Wolf at the Door (21 page)

“It’s the best one you got.” Timber didn’t
bother to keep the hard edge out of her voice. “You can make
guesses, but I can tell you exactly what happened.”

For a moment, he hesitated, and then finally
his head dipped in the barest of nods. “Okay, then.”

She forced herself to her feet, ignoring the
worried way they both watched her. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew
that. Walking into a place that would remind her so powerfully of
the hell she’d lived wasn’t her favorite idea, but she hadn’t been
lying. If Charles was anywhere near the same man he’d been when
he’d had her, she could give them plenty of useful insights.

And if he’d changed, maybe those changes
could help them, too.

But more than that? She didn’t dare say it,
but she knew. Charles never liked to be bested. Brandt and Shifter
Town Enforcement had bested him. They’d ignored the murder of one
of their own, they’d moved her, they’d found his hiding spot...that
made his vendetta against them personal.

He’d gone after Brandt.

And if she was guessing correctly, the last
place Tate had seen Brandt had been at Charles’s place. So that was
where she was going to look at first.

***

Brandt woke in the dark. His head throbbed,
pulsing angrily with every beat of his heart. He groaned quietly as
soon as he tried to move. His hands were tied in front of him, the
silver-lined rope so tight it had cut off circulation to his hands.
He couldn’t feel anything but a minor burning in his wrist and the
painful, prickling sensation that meant a limb was asleep.

He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust
but there was only darkness. Frustrated, he stretched out his feet.
His shoes hit metal, clanging against bars. He pushed, only for his
head to slam into the bars again. Not quite bars though, more like
the sides of a box. Shit. He was in a dog crate. Sure enough, he
ran his hands against the plastic bottom.

The thought hammered through him. Wolfe had
put him in a dog kennel.

They’d found Wolfe’s hiding spot, where the
hell had he captured Brandt?

Unable to see a damn thing, Brandt focused on
his other senses. The world around him was quiet, but he could hear
birds chattering quietly in the distance. The lack of cars and
people told him he wasn’t in a busy neighborhood, and definitely
not in the middle of the city. He sniffed at the air. A touch of
mildew hovered, but the place smelled mostly like stale
concrete.

He inhaled deeply, catching an oddly familiar
scent. It was musky, damp, probably a basement, but there was
something else here. Something he recognized. He breathed deeper.
Timber
. Anger rocketed through him, leaving him breathless.
Wolfe had taken him to Timber’s house. He had to know Shifter Town
Enforcement would be looking for Brandt, had to know they’d
eventually look here.

He twisted, straining when a corner lifted
away the darkness and a dim thread of light slipped through. Wolfe
lifted the blanket higher and Brandt was finally face to face with
the man he’d been hunting for so long. A man he personally wanted
to see dead on the ground.

Wolfe smirked down at him. It was a brutal,
feral smile. Brandt stained against his ropes, but it was useless.
Then he saw the taser in Wolfe’s hand right before the man shoved
it through the bars and everything Brandt was blacked out from the
pain.

***

She’d known that this place wouldn’t be
identical to the hellhole where Charles had held her. She’d told
Tate all he could do was guess at what happened, that she could
give him facts, but it was a lie. Bottom line, she also was only
guessing. Because this was different, she hadn’t been here.

Timber glanced back at the Hound behind her.
Tate’s face was drawn tight, as if he dreaded walking back in that
door. She also caught the flash of sympathy in his eyes before he
stuffed it away. Timber turned back to the shambles of a house in
front of her. The windows were all boarded up, the neighborhood a
dead memory, lifeless. Empty. If there were people in the houses
around them, they’d walled themselves inside to keep out of
trouble.

In places like this, everyone minded their
own business.

Timber blew out a long, steadying breath. She
knew why Tate had caved. Because her guesses were more likely to be
spot-on than his. That, and he probably had the same hope that she
did. That maybe somewhere in this mess Charles had left a clue that
would tell her where he’d taken Brandt.

“You still want to do this?” Tate asked
softly, stepping up behind her. His hand landed on her shoulder,
giving a reassuring squeeze.

No. A thousand times no. These were memories
she didn’t need. She had enough nightmares already, she didn’t need
to add to them. But, “Yup.”

Because she wasn’t going to walk away from
Brandt, from the women Charles had tortured and killed. She
couldn’t turn away and leave them to fend for themselves. She knew
what it felt like. No one deserved that. Especially not the man
who’d done everything in his power to ensure that Shifter Town
Enforcement would never turn its back on her again.

Tate frowned at her for a moment, but finally
he walked up the steps. Timber followed. The only light came from
sunlight streaming in through the curtains, and she blinked to
adjust. Dust covered everything. They wandered the house together,
and Timber felt oddly numb. Untouched. She forced herself to
breathe through the swamp of scents around her, but she didn’t try
to catalog them. Instead, she did everything in her power to block
them out.

Until the last room.

Timber froze at the door while Tate stepped
aside. Chains trailed off the edge of the bed onto the floor. Her
throat closed and her attention instantly riveted on the night
stand next to the headboard. The same, heavy-as-fuck nightstand
he’d chained her to. She reached out to catch the wall and instead
found Tate standing beside her, holding her steady. Shay stood on
her other side, one hand touching her elbow.

“You okay?”

He’d brought it. All this way, and he’d
hauled it with him. He’d never had any doubt he would find her
again. Timber forced herself to keep breathing. Maybe he’d believed
all along he would find her, but he couldn’t have known he’d win.
He might think it, but she wasn’t the same girl she’d been when he
first grabbed her. Especially not now.

“I’m fine.” Timber pulled away from them both
and stepped into the room. Her shoe bumped the metal chain on the
floor, and she stepped to the side. “He chains them by the foot of
the bed because they’re not important.”

God, how many times had he told her that?
That they were nothing, nobody. Just a means to an end. She
wouldn’t give him what he wanted, so maybe they would. She could
almost feel his breath on her neck, the sweaty heat of it crawling
along her skin as he reminded her that obviously they meant nothing
to her, either...after all, she watched them die. Let them die.

And still she wouldn’t change him.

It hadn’t been true. She’d thought about it
more than once, offered, but she would have tried to kill him the
moment he gave her the chance, and Charles had been smart enough to
know that.

“You were chained to an end table, by the
head of the bed. Emphasizing your importance to him.” Tate rattled
it off like he was simply profiling, or putting together the pieces
of a puzzle.

“That nightstand.” Timber shoved her hands in
her pockets. She couldn’t bear huddling into herself, hugging
herself tight, not in here. Even if Charles wasn’t watching, she
wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing him body language
that said he won. “It’s the same one.”

Tate looked from her to something behind her
and back again. “Are you sure?”

“I scratched the days out on the underside
using my fingernails.”

Tate glanced at Shay before he strode over to
the bedside. Timber watched him kneel and feel underneath. She knew
the moment he found the scratches. She knew he’d find the metal
brackets underneath, too, where Charles had secured her chains.

“He bolted it to the floor when I was chained
to it. Trust me, it’s strong. Sturdy.” Lord knew how often she’d
tried to break it.

“Yeah, he did it here, too.” Tate stared up
at her, and she knew what was going through his mind. It was
written all over his face. Hell, they were the same thoughts that
had run through hers. It had never occurred to Charles that he
might fail.

Timber let her gaze sweep over the rest of
the room, and then, finally, it was time to turn her attention to
the wall behind her. Her hands clenched, her fingers burning with
the need to rip the photos off the wall, but she held herself
still.

“Timber—”

She shook her head, holding up a hand to cut
him off. Shay stepped up next to her, but Timber didn’t look at
her. Shay had become a friend, someone she trusted, but what
Charles had hung on this wall were some of Timber’s deepest,
darkest secrets. Things even her soul didn’t want to admit. The
bastard had framed them.

“You okay?” Shay asked.

“I will be.” Timber stepped closer.

The woman in the picture stared back at her.
She had Timber’s face, features, hair, everything...but those eyes
weren’t her eyes anymore. Back then, there had been days she’d been
lucky enough to slip so far inside herself she didn’t even have to
be
.

That one had always been Charles’ favorite
picture. It was true submission, as he liked to call it. He’d
touched and stroked the glass so many times, just staring at it.
Usually on days that she couldn’t slip away, and she’d been at the
mercy of his ministrations, unable to hide. Those were the times
her mind hadn’t been able to protect her and she’d simply had to
endure.

She reached up to touch the black frame and
she heard Tate’s fast shuffle from somewhere behind her. “That’s
evidence, Timber.”

Shay touched her shoulder.

Timber looked at the both as she pulled the
picture down. “I’m not going to break anything, Tate.”

She turned and set the frame on the bed,
slowly prying up the metal tacks that held its backing in place.
“Charles had a few things he cherished, and he always kept them
close. There were a few things throughout the house. The silver
bullet in the case upstairs, his grandmother’s teapot...” She slid
the slim back aside and set it on the bed. On the back of the large
portrait sat several sheets of paper and a few four by seven
pictures. Recent pictures. “And this particular photograph.”

There was an image of her and Brandt running,
wolf and wolfhound, under the moon. It was a dark shot, blurry, but
she could make out the images. “And the stuff he likes to obsess
over, he keeps close to those important items.”

She handed Tate the pictures. She didn’t need
to know how close Charles had gotten to her in the past few weeks.
Didn’t need to know just how often and how long he’d watched her
while she’d been oblivious. A folded piece of notebook paper was
tucked into the edge of the frame. Timber didn’t have to pull it
out to recognize the soft tan sheets, the pale pink lines.

It was from her journal. The one she’d kept
the first year after she’d run from him, when she was still trying
to write her way out of her fears. She stared down at it. Knowing
Charles had read portions of her journal—or, hell, all of it—and
found something he liked enough that he’d stashed it here should
have bugged or disturbed her.

Instead, she felt the small kernel of hope
inside her bloom.

Shifter Town Enforcement had corned Charles,
had driven him away from his den, his lair. But he hadn’t been
finished with them, and he sure as hell wasn’t finished with her.
There was only one place he’d go. She turned to look at Tate, who
was still going through the pictures she’d handed him. “Can you
take me home?”

He winced. “That’s a crime scene, and believe
me, not one you want to see.”

“I need to, Tate. Please.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but he had
nothing. His head dipped in a slight nod. “Yeah. Okay. Just let me
give these to the Hounds out front, and then we’ll go.”

She didn’t say anything until they were on
their way there, almost ready to turn on her street when she leaned
forward from the backseat. “Go around. Park where Charles used to
watch me.”

Tate’s gaze slammed into her through the
rearview mirror. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that’s where he’s keeping
Brandt. You might want to have backup on the way. But you’re also
going to want to get in there fast, because if Charles smells
Hounds with no victory in sight, Brandt is going to die.”

Tate exploded with a string of curses, but
Timber ignored him, instead focusing on Shay. “And I’m going in
because I’m the only victory Charles wants right now, and I’m damn
well going to be where he can see me.”

Brandt still might die. She knew that. But if
Charles had to make a choice between killing Brandt or snatching
her, she was hoping he’d go for her. She could survive. It wouldn’t
be for forever, because she knew Brandt would come for her.

And she could make it through whatever hell
Charles had lined up for her.

There would be no surviving for Brandt. He’d
just be dead.

Chapter Twenty

“Damn it,”
Tate muttered while he checked his gun. Shay passed her spare to
Timber. “We should wait for the pack.”

“If Charles sees, or even gets a whiff of
your pack, he’ll kill Brandt without hesitation.” Timber tried to
ignore the stinging pain in her heart. She concentrated on the gun
in her hand, checking the safety, familiarizing herself with the
feel of it, its weight and texture. She’d known Tate wouldn’t like
the plan. Hell, it was why she’d waited to drop it on him until
just before they arrived.