“You think he cares about her?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know what to think about Warrick James. The night I treated his gunshot wounds he was furious with her.”
“So he could have been the one who attacked her in the alley,” Paige said. She wanted to meet this creature who was threatening her best friend.
“I don’t know if he attacked her, or if she was attacked because of him,” Ben said. “But I feel like he might be more responsible than the society.”
Or was that only what he wanted to believe because he and Paige and the child they’d adopted were all members of the society? It could have been a vampire who’d attacked Kate. And if that was the case, she was lucky she had only taken a blow to her head instead of a fang to her throat. But if she kept investigating, Kate was too good a detective to not figure out the secret and get herself killed.
* * *
Goose bumps lifted on Kate’s skin as she stepped into the thick darkness of the alley. Not even her flashlight beam could chase away the shadows this late at night. The anonymous call, promising to reveal everything she wanted to know, had lured her back to the alley. She had considered that it was just a ploy to get her here—to hurt her again. Yet she hadn’t been able to ignore it. Zantrax PD made it a policy to follow up on every silent observer tip. Maybe this tip was even better since it had come into her direct line and had been traced back to a public phone near Club Underground. A real witness could have made that call. Maybe Bernie.
Or the person who’d struck her that night...
She was a detective. Whatever risk it took to learn what she wanted to know was a risk she was willing to take. Of course she wasn’t usually foolish enough to go into a potentially dangerous situation without backup. But this was the second night she had taken that risk. Third, if she counted that first night when she’d chased Warrick James into the alley. But then she hadn’t wanted to risk his killing that man.
And now, she hadn’t requested backup because she didn’t want to risk her reputation. Her “missing” body case had undone the respect she’d fought for years to gain in the department. He had ridiculed her the most. Not the man she’d shot but the man from her past, the man she wished she could leave in her past— forgotten only to surface in rare nightmares to remind her to never make that mistake again.
To never trust.
But they worked together. He worked nights, though, and she worked days. Except now when she was off the clock but not really off duty.
Tonight she was more prepared, though. Her gun wasn’t in her holster but clasped tightly in her right hand while her left grasped the flashlight. She shone the beam around the alley, illuminating only one small circle of darkness at a time. Nothing moved in the shadows, though.
Well, nothing human. Small feet scurried across the asphalt. Confident she was alone, Kate gave in to a shudder of revulsion over the nearness of the rats.
“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”
Why call her if the person had no intention of showing up? He or she had gone to the trouble of disguising his or her voice so that it was unrecognizable. Maybe it was just a joke. Since that night when they had all searched for a body no one had been able to find, her coworkers had subjected her to many jokes. Like the bloody dummy left in her desk chair. And her locker and even her car...
If only she had been able to arrest Warrick the other night...to bring him in to the department and show his scars. She could have proved that she hadn’t imagined it all. That she hadn’t imagined him. He was real.
But too strong for her to have overpowered without her gun. Hell, when she’d had her gun she hadn’t been able to stop him. At least not permanently. He had survived injuries that would have killed anyone else.
Was he real?
He had disappeared from her bedroom just as quickly as he had the first night she’d discovered him there. One minute he had been there, almost as if he’d been watching over and protecting her after her concussion. Then the next minute he’d been gone...before she’d been able to find her gun or her cuffs. Before she’d been able to arrest him.
Or make love with him...
She wasn’t sure which she’d wanted more. Or at least she wasn’t willing to admit which she’d wanted more.
“Warrick?” Could he have been her caller? Somehow she doubted he would have gone to the trouble of altering his voice, though.
Who would have gone to the trouble of luring her here only to not show up? It had to be a joke. She sighed over her wasted time. But it didn’t have to be wasted. She could finish the investigation a concussion had ended those few nights ago. Instead of putting away her gun and putting down the flashlight, she leaned her shoulder against the Dumpster and shoved.
The metal creaked and squeaked as it edged slightly across the asphalt. Hell, she hadn’t entirely gained back her strength after the concussion. But the Dumpster seemed heavier tonight. It certainly smelled as if it was full since mingled putrid odors wafted out and overwhelmed her.
One scent—sweet and metallic—was new.
She rose up on tiptoe and shone the flashlight inside the Dumpster. The beam illuminated a man’s face, his skin pale but for the dirt and grease smeared across it and his beard.
“Bernie!” She recognized the homeless man from whom she had taken the statement about the people he had seen flying from the alley.
Maybe that was how Warrick disappeared so quickly from place to place. Usually she would never consider such a fantastic explanation, but at least it was an explanation. And that was more than she had managed to discover on her own.
She waved the flashlight in the homeless man’s face. “Bernie!”
The vagrant’s eyes were closed. Had he passed out drunk? She could smell the liquor, too, that saturated his clothes and oozed from his pores. The beam of light shining in his face didn’t even stir him.
Her pulse quickened and she moved the flashlight down. Horror, over what she saw, rushed up to gag her. But she choked it down just enough to scream.
* * *
He had already been tracking her scent, not surprised that it was leading him to the alley, when he heard her scream. The sound of the terror in her voice raised all the hair on Warrick’s body. She needed him.
But could he come to her like this?
It was after midnight, so he had taken his other form—the form he was from midnight to dawn every night. The form that might frighten her more than what was already in the alley with her. Unless...
He ran to her, legs straining to close the distance between them before she could be hurt again. Before he could hurt her...
But when he burst into the alley, he found her alone, staring into the Dumpster. What had she discovered this time that she shouldn’t have?
Then she turned and discovered...him. Fear had already drained her face of all color, leaving her skin deathly pale in the dark. Now her eyes widened, and another scream rose to her open lips. But she bit it back, as if afraid of startling him. “Stay away,” she murmured, cowering from him.
But the Dumpster was at her back, and he stood between her and the only exit. He was down on all fours, hoping to resemble more dog than werewolf. But dogs weren’t this big, this powerful, and she knew it.
“What are you...?” she asked the question, but he doubted she expected an answer.
She did not know that he could speak in the same voice he used in his human form. She didn’t know anything about werewolves, and she could never learn because the rules of the pack were as strict as the rules of the Secret Vampire Society. Perhaps stricter, because no exceptions were ever made