Circus Wolf (13 page)

Tigra wrinkled her bow. “What if your tests take
longer than our stay in town? Can you stop us from moving on when the circus
pulls up stakes?”

“We can shut down the whole operation, if necessary,
and keep everyone in town for as long as it takes. I suggest you both continue
to cooperate. And if either of you think of anything to help us,
call
me.” He handed them each a card. “That includes any
information you might learn about the museum robbery. That case is still open
and it’s possible both cases are connected.”

Chapter
Thirteen

Tigra’s stomach knotted. The silence between her and
Hugh was deafening as they watched the police officers hustle down her caravan
steps and disappear around the corner into the shadowy darkness of the closed
arcade.

She pulled her keys out of her hidden pocket, eager
to escape inside.

“Here, let me help you.” She felt a spark when he
slid her keys from her grasp. He inhaled as if to fortify himself and then
opened the door.

She pressed her lips tight. After a few seconds of
indecision, she said, “You want to come in? I can make hot chocolate.” She
remembered the sensual feel of him stroking her lips, stirring her, making her
want him. His eyes glinted and she had the uneasy feeling he was reading her
mind. Still a persistent sense of curiosity overrode her concerns, and she
decided to accept the danger of inviting him in. She needed to learn what the
police knew about him.

Although he could be dangerously persuasive, the
risk was vital; she had new information about this handsome roustabout that
couldn’t be ignored and another innocent young woman was dead. She reached
inside and flipped up the entry wall switch, needing to shine some of light on
what she felt certain was bound to be a disturbing conversation. She squared
her shoulders and then stepped back and gestured for him to enter.

 
He lowered his brows and his eyes darkened.
“You’re
going to attack me with a bunch of questions about how my brother and I fit
into all the evil, aren’t you? And then probably not believe my answers.”

“I’m trying to keep an open mind. You’re my
assistant. We have to work together and count on each other. I want to trust you
and I want you to trust me. But knowing you are a shifter and the new
information from the police has raised questions that must be answered for any
semblance of trust between us to continue.”

He shrugged. “I want to
keep my job so I’ll
come in for
a few minutes. I doubt either of us will get much sleep tonight.”
His nonchalance denied the tension charging the air between
them.
“And maybe the warm hot chocolate will relax us.”

She doubted anything could, and her theory was
immediately tested as he filled the caravan with his wide-shouldered presence.
She gestured to a folding chair. “Make yourself as comfortable as you can in my
cramped quarters,” she said, heading straight for the compact alcove that
served as her kitchen. From a packed cabinet, she got out the instant
chocolate, two mugs, and a jar of marshmallows.

He was staring at her with a piercing gaze. She felt
vulnerable and off balance; unfortunately she couldn’t take back that she’d
revealed her tightly-guarded secret, or allowed poor judgment and passion in
the steamy pool to further complicate and compound her mistakes.

They remained silent until she slid the hot
chocolate in front of him and sat down next to him at the small folding table. She
curled her fingers around the mug. Barely aware of the chocolaty aroma spiking
the air, she took a long, languid sip of the
marshmallowy
concoction.

Her mind churned. The murder of the young girl had
sent a new wave of darkness spiraling around them. She met his gaze. “Like you
surmised, I want to talk about you and your brother. Tell me about your
involvement with the other murder case, or cases.”

“Please understand I feel uneasy about opening
private doors.” His wary, sad expression suggested he was thinking back to his
youth and perhaps painfully recalling memories of lives entwined and then
ripped apart. “Will you promise to keep what I tell you just between us?”

“If you keep the secret about me, I’ll keep your
secrets as guarded as my own.”

“Maybe
we
should strive for
better
than you
guarded your own.
Morphing in the
hills like we did isn’t guarding our secrets as well as we could, and I think
we both learned a lesson about making sure we are totally alone before
shifting.”

Her face warmed. She couldn’t deny it.
“Right.
Now, back to what the police have against you and
your brother.”

He looked down into his mug of hot chocolate as if
the answers were there. His long, thick lashes hid his eyes. “I had two
half-brothers.
Damon and Reeves.
The men were as
different as angels and devils; Damon saved lives and Reeves took them. All
three of us were werewolves. Damon found the cure that worked for him and his
family. As yet none has worked for me. Eventually Reeves was destroyed by his
own evil. But before that, he violently ripped out my throat and I died. An
angel resurrected me.”

She couldn’t hold back a gasp. “What? Do you expect
me to believe that?”

He clasped his cup so tightly his fingers whitened.
“Work with me. Learning you’re a tigress is no less difficult to accept. I
assure you, I’m not a bad man. I’ve donated my life to helping others.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm
down. “What do the police know for sure?”

“They know women were being attacked and killed in
our community and that we were keeping experimental wolves on our property.”

“Why?”

“We were testing them, looking for a cure for
Lycanthropy and a substance to control lycanthropic impulses while
investigating promising serums.”

“If your half-brother Reeves was the real killer and
you cared about the women in your community, why didn’t you turn him in?”

“We didn’t know. When Damon learned of it; he tried
to alleviate the problem.”

Alarms went off in her head. “Alleviate the
problem?”

“Freedom from evil can only exist if deliberately
weeded out with great effort and too often, the spilling of blood. It is a
constant unrelenting fight to win over the ever rising and encroaching
darkness. And that may be what we’re dealing with now. But I’m getting ahead of
myself. The point is
,
the solution wasn’t permanent.”

He held her gaze and seemed to be watching her
reaction. Uneasy, she rubbed the prickles shooting down her arms.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to get into
things not pertinent to our conversation, like the bubbling mud, and the
unsettling of demons.”

“Whoa. You’re skipping some alarming concerns my
friend.”

“It’s essential for conciseness. All you need to
know now is Reeves became one of the walking dead with the ability to shift and
switch identities. The only way to stop the killing was to find a permanent way
to stop him. But with his ability to shift to other bodies, this took years.”

“The police never learned that your evil
half-brother was the killer?”

“No, and after tremendous struggles and near death,
we were all cleared of any wrong-doing.”

“How do you know your evil brother isn’t back and up
to his old tricks of seeking revenge?”

Hugh’s expression
grew stony.
“You’ll just have to accept my word. I’m positive he’ll
never bother anyone again. But someone is killing innocent women, and as of
this moment, I’m locking into the goal of finding and stopping him, while
keeping you safe.”

His words sent a tiny thrill of hope through her.
She didn’t want to distrust Hugh, yet her wariness remained. Like her, he
didn’t choose to live a dual existence but was it safe to believe he was a good
guy? “You’re a scary man, Hugh, with a scary history. After what you told me, I
should run like hell.”

“I’d understand if you did. So where does that leave
us?” He closed his hand over hers.

She glanced down at their clasped hands, resisting
an urge to rip her fingers away. “Trusting our instincts and living on faith.”

Glaringly aware the gravest threat to her secret and
her life was the burning desire to unearth the truth, she looked up into his
silvery and gentle gray eyes. She took a deep breath. “I guess our next step is
to figure out a way to help the police uncover the monster stalking the
periphery of the circus without revealing or incriminating ourselves.”

 
If they
didn’t come up with a solid plan, an earthquake of depraved evil would shake
them and their beloved Big Top to destruction. While working on a solution,
they had to get beyond the regret, feral instincts electrifying the air, as
well as somehow stay out of the path of evil—and stay out of one another’s
arms.

Chapter
Fourteen

Skull snickered at the stupidity of those he was
forced to share the world with. The police had come and gone. Without argument
or complaint, he’d allowed them to swab his mouth. He was prepared; his
blood-sucking cavern was as clean as the day, several lifetimes ago, that he
was born. His compliance revealed his willingness to cooperate—and the absence
of evidential DNA deflected suspicion off of him. It was a win/win situation.

He looked out the window and glared into the night.
Someone would pay for
sicing
the cops on him. The
pigs refused to tell him who’d squealed. Several people could have seen him
leave the grounds. Was it Madam Mystic? She always had access to an opaque
global window of information. The Voodoo Queen had better stay out of his
affairs if she knew what was good for her. And she did—she knew her every
breath depended upon her silence. Maybe it was Hugh. Skull scoffed. He didn’t
really need an excuse to oft the bastard, but he would enjoy it even more if he
had a solid reason. But with the police sniffing so close the wily assistant
tiger-trainer and roustabout served a better purpose as fall guy. Later, the
moccasin-wearing lothario could pay the deadly penalty for his interest in
Tigra and, if guilty, for
sicing
the cops on him.

Skull paced his caravan. He felt sure Hugh was the
snitch. He didn’t think Tigra had seen him behind her, and even if she had, she
was as closed mouthed as they come. He had always wondered what she had to
hide; her secretiveness was part of the intrigue around her. He smiled. One day
soon he’d learn her secrets and taste her blood. Then they’d soar to a wild
erotic state and he’d make her his for eternity

****

The next morning Hugh called his brother about his
prime suspect, Skull. He hated to ask for help; he wanted to be totally
self-sufficient, but with a serial killer on the loose and innocent women in
danger he couldn’t let pride get in his way. By noon, the detective his brother
kept on retainer called. He’d unearthed only tidbits of info about Skull. The
man, like himself, kept a low profile—he’d been with the circus for five years
yet no one knew anything about his past. He had no friends, no enemies. He
hadn’t even formed a close association with his high wire partner, the
attractive Gabriella
Devaux
.

Later, during practice, when Hugh told Tigra the
sketchy profile she said, “Look, I’ll admit the guy is weird and he personally
gives me the creeps, but he’s not the only creepy man associated with this
circus.”

Hugh’s throat went dry. Why she was defending him?
Did she have a thing for the high-wire king? “But he’s the only one I know who
left the circus grounds during the time of the murder.”

 
“Yes, you
made that quite clear with the police last night,” she said, opening the main
cage. “But seeing him leave isn’t evidence, and your accusation to the officers
sounded like deflecting blame. You left the grounds about the same time.”

He met her gaze. “And, so did you.”

She frowned. “You’ve made your point. We all left
the grounds and that’s not proof of anything. So, on my part, I won’t jump to
conclusions and decide about you or anybody without evidence.”

“So how do we gather evidence without breaking the
law? I thought of searching Skull’s caravan. But it’s illegal and besides the
police already searched it.”

Her eyes brightened. “They searched the whole circus
grounds and found nothing. That suggests I was right to consider looking for
evidence in the hills. I think we should go treasure hunting in the caves after
tonight’s show. If we luck out and find the golden arrowhead perhaps its
discovery will lead us to the killer.”

Hugh frowned. “Or, maybe lead the police to us.”

She lifted her chin. “Do you have a better idea?”

****

After the show, in her strips of fur and cape, Tigra
hurried to her caravan. The weather had been clear all day, but suddenly the
sky darkened and rain drizzled from the swollen skies. She leapt over puddles.
The change in weather encouraged the crowds to clear the grounds fast and they
headed for the exits
en
masse.