…and she had no choice but to accept that the growing worry in her mind was here to stay, even as he flipped her onto her back, even as he ventured down the soft length of her trembling body, and even as he brought his warm mouth in-between her legs, returning the pleasure she had just poured herself into giving him.
***
As Rachel and Conor’s intimacy rose and fell and eventually subsided just shy of intercourse, all the way out in the plains, Shane drove, following Larry Hardcastle’s old Buick at enough of a distance that the twisted man would never suspect a Quinn was tracking his every move.
On the passenger’s seat beside him was a two-way radio, his brother Dean on the other end of the signal, as Dean kept on Ronnie McDowell as Troy had instructed them to do.
It had been all day with this, shadowing Larry throughout the most dismal corners of the Fist. The guy didn’t live much of a life as far as Shane could tell, and it was starting to grate on the werewolf. Shane would much rather be coiled up in Whitney’s arms, lounging with her on the couch or tossing around with her in bed. He’d called and spoken with her a bunch of times throughout the day, and their conversations had always fallen into the territory of her fears about her father.
There was no denying that Rick had been acting strange. Shane had tried to defend the sheriff against Conor’s suspicions. He’d gotten to know Rick, had seen an entirely new side of him now that Whitney was in his life, but he wasn’t sure for how much longer he could maintain his faith in the man he would soon call Dad. It seemed, more and more, if Rick wasn’t in the dangerous throes of battling a fever or some other sudden ailment, he was at the stationhouse making decisions that seemed to counter or work against everything he had seemed to stand for in the past. During every call with Whitney, however, he was sure to remain sympathetic and accommodating to Rick’s health. They’d even been staying in her cabin instead of Shane’s so that they could be close to her father should he need anything.
All day he’d been bogged with empathy for his one true mate and also frustrated with Larry’s nonsense. The guy had been cruising the Fist and stopping at dumpsters to rummage all the potential treasures that had been the town’s trash. The Buick had become packed, its station wagon trunk filled to high heaven with all kinds of useless items, from busted furniture pieces to discarded electronics to antiquated cell phones that probably wouldn’t even work if he tried. In-between dumpsters, Larry had stopped at liquor stores and emerged with small bottles of what could have only been hard liquor. At times he bought cans of beers that were disguised just as conspicuously in brown paper bags. Rarely did the guy wait until he was tucked in his Buick to crack the can open and suck some of it down.
Yeah, the guy was a real piece of work, and not once had he driven out into the old Halsey land to lead Shane directly back to wherever Dante Alighieri had been hiding out.
Promisingly, however, Shane had discovered his purple amethyst crystal had been functioning just fine, warming up whenever Shane followed Larry too closely and cooling off as he fell back. It was something, and from the other end of the two-way radio, Dean had confirmed his own crystal had been working, playing a game of hot and cold whenever his truck pulled too closely to Ronnie McDowell’s vehicle.
Shane would’ve liked Whitney to have pressed charges against Larry and Ronnie. They’d essentially abducted her, after all, and she’d had to fight her way out of that corral stable at Yellowstone. But that night had been a tumultuous blur and arrests had never been made.
The walkie-talkie crackled from the passenger’s seat and then Dean’s voice cut through the static. “Ronnie’s heading out to the plains.”
Shane grabbed hold of his radio and squeezed, saying, “Hardcastle as well. Looks like he’s heading to his shack.”
“We’ll see if Ronnie meets him there,” Dean mentioned then the walkie went quiet in Shane’s hand.
The shack was exactly where Larry was heading. Shane slowed his truck and killed the headlights, keeping at a far distance behind the Buick.
He watched the boxy vehicle turn off the highway and start down the long, dusty road that led to the shack.
Shane pulled off as well, but didn’t proceed down the driveway. He idled for a moment. If Ronnie turned up this way as well, he would pass Shane’s pickup and potentially catch sight of him, so Shane pulled out onto the highway road again, keeping his headlights off and using his crystal-clear werewolf vision to see through the dark.
He angled his pickup truck off the road, coming onto the bumpy shoulder and driving out, off road. He pulled around so that he was facing the shack in the distance, but he wasn’t so far away that the amethyst went cold. Idling, he watched as the lights inside the busted shack came on and then relayed his exact position to Dean over the two-way radio.
Just as he’d hoped, he soon saw another vehicle turn onto Larry’s long driveway. It had to be Ronnie. About a minute later, he saw his brother’s pickup truck, which passed the driveway and eventually slowed, headlights turning off, as Dean pulled off the road and came around to park beside Shane’s truck.
Dean climbed into the passenger’s seat, shut the door, and said, “Let’s hope they don’t drink themselves into a stupor and pass out.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“If the sheriff dropped the case against Dante,” Dean began after a thoughtful moment, “I would think that Dante would be more brazen about going in and out of town. Why not? I’m just surprised he isn’t throwing it in everyone’s faces that he can do whatever the hell he wants in the Fist.”
“Me too,” Shane admitted. “But I’m glad he isn’t. I’m sure Rick would have to really fight himself not to arrest each and every one of us.”
“Why would Rick arrest us?” Dean asked and Shane looked at him.
As he returned his eyes to the glowing shack in the distance, he said, “Because you know at least one of us Quinn’s would throw a punch if not worse.”
Dean smiled. “True enough,” he agreed.
They waited for movement, for something to happen, as they sat in silence. Shane used a pair of binoculars he’d brought with him and spied Larry pacing back and forth in front of a window. It seemed he was lecturing the younger werewolf about something. Shane passed the binoculars to his brother and soon they were taking turns to spy on the only two members of Dante’s army of the damned that any of the Quinns knew about.
There had to be so many more.
Maybe that was why Dante was keeping a very low profile and staying out of sight. Maybe he needed to lay low to keep his hands clean from whatever he’d ordered his damned to do. Shane feared to imagine.
“Get comfortable, my friend,” Shane warned him. “I doubt we’ll be going anywhere tonight.”
But forty minutes later, Shane’s assumption proved wrong.
The lights inside the shack went out and then a moment later one vehicle started up, headlights coming to life. It looked like they were taking Ronnie McDowell’s car and heading back towards the Fist.
Shane and Dean followed.
***
Kaleb woke with a start the second his heavy head slipped off his large palm. He shook the sleepiness off and it took him a long, confused moment to place where he was. In his own living room. He’d fallen asleep in an armchair, Lucy tucked in their bedroom upstairs sound asleep.
Gaylord was working by candlelight, using the coffee table as a desk. He was seated on the floor and pouring over some book he’d been skimming. The professor was dedicated, Kaleb would give him that. He had been taking his task to find a way to defeat an Astral God seriously, but Kaleb had mixed emotions about the whole discovery.
His one true mate and his greatest enemy had been cut from the same cloth. And now the professor was devising methods to murder that very race of beings. It filled him with a dark feeling.
He studied Gaylord from across the room long enough for the old man to feel eyes on him.
“Did I wake you?” he asked in
a hushed voice.
“I shouldn’t be sleeping anyway.”
Gaylord frowned then resumed his work.
It wasn’t that Kaleb wanted to have to stay up all night watching the professor. The cabin was locked and secure. No one would be able to get in. But that wasn’t the issue. Kaleb had to stay up to make sure no one got out, namely the professor, who had already escaped once, sneaking out as soon as Kaleb had dozed off to steal his pickup truck. Gaylord had meant well, of course. He was enthralled with Sasha and had only wanted to drive out to the little, stone house to surprise her. But it would’ve been too dangerous, and when Kaleb had heard his truck starting up outside, he’d raced down the stairs and out the door and stopped the professor just in the nick of time.
Love knew no bounds, he supposed.
“I’m compiling tactics,” Gaylord mentioned without looking up.
It was curious enough that Kaleb rose from the armchair and joined the professor on the floor at the coffee table.
“It seems,” he began explaining, “that the fastest and most effective way to ‘ground’ an Astral is to capture and harm someone they love.”
“Dante doesn’t love anyone,” he pointed out.
But Lucy did.
It gave him serious pause.
“Another tactic,” the professor went on after his expression had drooped into a defeated frown, “is to pierce the Astral’s heart and then voice a command.”
“I’ve seen Dante in action,” Kaleb returned, “he’s able to use his powers to deflect whatever comes at him.”
“In battle,” Gaylord allowed. “But has anyone tried when Dante’s guard has been down?”
Kaleb thought about it for a long moment then admitted, “No, I guess not.”
“If we could convince someone who Dante trusts to pierce his heart—it can be pierced with anything, mind you—then that could be a way.”
Angel Mercer came to mind. Dante had obviously trusted her at some point. She was the only person who he could think of who had ever gotten close to the rogue werewolf. But the idea made him grimace. Angel and Jack had worked tirelessly to extricate Angel from Dante’s dark hold. To ask her to go back into the trenches…
He doubted she’d ever be willing.
But if it was their only option…
“Dante uses mind control,” he reminded the professor. “Who’s to say that he wouldn’t just mind control that person straight away. They might never get the chance to pierce his heart.”
“What if the person was overtly obedient?” Gaylord suggested. “Are you certain Dante uses the force of mind control even when his subject is obedient? I would think that using such a level of control only happens when he’s met with resistance.”
He had a point. “Okay, good work,” he said. “Let’s tell Troy tomorrow. Until then, you should get some sleep.”
“I have a few more hours in me,” Gaylord smiled as he turned another page in the gigantic book he was hunting through.
“Oh, good,” he said dryly.
It was fixing to be a very long night.
***
“Where the hell are they going?” Shane murmured under his breath when Ronnie’s car didn’t turn to skirt south along the edge of the Fist, which would’ve been the fastest route out onto the old Halsey land. Instead, when the car reached Trout Street, coming past the library and then Libations, he cut left and left again at Evergreen.
“Do you think they know we’re following?” Dean asked over the crackling walkie-talkie as if he’d just read Shane’s mind.
Though it was late, there was enough traffic in the Fist thanks to all the tourist that had flooded in from all over that Shane didn’t believe that was the case.
He pinched the walkie and replied, “I doubt it.”
Then Ronnie’s car turned again, this time onto a dirt road that led to a rural area on the southern side of Devil’s Fist, and Dean said through the two-way radio, “I know where they’re going.”
“Where?”
As if to himself, Dean murmured, “That can’t be…”
“Where are they going, Dean?” he demanded.
“There’s only one house on this road,” his brother told him.
“Who lives there?”
After a pause that was so silent it could only mean pure disbelief, Dean finally answered, “Adelaide Marple.”
***
The next morning, Rachel gently stirred, nudged by the warm sun on her face. As she woke in Conor’s arms, feeling cocooned in him, she was filled with contentment. She drew in a deep breath then began to stretch out like a cat under the covers. But just as she was starting to embrace the beautiful feeling of waking up with the man of her dreams, she was suddenly slammed with all the dread and anxiety that had been building inside of her.
She couldn’t even enjoy the feel of this moment.
As she rolled onto her side, facing him, Conor stirred as well. He yawned and cracked his eyes open. After a quick stretch he pulled her in and gave her a peck on the lips.
He might have been half asleep, but he could still tell that whatever had been weighing on her last night was back.
“You’re going to have to talk to me, Rachel,” he said, and she realized she was wearing a serious expression on her face. “I know something has been bothering you,” he insisted as he stroked her hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ears.
“I feel like something bad is going to happen,” she admitted, “and I never feel that way.”
He let out a soft sigh and studied the worry that was written all over her face.
“Maybe it’s just anxiety,” she suggested, hoping the conversation would end there.
It didn’t.
“You don’t strike me as the anxious type,” he told her. When she said nothing, he offered, “This town has been in the midst of battle after battle. I know how you feel. I used to feel it myself whenever there was a calm before the storm overseas. I was cool, calm, and collected when I was fighting. It was only when I was back on base, waiting to be deployed again, that I would be filled with a dark sense of dread.”
She appreciated that he could identify with her, but she knew that Dante and this war they were in the middle of wasn’t specifically what had been gnawing at her.
“It’s more than that,” she said, having a hard time looking him in the eyes. “It’s… it’s…” She couldn’t get the words out.
“It’s what?” he asked.
“It’s you,” she managed.
“Me?”
She felt her brow furrow and a wall of tension rise up in her chest. “It feels like something’s wrong. Like I want this,” she tried to explain, indicating them—him with her—with her hand. “I want to have something real with you, but at the same time I feel like it’s doomed.”
Conor studied her, a wash of confusion or perhaps apprehension clouding over his expression. “You think we’re doomed?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed, trying to backpedal. She shouldn’t have said even that much. Worrying out loud when she couldn’t even pinpoint what was wrong didn’t feel right either. “I guess I don’t want this to get yanked away from me.”
“It’s not going to be,” he promised, but she could hear the doubt in his tone. “If we want to be together, we can be together.”
A wave of frustration rose in her chest and without warning, she heard herself clarify, “I feel like we’re not meant to be.”
She hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t meant to put it in that particular way. Was that even what she had meant? Was that what she was really feeling? But that’s how it had come out.
“You feel like you want to be with me but you also feel like it’s not meant to be?” he questioned and she could hear the hurt in his voice.
“I don’t know,” she groaned, hanging her head on his sculpted chest so that he couldn’t look at her. “Don’t ask me things I don’t know.”
He stroked her hair, but she knew right then and
there, something had just changed between them. Something had shifted. And she knew it would never shift back.
Chapter Fifteen
CONOR
Conor made a pointed effort to be the first one in at Quinn Security that morning, having dropped Rachel off at the stationhouse in the heart of town.
He couldn’t believe what she’d said to him. It was almost impossible to wrap his mind around the fear she had expressed. Part of her felt as though they weren’t meant to be? He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand knowing she felt that way when deep down, in what felt like the very bone marrow of his soul he knew they were destined for one another. He kept telling himself she was mistaken, stressed out, overwhelmed, frustrated perhaps that she’d been chasing a promotion she might never get at work. But it was hard to blame what she’d expressed to him on any of those things.
It worried him.
He’d put off manning up and asking Troy point-blank whether or not Rachel had been born to be his one true mate. He wasn’t going to let another day go by without an answer, no matter how deeply it terrified him.
And that’s why he’d gotten in to Quinn Security an hour earlier than anyone else.
When he pulled his pickup truck into the parking area, he saw Troy’s truck already parked. The front door of the cabin was wide open. Troy had probably opened every single window as well to get as much cool morning air into the place before the summer heat overtook the day.
Inside he found Troy in his office working on hacking through a number of emails. He stepped into the office and closed the door.
Without lifting his dark eyes from his computer screen, Troy said, “You’re in early.”
“I need to talk to you,” he said as he sat in one of the chairs across from his brother.
Troy’s fingers were still dancing over the keyboard, so Conor waited patiently for his brother to wrap up whatever email he was composing.
When he finally had his attention, he said, “I have to ask you something.”
“Okay,” Troy allowed, giving him his full and undivided attention. “What’s wrong?”
Quinn Security Page 92
