Wild (44 page)

Caroline wished.

“I'm just telling you what she said. And anyway, they're just curious. We all are. Aren't you?”

“No,” Caroline snapped quickly. “I don't want to know anything that I shouldn't.”

The phone rang again, and this time Caroline did walk out of the reception area. She was heading back to her desk when she heard the knock at the back door and frowned. Their office hours were clearly printed on the front window, and the front door was open. So why was someone knocking at the back door?

With an exasperated sigh of her own now because—despite that she hated what Olivia and now apparently Nora from the beauty shop had been saying—she had tossed and turned all last night thinking about those two guys and how attracted she'd been to both of them. How a part of her, a deep and probably depraved part, had actually entertained thoughts of them together. Those thoughts had come in the late hours of night as she'd lain alone in her bedroom and had eventually moaned with how vivid and exciting the thoughts had actually been.

Shaking her head Caroline told herself not to go there. That nothing good could come of letting down her guard and acting on those dark desires again. She had to be smarter this time and stronger. Yes, she was going to have to be much stronger to resist those two and stand her ground.

Yanking open the back door Caroline silently reminded herself of those facts, just before gasping at what she saw on the steps.

Caroline was a vet, after all, so the sight of a wounded animal should not have rendered her silent, her heart hammering in her chest as if she were waiting for something else. When it whimpered, she immediately went to her knees, scooping it and the blanket it had been lying on up into her arms. She hurried back to an exam room, carrying the animal and calling out to Olivia for assistance. Martin had asked for the day off, and Caroline had quickly given permission since she was already nursing a bad mood, and the guy really was a pain in the ass to be around.

Now, she thought with another sigh as she finally placed the animal onto the examining table, she was chastising herself for letting her mood override her professionalism.

Pulling back the blanket told Caroline a couple of things: one, that the dog—a liver-colored pointer—had been badly cut, so much so that blood was oozing from everywhere and she had yet to see the actual wound; and two, there was a plastic bag, now covered in blood, with a piece of paper inside of it. Reaching over the still-moaning dog, she lifted the bag. Alarmed by the sight of the blood, Caroline began to read the note through the plastic.

It's your turn to make a delivery. Take this to those in the cabin by the forest. They'll know what to do to save it.

Below that was an address and driving directions to the very house that Olivia had been speaking about just moments before. She knew this because Olivia had typed the address into the computer that morning while she'd been talking about Malec and his friends. Caroline ignored the fact that she'd actually remembered it.

“Yuck. What happened to him?” Olivia said, coming into the office.

“I don't know.” Caroline's mind was whirling with possibilities, all of which kept circling back to the fact that Malec Zenta was involved. “Get some towels and a bucket of warm water. We're gonna need to clean him up a little first so I can see what's going on.”

“He sounds like he's dying,” Olivia said in direct contradiction to the slow way in which she moved to do Caroline's bidding.

“He just might if we don't hurry up,” Caroline insisted, lifting one and then the other of the dog's eyelids.

What the hell was that note about? Caroline thought as she moved. Who sent it, and what did “those in the cabin by the forest” have to do with killing animals? Or dying animals? Shaking her head, Caroline decided she couldn't think about that note or Malec or any of that stuff right now. She needed to save this dog. Damn, she really needed to save this dog, today of all days. With that in mind she began focusing on stopping the bleeding and preventing any type of infection from ensuing as a result of the very cleanly made cuts that looked as if something or someone had sliced right through this dog's stomach for no other reason besides that it could.

For the next twenty minutes Caroline worked as if her life depended on it, doing everything in her power to save the dog that had its guts just about ripped out by some sick bastard. On the inside she was trembling when she finished the sutures. Knowing the dog had already taken its last breath brought tears to her eyes, and to Olivia's, who had already run from the room, only seconds after the dog had ceased breathing. Her hands remained steady as she tied off that last stitch and dropped the needle into the pan of discarded tools and gauze. Bringing her forearm to her face she swiped the beads of sweat from her forehead and took a not-so-steady step back.

Someone had mortally wounded this dog, and the perpetrator had wanted her to see it die. The perpetrator had also wanted the guys in that cabin to see it. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath Caroline admitted she might be in over her head. She'd been in this town for only six weeks, and animals were being dropped at her door to die. There was something wrong with that. And soon the rest of the town would be saying the same thing.

She would be talked about and judged, even when she'd done nothing wrong, and that was not acceptable. She had to do something before this situation became out of control.

But what?

Her gaze returned to the books that were stacked against the windowsill. That's where she'd stuck that note that had come with the dog because she hadn't wanted Olivia to see it. Moving slowly, as if still dazed by all that had happened, Caroline retrieved the note, reading the typed words one more time.

It took her a few minutes to wrap the dog in the blanket it had been delivered in and lock it inside a crate. She grabbed that letter and the crate and went back to her office to get her purse. From there she called up to the front desk to tell Olivia to cancel the remaining appointments for the day and to close the clinic because she was about to make a home visit and she didn't know how long she would be gone. She did not tell Olivia where that home visit was for fear of a repeat report on how fine the men out at that house were and how much Olivia wanted one of them.

Caroline left through the back door because she'd wanted to look around back to see if whoever had dropped this dog off—the same person she was guessing had dropped off the buck and lynx yesterday—had left something behind that could identify him or her. She told herself it could also be a woman, but she was really betting on a vicious, sociopathic man for this crime. There was nothing, she thought with growing concern. Not even tire marks from a car. Nothing was on the steps. Nothing was out of place. She looked up and down the back alleyway, which was more like a small street with another building about twenty feet on the other side. She wondered if anyone over there had seen anything. Should she go knock on those doors and ask those business owners? Something told her that would be futile. Besides, a part of her was afraid that those shop owners may have been privy to the beauty parlor gossiping, Ms. Nora's recap of last night.

With a shake of her head, Caroline continued around the side of the building until she came to the small lot where she parked her car every morning. Caroline paused as she walked closer to her car, spotting the paper sticking between her windshield and one of the wipers. She quickly yanked it free.

It was the same note she'd stuck in her purse after wrapping it in paper towels from the clinic. Somebody did not want her to forget. Frowning, she snatched the paper from her window and opened the back passenger-side door, sliding the crate onto the seat. Seconds later she was behind the wheel, starting the ignition. Before pulling off she put the address she'd now memorized into her phone's GPS and then set out to do what, she had absolutely no idea.

All Caroline knew was that the dead animals were somehow connected to Malec and his friends. The note pointed towards that conclusion. Now she wanted to know how and why because she wanted these murdering bastards stopped.

 

CHAPTER 6

Channing had just finished the energy smoothie Malec had made everyone consume for lunch. After what had happened in the forest earlier that morning, Blaez had come back and gone straight to his room. Kira had followed. The others had stayed in the kitchen discussing what they'd seen and what the presence of the Solo and the harpy possibly meant for them.

“So the harpy was definitely looking for Blaez,” Channing had said as he sat at the kitchen table. “Rumor has it Zeus put out some sort of bounty on him.”

Just two months ago this kitchen had been an extension of Channing's space in this house. He'd designed everything in this room from the recessed lighting to the redwood porcelain–tiled floors. The seamless blend of country and modern had given him distinct memories of the foster home he'd grown up in with Emma and Ruxton Verdi in Kansas City. A stay-at-home mom, Emma was always cooking, cleaning, redecorating, and being the perfect mother to Channing and wife to her husband. She'd taught Channing everything he knew about cooking and taking care of people. As for Ruxton, he'd given his only son a crash course in every sport there was and cheered him on no matter what in each of the baseball and basketball games that Channing had eventually played in.

When Blaez brought them to this cabin, Channing had instantly seen the potential and began to design the perfect kitchen. In the back of the house, the building that used to contain horse stalls had been partially transformed into a garage for all their vehicles. The other half of the building was transformed into a gymnasium, where Channing often challenged the guys to basketball games. He and Blaez routinely kicked Phelan's and Malec's lycan butts on those occasions.

This place had become Channing's home in the last year, and now he hated that something dark was most likely threatening that serenity.

“I'm not surprised,” Phelan said dryly.

The beta was sitting at the head of the kitchen table, where Blaez usually sat, rubbing his fingers over the scar beneath his left eye while staring aimlessly across the table. That meant he was truly pissed off. The memory of the Fury Eureka slashing Phelan's face in a jealous rage years ago always surfaced when Phelan was angered or distressed. Which often seemed like a 24-7 affliction in Phelan's case. But Channing had known this guy for almost ten years now. In that time he'd come to know his moods well. This one he was in right now was not good. Not good at all.

“Zeus didn't send the Solo,” Malec chimed in from where he was moving on the other side of the kitchen.

Malec, in contrast to Phelan and any of the other lycans in this house, could not be still when he was angered. He moved constantly, whether working out until his muscles screamed in protest or running until the treadmill belt snapped straight off the machine—which he had done numerous times before. Physical movement seemed to be the only way he could relieve stress. Or take the edge off, as Channing had surmised over the years, because for Malec there would always be a mountain of stress that he would never dare to climb.

“Solos take no direction from anyone,” Channing announced. “They have no pack and no allegiance—that's why they remain alone. It's also what makes them more dangerous than any other lycan—they're not restrained by any specific rules or beliefs.”

Channing knew more about the lycans and their history, Zeus, and all the mythological beings that lived in another world and sometimes walked the earth than the other betas. Blaez knew more than he did, but that was only because the alpha had experienced more. Once Channing had endured his first shift when he was sixteen years old and spent the week following that locked in his room, struggling to figure out what the hell was wrong with him, he'd decided to never be without knowledge again. He'd searched everything he could online about lycans, and when he felt steady enough to return to school he'd begun hitting the libraries every day until he figured he'd read everything there was to read about the lycans and Greek gods. The thought that something the rest of the world took for only myth could actually be true was a lot to swallow. But for the first time in his life, Channing had felt proud and purposeful. He was a lycan, not just a boy that his birth parents didn't want. There was a bigger role for him to play in this thing called life, he was certain of that fact. He need only be prepared for when it was time to do his part. Those thoughts had encouraged and supported Channing throughout his teen years, until the day he'd been sitting in the auditorium in his high school and had seen Blaez Trekas.

“So Zeus is actively looking for Blaez and getting damned close to finding him,” Phelan offered, returning Channing's thoughts to the here and now. “Because if Blaez hadn't shifted into his wolf form, we would have had to rip that harpy's wings from its back and cut off her head to keep her from reporting his location.”

Channing nodded soberly, acknowledging the only way to kill a harpy was absolutely correct.

“The Solo is a separate problem,” Phelan told them.

“But he definitely wants us to know he's here. He's taunting us with those animals,” Malec said, his voice tight as he continued to move, taking veggies from the refrigerator and placing them on the counter near the blender.

“I think you're right,” Phelan agreed. “The question is, what are we going to do about him?”

“We find him and kill him,” Channing said in a dangerously calm voice.

More often than not Channing was considered the calm one of the pack, the more reserved one who would rather stand in the kitchen and cook all day than go into the gym and work out until he felt like collapsing. He didn't sit and study the news reports and contemplate their next move like Blaez always seemed to do, and he didn't walk around brooding and cursing as Phelan was accustomed to. No, Channing read the celebrity tabloids and autobiographies that he subscribed to. He wrote letters to the Verdis, giving them the impression that he was still in the Marines on top-secret missions. In short, he'd been content to fulfill what he considered his purpose in this pack. And it made him happy.