The Stranger's Secrets (23 page)

If you like this book, you’ve got to try ETERNAL HUNTER, the latest from Cynthia Eden, in stores now from Brava…

S
he reached into her bag and pulled out a check. Not the usual way things were handled in the DA’s office, but…“I’ve been authorized to acquire your services.” He didn’t glance at the check, just kept those blue eyes trained on hers. Her fingers were steady as she held the check in the air between them “This check is for ten thousand dollars.”

No change of expression. From the looks of his cabin, the guy shouldn’t have been hesitating to snatch up the money.

“Give the check to Night Watch.”

At that, her lips firmed. “I already gave them one.” A hefty one, at that. “This one’s for you. A bonus from the mayor—he wants this guy caught, fast.” Before word about the true nature of the crime leaked too far.

“So old Gus doesn’t think his cops can handle this guy?”

Gus LaCroix. Hard-talking, ex-hard drinking mayor. No nonsense, deceptively smart, and demanding. “He’s got the cops on this, but he said he knew you, and that you’d be the best one to handle this job.”

Erin strongly suspected that Gus belonged in the
Other
world. She hadn’t caught any scent that was off drifting from him, but his agreement to bring in Night Watch and his almost desperate demands to the DA had sure indicated the guy knew more than he was letting on about the situation.

Could be he was a demon. Low-level. Many politicians were.

Jude took the check. Finally. She dropped her fingers, fast, not wanting the flesh on flesh contact with him. Not then.

He folded the check and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Guess you just got yourself a bounty hunter.”

“And I guess you’ve got yourself one sick shifter to catch.”

He closed the distance between them, moving fast and catching her arms in a strong grip.

Aw, hell.
It was just like before. The heat of his touch swept though her, waking hungers she’d deliberately denied for so long.

Jude was sexual. From his knowing eyes. His curving, kiss-me lips, to the hard lines and muscles of his body.

Deep inside, in the dark, secret places of her soul that she fought to keep hidden, there was a part of her just like that.

Wild. Hot.

Sexual.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

Not the question she’d expected, but one she could answer. “I know what you are. What sane woman wouldn’t be afraid of a man who becomes an animal?”

“Some women like a little bit of the animal in their men.”

“Not me.”
Liar.

His eyes said the same thing.

“Do your job, Donovan. Catch the freak who cut up my prisoner—”

“Like Bobby had been slashing his victims?”

Hit.
Yeah, there’d been no way to miss that significance.

“When word gets out about what really happened, some folks will say Bobby deserved what he got.” His fingers pressed into her arms. Erin wore a light, silk shirt—and even that seemed too hot for the humid Louisiana spring night. His touch burned through the blouse and seemed to singe her flesh.

“Some will say that,” she allowed. Okay, a hell of a lot would say that. “But his killer still has to be caught.” Stopped, because she had the feeling this could be just the beginning.

Her feelings about death weren’t often wrong.

She was a lot like her dad that way.

And, unfortunately, like her mother, too.

“What do you think? Did he deserve to be clawed to death?”

An image of Bobby’s ex-wife, Pat, flashed before her eyes. The doctors had put over one hundred and fifty stitches into her face. She’d been his most brutal attack.

Erin swallowed. “His punishment was for the court to decide.” She stepped back, but he didn’t let her go. “Uh, do you mind?”

“Yeah, I do.” His eyes glittered down at her. “If we’re gonna be working together, we need honesty between us.”

“We need you to find the killer.”

“Oh, I will. Don’t worry about that. I always catch my prey.”

So the rumors claimed. The hunters from Night Watch were known throughout the U.S.

“You’re shivering, Erin.”

“No, no, I’m not.” She was.

“I make you nervous. I scare you.” A pause. His gaze dropped to her lips, lingered, then slowly rose back to meet her stare. “Is it because I know what you are?”

She wanted his mouth on hers.
A foolish desire. Ridiculous. Not something the controlled woman wanted, but what the wild thing inside craved. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Don’t I?”

Erin jerked free of his hold and glared at him. “Few things in this world scare me. You should know that.” There was one thing, one person, who terrified her—but now wasn’t the time for that disclosure. No, she didn’t tell anyone about
him.

If she could just get around Jude and march out of that door—

“Maybe you’re not scared of me, then. Maybe you’re scared of yourself.”

She froze.

“Not human,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Not vamp.”

Vamp? Thankfully, no.

“Djinn? Nah, you don’t have that look.” His right hand lifted and he rubbed his chin. “Tell me your secrets, sweetheart, and I’ll tell you mine.”

“Sorry, not the sharing type.” She’d wasted enough time here. Erin pushed past him, ignoring the press of his arm against her side. Her body ached and the whispers of hunger within her grew more demanding every moment she stayed with him.

Weak.

She hated her weakness.

Just like her mother’s.

“You’re a shifter.” His words stopped her near the door. She stared blankly at the faded wood. Heard the dull thud of her heart echoing in her ears.

Then the soft squeak of the old floorboards as he closed the distance between them.

Erin turned to him, tilted her head back—

He kissed her.

She heard a growl. Not from him—no, from her own throat.

The hunger.

Sure, he made the first move, he brought his lips crashing down on hers, but…she kissed him right back.

Fall in love with a hero who’s HALF PAST DEAD. Go pick up the collaboration from Zoe Archer and Bianca D’Arc today!

S
he knew it now without a doubt.

She wasn’t alone.

Fighting the sudden lump of fear in her throat, Cassandra pressed herself against the granite slab. Not for protection, but to better see whoever,
whatever,
prowled in the darkness. She held her breath, waited.

There, again. A justified chill of fear scraped down her neck. Someone was sliding from shadow to shadow, movements so swift, so silent, anyone who wasn’t trained to spot such subtlety would have missed it. Who could it be? Another Heir of Albion, like Broadwell? It couldn’t be a Blade, for Cassandra had been unable to send a telegram to let them know Broadwell’s whereabouts. Someone else, then.

Something else.
The shadows gathered, shaping themselves into the form of a man gliding from darkness to darkness—tall, long-limbed, powerfully built. Twenty feet away. At a slight sound, he turned to investigate. His eyes literally glowed. Hollow and white, unearthly.

Cassandra stifled a gasp. Oh, it was one thing to read about and study magic. Entirely different to sense it,
see
it.

Whatever this…man…was, he moved with unearthly speed and stealth. She could not see his face as he shifted back into the shadows, more subtle and elusive than any human or animal.
What was he?
Before she could study him further, he melted into darkness, disappearing.

For several moments, Cassandra peered into the night, straining for another sense of him. Yet he was gone, absorbed into the fabric of shadow like a half-remembered dream. Cassandra, trying to refocus, turned back to keep her vigil on the tavern.

The unknown man stood right in front of her.

They both started, neither expecting the other.

Her pistol came up immediately.

Ambient light from the tavern revealed his face, the glow of his eyes vanished, and her fingers around the trigger slackened in shock. The tall man also started again, as shocked as Cassandra.

It could not be. Yet it was. She took a step forward, lowering her weapon, hardly daring to believe what she saw.

“Sam?” Her voice was a stunned whisper. “Samuel Reed?”

“Cassie.”

Oh, God, she knew that voice. Knew it as well as she knew the deepest recesses of her own heart. A low, masculine rumble, much deeper now than it had been ten years ago, but it was him. Sam.

“Cassandra now,” she said automatically as she grappled with understanding. Nothing made sense. It could not be that Sam was the creature she had just witnessed prowling through the darkness. “What the blazes are you doing here?”

Sam emerged slightly from the darkness, wariness evident in the guarded movement of his long, lean body. He’d been only eighteen the last time Cassandra saw him, verging into adulthood. Now there was no debate. Sam had grown up. He was, positively, a man. She noted it in the breadth of his shoulders, his broad chest, and powerful limbs. Even in shadow, even dressed in clean but slightly threadbare clothing, she could see it. Sam had left boyhood long ago. This man radiated potent strength, barely restrained.

Cassandra stared up at his face and felt another jolt of shock. The softness of youth had vanished entirely. Sam’s face…there was no other way for her to describe it…it was
hard,
a collection of sharply chiseled planes that made no allowance for leniency. Bold jaw, tight-pressed lips, sharp nose, and forbidding, dark brow. Too severe to be handsome, but undeniably striking. Such a change from the boy he’d been.

“I should ask you the same damned question,” he growled. “You shouldn’t be out. Alone.” He moved, as if to reach for her, but his hand stopped, curling into itself and falling to his side instead.

Fear suddenly danced along her neck. His voice was rough, almost menacing. But that was ridiculous. This was
Sam,
her brother Charlie’s best friend, the boy she’d known—and adored—almost her whole life. Ten years ago, he and Charlie both bought commissions, joining the army and serving in the same unit together, as they had done everything together. Including—

“For a lady,” Sam growled, “you’re pretty damned free with that gun.”

She glanced down at the weapon in her hand, then tucked it into her skirts. Proper young women did not carry pistols. Certainly not during the day, and most assuredly not in the middle of the night while lurking in deserted stonemason yards.

“Pistols are all the rage this season,” she said. She could not tell Sam anything about her mission, bound by a code of silence, as well as for his own protection.

Although, she amended, gazing at Sam, he seemed perfectly capable of protecting himself. If forced to use only one word to describe this man, the word she must choose would be lethal. She’d never met a man who held such dangerous intent in his body, including the most seasoned Blade field agents. He did not even offer a veneer of a smile at her attempt at humor.

“Nothing good brings a woman out at night,” he rumbled. “Some kind of assignation, then. A husband? Lover?” He raised a brow.

Cassandra wondered what kind of lover necessitated having a gun. “I might not be the same girl who collected spiders in jars,” she said, “but I’m not the sort of woman who arranges moonlight trysts.” However, she wasn’t a maiden anymore. She’d seen to that a few years ago, though she wasn’t about to tell Sam.

Truthfully, she did not know what to say to Sam. She’d so often dreamt of this moment, how she would greet him upon his return. She had even contemplated something as frivolous as the dress she would wear. It would show him she was no longer a girl with dirt under her fingernails, but a grown woman, with a grown woman’s desires. And he would see her as if for the first time, a slow smile of wonder illuminating his face, and realize that what he had been searching for had been at home all along. Her nails, too, would be clean. She curbed the impulse to check them now—for often, after touring factories and inspecting conditions, her fingernails did get dirty. But that was a minor detail compared to seeing Sam again.

Her dream of their reunion had ended two years ago, but she remembered it vividly, an imprint of abandoned hope burned into an afterimage on her heart.

Yet this…fierce, dangerous man…was entirely unlike the Sam she’d longed for, resembling him only in the most superficial way. He burned with a deep, profound coldness that seeped into her own bones.

She realized that it
had
been Sam, stalking the darkness. Moving with an eerie fluidity. More at home within the realm of unnatural shadow than light and life. But how could that be possible?

“I’ve no idea who you are anymore.” Sam’s voice glinted like a knife in the darkness.

“That feeling,” she said, “is mutual.”

Truthfully, she had no idea who he was. Or, her mind whispered,
what
he was. She tried to push that thought away, but it would not be staved off.

Unfamiliar, this terror. Something clammy and frightened uncoiled in her stomach as she stared up at his impassive face. The changes wrought in Sam went beyond the shift from youth to maturity, from civilian to veteran soldier. Yet she did not know what, exactly, was different, was deeply, profoundly not right.

A burst of noise careened out of the tavern. Both Cassandra and Sam shot alert glances toward it, but no one exited the building. As Sam continued to rake the tavern with his gaze, Cassandra could feel the waves of anger and purpose emanating from him, palpable as frost. The gentling of his expression was gone. Nothing gentle in him now.

Sam had been a soldier, a major, the last she’d heard, and still held himself with a soldier’s vigilant, capable presence. He wore civilian clothes, yet carried, she saw at that moment, an officer’s sword and wore tall military boots. The war in the Crimea ended two years ago. What had become of him since then?

“This makes no sense,” she said. “I was told….” Her words dried as he swung his gaze back to her. Even in the weak light from the tavern’s windows, she saw his eyes were the same palest blue, edged in indigo, only now his eyes did not dance with humor or mischief. They were…
haunted.

“I was told,” she began again, “that you were dead.”

He stared at her with those anguished, cold eyes. And said, “I am.”