
