A Justified Kill (5 page)

Stopping dead in her tracks, she closed her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. What the hell was she thinking?
She had only been working with him for a couple weeks and he had asked her out at least a dozen times, but she was not intereste
d
. She had
turned
him down politely and not giving
him a second thought.

Now that wasn’t quite true, she admitted to herself. She had thought of him a few times
. Every time she considered going out with
another man, she
remembered
Blake. How she had let him slip through her fingers eight years earlier. She recalled the
sad sorrowful look on his face. How she had
looked back at him through the rear window of the car that took her away from him and her miserable life at Moonlight Shelter. She remembered how her heart ached to leave him behind. Blake had been the only other person she had ever loved besides her mother. And she had walked away and never looked back. She
had
refused to risk his life to be with him. And now, she couldn’t
afford to become emotionally attached again
and she wasn’t one for cas
ual flings or one night stands.

With h
er body in sexual overdrive, Amber
knew her wolf would be emerging.
Her mother had warned her
there would be side effects of shifting, but she had never told her if it would affect her sexually. Either
way, she had t
o make sure
to keep
her distance from Ryan.
In a space of a moment, all this flooded through her mind and she turned away. T
here was a look of d
is
appointment
on
Ryan’s face when
she
ducked her head and went into the back. She could feel his eyes following her when
she
left the bar.

Catherine could handle c
losing and cleaning up without her
.
In the past two weeks
the woman
had left her plenty of tim
es to close up without helping.
She had other things she wanted to do before she went back to her motel room. One, was to get some fresh air and
it
felt good to get out of the
smoke filled bar.
Two, l
eaving early would get her out ahead of the men in the corner.
Gerald would lead her to the campsite he had been boasting about most of the night
.

Somehow her scouting expeditions had missed
seeing or even smelling him
out in the woods and she wondered how that had happened.  The ins
istent urge to follow
him
made her wonder why her wolf was so hell bent on
stalking this scumbag
. Her mother had always told her to follow her wolf’s instinct. The plan was already formulating in her mind, she would
follow him to see what he was doing out at his campsite and who this person was expecting him to hurry back.
Hopefully it would turn out to be nothing and she could leave tow
n in a couple days like planned, or maybe sooner, if her body reacted this way again. It baffled her how her hormones had gone into sexual overdrive when looking at Ryan
. He was not a
werewolf and she should not have been attracted to him. She should not have been able to hear his blood pumping excitedly through his veins.

****

Amber sat in her vehicle, waiting
,
impatient for Gerald to exit the building.
Her stomach was still
bothering her
. T
he headache would not go away, but it was not as bad as it had been in the bar.
Thinking on it, she was certain, without a doubt that her wolf was on the verge of emerging and wa
s somehow trying to warn her, to
tell her something. Not knowing what her wolf was trying to do was frustrating.
She worried about not knowing when she would be shifting.
Yes, she had seen her mother shift, but seeing and actually going through it was a whole different thing.
With no one around to guide her
,
if
she wasn’t careful, things coul
d get out of hand really quick.

All the patrons of the bar, except for the group she was interested in, namely Gerald
,
had already gone home for the night and t
here were no people in the parking lot
. Sitting a little straighter in her seat, she noticed movement at the door of the bar.
It was
fifteen minutes before
closing time
when
he came stumbling out of the bar with his friends. She
was glad
, for her sake
anyway,
there were
no cops around
. If they had seen the group, they
probably w
ould have arrested the lot of them
before
they even made it to their cars
.
She wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear if at least one of them had an accident on the way home.
T
he men part
ed
ways
,
although extremely drunk they somehow made it
to their cars,
and
drove away,
leaving Gerald s
taggering to the rear of
the parking lot
to his van.

While she watched, h
e
tripped over his own feet
and almost fell flat on his face.
Cursing
, Gerald
got up from his knees
. W
ith
a lot
of effort
, he
righted himself and
wobbled to the van while digging in his pocket for the keys. The
deep, long
scratches
around
the key hole showed
this same scenario
had taken place
many times
.
Once again,
his awkward attempts
gouged
long thin line
s in the remaining paint
while he searched for the latch
before
finally
inserting the k
ey into the
lock. Hearing the door unlock
,
he stepped back
.
“
Hell
y
eah!”
His
slurred words carried across the
nearly
vacant park
ing lot
and
he
sniggered in triumph
.

With a bemused look, Amber shook her head at his
lack of control
. Gerald was so drunk
he didn’t know what he was doing
. She watched him look down
at the keys in his hand
and nearly
laughed
out loud
when he pushed the
button
on the keyless
remote
which locked
the door
again.

Reaching for the door handle
,
he gave it a yank and
frowned a
t his hand and
jerked on it a
gain
.
Cursing loudly, h
e punched the side of the van when the handle wouldn’t open the door after a cou
ple more
pulls
. Shaking his hand
, Gerald looked at the keys again, barked a laugh
,
and push
ed the button
. Shaking his head at his own stupidity for not remembering he had installed keyless entry
. He
pushed the button a few times,
playing with the remote. He watched
the lock lift and disappear
a couple times
before finally opening the door and stepping up on the side
step
of the van.
Sliding in behin
d the wheel
,
he twisted the ignition key
. H
e revved the engine
loudly
because
his
foot was on the gas
when it started
.
Lifting his foot from the accelerator, the
taillights ca
me on
when
he stepped on the brake
,
put
ting
the van in gear.

Gerald fishtailed out of the parking lot and Amber shook her head in disgust. Silently
hoping he didn’t wrap the van around a pole or worse, another car
.
That would ruin her plans of following him
to the campsite
.
Luckily, in the early morning hours there were no cars on the road.
S
till s
haking her head, s
he
didn’t understand how people got themselves to the point of
being so inebriated that common
sense was completely obliterated.
She had seen this very scene way too often and
wondered how he could
even
see to
drive.
Turn
ing the key, starting the engine
to the
Jeep
, Amber pulled out on
to the old highway behind his beat up Chevy van
.
She kept a good
dis
tance so he wouldn’t notice
anyone behind him
.
With her heightened vis
ion, she drove with no lights
so
Gerald
would
n’t
know he was
being
followed.