In the Crossfire (Bloodhaven) (6 page)

Isobel pressed her palm to the screen. The front gates sealed shut.

Liam continued to stand there, on the other side of the gates, watching. After several moments, he turned away and headed in direction of his cabin.

Isobel locked the front door, closing out the night. She returned to her office and pulled up the internal monitoring system. She cued up the surveillance videos to when Liam and Naley had first entered the house. She watched it on fast-forward. Multiple camera angles showed the girl enthusiastically dragging the reluctant man inside. Isobel saw the two of them stay in the kitchen and the living room the entire night.

By the time she went upstairs to Naley’s room, the girl was fast asleep in bed.

If Naley had been faking it, Isobel would’ve insisted on having their talk, but she could tell by her breathing that the young girl was truly out of it. It seemed she’d been worn out by the day’s events.

Events of which included running an hour’s journey all the way from school.

Isobel sat on the edge of the bed. She ran a trembling hand down her face, trying not to think of all the things that could’ve befallen Naley on the way to her house. She drew in a deep breath and gently smoothed her hand over her niece’s hair. In slumber, looking soft and relaxed, Naley appeared even younger than she was. Even more vulnerable.

Isobel remained there, watching Naley sleep, blanketed by the darkness and her own pensive thoughts.

The war had ended seven years ago. In Liam’s dreams, however, it went on and on, like the methodical beat of a hollow, malignant drum. Thumping, thumping, thumping, a pulse that resonated steadily in his ears, until the screams took all hearing away entirely.

Sometimes he saw the grinning, blood-smeared faces of the soldiers from his unit. Sometimes he saw flaps of their skin fluttering in the wind. Sometimes all he saw were the broken limbs torn to pieces and strewn across the fields, a scattering of incomplete jigsaw pieces never to come back together again.

The drum continued its relentless beat in his head.

And then he felt the manacles lock around his wrists.

And then he felt his body stretch tight between the chains.

And then he felt the blade part his flesh.

Liam jolted awake with his breath clogging his lungs, choking him so that he had to struggle to dispel it from his own throat.

As he heaved on the sheets, damp with sweat, writhing and hating himself for not even being able to scream, he thought how funny it would be if he died here right now, in this bed, before the blackness of night was even split by the tentative gleams of dawn.

Yeah. Real funny.

Nobody would even know. It could be weeks before Evelyn Hooper called to ask if he had any more furniture to sell at her store. It could be months before his body was discovered.

No, that was wrong. Isobel would notice. Rent was due in five days, and besides, she was bound to smell a rotting corpse on the premises.

And does that comfort you, Whelan?

After an agonizingly long time, Liam’s breath finally began to wheeze out. Too slowly, but at least he no longer felt like his entire chest was about to explode. Or cave in on itself.

He rolled over to the edge of the bed, gasping, heart pounding loudly in his ears. He sat up and planted his feet on the stone-cold floor. Sweat rolled off his skin, dripping off his nose.

His head hung low as he stared down at his scarred, trembling hands. It took several moments before he could will the images away. He ignored the screams still echoing in the deep recesses of his mind.

When his heartbeat finally slowed down to a more manageable tempo, he raised his head and sucked in a shuddering breath. The bare, unadorned window by the kitchen told him it was still pitch-black out.

Liam knew there was no way he could go back to sleep, so he shifted directly into wolf form. He always slept in the nude so there were no clothes to shed. He paced to the unlocked front door, nudged it open, and ran.

Running helped keep the demons at bay. Most nights he’d run round and round the edge of the property, or zigzag through the woods beyond. If he was feeling particularly restless, he’d climb some of the cliffs that formed part of the mountain ridge until the rocks grew too steep for padded feet.

Just to keep moving. Just so that there was no reason to think.

Liam raced around the perimeter, paws flying over dew-wet grass. He slipped between the trees, weaving away from Isobel’s side on the south. He didn’t want her motion-sensitive cameras picking up images of an insomniac, unsound wolf prowling the grounds at some godforsaken hour.

That was all he needed, for Isobel to get skeeved out by her unstable tenant and evict him at once.

Though somehow, he couldn’t picture Isobel getting skeeved out by anything.

If it makes you feel better, I have absolutely no compunction about slitting your throat.

Liam smiled.

Then the smile faded. If Isobel hadn’t already trusted him to some extent, she would never have added him to her security system in the first place. He still didn’t know how he felt about that.

She shouldn’t trust him. He didn’t even trust himself.

I don’t say things I don’t mean.

No, she certainly didn’t. Isobel was a straight shooter. She didn’t mince words. Liam liked that about her.

He liked entirely too many things about her.

He still remembered the first time he’d approached her more than a year ago to ask if the small, dilapidated shack on her land was for rent. He’d been passing through the area on his way to . . . well, not
to
anywhere. More like
away from.
He’d been traveling as far as he could away from his demons, and when he’d cut through the forest on his way to the mountains situated directly beyond, he’d seen the broken-down structure on that untamed piece of land and instantly recognized himself in it.

Fuck, if that hadn’t said it all about his state of mind at the time.

He would’ve gone in for a closer look, but he’d noticed the signal receptors carefully stashed throughout the woods, particularly concentrated around where the forest ended and the untamed property began.

Somebody owned that piece of land, and by the looks of it, it was somebody who didn’t appreciate trespassers.

He must’ve tripped something off anyway without knowing it, because a few minutes later, a woman emerged past the stone gates surrounding what appeared to be an impenetrable fortress on the south side of the property. Riding a black-and-chrome motorbike, she headed in his direction.

Liam had remained deep in the forest, hidden by the shadows, but the woman stopped in front of the mass of trees directly in his line of sight. In one liquid move, she’d slipped off the bike and lifted her head to gaze unerringly at where he’d lurked in the darkness.

She was small but packed full of curves, all encased in a tank top and mouth-watering leather pants and boots. Her honey-brown skin was brought to stark contrast by champagne-colored hair, which was pulled ruthlessly under control by way of a tight braid at the back of her head.

Glinting in the late afternoon sun were faint, silvery scars that lined her toned arms, barely noticeable without the right light. Shifters healed fast—and she was most definitely a shifter—but neither multiple shiftings nor modern-medicine Med-bands had succeeded in erasing the subtle marks she bore.

She never made any attempt to hide those marks, Liam would later discover in the months that followed. They were just part and parcel of her, of Isobel Saba, and her utter lack of self-consciousness only increased her innate grace.

Liam only wished he bore his own scars with similar aplomb.

Clear, cool eyes had seared past the leaves and trees and shade that day, even past Liam’s defenses, it seemed. His skin had instantly prickled with awareness. A slow hiss of breath had escaped his lips.

“Come out and state your business,” she’d said flatly, not bothering to raise her voice. A blade peeked out from beneath the hem of her top.

Liam could’ve kept going. He could’ve turned his back and taken another route to get to the mountains. But it was no longer the shack that had claimed his attention. He could’ve no more kept himself from emerging out of the shadows and approaching the woman than he could’ve forced the trees to bleed.

He’d expected her eyes to widen, for her to flinch or step back on sight of him. It was what most people did, especially the women. He’d long learned to brace himself for such reactions, to shut down that part of him that was tempted to take it personally.

But Isobel Saba, he soon discovered, was not like most people. Aside from a perfunctory gaze that mentally cataloged his every notch and scar, she hadn’t batted an eye.

Those eyes, he’d found on closer inspection, flickered within that mysterious space between green and gold and brown. They’d stared at him in cool, skeptical disbelief as he explained his interest in the shack.

Naturally, she’d regarded him with suspicion. Apparently she’d planned to tear the structure down once she’d gotten around to it. She even told him, quite bluntly, that the shack was an unlivable hovel and that she wouldn’t subject a dog to it.

“That’s okay,” Liam had replied without irony, “wolves are hardier.”

He answered her questions haltingly, forcing himself to formulate cohesive sentences. He hadn’t spoken much during the two years he’d spent wandering the country. There simply hadn’t been the need, what with people usually keeping their distance from him. Even when he’d worked odd jobs, those he tended to work alongside with had been taciturn in nature as well, so an occasional grunt or two typically sufficed as conversation for a whole week.

The words came haltingly, feeling rusty and foreign on his tongue. He found himself constantly tripping over them and starting again, while Isobel listened without the slightest hint of expression betraying her thoughts. It would’ve been almost unnerving, that poker face, if Liam hadn’t been familiar with such himself. He, too, knew the need to keep everything close to the chest.

During her questions, he happened to mention some of his previous odd jobs. He saw her ears perk up then. He took another quick look at the property and saw his opportunity.

He casually murmured that he could help tame those fifteen acres of land if she was willing. Judging from the state of it—the wild, overgrown brush was already threatening to take over the property and reclaim it for the forest—Isobel’s schedule was one that left her little time to tend to the place at all.

He hadn’t pressed his case, though. Just let the thought sit there to percolate. He knew a thing or two about strategy.

Isobel had eyed him carefully on learning he typically paid cash for room and board. Then she’d taken out her phone and scanned his prints, and it was then that Liam realized she was a Council agent.

He’d realized as well that she was bound to run numerous background checks on him. His previous landlords had been content to leave him alone as long as they received a wad of cash on a week-by-week basis, but he doubted Isobel would be so easily satisfied. She had various Council resources at her fingertips. He didn’t know how much of his history she’d unearth, but he thought about the things he’d done in the war, and what had happened after, and his head began to hurt.

Finally she’d slipped her phone back in her pocket. “I’ll get back to you about your request. In the meantime, stay off my land.”

He should’ve left then. Should’ve just kept going. He’d never felt the urge to stay in any one place for a long period of time before.

Instead, for the next few nights that followed, he’d camped out in the woods awaiting her answer.

He’d laid there in the forest, eyes barely making out the stars through the heavy cover of trees above. Physically, he’d been impervious to the temperature. He’d slept through worse. Instead, the chill he’d felt was the kind that numbed a man from the inside out. For the past few years it had hooked itself deep within his bones, and now grew progressively colder as he imagined the information she’d dig up on him.

He had no criminal record, but there were other things to a man’s past that he regarded as his own private affair, that was nobody’s business but his own.

He’d given Isobel the contact information of his previous landlords—five in the past year alone. Considering he’d only stayed for a few months at most, and they were the sort to not ask questions, he doubted they’d matter much as references. The only positive he could think of was that she might view him as carrying on doing much the same over here, and that she’d be more inclined to let him stay if she thought he was only going to hang around for a few months.

He’d made no mention of his old pack to Isobel, and could only hope they didn’t turn up in any of her background checks. The last thing he wanted was for her to call his packmates and clue them in on where they could find him.

Besides, it was more likely that she wouldn’t be aware of the Whelan clan in the first place. The pack lived too far up north to be of any significance to anyone here in Bloodhaven.