by Kari Cole
* * *
Hannah screamed and screamed. She was already dead. Her heart just hadn’t stopped pumping.
The sky above was as clear and blue as the creators had ever made it. So beautiful. It would be the last time she ever saw it.
In the seconds she had left, she thought of Vaughn. His secret smiles and dimples. The storm-gray eyes she liked to get lost in. His decency, protectiveness, his fierce heart.
I love you.
She stopped screaming.
Then she saw the brown wolf sail out over the edge into the abyss with her.
No!
The wolf...disappeared in a shimmering blur, and something dark rocketed toward her.
Right before it struck her, enormous wings flared out, and talons twice the size of a man’s hand caught her around the waist and torso. Her head whipped back and she shrieked.
They were still falling.
“Let go! Don’t die for me!”
The huge golden-brown eagle let loose a screech as it beat its wings. The ground rushed at them. The air current suddenly changed, and she realized they weren’t falling straight down anymore, but sailing through the canyon. She braved a look and wished she hadn’t. If she tried, she might have been able to skim her fingers along the rocky surface.
The eagle cried again and they started to rise. Fast.
“Oh, goddess.” She closed her eyes. Each beat of his wings jerked her up and down. So she grabbed onto one of his legs and held on.
“Vaughn?”
He made a chirrup! sound, and her wolf preened inside her head.
Okay. “Just checking.”
They cleared the cliff face quickly and a big, naked guy with messy dark hair was waiting for them at the edge with Frost and a few other people. She started crying when she saw him. She recognized the naked guy as Luke, the pack Alpha. He held out his arms, and with another screech, Vaughn released her into them.
Luke set her on her feet, and she dropped to her knees to hug Frost.
There was a lot of noise. Cheering and barking.
And growling.
At least a dozen werewolves surrounded something...or someone. Above, Vaughn circled. A huge, otherworldly presence.
The Alpha held out his hand and helped Hannah up.
In the center of the group, the black-and-gray wolf that had knocked her off the mountainside paced and snapped. She sniffed and recognized his scent. The rage that blasted through her stole her breath. She stumbled toward him, claws springing from her fingertips.
A sharp cry pierced the day, and Vaughn suddenly dropped from the sky to land at her side. A wing the size of a king-size bed curved around her and kept her from getting any closer.
“I saw him on the security monitors,” she said. “He murdered my family.”
The pack’s snarls shook the ground.
“Yours wasn’t the only one,” the Alpha said. He raised his voice. “You have a lot to answer for, Caine. Shift and cooperate and—”
Apex’s hunter sprang from a crouch and slammed into a caramel-colored female, shoving her out of his way, as he barreled straight toward Luke. In a blur of brown feathers that knocked her to the ground, Vaughn’s eagle leapt in front of his Alpha. Wings outstretched, he blocked the killer’s attack.
Hannah screamed as the vicious wolf crashed into him. Blood flew through the air. Several of the pack attacked Caine and pulled him off the eagle. As soon as they did, she scrabbled to Vaughn’s side. He lay on his back, blood staining his face and throat. “Vaughn? Please.”
As gently as she could, she tried to figure out where he was injured, but she didn’t know much about an eagle’s anatomy. Whining, Frost nosed him and licked his beak until the huge golden eagle squawked and rolled to his feet.
Hannah thought her heart might pound right out of her chest. “You’re all right?”
He peered at her with a golden-brown eye and nodded once before turning his attention to the pack.
Unbelievably, Caine had continued to fight, even as the other wolves herded him toward the cliff’s edge.
“Last chance, Caine,” Luke said, his voice like thunder.
Dripping blood from a multitude of wounds, the killer bared his fangs in a silent snarl and charged the caramel female again. The pack swarmed him.
As the fight came to a final, gruesome end, Vaughn enveloped her and Frost in the shelter of his immense wings.
Chapter Forty-Six
In the hallway outside the pack house library, Vaughn paced. The door was closed, and if it didn’t open soon, he was going to—
“Vaughn.”
Dressed in a pair of red board shorts and a white T-shirt, Luke strode toward him. He had a bandage on his lower left leg covering a silver bullet graze. Vaughn had a couple of bandages under his clean clothes, too.
“You wearing a hole in the floor isn’t going to make Sarah move any faster. You know how she is.”
“I heard that!” she shouted from inside.
“Then hurry up, female,” Vaughn shouted back. There was a beat of silence, then feminine laughter from behind the door. Luke’s shoulders shook. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Oh yeah. Much funnier when it’s not you.” He sobered. “You know Hannah’s okay, right?”
Vaughn rubbed his chest. “She needed more stitches.”
“Just a few. She’s tough.”
He nodded. Strongest person he knew. He scrubbed his fingers through the back of his hair. When were they going to be done?
“You know, it’s still kinda weird to see you with short hair,” Luke said.
Heat rose in Vaughn’s face and he dropped his hands. “I, uh, I wanted a change.”
Luke nodded slowly. “I can understand that. Big change in your life, you want to do something that marks it. I’d say surviving an assassination attempt and shapeshifting into an eagle for the first time in your life is an occasion to mark.”
Vaughn blinked in shock. Not only had Luke understood why but—
“Yeah, I knew,” he said. “A few days after everything went down, Izzy flew me out to the escarpment where Rick tried to kill you. I’ve been there before, but I wanted to check if I was remembering it right. Rick thought he killed you. With good reason, too. Your blood was still all over the freaking place. Right at the cliff’s edge. The only way someone survives falling off that is if they have wings.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“Figured you’d say something when you were ready.” Luke got a sheepish look. “Though, as my mate has informed me—with lots of swear words—that was a stupid thing to think. You’ve never been very communicative. Certainly not about anything personal. And...well, I’m ashamed to say it, I didn’t do anything to encourage you.
“You’re only two years older than I am, and I barely knew you when we asked you to come home to be sheriff. That’s on me, Vaughn. I have no excuse, and I’m sorry. Rick and those other bastards thought they could get to you, because I hadn’t made it clear to everyone that this is your home and we are your pack.”
Heels clicked on the hardwood as Marianne Townes walked toward him. “I wanted to be the one to kill Caine. Thanks to him and Apex, I lost two of my daughters. I was so focused on getting vengeance, I allowed that bastard to blow right by me. He almost got Luke because of my inattention. Lucky for me, you were there to fix my mistake. You saved our Alpha, Vaughn. Darren would be so proud of you.”
His entire life, Marianne had treated him like something she’d scraped off her designer shoe. The look of respect in her eyes now didn’t erase more than thirty years of crap from bigots like her, but it was a start. He nodded to her once.
“’Bout time we got that outta the way,” Dean said as he ambled out of the kitchen. Behind him, crowded under the archway were Vaughn’s mother, aunt, and several othe
r pack members, some of whom had fought Caine’s men today and seen him shift between the wolf and eagle. None of them looked afraid or disgusted. They looked...proud, too.
Vaughn stared at them. Even if he was as much of a chatterbox as Dean, he wouldn’t have had the words to express what this moment meant to him.
The library door opened, and Sarah, Hannah, and Jessie stood there, obviously having heard every word.
Hannah smiled then, and though it was dusk, the sun came out.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Hannah rubbed her sweaty palms against her thighs. Not that it did any good since she was still wearing her leather gloves.
“Shh, baby,” Vaughn said. He slid his hands under hers and squeezed her fingers.
Luke’s setup outside the library had touched Vaughn so deeply, she could see it in every tiny motion. The usual stiffness to the set of his shoulders, the tightness around his eyes was all gone. Hannah wanted to hug each and every person who’d done that for him. She’d be damned if she ruined the moment with a panic attack.
Now they were in Luke’s study and she was sitting on Vaughn’s lap—he wouldn’t stand for her being anywhere else. Jessie seemed to find it hilarious and kept snorting at them.
Frost leaned against her and Vaughn on the leather couch, half asleep. Sarah had had to treat a broken bone in his right hind leg, and the pain meds she’d given him were making him loopy. So much so that Vaughn had lifted him up and gently laid him there, in order to keep him from lying on the hard floor or having to hop up on his own.
The room was twice the size of a normal study or home office, with French doors that led out onto a wraparound porch. Sounds of the pack partying before the moon’s zenith drifted in. But despite the lovely evening, the doors were closed and the curtains were drawn.
Luke cleared his throat. “All right, let’s do this. I know Vaughn is anxious to get Hannah home. I can’t blame him. It’s been a long day. Agent Moreno, why don’t we start with you? Anything new from the IA side?”
Diego sat kitty-corner from Hannah and Vaughn. His arm was in a sling, and he had a mound of bandages taped to his left shoulder. The silver bullet had hit just below his collarbone. He looked miserable and pale. “I spoke with my superiors. I think you’re right. IA is...” He clenched his jaw. “I don’t think you can trust IA right now. At least not everyone. I asked about the test samples Dr. Simmons sent in, and I was told that all test samples would be processed in the order they were received.”
“Meaning never,” Dean said.
“Pretty much.” Diego shifted in his chair and winced. “There aren’t even any records of you calling for help when your Alpha and Beta were killed.”
Luke growled. “We called a dozen times, sent even more formal requests.”
“I believe you. They’re just not there.”
Dean said a swear word that Mama would have gotten the Dial soap out for.
“It’s not safe for you to go back there,” Vaughn said.
“I agree,” Luke said, “which is why I already spoke to your Alpha. You’re going to recover here.”
Diego sputtered a bit at that, but Alphas. What were you going to do?
“There’s no sign of Sharon Beck,” Dean said. “We tracked her to a rental property about a mile and a half away from her wrecked pickup. There were some fresh tire tracks, but she could be in Canada by now.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Jessie.”
“Oh, no,” Jessie said. “I’m good with never seeing her again. After that scene at my house today, I did some magic.” She tossed a rounded black object about the size of a nickel on the coffee table. “I found a bunch of these stashed around my house.”
“What are they?” Sarah asked.
Vaughn picked it up. “It’s a spy cam. I’ve never seen one like this before.” He flipped it to Diego. “You?”
“No. Wi-Fi, probably. How many?”
“Five,” Jessie said. “The ones inside were in the heating vents.”
A chill raced up Hannah’s spine.
“What is it?” Vaughn asked her.
She’d already told him everything about Raze, but now she went through a condensed version of how he made contact with her and “helped” her. She looked at the camera. “That must be how he knew about you and...”
Vaughn hugged her around the middle. “It’s okay,” he said, though the growl in his voice suggested he wasn’t quite as calm as his words.
“Do you think he’s here in Black Robe?” Luke asked.
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know. I always felt like he was everywhere.”
“Could you recognize him?” Vaughn asked.
She closed her eyes and tried to picture his face. “I don’t know. Maybe in the right circumstances. I don’t remember the details of his face. Just that he was blond and attractive.”
“Attractive,” Vaughn said without inflection. “Was he a shifter?”
“I thought he was human, but...” She shivered again.
“What?”
Hannah swallowed the lump of unease growing in her throat. “Well, with everything else Genysis and Apex are trying to do to shifters—increase strength, stamina, psychic abilities—wouldn’t masking our scents be on top of the list of desirable new traits?”
A swift and savage round of swearing commenced.
“I wish you hadn’t destroyed your computer and phone. We might have been able to get something off that,” Dean said.
She shook her head. “Raze is too good.”
“You think he’s behind the hacking at the station?” Luke asked Vaughn.
“Probably. Or could be someone at IA.”
Diego looked around the room, startled. Then a hardness entered his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe. There’s something else you should know. The clinic Sharon Beck attacked all those years ago? It was a Genysis Labs facility.”
“Son of a bitch,” Vaughn said.
“Maybe she really is trying to stop Apex?” Hannah said. Not that she would ever think of the other female as some sort of hero. She’d tried to kill Vaughn. For that, Hannah was planning on holding a grudge.
“All right. Unless there’s anything else, let’s discuss this memory card everyone is so gung ho about,” Luke said. All eyes focused on Hannah and more chills raced over her skin, despite Vaughn’s reassuring touch. “How did you even get a hold of it?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out. “The morning after I touched Crawford’s ring, I went back to my father’s law office. I said I’d left my purse and needed to get it. There were lots of caterers and cleaning staff picking up after the party. I knew the code to his safe. No one noticed me.” The hard part was entering the code while wearing two layers of knit gloves.
“You didn’t go to the healer?” Sarah asked. “I mean, you passed out and vomited, right?”
“Yes, but the pack healer was at the party.” The old coot. “He told my parents I was fine. That I must have just had too much champagne and should stop eating so many caviar blini.”
Sarah laughed. “Wait. You’re not kidding.” When Hannah shook her head, Sarah muttered, “Asshole.”
“He is,” Hannah agreed. “After I left the office, I drove to a quiet park and tried to access the information on the card on my laptop, but I couldn’t get past the required password. So I took it home and hid it in my room inside a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes in the back of my closet.”
“Shoes,” Diego said with a sigh. “Half the world is looking for the damn thing and she hides it in a pair of freaking shoes.”
“They’re very nice shoes,” Hannah said, unable to keep the annoyance from her voice.
Behind her, Vaughn choked on a laugh. “Go on, baby. Then what?”
“Well, the next morning, I told my parents I was all better from my ‘night of excess’ and was going shopping.” Hiding
her double-gloved hands from her fashionista mother hadn’t been easy, but both her parents were so mad at her for causing a scene at the party, they were barely speaking to her anyway.
Vaughn’s arms tightened around her and Hannah tried to forget how badly it had stung to be dismissed as a silly party girl. She cleared her throat. “Instead of shopping, I took the memory card to a college friend who’s a computer whiz. He couldn’t get in either, but he warned me that if I tried a third time and failed to enter the correct password, the card would scramble itself.” She shrugged. “He used a lot of techie words, but it sounded serious.
“That’s when I went back to the park and tried to uncover the password with my ability. It didn’t go well.” Her rib cage felt like it was shrinking just remembering how the memory card had affected her without any protection. She’d woken up covered in vomit and blood. Her—
“Baby?” Vaughn gave her a little shake.
“By the time I made it home—I—I found—the pictures Diego had—I—I don’t—”
“That’s enough, Hannah,” Vaughn said. “No more. No more.”
Hannah dragged in a ragged breath, but she still felt dizzy, like she’d run a marathon.
Someone pressed a large cup of tea, overly sweetened, into her hands. Sarah. “Drink,” she said. “Little sips. Vaughn, get her to drink.”
Several minutes passed. Maybe several hours. Hannah lost track of time as she sipped the tea and focused on the solid weight of Vaughn’s arms. Voices rose gradually around them until they started to get loud and Vaughn growled.
Someone cleared their throat and Hannah looked up to find half a dozen people all staring at her expectantly. “Uh...”
“I’m sorry to press you for more,” Luke said. “But Hannah, sweetie, where is the memory card?”
“Oh!” She’d been hiding the damn thing for so long, it was weird to even think about showing it to anyone. But if she wanted to help Apex’s victims, that’s exactly what she had to do. “The safest place I could think of,” she said.
She stroked Frost’s head. “Excuse me, darlin’. Just need to get this off.” He lifted his head onto Vaughn’s thigh and she unbuckled Frost’s collar.
