by Paige Tyler
“There’s no way we’re letting you drive all the way down to Austin on your own,” Miriam said. “Not in the condition you’re in right now.”
Lana nodded as her phone rang again. She sat there, too numb to answer it.
Brandy took the phone gently out of her hand and answered it. Lana tried to listen in on the conversation, but she was too out of it to focus on anything. Instead, she leaned against Miriam, tears in her eyes.
“Honey,” Brandy said, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “That was Max. He’s on his way. I told him what happened and he said he’ll take you down to Austin to talk to the police. Okay, Lana?”
Lana nodded, a little bit of the weight crushing her chest easing up at the mention of his name. Max would be here soon. He’d help her get through this.
* * *
“This is going to be hard for you to see, Ms. Mason,” Detective Peterson said as he placed a closed folder on the table in front of her, his hand resting on the cover as if he thought Lana would open the thing on her own. “But I need you to look at the pictures we took at your apartment and see if anything is missing or out of place, or whether there’s something there that doesn’t belong.”
Lana nodded, trying not to hyperventilate. The long drive from Dallas with Max had helped calm her down, but the moment they’d gotten to the police station and Peterson had brought them into the small conference room, the reality of what she was doing there all came rushing back. She’d felt like she might be ill, and something told her that looking at these pictures was only going to make it worse.
Beside her, Max’s big hand enveloped hers. “I’m right here, Lana.”
She gave him a small smile, thanking God he’d come with her. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do this without him. For some crazy reason, she felt like she could take on the world when she was with him.
Taking a deep breath, she flipped open the folder, prepared for the worst, relaxing when she saw that the first photo was a picture of the front door of the apartment she used to share with Denise. Her lips curved a little at the fall-themed welcome sign hanging from the little hook under the peephole, the one with the pumpkins she and Denise had gotten at a local flea market.
“The door wasn’t damaged, so we thought Denise must have known her attacker and let him in,” Peterson said. “But earlier today, we had a locksmith take a look, and it’s his opinion that the lock was picked by someone who knew what they were doing.”
Lana transferred the photo to the other side of the folder, then looked at the next picture. Any relief she’d felt at the sight of the front door disappeared as she took in the living room. The couch and matching chairs looked like someone had taken a knife to them, the coffee table had been smashed, the TV had been completely destroyed, and the built-ins that made up the entertainment center had been demolished.
The rest of the photos were just as bad. The kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms looked like a tornado had hit them. Lana could only stare in disbelief. Who would do something like this?
Peterson asked her one question after another. Was there anything missing? Did Denise have a boyfriend? Did she sleep around? Was there anyone Denise had problems with lately, anyone who hated her enough to want to hurt her? Was Denise doing well in her classes? Did she take drugs? Did she hang out with anyone off campus?
Lana answered the questions the best she could, telling the detective Denise wasn’t like that. “Seriously. She was fanatically focused on her classes. If it wasn’t for the occasional times I’d drag her out to go see a movie after an exam or big project, she probably wouldn’t have left the apartment other than to go to school.”
She looked through the photos again, stopping when she got to the picture of one of their kitchen chairs. There were pieces of what looked like duct tape attached to the wooden arms and dark smears that could only be blood. Lana knew Peterson was talking because she could hear the sound of his voice in the background, but he was saying stuff that made no sense, using words like gagged, beaten, and tortured. Denise had been a beautiful person who’d never hurt a soul in her life, and never given anyone reason to hurt her in return.
Lana pushed the pictures away and got to her feet, then walked over to stand on the far side of the small conference room to look at the photos on the wall. They were of various Austin PD police functions, from chili cook-offs to commendation ceremonies. They weren’t all that interesting to her, but she needed something to get the images she’d just seen out of her head.
Max ended up becoming a translator for her, talking to Peterson, then gently prodding answers out of Lana a little at a time. The fact that someone had not only killed Denise, but had also tortured her was simply too much to deal with.
Detective Peterson was of the opinion that this hadn’t been random. It was too violent to be anything other than personal, but Lana refused to believe that. No one who’d ever met Denise could have hated her this much. This had to be some kind of horrible case of mistaken identity.
After Peterson was done with his questions, Lana forced herself to ask one of her own.
“Have you reached Denise’s parents yet?” she asked, sitting down beside Max again.
It might seem like an odd question, but Denise had grown up in the wilds of Alaska. When Denise sent packages to her parents, they took weeks to get there, and calling her parents had always been an adventure too.
Peterson nodded, his face bleak. “They’re on the way down from Alaska now. They’re arranging to take her home at the end of the week or early next week—after the ME’s office has done their job.”
Lana couldn’t imagine how hard this was for Denise’s parents. She’d been an only child. Lana’d need to call and find out what arrangements they were making, so she could pay her respects. Alaska…that was going to be complicated.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, Max asked Peterson to keep in touch in case anything turned up, and then they left. For her part, Lana hoped she never heard anything more about this case unless it was to say that they’d caught the person responsible and put them away forever.
She wasn’t aware of much of anything after leaving beyond Max helping her into his car. When he started his Camaro, she leaned back in the seat and lost herself in the soothing rumble of the muscle car’s engine. She probably would have stayed like that all the way back to Dallas, but halfway there, Max pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot of an all-night diner.
“What are we doing?” she asked in confusion.
He shut off the engine, then looked at her. “When’s the last time you ate anything?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Lunchtime, I guess. I’m not really hungry.”
“Lana, it’s almost midnight, which means lunch was probably twelve hours ago,” he said gently. “We still have two more hours on the road before we get back to Dallas, so I’m going to take you in there and get you something to eat. And while we’re eating, you’re going to tell me about all the funny stuff you and Denise did while you were roomies.”
That sounded like the most insane thing Lana had ever heard. She didn’t have any desire to eat or talk about Denise. But it wasn’t like Max was giving her an option. Getting out of the car, he came around and opened her door, then stood there, hand outstretched. She took it simply because she didn’t know what else to do.
When the server came to take their order, Max ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and bowls of tomato soup, then started prodding her with questions about Denise. At first it was hard talking about her friend, but after a while, she told him more and more, including all the funny stuff he wanted to know—the way they’d met, the way they’d borrowed each other’s clothes, the way they’d passed notes in organic chemistry class about the cute guy in the front row.
Lana cried some, but she laughed a lot, too. Before long, the soup and sandwich were gone and Lana could
barely stop the stories that kept pouring out. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed in the diner, but the waitress kept refilling their coffee and bringing Lana more tissues, so she supposed it must have been a while. It was then that Lana realized that she’d truly stumbled across one hell of a man. There weren’t many guys in the world who’d sit with a woman half the night listening to her tell stories about a friend who’d just been murdered—not when they’d known each other for less than two days.
But Max was that kind of guy. She decided then and there that she was going to do anything she could to keep him around for as long as possible.
Chapter 5
Max sat in his car on Park Lane, gaze trained on the Wallace house as he strained his ears to hear even a peep of a noise that meant Terence and his sisters were in trouble. If he heard anything to suggest Wallace was hurting those kids or their mother, he’d go in and worry about the consequences later.
Ernest Miller, the crusty, old neighbor, had called Max a couple hours ago, saying Wallace was up to his old ways, shouting like a madman less than a day after the cops had been there. Ernest had called the police, but by the time the uniformed officers had shown up, everything had calmed down. Eileen Wallace claimed everything was fine and that the kids had been watching TV too loud or some crap like that.
Max had wanted to haul ass for the Wallace house the moment Ernest called, but unfortunately, he and a few of his pack mates had been stuck outside a convenience store in midtown, waiting while negotiators convinced a guy with a gun to come out with his hands empty, instead of clutched around a hostage. The city negotiators, with more than a little help from the team’s hostage negotiators, Zane and Diego, had gotten the guy to give himself up, but waiting around had been agonizing.
To make things worse, Max couldn’t simply take off the moment they’d gotten back to the SWAT compound. Since it was the middle of the afternoon and he was still on duty, he had to ask his squad leader, Xander, for a couple hours off so he could take care of some personal business, all the while praying his fellow werewolf didn’t question it—or worse, know he was lying. But Xander had told him to take off.
Max had wanted to march right up to the front door of the Wallace house the moment he got there, but he was smart enough to know that wasn’t going to work. As much as he hated the idea, since the kids and their mother were too scared to talk to anyone, the only way to put a stop to the abuse was to catch Wallace in the act.
He tilted his head a little as he heard a loud noise coming from the house, his fangs and claws extending. He was already reaching for the door handle before he realized the sound he was hearing actually was a TV playing too loud. Some kind of cop show or something.
He pulled his hand away from the door and put it back on the steering wheel, staring at his claws. He’d never been great at keeping his claws and fangs where they belonged, but lately, it seemed like he was losing control at the drop of a hat. It didn’t escape his notice that it coincided with Lana’s appearance in his life. Not that he was complaining. Lana was an incredible woman, and if having her in his life meant he had to put in extra effort keeping himself focused when he was with her, it was worth it.
Max almost laughed. He was beginning to think there wasn’t much of anything he wouldn’t do to be with Lana, which was a little scary when he thought about it.
It was obvious that Lana was The One for him. Still, he’d have been lying if he didn’t admit the intensity of this whole thing had him a little…unsettled. Sure, he’d heard the guys talk about what it had been like when they’d met their mates—“catching lightning in a bottle,” “strapping yourself to a tornado,” and “riding a nonstop roller coaster” were some of the ways his pack mates had described it. But even after hearing all that, he was only now starting to realize exactly what Gage had meant when he’d said taking it slow and easy might be tougher than Max thought. Max was falling for Lana so fast it made his head spin. He’d known her for less than forty-eight hours, and she was already the only thing he could think about. He just wished he had a clue whether Lana felt the same.
He knew she was attracted to him. From the way she leaned into him when they walked and looked at him when they talked, it was obvious. This thing with her not behaving like any other werewolf they’d ever met was tossing him for a loop, though. What if Lana was so different that the legend of The One didn’t apply to her? What if she liked him the way any woman would like a guy she’d just met? What if she didn’t feel the same magical connection he felt?
Max cursed. There were bigger issues to worry about here than whether he and Lana were meant to be together, and it all had to do with her roommate’s murder in Austin. He wasn’t sure what the hell had happened, but whatever it was, it was more than just a simple home invasion gone bad. His gut told him that somehow Lana was at the center of all of it.
After Lana had gotten up and walked to the other side of the conference room, Detective Peterson had gone through the rest of the photos with him. Max was glad Lana hadn’t seen them because they were all pictures of Denise. Lana’s roommate had been beaten badly, worse than Max had ever seen—and he’d seen a lot since becoming a cop. She had been brutally tortured for an extended period of time before she’d been shot in the head.
After hearing Lana talk about Denise for nearly three hours in the diner, Max couldn’t imagine what the girl could have done to inspire that kind of treatment. The fact that no one heard anything during the night meant Denise Sullivan had been gagged for much of the beating. Whoever killed her had done it for fun, not to get information.
The expert lock picking, the methodical way Denise had been beaten, and the silenced gunshot to finish her off implied this had been a professional looking for information. But what information? It wasn’t like Denise had been sitting on a wad of money or a drug stash.
Max could see where Detective Peterson was trying to take his investigation. All the questions about boyfriends, whether Denise had slept around, and who she might have hung out with when she wasn’t with Lana told Max the man was looking at this as a simple crime of passion. Denise had gotten on some guy’s bad side, and he’d gotten back at her.
That didn’t feel right to Max.
He knew his worries about Lana’s safety might be clouding his judgment, but with all the hunter crap they’d heard lately, it was difficult not thinking this might be connected to them. They’d learned a few months ago in New Orleans that the hunters were a vicious bunch who didn’t shy away from hurting people, and they tended to go for a head shot when it came to taking out werewolves.
Max was tempted to believe Lana was hiding that she was a werewolf because she knew hunters were on her trail and thought if she kept her true nature a secret, it would be safer for everyone. But when he started picking at the individual threads of that argument, the logic kind of unraveled. If she knew she was in danger from hunters, why wouldn’t she reach out to Max for help, since he was a werewolf, too? Hell, if she knew there were hunters around, wouldn’t she want to warn other werewolves about them? Max was pretty sure he knew Lana well enough to suggest she’d never put another person—or werewolf—at risk to save her own skin.
Of course, there was always the possibility that Cooper was right and Lana wasn’t aware she was a werewolf, in which case running home to Dallas before the hunters arrived in Austin might have been some kind of instinctive thing. That idea kind of made sense. Lana said she’d felt like she needed to come home the second she’d finished college. A lot of the werewolves who’d shown up in Dallas lately had admitted they’d been drawn here without knowing why, like pure survival instinct telling them to get close to a strong alpha pack.
Max had mentioned it to Gage this morning, and while his commander promised he’d talk to some people about the possibility, he was of the opinion Max was twisting the facts in an attempt to connect dots that were simply too far apart. Denise getting tortured and sho
t, as horrible as it was, didn’t automatically mean hunters were involved. Sometimes, it was merely normal psychos out there killing people. Heaven knew there were enough of them.
While that all sounded very logical, it didn’t keep Max from worrying. Lana was a werewolf, even if she didn’t act like one. His gut told him if anyone was coming after her, it would be a hunter. With that in mind, it was damn difficult not seeing hunters in every shadow.
He was still contemplating that when he heard shouting coming from the Wallace house.
Max didn’t stop to think. Shoving open the car door, he jumped out and sprinted down the block just as a little girl’s scream echoed in the air. The terror in it made his inner wolf howl.
He was wearing his backup piece in a holster around his right lower leg, but as he hit the porch steps, Max didn’t bother slowing down to grab it. Another high-pitched scream came from inside the house, forcing his fangs to extend even as he swung open the screen door.
“Dallas Police Department…I’m coming in!” he shouted before twisting the knob and shoving the inner door open.
The scent of fresh blood hit his nose as he rushed inside, ripping a growl from his throat and pushing him within an inch of totally losing control. But if Max thought the scent of blood had him close to the edge, that was nothing compared to how bad it got when he saw the scene spread out in front of him.
Little Natasha kneeled behind the arm of the couch, her eyes almost completely glazed over in fear. Nina stood in the middle of the living room, her face tight with defiance as she stood between her father and brother. Terence was by the kitchen doorway, standing defensively in front of his mother as if trying to protect her. There was a thick layer of white gauze wrapped around his right hand, from fingertips to the middle of his forearm. Red stains were already seeping through the wrappings, and Terence wrapped the fingers of his other hand around them, squeezing hard as if to stop the bleeding—or the pain.
