Forged in Ash (46 page)

Wolf was different. He hadn’t been directly involved.

“Someone should wake Jillian,” Zane Winters said, his voice right next to her door. “See if she recognizes him.”

Jillian stopped dead, her heart suddenly leaping in her chest. She could only think of one person Zane would expect her to be able to recognize.

She returned to the clothes she’d neatly folded on the chair beside the bed, and dressed in a daze.

Had they really found one of the men who’d killed her children? A combination of apprehension and anticipation balled inside her, settled in her chest like a cold, hard weight.

Rather than strapping the knife to her calf as Wolf had done, she held it in her hand and tugged her sleeve over it. The sweatshirt dwarfed her, so the knife disappeared.

Nobody was in the hall when she walked through her door.

“Jillian described him as tall, thin, with brown eyes and no hair.” Wolf’s icy voice drifted down the hall.

Jillian started walking in his direction.

“A perfect description of our fake detective, wouldn’t you say?” Mackenzie said. “Grab one of those knives. Let’s wake this bastard up.”

With each step, the hall seemed to elongate, like one of those carnival fun-house mirrors. The kind that stretched on and on forever.

The voices in the kitchen seemed to rise and fall too, which added to her feeling that the world had slipped its axis and she was free-floating in zero gravity, tumbling head over heels without a tether.

“He’s faking,” Wolf said tightly.

And suddenly Jillian found her tether. Her anchor. She locked onto his voice and let it draw her down the hall.

“No fucking shit,” Mackenzie snapped.

“Actually, he could have passed out,” Rawlings said. “That was some chokehold you had on him when you grabbed him in the living room. I thought you were going to strangle him.”

“You still have your questions,” Wolf said.

A pause shook the room.

“Mightily obliged you held back,” Rawlings drawled, but he sounded wary.

“It’s not my place to dispatch him.” Wolf’s voice dropped back into that feral grittiness.

“We don’t even know if this is the guy,” the woman with the clipped voice said. “And no talk of
dispatching
him. He’ll be turned over to the authorities once he’s answered our questions.”

Nobody responded.

“We agreed—” the woman snapped.

“I agreed to nothing,” Wolf said in his flat, inflexible voice.

For the first time in months, her chest warmed. Flushed with heat.

When she stepped through the kitchen door, Wolf was waiting for her, his black velvet gaze locked on her face.

“
Hooku bexookee
,” he said, and that feral bite was gone. “Do you recognize this man?”

“What the hell did he call her?” Mackenzie asked.

His lioness. He’d called her his lioness.

The heat in her chest spread out, infusing her with warmth.

Her hand tightened around the handle of the knife.

There was a bound man slumped in one of the kitchen chairs. He was bald. She could see the shimmer of his scalp above the white bandage ringing his head like a crown. Blood spotted the right side of the bandage and streaked the side of his face.

Her breath hitched, and her throat went dry.

Wolf caught one of the chair legs with his boot and swung the chair around to face her. The screech of the plastic feet against the plank floor swelled in her head. The man’s bald head was bent, chin poking his chest.

But she recognized him.

“You do what you’re fucking told and you and the brats will be fine. But one wrong step and we’ll kill a kid. We’ll make you choose.”

Wolf reached down, grabbing the man by his chin, and jerked his head up. Hard. The guy sprang to life, fighting his bindings. He twisted his head until his chin slipped free. “Do you recognize him, Jillian?”

“Get down on the floor. Don’t say a word. Not one word, understand?” His bald head gleamed beneath the garage’s overhead lights. Empty brown eyes studied her face. “You’re doing really good. You keep this up and everything will be just fine.”

Liar.

Murderer.

“I’d say that’s as close to a
yes
as a look can get,” Rawlings murmured. Suddenly he frowned, stepped closer to Jillian, and stared fixedly at her left eye. “I’ll be damned.”

Zane Winters stared at her for a second too. He turned to Cosky and lifted an eyebrow. “Another miraculous recovery?”

“I don’t know what the hell you clowns are accusing me of,” the bald murderer said. Flat brown eyes touched her face and slid away. “But you just made a big mistake. One that’s going to bury you. I’m undercover, working a case, and you just blew my cover.”

Jillian took a step forward.

“Was that before or after you opened fire on us in the lab, you motherfucker?” Mackenzie growled.

The man’s mouth snapped shut. He shot Jillian an assessing glance. “You’re fucking with me, right? You believe her lies? The woman’s crazy. You saw that yourselves.” His gaze shifted to Marcus Simcosky. “For Christ’s sake, she tried to shoot you and then run you over. She went after your girlfriend with a knife. She’s got some major screws loose.”

“We need some pictures, okay? Nothing scary. Just taking some pictures to remind your brother of what’s at stake. Be a good girl and tell your kids to come along.”

“Is this the man who killed your kids, Jillian?” the woman with the clipped voice and short red hair said. “We need you to identify him.”

Jillian opened her mouth, but the affirmation got stuck behind the locked muscles of her throat.

“You are stronger than you think,
hooku bexookee
,” Wolf said softly. He grabbed the man’s chin again and wrenched it over until he was facing her. “Look at her.”

“She’s a crazy fucked-up bitch,” the man who stole her babies spat. “I can’t believe you’re buying into her shit. She probably didn’t even have any kids.”

Jillian wasn’t aware of moving.

One minute she was across the kitchen. The next she was standing in front of him.

With the ground gritty and damp beneath her knees, and her children kneeling on both sides of her, Jillian watched her killer drop the camera and lift a big black gun with an extra-long barrel. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said as the first bullet struck in an explosion of pain. “Nothing personal.”

Without hesitation she lifted the knife and drove it into his chest.

Just beneath and slightly to the left of his sternum.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she whispered. “It’s personal.”

Cosky froze in absolute disbelief, staring at the knife plunged hilt deep into their best shot at getting some answers. For an instant, shock held everyone silent and still. Faces went slack. Mouths fell open. Eyes rounded.

Pachico—they still didn’t know the poor bastard’s real name—looked more startled than anyone. His mouth was the widest, eyes the roundest. His face blank. Somehow the white bandage crowning his head added to the shocked look on his face. And then, oh so slowly, he fell forward. He would have kept going, fallen right out of the chair face-first onto the floor if Cosky hadn’t leapt forward, grabbed the back of his button-down shirt, and hauled him upright again.

“Rawls!” Cosky roared.

Although he already knew it was too late. There weren’t enough tricks in their corpsman’s medical bag to pull the bastard through. Jillian’s aim had been perfect. She had driven the blade straight between the ribs and toward the descending aorta. If by some damn miracle the blade had missed the aorta, it would have pierced the vena cava. Either way, he’d bleed out in a matter of minutes, maybe even seconds.

The bastard they’d pinned their hopes on was a corpse. Their best hope was that Rawls could keep him alive long enough to answer some questions before he rattled off his last breath.

“What the Goddamn motherfucking hell,” Mac bellowed, his body stiff with rage as he stalked toward Jillian.

In one long stride Wolf rounded the chair, caught Jillian around the waist, and pushed her behind him. Backing her into a corner, he planted himself in front of her.

Mac stopped, scowled at Wolf’s impassive, inflexible face, and without saying another word, turned around and headed toward Cosky.

Rawls squatted in front of Pachico, who was just sitting there, staring down at his chest.

“There’s hardly any blood,” Faith whispered. Her gaze was riveted on the knife handle and the slowly spreading tide of red seeping
out around it. With each second, her face turned paler, until her freckles stood out like flecks of gold. “Maybe if nobody pulls it out, we can get him to the hospital in time.”

Pachico’s head slowly rose. From the stark look in his brown eyes, it was obvious he realized what the scientist hadn’t—he was already bleeding out inside.

Rawls shot to his feet and turned to Kait, who was standing rigid and white-faced across the room. “Kait—”

Cosky knew immediately what his buddy had in mind. “No!” he snapped, stepping forward to block Kait’s path in case she had any bright ideas.

Shoving his hands through his hair, Rawls wheeled on Cosky. “Goddamn it, she can save him. Look what she did to your knee. Look what she did for your eye.”

“No,” Cosky reiterated even louder, although it was more for Kait’s benefit than Rawls’s.

The wound was too major, life threatening. It would take an enormous amount of energy to heal something that severe. There was no way in hell he was letting Kait channel that much energy and risk frying herself for that scumbag.

“What are you two babbling about?” Mac said, shooting Cosky and Rawls a disgusted glare. He kicked the bound feet until Pachico’s dull brown eyes lifted. “You’re tapping out, buddy. Now’s the time to make things square with whoever the hell you believe in. Who signs your paychecks?”

An ugly, amused light muddied the brown eyes below Mac. “You poor bastards don’t have a clue who you’re chasing. I’ll let you have the pleasure of finding that out for yourselves.”

Rawls swung to Cosky. “Christ Cos, if we lose him, we lose our
best shot at finding out who set us up, who killed McKay. Goddamn it, we lose the teams.”

Cosky’s jaw tightened as the truth of Rawls’s words sunk in. From Zane’s account of the mission, the scientist they’d rescued in the lab had provided some new leads. But that’s just what they were—leads. There was no way of knowing whether they’d pan out.

Pachico, however, he had actual names.

He had answers.

Her eyes on his face, Kait took a couple of shaky steps forward and touched Cosky’s arm. “We could try—”

Looking down into her pale, willing face, he simply shook his head. There was no hesitation. He’d rather risk his career, his life on the teams—than her.

Rawls turned to Kait.

“I can’t help him,” she said, before Rawls even opened his mouth. She didn’t look at Cosky, but he was certain she was thinking the same thing he was. To heal a wound of this magnitude, she would have to supercharge her gift, which she couldn’t do without Cosky’s help.

Zane’s gaze bounced between Cosky and Kait, like he knew something was going on, but, shrugging, he turned to Pachico and crouched. “It does you no good to hold out,” he said in a reasonable voice. “Who is pulling the strings? Where did they take the scientists from the lab?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Pachico said, his voice thinning. “They’ll find you.” His breathing grew labored and spotty. “Sooner than you think,” he gasped out as his eyes glazed.

Cosky frowned. What the hell did that mean?

When Zane reached out to shake him, he was unresponsive.

Rawls pressed his fingers to the thick neck. Silence colored the room. After a few seconds, he stood up.

“He’s gone,” he said, frustration stamped across his face.

Cosky turned away from the accusation in the blue eyes. There wasn’t even an ounce of regret over his decision.

“Motherfucker.” Mac turned furious black eyes toward the corner, where Jillian stood backed up against the log walls, and Wolf’s thick body shielded her. “You were looking right at her. You must have seen the knife. You could have stopped her.”

Wolf stared back impassively. “She had every right to take his life. He took five of hers.”

Swearing again, Mac gripped the back of his neck and spun in a tight circle, like he was trying to walk the rage off. “Nobody is debating that, damn it. But we needed to talk to him. We needed fucking answers.”

Crossing his arms across his chest, Wolf shook his head. “He would never have answered your questions.”

Mac scowled back. “You don’t know that. We had his life to barter with, which makes damn fine incentive.” Suddenly Mac tilted his head, and studied Wolf with suspicion.

“Did you get anything out of him on the trip here?” Cosky asked.

“Nada,” Zane said with disgust.

“Or maybe that was your whole fucking plan,” Mac said sharply. Bracing his feet, he pulled back his shoulders and stalked close to Wolf, the hostility radiating from him. “Maybe you let her kill him because you didn’t want him talking. Maybe you’re neck deep in this shit and this invitation to your castle was nothing more than a smoke screen to keep us close and make sure we didn’t latch onto something.”