That meant others were on their way here.
“I need some air,” she said.
Without another word, Skylar left the room. On her own, with only seconds to spare before Gavin might follow her outside and before other members of the law arrived, she leaned against the corner of the building on legs that felt like rubber, allowing the tears of shock and fright and blatant disgust to pool in her eyes.
Wet-faced and shaky, she blinked slowly when a shadow behind her blocked the sunlight. She didn’t need to guess who it was.
Chapter 12
“Can we talk?”
Skylar whirled to face him.
“Before the others arrive?” Gavin added.
“I don’t know anything about what happened here,” she said.
“Then tell me about silver bullets. The bullets in your gun.”
She looked at him with her lips parted for a shout she didn’t let loose. “I believe the only way you’d find out about that might be called trespassing,” she said.
“As I said, I had probable cause to enter your house.”
“Such as?”
“Searching the premises for intruders, since we were gone all night.”
“Is that all?”
“No. Actually it was just an excuse to wait for you. I wanted to be there when you arrived.”
His confession made her look away.
“You have secrets.” He spoke softly, not caring to distress her further.
“Obviously, my father is the Donovan who kept secrets,” she said.
“Can you talk to me about that, Skylar? Will you?”
“It wouldn’t help this case.”
“Why not?”
“He was good at what he did and spent his entire professional life helping others. These things…” She waved at the building beside them. “These things aren’t indicative of the man I knew. They’re far removed from what I know about my father.”
“Did he come here to get away from his work?”
“Yes. Dealing with mental patients day in and day out began to take a toll.”
Gavin absorbed this news slowly. “He wasn’t a general kind of MD?”
“He’s a…” She paused before starting over. “He was a psychiatrist.”
“At a hospital facility?”
“Yes.”
“A mental hospital?”
She nodded. “One that housed patients with extreme mental deficiencies.”
Gavin thought he was starting to see a pattern that might lead to answers to some of the problems they faced. But he couldn’t yet connect the dots. What he knew pointed to Skylar’s father as a suspect in whatever went on behind Tom’s house, though at the moment they had no real idea as to what that was.
“We haven’t found anything illegal here yet,” he said tentatively, disliking that fact. “No proof of illegal activity to go on. For that, more evidence needs to be gathered.”
Besides, Gavin inwardly added, if he told anyone of his suspicion that a werewolf might have been caged here, he stood to be laughed out of town.
For him, the chains and silver cages made it a foregone conclusion, though. The fact that Skylar’s father rented this place from Tom incriminated her good old dad in something unspeakable, as did that gun with the silver bullets.
Silver chains, silver cage, silver bullets.
All this silver business rubbed him the wrong way, as did the picture Skylar painted of her father.
“You do realize that withholding information might prove a fatal mistake?” he said, carefully moderating his tone.
He found it unimaginable that anyone might have trapped that gigantic monster from the mountain here. How the hell could that have been managed? Even if the hunter had used tranquilizer darts made for taking down elephants, the beast would still have to be transported to this location.
And damn it, he was a sucker for the damp green eyes now looking into his. He wanted to kiss the tears from Skylar’s beautiful, innocent face. She made him want to believe she knew nothing about her father’s intentions.
He brushed the drops of water from her cheeks with his thumbs, allowing his fingers to linger on her too-pale skin.
“If I ask you something personal, will you answer honestly?” Gavin willed himself to keep some emotional distance from the woman who’d taken hold of his soul so quickly and easily.
Long lashes briefly cloaked her eyes. “I’m not sure. Right now I’m not sure about anything.”
Gavin lowered his voice. “Did your father have an agenda for those silver bullets, or were they only collector’s items?”
“I haven’t found the answer to that question, though I’ve been wrestling with it since I arrived,” she answered earnestly.
“You knew about the bullets, then?”
“I found the gun and the bullets in a trunk in the attic of the cabin.”
Gavin blew out a breath and blinked again, thinking Holy hell. Skylar’s father might actually have known about the thing in the woods, or thought he did. And that beast might have been right here, either of its own accord or held against its will by Skylar’s dad.
Had the elder Donovan actually succeeded in capturing and chaining up the monster Gavin so desperately wanted to find? Could Donovan, at least for a time, have kept that monster captive here behind Tom’s house, right beneath Gavin’s nose?
Some pieces of this puzzle were lining up, and the pattern he saw suggested that Doc Donovan was a werewolf hunter.
Had the monster managed to get loose and go after its keeper? Maybe Donovan let it go?
Gavin rolled his shoulders as he speculated about the doctor’s body being discovered torn to shreds and missing a face. His muscles tensed with the memory of being torn apart on that same mountain.
Theories about revenge would make a horrible kind of sense if life mimicked the pages of horror novels and monsters possessed the ability to think like human beings. Could this be a case of a beast reaping revenge on its tormentor, like in the Frankenstein story?
Wasn’t he after the same thing in his own hunt for that big beast? Revenge?
If Skylar’s father had succeeded in trapping the creature in this building and it somehow got loose, possibly showing complex thought processes…heaven help the man who’d dared to cage it.
Gavin felt the rightness of his reasoning, but could he prove any of it? Talk about it with anyone? As far as most people were concerned, the only monsters running around hurting other people were low-life human criminals.
If he mentioned any of this, he’d be considered a candidate for Dr. Donovan’s mental ward.
“I’d like to know more about your father,” he said when the silence had stretched for far too long. “You said he kept secrets. I want to hear what you know about those secrets.”
“So you can pin what we’ve found here on him?” she countered.
Think carefully about what you say next, and how you’ll explain what you’re about to propose.
“Skylar.” Gavin took his hand from her face. “Is it possible that your father believed in the lore of old European legends?”
She shook her head, unwilling to hear more. He could see she resented this kind of personal intrusion.
“Do you have any idea what silver is used for in those legends?” he pressed.
She remained mute, but he couldn’t let this go.
“Could your father have brought a wolf here?”
Feeling her mounting tension, Gavin’s excitement began to stir. Skylar knew something, all right. She was trying to hide her conclusions from him. Once again, her eyes met his, and the electricity sparking between them scored his soul. The look on her face was sad and lonely and startlingly defiant.
He reached for her without thinking, desiring his hands on her, whether to offer comfort or demand her compliance with his line of questioning. With his cheek buried in her soft, silky hair, he posed the final question, holding her tightly in case she tried to avoid what was coming.
“Did yo
ur father believe in werewolves?”
Sirens in the distance broke the silence that followed his question. The woman in his arms struggled to break free, perhaps tortured by what he’d suggested.
She probably thought him crazy for proposing such a thing. Her heart banged in her chest. Small rattling quakes ran up and down the length of her spine. But he didn’t let her get away from him, because he was badly in need of her answer.
“Skylar,” he said. “Is that why he came to Colorado? To hunt wolves, hoping to capture a special one?”
When she tilted her head back, Gavin noted the fear darkening her eyes. After seeing this place, she’d be afraid to speak further about her father. He didn’t blame her, really, especially after he’d mentioned the seriousness of withholding information.
Who would believe it, anyway? he wanted to shout, Other than me?
“Werewolves?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Yes. I think he believed in them.”
Skylar’s reply set off tiny explosions in his overworked mind. Hell, was Skylar’s father at the center of this?
The noise of the sirens told Gavin that two law enforcement vehicles had arrived. He heard doors slam. Calm voices carried on the wind. When Skylar struggled again, he let her go.
“You don’t have to be here,” he said.
“They’ll want to speak with me eventually. Better get it over with.”
Skylar set her shoulders and walked past him, looking young and small from behind…and fragile and burdened as she marched to face what came next.
Gavin could have told her this wasn’t the end, and that it was only the beginning of the nightmare.
Chapter 13
The interrogation was shorter than Skylar expected. When they freed her to go home, the sheriffs, accompanied by a couple rangers, headed down the hill to see what this nasty business was all about.
She couldn’t stay there, near that shed, so she started walking in the direction of her cabin. It was either that or wait for Gavin, who might be some time yet, and would certainly have more questions about her father’s secrets.
She was aware that Gavin’s thoughts were turning her way, though he was nowhere in sight. The more time she spent with him, the more the bond between them deepened.
It was getting too dangerous to keep holding back some serious family issues. She knew that now. The damn word haunting her was the word Gavin had brought up—werewolf.
Is that why he came to Colorado? To hunt wolves, hoping to capture a special one? he’d asked.
Stumbling on a stone bordering the road, Skylar fought off the rise of her temper. Reason told her it would be best to leave Colorado, go home and forget about this place. Put the cabin up for sale with all her father’s things in it and move on. Lose the dreams. Lose Gavin Harris.
Pausing long enough to glance over her shoulder, she repeated “Lose Gavin,” aloud, testing both the idea and her resolve.
Right then the idea almost seemed doable.
Almost.
Her stubborn streak just didn’t agree. Neither did the spot deep inside that wanted his touch so desperately.
What would her father have thought about Gavin, so different from her ex-fiancé? Her dad hadn’t liked Danny much. Gavin already showed more stability than the edgy companionship she’d shared with the cop, a relationship that had resembled a positive relationship on only a superficial level. Even after saying yes, she’d known that no woman should settle for superficial when her heart wasn’t truly with the program. She’d learned this lesson the hard way.
While Gavin…
Gavin, her handsome, virile lover, kept her on the verge of something she didn’t dare name, in a completely different way. He was strong, capable, gorgeous and smart. Around him, she felt safe, but also as if that sense of safety might be temporary, with the future some kind of wild unknown.
The looks. That voice. Hell, yes, she was undeniably attracted to him. Probably too much. He pulled her wildness out and into the open, exposing that side of her. Her shakes and quakes weren’t all signs of weakness, but an effort to control the secret longings she felt building up inside.
Yet Gavin had spoken the dreaded word that plagued her. The word she hated most at the moment. Werewolves.
Confused, flustered, Skylar thought about going back to Tom’s house to quiz Gavin about what silver bullets were meant for.
It was going to be a conversation straight from hell.
As luck would have it, she didn’t have to turn around or wait long for him to find her. Recognizing the sound of the Jeep’s engine, she planted herself in the middle of the road, ready for the next showdown.
*
One look at her face—the set features, the lips forming a straight line—told Gavin that Skylar wasn’t going to jump into the car without an argument.
Too many things left unsaid had created a tension between them that stretched their connection to the breaking point. The accusations he’d made regarding her father might have seemed absurd to anyone else, yet apparently weren’t crazy to Skylar.
Why?
Cutting the engine, Gavin got out of the car thinking that if he remained on his side of the vehicle, chances were the woman eyeing him so intently might feel less threatened. Though he wanted to search the trees for the monster able to eat its way out of that silver cage, it was still daylight. He kept his attention on the woman in the road.
“Want a lift?” he asked casually.
“I don’t think so.” Her voice sounded clipped.
“Want to talk?”
“Do you?” she countered.
“Yes, I do. But why don’t I drive you home, and we can leave the talking for later? Get you off the road?”
“You think I don’t know what you’re dying to say? I can hear your unspoken questions from where I’m standing.”
“You’ve had a shock,” Gavin said.
“Understatement,” she tossed back.
“Your father didn’t necessarily have anything to do with that place.”
“Do any of you actually believe that?”
“At this point, and as I’ve said, any evidence is circumstantial at best. They’ll have to go through that place with a fine-tooth comb to dig up more, and that will take time. Please let me drive you home.”
She shook her head to reinforce her decision to remain on the road. “You brought up werewolves.”
He nodded. “Yes, and you went along with it. I find that not only fascinating, but strange.”
“How so?” she challenged.
“You didn’t laugh at the word.”
“It’s not funny.”
“No, but it probably should have been funny. That’s the point.” Gavin rested both hands on the roof of the Jeep. “Are you searching for proof that your father wasn’t off his rocker? Because now those law guys are going to try to discover that same thing.”
It was clear that some of the fight had gone out of her when she said, “He couldn’t have hurt anyone in a place like that.”
“You’d be the one to know.”
She glanced around uneasily. “You’re right. We shouldn’t talk here.”
“If you don’t want to go to the cabin, we can go someplace else.”
Gavin waited her out, trying to read in her expression what she needed at the moment to help ease the shock of seeing that building and imagining what it might have hidden.
“What were you doing at Tom’s?” he asked.
“I was going to thank him for watching over Dad’s cabin.”
“That’s all?”
“No,” she admitted. “I was looking for information.”
“About what?”
“My father, and what he did here in Colorado.”
Some of the iron in her tone returned as she added, “Shall I repeat my protest about him not using that awful place?”
“No need. I’m sure no one could believe their father capable of that.”
Having successfully defus
ed another potential argument, Gavin waited to see what Skylar might say next. She might want a fight, but he wasn’t going to let her have it.
“If my father had lost part of his mind, other people would have noticed. The rest of his family, all of us, would have heard.”
“One would think so,” he agreed. “Especially if he worked in a hospital where anomalies are noted on a daily basis by people trained to see them.”
Skylar’s hand moved to the door handle. “I can’t explain about the gun.”
“Though you admit to knowing what silver ammunition is supposedly for.”
Her face fell. “Yes. Wolves. Not just wolves, though. Imaginary wolfish beasts.”
Gavin shifted his stance to hide the degree of his surprise.
“Okay,” she said. “Believing in werewolves isn’t normal behavior. I get that.” Looking directly at him, she asked, “Is it?”
Unwilling to answer that question, Gavin blew out a breath. He sure as hell couldn’t confess.
“What will those guys in uniform assume when they investigate the room back there?” she asked.
“They will assume that a lunatic has escaped from an asylum.”
He was wrong about her face not being able to get any paler. Skylar’s shoulders slumped as she opened the door. It took minutes for her to get into car. When she did, she sat as far away from him as possible.
Tonight, he thought, gazing at Skylar with regret and a gigantic knot in his gut. In a few hours, when the full moon rises and the wolf takes me over, no explanations would be necessary if you were to see me. And that might actually hurt you more than it hurts me.
Gavin felt the intensity of her heated gaze. For once, he wanted to shape-shift right then and there to put an end to the misery they’d face sooner, rather than later. Get it over with. Let her know that her father might not have been loony.
As if revealing his beast would put her mind at ease.
Chapter 14
The man beside her drove in silence. Skylar wanted anything but distance, but the terrible find had created even more distance between them.
Skylar figured it was past noon. Time had been suspended after her discovery of that shed. She wasn’t able to shake off the latest round of chills or ditch the feeling that she was about to step off a cliff.
Seduced by the Moon Page 10
