Jarrett (13 page)

Clemmie looked at Slone when she sighed heavily before speaking. “She is the sweetest person I know next to Addie, but I swear to you, Jack learned how to talk from a bartender. But you get the point.”

“I do, and I like Jarrett. He’s brash and headstrong, but that’s good in this world. He said he’s part of your IT department. Why is he not running it? He’s smart enough.” Slone took a small plate of cookies that the maid was handing out. Clemmie took one as well and put it on her knee. “I think you have a good family here.”

“I have a wonderful family here. Including you, if you’d like to be a part of it. But if you don’t, then I don’t care about that either. Addie will, but that’s between you and her.” Clemmie nodded. “As for why he’s not running my department, not that it’s any of your business, but he doesn’t want it. He feels he’s not good enough.”

Clemmie ate two of her cookies and sipped her tea. She looked at the two women and smiled. “I think we’re done testing each other for being the biggest bitches, aren’t we? I’ll give you the honors, Slone, but there will be times when I will come out on top.” Slone put out her hand, and Clemmie stared at it. “If you do this, you know what happens.”

“I do.” The hand stayed there, and Clemmie took it. “I also have your scent now, so we’re all family should you like to be.”

“I’d like that very much.” Jack laughed and put her hand out as well. “You’re very unspoiled, aren’t you? Sort of a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stagnant world.”

“Thanks.” Clemmie laughed. Yes, she was going to enjoy this family. When Hunter stood up, the rest of them did as well. But it was her granddaughter that held her attention. She was visibly upset.

“He’s here.” Clemmie looked at the rest of them to see what Addie was talking about, or who. “Duncan is on the property, and he’s just killed a man.”

Clemmie had never trusted the man and couldn’t believe that Addison had hired him. He’d never touched her or anything like that so that she’d be able to read him, but there was something so very sinister about him that made her skin crawl. And now he was after her only living relative.

“Benny. He murdered Benny, and there was nothing I could have done about it.” Clemmie started to go to her granddaughter when Jack stepped in front of her. Clemmie didn’t think it was her intention to cut her off, but to comfort Addie. Or what Jack thought of as comfort, she supposed.

“And what the hell would you have done if you’d been out there? Got yourself hurt too.” Jack put her hands on Addie’s shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Get real. He’d have gotten you, held you for all kinds of money, and then he’d be gone again. I’m really sorry for your employee, but now we have something on him. Something that we didn’t before. And this time you’re calling the cops.”

Addie stared at Jack and then looked at Clemmie. There was something there that she’d never seen before, and it took her almost a minute to figure it out. When she did, she staggered back in her chair. Slone was kneeling down in front of her when she finally looked at her.

“She’s stronger than any of us.” Slone nodded as if she already knew. She might have, but she might not understand just how strong. “Addie has more than any of the rest of my family had combined. Not just the ability to read minds, but she can manipulate them as well. Bend people to her will.”

“She doesn’t know it?” Clemmie nodded and looked at Addie again. She was telling them where the body was and how bad it was. Apparently, the young man had been strangled to death. That brought a whole new light to the type of person that Duncan was.

Clemmie moved to her room after the young men left the house. The police had been called in and there was going to be an uproar about this. But she was going to be prepared. Picking up her cell phone, she made three calls and then lay down on the bed.

The knock at the door had her lifting her head, but she didn’t get up. This bedroom was her room, and if you invaded her space then you got what you got. When she bid the person enter, she was startled to see Shawn standing there.

“I’ve just gotten a call from a man by the name of Anderson. He said that you should speak to me or Luke, Jarrett’s brother. He said to tell you he’s on his way but thought we could help you.” She told him to give her a minute and she’d meet him in the library. “It’s being used at the moment. Could we talk in the study?”

“Of course.” She got up when he closed the door and put on her lips. Her mother would have given her a good switching had she ever left the house without makeup. Now she rarely used anything but lipstick. Putting on her lips had been something Clemmie had said to her own daughter. Hurt at the loss of her, Clemmie grabbed up her cane and made her way downstairs.

Luke and Hunter were there when she entered. Both of them stood up when she closed the door behind her, and Clemmie made a mental note to tell Cash what a good job he’d done with his sons. The man more than likely knew anyway. Shawn was on the phone with his back to them and he didn’t sound happy.

“I didn’t know that we’d need this much to get a simple job finished.” Hunter looked at Luke, then at her again. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here, Hunter. You’re a very nice man and all, but this is a private matter.”

“Luke needs me to okay anything that might have to do with the pack.” She had forgotten about that, him being the alpha and all. “And I wanted to tell you thanks.”

“Thanks?” He nodded. “Whatever for? And if you know what I’m about to do, I’m going to be one very pissed off old woman.”

“I don’t. Frankly, I was just telling Luke to help you in any way that he can. No, what I was thanking you for was the extra something special that you handed down to your granddaughter. She’s…she saved my brothers and my dad’s lives yesterday, and I wanted to tell you thank you.”

When he left, Shawn turned to her after hanging up the phone. Luke was smiling like he knew a great secret, and she had a feeling that he knew a great deal. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was so set in her ways, she might try to keep him for herself as her own attorney. He or Shawn would have been a nice addition to her group.

“Mrs. Mantle, I’ve just been told that you wish to change your will.” Clemmie liked a man who got to the point. She told him yes. “Well, as of a few minutes ago, I’ve been assigned second as your attorney. Luke here is first.”

“Good. Then let’s get this show running. I have a wedding to plan.” Luke cleared his throat and she glared at him. “He is planning to marry her, isn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am, he is, but you might want to talk to my wife and Slone. I think they’re well on their way to having it all worked out. Jarrett asked them to do it yesterday before the shit hit…the crap hit the fan.”

“No, you had it correct. Shit. And Duncan Shepard is going to pay for his messing up my visit.” Luke laughed, as did Shawn. Clemmie decided that she might just hang around this house for a bit longer. She might learn a thing or two.

Chapter 13

Duncan fell again. His body was covered in mud now. Twigs and other things were a part of his new suit, but it was a damned sight better than all that blood. Christ. That boy had hurt him badly.

The kid had been up in one of the trees on the Parker property when Duncan had seen the trees. Nearly starved for anything, he’d gone deeper onto the place than he’d thought he had and was looking for anything to eat when the kid had yelled at him from his perch.

“You’re on private property, sir. I don’t know how you got past the gates, but you’re going to have to leave.” Duncan nodded, but then he’d seen the cooler leaning against the tree and took a step toward it. The boy was a man, he realized, when he landed in front of him when he’d jumped down. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave before I call in security.”

“I’m hungry.” The man nodded but still didn’t move. “Can’t you spare something? An apple, for Christ’s sake?”

When he turned to bend into the cooler, Duncan attacked. He had no idea why he’d done it, but when he realized that he was going to be killed if he didn’t do something soon, he hit the man on the head with a rock. After that things were sort of blurry, but he did know that he’d killed the man.

The little lake seemed to have come out of nowhere. Duncan fell into it gladly, washing off as much of the crap that he’d gotten on him as he could. Then he had to get out without getting more on him, and he shivered. Christ. He realized then he should have been more careful. The water was fucking cold.

As he shivered and tried to keep himself warm, he thought about the man he’d killed. He’d hurt people before in his long career, but never killed anyone. While at the time he’d felt repulsed by what he did, he realized now that it was kill or be killed, and he had come out the victor…if he didn’t count the fact that he felt sick from the pain in his head where the man had hit him with something.

“Finally, things are going right for a change.” The cooler had dropped near where he’d entered the water, and he went there to get it. Opening it, he really did expect it to be nothing more than a bottle of water and maybe a cheese stick. But he nearly wept when he saw it.

The thermos was opened first, and he nearly whimpered when he got his first sniff of coffee. Pouring some in the cup-like lid, he sipped it slowly, relishing in the fact it was hot and warming him from the inside out. As he enjoyed his drink, he looked at the other things in the cooler.

There were three sandwiches, all of them thick with roast beef, lettuce, and tomato. There was even a pickle wrapped with each one, but separate from the sandwich itself. Duncan was eating the second one when he realized he should have portioned them out. But he was starved and hadn’t thought of it. Now he was looking over his dessert choices and decided that he needed the extra sugar in his system to keep him going.

He also found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Having never smoked in his life, he tossed them back into the cooler. But the lighter he could make some use of. Getting up, just realizing how stiff and really cold he was, he gathered some of the dried leaves as well as small sticks and things he could carry.

Duncan thought that building a fire would have been a piece of cake. Light some dry stuff, then put some bigger shit on top of it. No, as far as he could tell it wasn’t that simple. First of all, the twigs would catch fire, then sort of smolder out. The leaves would burn all right at first, too, but it was a quick fire that gave him neither heat nor any way to keep it going. Resorting to finding more sticks and more leaves made him exhausted, and he had to sit down twice to nurse his pounding head.

After what he thought was at least several hours, he got something going. The flames weren’t all that high and the heat coming from the little fire wasn’t that good, but it was a start and he was willing to count that as another victory.

Duncan got up three times to get more wood for his fire. Each time he was careful not to let it catch some of the leaves that were around his makeshift furnace. He didn’t want the woods to catch fire while he was hurting this badly. And when he’d returned the third time, his arms simply too weak to hold more than a couple of small logs, he lay down next to the thing and tried to think if he’d left any evidence behind when he’d murdered the man. While he was laying there, he felt his belly leap up and he had to turn to puke all his food up.

Lying back again, he bemoaned the fact that he was going to die out here and it would be spring or later before anyone found him. His body would be all chewed up from the wildlife and he’d be just a shell of a man in a nice suit.

Duncan sat up when he heard something behind him. The wolf stared at him for several seconds. He might have been there a lot longer because he looked too comfortable just lying there on his belly staring at him. Duncan didn’t take his eyes off him as he reached blindly for something to throw at him. The wolf stood up and growled.

He saw the wolf, yes, but it was the teeth, all sharp and long, that had his full attention. Christ, even the hair on the back of him stood up, and he looked several times larger than he had before. When Duncan dropped the log he’d picked up, the animal lay back down but didn’t leave.

“Get away from here.” The thing just stared at him and Duncan even thought he’d grinned. “You don’t belong here. Now get before I get my gun.”

He was sure that the animal laughed that time. His teeth showed and he could see the massive shoulders on the monster animal shaking. When he stood up and walked toward him, Duncan scrambled as far from him as he could, but the thing just moved past him. Duncan watched in horror as the thing picked up his still half full thermos and took off with it.

“Son of a bitch.” He didn’t move, however, thinking that as fast as it had moved, it would be back on him in seconds and Duncan had plans, and dying in the wilderness wasn’t even a small part of them.

It was nearly an hour later when he saw the first man. He wasn’t dressed in a cop’s uniform that he could see, but Duncan was pretty sure that’s what he was. Then the second man came out of the brush, and Duncan grabbed the last sandwich and the rest of the food and stuffed them in the cooler. As he was moving away from the men with guns and flashlights, he had to go back to his little fire and grab the lighter. He might need to start a fire again soon, and that was all he had.

Duncan had lost a shoe in his fall in the water, and he was limping by the time he’d made his way back to the caves he’d been in yesterday. The openings were not very wide, but they did have deep enough places in them that he thought he could hide in. As he struggled with pulling in the cooler behind him, he heard the men shouting and thought they’d found his fire.

Duncan should have left by now. He realized that, but the lure of his money, all he had in the world, was too tempting. Now he had to go without it. He knew that but didn’t like it. It felt as if he’d failed himself by leaving it behind, but he wouldn’t like spending time in prison for a few million bucks either.

Killing the man had upped things now. The police would look harder for a killer than they would a man who had helped himself to a few bucks here and there. Skimming the books was a white collar crime; murder was big time.

Not starting another fire, he sat and shivered in the dark cave. Thinking about how he was going to get out of there and where to go kept him awake for a time, but now he found himself drifting off and on and lay down. Sleep took him almost immediately.

~~~

Ellis watched the men searching for Shepard. He knew where he was, and even how badly the man was hurt, but he was his and he wasn’t going to let a few cops take him in. Ellis knew little about the law and less about the penalty for robbery, but he knew that hit-men had hurt his family and he had to pay.

Come home.
The voice had been getting more and more insistent all the time. Ellis had been able to ignore it at first, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore Hunter. But this time his dad was commanding him, and Ellis could no more push off his compulsion than he could have his mom’s when she’d been alive.

I’m doing something.
It sounded lame even to him, and he was sure his dad thought so too. His dad said he knew, but he wanted him home.
I need to see something through.

The alpha said he saw you fucking with that man.
Ellis looked around from his vantage point to watch the mouth of the cave
. He also said you were going to get yourself hurt. Did you know that Duncan killed a man?

No. When?
He wanted to pull Shepard out of the cave and tear him to pieces, but his dad told him once again to come home.

Just a few hours ago. He strangled the young man, then stole his lunch box. What kind of person steals a dead man’s lunch box? Addie said that you stole a thermos from him and that you’ve used it to give his scent to some of the rogue pack. Did you do that, son?
He knew that he had, so Ellis didn’t answer him.
Come home, please. Addie is having a hard time of it. Her grandmother, while she’s a hoot, is getting on my nerves. Who does she think she is, ordering me around like I’m some sort of peon?

Dad, no one would think of you as anything but as completely in charge.
His dad agreed.
Dad, this man hurt us. Kidnapped you and me and Jarrett. Stole from Addie when she trusted him, and now he’s killed someone. He needs to pay.

He does, I’ll agree with you there. But how are you going to feel when it comes out that he had someone directing him into this stuff? Or that he’d had a reason for doing it? I’m not saying that any reason is going to justify him killing that young man, but we just don’t have all the facts.
He told his dad that it was a fact that he’d hurt them.
Yes, he did. And believe me when I tell you, I’d like to be there with you, but that’s just not right. We don’t work that way and you know it
.

Ellis did know it. It was the reason he’d come out here alone, not told anyone what he was doing. He knew it was wrong to even think about some of the things he wanted to do to Shepard.

Okay, I’m coming. I guess I’m not like the rest of them.
His dad laughed and Ellis felt his temper rise.
Sorry to have disappointed you.

Disappoint me? Boy, if you were here right now I’d take you to the shed over that. Disappoint me? How the hell did you come up…? You know what, I just don’t care. I’m so proud of you that I could just pop a button or two. Damn it, son, you took that company of mine and made it a money maker. Not that it wasn’t before, but you’ve made it the best in the state, bigger if you ask me. I could no more be disappointed in you than I could be…well, hell son, I’m so proud of you that if I were to die right now and went up to see your momma, I’d have a million stories to tell her just about you and your accomplishments.
His dad laughed again.
And a few that she’d get a might pissy about. Your momma didn’t have as good a temperament as me when it came to you boys. She made you walk the line. I was more of the instigator, I think.

His dad had been the one to lead them down a merry path. Sometimes his mom would just look at their dad and he’d drop his head. Other times, more often than not, he’d pick her up and swing her around in his arms until she was laughing as hard as them. Christ, Ellis missed his mom.

I love you, Dad. I don’t think any of us tell you that enough, but I do love you. And you did right by us growing up. None of us ever wanted for a thing because you gave us what we needed.
His dad said that he wanted him to come home.
I’m coming. I’m sorry that I worried everyone. Tell them I’m on my way.

You do that, son. And I love you very much. Don’t think I tell you boys that enough. But from here on out, I’m going to make sure I do.

Ellis made his way to his clothing. Just as he was pulling his pants up over his hips, he looked down toward the lake again and saw something moving. At first he thought it was Graham. The man was forever near water. But then he realized it wasn’t a man but a shifter.

Yesterday Hunter and the rest of them had gone into the cave where they’d been held and tried to reason with the shifters there. But they were not in the mood to listen, or were just simply too stupid to understand that his family was not only bigger, but stronger too. In short order, the shifters lay dead and he and Jarrett were being cut down. Dad had been let loose just before his family had gotten to them, and he’d been beat to shit.

But this shifter didn’t look like he was with any of the other men. He watched as she moved to the water’s edge and drank deeply before shifting. When she looked around, her body shadowed by the bushes at the edge, Ellis thought she was going to pull on clothing. Instead, she dove into the water like she’d done it a million times before.

Watching her kept his full attention. Twice she stood up in the water and looked around, and Ellis saw her breasts. They were full and heavy looking, and he felt his mouth water to taste her. But he never moved, not even to finish pulling on his clothing.

When she swam to the water’s edge, he lost sight of her and hurriedly pulled on his clothing. When she went back to the middle of the lake and began washing with something, he leaned against the tree and studied her.

She was lovely, what he could see of her anyway. Her hair was dark, but he wasn’t sure what color. He thought black, like her wolf had been, but was not sure with it being wet. Her body was that of a shifter too. Long and sleek, she was well muscled and had no fat on her at all. The fact that she was bathing in what would be considered frigid water made him think she wasn’t living where she could get a nice, hot bath.