Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  Where had he gone? And why hadn’t he told me where he was going or taken his pistol with him? “Oh, my God, oh, my God.” What was I going to do?

  I heard a low whine out on the porch. It was calling to me, beckoning to me like some sort of old friend who I’d only just recently met.

  It was here. The wolf from last night was here. I had no doubt about it. Had it come inside? Taken Matthew somehow? I bit my lip hard, struggling to hold myself back from going outside and joining it.

  What worried me the most, though, was that my worry only seemed skin deep. Rationally, I knew I should be afraid. But deep down? I couldn’t feel the fear. Instead, I could only feel a weird, demented fascination with the creature that must be on the other side of the door.

  But, mesmerized or not, I needed to be safe, despite my ridiculous lack of fear for this creature. I reached down and grabbed Matthew’s pistol from the coffee table. I drew it from the holster and flicked the safety off. Gripping it in both hands just like my Uncle Zeke had taught me to all those years ago, I eased myself to the front door. I pressed my ear to the solid wood fixture, closed my eyes as I held my breath, and just tried to listen.

  There was only the sound of heavy breathing. Nothing more, nothing less.

  I reached down and pulled the door open, stepping through it with my pistol lowered, raising it again as soon as I was on the other side.

  Looking back on what happened, it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have had my finger on the trigger when I didn’t know what I was walking out into. But the shock seemed to be almost literally that, causing my finger to twitch, and Matthew’s gun to roar and jump in my hand just as I saw him standing there.

  The gun tumbled from my fingers in horror.

  He was naked except for a bundle of black cloth he held against himself like he was Adam after taking a bite of apple and just discovering a fig leaf. His other free hand was out in front of him, palms out. A scarlet ribbon of blood ran down from the right side of his chest. I stared wide-eyed in horror.

  I’d just shot the man of dreams.

  I’d just murdered the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

  I screamed.

  Chapter Thirty-two – Matthew

  “No, get back,” I rasped, batting her hands away as she came over to me, her eyes wide, her face pale as bleached bone, “you’ll get blood all over you!”

  My other hand held my balled-up black briefs in front of my crotch. I wasn’t exactly shy about being naked, but I wanted to preserve some sense of mystery with this woman.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” she cried, the shock written so boldly across her face that it might as well have been scrawled out in sharpie. “Oh, my God, Matthew, there was a wolf, I heard a wolf, and I came out to see if it was the same one at my house last night, and all that was here was you, but I didn’t know it was you, and it just happened! But I-I shot you and you’re naked, and oh, my God, you’re bleeding!”

  I winced a little at her words. “Yeah,” I agreed as the pain began to spread out from my chest and through my body, “I am.”

  “Oh, God, we need to get you to a hospital! How far is Yellow Rose? Do the phones work? We need to get you some help! We need to compress the wound and get you to a doctor! Oh, my God, Matthew, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe this happened!”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, trying to soothe her even as I gritted my teeth against the unimaginable pain in my body. From the warmth on my back, it felt like the bullet had gone through. That was good. Expelling them as I healed was always uncomfortable to watch, even for me. Shifters might not die from normal bullets, but bullets still fucking hurt like we were going to. “No, Rebecca, you need to calm down. I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine!” she nearly screamed. “You’re not Hercules! You need to get to a doctor!”

  I shook my head, trying to think of a way I could get her to stop freaking out over this. I mean, it was bad, blood was getting everywhere—all down my front and onto the deck—but this wasn’t the end of the world, and she needed to understand that. Then, I thought of something.

  “Rebecca,” I said, looking down into her eyes, “do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  “Look at my right arm. At my bicep.”

  She glanced from my eyes to my arm and back again. “Why? What’s wrong with it? Did I shoot you there, too? I only fired one bullet, though!”

  I swallowed hard, the pain getting a little worse. That’s how these things worked. The pain steadily became excruciating before it went away. Nothing a little Motrin wouldn’t fix, though.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” I said. “What’s missing?”

  She looked back at my arm, recognition slowly dawning on her face. “You don’t have a bandage,” she whispered. She looked back up at me, her mouth open in shock. “Why don’t you have your gunshot wound there?”

  “It’s complicated,” I started to say. I wanted to follow it up with that I’d explain everything, but she’d already dropped her hand away and was backing up to the door.

  “Oh, my God,” she breathed. “You’re not fucking human, are you? You’re like a ghost or something! Or an alien, aren’t you?”

  My stomach sank. This was exactly the opposite reaction I’d wanted. “What?” I asked, straightening up fast enough that my chest erupted in a flash of gut-churning pain. “If I was a ghost would I be fucking bleeding?”

  “A government experiment!” she shouted. She glanced down at the gun, scrambled down and got it, and leveled it at me. “That’s why you were in the military!”

  I couldn’t help but smile a little as I shook my head. She had spunk, I had to give her credit there. But I would hope that’d be true of any woman I was meant to fall in love with. “No,” I said, “I’m not a military experiment. I’m something else entirely. I don’t think the government even knows about us.”

  “Us? You said us! There’s more like you?” she asked, backing away, gun still raised.

  “Yes,” I said, nodding, wincing at the fire in my chest from the movement. “Look, can you just put the gun down? Please? I’ll explain everything.”

  “Why? What’ll you do if I don’t?”

  “Guess I’ll get shot again,” I said, reaching up to probe my fingers into the already scabbing and closing hole in my chest. Even my voice was sounding better, less fluid-filled, and I was able to breathe easier. “Look, it’s not going to kill me even if you do shoot. It’s just going to hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  With the gun in one hand, she pulled the screen door open with the other and went to step inside. “Well, how about this? How about you just get the fuck out of here, then? Huh?”

  “Oh, come on, Rebecca!” I called, stepping forward, my underwear still balled up in front of my groin, desperately trying to preserve some sense of modesty. “My keys are in my jeans! And I can’t leave you anyway, I’m your protection detail!”

  She slipped inside the cabin and slammed the door shut behind her. And then, with a certain finality, she clicked the deadbolt into place.

  I slumped down and my heart sank along with my whole body. I’d been right. She had rejected me. Everything I’d been worried about had come true. Rejection by the woman I cared for most, my true mate.

  God, I should have told her. I should have told her the truth earlier tonight, when she wasn’t in shock from having just fucking shot me. Peter had been right; I just needed to tell her.

  “Rebecca?” I called as a cool wind blew in from the north, whipping through the pines and stirring all the fallen needles on the ground before it whipped up behind my balled-up underwear and caressed my most sensitive of spots. I shivered, a tremor that went through my body and up and down my back. “Come on,” I whined a little, “it’s cold out here.”

  Fuck. How the hell did I get into this situation? Naked, cold, and alone, in the dark with a very angry woman just beyond the door, wielding a gun.

  Chapt
er Thirty-three – Rebecca

  “Okay,” I said, pacing back and forth in the living room, “okay, okay, okay.” I repeated the words like a weird mantra, hoping against hope that maybe somehow, somewhere, those words would work like a magical charm that would just fix everything. Uncle Zeke would be out of jail, the mafia wouldn’t be after me, and the man I cared for most in the world wouldn’t be some kind of undying freak of nature.

  “Rebecca!” Matthew called again from outside. “Please let me in. It’s fucking freezing out here!”

  I looked back at the door as I chewed the inside of my cheek. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. There was no way this was real. No fucking way.

  I was a reasonable person, wasn’t I? I was sane. Wasn’t I? I hadn’t somehow slipped into a mental fugue state, had I? And this was all just some crazy dream or hallucination?

  I shook my head. “No, Rebecca, this is real. This is really, really real.” I collapsed onto the couch, dropped the pistol, now with one less bullet, on the coffee table. I needed to think.

  Outside, I heard Matthew groan loudly, the patio shifting as he settled down to sit with his back against the front door.

  The wolf I’d heard earlier, the howl that had called to me. This was the second time a wolf had appeared near me, the second time one had come around me while I was sleeping. The first time, Gladys had run it off, that I remembered. This time, when I’d been the one to investigate, all I found was a naked firefighter-slash-private-security guy. Which meant—what?

  I blinked slowly as I stared at the front door. “No,” I whispered. “No fucking way.” Equally slowly, I turned my eyes back to the TV in the entertainment center in front of me. I watched my eyes blink in the black mirror of the screen. “Can’t be.”

  “It can be!” Matthew called. “I promise!”

  What? I leapt to my feet. How’d he hear me? Did he have telepathic powers, or was the cabin just wired to pick up sound? This guy was a security professional after all.

  “How can you hear what I’m saying?” I finally asked, my voice at normal volume.

  “Because I have great hearing!”

  I didn’t speak for a long time. “What are you?” I asked finally. “And tell me the truth.”

  “I’m a shifter, Rebecca.”

  “And what the hell is that?” I asked, still standing in front of the couch.

  “I can turn into a wolf. I can also only be hurt by silver.”

  “But I hurt you with a bullet.”

  “Technically,” he called. “But I got better!”

  I giggled a little despite the situation.

  “Knew I could still make you laugh!”

  I didn’t reply, just shook my head in dismay.

  “Look,” he said. “If you come open the door and let me put some clothes on, I’ll explain everything, okay? I should have told you earlier tonight about what I really am, but I guess I chickened out. I just didn’t want you to dealing with this, what with the meeting tomorrow. And the stuff with the note in your bedroom happened, and getting you out of town to somewhere safe became way more important than me opening up this whole can of worms.”

  “And you’re safe?” I asked. “I mean, you’re harmless, right? Like, it’s not a full moon or anything, and you’re not going to tear me apart like in the movies?”

  He laughed. “No, I’m not going to tear you apart or anything. I can control myself just fine, I promise.”

  I sighed as I went over to the door. My fingers lingered on the deadbolt as I took a deep breath. “And you’re not pissed?”

  “Pissed?” he asked with a snort. “I’m fucking freezing my ass off out here, Rebecca, and I’m covered in blood. I just want to take a hot shower and put some clothes on, okay? That’s all.”

  I took a deep breath and then flicked the lock open. He clamored to his feet, fit as a fiddle and now actually wearing his underwear, as I pulled open the front door for him and stepped aside.

  “Thank you,” he said as he came in. “I promise as soon as I take a shower and wash this blood off, I’ll explain everything.”

  As he walked by, shifter or werewolf or whatever, I couldn’t tear my eyes from his brief-clad body. He really did have a great ass, even if a tail might sprout out of it every now and then.

  He stopped at the opening to the hallway and shot me a look. “Take a picture,” he said, completely deadpan, “it’ll last longer.”

  I rolled my eyes as I shut the door. “Take your goddamn shower, Matthew. After that, you’re going to explain everything.”

  I’d heard military guys could take showers fast, but I’d always thought that was an exaggeration. Turned out I was wrong. Of course, I’d always believed that the supernatural didn’t really exist. So guess I was oh for two, there.

  Now, as we sat across from each other at the small kitchen table between the conjoined living room and kitchen, both our hands around fresh cups of hot coffee, I eyed Matthew carefully. Nothing about him looked inhuman. Nothing about him looked like a monster. Hell, I couldn’t even tell that he’d been shot less than an hour before. Everything about him just seemed like the all American boy next door. Served his country, fought fires on the weekends, protected damsels in distress.

  I mean, what was there to not like about this guy?

  “Okay,” I said after a long moment. “Talk.”

  And he did.

  He told me about shifters. About how he’d been adopted, and hadn’t known what he was until he was a teenager and he’d first shifted in his bedroom. How painful it had been. About how he’d thought he was a freak, an undesirable. He told me about the children he’d saved in the house fire he’d happened to be near, that he’d transformed to get in and out, and how Peter Frost and Richard Murdoch had found him later by sniffing him out. Literally.

  About how the other guys at the security agency were shifters as well. All of them.

  “I never had a pack, not like the guys here. We’re practically family, like I was saying.”

  “It’s one of those things you wanted to tell me, wasn’t it?” I asked. “You were worried about telling me then, weren’t you?”

  “Of course I was. I’ve been hiding this my whole life, like some kind of stain. Growing up, I’d always known I was different from my family. And then, when puberty was the only thing affecting all the other guys, I had this thing happen to me. Right then, I really knew just how different I was, just how much I didn’t belong in my family.”

  I reached across the table and touched his hand as I winced. “I’m so sorry I shot you, by the way.”

  He chuckled and gave me a warm smile. Those dark, smoldering eyes of his glanced up at mine. “It’s okay. I can genuinely say that was a first for me. All this has been.”

  “A first?”

  “I’ve never told anyone I ever cared about. About this, I mean. I just didn’t think they’d ever understand, you know? It’s not like, hey, I’ve got a weird mole on my back, or a third nipple. This is serious.”

  I laughed. “Wait. You don’t have a third nipple, do you?”

  He grinned. “Did you not notice it earlier?”

  I squeezed his hand before pulling mine back and placing it back around my coffee cup. “One thing I was wondering,” I said. “Last night. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  He blushed a little and looked away. “Yeah,” he croaked out. “Yeah, that was me. I just—I caught your scent when I’d shifted back at my house, and I didn’t quite realize it was yours till I got there. But I followed it all the way back to your place and kind of sat there for a minute. Till, of course, that crazy old lady came out.”

  “Oh, Gladys isn’t crazy,” I said with a wave of my hand. “She’s just protective. Her and Zeke go way back, and she just keeps an eye on me.”

  “Well, whatever she is, I’m just thankful she’s got bad aim. Buck shot probably hurts like hell, even as a wolf.”

  I grabbed his hand again as we both laughed, and he squeezed rig
ht back.

  We stayed like that for hours, both talking and laughing.

  By the time the sun came up, I’d never felt closer to another man. Ever.

  Which only made his betrayal worse.

  Chapter Thirty-four – Matthew

  “Well, let’s hear it, Mr. Jones,” District Attorney Wachowski said as he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his slim chest. He was a small man with a deep voice, an exercise in contrasts. “Let’s hear this evidence you have which your boss is so certain will convince me to drop the charges against Zeke Rogers.”

  The five of us were gathered in Sheriff Peak’s office around the heavy oak desk. He’d inherited it from the previous Sheriff, but the decorations were owned by the county and hadn’t changed all that much. A big wolf’s head on the right, one that always filled me with a bit of revulsion each time I had to see it, and an old Winchester lever-action rifle like John Wayne used to use in the movies hung on the back wall.

  Across from us sat Sheriff Peak, who was leaning back in his desk chair with his big belly heaved out in front of him, and behind him stood Deputy Glick.

  I glanced over at Rebecca, and she simply nodded.

  I hit the little play button on my cell phone and, like the best magic technology could provide, Reggie the Gap’s conversation with me sprang into being.

  The five of us sat in Peak’s office, crowded around his heavy wooden desk, listening to the mafia member’s words. When it was finished, I let it play again in case they’d missed anything.

  DA Wachowski glanced at Peak, eyebrows raised above his rimless glasses. “Interesting. What do you think, Daniel?”

  Peak’s heavy features scrunched up a little, heavy lines forming on his brow. “Sounds legitimate. Where was this recorded?”

  I told them, and gave them the time, too. “I can authenticate everything with our IT person’s forensic kit and have it ported over to a digital copy for your use, Mr. Wachowski.”