Then again, it might be a reminder of what he, and his kind, were capable of should I fail to get justice for Shonda.

  Paranoid? Nah. Not me.

  Once I settled in, Ford shut the door and jogged around the truck to join me in the cab.

  “You’re the best driver I’ve had since I got here,” I confessed as he merged into traffic.

  “Momma always says it’s one thing to drive a monster of a truck and another to drive like a monster in a truck.”

  “Your mom is wise.”

  “Yeah, she had to be to survive raising four boys on her own.”

  “There are three more of you? Two brothers were bad enough, but three?”

  The slip caused my breath to catch, my heart to thud louder in my ears, and my palms to go damp.

  Hadley didn’t have brothers. She only had a sister. I had to keep it straight. I had to sell him on me.

  Luckily, he seemed to think I was referencing his earlier mention of his brothers and not my personal experience with having them.

  “All older.” He was grinning now. “I’m the baby.”

  “So, you’re spoiled.”

  “Harsh.” He cut his eyes toward me. “I wouldn’t use that word exactly.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Lucky? Besides, you’ve got no room to talk. You’re the baby too.”

  “No, I’m—” The middlest. I bit my tongue so hard it bled. Frak. This was why making friends was dangerous. Too much potential for blowing my cover, especially with Ford. He was slick as spit. “Sick kid trumps birth order.”

  “Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I could see that.”

  With that brilliant zinger, I single-handedly managed to kill the vibe, and we settled in to listen to the radio for the rest of the trip.

  Three

  Fresh from visiting the Randalls, Midas sat with his back against a ratty pine gnarled from abuse and rotting from the inside out. The sun was rising, the air warming, but the earth remained cool beneath his palms, and a faint breeze nudged the warped plank he and his sister had fashioned into the seat for a rope swing what felt like a million years ago.

  This was his thinking place. He came here to escape when life closed around his throat like a fist. The only corner of the city left where he could breathe without choking on duty, on expectations.

  Here he vented all the things he would never breathe to another person, even Lethe, though he still directed his gripes to her out of habit.

  “You screwed me over, sis.” He tipped his head back against the trunk. “I don’t want this. I never did. I’m not like you.” He grimaced when the coarse bark tugged on the long hair he ought to trim soon. “Shonda is dead, the Randalls are demanding justice, and Mom is sitting back to see what I’ll do to get it for them.”

  Nine out of ten gwyllgi deaths were what Hadley would call open-and-shut cases. Dominance fights kept the highest-ranking pack members from enjoying their full lifespans, and an accidental sneeze on the wrong person could spark a throwdown that spun into an all-out brawl.

  Hadley.

  A frown carved his mouth when he realized her name—and not Linus’s—had popped into his head first.

  “I met Linus’s apprentice. There’s something about her.” A growl entered his voice. “I know her from somewhere, but I can’t place her. Yet.” He rubbed his face. “It’ll come to me.”

  Overhead, the frayed rope creaked in the only agreement he was likely to get.

  “I paired her up with Ford, but it ought to be me. I’m the beta. It’s my duty to protect the pack, not his. I did what Mom would have done. I passed the buck.” He gritted his teeth, grinding down on the insubordination in his tone. “She does things a certain way, and it works for her, but it’s not working for me. I was trained to be a soldier, not a prince. You were supposed to take the mantle, not me.”

  That was all water under the bridge now that Lethe had her own pack, her own home, her own city.

  She was an alpha, and one day he would be too, whether he wanted to be or not.

  “Mom has booked my Friday and Saturday nights with her handpicked potential daughters-in-law since I got sworn in. I haven’t gone on any second dates, and she’ll run out of candidates before I agree to one.” His sigh left him sagging on weary bones. “You’d think she would understand why I...” He snapped his jaw shut, unwilling to speak of it, even to the empty air. “Some days I’m tempted to let Mom arrange a match. Just mate someone and get it over with.”

  Then she would expect grandkids, and procreation required a level of physical intimacy that broke him out in cold sweats, even after all these years. Whatever unlucky female he chose might expect love when all he had to offer any woman was elevated rank. For some, it would be enough. More than enough. Those were the ones he ought to focus on.

  Fingers bumping over the crosshatch scars raised down his forearms, he conceded it was no less than he deserved. To be used. Though he had trouble breathing when he pictured sharing a life, a purpose, a bed, with another person.

  “You should have left me there,” he said, not for the first time, but added the words he would never utter to his sister, who had tried so hard for so long to fix him. “You didn’t save me.” He let his eyes close. “No one can.”

  Four

  Perkerson Park was a fifty-acre oasis for the city dweller in southwest Atlanta. Beyond the tennis courts, basketball courts, disc golf course—whatever that was—ball fields, rec center, and pavilion, I saw what must appeal most to the gwyllgi. Shady woods crisscrossed with walking paths, open fields prime for frolicking—though they would never call it that—even a stream for a quick dip in the summer heat.

  Parks like these were a veritable paradise for the urban predator.

  Hmm.

  Can I get away with asking Ford if he can doggy paddle?

  Probably not. Unless I was willing to find out how it felt to get bitten by a gwyllgi.

  Ford parked without skimming signs the way I had been, so I assumed he was familiar with the area.

  Unsnapping my seat belt, I scanned the otherwise vacant lot. “Anyone meeting us?”

  “Midas returned to the den.”

  The den made it sound primitive when the truth was the seat of the pack was a sprawling estate with an elegantly modern home flanked by miles of forestland. The alpha lived there, most of the pack did too, but I had never been invited for a tour. All I knew about it I’d heard in secondhand accounts from the POA.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of the cleaners or the witness who discovered whatever it is we’re about to see, but good to know.”

  A grimace twisted his features. “Beg pardon.”

  He got out, and I sighed into the empty cab. “Men.”

  “I heard that,” he said through the window.

  Contrition was difficult to fake, but I like to think I managed as he opened the door for me.

  “Gwyllgi tend to get protective fast, both the male and the female of the species,” he explained. “Midas paired us up, and that’s that as far as my inner wild man is concerned. I don’t mean to snap and snarl, but those same instincts make it hard when another male is encroaching on my territory, so to speak.”

  “You haven’t snapped or snarled.” I gave credit where it was due. “You’ve been downright kind to me, but you will have to work on your Midas fixation. I’m starting to think you’ve got a crush on him.”

  “All that golden hair, those flowing locks…” Ford batted his eyelashes. “He’s so dreamy.”

  Despite the reason for our early-morning trip, I burst out laughing. “You’re horrible.”

  “Yeah, well. Every pretty girl wants an equally pretty boy, and he’s as pretty as they come. I don’t have to want to date him to be honest with myself. Doesn’t hurt I’ve heard dozens of lovelorn women ticking off his attributes over the years. I could recite them for you, and you could write them down. Just think of all the time you’d save not making your own list.”

  “Jealousy is poison.” I gentled my tone to avoid coming off as reprimanding. “It warps your outlook on life and the object of your envy.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  “Oh, yeah. I had a friend like yours. The best, the brightest. I wanted everything she had. Her magic, her status, her family, her whole life. I made a bad bargain to get a poor imitation.”

  Tension shot through his shoulders. “Not with Linus?”

  “No, not with Linus.” Ford must have superpowers that caused you to blab your darkest secrets. That, or I had starved myself for companionship until I was ravenous enough to vent a year’s worth—a lifetime’s worth—in one go. “He saved me, in more ways than you can imagine.”

  As his posture relaxed, he pointed toward the creek. “That’s our destination.”

  A petite woman stood where he indicated, arms crossed over her frail chest, delicate hands cupping her opposite elbows, bony fingertips digging into delicate skin.

  “That’s Bonnie Diaz.”

  I jerked my head toward him. “The same Bonnie from the Faraday?”

  “Yeah. She’s Midas’s new PA. He’s not thrilled about it, but she has office experience. She suggested it, and he didn’t have the heart to turn down the offer.”

  Mud had soaked through the hem of the ankle-length dress she wore, cream with tiny pink flowers, and her shoes were ruined. Her cardigan was a complementary petal-pink shade, and her hair was bunned up so tight it gave me a headache looking at her. Her face was scarred, a cruel swipe of claws across one cheek, but she was lovely, and she trembled when she spotted Ford.

  “I got a t-t-tip.” Head down, she kept her eyes averted. “I followed up before bothering anyone.”

  Ford gawked at her. “Alone?”

  Bonnie curved her shoulders inward, making herself even smaller, and whispered, “Yes.”

  I couldn’t say why I did it, except I had often wished for help that never came, that I never dared ask for, but I stepped between them and wrapped a supportive arm around her narrow shoulders.

  “Ford isn’t mad at you,” I soothed in tones that would have calmed me back then. “He’s just worried. No one wants to see you get hurt.”

  Happy to plaster herself against my side, she turned her face into my shirt.

  “I didn’t want to lose my job,” she mumbled against me. “I just got hired, and I need it to stay in the pack. Everyone has to contribute. Everyone. Alpha Tisdale told me so. If it had been a crank call and Midas came out for nothing, he might…”

  The sentence hung there unfinished, and I hoped I read her implication wrong.

  “Midas doesn’t hurt women.” I repeated what he’d said to me because I believed it. I wasn’t sure how she could doubt him after spending any amount of time with him, but past trauma had a way of coloring the present in shades of the familiar. “You come tell me if that ever changes.”

  “I c-c-can’t do that.” She shivered at the sound of his name, or maybe at the thought of standing up for herself, and she burrowed close enough it felt like I gained a second heartbeat. “You’re not p-p-pack.”

  “You’re right. I’m not. I’m the POA’s apprentice. I operate outside pack law. That means if the pack ever gives you trouble, right on up to the alpha, you come to me, and I’ll keep you safe. I will set you up with a new job and arrange a place for you to live.”

  The Office of the Potentate did more than enforce Society law. We protected all those who were subject to them, regardless of species, when those same laws failed them.

  “Okay,” she breathed, barely a whisper.

  Remembering the empty lot, I asked, “Did you take a Swyft?”

  “I shifted and ran.” She plucked at her ruined dress. “I’m stronger that way.”

  She was braver than she knew, reckless too, but I wasn’t about to kick her for it when it was obvious life had knocked her around enough.

  “There’s a bench over there.” I pointed down the path winding back toward the parking lot. “How about you wait for us, and when we finish up, we’ll give you a lift wherever you need to go?”

  Peeking up at me, she wet her lips. “You’re sure you don’t m-m-mind?”

  “Not at all.” I winked at her. “It’s not my truck. It’s his.” I laughed at Ford’s pinched expression. “What’s a little mud between friends?”

  “Friends?” she repeated with so much hope I didn’t have the heart to tell her she had misunderstood.

  “Yeah. Friends.” I patted her bony shoulder awkwardly. “Sure. Why not?”

  Bonnie was strong, ridiculously strong, as I learned when she hugged me until my head threatened to pop off like a cork stopping a bottle of shaken champagne. “Thank you.”

  “Go on.” I pried her off me and shooed her in the right direction. “We won’t be long.”

  With a quiver in her limbs, she padded to the bench where she sat facing us. The bright intensity of her stare made my spine prickle when I turned, giving the absurd impression she was watching my back when a strong breeze would knock her off her feet.

  “You handled that well.” Ford toed off his boots, rolled his jeans up over his ankles, then stepped down into the shallows. I took the high road, keeping to the edge of the shore, and left him the wet one. “Her fear makes it tough to spend much time with her. Her timidity makes our submissives withdrawn, which draws out the protective streaks in our dominants, and you wouldn’t believe how fast those brawls turn ugly.”

  Given her reaction to males of the species, I could imagine. “Who hurt her?”

  “She won’t tell.” A low growl entered his voice. “Midas found her in one of the women’s shelters where he volunteers, recognized her as gwyllgi, and brought her home with him. It’s been a week, give or take, and you’re the first person she’s allowed to touch her.”

  Abuse recognizes abuse was what I thought, but what I said was, “Let me know if I can help, in any way.”

  “I’ll do that.” He slowed a dozen or so feet upstream from where Bonnie had been standing when we first arrived, and grimaced. “There.”

  Kicking off my sneakers, I hiked the hem of my jeans up to my calves. About to wade in, I startled when Ford scooped me up in his arms with a wide grin that told me he thought he was quite gallant.

  Though he might very well be, I was on the job, and I wasn’t about to explain to my boss how I solved a crime without my feet ever touching the ground. The Prince Charming routine only worked on girls with stars in their eyes, but all of mine had long since fallen, and no amount of twinkle from him would put them back.

  Bracing a palm on his broad shoulders, I used him as leverage when I snapped my hips to execute a twist that flipped me out of his grip. I hit the water in a crouch, soggier than I would have been had he left well enough alone, but admiration sparked in his eyes that made the damp worthwhile.

  I wasn’t interested in a boyfriend or a booty call. I had to focus on me, on proving myself a worthy successor, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate a handsome man sizing me up like he might consider both, or either.

  “You’re quick,” he said, and it came out as a growl. “And flexible.”

  “I run, and I do yoga.” I stood and splashed out to meet him in the ankle-high water. “Gotta have an edge.”

  “I would pat you on the back for landing that move, but your edge is so sharp it might cut me.”

  Rolling my eyes, I sloshed past him to what had drawn his interest before my moves distracted him.

  Tangled in a tree limb was an arm chewed off at the shoulder, making it look as though the grasping hand had tried holding on until help came. We were here now, but we were too late.

  “Scout the area,” I told my all-too-invested shadow quietly. “Tell me if we’re expecting company.”

  Ford made his way to me. “Want me to call this in?”

  “Not yet.” I took out my phone and snapped pictures from every angle before wading on. “I want to see what we can find before more evidence gets washed away.”

  I had no beef with the cleaners, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I had to get this right.

  Tipping the brim of an imaginary hat, he nodded. “You’re the boss.”

  Not yet I wasn’t, but it still had a nice ring.

  “The water is usually deeper than this by a few inches,” he murmured. “There must be a blockage.”

  For our sake, I hoped the creek was a victim of our recent dry spell and not something worse.

  “There’s another one.” I picked my way across the slippery rocks and found a foot, its heel wedged between two rocks. “Two separate victims.”

  Thanks a lot, hope. You continue to fail at your one job.

  “First was Caucasian,” he agreed. “This one looks Hispanic, maybe Indian. Hard to tell in this condition.”

  Crouching for a better angle to snap a photo, I pointed. “See the design across the top of the foot?”

  “Henna, right?” He scratched his jaw. “Atlanta has a large Indian population.”

  “Henna tattoos are popular with non-Indian women too.” I thought of a kiosk on the opposite end of the mall that offered henna, as well as other temporary tattoos, to anyone with an hour and twenty bucks. “We need to nail down any meaning associated with the design. It might give us a lead on how or where the victims were selected by the killer.”

  Please don’t let them all be gwyllgi.

  Not that I wished this epic heartache on anyone or any faction, but three deaths? Even in a pack the size of the one in Atlanta, it would equal a catastrophic loss.

  We found more victims as we traveled upstream, pieces of them anyway, and the freshness degraded with every yard. I had a bad feeling about what we would find at the apex, but I got no sense from Ambrose that the person or creature responsible was still in the area. That was something.

  As I catalogued each hand, toe, finger, and foot with my phone, I kept wracking my brain for a species that might fit the profile I was building, but I didn’t have enough information. I was getting ahead of myself. Again. There was no time to slow down, not with a killer—or killers—on the loose.

 

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