“Where Delilah was living?”
“It’s vacant now,” Rachel reminded him as a glum cloud of solemn grief rose up behind her eyes. Delilah Dane had been Alighieri’s latest victim. She’d lived a hard life and had had her fair share of flaws, but she hadn’t deserved to die the way she had. No one did. “I’m hoping to rent it.”
“Living above Libations doesn’t suit you?” he asked, making small talk about her current situation.
Rachel had been renting the apartment above the one bar in town and Conor could only imagine how much noise she had to deal with, especially on the weekends, because of it.
“If I want to do what needs to be done in order to make detective,” she explained, “I’m going to have to get my sleep. Lord knows most nights I’m only able to grab four or five hours of it. I’ve got to make those hours count.”
She gave the rotating stand a little spin then rested her slender hand on the butt of her gun.
“I could see you living in a cabin,” he ruminated. “It always surprised me that you’ve been living above that bar.”
“Jack’s a good landlord,” she reasoned, though the glint in her eye, the spark that had lit those big brown eyes of hers up, told him that she might be interested in hearing more about what did and did not surprise him about her. “But you think cabin life might suit me better?”
“I think cabin life suits everyone better,” he said as he drank in the sight of her and felt a twinge to ask her out. Instead, he ventured to edge into the other reason he’d permitted himself to follow her into the souvenir store. “Where do things stand in your investigation of Dante Alighieri?”
She might have been inclined to answer had the salesgirl not returned with Adelaide Marple in tow.
Adelaide was a sturdy woman of forty-eight who had been something of a fixture in this town ever since she’d moved from Montana about ten years back. Rumor had it that she’d escaped an abusive marriage, but Adelaide wasn’t exactly forthright with the story. She mostly kept to herself, frequented Yellowstone on her downtime, and had fallen so deeply in love with Devil’s Fist that she’d opened the souvenir store, eager to be constantly surrounded by the evidence that she finally lived in a peaceful place.
As Rachel introduced herself—not that introductions were necessary, everyone knew just about everyone else in the Fist, but that didn’t stop Rachel from maintaining respectful formalities—and began to explain how she was interested in renting the apartment above, Conor eased out of the conversation, knowing he ought to get on over to Quinn Security before Dean and the rest of his brothers wondered where he was.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off Rachel.
There was just something about her.
She was someone special.
It was a very long moment before Conor Quinn had managed to tear himself away.
Chapter Two
RACHEL
It was a major and immediate undertaking, but after going off duty, Rachel drove out to Jackson Hole to rent a U-Haul, left her car there and drove the truck all the way back to the Fist where she parked in front of Libations, loaded the truck up with Jack Quagmire’s help and the assistance of just about everyone that happened to be in the bar, puttered up to Devil’s Advocate, and carried all she could up into the little bohemian apartment that had once been Delilah Dane’s.
Jack had been sad to see her go. Rachel had been an exemplary tenant for all the years she’d lived above the bar. She’d complained very little about the noise and had taken him up on his offer, once or twice, to appease her with a beer on the house when the crowd in Libations had gotten particularly rowdy. But he wasn’t surprised that she’d jumped on the first vacancy she could find.
Adelaide Marple, the owner of Devil’s Advocate and her new landlord, had cleared most of Delilah’s belongings out of the apartment, leaving behind only a bedframe, dresser, couch and coffee table. She’d stripped all of the bohemian flare out of the apartment and had offered to clear what little furniture remained, but Rachel said she could deal with that herself. It made the move a bit less complicated after all, since it meant there was slightly less of her own furniture to haul up the street.
It wasn’t until eight in the evening that she returned the U-Haul to the rental agency in Jackson Hole, hopped into her car, and started the long drive home. When she reached the Fist, she parked on Bison Road, at the corner of Main Street, where Adelaide had indicated would be considered her spot from now on.
Adelaide was more than thrilled to have a cop living above her prized souvenir shop. If there was a break-in, Rachel would be sure to respond immediately and apprehend the intruder. It was as good as having a free security agent on site, and though Rachel’s only qualm about the place was that she would always have to come and go through the store, which could become cumbersome afterhours—she would have to disarm the alarm system and reset it each and every time—she felt strongly that that was a small price to pay for guaranteed peace and quiet throughout the night.
Elated, Rachel locked the apartment door behind her, having deposited the furniture she’d brought up, and neared the banker’s box she’d brought with her from the station. She had a good feeling about this place. Her new home. This was where she’d push her private investigation forward, where she’d be living when she finally made detective, and this was where she would celebrate her many victories.
She had set the banker’s box on top of her desk. She neared it and began pulling out all of her compiled evidence, research, and notes on the Dante Alighieri investigation, including the map of named suspects she’d been building by hand, her attempt at organizing who might be a werewolf and whether they were associated with Alighieri.
Pamela Davenport, one of the salesgirls at Acorn Fashion & Accessories who had been obsessed with Kaleb Quinn and—Sheriff Rick Abernathy assumed—was responsible for the murders of Holly van Dyke and Leeanne Whitaker, was in fact a werewolf. Rachel had sent a sample of the dead woman’s blood to the lab she’d been using in Jackson Hole and the DNA had come back categorized as canine. Though this information aligned with the assumption that Pamela had attacked and killed both of the victims, it didn’t necessarily sit right with Rachel.
Delilah Dane, a third victim, had been killed in a manner that didn’t necessarily scream wolf attack. Rachel, herself, had discovered the bohemian drifter’s body behind Shane Quinn’s house.
Rachel quickly made note of the association, having pulled up a chair at her desk. The conclusion had been that Shane had been set up. But why? Why would someone kill Delilah and plant the body in order to bring Shane down? She scrawled her questions down and continued reviewing the evidence.
The map of names she’d been working on listed Troy Quinn on one side, his associates below, and Dante Alighieri on the other. Assuming all Quinns were united, she wrote the remaining four brothers’ names below Troy’s. Since Kaleb’s blood sample had come back negative in terms of being canine, she’d crossed out the word werewolf she’d jotted down weeks ago. But she had to think about it now. Something told her it needed her focused consideration. It was true that Dean Quinn had been shot by a silver bullet and hadn’t died from it, which had prior tipped her suspicion of them into the territory of being truly human, but she wasn’t so sure now.
Professor Gaylord Geer III, a werewolf expert who had been brought in from Jackson Hole and working with the police, had shed a bit of light on the silver bullet aspect, which had led Rachel to the conclusion that it could be folklore. Silver might not kill werewolves.
The cheek swab she’d collected from Angel Mercer before releasing her from jail and dropping all charges had also come back. Canine. As did Delilah Dane’s blood sample.
Having made note of all of the “canine” individuals beneath Alighieri’s name, she stared at her map.
If Dante Alighieri was in fact a werewolf—and Rachel was convinced he was—had he turned Angel, Pamela, and Delilah? Her gut was telling her that he had. But then,
why would he kill Delilah? Why would he sacrifice one of his own? Was the prospect of putting Shane Quinn in prison for life more valuable to him than what Delilah might have been able to do for him should she go on living?
Complicating matters was Angel Mercer. Rachel knew she was canine, knew she’d followed Dante’s orders to get Reece Gladstone out onto the old Halsey land, which resulted in her unlawful imprisonment, but she also knew that Angel was aligned with the Quinns somehow. If she wasn’t, Reece wouldn’t have been adamant about dropping all charges against her and making serious efforts to get her out of jail.
It was getting late and she still hadn’t eaten dinner, but Rachel refreshed her mug of coffee in the kitchen and returned to her desk. When she sat, she found herself staring at Conor’s name on the map and felt a panging twinge of something that didn’t at all feel investigative.
While she told herself to focus on Dante and his werewolves—what was the out-of-towner’s real motivation for turning the listed individuals into werewolves?—she couldn’t help but think about Conor.
Since the spring, she’d felt curious about him. It wasn’t lost on her that every time she encountered him she felt a buzzing thrill. It might have taken her months to accept it, but she was attracted to him, and for almost that entire time she’d been convinced that he didn’t at all feel the same way. He’d always been cordial if not friendly with her, but she couldn’t say he’d made any efforts to directly flirt with her. He’d never asked her out and had remained professional during their encounters. She knew her interest in him had been one-sided. It had nearly blown her determination to make detective, in fact, when she’d turned the volume of the scanner in her cruiser all the way down while she’d worked up the nerve to go into Quinn Security to ask him a few simple questions. The painful result had been that she hadn’t been the first on a critical scene, and from that moment forward she promised herself not to allow her attraction towards Conor Quinn to distract her from her investigation.
But her impression of the second youngest Quinn changed the day he had intercepted Dante’s dark hold on Rachel inside of Devil’s Advocate. He had held her closely against him. Rachel could almost feel it now, those strong arms wrapped tightly around her. It had felt more than friendly. It had felt like he hadn’t wanted to let her go even after Alighieri had fled from the souvenir shop to evade them.
She wasn’t going to let anything sidetrack her efforts to crack this thing wide open, but maybe it would be advantageous to get close to Conor. If she could, maybe she would be able to find out why it seemed that Dante Alighieri was at odds against the Quinns.
Though she had a brief moment of clarity and questioned whether she might be lying to herself—would getting close to Conor really promote her investigation or was it just an excuse to explore feelings she’d been trying to deny?—she resolved to do just that, rinsed her mug of cold coffee out in the kitchen sink, and proceeded to fix herself a little something to eat.
***
The dark pull on his soul was getting stronger and stronger. Rick could feel it, but couldn’t fight it. He felt like he’d been holding himself together all evening, having willed his wolf form to shift back into his human one so that he could leave the station before he could get caught. It had not been a welcomed surprise that his daughter, Whitney, and the new man in her life, Shane, had dropped into his cabin unexpectedly with steaks in hand.
Rick felt hot and sweaty and agitated. Standing over the grill in his chef’s hat and comical apron had been a subtle form of torture, but at least they’d been able to enjoy a little fresh air, which he assumed could only do him good. But now that they were seated around the dinner table inside, he felt suffocated and kept losing the thread of conversation that had been unfolding between Whitney and Shane.
For some unexplainable reason, he’d had to work hard not to glare at them. There was something about their scent that infuriated him and he couldn’t understand why.
Whitney was his pride and joy, always had been. He would die for her. He’d even built her her own cabin so that she could remain as close as possible during her adult years. Ever since his precious Sally-Mae had passed away many years ago from cancer, he’d poured every ounce of love into his little girl. So, why now was he itching to throttle her?
He could guess why he was also itching to throttle Shane. Rick had been at odds with all of the Quinns for as long as he could remember, but given recent developments, his sudden and overwhelming distain of the guy didn’t exactly add up.
If it hadn’t been for Shane, Rick might not have ever found his little girl. Whitney had gone missing and Dante Alighieri had been at the helm. He’d been able to see it in the former Marine’s eyes that Shane cared just as much about his Whitney as Rick did. He’d stopped at nothing to get her back and he’d succeeded. But sitting with them at the dinner table—Rick at the head of the table and the happy couple facing one another on either sides—Rick was pained to discover that he couldn’t even remember the feeling of extreme relief and deep gratitude that he knew he felt the second he’d seen Shane return Whitney to him in the salvage yard of damned repair.
It was as though Rick was losing himself, as though dark energy was flowing through him and erasing the man he thought he was. He felt different, off, dark, and he didn’t like it.
He also felt like a pressure cooker, like he needed to get the hell out of there before he exploded.
Whitney beamed a big ol’ grin at Rick, her green eyes flaring with enthusiasm, and concluded, “That’s why we think an autumn wedding would be perfect! What do you think?”
He tempered his irritation and reminded himself that he’d always wanted to give his little girl the world then mustered some semblance of an acceptable response. “Where are y’all thinking to hold the ceremony?”
Whitney locked eyes with Shane, who had been grinning just to be around the girl—a demeanor he certainly had never been known for—and she suggested, “I was thinking it might be sweet to tie the knot at Yellowstone. We can build an alter near the corral stables, dress it up in white roses. Wouldn’t that be lovely, Daddy?”
He grumbled, “Certainly would,” and mustered a smile that felt forced.
He was at odds with himself, at war, as though this new overwhelming darkness that he could feel growing inside of him was threatening the very fabric of his soul.
“You okay, Daddy?”
“Been feeling a touch under the weather,” he offered, and as he gave her a reassuring smile, it felt like his cheeks were about the crack and split open. “Sure am glad you both decided to swing by, though.” There was something deep inside of him, pulling him down, warning him, but he fought it like hell, determined to be the same supportive father he’d always been to his Whitney. “I can’t wait for the wedding and I’ll do everything within my power to make it the most special day of your life. Both of your lives,” he amended as he smiled at Shane. It felt more like a smirk, an awful, bitter, glaring smirk, but the man didn’t seem to notice or mind. “Say…”
Rick took a moment to mentally compose how he would word the change of topic.
Dante had shown up in his office that night, had chosen Rick and turned him, for a reason. Rick lived in a causal world. Every action had an equal but opposite reaction. Cause and effect. Motive and crime.
“Y’all are close with creepy little Lucy Cooper—”
“Daddy,” she warned.
He hadn’t meant to describe her like that. It was as though his voice—and mind—were not his own.
“I apologize,” he struggled to say, as he turned to Shane. “I guess I have a lot of questions about that night at Damned Repair. Y’all knew that if Angel Mercer and my good buddy, Jack Quagmire, tied the knot, it would conjure Dante. But it was Lucy Cooper who had, I don’t even know what to call it, levitated and fought Dante with her light powers?”
Again, Shane and Whitney looked at one another but nothing about either of their expressions was filled with glee
like last time.
“Lucy’s different,” Shane allowed.
Rick asked his daughter, “How long have you known she was different?”
“Not long,” she told him, but didn’t elaborate.
Cause and effect. Rick had witnessed Lucy’s powers and then Dante had shown up in his office.
“Alighieri bested her,” he commented, mulling the disturbing fact over.
Whitney perked up and said, “Lucy’s going to be my maid of honor.”
Rick frowned. Staying on Shane, he asked, “What do you know about him? Alighieri, I mean. He’s a werewolf, right?”
“Daddy, this isn’t the dinner conversation we were hoping for.”
“Well, it’s the dinner conversation I need!” he snapped, voice booming across the table.
Whitney flinched and Shane did not look pleased.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I think I’m coming down with something. I’ve been wrestling a fever all day.”
As he ran his large hand down his face, Whitney quickly began collecting their plates and told him, “We’ll get out of your hair and let you rest, Daddy. We probably should’ve called ahead.”
Rick remained seated at the table while his daughter and Shane did just that, cleaned up and started for the door.
Before leaving, Whitney circled back and placed her warm hands on his shoulders.
“Have a good night. Thanks for dinner. You’re the best.”
He had to punch his response out, “Goodnight,” because the word would not come otherwise.
As soon as he heard the click of the front door closing behind them, he slouched into a drained, defeated slump and hung his head, exhausted.
Then a wash of dark energy paralyzed him. He felt both relaxed and terrified. He had no control over his body, he soon realized. His mind had gone blank as well.
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