by Rebecca York
Human intelligence.
And in that one shattering moment, she knew what her mind had shut away—what her intellect had refused to believe when reality was too terrible to contemplate.
The wolf was Ross!
Even as the thought grabbed her by the throat, she rejected it.
Impossible.
But it came slamming back with a force that physically knocked the breath from her lungs.
Ross was the wolf.
The man who had made incredible love with her last night.
Ross. The wolf.
The first time she had seen the animal, he had threatened her, his muzzle smeared with blood from the kill. He didn't threaten her now. Not physically. He only threatened her sanity.
A sob rose in her throat as she turned and stumbled back through the door.
Shaken, feeling as if she'd been torn into shreds, she backed away from the door, crashed into a low table, and cried out as pain shot through her leg.
Making it no farther than the couch, she collapsed and huddled into herself, her thoughts scattered, fragmented.
She wanted to look away, but her eyes were drawn to the curtains.
Maybe she had been mistaken. Maybe she had somehow made it up. Just the way she'd made up the other two encounters. Then the curtains moved, and a shaft of sunlight pierced the darkness of the room.
He was coming in. But who? The wolf or the man?
Her breath heaving in jagged gasps, her arms wrapped around her shoulders, she waited.
Then Ross, the man, walked back inside. Naked.
A kind of frozen calm came over her as she stared at him. She should be frightened. She should be angry. But all she could feel was a thousand-pound block of ice compressing her lungs.
The terrible cold held her fast, froze her emotions, leaving her rigid as a statue carved from snow.
Ross stared at her with the same rigid calm, and she sensed that he was working to contain emotions as searing as the ones she felt.
Mechanically he pulled his clothes on. Strapped on his shoulder holster. Afraid that he might come closer, she watched him warily. But he stayed where he was by the wall, regarding her with his dark eyes. Eyes so like the yellow eyes of the wolf.
Why hadn't she seen that before?
Because she hadn't wanted to. Perhaps that was her fault. But he was the one who had hidden the truth.
"You lied to me," she whispered, feeling as if the two of them were confronting each other in the eye of a hurricane. In a little while, the storm would rage again. For the moment, the air around them was clear and calm.
"I never lied. I told you there was a genetic problem in my heritage. You told me I have an extra chromosome. Now you know what it does."
"You let me think that I was going crazy. You let me think I imagined the wolf."
"Are you better off now that you know?" he asked with maddening calm, then continued in the same flat voice. "I was trying to save you. My father told me that by the time I was thirty, I'd start looking for a mate—that I'd bond with a woman, and neither one of us would be able to resist the other—because the werewolf is programed to perpetuate his genes. I told myself that wasn't going to happen to me. To make sure it didn't happen, I started keeping to myself. Then you found me naked and wounded. And I had no control over the situation. You touched me, took care of me, and you're seeing the results." His Adam's apple bobbed. "But maybe it's not too late for you. Maybe if I just walk away now, you can go on with your life and forget about last night."
She tried to take in what he was saying, even as he gave her one last regretful look. Then he turned and exited through the door where he'd come in.
In that moment, the ice that held her fast shattered. She fought for breath, felt the searing pain in her chest—in the very depths of her soul.
A cry welled in her throat, a cry of loss and rage. Curling into herself, she raised her arms and cupped them over her head, trying to protect something inside herself that was weak and vulnerable. Yet deep within her she knew that it was already too late.
HER cry of anguish pursued Ross as he staggered toward his car, wrenched open the door, slid inside, then fumbled with the key, his hands so numb he could barely push it into the ignition. He had held himself together long enough to say a few words to her. Then he'd fled, trying to escape pain greater than any he could have imagined.
Finally he succeeded in starting the car. Yanking the vehicle into reverse, he lurched backward down the driveway, almost plowing into a tree near the street.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, he whipped into first gear and roared down the road.
The blacktop in front of him was a blur, overshadowed by the picture in his mind of the horror on Megan's face when she'd finally figured it out. Figured out that the man she had made love with last night was a monster.
A monster who felt as if his heart had been ripped from his body. Because until he had seen that look on her face, he hadn't truly understood what it was to suffer the tortures of the damned.
His hands fused to the wheel, he drove on. He was several miles from Megan's house when he realized he was driving home. To his refuge. Díthreabh. Where he could lick his wounds.
What had happened was for the best. She'd stumbled upon the wolf when she'd been unprepared and vulnerable. And now she was in shock. But in some deep, unselfish part of himself, he knew she would come to understand what she had escaped. She had saved herself. The woman he loved.
The woman he loved. The phrase played over and over in his mind, and he understood what had eluded him until this moment.
If a man like him could love—then he loved her. But it didn't change anything. His love was tainted by his nature—by the genetic heritage he could never escape. He was a werewolf, helpless to stop himself from repeating the cruel behavior patterns of his kind. To keep his mate pregnant, bearing a succession of children who were doomed to die—or doomed to live the savage life they could never escape.
Rationally he knew that Megan was infinitely better off without him. In his heart he was sick unto death.
MEGAN tried to stand, found her legs were still too wobbly, and simply collapsed back against the cushions.
Lowering her head, she buried her face in her hands, her brain too stunned to cope with reality.
Last night, making love with Ross had been the most wondrous experience of her life. This morning, he had shattered her world.
"Ross." Megan spoke his name, not knowing if it was a plea or a prayer or perhaps a curse.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to pound the walls with her fists. She did none of those things, only huddled on the sofa, her mind in turmoil as bits and pieces of the past few days came back in flashes.
The books on his shelves. Fairy tales. Myths of night stalkers—vampires and werewolves.
His love of the woods.
His extraordinary recuperative powers.
His secrecy. The way he'd warned her to leave. The way he'd struggled to distance himself from her.
She should have been smart enough to listen to him.
A sound bubbled in her throat—something between a sob and a hysterical laugh.
She'd thought she was going crazy. Seeing the wolf. Having no explanation besides the phantoms of her own mind.
There had been no rational interpretation. Nothing she could have accepted until she'd seen it for herself.
FROM a doorway down the aisle, Donald watched Sandy open the shop. She was dressed for business again, in one of her outfits that looked only slightly less trashy than what she'd worn the night before.
On the drive home, he conceded that he'd made a mistake. He shouldn't have had any sexual contact with her until he'd resolved the problem with the binoculars guy. Now he was going to have to tread carefully.
So he did a couple of circuits of the mall before coming back to the shop.
She was alone in the store and behind the counter when he stepped through the
door. Her head shot up when she saw him, and he could see her expression was guarded.
"Hi," he said. "I've been thinking about you since we parted. Wishing we hadn't been in a car, wishing I could have cuddled more and showed my feelings better."
She gave a little nod, and her features relaxed somewhat.
"I want to see a lot more of you."
"I don't exactly feel great about last night."
"I know, baby. And I'm trying to apologize for rushing you into stuff you weren't ready for."
"I wasn't."
Sure, he thought. Wait till I rush you into something you're really not expecting.
"So I was hoping you'd let me buy you lunch," he said. That hadn't been on his mind at all, but he figured it couldn't hurt.
"Okay."
He cleared his throat. "Do you have that credit slip for me to look at?"
She looked toward the door. "No."
He struggled to keep the anger out of his voice. "What do you mean, no?"
"I can't let you see the slip. That's against company policy."
Before he could reach across the counter and shake her, she said, "But I can tell you his name. It's Ross Marshall."
He felt the awful tightness ease in his chest. "Ross Marshall. There probably aren't a lot of guys with that name."
"Yeah."
"Sandy, I really appreciate this. I really appreciate you," he added for good measure.
"I just hope my boss doesn't find out."
"How could he—unless you tell him."
"You're right." She pressed her hands against the counter. "I'm off at eleven-thirty for lunch."
He made his features register disappointment. "I'm working until one. So that's not gonna work. We'll have to do it another day."
"Yes. Okay."
"I'd better get back to work, before I lose my job."
She nodded, and he left—then headed straight for the hallway with the telephones and the rest rooms. Choked with excitement, he looked up Ross Marshall in the phone book.
He wasn't listed in the white pages, and Donald's heart plummeted.
Shit!
Ordering himself to calm down, he tried information. This part was tricky, now that the system was more automated. So he told the recorded message that he was from out of the area and looking up an old school friend. In the middle of the explanation, a real live operator came on the line; he told her that he wanted to make sure he'd located the right Ross Marshall.
"I have a listing for a Ross Marshall, private detective."
A private detective! Jesus. It was several seconds before he could drag in breath enough to speak. "Could you just read me the address so I can see if it's familiar?"
"Eighty-five seventy-two Stony Brook Lane," she told him.
"Yeah. That sounds right. Thanks." He wrote it down and hung up, feeling light-headed.
A private detective. With a dog. Investigating him!
Well, so fucking what? He didn't have any proof of anything. The dog hadn't come back with a report about the grave.
It was his word against the bastard's. Now.
Soon the bastard was going to be dead.
His next stop was the bookstore, where he consulted one of those detailed street maps. Stony Brook Lane wasn't in Montgomery County. It turned out to be in Howard County, off Route 99.
Was it really him? It had to be. He'd seen the guy's SUV last night, with the same first two license-plate letters as on the SUV from the second time the bastard had come visiting with his damn dog.
He made another circuit of the mall, his mind whirling. When he passed a guy lighting up a cigarette, he didn't even stop to chew him out.
He couldn't keep his thoughts off Ross Marshall. Couldn't suppress the excitement surging through him with the hum of an electric current. It was almost like the way he felt when he got a woman in his car, hand-cuffed and scared shitless. Almost sexual.
He was breathing hard. His face was flushed. And he knew he couldn't spend the next five hours prowling the walkways of this stupid mall.
Changing directions, he went down to the office, told the dippy little secretary he must have picked up a stomach virus and that he was taking sick leave. Then he went to his locker, got out his coat, and started for his car.
MEGAN sat on the sofa for a long time, unable to rouse herself. Finally, to escape the pain and misery, she pushed herself up and staggered down the hall and got dressed. But once she'd slipped into the car, she wasn't sure where she was going.
Work?
A sound of denial bubbled in her throat. Betty would see she was still upset and try to get her to talk about it.
Another hysterical laugh bubbled up. She couldn't talk about this with Betty. Or anyone else.
Hank would still be wondering what was wrong. He'd slide her questioning looks, but he wouldn't say anything. Walter would still be angry. And God knows where that would lead.
Because if she told any of them what had happened this morning, they would think she had lost her mind. Funny, that's what she'd been thinking herself. Now she knew she was completely sane. As sane as she could be after last night and this morning.
At first she drove aimlessly. But when she found herself near an entrance to Montgomery Mall, she pulled into the parking lot.
She wasn't sure what she was doing there. But she didn't have any better ideas, so she found a parking space and started toward the main entrance.
She was marching up the aisle toward the door when she stopped in her tracks, suddenly remembering what Ross had told her yesterday.
Yesterday, before he'd shattered her life.
She shook her head, refocusing her thoughts. Ross had told her the killer worked here. That he was a security guard. Which meant that hanging around the mall was probably a bad idea.
BECAUSE he couldn't bear the four walls of the house pressing in upon him, Ross fled into the woods. Not as a wolf. Not after the encounter with Megan that morning.
Stopping beside an oak tree, he ran his fingers over the rich brown bark of the trunk, pressing his flesh against the narrow ridges.
Even in his human body, this place always had the power to calm him. But today the pain was simply too great.
Once again he saw the look on Megan's face—the look when she understood that he was the wolf. His whole body ached from the horror he had seen in her eyes. Suddenly unable to stand erect, he folded in the middle, wrapping his arms across his stomach to hold back the pain.
He stayed that way for a long time—unable to do more than fight the sense of loss. He didn't know how he would get through the next few minutes, let alone all the long lonely years that stretched ahead of him.
Jaw clenched, he forced his mind away from his own misery. At least there was one good thing that had come out of the meeting of wolf and woman this morning. It had saved her from a future of sorrow. A future with a man who would take out his savage nature on his family as surely as he would on his enemies.
But there was still the present to deal with. He had managed to save her when she'd been attacked. Yet she might still be in danger—and that possibility twisted like a dull blade into his guts.
Infused with a sense of purpose, he began to think about the car that had stopped in front of her house the other morning. What if the bastard was coming back?
But why had he been there in the first place?
Because he was planning to search for something? Or because he'd found out her address and was stalking her?
He looked at his watch. She should be at work—if she'd managed to make it to work after the scene in her backyard this morning.
Trotting back to the house, he changed into fresh jeans and a T-shirt and made a few quick preparations. Then he jumped into the SUV and headed back toward Megan's house.
DONALD was about to push open the door when he stopped short.
It was her. Coming toward the mall. The little blonde who'd been having dinner with the Ross Marshall guy in the food cou
rt the night before.
About twenty yards from the doorway, she abruptly stopped walking. Jesus, had she seen him? Did she know who he was? The questions swirled in his head as she turned and rushed back through the parking lot.
It wasn't because of him, his mind screamed, even as he felt sweat break out on his forehead.
Should he go after her? Get back inside? What?
Opting for action, he bolted through the door, then hung back as she got into her car, a cheap little green Toyota.
Because he couldn't risk her spotting him, he couldn't get close enough to read her license plate. Too bad his Land Rover was half a block away. He jogged over to it, and by the time he made it back to the area where she'd parked, she was nowhere in sight.
Shit!
Making a split-second decision, he took a guess at what exit she was using and roared up a row of cars.
At the Democracy Boulevard light, he spied her stuck in a line of cars.
Dodging around a Volkswagen, he joined the line, slipping past a dumb as mud woman who was trying to make a left turn. By the time the woman in the Toyota was a quarter mile down Democracy, he'd caught up.
Yes! This was his day. Nothing could go wrong.
Being careful to hang well back, he followed her toward Bethesda. Before she reached the downtown area, she turned onto Conway Street, and then into an industrial park. He stayed several car lengths behind, waiting for her to get out of her car. But the bitch was just sitting there. What the hell was she doing anyway? Eyes narrowed, he pulled into a parking slot a dozen yards down the row.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
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JACK HUNG UP the phone, made some notations on a lined pad, and put them in the new folder that he'd started.
He'd already ascertained that a Donald Arnott had worked at King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania for four years and that he'd resigned eighteen months ago.
According to his performance evaluations, his work had been satisfactory but not outstanding.
Then, pretending to be doing a credit check, Jack verified that Arnott had joined the security force at Montgomery Mall twelve months ago.
