“Okay,” she muttered, not meeting his eyes.
It’d have to do. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek…which she didn’t acknowledge because she was too busy sulking. He tried not to smile. “I’ll call you when I need you.” That lightened her scowl…slightly.
When he arrived at Merilee’s house a few minutes later, he actually drew back as he got out of his truck. No. He shook his head. No, this couldn’t be happening. Dammit. Couldn’t anything go right for him? One day of peace. One day.
Liam was on the porch waiting for him and smiled grimly and snidely at his expression. He wasn’t feeling the need to show deference apparently, and this wouldn’t help stomp down that moron’s issues with authority.
He dragged a hand through his hair and shook his head. Hell.
The whole property smelled like LeAnn.
Chapter Eight
She’d gone to the door to watch Travis leave, but stayed there as another scent hit her. It was distant, but it was there. Ross.
“Ross,” she called softly. “Come in and we can talk.” She had no idea what pack law said in this situation, but she’d handle it if he came in. She waited and sighed when she didn’t hear any movement. Leaning against the doorframe, she said, just as quietly, “You probably don’t know what to think about your sister shacking up with the local sheriff, huh? It’s weird. But he’s a nice guy.” Also, they weren’t really doing anything. “I guess you probably see him more as Alpha than a sheriff, though.”
Nothing.
“I’m sorry if our dad messed you up and made you think revenge was worth all this, but it really isn’t. I’m sorry you can’t take it back.” The Ross she’d known would have eventually regretted what he’d done. There were no take-backs with some mistakes, though. Especially killing someone. Whether or not they deserved it…and sometimes they really did deserve it. And not just by being annoying.
The cold was seeping into her skin—her skin that was still warm from lying next to Travis. She belonged to him. Even if she didn’t belong with him. Shivering, she rubbed her hands up and down her upper arms. Here she was, standing between two men—her brother and the man who’d be her mate if she let him. One she belonged with by virtue of her blood. The other had bonded with her soul.
If she did talk with Ross, Travis might see that as a betrayal of his trust—especially if she did it in his place. But maybe she could talk Ross into giving himself up. Travis might kill him anyway. If she talked Ross into showing himself and it cost his life, she’d have betrayed her own brother. There was no way to win here.
Why is it so cold?
Maybe because she’d been so warm.
Maybe the reason she was staying with Travis and considering staying with the pack was because she’d been alone for so long, and the last of her family was as good as dead. She’d learned the hard way that it was better to be alone for the right reasons than be with someone for the wrong ones.
LeAnn waited another couple minutes, just because, and then she went to go have breakfast and wait by the phone…as long as she could. She was going to try really, really hard to stay here this time. At least this time, Travis had a good reason for asking her not to come with him, and it’s not like the whole rest of the pack was in on it.
…
“Did you tell anyone?” Travis asked as he approached.
Liam finally looked down.
Hell. “Who did you tell?”
“Melissa went into heat last night and Lara is due to. They deserved to know.”
Travis shook his head. “LeAnn didn’t do this. Someone stole her clothes and used her scent, but she didn’t do this. She even said Merilee was nice.” And this was not nice. There was too much blood in the air for a tracking tag being yanked out. It also ruled out Merilee getting scared and taking out the tag herself and running for it. He could assume that Melissa and Lara had panicked and called around. Travis stopped on the porch and inhaled. He hissed out a breath while clenching his teeth.
Well, that’s only the second-worst scent to have here. I can’t catch a break. What the hell? Who did I wrong in the universe?
“Ross,” Liam said, stopping too. “I didn’t notice that before.” Probably because he wasn’t looking for it. He’d condemned LeAnn in his mind already.
He ran a hand through his hair and fought the urge to punch something. He couldn’t lose control in front of Liam. His movements were stiff as he tried to minimize his responses. Keep it together. Act calm.
This couldn’t be happening. Every time he thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did.
“Maybe Ross told her to do it,” Liam said.
And there it was. That was definitely worse. He wanted to throttle him for saying what everyone else was going to assume. A brother-sister killing team.
There was no way. Even knowing her history, knowing she’d killed a man… She wouldn’t do this. Not in her right mind. He inhaled and exhaled slowly. Even if she wasn’t in her right mind… The niggling worry surfaced in his head warning him that he’d underestimated her in the beginning. But that was before he knew her—before this morning.
No. He could trust his gut instinct on this. LeAnn was being framed.
Sitting on Merilee’s porch swing, he opened his laptop. Merilee’s tracking device might be here, but the movement of other tags might be useful, though he doubted it. If they’d gone to the trouble of pulling hers out, which must have hurt like hell if she was still alive, then they’d cover up their own. Angling it away from Liam, he looked up the tags. Holy hell. He’d thought that tagging them would help. His crazy need for control. Instead, it was fairly damning if anyone else saw it as he dragged through the check-ins. Someone must have placed those jamming devices all over. Nearly half the pack disappeared after the challenge when they left. The only person running like crazy everywhere including past Merilee’s a couple times…was him.
He shut the laptop. If they went by that, it was either someone without a tag and a reason to hate Merilee…or him. Great. He pinched the bridge of his nose. A headache was building in the base of his skull and behind his eyes from the tension. He’d faced greater challenges than this and stayed cool. He was known for being easygoing. He should be able to handle this—to bring it back under his control. He was a damn genius. Why couldn’t he pull it together?
LeAnn.
The stakes had never been this high before. And she had him off-balance and needy at the worst possible time for it. He had to protect her from everyone, and hell, if someone killed Merilee, who was next? And why were they trying to frame LeAnn? If Ross was doing this, he might have to kill his own future brother-in-law. That ought to win points with LeAnn.
Okay, Travis, deal with one thing at a time. Control the closest things to the problem and widen your circle from there. You’re a damn Alpha—act like it.
“Liam, go home and wait for me to contact you,” he said.
Liam snarled under his breath, but turned and stalked away.
After Liam’s SUV was out of earshot, he pulled out his phone and stared at it. He could do this on his own. He didn’t need help. Setting his phone and laptop to the side, he walked the perimeter of the house, trying to catch any other scent besides LeAnn’s and Ross’s. There were faint traces of others, but… He wiped a hand down his face. He was not a tracker. Give him something more than a faint trace of scent to follow. Clues. Facts. Logic. But scent? Hell. It was either bringing in Jordan…or LeAnn. He picked up his phone.
“I hate you,” Jordan said.
“I’ve got a missing pack member, but I think Merilee’s dead.” He set his laptop by the door as he walked through her place. Death and sex. The whole place smelled like too much blood, death, and sex.
“Who’s your most likely suspect?”
“They’ve framed LeAnn.”
“Are you sure she’s being framed?”
Travis gritted his teeth but forced himself to answer the question reasonably. “Merilee’s place smells l
ike LeAnn…like she came here and didn’t even bother covering it up. Someone stole her clothes a couple days ago, and I spent the whole night chasing her. I swear she was not here last night. At the very least, I would have run across her in the time it took to do this. She was in her car, and her car was not anywhere near here. She was somewhere south of here because she was still pissed at me for last night.” He realized how that sounded. “She wasn’t pissed…she was upset.”
Jordan sighed. “If she felt betrayed, you can’t predict her behavior when instinct hit her.”
“I can. She doesn’t feel threatened by any of the females in the pack besides Alanna. I asked her about Merilee this morning because I was thinking about what you said, and I told her that I didn’t like Merilee. She thought I was saying I hated her, and she thought that was weird because Merilee was, in her words, nice.”
“Did she talk about her in the past tense?”
“No.”
Jordan got up from bed after murmuring to Christa, “It’s okay, baby, stay asleep.” A moment later, Travis heard the door shut and a cat meow as Jordan walked. The place was huge, and the echo of feet sounded eerie as Travis waited for the other man’s opinion.
“I’ve got other females going into heat,” Travis said when Jordan’s silence got to him. “And Liam was the one to find Merilee missing, so he called them to warn them.”
Jordan swore under his breath. “So this is bad.”
“Someone dug out her tracking tag and left it on the bed.”
“Ross.”
“His scent is around here.”
“Hell. But he’s dead.”
Travis rubbed his tired eyes. He’d been exhausted, and he still was, but this was certainly jogging his adrenaline. “Ross did dig out his tracking tag.” He was now more than willing to blame his mate’s brother, even if it meant he’d returned from the dead. “That’s another thing. LeAnn doesn’t know we have tracking tags. I never mentioned it.” She was being framed. He might question a lot about LeAnn, and hell, she needed that therapist, but she didn’t do this.
“And you’re sure Ross never mentioned his tracking tag?”
“Hell. No, I’m not sure.” He could imagine Ross mentioning it. They’d all found it futuristic and funny when they’d done it. None of them had ever assumed it’d become this big a deal. This was insane.
“And she’s never seen you on your computer?”
He closed his eyes. She’d broken into his computer, but he wasn’t going to tell Jordan that. “She’s never seen me. And I know she hasn’t accessed the program itself—it keeps a record of when I log on.” She might have seen the program on his computer and guessed. But it would take a cold and calculated person to then extrapolate that she’d need to remove her victim’s tracking tag to hide the body, and a freaking psycho to actually do it. He shook his head as he stared at the bloody tag in the middle of Merilee’s bed. LeAnn was framed good and strong. “It’s got to be Ross. But why would he frame LeAnn?”
“I don’t know, but Dane found tire tracks yesterday up at the cabin. Up beyond where we parked. There was another car there. They might have been older tracks and something other than whatever Ross was driving, but he said another car was up there beyond the cabin recently. I meant to tell you when I saw you last night but I forgot, because that still seems so implausible.”
“Someone might’ve taken some of Ross’s clothes, too.”
“So you’re saying someone is framing both of them?”
“Maybe.”
“Wow, all the sickos ended up in Rainier pack.”
“Yeah. That’s helpful. Thanks.”
“Well, what do your tracking tags tell you? You’ve looked, haven’t you?”
“Someone put jammers all over, I think. Half the pack disappears after the challenge…except for me. So, yeah, it could also have been me who did this.”
He heard the smile in Jordan’s voice as he said, “I’m discounting you as a suspect.”
“I make as much sense as LeAnn.”
“You know that’s not true. And as I told you, pack law allows for challenges with alpha females to be settled in private, so if LeAnn did this, she didn’t break pack law as far as tradition goes.”
“She didn’t do this—and she doesn’t even know tradition to know this is allowed.”
“It sounds like it’s your word against the evidence. And we’re only talking about pack law. The actual law, on the other hand, that silly human law that you’ve sworn to uphold…if you find a body and don’t deal with it, your pack may turn on you since you’re a sheriff, and then you’ll be circling getting charged with a crime yourself. You know how much we depend on the pack’s secrecy. The fact that most Lycans die as wolves helps, but if Merilee turns up as a two-legged, you’re screwed.”
The ache in his brain grew sharper, and a muscle in his eyelid twitched. He growled. This was hell. Pure hell.
“If it comes to that, LeAnn could make a real defense for insanity.”
He growled louder.
“Actually, she’d be telling the court that she can’t turn into a wolf, whereas we all know she can, so that might not work out.”
“Jordan, quit being an ass. She didn’t do this. I need real solutions.”
“You’re going to have to have a meeting with LeAnn present. She comes across as harmlessly crazy in person, so that might help.” He sighed. “Actually, I like her. I won’t say that she doesn’t have me unsure of what she’s capable of, but my gut instinct is that she’s harmless…other than to Alanna. She’d gut Alanna. That’s a cage match waiting to happen.”
Travis rubbed his forehead with his palm. He could use a couple ibuprofen and a dark room—in a perfect world. Too little sleep. Too much stress. Too little time holding LeAnn. “You know it can’t be LeAnn because of all the proof that it was LeAnn.”
“I’m doubting your IQ is thirty points higher than mine again.”
“Why would LeAnn bother with jammers all over if she was going to walk in here and leave her scent and when she doesn’t even have a tracking tag?”
“To create reasonable doubt that it was her.”
“Yet, she did this instinctually in a moment of passion after I upset her last night?”
There was a moment of silence before Jordan said, “No, you’re right. That doesn’t make sense. Also, digging out the tracking tag sounds more premeditated and vicious than I think she’s capable of.” It felt like success up until he added, “But if Ross was helping, I could see that.”
“It’s crazy to think that she suddenly found her brother and went along with a bizarre vendetta of his. Ross may have done it without her, but she wouldn’t have done it. When I found her this morning, she was looking at a map planning on another day of looking for him, and she definitely didn’t look like she’d spent the night overpowering and killing someone. She didn’t smell anything like Merilee, either. It doesn’t make sense that it’s her.”
“Your pack won’t see it that way, though. Because the other option is that it’s one of them, or Ross is stalking his own pack now.”
“So what do I do? I want to chase down any possible trails, but I gotta admit, while LeAnn might give you a run for your money at tracking, I’m not doing so well. I can swear there’s another scent here, but they must have scrubbed down and put on LeAnn’s clothing.”
“LeAnn is good?”
“She’s really good, I think.” He didn’t want to tell Jordan that she’d been a successful thief for over a decade thanks to her skills. He still wasn’t sure what he’d be doing about that. This sense of pride he felt that she was that good wasn’t helping, though. It was hard not to be impressed that she was an amazing thief, but he’d have to try.
“I think meeting with your pack is your first order of business. You don’t want anyone acting rashly, and the longer you let their thoughts fester, the harder it’ll be to swing their opinion on LeAnn. But you can’t have it until I get there, and this feels too muc
h like Ross’s trap last week for me to up and go without making sure Christa is safe somewhere.”
“Why can’t I have it before you get here?” He had a lot of respect for Jordan, but this was still his pack, and he wasn’t sure that Jordan was far enough on LeAnn’s side.
“Don’t be an ass…think about it: you’ve got too much emotion invested in LeAnn and you’ve scent-matched to her. You’re going to be overprotective. They need someone impartial to balance you out and to stop you from saying crazy things. And if anyone gets aggressive toward LeAnn, instinct will make you blind and stupid. I’ve been there. I nearly killed Dane once when I was like that. I couldn’t think straight. You need an Alpha there who doesn’t have a dog in this fight.”
“That’s what I don’t like.”
“I like LeAnn, and the more I think about it, the more I realize this doesn’t make sense. But I can act rational and impartial. You’ve wanted to rip my throat out about half of this phone call. You keep freaking out my cat…uhh…Christa’s cat.” Then he said in a lower voice, “Lucifer, what the hell? Yeah, you better go find Christa. You better run.”
“Are you threatening a cat?”
“This thing isn’t just a cat. It’s like an imprisoned minion of evil. I’ll be there in three hours. That ought to be enough time to settle Christa over at her brother’s. Everyone meets at the lodge and no one goes within five hundred feet of Merilee’s.” He paused and then asked, “You’re sure she’s dead? That you shouldn’t be out looking for her?”
“It smells like death in here. It’s got a cloying sweet smell even if it’s faint. Someone died in here.”
“Okay, so having everyone sit tight in the meantime won’t matter.”
“No. I don’t imagine it will.” It was a shame. Merilee could be raunchy and foolish, but she didn’t deserve to die. “Should I hunt down some of these jammers?”
“No, you should go home and keep LeAnn in your sight and watch out for angry mobs.”
Travis sighed. Going home to LeAnn was the thing he wanted most and least. She’d have questions—questions he couldn’t answer. She was starting to trust him, and keeping this from her would piss her off. She’d see it as a betrayal. “This sucks.”
Crazy Over You Page 16
