by Rita Herron
But the thing that disturbed him most was her final dig—she claimed that he scared her kid.
Sonya Silverstein’s beautiful face flashed into his mind, then her little girl’s, and the mental wheels in his brain rolled like a freight train barreling ahead. But he refused to board that train again.
“I’m going into the woods now, see what I can find,” Brack said. He strode from the room, needing to be alone.
Needing to blend into the woods with the animals and forget that Sonya’s green eyes had momentarily made him want to bury himself in her and forget his vow of solitude.
NIGHTMARES of the attack tormented Sonya. Katie’s terrified screams echoed in her head. Her own followed.
She jerked awake and stared at the clock, her body tense. The nightmare was over. Katie was safe. And she was in the hospital.
The clock read 6:00 p.m. She desperately wanted to go home.
She could not spend another hour in this room. The smells, sounds…they were a part of her job. Yet in the back of her mind, other memories stood out. The night she’d given birth to her daughter. The problems with the delivery. The horrifying realization that something was wrong.
The incubator where they’d placed her premature newborn. She’d been born six weeks early, and weighed only three pounds. She had struggled for days with her breathing. And then the tests…
Hours of endless waiting. Days of not knowing. Stan’s denial.
Then his withdrawal.
As if only the perfect in society deserved love.
She’d fought against hating him then. Not for herself but for the infant who needed him. And last night she’d come so close to losing her baby again….
She had to go home. Tuck Katie into bed, touch her and know that they were both still alive.
She beeped the nurses’ station and begged the RN to persuade the doctor to release her. Katie needed her tonight, and she needed to be with her in their own house.
Even though she was beginning to wonder if the house was haunted. Had it had been built on tainted land as rumors in Tin City claimed? Land where evil bled through the ground and rose to leak a sinister danger in the walls.
Dr. Waverman, a physician she had worked with more than once when she’d worked the ER rotations, stepped into the room. He was midthirties, had sandy brown hair, hazel eyes, and had displayed more than a passing interest in her since she’d accepted a job with Tin City’s only rescue squad unit.
And although he seemed nice, she hadn’t felt any sexual sparks or interest in return.
Maybe she had cut herself off from men because she was afraid. Her parents’ marriage had failed. Hers had ended bitterly.
Everyone she loved deserted her.
She’d even convinced herself that she was past feeling anything for any man.
Then why had she felt a connection with Brack Falcon? Why had her skin tingled and her body felt drawn to him?
Because he saved your life.
It was only natural.
“Sonya.” Dr. Waverman looked up from her chart. “I think you need to rest at least twenty-four hours before going home. You lost a lot of blood.”
“I’m fine, Doctor Waverman. I can’t sleep here, especially since I would have to leave Katie all night.”
“Sonya, please call me Aaron. And it won’t hurt Katie to spend a night with Margaret.” He paused, giving her a concerned look. “It’s healthy for children and parents to spend time apart. You need, you deserve, to have a life. Even if it is to rest.”
“But—”
“You don’t want Katie to suffer from separation anxiety when she starts school, do you?”
The thought of Katie attending school, of facing the kids who might tease her, sent a shudder through her. Granted, she had enrolled Katie in a small preschool program, but that was different. Only three hours at a time, two days a week.
Besides, she didn’t need a parenting lecture right now. She would worry about separation anxiety when the time came. When Katie was ready.
When she was ready.
Not when some man ordered her to do so.
No, she’d never allow another male to make her decisions for her.
“Please, Aaron.” Sonya detested the wobble in her voice, but maybe at home she could stop having nightmares, feel safe, forget the trauma of the past night and day.
“All right, I’ll prepare the paperwork.” He moved closer, reached up and brushed his hand down her arm. “Just promise me you will rest, that if you need help with Katie, you’ll ask Margaret to watch her.”
“We’ll be fine,” Sonya said, willing strength into her voice. “I’ve been on my own with my daughter for four years, Aaron. I can manage.”
A flare of sexual interest sparked in his eyes. “You don’t have to do everything alone,” he said softly.
Sonya bit down on her lip. She wished she could reciprocate Aaron’s attentions, but anything more than friendship was impossible. She wasn’t ready for a personal entanglement with anyone.
Not Aaron or the mysterious falconer who’d saved her life. The one who’d heated her blood with his dark, brooding eyes and his gruff exterior.
She simply wanted to be at home where she and Katie could be together, safe, hidden away from the monsters in the woods.
And the ones who looked like men—the ones who could hurt her just the same.
A MURKY GRAY SKY hung heavy with clouds as Brack hiked through the dense woods. Winter echoed in the shrill sound of the wind whistling through the mountain of trees. Animals skittered and scurried, scrounging for food. A vulture soared above, obviously zeroing in on the carcass of a dead animal for his next meal.
Brack veered to the right, tracking its movements.
Normally, the forest offered him solace, a place to purge his physical energy and frustration with a run or hike. A place to find inner peace, the strength he needed to sustain his goals, to serve his only friends, the birds of prey, and live as God had intended him to—alone and free in the wild.
But turmoil tightened his every movement today, his senses honed for dissension in the animal kingdom.
Had something in the environment poisoned the animals? Maybe the smaller ones that the falcons preyed on? Were some of the birds sick, diseased, carrying an affliction that caused them to attack at random? Or was a human among them, ripping at their flesh and using them as an excuse for his vicious attacks?
The idea of mutants—half animal, half human—was another possibility he couldn’t ignore, although the idea seemed far-fetched. But the ghost legends and tales of the miners trapped below the city were infamous. And random deaths over the years created suspicions, and had never been explained. Like the death in the woods behind the old farmhouse Sonya had bought.
He hiked a few more feet, then paused near Vulture’s Point. His stomach churned when he spotted two juvenile hawks slaughtered near the west end of the ridge. The vulture had honed in on them for dinner.
He’d have to find food from another source tonight. Brack stooped, yanked on gloves, then gathered their remains into boxes he had brought with him in his pack.
He’d send them to the vet for analysis. The blizzard dwindled into a light snow as he trekked back toward Falcon Ridge, but the roaring wind continued to shake the trees and howl incessantly, biting at his cheeks.
A half hour later, he packed the boxes in the trunk of his SUV and drove down the mountain to the vet. Dr. Phil Priestly, the town veterinarian, studied the animals with dismay. The vet was in his midforties, intelligent and had done an internship at Cornell University at its Veterinary School of Medicine. He had also been attacked by violent wild dogs once and had a special interest in animal behavior. His assistant, a young guy named Elmsworth, watched him from the lab.
“I’ll look them over, take some samples and blood, and see what we can find.” He frowned and pulled at his chin. “You say the woman had talon marks on her back?”
“Yes. Thankfully her heavy coat offer
ed some protection, but the attack was pretty vicious. My brother is calling a wildlife biologist and the EPA to help us look into this matter. If the water or vegetation is contaminated, it could affect other creatures in the forest.”
And eventually might trickle into the town’s water source and affect humans. A danger Brack didn’t want to face.
The vet nodded. “I’ll run full tox screens and let you know what I find.”
“Good. We need to solve this mystery ourselves before Cohen stirs up so much panic, the town goes on a wild bird hunt and destroys the wildlife.”
He thanked Priestly, then climbed into his SUV and cranked the engine. He wondered what the doctors had determined about Sonya, if they’d discovered anything on the blood or hair fibers on her skin.
He punched in the hospital’s number. It took a minute but the receptionist finally patched him through to Sonya’s doctor.
“It’s Brack Falcon, Doctor Waverman. I’m calling to check on Sonya Silverstein.”
“She’s fine. I’m preparing the paperwork for her release now.” He paused. “Although I wish she’d stay the night. She’s weak and needs rest, but she insists she wants to go home and be with her daughter.”
The mother bear protecting her cub.
“What did you find on those tests? Anything unusual?”
“I can’t discuss her medical records with you, Mr. Falcon.”
“I’m not asking about personal information. But if I’m going to find out what attacked her, I need to know if you discovered anything unusual. I’ll check with the CSI lab if I need to.”
Waverman muttered something beneath his breath. “There was something odd,” Waverman admitted in a low voice. “I haven’t told Sonya yet, but mixed with her blood, I found traces of another human’s blood. What’s even weirder, there were also traces of animal blood on her skin.”
Brack’s blood ran cold. “The blood of a bird?”
“That I don’t know yet. We’ll have to wait on more tests to verify the source.”
Damn, Cohen would have a fit.
An image of Sonya wounded and bleeding, lying in that snow the night before, flashed back, and Brack pressed the accelerator.
If Sonya’s attacker was part animal and part man, then they were dealing with a mutant creature of some sort.
But if it was human, the sicko might be afraid she would recognize him. Which meant that he might come after her again.
And she might still be in danger.
Chapter Six
The hint of danger tapped at Sonya’s nerves as the minutes ticked by. Alarm niggled at her at the thought of returning to her house. Even before the attack, the house had begun to creak and groan, the eerie sounds sending pinpoints of fear through her each night. In the darkness, she thought she’d heard a ghost whispering in the eaves of the wooden boards, and she imagined the dead that had gone before her walking underground and sending tremors through the earth that shook the walls and made the pictures on her nightstand rattle.
She shivered, and slipped off the hospital gown, wondering if she was going crazy. All this talk of ghosts in Tin City, and now of a mutant bird-man… Heaven help her. She had to have imagined the ghost sounds. And Katie had to have imagined the monster.
If her husband had any inclination to sue for custody and he caught wind that she suspected her house might be haunted, he’d have a good case to take her daughter from her.
But Stan wouldn’t do such a thing. He didn’t want her or Katie.
She swallowed back the hurt, then winced at the soreness in her limbs as she pulled on the sweats the nurse had brought her. Thankfully, the ER kept a stash of extra clothes in case of emergencies. At least the shapeless clothes were loose, warm and nonabrasive against her bandaged arms and back.
A knock sounded at the door just as she pulled on socks. “Come in.”
The door squeaked open, and Dr. Waverman poked his head in. Behind him, Brack Falcon appeared. Surprise made her chest flutter. He’d pulled his hair back into a ponytail with a leather thong, and his bronzed cheeks looked chafed from the wind. Beneath the hospital lights, the dark beard stubble grazing his jaw stood out, making him look impossibly formidable and rough, as if he might have been out fighting wild animals in the wilderness.
She didn’t like the heat that shot through her. Much preferred the numbness of a man who didn’t make her feel anything, such as Aaron Waverman.
What was the mysterious falconer doing here?
“I have the paperwork ready,” Aaron said. “But I wish you’d reconsider your decision to go home, Sonya.”
“I told you I’m fine,” she said simply. “I’ll rest better in my own bed.” At least she hoped she would.
He gave her a skeptical look but thankfully didn’t argue. “I’ll drop by and change your bandage tomorrow.”
“No, thanks, Aaron.” The idea of him in her house, physically touching her, triggered a stab of panic to her chest. “Margaret can do it for me, or I’ll have Reesie come by.” Reesie was one of her coworkers.
Aaron shifted restlessly, and Sonya saw Brack studying her. Anger radiated from his brooding face and well-honed, muscular body. But a raw hunger flickered in the depths of his bottomless eyes, a primal look that twisted her stomach.
He obviously didn’t like the connection between them, this sexual chemistry that seemed to throb in the air. She could feel it in every second that passed, every time their eyes met. He had to also.
Or maybe she’d imagined it, just as she’d imagined the ghosts.
Maybe he just didn’t like her. He probably saw her as weak, needy, imperfect. Like Stan had.
“I came by to see what the doctors found from the tests they ran,” Brack said as if he needed to explain his visit.
So much for his concern or personal interest.
Not that she wanted a personal relationship—she didn’t. And she certainly didn’t want to pursue this chemistry herself…not with someone as dangerous as him.
She swiped a hand over her sweating forehead. The drugs must be making her delusional.
“What did you find?” Sonya asked.
Aaron cleared his throat. “There were traces of your blood, of course, and another human’s blood, as well as human hair samples. But we also discovered blood from an animal.” He shot Brack a suspicious look. “Bird feathers were also caught in the blood.”
Sonya clenched her fingers together and leaned against the bed frame. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Aaron admitted. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“Then Katie might be right.” Sonya slid down onto the bed. “It was some kind of mutant creature that attacked me?”
Brack moved closer to her as if to offer comfort, although he didn’t touch her. “There’s another possibility. Some psycho is doing this and wants us to think he’s a mutant, so he smears an animal’s blood and feathers on his victims.”
Nausea rose to Sonya’s throat. “What kind of person would do that?”
“A very disturbed one,” Brack said in a clipped tone. “But don’t worry. My brothers and I are investigating. We’ll find him.”
Aaron placed a hand on Sonya’s arm and patted her gently. “If he’s right, you might still be in danger, Sonya. Let me take you back to my place for the night. I have a guest room where you’ll be comfortable.”
“No, I want to be with Katie.”
“She can come, too,” Aaron offered.
Irrational fear snaked through her at the idea of staying with him, in his house, with or without her daughter. “Thanks, Aaron. But there’s no reason to think this psycho would attack me again.”
“You escaped. Maybe he thinks you can recognize him,” Aaron pointed out.
Brack’s jaw went rigid with anger, and Sonya glared at Aaron. Was he intentionally trying to frighten her? “I told you, I’ll be fine, Aaron. But thanks for your concern.”
“I have to drive past your place on the way to Fa
lcon Ridge. I’ll give you a lift home,” Brack offered. He angled his head toward Aaron. “Don’t worry, Doctor. I’ll make sure she and her daughter are safe, even if I have to stay there with them myself.”
Sonya’s breath hitched at his bold declaration.
“And who’s going to protect her from you, Mr. Falcon?” Aaron hissed.
Brack balled his hands into fists by his side as if he might assault the doctor, but a second later a cold mask slid over his expression.
Sonya clenched her hands together and moved toward the door. She wanted to assure Aaron that she wasn’t afraid of Brack, at least not physically. But she didn’t like either man ordering her around, acting as if she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Besides, she was terrified of Brack. Terrified that he would hurt her emotionally.
He can’t. Not unless you let him get close.
There, she had her answer.
She knew how to protect herself. She’d guard her heart. Because Brack couldn’t hurt her unless she let him.
SONYA WAS afraid of him.
The realization felt like a hammer against Brack’s skull. How many times did it take for him to realize that no woman was going to want him? Not the man he was.
And why did her distrust disturb him?
He hardened himself. He couldn’t allow it to affect him.
Slapping his control back in place, he turned abruptly toward the door. But he would protect her and find her attacker in spite of how she felt about him.
After all, tracking animals was his specialty. And if he didn’t find the psycho who’d attacked Sonya, Cohen would continue to blame the falcons and might put them in danger.
While the nurse wheeled Sonya to the hospital entrance, he retrieved his SUV and cranked up the heater. She was shaking when she climbed in, from fear or the cold he wasn’t certain, so he removed his coat and tugged it around her shoulders.
Her gaze flew to his, and the car seemed to shrink in size. The air grew hot, sultry, the scent of her female essence permeating the air. And then her fear rattled between them. She wet her lips, making him itch to kiss her and assure her that he was her friend, not her enemy.
