by Lola Gabriel
“Caroline, stay with me,” Brianna said through her tears. She knew it was no use, though. The paramedics wouldn’t know how to fix silver poisoning, even if that was possible.
Caroline’s body flopped back down, and she was still and silent. Brianna knew without checking for a pulse that she was dead. She reached out and gently closed the girl’s staring but unseeing eyes.
The sirens were almost upon her now, and she looked up to see the sheriff’s car and an ambulance approaching her. The paramedics ran to Caroline’s body with a stretcher. She stood up and moved back out of the way. The sheriff approached her.
“I’m Sheriff Stanton. What happened?” he asked.
“She was shot,” Brianna said. She told him everything that had happened. He nodded along, taking notes as she talked. She noticed the paramedics pushing the stretcher towards the ambulance. A white sheet covered Caroline’s face.
“Excuse me a moment,” the sheriff said. He moved away to talk to the paramedics, and Brianna leaned back against the wall of her apartment building.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened her eyes when she heard footsteps approaching her. The sheriff was back. She had to know what he made of it all. His expression told her what news he was about to deliver.
“I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “She didn’t make it. She was already gone when the paramedics got to her. They tried everything, but it was too late.”
Brianna frowned. “But I saw the wound, sheriff. It was barely more than a scratch.”
He shook his head sadly. “No, miss. You must have been mistaken. The bullet clipped an artery.”
“Oh,” Brianna said. She knew the sheriff was lying, but she didn’t want to press the matter and give away exactly how much she knew.
He couldn’t possibly believe that Caroline had died from blood loss. He had to know about the supernatural world. This was some sort of cover up. It sparked Brianna’s curiosity, but she told herself not to get involved. She knew there was a fair chance she had once more avoided being captured by a Matchmaker, and she should just be grateful and let it go.
“Are you all right, miss? Do you need to go to the emergency room?” the sheriff asked.
It was the last thing Brianna wanted to do. She wasn’t sure she could keep biting her tongue to stop herself from asking too many questions. She shook her head.
“No. Thank you. I’m fine. I guess I’m a little shaken, but I’ll be all right. I’ve only known Caroline since yesterday. We were both new medical students,” she said.
Sheriff Stanton seemed to accept her refusal to go to the emergency room. He nodded his head and walked back to his car. It was the confirmation Brianna needed that he was covering this up. Why wasn’t he questioning her more about Caroline’s murder? She was the only witness. He didn’t want Brianna asking questions any more than she wanted to ask them.
She watched his car pull away, followed by the ambulance. Its sirens were silent now. They disappeared from sight, and Brianna felt empty, like she didn’t know what to do. Caroline had to be a Matchmaker. Why else would a shifter have taken an interest in her? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe she was genuinely just here for medical school.
Surely, if she was here for me, Brianna thought, I would already have been taken. She could have taken me any time last night while I slept in her dorm room. Or maybe she was waiting for a buyer. It’s not like she had to worry about losing me.
She thought of Raina, the bear shifter who had saved her in New York. Had she saved her once again? She shook her head. No, Raina wouldn’t have just slunk away. She’d have come forward now that the sheriff had gone.
She looked around, working out where Caroline was standing when she got hit and where the bullet had come from. She pinpointed a location and made her way around to the side of the building. The shooter would have been behind the building, just poking their gun out when the time was right. She peered cautiously around the corner, but the area there was deserted, too. She looked down at the ground, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw them. Paw prints. Huge paw prints.
Again, everything pointed to the sheriff covering this up. He hadn’t even bothered to come around here and check it out. He hadn’t cordoned anything off as a crime scene or taken any photos. He had no intention of looking for Caroline’s killer, because he already knew who it was.
Brianna crouched down to look at the paw prints. She frowned. They didn’t look like the prints of a bear. She pulled her cell phone out and took a quick photo. As she walked back to the door of her building, an image came into her mind; an image of a large sandy-colored dog. And she knew then it hadn’t been a dog. It had been a wolf. She googled wolf prints and saw that she was right.
What the hell have I got myself mixed up in here? she asked herself, getting in the elevator and heading up to her apartment.
4
Archer stood up as the sheriff entered the office. Sheriff Stanton’s office was small, barely big enough for his desk, but he always seemed to be at home there. Looking at the stacks of paperwork in no particular order made Archer feel sick, thinking of his own neat stacks, but the sheriff somehow understood his haphazard system, and he could instantly locate any file or piece of paper that crossed his desk.
“You fucked up,” Stanton said as he walked in, ignoring Archer’s outstretched hand. “There was a witness. You must have seen Caroline was with another girl when you shot her.”
Archer felt his wolf stirring inside of himself, and he bit it back. His wolf had come in useful earlier to stalk Caroline once she and the other girl had left the diner, but it wouldn’t do for it to make an appearance now.
“Of course I saw her,” he snapped, sitting back down as the sheriff fought his way behind his desk and sat down himself. “But it was the best chance I had. It was the only time she wasn’t somewhere where there would have been multiple witnesses.”
“And you absolutely had to do this today?”
Archer nodded. “As I told you on the phone, Caroline had plans to harm a professor from the university. I didn’t want to take any chances. She was damned dangerous, and believe me when I say your town is much safer with her gone. Now how about you lose the attitude and remember that.”
“The girl was suspicious. I told her the bullet nicked an artery and her friend bled out. She played like she bought it, but she didn’t. She saw the wound. She described it as barely a scratch.”
“She’s a mortal, sheriff. I would have sensed it if she was a shifter of any kind. She might be confused now, but she’ll think about it for a time, and she’ll convince herself her mind was playing tricks on her and that you must have been right. It’s what mortals do when they can’t explain something. You and I both know that.”
Stanton sighed. “You were lucky this time, Archer. The paramedics were two of my guys. But just be careful, okay? I promised to stay out of your business as long as it doesn’t affect mine, and this almost did.”
“If by that, you mean I saved someone you couldn’t have, then yes, it affected your business,” Archer said. He kept his voice low and calm, but he knew by the sheriff’s expression that he could sense the anger simmering beneath the surface. Stanton knew when to push it and when not to, and he nodded his head.
“Yes, you’re right. Thank you. And thank you for the heads-up,” he said.
Archer nodded and stood up. This time, when he offered the sheriff his hand, Stanton shook it.
“I take it you can see yourself out?”
“I think I can manage that,” Archer said.
He left the sheriff’s office and headed back towards his own. His mind was spinning. He didn’t like to leave loose ends, and the girl was definitely a loose end. He had no intention of hurting her. She wasn’t a part of this world; he had known it the second he’d gotten close enough to sniff her scent. Still, he thought it would be a good idea to find out exactly how much she knew and whether or not she had bought Stanton’s story. Once he was
back in his office, Archer sent a text message to Sven, asking him to meet him there, and Sven was there within minutes.
“How did it go?” Sven asked as he walked in. He took in the set of Archer’s jaw. “Not well, I take it?”
Archer told Sven about the deal Caroline had presented him with, and that he obviously couldn’t take it. He told him he had followed her and managed to take her out, and that the sheriff was dealing with the body. He didn’t mention that there was a witness. That was his problem to take care of, not Sven’s.
“So she didn’t tell you anything about the hunter?”
“Not a lot,” Archer said. “Just that he’s not working directly with the Venandi Lupi. He’s an ex-member, but he’s no longer one of them. So, hopefully, he’s just a lone hunter that’s stumbled across us rather than this being an orchestrated attack.”
“Well, that’s something,” Sven said.
“Yes. And Caroline knew his name and where to find him. Of course she wouldn’t tell me that without me making the deal with her, and I couldn’t do that. But she has associates. Someone must know something. I want you to gather two or three of our most trusted people, have them track down any of Caroline’s associates, and see what they can get.”
Sven nodded and stood up. “I’m on it.”
Archer thought back to the girl again once he was alone. He could still smell her scent in his nose, and as much as he didn’t want to, he could feel his body reacting to it. It was a sweet scent, like honey, and his wolf was rather taken with it.
Stop it, Archer warned himself. Don’t go complicating matters. She’s a mortal. Nothing can ever happen between you. And you don’t want to pull her into this world. You just have to find out how much she knows and work out whether or not you need to bring in a vampire to wipe her memory of the shooting.
He knew where she lived: the building he had followed Caroline to. It hadn’t been Caroline who had pulled out a door key. The girl had to live there. He debated going over there now, but he knew it was too dangerous. Bursting in like that and demanding answers would only scare the girl, and it could get ugly. He was determined not to hurt her. She was innocent in all of this. She obviously had bad taste in friends, but that wasn’t worth dying for.
From what Stanton had said, she suspected something wasn’t quite right about Caroline’s death, but it didn’t mean she knew anything. She couldn’t know anything about their world. He just had to confirm that and be done with this whole mess.
He thought about Caroline telling him she had a teacher in her sights, and it all clicked into place. She must have enrolled in the university to get intel on the teacher. That meant the girl was likely a student there, too. He would wait until Monday and scope the school out. He had her scent, and he would be able to identify her again, even in a crowd. His wolf would home in on the single scent and find her, even if the scent wasn’t so damned attractive.
Archer knew he had been right the moment he set foot on campus on Monday morning. He could smell the girl. She was somewhere in the building, and his senses told him she was likely on the second floor. He looked at the floor plan. Medical school. Great. No wonder she hadn’t bought Stanton’s story. He shook his head. It was the first day of term, and the girl wasn’t medically trained. Not yet.
He went back outside and hung around, waiting for her to come out. He wasn’t going to attempt to question her in there, with hundreds of people milling around. He would stalk her home and demand answers once she was alone.
The morning dragged, but lunch time rolled around, and the students began making their way outside. Archer’s wolf howled within him; the girl was close by. He let his wolf in just enough to heighten his senses. He saw the campus as a grid, the people as dots on a heat map. One of them was pulsing, and he knew it was the girl. He pushed his wolf back and looked at her with his normal eyes.
He felt his heart skip a beat when he saw her. She was gorgeous, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She looked to be in her early to mid-twenties. She was on the short side, and her body had curves in all of the right places. Her hips were wide, striking. Her breasts were large and full, and her stomach was ever so slightly rounded. She was voluptuous. There was no other way to describe her. Archer pulled his eyes away from her hips that swayed slightly as she walked. Her sleek black bob perfectly framed her face, not a hair out of place.
He chastised himself again, forcing himself to look away from the girl. His eyes were drawn back to her almost instantly, and for a second, he met her gaze before he turned away quickly. It wasn’t so quickly that her pale green eyes weren’t etched onto his brain permanently, though. He couldn’t help picturing her as a wolf, lithe and graceful and strong, her eyes standing out against midnight black fur.
It was not going to happen. She was mortal. And if she had the Sanmere protein in her blood, Caroline would have known about it. And she wouldn’t have been offering him some second-rate teacher as a deal, she would have been offering this exquisite beauty. Would he still have been able to turn the deal down if Caroline had shown him a picture of the girl? He liked to think he would have, but it would have been so much harder than it had been.
Archer shook his head, shaking away all thoughts of mating with the girl. She was a loose end that needed to be dealt with. He wasn’t willing to risk the pack’s identity by letting himself get caught up in a dream. It didn’t matter that his wolf was clamoring for her scent, or that he was instantly mystified by her. It was business. Just that, and nothing more.
He watched as the girl sat down at a bench with her lunch. She was with another girl, who was pretty enough, but she paled in comparison.
Archer cursed the other girl. This would have been a perfect moment to talk to the raven-haired woman. The bench she was sitting on was on the edge of the campus, far enough from the others that they could talk privately, but close enough that she wouldn’t feel threatened by his presence. He would have to find a way to get her alone so he could question her without scaring her half to death. He would just have to be patient and bide his time. The other girl was talking on the phone now, and Archer settled down to watch them.
He felt his pulse speed up when the other girl ended her call and stood up. She said something, and the girl nodded and waved her away. The other girl left. It was Archer’s first stroke of good luck in a long time, and he wasn’t going to waste it. He stood up and quickly approached the girl’s bench, smiling while he did so.
She smiled back at him, somewhat hesitantly, and Archer knew he would have to play this just right. She didn’t look like someone who trusted easily. Her smile lit her face up, and he spotted tiny flecks of amber in her pale green eyes.
“Hi. You mind if I join you?” he asked. The girl shrugged. Archer sat down. “I’m Archer,” he said.
“Brianna,” she replied. She was watching him, and Archer thought he saw something on her face. Something that told him that maybe she felt the chemistry sizzling between them as acutely as he did.
“I hope you don’t mind me approaching you like this, but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” he said.
“About what?” she asked with a frown, guardedly.
“About Caroline Maynard. She was a good friend of mine, and I heard you were with her when she… you know.”
He saw a flicker of sympathy flash across Brianna’s face, and he knew his halting sentence had worked. He had convinced her he was just a grief-stricken friend, and he was confident she would talk.
5
Brianna’s heart skipped a beat as she looked up and saw a guy approaching her. He wasn’t just any guy. He was by far the hottest guy Brianna had ever seen. He was tall and well built. She could see his pecs through his t-shirt, and she could only imagine the six pack that must lie beneath it. His arms were big, but not big enough to be comical. They looked strong, like if he wrapped them around her, she would feel safe from the whole world.
She dragged her eyes away from his body, feeling hersel
f flushing slightly as she thought of his body moving against hers. She ached for his touch.
His face did nothing to calm her. He had a square jawline, and something about it made her want to reach up and run her fingers along it. His hair was sandy blond, but it had flecks of gold in it that caught the sun when he moved. And his eyes… holy shit, his eyes. They were bright blue, almost turquoise, the color of the ocean washing up on a tropical beach. They were the most intense eyes Brianna had come across, and when her eyes met his, she felt like she couldn’t look away.
Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt herself blushing again. Her mind was working overtime, imagining him on top of her, herself looking up into those beautiful eyes as she screamed his name. She shifted on the bench, sucking in a breath as she moved.
“Hi. You mind if I join you?” the guy asked with a charming smile.
She felt her heart flutter as he smiled down at her. She almost said no. It didn’t matter how smoking hot he was. Something about him felt like trouble. There was an edge to him, something Brianna couldn’t put her finger on. While she wasn’t scared of him, she felt like maybe she should be.
She couldn’t very well say no, though. It was a free country, and he had every right to sit anywhere he wanted to. She shrugged, going for casual, like she had no real interest in what he did. He sat down.
“I’m Archer,” he said.
“Brianna,” she replied. Her voice came out breathy and unlike her own voice. She could barely pull her eyes away from Archer’s face, and she told herself to get a grip.
“I hope you don’t mind me approaching you like this, but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” he said.
“About what?” she asked. What could this perfect specimen possibly want from her?
