Quinn Security
Page 46
“You know,” Pamela snorted with a disgusted laugh, “I thought I was pissed at Courtney.”
The way she’d said it made it sound like she should’ve really been pissed at Lucy and Lucy didn’t know how to respond to that.
“I’m close with her, you know? And it felt like an act of betrayal when I saw Kaleb sneak out of her apartment building. But I knew I could get over it, because I knew Kaleb. Or I thought I did.”
“Okay…?”
“How did you do it?”
Thrown, Lucy asked, “Do what?”
Again, Pamela let out a little snort of a laugh and asked, “How did you accomplish what we’ve all failed to do over the years?”
“Which is?” Lucy dared to ask even though it was dawning on her what Pamela was referring to—hold Kaleb Quinn’s interest for longer than a solitary night.
“You think I don’t know about you?” she challenged from out of nowhere. “You think no one knows about your parents?”
“People know about my parents,” she said, as she cautiously observed Pamela growing furious.
“You were a strange little girl back then. Everyone knew it. My folks all knew it. They weren’t blind to it. We all could guess what really happened back then.”
“You think I killed my parents?” she asked, offended. She was so offended in fact that her chest began to burn.
“Something’s not right with you,” Pamela allowed as she planted her hands on her hips and glared at Lucy. “And here you are, the only girl in all of the Fist to capture Kaleb Quinn’s heart.”
“Pamela,” she responded in a grave tone. “Are you the one who’s been breaking into my apartment?”
Pamela’s expression went long and serious. She held her head high, looking down her nose at Lucy as she closed the gap between them, and admitted, “Someone has to take you down a notch.”
Lucy didn’t know what to say. She’d expected to find out that Courtney Harrington or Peter Swanson or even Dante had been the one tormenting her with those break-ins. But it was Pamela? Mild-mannered Pamela? Pamela who had sold Lucy dresses and scarves and high heeled boots over the years? Pamela, who had barely seemed to bat an eye that she was just another of Kaleb’s nightly conquests? That’s who had been spray painting wild accusations across her door and mattress?
When Pamela dared to take another step towards Lucy—she was really on top of her now—Lucy flinched, anticipating the girl would grab her hair to start tussling, but that’s not what she did.
Before Lucy’s very eyes, the girl collapsed in a millisecond and it wasn’t her palms that hit the dirt trail.
She’d transformed into a gray wolf.
Lucy gasped and scrambled back until her shoulder blades scraped against the jagged cliff-face of the looming mountain.
The wolf peeled its teeth back over its hideous fangs, growling and hunching its shoulders, head low to the ground and dark eyes glaring wildly up at her.
Then it started closing in, creeping and snarling.
This wasn’t one of Kaleb’s, Lucy could feel it. This wolf didn’t belong to the werewolf pack.
“I didn’t kill my parents,” Lucy pleaded, but she had no reason to trust that Pamela would be able to understand her now that she was in her wolf form.
Lucy willed her inner light to flare. She needed to create another force field like the one she had when Whitney had squeezed the trigger of that gun. But her light didn’t pop in the same way.
She panicked.
Then she screamed and shielded her face with her arms as the wolf lunged at her.
In an instant, Lucy was behind the wolf, on the opposite side of the trail, as the wolf slammed into the rocky cliff wall. It landed hard on the ground with a whine but was on its feet again, its dark eyes locked on her.
It slowly edged across the trail towards Lucy, once again stalking towards her to close the gap.
There was at least two hundred yards of thick wilderness at Lucy’s back. She could run, try her luck that way, but would the wolf give chase and tackle her?
Faintly, in the distance, Lucy heard the clomp-clomp, clomp-clomp of hooves pounding the earth.
“Help!” she screamed again just as the wolf crouched, readying itself to lunge at her all over again.
BANG!
Lucy startled as the wolf fell over onto its side, dead.
When she looked up, she saw Whitney on horseback, a smoking gun in her hand.
“Whoa!” Whitney called out for the horse’s benefit as it bucked up onto its hind legs. “Easy, Buttons, easy.”
“Whitney!” Lucy exclaimed as she rushed over to Whitney, who was sliding off the horse.
She threw her arms around her neck and didn’t let go. “You saved me!”
“I must’ve heard you a mile off,” she said, embracing Lucy right back as relief washed over them. “I didn’t know what I’d find, but I definitely didn’t expect a wolf. Christ, are you okay?” she asked, urging Lucy back so that she could look her over.
“Just shaken up,” she assured her.
“It’s way too early in the day for wolves,” said Whitney as she glanced around Lucy at the dead wolf. But she froze. Her eyes widened as though her brain couldn’t comprehend the message.
When Lucy turned to see what had shocked her friend, she saw Pamela’s dead body on the ground where the gray wolf had been.
In terrible timing, as the girls cautiously neared the body, a group of Asian hikers entered the straightaway at the far end of the trail, saw the body, and screamed in collective horror.
This looked bad. Very, very bad.
Lucy rushed to them, stretching out her red tape, and ordered, “This trail is closed! Go back the way you came, please!”
But the tourists lifted their cameras and began snapping off photos that Lucy couldn’t block.
“Please go back the way you came!”
Finally, they turned and shuffled off, snapping a photo here and there as they went.
Lucy jogged back down to Whitney who was standing over Pamela.
She lifted her round eyes, meeting Lucy’s worried gaze, and said, “Now I know there are werewolves in Devil’s Fist, and Pamela was one of them.”
Little did the girls know, however, that Pamela wasn’t just a werewolf.
She was one of Dante’s damned.
And he’d turned enough of them to have formed an army.
Chapter Fifteen
KALEB
It was a disaster of astronomical proportions and Kaleb only had himself to blame.
He should’ve never separated from Lucy out on Rocky Road trail. He should’ve asked Troy to meet him halfway up the mountain where the cliff face had been breaking off into the path for years. He should’ve been there when Pamela had crossed paths with Lucy. If he had, all of this could’ve been prevented.
But he hadn’t. As he’d met with his eldest brother outside of the Trail Office with the brilliant Wyoming sun shining down, he’d first heard the sirens then seen the police cruisers, one after the other as they’d come to screeching, dust-spitting stops in the parking lot, the sheriff’s bulky SUV among them.
Against the sheriff’s furious warnings, Kaleb and Troy had started after the brigade at a clip, and Kaleb’s stomach had twisted the second he realized where the cops were headed.
Rocky Road trail.
Where he’d left Lucy.
The only saving grace that had prevented Kaleb from having a heart attack was knowing that if worse came to worse and push came to shove, Lucy could probably take care of herself.
But nothing could’ve prepared either Quinn for what had been waiting for them in the shady bend of that particular trail.
Whitney Abernathy had been screaming her head off at her father, insisting that werewolves existed in the Fist. She knew it, through and through, now. She’d seen it with her own two eyes—the gray wolf dropping dead and Pamela’s body appearing where it had landed. Had her gun not been loaded with silver bullets,
she had claimed, both her and Lucy would be dead just like Holly van Dyke and Leeanne Whitaker.
The dust had metaphorically settled on the scene, but not in Kaleb’s world. Not by a long shot.
A few of the police officers had set up yellow police tape to prevent hikers from passing through. They’d created a barrier of wind-blockers around Pamela’s dead body.
Whitney was standing next to a tremendous black horse that she kept referring to as Buttons, mentioning often to anyone within earshot that her trusty steed deserved a medal, or at least a carrot, did anyone have one?
The sheriff was crouched beside the body, closely eyeing the silver bullet wound that had struck Pamela’s chest, as a handful of officers looked on. Rachel Clancy wasn’t among them for some reason. Kaleb knew she’d really be kicking herself this time.
Lucy was being questioned by yet another police officer, but her answers remained consistent.
Kaleb had been instructed to keep away from her until she’d answered as many questions as the officer could think of.
“I’m going to have to have a serious talk with the medical examiner,” Kaleb heard the sheriff grumble as he hoisted himself to his feet and paced away from the body. He had that in common with his daughter, it would seem, talking broadly to no one in particular. Himself, perhaps. “Verify that she was canine in some shape or form prior.”
Troy leaned in and spoke low in Kaleb’s ear, “She had to have been turned by Dante.”
“How many more are there?” he asked his brother with trepidation. “And why didn’t our amethysts heat up?”
Troy locked eyes with him as though he was at an equal loss for any degree of explanation. These were uncharted waters.
Whitney neared her father, just as the cop questioning Lucy was finishing up.
Whitney gave the sheriff a sweet nudge—it was weird seeing Rick’s “father” side—then leaned her head against his chest for a hug and told him, “Thank God you gave me that gun. I’m not sure what would’ve happened if you hadn’t.”
“All’s safe in the Fist, now, girl, don’t you worry,” he told her with complete confidence, which prompted Kaleb and Troy to exchange another quizzical look.
“You think?” asked Whitney.
“You’re the town hero now,” Rick said. “You up an’ shot the werewolf. Pamela had been coming and going from Cooper’s apartment,” he summarized, having understood that part of the vandalism story as told by Lucy when he’d first come on the scene. “She’s been harassing Lucy. She killed Leeanne Whitaker. And it stands to reason that she killed Holly van Dyke since the murders were identical in nature.”
Kaleb turned to Troy once again and, having clearly overheard the sheriff, suggested, “Maybe he’ll drop it then?”
“Maybe,” Troy hesitated to agree, but the brothers had spoken too soon.
“Daddy, they live in packs,” Whitney informed her father. “For every one you catch, there are at least a dozen more hiding.”
“Where’d’ya come up with that statistic?” he questioned with a little chuckle as though Whitney was a silly girl.
For once, Rick’s abhorrent sexism might work in the Quinns’ favor.
“It’s common knowledge. Ask anyone!” she insisted.
“I’m planning on asking an expert or two,” he assured her. “Got one comin’ in from Jackson Hole at the end of the month.”
“A werewolf expert?” she asked, intrigued.
“Yes, indeed,” he said, giving her a little pat on the head that made Kaleb want to puke, but not as much as seeing his brother, Shane, gush at the sight of Whitney Abernathy in all her idiocy. Shane was just now joining the fray.
“Dean and Conor are holding down the fort,” he informed them. “What the hell happened?”
As Troy got him up to speed, Kaleb couldn’t help but notice the way Shane had locked his gaze on Whitney Abernathy, and he hoped like hell that his younger brother had no real plans of going there. Garnering an interest in the sheriff’s daughter had to be just about the worst idea on the face of the planet at this point.
“Is she okay?” asked Shane.
Kaleb told him, “She’s the one who shot Pamela.”
Kaleb saw the hard line of his brother’s mouth twitch with the itch of an impressed grin.
“She’s fine,” he added.
Shane cleared his throat and said in a flat tone that to Kaleb’s ears sounded like it was veiling an interested emotion, “Good.”
Whitney, having stepped away from her father, gave Buttons a few loving strokes, then trotted over to her friend, saying, “Lucy-goose, I think we’ve earned ourselves a drink.” She glanced Shane’s way next and if Kaleb wasn’t mistaken he thought he caught her give his brother a wink.
Christ.
Shane cut his eyes to Kaleb and concluded, “Looks like we’re headed to Libations.”
Kaleb’s only response was, “We?”
***
Rachel shouldn’t still be sitting in her cruiser and staring at the Quinn Security cabin.
She felt like a teen-aged girl the morning of the Sadie Hawkins dance. Working up the nerve to approach the guy she liked. It was pathetic.
At least she’d killed the engine.
For some reason her crisply pressed uniform was giving her the trouble. She felt like a man, masculine and unappealing. She’d pulled her hair elastic out and fluffed her wavy, brown hair, but it barely helped.
All she had to do was verify Courtney Harrington’s alibi. Simple. Straightforward. And yet, it was the last thing she wanted to do.
In order to pull herself together, she’d even lowered the police scanner to a volume of zero so nothing would distract her from her task.
This was ridiculous. She was damn good at her job. Nothing slowed her down.
Steeling her queasy emotions, she finally climbed out of the cruiser and, resting her hand authoritatively on the butt of her police-issued Glock, started for the entrance of the state-of-the-art cabin.
When she reached the door, she gave a courtesy knock then let herself in. The air was cool and crisp, the central air conditioning having pumped an entirely different climate into the cabin.
Her eyes cut to Dean Quinn, the only person in the immediate area. He was seated at one of the desks in a secretive hunch with his desk phone clamped to his ear.
“I’ll call a meeting,” he said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “Midnight as usual?”
He must have heard or at least sensed her wading cautiously into the space, because he lifted his eyes, shot her a puzzled smile, then said into the phone, “I gotta call you back. Clancy’s is here and it looks official.”
It was.
“Is Conor around?” she asked as soon as he’d returned his desk phone to its cradle.
“Hey, yo’, Conor!” he called out over his shoulder. “Clancy’s here for ya!”
“Thanks,” she said, hoping that the jittery edges of her flighty nerves would calm the hell down.
Conor entered the broad room from the back, locked eyes with her, and asked, “What’s going on?”
“Can we talk?” she asked. “Privately?”
He frowned with what looked like empathy. She didn’t want him to sense something was wrong, at least not with her, so she told him, “It’ll just take a second I’m sure.”
“No problem, we can use the conference room,” he suggested as he gestured in the direction of said room.
It was on the other side of the floor so she met him halfway, then turned behind him, following Conor into a large conference room that had floor-to-ceiling windows that face out across Yellowstone.
It was quite a view, and when he closed the door for privacy and sat, she only turned to him. She wasn’t sure it would be necessary, or appropriate, to sit down.
“Rachel, is something wrong?” he asked innocently.
God, this was dumb. Her tumultuous emotions. She could tell by the friendly glint in his eyes that any sexual interest s
he’d hoped to detect coming from him had only been in her head.
She cleared her throat and spoke in a straightforward manner, “I need to confirm with you that you spent the night, last night, with Courtney Harrington.”
He stared at her for what felt like a stunned eternity then tried not to laugh.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
“Courtney named you as an alibi for the entirety of last night, claiming you left Libations bar together and went straight to her place where you stayed with her until this morning. Is that true?”
The expression that came over him was difficult to read, but his humor slipped away and he looked almost… pained.
“Yes and no,” he answered.
“That doesn’t help me, Conor. Did you or did you not—?”
“Courtney was a train wreck at the bar,” he began explaining. “She’d had way, way too much to drink and she cornered me about my brother.”
“Kaleb?” she asked, but it was more for confirmation than anything.
“Yeah,” he said. “She wanted to track him down and throw herself at him. Which wouldn’t have been pretty. So I walked her home.”
“And?”
“And… I got her home safe and sound.”
Inquiring as to whether or not he slept with Courtney really had nothing to do with her mini investigation, so all she could ask was, “You stayed with her all night?”
“No,” he said, and there was something about the tone of his voice that seemed to contain a promise that she didn’t understand, until he added, “I’ve never gone after my brother’s sloppy seconds, and as you can imagine, that leaves very few women in the Fist for me to try to get to know.”
Rachel tried like hell not to let a huge smile spread across her face.
“What did Courtney need to use me as an alibi for?” he asked smartly.
But first she needed to know, “About what time did you leave her place?”
“Late, I don’t know, maybe two fifteen? We left the bar at two, and I wasn’t at her place long.”
Satisfied with that, Rachel informed him, “It looks like she broke into Lucy Cooper’s apartment.”