by Sadie Hart
Charles would kill and keep on killing, no matter what she did—whether she was with him or running from him. She didn’t matter. Not like he told himself she did.
Her teeth dug into the back of her hand hard enough she could taste the blood, but she would not scream. Would not cry. He’d broken her once, left her shattered. It was time to be strong now. Stronger than Charles could imagine.
A fist banged against her front door and Timber lowered her bloody hand to the table, the knife still gripped tightly in her fist. Tossing the phone aside, she picked up the second blade and went to the door. Timber recognized the Hound, who kept hammering on her door, his eyes wild with fury, anger.
Then Brandt was there beside him, reaching for him.
The other man swung out and Brandt ducked. “Jesus, Ace, stand down.”
“He killed her. That son of a bitch, he killed her.” The other Hound, Ace, waved wildly in the direction of the patrol car. Oh, no. Timber swayed slightly, the angry Hound’s accusations swamping her. “I fucking went out on patrol, came back, and Laci’s dead.”
Timber leaned her head against the front door. She recognized the expression that flashed across Brandt’s face, had seen it so many times before. They’d lost one of their own.
“Shit,” Brandt whispered, his voice suddenly hollow.
Ace made a broken, angry sound. “I heard her screaming, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
“I thought it was Timber.” A hand touched her door handle, tried to twist, and Timber stared at it, waiting for Brandt to realize she’d locked the door.
“That little—”
“Don’t.” Brandt cut the other Hound of with a snarl. “You will do your job. Timber is as much a victim in this as your partner.”
Through the peephole she could see Ace’s nostrils flare. “You only say that because you were fucking her.”
“Enough.” Brandt jerked his hand out in the direction of the car. “Secure the scene and call in the pack. I need to make sure Timber is safe and that we haven’t lost two people tonight.”
The handle twisted again.
“She isn’t one of ours,” Ace said, grief and anger contorting his voice, but still saying what Timber had expected to hear.
How many more will die because you won’t do what you’re asked? Charles’s taunt echoed through her, but then Brandt’s voice outside her door cut off the self-doubt and guilt.
“No. You’re right. Timber Kearney isn’t a Hound. But she’s ours to protect. That’s our job. She didn’t ask for this.” Brandt shoved closer, pressing into his space until he was right in Ace’s face. “Are you going to do your job, or do I need to do it for you?”
“Fuck,” Ace muttered but he turned and headed for the car. She watched Brandt stare after him, turning only when he saw the other Hound pull out his phone and make the call.
“Timber,” Brandt called out. His knock rattled her front door. She stared at it.
Where was the line between fighting and hiding? Charles would keep killing with or without her, she knew that, but would fewer people die if she had a gun and—
“Timber,” Brandt said, this time his voice soft. “You’re right there, I can hear you breathing. Open the door.”
She wavered. Charles wanted Brandt gone, that much was clear. He’d killed a Hound to make sure she got the message. More than that, though, as much as she didn’t want to believe the man who’d just held her minutes before would turn his back on her...pack was pack. And he’d just lost one of his because of her.
It was a lot to ask of him, to keep protecting her if his own kept going under fire. And they would.
“You should go,” she whispered.
He made a gruff sound of disagreement. “You should open the door and have this conversation with me.”
She shook her head. No. Timber shoved away from the door. Turning toward the living room, she left him standing on her front porch.
“Timber!” Brandt called again, a note of real fear in his voice this time. She heard the handle jerk again as she scooped up his duffle bag and shoved what belongings had spilled out of the top back inside. She pulled the zipper closed and went back to the door.
She wouldn’t just walk into Charles’s arms. No, she’d find another way to fight him. But she could yield in this. He wanted Brandt out of her house. Hell, maybe it’d buy them all some time. She flipped the lock and opened the door. Brandt stood there on the front steps, alone this time. His gaze narrowed on the bag.
“You have to go.” She tossed the bag to the deck in front of him.
Brandt just shouldered his way inside. His gaze skimmed over the knife still clutched in her hand, the other on the table beside the door. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her behind him. “Stay behind me.”
Brandt scanned the room and pulled out his phone. “Tate?”
A man’s voice sounded over the other line, softer, but with her wolf’s hearing Timber could make it out. “We’re on our way, Ace called. Martin’s dead?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if Wolfe is here still or if he’s left.”
“Do you have Kearney?”
Brandt looked back at her. There was something hard in his eyes when they met hers, but there was a question in them, too. He lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound confident. “I’m securing the house now.”
He hung up and turned his back to her, but only to scan the room again before he moved forward. Timber stayed behind him. Silence stretched and lingered between them. It wasn’t until they’d cleared the house and were standing in her office, the distant sirens getting louder, that he turned to look at her again.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Confusion had muddled her, but Brandt continued before she could even form a question. “I’m not going anywhere, and neither is my pack.”
“Your Hound—”
“Ace has his own issues. Issues I’ll deal with. But he does not speak for me, and he sure as hell doesn’t speak for the rest of my pack. So you tell me what’s going on. If it was the conversation you heard between Ace and me or what nearly happened between us on your couch—”
“He called.” The words burned her throat and she took a step back, but Brandt followed her. He didn’t give her an inch of extra space. “He called while he was killing her. I heard her die. I heard the knife slice through her.”
And in spite of all the guilt and fear that poured through her, Timber heard her own anger, too. The unbridled fury, burning hot. Her hand tightened around the knife still in her grip. She was so sick of this.
“Shit,” Brandt whispered, and his face softened, but Timber didn’t want soft. She wanted him to be angry too. Sympathy was worse than having him walk away; sympathy could break her back down. He was getting too much of her heart too fast.
She shook her head. “He doesn’t want you here and he’ll keep going after your pack until you go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. He wants you alone. My pack members can take care of themselves.”
“You didn’t hear her die.” A shudder jolted down her spine, and Timber jerked her chin up a notch. “You didn’t hear her scream as the knife rammed into her, or—”
Brandt was standing in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms hard, before she could finish the sentence.
“Enough.”
Timber sucked in a shaky breath, her voice fading. Brandt pulled her closer, one hand slipping beneath her hair to cradle her head to his shoulder, the other one holding her. Just holding her. A tear slipped down her cheek before she could stop it. Brandt’s fingers ran through her hair, stroking, soft.
She should have pulled away.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. “He sounded...I don’t know...jealous.”
And the moment she said it, it made it sense.
You don’t belong to him, Charles’s threats from the first call raced through her mind. He can’t stay with you every night.
�
��He is jealous.” Timber pulled back and Brandt let her go. He stared down at her while she wiped the tears from her face. “The first call. He said I don’t belong to you. That you can’t stay with me every night.”
Those dark eyes of his bored into hers, and she could see Brandt mulling it over. “And tonight?”
Her jaw tightened. She’d never forget a word of what he’d said.
“How many more are going to have to die before I do as he asks? That I was his and,” Timber found herself smiling, not out of joy, but because she’d figured something out. No matter how small. It was one more piece to the puzzle that was Charles. “And to get that ‘dog’ out of my house. You.”
“It makes sense. He abducted you the first time because he decided you were his mate. If he’s still buying into that mentality—”
“I ran with you the first night. As a wolf and you as a wolfhound. And he watched. You’ve slept in my house. He’s as pissed off about your presence as he is by the fact that he can’t snatch me back. And then tonight, oh shit...”
She started to pull away when Brandt caught her arm. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“I’m not blaming myself for anything he does anymore. Well, I’m trying not to. It’s a work in progress.” Timber tried to force a smile, but she heard someone shout downstairs and was spared the effort of making it look real.
“Brandt?”
“Coming.” He squeezed her arm. “Stay here. I’ll lock the door on my way out. We don’t know for sure if he’s gone yet.”
He cupped her jaw and tilted her face up. Something flashed in his eyes, a hesitation, then he leaned in and kissed her. Just a light touch of his lips against hers, but the fear she hadn’t even realized was clutching at her heart eased. He ran his thumb across her lips. “Stay safe.”
He pulled away and jogged down the stairs, his kiss a memory against her skin. She stared after him. She should have regretted tonight, should have felt more guilt than she did. If Charles had seen them together, there was a good chance he’d killed Brandt’s Hound because of it, and if he had, all hell could be about to break loose.
Chapter Thirteen
Brandt cursed under his breath. The crime scene team had cordoned off the area. Bright lights cast a ferocious glare, drawing everything out in Technicolor detail. Martin lay sprawled in the grass, red splattered out across the green. The bastard had really done a number on her. Multiple stab wounds to her torso. It hadn’t been a painless death. She’d felt the knife go in, multiple times, before death had finally taken her.
Tate made a sympathetic sound beside him.
Laci Martin had been one of theirs. Fuck.
“He stabbed her four times before he slit her throat and dumped her,” Tate said.
Brandt nodded, but he couldn’t erase the hollow ache in his gut. The churn of guilt. He forced the emotions aside and let his training click in. He’d done this job long enough that his brain could process clearly, even if emotionally he wanted to rage and stomp around. She’d been a member of his pack, his to protect, and he’d failed, but feelings like that wouldn’t help here.
Facts would.
And everything in the scene pointed to one thing. Charles Wolfe had been angry. Martin’s death had been brutal, cruel. Wolfe had been pressed for time...otherwise Brandt hated to think what she might have endured. Staring down at the stiff body, Brandt knew Timber was right. Wolfe was jealous.
He’d lashed out at something that would hurt Brandt as well as Timber. He wanted to see if he could force Shifter Town Enforcement’s hand. Brandt’s jaw tightened as he ground his teeth, holding back the simmering anger, the sickening churn of grief.
“He’s never attacked a Hound before,” Tate said softly, drawing Brandt’s attention to him. “But I might understand the reasoning behind it now.”
Brandt lifted an eyebrow and waited. He didn’t trust himself to speak yet.
Wolfe had wanted to force Shifter Town Enforcement’s hand, but he hadn’t thought it through. Attacking one of theirs wouldn’t give him an advantage; it just pissed Brandt off and made him even more strongly motivated to take down the son of a bitch. Not just that, but it made his pack more determined to nail the bastard, too.
Brandt wasn’t worried that someone in his pack would simply hand Timber over, especially not now. Ace had issues, but this was now an attack against their own. Shifter Town Enforcement as a whole would be sitting up and taking notice. You couldn’t viciously murder a Hound and expect to walk away.
Seeing the look in Tate’s eyes let Brandt know he was spot on. Tate looked as furious as he felt. Then he held up his phone. “He called her again,” Tate said, tilting his head at Timber’s house. “We couldn’t get a fix on Wolfe’s location, but we did record the call.”
They’d put the phone tap in. Brandt knew what Wolfe had said, he’d heard it from Timber, but as he stared at the phone he nodded. He wanted to hear Wolfe for himself. Wanted to hear the man who had killed fifteen women. The same bastard who had tortured Timber for a year. He wanted to know the voice behind the stench.
“Play it.”
Tate glanced at the Hounds around them, but his thumb brushed over the touch screen to begin the call. Martin’s whimpers filled the night air and everyone stilled. Brandt watched while Ace’s faced hardened.
“Charles,” Timber’s voice came over the line. Hard, angry. Nothing at all like the soft, teasing woman who had been in his arms less than an hour ago.
Martin screamed then, and Brandt heard Timber’s breath catch, the soft sob she stopped before it could make much of a sound. But if he’d heard it, he had no doubt Wolfe had heard it too. Brandt also knew it was exactly the reaction Wolfe had wanted.
Wolfe’s voice came over the line again, and hot fury curled through Brandt, burning on white-hot embers that raced through his veins. His fists clenched as the words rang out in the night, everyone around him tense and listening. “You know the rules, love.”
Brandt barely refrained from snarling. As if Wolfe had any idea what that meant. Wolfe rattled on, but Brandt looked from one member of his pack to the next. The knife slashed out and Brandt winced when he heard Martin’s whimper, the slice of the blade sinking into her again.
He barely heard the rest of what Wolfe said before the phone went dead.
“He’s jealous,” Brandt said and not just to Tate, but to everyone in his pack there. “He can’t get to Timber because we’re watching her. He wants to force us into giving him what he wants.”
Tate snorted. “Because that’ll solve everything. Kearney was his ‘mate’ the last time he kidnapped her and held her. He killed his first twelve victims while she was with him. He’s just getting warmed up with this little show.”
“This isn’t a show,” Ace snapped, and the growl rose out of Brandt before he could stop it.
Ace was a good Hound, but he still had the old mentality that shifters and Hounds weren’t the same. It wasn’t a mentality they could afford right now.
“No,” Tate said quietly. “It’s not a show to us, but it is to him. He killed Martin brutally to make us sit up and take notice. He killed her on the fucking phone to torture the woman in that house.” Tate pointed at Timber’s. “Because holding her and raping her while he killed twelve other women over the course of a year wasn’t torture enough.”
Brandt hadn’t realized until now how much Tate had figured out. Tate hadn’t questioned the amount of information Brandt withheld, but he’d sure as hell put together the pieces and come up with a pretty accurate picture.
“Makes you wonder how many times he’s made her listen to him or watch while he killed someone else,” another Hound said softly. Brandt looked around at them. Of his entire pack, the only one there who was angry at Timber was Ace. He’d expected as much, but it made him damned proud to know how far they’d all come during their past few years together. A few had even requested a transfer to his pack to have a shot at making a difference in the lives of shifters.
<
br /> “Finish the scene,” Brandt said, exhaustion suddenly weighing him down. Then he turned to Ace. “Come with me.”
The Hound snarled but got to his feet. They both knew what Brandt was going to say. Everyone in the pack probably knew, but he’d given Ace time to adjust, and right now they didn’t have the luxury of giving him more. Not after his stunt with Timber. Her trust in Shifter Town Enforcement was shaky enough, he couldn’t afford to have Ace shatter what little she had.
“You firing me?”
“No. I’m putting you on leave, and tomorrow I’ll see if we can find an appropriate transfer for you. You’ve lost two partners, and you need the time off. And we both know this pack isn’t the right fit for you.” Ace sneered but didn’t say a word. If he had an argument, it obviously wasn’t something he felt he could bring to Brandt. “Go on. You’re off for the night.”
Ace turned and marched away. Brandt could feel the man’s anger, his frustration. He knew on some level Ace still wanted Brandt to ‘do something’ about Timber, exact some retribution for what had been done to Martin. And Brandt would, but it wouldn’t be what Ace wanted. Laci Martin’s death hadn’t been because of Timber. He also knew Ace was mad at him because he’d as good as made love with Timber tonight. Her scent was all over his skin.
Shit. He’d known it wasn’t a good idea. But knowing it hadn’t been enough to make him want to stop.
“Boss,” Tate said as he approached, and Brandt wrestled his attention back to his second in command.
“Yeah?” But even as he spoke, Brandt knew what Tate was going to say. Knew it because it was the same damn conversation that was clamoring around in his head.
“Wolfe’s not just trying to force our hand; he’s trying to force yours. Think you might be getting too close to the job?”
Brandt wanted to deny it. Hell, getting involved with someone on the job, especially a crucial witness, wasn’t smart. But what happened tonight hadn’t changed anything. He’d still done his job. It had hurt like hell, physically and emotionally, to walk out that door and go after Charles when all he wanted to do was finish what they’d begun on that couch.
