His own wolf loved that idea and with the scent of Glenna’s wolf heavy in the car he had a rush of need to drive back and see if the sexy blonde could be a potential mate.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
He pushed the need down. Look at all the trouble a newly turned wolf was for the pack. It was hard enough to keep one human turned a secret. But two?
Besides, he’d been single and loving it for too long. He didn’t want a mate. Even if it was Glenna’s sexy tight-assed sister.
Glenna whined and he took his eyes off of traffic long enough to check on her. “Are you breathing?”
“Yes! I’m breathing.” This time he heard the air sucking in and easing. “Satisfied?” She glared at him and settled back into the seat, staring out the window at the houses and shopping malls flashing by. Her voice dropped low. “What about Sarah? Do you think she’d make the change? Would the CDC think so?”
“She might not end up with a wolf, but odds are she’d end up something. Spelltalker, dreamwalker.”
She sat back up and turned to him. “I can’t let them take her.” She twisted the ball cap in her lap.
“You can’t come down here anymore, Glenna. Just look at you.” He could see the fight she was going through to not shift in the car.
“Sam will do it. He’ll keep an eye on my baby sister.”
“Sam’s not much better off than you, ever since he almost went wild his control in the city is terrible.”
“Then you’ll have to do it. Please?” She began to pant, her eyes going wide and scared. “She’s all alone. Roger is worthless and my grandmother only wants her to be a china doll. No one will step up if it makes waves.”
His wolf whined inside, not understanding where the danger was coming from, but ready to respond to her need. “Calm down, Glenna.” But he could see, she wasn’t going to stop until someone threw her a bone. It might as well be him. He sighed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Just keep an eye on her. Please, Caleb?”
There was no way he was resisting her now, not with her wolf calling to his.
“What the hell.” He’d been bored with his life anyhow, this might be something different to do other than getting drunk on Saturday nights and running wild up the mountain. Besides, how difficult would it be to watch that long-legged blonde move through her days? “I’ve got a few days leave coming and I can think of worse things to do with my time.”
Glenna launched herself across the gearshift and gave him a fierce hug. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You won’t regret it.”
As they sped toward the mountains and the safety of Ram’s Haven Ranch, Caleb wondered—what in the hell had he gotten himself into?
#
Sarah McReynolds inserted her key into the lock of her grandmother’s house, and twisted, working at the old lock until finally it gave. Every day she was out of her apartment and living here she missed the small things she’d gotten used to—like fancy electronic locks and a parking garage. The old house was amazing, but it had been here a long time. Unless it was a total necessity, Grandmother resisted modernization. Like the alarm. Grandmother had insisted on having one of those years ago. Pushing open the door, Glenna entered the house. Ignoring the alarm’s slow beeping countdown, she turned and glanced over her shoulder at the black SUV driving at a snail’s pace down the road. Her temper flared.
“Assholes.”
It had been six months since her sister Glenna’s disappearance. Six months since the government men in black suits had come to the house and informed them Glenna was dead, her highly contagious body disposed of. Six months and yet, they were still spying on her.
She tapped in the code and quieted the beeps. “Anybody home?”
“Just me.” Janet Atkinson, the woman who’d been her grandmother’s housekeeper for as long as Sarah could remember, came out of the back hallway. Sarah didn’t remember a time when Janet’s plump figure wrapped in her trademark floral aprons wasn’t somewhere in the house, baking cookies or cleaning up the messes she and Glenna had gotten into. “Your grandmother’s gone to lunch with the garden ladies. I don’t expect her back until around five.” Janet gave her a relieved smile. “Thank goodness, she’s finally leaving the house again. I’ve been able to catch up on a bunch of things with her gone. Maybe we’re getting back to normal around here.”
Sarah gave her a hug and headed for the stairs. “Thanks, Janet.”
Thank God for Janet. She was sure Janet was the reason she and Glenna had turned out as normal as they had, despite Grandmother’s pressures to be perfect little society girls.
“Oh, wait, you’ve got a package.” Janet picked up a small brown box from the marble topped mahogany side table centered under the wide hall mirror. “It came this afternoon.”
Sarah looked at the plain box with her name and address printed out on the label. “Wow, those checks came fast.”
The housekeeper headed back to the kitchen. “Dinner is at seven.”
“Hey Janet, you didn’t see the black sports car out there a minute ago?” Sarah paused with her hand on the baluster. “Did you?”
“No, I’ve been back in the kitchen all afternoon. Any reason?”
“No, no reason.”
Except there was. She might not have thought twice about the car, or the bold, black haired driver who’d stared at her, sending chills over her skin with the hungry, sexy way he looked at her. But...just for a second...she thought she’d seen a woman in the passenger seat. A woman in a baseball hat who tilted her chin at exactly the same angle as Glenna.
But she couldn’t tell the housekeeper that.
Janet, her grandmother, even Roger—they’d all told her she was seeing things the last several times she’d thought she’d caught sight of Glenna. Lately, she’d stopped telling anyone much of anything anymore. It was easier this way. Less complicated.
Her sister was dead. As far as everyone else was concerned, that was as far as the matter went. Even if she had a twisted feeling in her gut that they were all wrong.
Sarah shook it off and started up the stairs. “Okay, thanks anyway.”
There was the sound of a door closing in the back of the house.
“Shoot! That must be your grandmother coming in from the garage. She’s early.” Janet went rushing towards the back hallway just as Sarah’s grandmother came in. “Mrs. McReynolds, can I get anything for you?”
“No, thank you, Janet, I’m fine. Ah, Sarah, there you are.”
“Hello, Grandmother.” Sarah came back down the stairs again and gave her grandmother a careful hug and a peck on the cheek.
Mabel McReynolds had shrunk a good three inches since the news about Glenna. It was only recently that she’d picked back up her social life of bridge, book clubs, and charitable functions. Every day she seemed older and more fragile to Sarah, and it worried her.
“You’ll be here for dinner, Sarah, won’t you?” Grandmother’s voice sounded strained.
“Of course.” Of course she would. She’d hardly done anything but have dinner here for months. At first, she’d needed the routine, but now? Maybe not so much.
“Good. Roger’s coming by. I know he’d love to see you.”
“Is he really staying for dinner? Again?” Sarah made a face.
“Really, Sarah, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. Such an attitude.” Her grandmother pursed her lips and frowned.
“He’s been here a lot, lately.” And she was getting sick of his interference in her life. He wasn’t her fiancé, after all.
At first, after Glenna’s disappearance and the announcement of her death, Roger had been a rock. He’d convinced her to move back into her grandmother’s house and had helped her move everything out of her apartment. But lately he’d been over too much. And now that she was ready to move back out, he was no help at all. She was even getting suspicious that he seemed to be actively blocking her apartment search. The last two times she’d had an appointment sche
duled with a fabulous loft in Lo-do, she’d told Roger casually at dinner, and the loft had been rented by the time she’d gotten there. The last time she’d cornered the agent and asked him what was going on, and while he yammered about the tight rental market, he’d been unable to meet her eyes.
“Roger’s a good man. He’s been such a help with the business, since Glenna...left. I don’t know what I’d do without him.” Grandmother added, smoothing over her small hesitation over the word ‘death’. “You would do well, Sarah, to think about what he could do for you. He’ll be able to manage the business, the house, everything for you, now that you inherit it all.”
Sarah’s throat closed up. She inherited everything now because her sister, Glenna, was dead.
“Grandmother, have you seen the black SUV that’s been driving up and down the street lately?” Time for a subject change. Grandmother couldn’t say the words ‘death’ and ‘dead’, and she herself still couldn’t face the repercussions.
“No.”
“There’s something weird about it.”
“Sarah.” Her grandmother took her shoulders in her hands and faced her. “You’re just being dramatic. Again. It’s probably just the Jamison boy back from college. Or one of his friends.” Her grandmother let her go. “Now, put on something pretty for dinner. Men like Roger don’t grow on trees.” And she went into the front room she used as her private parlor and closed the door.
Sarah stuck her tongue out at the closed door. “Men like Roger don’t grow on trees. Thank heaven.”
She took the box and her purse and climbed the stairs up to the room on the second floor she’d had as a child. Still decorated in pink and white, it was the room of a little girl, with a row of worn out stuffed animals on the window seat and her ballerina jewelry box on the dresser. At least she’d at taken the posters down and made it looked semi-adult when she’d moved back in by adding some of the family oils from the attic. The bucolic country scenes made it feel like someone’s B&B and not like her own room anymore, but maybe that was for the best. She wasn’t going to be staying here for too much longer.
Before looking for something sharp to cut open the box, she went to the window over her desk and moved the lace curtains aside. Secretly, she was hoping to see the black sports car again, but there was nothing outside except the same black SUV. An odd sense of deflation filled her as she dropped the curtain on the sight of the Suburban cruising out of sight.
The driver of the Firebird, had stared at her as if he knew her, knew exactly what to do to her. Knew the things she’d never told anyone.
For a second time on what was truly a warm Colorado spring day, chills rushed along her skin.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Sarah McReynolds?” Maybe her grandmother was right and she was just creating drama. Maybe she needed to get out of this house where nothing ever happened and get back into life. Maybe that would help her stop imagining insane things like mysterious women in ball caps being driven around the neighborhood by hot Latin lovers.
She dug into her desk drawer and found some scissors but when she cut into the box, instead of the expected checks, out tumbled a small, black flip phone. “What in the world?” She dug deeper into the packaging and found a note.
If you want to find out the truth about your sister, turn me on.
“Oh great, someone has a sense of humor.” She followed the directions, pushing the button and waiting impatiently for the phone to warm up. Finally, something interesting in her dreary—go to work, come home, have dinner—life.
The small display screen flashed to life. She pushed the little bubble symbol for texts with the number one and read:
Your sister is alive. Text back if you want to see her.
A wave of dizziness washed over her and she sank onto the desk chair. She stared at the phone, black spots dancing in front of her eyes. She blinked hard to clear them, bringing the text back into focus but the words were still there.
“This is crazy. Crazy! She’s dead, asshole. Dead!” Her heart beating fast she yanked open the desk drawer and threw the phone in, slamming it shut.
She curled her feet up under her on the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees, literally holding herself together and stared at the closed desk drawer as if instead of a phone it contained a poisonous spider, just waiting to crawl out in the middle of the night and bite her.
First she thought she’d seen Glenna. Now this. Was Glenna really alive or was someone playing tricks?
She eased off of the chair and opened the desk drawer, staring at the phone. The first trickles of what she thought were excitement lifted the hairs on her arms. She rubbed them hard, the warmth of her own skin convincing her of the reality of what was happening.
This was tangible proof. Someone, somewhere, had answers. Now, she just had to be brave enough to find them. Despite what anyone else around her wanted.
To find out what happens to Sarah and Caleb, click HERE
And discover PACK ENFORCER by Jessica Aspen
http://geni.us/PackEnforcer
Blood Enforcer (Wolf Enforcers Book 2) Page 27
