Sadie Hart (5 page)

The familiar magick coursed through her veins
and Ollie turned her attention to the forest around her, letting
the magick stretch out, searching for any sign of the Hunter. Wolf.
Male. It was a silent mantra in her head as she scoured the area
around her.

Scrying with her magick was tedious,
draining, but Ollie didn’t see a way to avoid it. It was one of the
few advantages she had against him. In the dark woods around her
house, it might also be the only thing that let her see him before
he found her. “I know you’re out here,” she called out, voice
steady.

A branch cracked to her left and she
spun.

There was a soft snort to her right and she
jerked around again. Fucking bastard was playing with her. Get a
grip, she told herself. This was what he wanted, what he enjoyed.
Ollie forced herself to freeze, a deep breath building in her
lungs. Claire Rawson could be out there alive, he could still be
waiting to kill her.

But right now, while she was jumping at every
shadow, she was doing exactly what he wanted. What he needed. Fear
would make her run, startle. If she wasn’t careful, she could end
up another victim tonight.

Ollie closed her eyes with a whimper. Part of
her would rather die than make this choice, but she couldn’t give
him what he wanted. Whether this kept Claire alive or killed her
faster, Ollie didn’t know. She shook her head.

“I’m not playing this game. I’m done.”

Then she turned and walked away, heading back
towards her house. She made it a handful of strides when a girl
screamed. A long, ragged sound, filled with raw pain. No. Ollie
turned and ran for the sound, stretching into every stride until
the wolfhound inside her leapt up, filling under her skin. She
shifted, the dog pouring out of her, and suddenly she was running
on four legs instead of two. Her lean, whipcord body made short
work of the distance between her and the agonized scream slicing
through the night.

The sound had turned wet by the time she
broke through the thicket to see a large, black wolf shaking at the
woman on the ground. The rotting stench of silver poisoning filled
the small clearing, thick enough to choke. He couldn’t have shot
her here because Ollie would have heard the gun. She dashed into
the clearing just as the wolf turned and bolted, disappearing into
the shadows.

It took everything inside her not to go after
him. To stop and shift back to human next to Claire Rawson’s body.
She checked for a pulse. Still alive. Oh, thank God. Ollie
whispered a silent prayer for the girl as she dug out her phone,
pleading with every god out there that Claire Rawson would get to
live. Just let us save one. With shaky fingers she called for an
ambulance, her free hand wrapped in the woman’s bloodstained grip.
In the end, all she had to do was look at the young girl’s eyes to
see that she didn’t have a chance.

A sob lodged in her chest as she bent and lay
her forehead against the other woman’s while Claire took her last
breath.

“I am so sorry,” Ollie whispered.

But sorry didn’t bring Claire back.

***

He shook off the adrenaline at the front
door, kicking his boots free of dirt before he twisted the bronze
handle and let himself inside. Bosley gave a gruff bark, spooked.
The golden retriever came running down the hall, body stiff with
threat, barking the entire way. Right up until the dog recognized
him and then melted into a wave of wiggles and wags. Dean Winters
patted his jean-clad thigh and laughed as the big-headed brute
slammed his muzzle up under his hand, greeting him with kisses and
happy wooing barks.

Dean set the gun on the table. He’d have to
clean it before bed, put the silver bullets back in their special
case. Make sure everything was tidy. First, though, the dog needed
some attention.

“You were a good boy, eh?” Dean leaned down,
giving the dog a thorough pat down. The golden melted under his
touch, rolling over to beg for a belly rub. Dogs were simple. They
knew masters, knew how to beg. Submission came easily.

“It was a good hunt tonight,” Dean told the
golden, grinning as the dog licked eagerly over his chin. The wolf
had run, blindly. Desperate. He’d savored her yelps as she bolted
through the forest. Loved watching her crumple when the first
bullet had ripped through her flank.

He didn’t normally shoot to maim. What was
the point?

If he were going to hunt, he liked a clean
kill. Old habits died hard after all, and his dad had always liked
the animal as intact as possible. But seeing her stagger, desperate
to keep running on three legs, and something had clicked inside
him. A quiver of anticipation. When he’d finally forced her to
shift back... Dean shook his head, his breathing shallow as he
forced himself to stand. Eyes bright with the memory.

And then that Hound’s face. Perfect.

Dog and man grinning, they headed down the
hall, his boots making soft thuds against the hardwood. Animals
stared back at him from the walls, their glass eyes peering out of
dead heads mounted down the hall. He paused in front of a grizzly
and reached a hand up to cup the bear’s muzzle. That one had been a
right fucker to kill.

A shot straight through the heart. The beast
had crashed to the ground only feet from him, blood smeared into
the dirt. It was talent to get a clean shot on an animal that
big.

“Should get you out soon,” he told Bos. The
dog could use some practice. It’d been awhile since he’d cleaned
out the rifle and taken Bosley down to the pond. The ducks were
almost always out this time of year. Good autumn weather making
them feel comfy in the water. “Bet you get that thrill when you see
those ducks.”

He rubbed the dog under the chin as he
plopped down in the old recliner, the house silent around him
except for the pat-pat of Bosley’s tail hitting the floor. They dog
sat beside him, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. “Bet
you just get the shivers when you hear the gun crack and see the
birds fall out of the sky.”

Dean curled a hand through the long
honey-colored fur as anticipation rolled through his gut. The look
on that Hound’s face. He grinned. That had been worth it. Taking
Clare Rawson all the way out to the Hound’s home had been a pain in
the ass, not even the kind of kill he liked to make, but to see her
face. Oh. That had been rich, right there. A grin slid over his
face, hard and predatory as he glanced down at the dog slumped
against his chair.

“You should have seen her. Flinching at every
sound, scared shitless.” A shiver danced through his veins at the
memory, anticipation heating his blood, and Dean leaned back, his
legs spread wide to ease the arousal pressing at his jeans. He’d
almost shot her then.

She’d been so scared. Whipping her gun back
and forth, startling like a spooked hare every time he’d
purposefully put a paw on a branch to make it snap. Then she’d
decided to stop, just like he’d known she would when her brain
finally kicked in past her fear. It wasn’t terror yet, not the
blind, all-consuming fear that he would slowly train her to feel.
No, she still had too much control yet for that. But they’d get
there.

Holly Lawrence would be a long hunt, with him
harrying his prey right into the ground. The anticipation tasted
sweet on his tongue, like raw sugar cane, and he savored the flavor
of it. The memory of her gray eyes burning with fear, suddenly
going hard, angry. The way she’d jerked herself around as if she
could just waltz away and head back inside, as if she didn’t have
to play.

Dean laughed at that, leaning down to kiss
Bosley on his furred head. “Bitch,” he murmured against the soft
fur. He’d taught her that lesson real fast. Like with dogs, you had
to be hard and firm to get the lesson through their thick heads,
show them who was boss. Killing Claire Rawson like that, just when
Holly Lawrence had thought she was getting smart, that’d been like
taking Bosley by the scruff and shaking him out so hard he pissed
himself.

Scared them right the first time.

Dean closed his eyes, reveling in the quiet,
the solitude. The peace that came after a good hunt. This was what
it was all about. Just him, his dog, and the night air making the
room cold. Now he just had to figure out how to keep breaking her.
His fingers drummed against the armrest, Bosley’s tail whacking the
ground in time with their tempo. What he needed to figure out, he
decided, was what was going to make her sweat the most?

What he needed was something to change up his
game. An image of the man with her in the woods flashed in his
mind. The carefully restrained wolf. An alpha. There was a whole
pack to choose from. He’d never picked more than one from any given
area, but this, he could make it more personal. Then a new idea
wormed in on the heels of that thought, a dark virus that injected
itself deep, and Dean leaned forward, a wicked grin on his face.
Suddenly eager.

Bosley squirmed closer and pressed up against
his knee, floppy ears dangling as the dog shoved his drool-wet
muzzle under Dean’s hand. It would be the most intense hunt he’d
ever had to pull off. He’d have to be careful. But Ms. Holly
Lawrence definitely made the game more fun, more interesting.
Challenging.

And Dean liked a good hunt.

Chapter Five

Dawn leaked over
the sky in ugly golds and red, as if the sky were bleeding from
sick, puss-filled wounds. Holly leaned back against a tree, her
shoulders sagging under the weight of the night. She hated mornings
like this, the hopeless, defeated drudge of a new day. Her partner,
Sawyer, stepped up next to her, the lioness looking every bit as
exhausted as she felt. “Nothing like another dead body to make a
sunrise look like shit.”

Sawyer smiled at that. “Looks like the moon
threw up.”

Ollie grinned.“A shitty night makes a grisly
day.”

Sawyer stuffed her hands in her pockets and
angled her head in the direction of the sun. Ollie watched as it
slowly inched up over the horizon, the silhouette of the trees
slowly coming into color. On an average day, when she let Star out
to romp in the field, it was pretty. She liked to bring out her
morning coffee and see the sun wake up and shake out the first few
rays. The morning air normally revived her. Today, everything about
it just felt sickly.

“For the record,” Ollie started, speaking to
her boss before Lennox Donnelly even made it out of the bushes. “I
wasn’t out here looking for him. I was letting the dog out to pee
before I went to bed.”

“He’s making this personal.”

“Yeah. I got that. I figured it out when he
was fucking with me while waiting for her to die.” Ollie fisted her
hands at her side. Damn, but she hadn’t seen that one coming. She’d
figured out he was playing with her, but it wasn’t until later,
with the ME on scene, that things had really started to sink
in.

“He didn’t shoot her here.”

Lennox shook her head. “No. He parked his car
in a meadow a mile west of here, behind a small stand of trees. It
would have been hidden from the main road, but easy to back in and
out of. She was bleeding heavily there already. The bloodhounds
tracked her to the clearing...she must have run her heart out.”

And the more she ran, the more the silver ate
at her blood. Killing her. “I never heard her cry out. If he hadn’t
howled—”

“He chased her here, he wanted you to
know.”

Lennox’s shoe scuffed dirt, and she blew out
a long, slow breath. Almost hesitant, not like her boss at all, and
Ollie turned to look the red-haired Hound in the eye. “What are you
not telling me?”

“He wanted you to find her alive. To be there
when she died. He made sure she’d die, a stomach wound like that—”
Lennox gave her head a small shake. A gut wound, with silver
already eating through her veins, yeah. Claire Rawson had never had
a chance. “I think it’s why he howled. To get you there in time. To
make sure you watched her die.”

So Ollie would have one more nightmare to
haunt her. She wondered if he’d stuck around to see her hold Claire
Rawson’s hand as the girl had taken her last breath. Like a demon
in the bush, had he waited? Probably grinning the whole time.
Laughing over another victory. He always came back to the crime
scene. He’d have been there, watching. She knew it all the way down
to her soul. And once again he’d gotten away.

Lennox laid a hand on her shoulder. “There’s
nothing more you could have done.”

“Keep saying that.”

Sawyer twisted to look at her, but Ollie
shook her head. “Go ahead, both of you. Just keep saying it, but it
feels like I should have done more. I know him, and he still got
the best of me. Still made me jump. If I hadn’t—”

“Hell.” Lennox shoved a hand through her hair
and stepped away. “You are way too close to this case. I keep
telling myself to take you off it, but damn. You’re good at your
job, Ol. And you’re right. You know him, which is why he’s fucking
with you, because he knows you, too.”

Lennox stepped closer, shoving into her
space, and Ollie automatically started to move away, yielding, when
her boss caught her by the arm. “You also beat him. It might not
feel like it to you, but to men like him, they take that shit
personally. You beat him. He wanted you dead the night that Rosalie
Myers died and you got away. That galls him.”

She knew that. When Ollie was honest enough
with herself to admit it, she knew the knowledge that she’d gotten
away, that she escaped his hunt, drove him mad. It ate at him.
That’s why this was personal now. That was why he messed with her.
She’d beaten him, so now he was upping the ante. “But how many have
to die before we beat him for real? Why can’t he just come after
me?”