Sadie Hart (20 page)

“I did fail. Every single time he won—” He
pressed a finger to her lips and shook his head.

“You don’t fail when someone dies. You fail
when you stop trying to catch this man. You fail when you blame
yourself for when he pulls the trigger.”

A bird called urgently from the trees, over
and over again, like the chime of a cuckoo clock, marking the
seconds as they ticked by with her staring up at him. He could see
how badly she wanted to believe him, to accept what he was saying
as truth.

“It’s moments like this that I think I have
you nailed down,” Caine continued. “But what I don’t get, and what
I think is the friggin’ core of you, is why? Why him? Why this
case?”

Caine ghosted a kiss over her lips. “So what
makes you tick, Ollie?”

He could feel her heart pounding against the
palm he held cupped around her neck, a steady thud-thud in time
with the cry of the bird above. Tick-tock. It raced as the seconds
blurred by, one after the other. Her chest swelled as she breathed
in, borrowing courage from the forest air all around her, and he
looked down to watch as it lifted her breasts, made him want to lay
kisses along each delicate curve, but Caine held himself back.
Waiting.

She was worth his patience.

“In the Shifter Town Enforcement Academy,”
she began slowly, “for your final year, you have to pick one of the
big, ongoing cases, see if you can shed new light on it. You don’t
get access to any of the actual files, but you’re supposed to dig
up news articles, any and all information that you can find, and
build a profile. See if you can find any clues that might help
solve the case.”

“Sounds fun.”

A laugh flashed in her eyes, damn near
twinkling, and he knew she’d really enjoyed the challenge, from
digging up the information to trying to solve a case no one else
had. A blush touched her cheeks. “It was. At the end you have to
present your findings to the class, and everyone pitches in, trying
to fill in anything you might have missed. If your findings are
deemed helpful, they’re passed to the Enforcement agency covering
the case.”

“Has it ever helped solve anything
before?”

“Yeah. A few times. Sometimes you need fresh
eyes. Sometimes you need that kid gunning for a grade who’s just
plain desperate enough to search through fifty stacks of parking
tickets and find one that matches the night of a murder.”

Ollie bent her head and he could imagine the
memories flashing by in her eyes. “So you obviously picked the
Hunter. Still doesn’t answer my first question, why him? What about
this one man is so important to you?”

She started to shrink away, pull back, but
Caine refused to let her go. She’d hidden from the reasons she’d
picked this case for so long, it was time she actually looked at
them. He turned her in his arms, fitting one over her shoulders as
he tugged her close to his side and moved them towards the stretch
of forest between his house and Trey’s.

The pack owned the whole street, more than
eighty acres among the lot of them, with plenty of woodland between
the houses so they could run to their hearts’ content. Or walk away
their fears. Ollie leaned her head against his shoulder with a soft
sigh. “I don’t know, I just—”

“He’s not the only serial killer out
there.”

She half smiled at that. “No. My brother was
dealing with one in Colorado at the time. The Wolfman. I thought of
doing that case.”

“So why didn’t you?”

Her shoulders started to lift, then stopped
and she scrunched her nose as she looked at him. “You ever wonder
why I live with my grandmother?”

“Don’t change the subject, Ol.”

“I’m not. My mom died when I was really
little. Brandt knew her better than I did, but even his memory is
sketchy. So we grew up with our dad.”

She burrowed in closer and he felt her take a
deep breath, her body giving a slight tremor before she continued.
“He used to drink a lot. Constantly. He could barely hold down a
decent job for any length of time because he was always
wasted.”

Caine caught her hand, fingers entwining with
hers. His silent comfort urging her on.

“He took us hunting once. God, I didn’t want
to go. I was thirteen and more than smart enough to know that a
drunk man unarmed is dangerous enough. Add a gun and I’d be lucky
to survive the trip.”

The forest had closed in around them,
blotting out the house behind them, the road. Leaving them alone in
the quieter birdsong of early evening, only the crunch of their
shoes over the forest floor making any real noise at all. “Did he
ever hit you?”

“Oh yeah. Brandt took most of it. If he
thought dad was going to get violent, he’d piss him off. I used to
think he was stupid to do it, all the while so thankful it was him
and not me. Then I started realizing he was doing it for me. I
tried a few times to help him out, cut him some slack, but Brandt
never let me. And by then he was just plain better at pissing our
dad off.”

His respect for the other wolfhound went up a
notch. Caine would have done the same thing for his little sister,
made damn sure she’d never learn how to draw their father’s fire
the way he could. Turning his head, he brushed his chin over her
hair, frizzy from a long day’s work and barely contained in the
messy bun that Ollie wore day in and day out. He breathed her in.
The apple blossom of her shampoo, the soft, womanly scent that was
just Ollie, the musky scent of her dog-half.

“Please tell me your father’s dead.”

She shook her head slightly, and he nuzzled
in closer so she couldn’t see the flare of anger in his eyes. “No,
but Brandt and I packed up and left when I was sixteen, and went to
live with Nana. A few years ago, she moved out here, and when I got
out of the academy I came to join her. Big house, one woman, it
just felt right for us to have each other.”

“And you could work this case.”

“Yeah,” she breathed out. Her chin dipped
down in the smallest nod. “And when I was looking through those
cases back at the academy, trying to make up my mind, I found him
and he reminded me a lot of my father. Not the drunk part. But the
fact that he obviously liked the hunt. He wanted them to run. He
wanted their fear. That’s my dad, all the way to the bone.”

Caine could see the peak of Trey’s house
through the trees and angled them away, heading deeper into the
woods behind the houses. The last thing he wanted to do was stop
her now. Ollie’s fingers toyed with his, squeezing and letting go,
tapping against his skin. Nervous.

“My dad never liked a clean kill. He’d shoot
just to scare them sometimes. Others, he’d shoot them to make them
bleed, and while they ran he’d track them using their blood trail.
If he didn’t find them, oh well.”

Monster. Christ, he couldn’t imagine her
living with a man like that. “Ollie—”

She shook her head. “So I just couldn’t stop,
you know? I had to read on, I had to study him. Know him.” A bitter
laugh escaped her then. “So I guess I chose him because I thought I
had a unique view to bring to the case, I’d lived with someone like
him. Dad hated when Brandt would take his hits without an ounce of
fear. I couldn’t manage that. I think in a lot of ways I excited
him more because I was scared and couldn’t hide it.”

The growl slipped out of Caine before he
could stop it that time, and Ollie paused, twisting in his arms to
slide her hands up his chest. Rising on her tiptoes, Ollie pressed
her lips to his to soothe him with a kiss. A soft, feather light
touch against his mouth. “It was a long time ago.”

Her metallic gray eyes met his, strong,
vibrant. The woman in front of him had been forged in fire; the
loss of her mother, the abuse of her father, and now, the Hunter.
She framed his face with her hands, thumbs sweeping over the shadow
of stubble on his skin, and all he wanted to do was lay her down
and strip off every stitch of clothing. Kiss her lips, the hollow
of her throat, the swell of her breasts. Kiss her everywhere.

With a groan, he leaned in to steal another
taste of her when she whispered, “That’s why I was so certain that
if they didn’t run he wouldn’t, maybe even couldn’t, kill
them.”

Caine paused, watching her. Ollie bit her
lip, almost lost in thought. “I was right. He tried so hard to get
me to run. He wanted it, and I could see the anger and impatience
in his eyes when I kept Rosalie from running, when I refused to
run, just like my father with Brandt.”

And there, in those words, Caine saw the
spark of triumph. The strong woman she was, before the guilt
dragged her down. The woman who captivated him, who wouldn’t give
up. Who, in the end, was going to beat this bastard. He watched as
she shed the guilt and she damn near glowed with pride. She’d
beaten the Hunter that night. Had she saved Rosalie Myers? No. But
she’d done something no one else had—escaped, survived—and it was
time she relished that.

“Just like your father, he’s a coward.”

The smile that curved her lips at that remark
made him rock hard.

“Yes,” she whispered. Looking at her, Caine
had never wanted anyone more in his life.

He wrapped his hands around her hips and drew
her against him. The hard press of his erection against her belly
drew a hiss from him as his lips crashed down over hers. He tried
to show her in a kiss what he’d failed to help her see a thousand
times with words.

It was soft at times, hard in others,
demanding and cherishing, emotions whipping back and forth between
him until he didn’t know how he wanted to kiss her, except that he
couldn’t bring himself to stop. With one hand, he reached up and
pulled the hair tie holding up her hair, and let the frazzled,
black waves fall down around her shoulders, only to bury his
fingers in the length of it and pull her back.

“And you’re going to beat him.”

Ollie looked up at him, squirming a bit
against his throbbing erection. She grinned. “I’m counting on
it.”

Caine started to say something, fully
expecting to argue, but the confident answer left him stunned.
Ollie shook her head, playing pushing at his shoulders. “Don’t look
at me like that. As much as it scares me sometimes, as much as the
guilt eats at me sometimes, I’m still banking on winning. Someone
has to, right?”

The question drew a surprised laugh from him.
“Yeah. I’m betting on you, too.”

“You better be.”

He kissed her again then. Hard, deep, and
fast. When they broke it was on a rough groan as his forehead
leaned against hers. “Stay with me tonight, Ol.”

His hand slipped through her hair to wrap
around the back of her neck, massaging. Silently urging her to say
yes. Twilight had already begun to darken the forest, painting the
trees into silhouettes. Gossamer strands of light still managed to
fight through the haze of dusk, but it became filmy, misty, hanging
like ghosts between the trees.

Wrapped in each other, Holly’s back still
propped against the tree, Caine waited, more than willing to wait
until the light left the forest altogether, when a smile touched
her lips. “Okay.”

One night. With nothing but the two of them,
skin against skin, legs tangled in sheets. He tugged her head back,
to nibble over the exposed line of her throat. It wouldn’t last
forever. When dawn arrived the next morning, it’d come with the
firm reminder that they had three days to the full moon. Three days
to find a miracle.

It almost felt wrong to have her now. But she
needed rest—they both did—and she needed loving as much as he
needed to give it to her.

Caine let Ollie slide down until her feet
touched the ground and, taking her hand, led her back towards the
house, now bathed in twilight. The darkening sky was slowly
beginning to pop with stars, and now that they had emerged from the
trees he could see them glimmering against the night backdrop.
Ollie leaned against him briefly and then, grabbing his hand with a
triumphant grin, began pulling him along towards his house.

She ran her hand up the polished rail of his
front porch, took in the small deck landing, the door with the oval
window above it—just another way to let in the natural light. Every
inch of this house had been designed and built by members of his
pack. Just like every other house on this road.

Caine leaned past her to open the door,
welcoming her inside. She fit. The strength that was Ollie blended
beautifully with the quiet comfort of his home. It wasn’t anything
special, no sprawling mansion. The worn leather sofa stretched out
in front of the fireplace smelled like home, the right-hand cushion
soft and sagging from the years he’d been sitting there to watch
TV.

The staircase leading to second floor turned
off to the right, revealing the painting Claire’s mother had done
when he’d been out messing around in her back yard in wolf form one
day. Ollie caught sight of it and strode over, her head cocked,
dark eyebrows furrowed over her silver eyes.

She paused a foot away and looked back at
him. “It’s you. Who painted it?”

Caine glanced at the silver and black wolf.
The brush of brown between his ears. Afternoon sunlight bathed him
in that picture, made him look truly wild, a part of nature itself,
with the long willow grasses tickling up the wolf’s belly, shadows
of a few pack members lurking in the distance. She’d captured it
all with a beautiful, perfect hand. “Claire’s mother. Mrs.
Rawson.”

Sadness crept between them, but Caine crossed
the room before it could bog her down, touching her chin briefly as
he turned her back to face him. “This whole place, every house on
this street, it was built by the pack. There are memories of those
we lost, and cherished moments with those we love, in every
house.”

He turned to the picture, admiring again the
way Mrs. Rawson had captured the dark almond of his eyes, lighter
as a wolf than they ever were as a man. He turned back to Ollie,
hand outstretched, and waited, letting her find her own way past
the stab of guilt and back to steady ground. With one last glance
at the picture, Ollie took his hand and let him lead her upstairs.
Past the spare bedroom he used as a den, past the little half bath
midway down the hall, and towards the room that smelled the most of
him.