Fierce Informer (Sierra Pride Book 6)

by Liza Street

  “Starla,” Justine gasped. “You took my sister from us!”

  “You got it!” He clapped his hands.

  “What—I don’t understand.” Things were growing hazy. “You…take people? Kids?”

  “Yes. Good money in sending little shifter kids to new families for adoption. Not much of a paper trail. The kids believe their families are dead, the families believe their kids are dead, I make a tidy profit, and the adoptive families keep quiet, not wanting to invite legal trouble. Now, lie back into the gray. You’re safe and relaxed. Safe, and relaxed. Even if your body isn’t ready to relax, give it time, and body and mind together will float into a safe relaxation…”

  She was not safe or relaxed, and she wasn’t going to believe any of this bullshit. Rage coursed through her, a rage so hot it felt like it burned her veins. Listening to his words, she waited until he mentioned the knife again. There must be one nearby, maybe in the grass somewhere, and he would direct her to it.

  “As you walk through the gray, you bend down and find a knife next to you. It’s your way out, Justine. You don’t have to feel the pain anymore.”

  Blinking, she raised the knife and turned to face him.

  His eyes widened in alarm, but he continued to talk to her, and suddenly he was Starla, right there in front of her like Justine remembered her. Eleven years old, with brown eyes like their mom’s.

  “Don’t hurt me,” Starla begged. “Please, put the knife down, Justine. I love you, don’t hurt me.”

  Then another voice spoke through the gray, a familiar voice that filled her chest with lightness and love. “Justine, it’s me, Mateo. Kill him, Justine. Don’t hesitate—kill Al Gunser!”

  That voice. Mateo. He hadn’t left her at all. She was in some kind of thrall to Gunser, and the person in front of her wasn’t her sister, but the man who’d taken her sister.

  Mateo’s voice again, urging her to kill him and save herself. She blinked and saw Gunser’s face. He stared behind her, likely at Mateo.

  “You won’t hurt me, will you, Justine?” His lips moved, but it was Starla’s voice. “Use the knife, Justine. Take your life, and end the pain you’re going through.”

  His image quickly flicked back to Starla’s face, but Justine was no longer fooled.

  With as much strength as she could muster, Justine slashed with the knife. Surprised, Gunser raised his arms to ward of the strike, but he wasn’t fast enough. Justine watched her sister’s—no, Gunser’s—blood spill all over her hands until, the haze completely clearing, she saw Gunser lying on the ground in front of her, his neck slit, blank eyes staring past her.

  fourteen

  Mateo hugged Justine and pulled her into his lap. Justine moved easily, limp from exhaustion or the drugs that made her skin smell odd, or from whatever state of haziness she’d been experiencing.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t kill him for you,” he said. “I didn’t have time to shift—you were seconds away from killing yourself. Oh, Justine, cariña. That was too close.”

  Mateo heard a car pull to a stop, and recognized the sound of Rafe’s SUV. Seconds later, Rafe rushed down the embankment.

  “I saw your truck on the road,” Rafe said. “Is she okay? Are you okay? Mom’s staying with Barrett, but Dad’s on his way.”

  “We’re fine, mostly,” Mateo said, curling his body tighter around Justine’s. She was shaking, still, and he didn’t know what else to do for her.

  “I can’t believe I killed him,” Justine said.

  Mateo couldn’t keep the growl from his voice. “I’m sorry I didn’t do it for you.”

  “No, not that.” Her voice was faint, as if she were still trapped in that faraway place she’d been in when Gunser was talking to her. “I’m glad I was the one to kill him. But he knew about Starla—he took her from my family, and now I don’t know where he took her, or if she’s even alive or not. He said she was like me, that she resisted the hypnosis.” Justine lifted her tear-streaked face to look at Mateo. “I think he might have killed her.”

  Justine dissolved into body-wracking sobs, and Mateo rocked her back and forth. His eyes met Rafe’s, because they were both helpless to make this better for Justine.

  Rafe flicked his gaze to the corpse, and Mateo nodded.

  “Get rid of it. Please,” Mateo mouthed.

  Rafe gave a quick nod and began hauling the body away. They knew this forest better than anyone, and that body would never be found.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Mateo whispered to Justine. “I promise, everything’s going to be fine.”

  He sat that way, rocking her until her tears stopped.

  epilogue

  Justine couldn’t stop crying—but now they were tears of joy. When her brothers pulled her into a group hug, she cried a lot, sniffling into their shirts. And when she saw Cora, her twin, she completely lost her shit. Cora was too skinny, and there was a haunted look in her eyes that Justine had never seen before. Justine sobbed into Cora’s bony shoulder.

  “I missed you so much,” Cora whispered.

  “What did they do to you?” Justine asked. “You’re…different.”

  Cora gave her a smile that Justine knew to be fake. “Long story.”

  “Tell me later?”

  Cora nodded.

  Justine grabbed Mateo from where he’d been hovering at the doorway of the ranch house. “This is Mateo,” she said. “He’s my mate. And my fiancé.”

  Cora shook Mateo’s hand, but all the brothers descended and gathered them together in another hug. Justine laughed.

  She spent a few minutes greeting her brothers’ mates—Hera, with the twins; Ava, who she’d known in high school; and Gabriel’s mate, Miranda. She met Ava and Jude’s daughter, Chloe, who seemed to have charmed the socks off of every person in the house. Kate and Maverick were in school, so Justine would have to meet Kate later.

  It felt so good to be home, and while she wouldn’t have thought it beforehand, her heart felt bigger and stronger with the new family members to get to know and love.

  It wasn’t just the new family members that had concerned her before she came home. She’d spoken with her brothers and Cora on the phone last week, the day after she killed Gunser. Justine was relieved that nobody had been angry about her killing their only lead to Starla. “We’ll figure it out,” Gabriel had grumbled, echoing what Mateo had said before.

  She had gotten over her anger at herself, too. There had been no other way to save herself, and if she had died, they wouldn’t have learned that Starla had been one of Gunser’s victims.

  Taking Mateo’s hand in hers, she led him out to the back patio where everyone else was converging for a Welcome Home barbecue. It was time to shake off those thoughts of Gunser and move forward with her life. Still, there was one lingering detail.

  “Have you talked to Barrett yet?” she asked Mateo.

  “Yeah. He’s happy. His parents are very emotional, he said. Understandably so. Interesting how we hadn’t even heard about his pride. I think Gunser was always careful to do adoptions between prides with little to no contact with each other.”

  “Do you think he’s going to be okay now?” Justine said.

  “Yeah,” Mateo said, kissing her temple. “He’s going to come visit next summer, and his parents think it’s a good idea, too. He still wants to go to the trout stream Rafe and I were telling him about.”

  “And your parents? How are they?”

  “If a shifter kid needs a home, they’ll adopt,” Mateo said. “But if not, they have enough money to hire a surrogate, too, if they want. It’ll work out.”

  “Everything always does, doesn’t it?”

  “Not always,” he said, “but it has for us. I love you, cariña, and I’m so glad you’ll be my wife.”

  “I love you, too.” She leaned up to give him a kiss, ignoring the hoots and whistles of her family. She was loved and whole again, and whatever happened next in their search for Starla, she’d be ready.

 
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  Sneak Preview of Fierce Survivor

  Book 7 of The Sierra Pride

  Coming November 2016

  With her wrist, Cora wiped her beer foam mustache off her lip and grabbed the next knife. This had been her brother Maverick’s idea, and the stakes were high—if she won, she could move out to the converted apartment above the garage. If she lost, she’d be stuck in her and Justine’s childhood bedroom, right next to Gabriel and Miranda’s room which had not nearly enough soundproofing for a couple who seemed to be having sex all the freaking time…and one of them was her brother. Gross.

  The whole “mate” thing in the shapeshifter world? She wanted nothing to do with it, not anymore.

  “You can do this,” Maverick said. “Eyes on the target. Deep breaths.”

  Cora snorted and gave him her most contemptuous look. “Stop pretending to be my coach—I am a knife-throwing master.”

  The beer had made her cocky, so she listened to Maverick and took a deep, steadying breath and eyed the target. She and Maverick had carved it together. They were the two woodworkers of the family, and they’d had a blast trying out a new dremel. The finished product was a target made from a round of wood with images of a spider, a lumpy-looking thing that was supposed to be a cockroach, and a wasp—all things that Cora hated. She’d practiced until the wasp was nothing more than wings, and the spider had been all but gouged out in the middle. She was good, but not as good as Gabriel.

  “I can’t believe we’re even playing for this,” she said.

  Gabriel took a swig of his beer. “I’m not ready for you to be out of the house. We just got you back.”

  “Yeah, like four months ago. Come on, Gabes, I think it’s time I got my freedom.”

  “Then you must earn it,” Gabriel said with a sadistic grin. “Spider, fourth leg from the right.”

  She weighed the knife in her hand and poised to throw.

  “Wait, wait!” Maverick called. “You’re supposed to take another drink.”

  “Sh—shoot,” Cora said, correcting herself when she saw June, Blake and Hera’s daughter, watching her intently. June wasn’t even one yet, so probably wouldn’t understand, but Cora would rather bite her tongue than be the one to teach the twins swear words. Well, until they were teenagers, maybe.

  It was weird coming back and seeing kids here. Her pride had changed since she’d been away. Her brothers had mates now. Jude and his mate, Ava, had a daughter, and Blake and his mate, Hera, had twins.

  She took the drink. All she had to do was stick this last throw, and she’d have her own little apartment. No more pillow talk filtering through the walls, no more need for sleeping with ear plugs so she wouldn’t be awakened by the bed creaking in Gabriel and Miranda’s room.

  Jude, Ava, and Chloe had their own place a few miles away. Blake and Hera had built another house on the property, farther down into the meadow. Maverick and Kate were still in college and they had their own apartment. Justine and her mate, Mateo, lived in Montana, running one of the mountain resorts Mateo’s family owned.

  True, there were plenty of rooms in the house, and Cora didn’t have to sleep in her old room; she could take Blake’s old room, for instance, or Jude’s. But it was time that Cora got some distance from her family, even if that distance was no farther than an apartment above the garage. She was tired of being treated like a teenager, tired of being coddled and protected. Yeah, being trapped in Nevada had been awful, but it was over, and she was ready for everyone to move on.

  Exhaling, Cora relaxed her stance. She stared at the spider’s leg. Pulling her arm back and stepping forward, she exhaled to throw the knife.

  Just as she was releasing it, though, an engine gunned down the drive. Cora turned, startled, and the throw went wide, lodging in the fencing behind the target.

  Maverick gave a big belly laugh, his blue eyes twinkling, until his mate, Kate, punched him in the arm.

  “She’s too easy to startle,” he said with another laugh. “I can’t help myself.”

  “Shut up. It’s because of what she’s been through,” Kate whispered.

  Kate was human, and was always forgetting that shifters—especially mountain lion shifters—could hear everything.

  “Boo!” Maverick said.

  Kate smacked him again. Cora gave him a scorching look, but inside she had to admit, she preferred Maverick’s tactic of getting her used to normal life again. Most of her brothers and their mates tiptoed around her, trying not to make any sudden noises, making sure to give her plenty of space and lots of room to roam. She’d been cooped up in Bryan Brooks’s apartment for six months, not able to run, having to shift into her lion indoors. Instead of babying her, though, Maverick challenged her, and she appreciated that.

  That was why, as soon as Maverick graduated from college, the two of them would start a carpentry business together. They both had good eyes and together their skills would only improve.

  “No, listen, you idiot,” Cora said. “A car.”

  Blake cocked his head, listening. “Yeah, someone’s coming.”

  Cora felt her face split in a wide grin when the vehicle came around the curve of the driveway and she recognized an old truck. “It’s Quentin!” she reported to the others.

  “But I thought Emma was performing this month,” Hera said from one of the chairs on the patio, Baby Jasper in her arms.

  Blake, next to her, bounced June in his lap. He picked her up and passed her to Cora. “I’ll go see what’s up. Hopefully nothing’s wrong.”

  Cora cuddled with June, making bug eyes and sticking out her tongue so June would try to copy her. Freaking cute babies.

  Blake and Quentin came around the side of the house together, somber looks on their faces.

  “Is everything okay?” Cora asked. “Where’s Emma?”

  “Emma’s fine,” Quentin said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t call before I came. Phone battery, from talking so much to Emma on the road.”

  The tips of his ears turned pink, and Cora guessed he’d been having sexy conversations with her. Something about mates and their libidos—she would never understand it. She hadn’t ever felt that way with Bryan.

  “Cora, I have…news.”

  She looked up at Quentin again. This didn’t sound good, and maybe she’d rather not know. She passed Baby June off to Gabriel’s mate, Miranda. “What is it?”

  “Jerome Brooks called and asked me to act as an intermediary.”

  “Because of your rogue status?” Gabriel asked, disbelief in his voice. “He does know that you’re a part of our pride now, right?”

  “He doesn’t care,” Quentin said. “He insists he wants to do right by the Sierra Pride, and he asked my permission for him and his son to enter our territory and give us a peace offering.”

  Cora felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. No. No, she couldn’t bear to see Bryan, her mate. She just…no. She couldn’t do it. He’d kept her in that apartment, he hadn’t let her go, and she wasn’t ready to face him again.

  The world shrank to the sound of blood whooshing in her veins, and her vision went gray. She heard someone shout, and then Hera’s arms were around her, and Blake’s, and her pride was touching her arms and back and shoulders, helping to ground her.

  “It’s not Bryan,” Miranda whispered urgently in Cora’s ear. “He’s bringing Tyler. Not Bryan, Tyler.”

  “Bryan will never be allowed in our territory,” Gabriel said, his voice firm. “It’s Jerome and Tyler.”

  “Don’t shift,” Maverick said. “Stay with us, Cora. Don’t you want to tell us what you think of their peace offering?”

  Tyler, not Bryan. A peace offering. Color slowly returned to the world around her—no more gray.

  Cora said, “There’s no peace offering that w
ould be acceptable. The only thing I want to see is Bryan in a cage of his own. Forever.”

  She hated the way her voice shook, but it was important she tell them what she wanted. She could be fierce, like her brothers. Bryan hadn’t broken her. Or if he had, she was determined not to stay broken for long.

  “…not a lot of warning,” Quentin was saying. “They should be here any minute.”

  “What?” Cora yelped.

  She stood in stunned silence while the rest of her family stood around her, sympathetic looks on their faces.

  “There they are,” Blake said.

  She heard the car engine a half-second later, and Jerome Brooks’s Jeep came into view after another minute.

  Two choices. She could shift into a lion and take off, but someone would probably follow her to make sure she was okay. Or she could run upstairs and hide in her bedroom. Once she was in there, nobody would dare bother her until she came out, after what she’d been through. It had been part of their agreement when she came back home—she called the shots about her living space, and one of her rules was nobody could come in unless she said it was okay.

  The Jeep parked a fair distance from the house, probably so Jerome and Tyler could make sure they wouldn’t be attacked.

  Cora turned and fled inside, up the stairs, and into the room that, a few minutes ago, she’d wanted nothing more than to leave behind.

  The Sierra Pride Series

  Fierce Wanderer

  Fierce Heartbreaker

  Fierce Protector

  Fierce Player

  Fierce Dancer

  Fierce Informer

  Fierce Survivor (due out November 2016)

  Fierce Lover (due out December 2016)

  About Liza

  Liza got her start in romance by sneak-reading her grandma’s paperbacks. Years later, she tried her own hand as a ghostwriter of romance. It wasn’t long before she heard the call of the wild—the call of shapeshifters, to be exact—and she couldn’t resist developing her own series. Now she divides her time between freelance editing, ghostwriting, and the mountain lion shifters in the Sierra Pride.