“Oh, we have another guest.” Zoe straightened. “In fact, I think we have another two guests if I’m not mistaken.” She touched her tongue to her top lip as two shadows edged out of the foliage and onto the lawn. She furrowed her brow in confusion as my heart skipped a beat. Zoe clearly didn’t recognize the newcomers, but I did. “Who the heck are you?”
“Lisa Savage and Fred Pitman,” I gritted out, confusion washing over me. “Apparently they’re working together. I did not see that coming.”
“Fred Pitman.” Aric made a face. “You’re the guy who owns the inn out on the highway.”
“The one with all the dead animals on the wall, right?” Zoe queried, shaking her head.
“The one with the dead animals that stare at us while we’re trying to eat,” Sami bellowed from the raised porch. She stood at the railing and stared at us. “No one wants to eat with dead animals judging you while you’re eating their cousins.”
“I told you to stay in that house!” Zoe snapped.
“You never defined if the porch was part of the house.”
Aric lifted his arm and pointed. “Inside!”
“I never get to have any fun!” Sami stomped her feet as she swept into the house.
“She’s adorable,” Lisa drawled, disdain practically dripping from her tongue. “It’s too bad we have to kill her when we’re done with you. I promise it will be quick, though.”
Zoe blew out a wet raspberry that was so exuberant Lisa had no choice but to wipe the side of her face.
“You’ll never get past us,” Aric said. “Even if you did, you’re no match for Sami.”
Something about the way he said it made me sit up and take notice. I already knew Aric and Zoe were more than they let on. Sure, Zoe told me a bit about her abilities, but she was purposely vague when it came to Aric and Sami. The odds of Sami being normal when her mother was extraordinary were slim. I should’ve realized that.
“Oh, you talk big,” Lisa sneered, “but I’m in control here.”
“We’re in control here,” Fred corrected, raising a gun I hadn’t seen when he first ventured onto the property. “We’re in control. You’ll do what we say and that’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, we’re quaking in our boots.” Zoe bobbed her head agreeably, her tone flat. “Please don’t hurt us. Please spare our child. Please don’t kill the bees when you’re running to escape.”
“I … what?” Fred worked his jaw. “What are you talking about.”
“Try being married to her,” Aric suggested. “She’s right about those bees, though. If she’s not allowed to kill them, neither are you.”
Fred exchanged a quick look with Lisa. “Do you understand what’s going on here?”
“No, and it hardly matters.” Lisa shifted her eyes to me. “This is the one we want. We can kill the others and make our escape, but we need this one alive.”
Me? Was she talking about me? “I’m sorry, but … I don’t understand.”
“She thinks she can use you as a scapegoat or something, or maybe a bargaining chip,” Zoe explained. “She knows she’s in trouble for poisoning her husband and wants to trade you for a free ride out of town.”
Lisa turned haughty. “That shows what you know. I don’t care about that. I want information from her, like how she got involved in this and why she felt the need to save Ethan when she could’ve just left him to die in the woods.”
“She wasn’t alone when she found Ethan,” Aric pointed out.
“No, you were with her.” Lisa’s lips curled into something grotesque. “I blame you, too. That’s why you have to die. You ruined everything for me.”
“I’m pretty sure you ruined it yourself,” I countered, slowly getting to my feet. I positioned myself so I stood between Jack and Lisa, a barrier of sorts. I was determined to protect him. “You only married him for his money. You knew you had to kill him to get it.”
Lisa shrugged. “So?”
“So why did you choose to do it with poison?” Zoe asked. “I mean, there are tons of better ways that ensure he wouldn’t have a chance to recover.”
“He shouldn’t have recovered this time,” Lisa snapped. “He was supposed to wander around aimlessly for a few hours and then die. I spent two days in a hellhole hotel off I-75 in freaking Caro – a city that doesn’t even have a Starbucks – thinking he was dead, only to find he wasn’t dead. How is that even possible?”
“You weren’t even in the woods the entire time,” I mused. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the revelation, but it irritated me all the same. “You left your husband to wander around and ultimately die while you went to a hotel and ordered room service? Nice.”
“Don’t kid yourself. None of the hotels in Caro are exactly five-star offerings. My hotel didn’t even offer continental breakfast.”
I hated her. I couldn’t believe I’d once felt sorry for her. “Well … that must have been hard on you.”
“You have no idea.”
“What I don’t get is how you’re involved in all of this, Fred,” Zoe noted, ignoring the gun Fred pointed at her. “How does an inn owner turn into a potential murderer?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Fred seethed. “We’re not going to engage in some Scooby-Doo moment, so you can push that right out of your head.”
“He worked as the financial advisor for Lisa’s family for a number of years and then he bought the inn as a retirement venture,” I supplied. “I’m guessing it was more work than he’d realized. He couldn’t go back to his old job because Lisa’s family lost all their money when Covenant College burned down.”
Zoe jerked her eyes in my direction, surprised. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “She’s broke.”
“What ties did you have to Covenant College?” Aric asked, a vein working in his neck as he tensed.
“We made money off construction and tuition,” Lisa replied. “It was a good gig, and we had to do very little work. When the college burned down – something no one could explain – we were simply out our money with no way to get it back. We got a few insurance payouts, but were left with next to nothing.”
“And I’m guessing Covenant College is the tie you used to find these guys.” Aric gestured toward the bristling wolves. “You knew that Covenant College was a haven for paranormals. You probably had that knowledge in your back pocket when it came time to off your husband. I still don’t understand why you thought it was a good idea to poison him.”
“Because I wanted it ruled a tragic accident,” Lisa said. “I figured by the time his body was found the Nightshade wouldn’t matter – especially if he could’ve gone a few weeks without discovery – and it simply would’ve looked as if he got lost and died from exposure.”
“And all that was ruined for you when we found him,” Zoe mused. “What a bummer for you.”
“It’s more than a bummer,” Lisa seethed, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Now I’m in a pickle. The cops are looking for me. You guys were spreading word through the inn that I was a suspect … and mounting theories as to what happened. Don’t bother denying it. Fred heard you.”
“I have no reason to deny it,” I offered. “You don’t have a way out of this. If we figured it out, the cops have too. I guess you know the reason you weren’t allowed to see Ethan. Of course, that’s why you asked to see us, isn’t it? You wanted to know if we had information to share.”
“And it turns out you didn’t.” Lisa made a face. “All this work. I just don’t understand how I could’ve done all this work merely to have it fall apart. It’s your fault.”
“So … what? You’re going to take me someplace else and torture me for retribution?”
“There’s no money in that. I’m going to ransom you to The Legacy Foundation. Those people are rich. They’ll pay to get you back. I thought about taking him, too, but he’ll be too hard to control.” She gestured toward Jack and shook her head. “I guess I’ll just have to kill him.”
“Yea
h, well, I’m not letting that happen.” I squared my shoulders. “You’ll have to go through me first.”
As if on cue, the wolves snapped and growled, practically drooling at the prospect. I didn’t like their reaction one bit.
“I have no problem going through you,” Lisa said. “But I do need you in one piece, so I’m willing to offer you a trade.”
“And what would that be?”
“I’ll let your boyfriend live if you go willingly. I have to kill these two because they’ve seen me, but your boyfriend didn’t. Our friends knocked him out before he even knew what was happening. We’ll let him live if you come with us.”
It wasn’t even a remotely tempting offer. Still, I had one more question. “Before I respond, I need you to answer something for me.”
Lisa feigned patience. “And what’s that?”
“If you had everything planned where Ethan was concerned, why did you go through all the effort to scream and run the night these guys showed up to scare him into the woods? I mean … I get that Ethan being lost and roaming the woods was part of your plan, but why go to the effort to put on a show yourself?”
Lisa shrugged. “Why not? I needed to be sure my story would hold up. I knew the cops would check the campsite. I needed appropriate footprints to sell my story of something – some dark creature – stealing Ethan from the scene. It was best to act out everything to sell my story. It’s the little details that trip people up. I didn’t want to get caught on a technicality.”
“Ah.” I understood everything now. “I guess that makes sense.”
“So, you’ll come with us?”
I shook my head. “No. I just wanted to know why you went through all the trouble to crawl and scream as you fled into the woods.”
Lisa furrowed her brow. “How can you possibly know that?”
“Because I’m more than I appear to be,” I answered.
“So are we,” Zoe added, her expression turning dark. “You should’ve done your research before picking this family to screw with. It’s too late to turn back now, so I guess you’ll have to take your medicine.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The question was barely out of Lisa’s mouth before Aric, Zoe and I reacted. I slashed out with my magic, pitching Lisa backward and slamming her into a tree. Zoe was a little more forceful when her magic burned Fred’s hand, causing him to cry out and drop the gun. She was a small and silent predator as she stalked forward and caused Fred to shrink back in fear.
As for Aric, I watched out of the corner of my eye as his body contorted. The snapping sound that accompanied it – the noise associated with contorting muscle and bone – almost made me go weak in the knees. The wolf he turned into – one that was twice the size of the others – was big and black. The lighter wolves must have realized right away that they were no match for him because they turned tail and raced into the underbrush. Aric gave chase, and the howl he let loose was something straight out of a horror movie.
That wasn’t the end of the action, though. A much smaller wolf raced down the outdoor steps and followed Aric into the woods, happily yipping as it gave chase. This one was miniature – almost child-sized – and its coat was a pretty gray color.
“You’re grounded when you get back!” Zoe shrieked after the small wolf.
That’s when true realization washed over me. “Sami?”
Zoe shrugged. “She takes after her father no matter what he says.”
I sighed as I loosened a heavy tree branch from above and let it drop on Lisa’s head, releasing my hold on her as she lolled to the side and hit the ground. “I see you’ve been keeping something else from me.”
“My family comes first.” Zoe wasn’t the type to apologize. “Now, come on. We need to call the police and wake Jack. We’ll need a feasible story for both. Get that brain working. Explaining all this isn’t going to be easy.”
29
Twenty-Nine
“That’s quite the story.”
Jack rubbed the back of his head thirty minutes later, watching through Zoe and Aric’s kitchen window as the police loaded Lisa, Fred and two naked men who just happened to be unconscious into cruisers.
“It is quite the story,” I agreed, shifting on my stool as I tried to get comfortable. “It all happened really fast. We didn’t know you were outside until you were already on the ground – and that honestly scared me, for the record .We tried to get to you as fast as possible. What were you even doing here?”
“Looking for you.” Jack’s mood was hard to read. “You weren’t in your room when I went upstairs to check. I was worried after you disappeared from the bar without telling anyone where you were going. I figured you headed here and wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“That’s kind of sweet.” And could’ve caused huge problems, I added silently. “But I was fine.”
“So I see. Um … why are those guys naked?”
That was a very good question. They were that way when Aric dragged them from the woods. He was, too, and it took everything I had to look away while he dressed. Sami had scampered into the house in her wolf form and I hadn’t seen her since. She was probably living in fear of her mother’s reaction to her insistence on helping her father with his hunt. “I have no idea.”
“They’re probably meth heads,” Aric announced as he strolled into the kitchen. He appeared calm, as if he hadn’t just shifted into a wolf and hunted down and beat the crap out of two other wolves. “They’re going to the hospital to be tested before being jailed.”
I wondered what the hospital staff would find. Of course, Aric’s father was a senator who had ways of changing records. It probably didn’t matter what was in their systems. I heard Aric on the phone with his father while Zoe was healing Jack before the cops arrived. Apparently they were coming up with a plan, one they didn’t share with me.
That was probably for the best.
“What about Fred?” I asked, hoping to steer the conversation to a safer topic. I didn’t want Jack – who seemed really confused – dwelling too hard on certain parts of the story. “Do we know why he was involved?”
“Money,” Aric replied simply. “Lisa promised him a cut of what she was going to get from Ethan’s life insurance if he agreed to help. He supplied the two guys who helped mess with the campsite scene and who forcibly drugged Ethan before letting him loose in the woods to wander and eventually die.”
“And they thought stealing Charlie would help them get money?” Jack asked, wrinkling his forehead. “I’m not sure The Legacy Foundation would’ve paid a ransom. It would’ve for Chris, but he’s family. Charlie is just an employee.”
“I don’t think it was the best thought-out plan,” Aric explained. “They just wanted money and to get out of town. They knew Ethan would talk – and that it would be all over for Lisa in social circles even if she managed to get away with the poisoning – so they needed money in a hurry.”
“It wasn’t a very good plan,” I agreed, widening my eyes when I realized Sami had silently slipped into the spot on my right. “Where did you come from?”
Sami’s smile was mysterious. “I’ve been around.” She grabbed the can of whipped cream from the counter and sprayed some in her mouth. “Can we order pizza, Dad? I’m starving.”
“Ask your mother.” Aric pinned her with a look that promised a serious conversation once they were alone. “Although, pizza does sound good.” His expression softened. “If you order it, I’ll pay.”
“Yay!” Sami handed me the whipped cream before clapping her hands and hopping to the floor. “Meat lover’s special?”
“Get the wings, breadsticks and that giant cookie thing your mom likes, too,” Aric instructed. “You’ll need something to bribe her with if you ever want to see the world beyond our property again.”
Sami’s smile slipped. “Whatever. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
Jack slid me a curious l
ook. “What’s that about?”
“Oh, well … .”
“Sami slipped outside during the excitement even though she was ordered to stay inside,” Aric answered, his ease when it came to lying apparent. “She’s going to be grounded once her mother has a free moment to talk to her. The pizza will be a last meal of sorts.”
“Where is Zoe?” I craned my neck to look out the window. “Is she still talking to the cops?”
“She is,” Aric confirmed. “She has some rather … um, unique … suggestions for punishment. I think she just wants to mess with Lisa and Fred a little bit. She gets her jollies by making people want to kill her.”
I could see that. I exhaled heavily, blowing my hair up my forehead before focusing on Jack. “Do you want to go to the hospital and have your head looked at?”
“The paramedics checked. I have a lump the size of an orange back there, but no concussion. They said it was a small miracle that I didn’t have more serious damage, but it appears I’m fine.”
A small miracle … or a woman with glowing blue fingers.
“I’m glad you’re okay, but you didn’t need to follow me,” I supplied. “I only wanted to say goodbye.”
“I know.” Jack met my gaze. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. We’ve had a busy day and I knew you were tired. I wanted to make sure you got back to the inn safely. You tend to attract danger.”
That was the understatement of the year. “I won’t pressure you. I hope you know that. I was being a bit of a jerk earlier, but I know it’s not fair to demand things of you. You can take all the time you want.
“And you don’t have to follow me,” I continued. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a very long time. I’m okay. I’ll keep being okay.”
Jack nodded as he ran his tongue over his teeth. “Yeah, well, here’s the thing … it became very apparent when you disappeared tonight that I want to take care of you. I at least want to be around when you take care of yourself.”
“That’s nice.” Wait … what was he saying?
The Werewolf Whoops Page 26
