Walking to a wing chair, she gripped the back and asked, “You said one of the men who came over could be the murderer. Why do you think so?”
He made an angry sound. “Because I put you in danger!”
“How? Just by staying here?”
“Unfortunately, yes. When I first started looking for the killer, I didn’t give a shit what happened to me. So I didn’t bother to use an assumed name. I even thought it might work like a lure. If the guy is in town, he probably knows I’m the husband of one of his victims. Probably he’s got a whole book full of press clippings. For me, his interest is an advantage. But not for you.”
“You could find somewhere else to stay,” she murmured.
“That would be worse. Now that I’ve called attention to you.”
“Maybe, over dinner, you should tell me what you know about the killer.”
“It’s not great mealtime conversation.”
“But necessary,” she said briskly. She hadn’t thought about food in hours. Now she started considering what to fix. “Um, since we haven’t been drinking coffee, I have some cream I need to use up. How does salmon chowder sound?”
“Don’t go to any trouble for me.”
“Right. You can always go out and catch yourself a couple of rabbits.”
He made a strangled sound, and she wished she could see his face.
“That was a poor attempt at a joke. I guess because I’m nervous.”
“Marcy never joked about the wolf,” he said very quietly.
“Well, if I were an entirely sober-faced, respectable citizen, I wouldn’t be reading tarot cards for a living, would I?”
“I haven’t noticed any other customers beating a path to your door.”
“Wait until this summer.”
The sentence hung in the air between them. Would he still be with her in the summer?
When he didn’t answer the unspoken question, she took a step toward the hall. “The soup should be ready in about half an hour.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
She knew he was still lingering in the wide doorway. It took all her resolve to keep from stopping and cupping her hand over his shoulder. Or touching his lips with her fingers. She craved the physical contact. She longed to hear him say something—anything—about their future. But he’d said he was still stuck in the past. So she walked by him and into the kitchen, where she went about assembling the ingredients she’d need for the soup. Glad to focus on cooking, she chopped onions and garlic, then melted the butter in a small pot and added the vegetables.
When they felt nice and soft against the spoon, she turned down the heat and stirred in flour. Slowly, she added a little chicken broth, stirring until the mixture was uniform. Then she opened the cream.
It smelled a little off, and she didn’t want to ruin the soup. So she got out another spoon to have a taste. She was lifting it to her lips when Grant’s sharp exclamation rang out from the doorway.
“Don’t!”
Frozen in place, she heard running feet, then an arm lashing out and knocking the utensil out of her grasp.
Chapter 9
“WHAT? What’s wrong?” she gasped as the spoon clattered to the counter.
“It’s poison.”
“Poison,” she breathed, wondering if he’d lost his mind. “How do you know?”
“The same way I know who was here. By the smell. I can smell something dangerous coming off that cream.”
“Grant. Are you sure?”
When she reached toward the carton, he snatched her hand away, wedging it against her side as he dragged her into his arms.
She could feel his heart pounding as he held her to his chest, feel him shaking.
“How . . . how . . .” she tried to say. But her brain wasn’t working all that well.
“It looks like one of your visitors left you a present. Either Charlie or Dwayne or Scott,” he said in a grating voice.
“One of them?” she asked, hardly willing to follow the logic of it.
He clamped his hands on her shoulders. “It has to be one of them. They were here today.”
“Somebody else . . .”
“I’d know if somebody else had been in the house.”
As she struggled to rearrange her thinking, he went on, “And one of them is using the killer’s MO. Like I told you, he poisons his victims, then sets their houses on fire.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! I’ve made a study of the bastard. Not only that, he picks women who have some . . . handicap.”
“Marcy had a handicap?” she gulped out.
“She had broken her leg.” His fingers dug into her shoulders. “He went after her. Now I’ve brought him to you.”
“But . . . but you stopped him.”
“And the bastard doesn’t know we’ve caught on. He’s probably waiting around for you to use that cream.”
“You mean he could be . . . waiting for it to happen?”
“Oh yeah. Do you usually have a cup of coffee after dinner?”
“Yes.” She struggled to think logically. “But if he’s outside watching, he can see you knocked the spoon out of my hand.”
Grant answered with a sharp laugh. “I don’t think so. In case you don’t realize it, you were cooking in the dark. I’m the only guy who could have seen what you were doing. I’d been standing in the doorway for a while—watching you.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I can be pretty quiet.”
She felt his body tense.
“What?”
“I . . .”
“Say it!”
“If he’s waiting to see what happens, we can trap him.”
“No. We can call the police.”
“If it’s Scott, we’ll tip him off.”
She thought about that. Thought about what might happen next. Swallowing hard, she asked, “What would you want me to do?”
“You have milk, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t put any of that damn cream in the soup?” he asked very carefully.
“No. I’d just opened the carton. I’ve got a better than average sense of smell, too.”
“You would.” He held her a few feet away from himself, and she imagined he was looking into her eyes as he issued clipped directions. “Put some milk into the soup pot. But leave the cream carton on the counter right next to where you’re standing,” he went on rapidly. “Then you’ll turn on the light, pretend to be cooking, and taste the soup. Act like you’ve drunk his damn poison. Maybe you can start gagging—then fall to the floor. And lie there.”
“What kind of poison is it?” she murmured. “What are the symptoms?”
“I don’t know. But probably he’ll be so excited that you took the bait that he won’t be real particular.”
She made a strangled sound. She wanted to tell him they weren’t in the middle of a made-for-TV movie. Instead she asked, “And where will you be while I’m lying on the floor?”
“Waiting for him,” he said in a low, hard voice that sent a shiver down her spine. And she knew that he was thinking this was his chance to get his claws and teeth into the man. Could she keep the worst from happening? She didn’t know. But she had to try.
Her arms slipped around him and she hung on tight, pressing her lips against his shoulder, wondering if it was the last time she would ever hold him.
Then she eased away. “Let’s do it, before I chicken out.”
“Are you sure?” Now he was the one who sounded uncertain. “Maybe it’s too much of a risk.”
“Is the wolf turning tail on me?”
“No!”
“Then help me get ready.”
With the light still out, he carefully washed down the counter where the spoon had landed, while she unlocked the back door. When he had left the kitchen, she crossed to another drawer and got something she thought she might need. With her private preparations made, she turned on the light and fussed a
round the kitchen for a few minutes before pouring some milk into the soup, keeping the carton shielded with her body before returning it to the refrigerator.
As she stirred the mixture, she wondered if she had lost her mind by agreeing to this crazy scenario.
Resolutely, she shoved her doubts aside and focused on making it look like she was in the midst of cooking poison soup.
First she found the can of salmon she’d put into the pantry and marked with a braille label. Then she carefully removed the skin and bones from the fish, before breaking it into chunks and adding them to the soup, working slowly and carefully, giving anyone outside in the darkness time to get a good look at what she was doing.
She was glad she couldn’t see the carton of cream, because the idea of touching it again made her stomach roil.
Somewhere in the house, she could hear the sound of Grant’s voice. He was speaking strange syllables, words she didn’t understand, but they raised the hair on the back of her neck. She was pretty sure that the next time she encountered him, he’d be a wolf.
Desperate not to lose her focus, she dragged in a deep breath, stuck a large spoon into the milky soup and took a sip.
Wondering if the killer was really watching her performance, she went for melodrama. Face contorted, she pretended to cough and gag, then dropped to the floor where she made a show of writhing in agony before going limp.
Once she was still, she wished she’d gotten herself into a more comfortable position. Her leg was twisted, but there was nothing she could do about it except lie on the floor with her pulse pounding.
Eons passed, and the leg began to ache. But she stayed still as death, fighting the horrible sensation that she’d lost control of the unfolding drama.
Her mind screamed for her to scramble up and run. But she stayed where she was. And finally, finally her straining ears caught the sound of the back door opening.
When someone crossed the pantry and entered the kitchen, her stomach knotted painfully. The worst part was that she had no way to know who was there.
Was Scott looking down at her? She’d bet on Scott.
For heartbeats, the man remained very still, then he walked toward her.
“How was your dinner, bitch?” he asked, and she knew then who it was. Dwayne Shipley, who had come to fix her broken electrical plug and left a little present in her refrigerator.
She felt him bend over her. When he jerked on a lock of her hair, she gasped.
“What the fuck?” he growled.
THE wolf who had been waiting in the shadows saw the man hover over Antonia.
It was Dwayne Shipley. The hayseed in the overalls. He was the monster who had killed Marcy.
In a blinding rage, the wolf leaped through the doorway, landing on the killer’s back, bringing him down. A knife went flying from his hand, clattering across the tile floor, as he fell forward so that his head hit the corner of the cabinet before he sprawled in a heap on the floor.
Even as the wolf stood over the unconscious man, ready for the kill, he heard Antonia’s desperate voice.
“Grant, don’t. Don’t!”
Turning his head, he saw her crawling blindly forward across the kitchen floor.
She couldn’t know that Shipley was down, as she scrambled toward them. And Grant couldn’t tell her. As a wolf, he couldn’t speak. He could only give a warning snarl.
She ignored him and kept coming, still crying out as she closed the distance between them.
“Grant, don’t do it. Don’t kill him. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
The rest of his life? He had dedicated the rest of his life to killing this monster. And now she was trying to stop him.
He wanted to howl at her to back off, so he could take care of his own business.
But it seemed she wasn’t going to give up easily. She reached his side, half falling over the inert Shipley as she grabbed the wolf’s shaggy coat, tugging on him. When he tried to shake her off, her grip on him tightened.
“You asked me to help you trap him. I did. Now turn him over to the police.” As she spoke, she came up on her knees, finding his muzzle with her hands and locking his mouth closed with her fingers.
“Grant, I love you. I love you,” she cried.
The declaration reverberated through him, even as she kept shouting.
“I want us to have a life together. Don’t kill him. If you love me, don’t do it.”
He went very still, his head spinning, partly because she was making it hard for him to breathe. He was so close to achieving satisfaction. He could kill the monster. Remove this obscene scar on the body of humanity. And now Antonia was telling him to give up that pleasure? That necessity.
The wolf lusted for revenge. The man inside him knew that something fundamental had changed since he had met Antonia.
He had lived to kill the fiend who had taken his mate from him. Now he wanted something more. And he knew with a burst of insight that the woman on the floor holding on to him with such courage and determination was more important than revenge.
With that realization, something new and tender bloomed in his heart. He had been trapped in the freezing winter of his life. Now green shoots dared to poke through the sheets of ice.
He couldn’t tell her any of that. He couldn’t even use his eyes to convey what he wanted her to understand.
All he could do was tell her with his body. Wordlessly, he bent one leg and bowed to her in a gesture of submission, hoping the posture told her some of what he was feeling.
She must have been waiting for a sign from him, because she loosened her grip on his muzzle.
“Thank God,” she breathed.
Delicately, he stroked his tongue against her cheek. He wanted to remain close to her, but he couldn’t stay in wolf form now.
Slowly, he eased away. The man on the floor lay without moving. But Grant couldn’t take a chance on leaving him alone with Antonia. Changing shape was such a private act for him. Still, he stayed in the room, backing up a few feet and saying the ancient chant of transformation in his mind.
As soon as his body was under voluntary control again, he ran back to Antonia. Pulling her to her feet, he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight.
“Grant. Thank you Grant,” she whispered, as her hands swept over his naked back and shoulders.
“No, thank you.” He let himself hold her for a few precious seconds, then he loosened his hold. “Got to put my clothes on.”
“Yes.”
He dashed out of the room, picked up his discarded sweatpants and shirt, and brought them back to the kitchen. After dressing, he used a length of rope he’d seen in a kitchen drawer to bind the man’s hands. By the time he had secured the killer, Shipley was stirring.
He put himself between Antonia and the bastard. “Why did you kill my wife?” he asked.
“I don’t have to tell you nothin’.” The man lay there looking pale and sick.
From the corner of his eyes, he saw Antonia edging closer. When he tried to hold her back, she gave him a savage shake of the head.
Then she faced the killer, staring at him with a gaze fierce enough to pierce flesh and bone. “No, you don’t have to tell us anything. I can read it in the tarot cards. I know all the women you murdered,” she said in a low, menacing voice.
“Oh yeah? I say you don’t know squat.”
“I know . . . from the tarot,” she insisted. “The cards tell me people’s secrets.”
“You’re lying,” he answered, but he didn’t sound so sure of himself.
“The cards showed me your victims. Marcy Marshall in Fairfield. Wendy Spencer in Baltimore. Cara Boston in Williamsburg. Laurie Carmichael in Morristown.” She stopped and took a breath. “Donna Dunn in Princeton. Phyllis Nelson in Camden. Tracy Porter in Rising Sun. Ginger Gold in D.C., Wendy Spencer.”
“Ginnie!” Shipley snapped.
“Thank you for correcting me,” she answered.
Grant blinked. He h
ad given Antonia those names and places only a few hours ago, but somehow she’d memorized them.
“How . . . how do you know all that?” Shipley asked in a shaking voice.
“From the tarot. From their ancient wisdom,” Antonia intoned. “The cards told me who you killed. The cards tell me everything.”
“No. I was careful.”
“I know you poisoned them. I know you burned their houses to destroy the evidence.”
“You can’t know!”
“I know everything,” she corrected him. “Shall I tell you how you’re going to die? In the electric chair? Or by lethal injection?”
“No. I’m not going to get caught. They deserved to die. Every one of them.”
“What poison did you use? I don’t know that. What poison did you put in my carton of cream when you were in here this afternoon?”
“Strychnine,” he gasped out.
“Thank you for the information,” Antonia said, pulling out the small tape recorder from her pocket.
“You blind bitch. You taped me,” Shipley screamed.
“That’s right. And Grant didn’t even have to beat a confession out of you.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, then took the recorder from her and clicked it off before giving the bastard a swift kick to the chin. Once again, Shipley went still.
“What did you do?” Antonia gasped.
“Mr. Shipley is taking another nap,” he told her, “So we can talk. As soon as I call 911.”
After telling the cops that they were holding a murderer, he turned back to Antonia. “We’d better get our stories straight.”
“You mean that I asked you to help me trap Dwayne because I smelled something funny in the cream and remembered I’d left him alone in the kitchen?”
“You remembered that?” he asked sharply.
“Well, not till just now,” she answered, then plowed on, “And we agreed I’d have a tape recorder in my pocket because I was pretty sure I could get him to confess.”
“That, too.” He cleared his throat. “And I grabbed him from behind when he tried to cut off a lock of your hair.”
Cravings Page 29
