Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels Page 25

And when she realized that, she froze. No movement anywhere.

  And Avery stopped. He pulled back, straightened, backed away from her.

  The door to the elevator opened.

  Dana couldn’t look at him, but she couldn’t step outside either.

  It was Avery who left the elevator first.

  She followed him.

  They walked down the hall in single file, until he got to the door to his apartment. He stopped there, unlocking it.

  Dana kept going.

  When he realized that, he turned and went after her. “Gray, you can’t be by yourself.”

  “Maybe I’m not comfortable being alone with you,” she said.

  “Too fucking bad!”

  She stopped at the door to her own apartment and opened it. “I’m confused, okay?” She tried to get inside first and close the door on him.

  But he was too fast, and he squeezed past before she could stop him. Then they were both in the kitchen of her apartment. “I’m confused too,” he said. He was standing between her and the door to the hallway. He was also blocking her exit into the living room.

  She had no choice but to walk further into the kitchen.

  “I don’t know why I did that,” he said.

  She turned around to face him. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He took a step closer to her.

  She backed up. “Well, you should be.”

  Another step. “You didn’t like it, did you?”

  “I...” She backed up again. “I wanted to like it.”

  “What does that mean?” He was still coming closer, damn it.

  She backed into the refrigerator. “I don’t...”

  He was kissing her again. Why was he doing that? Hadn’t she just told him...?

  It was just as pleasant and nice as it had been in the elevator. Avery was wholesome and buoyant. There was no darkness in him, no undercurrent of shame or fear to his kiss. It should have been good. But it wasn’t. It didn’t feel right.

  She pushed him away. “Don’t.”

  He rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms. “Sorry. I did it again.”

  “I noticed.” Her voice was sharper than she meant it to be.

  “It’s only that you seem like you’re into it, and then you... aren’t.”

  “You aren’t him.”

  He looked stricken.

  “I’m sorry, Brooks,” she said. “I’m only being honest.”

  “What kind of hold does he have on you, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She glared at him. “Why are you kissing me?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “Fuck, Gray, I’m not even sure.” He took a seat at one of the stools next to the bar in her kitchen.

  “You called me a slut and a whore,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “And then you kissed me,” she said. “Twice.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I wanted to.”

  She sat down at one of the stools. “Do you have feelings for me, Brooks?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “How long have you had them?”

  He rested his head in his hands. “No, it’s not like that. I don’t think about you that way. You’re Gray. You’re my partner. We’re best friends.” He lifted his head. “But then, suddenly, it’s like you’re... you know, a girl.”

  She glared at him. “I’ve always been a girl.”

  He turned away from her, his face reddening. “You haven’t been someone who... did girly, sexy things.”

  “Girly, sexy things? What?”

  “And then all of the sudden, you’re looking at him the way you look at him, and he’s talking to you in that voice, and calling you beautiful, and saying things about your—” He glanced at her chest. “You know. And for some reason, it really starts bothering me.”

  “What?”

  “Thinking of him doing things to you. It makes me crazy angry. And then, out of nowhere, I wanted to kiss you. So... I did.”

  “Oh,” she said. She thought of the night she’d ogled Avery’s bare chest, of the way they’d woken up that morning, all wound up together. It was a little confusing.

  Avery got up. He walked around the bar into the living room. “I won’t do it again.”

  “Good,” she said. But was it good?

  “I got confused, that’s all,” he said. “I’m really sorry, Gray. I promise I’ll keep things professional from now on.”

  “Professional?” she said. “Because technically, we don’t even have a job right now.”

  He collapsed onto her couch. “Dammit. We really didn’t get anywhere today, did we? We didn’t get his scent. We didn’t get answers. We got nothing.”

  “Except for him saying disgusting, embarrassing things about me,” she said. “He’s a bastard.”

  “He played us,” said Avery.

  “Well, he did say the thing about listening,” she said. “Do you think that means something?”

  “What could it mean? It wasn’t like you weren’t listening to him.”

  They were quiet.

  “Hey, Gray,” said Avery.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it gonna be weird between us now? You know, because of what I did?”

  She smiled. “No. It’s not gonna be weird. I’m not even thinking about it.” She peered at his lips. They were nice lips. Why couldn’t she enjoy them?

  * * *

  She awoke from a dream in which she was a wolf, traipsing through a snow-covered forest, her paws whispering in the white powder, the bite of wintry air on her nose. Her ears were pricked, listening for her prey. She was hunting for her pack. For her mate and their offspring. Together, they would feast, but first they must take down the prey, tear into it, destroy it.

  She listened, but all she could hear was the whistle of wind, knocking snow from the branches of fir trees. It was silent and white out here.

  Then there was a sound.

  A voice.

  She’s resistant, and I think they’re keeping her from me. I’m working on a different plan, but right now I have nothing. I can’t believe she hasn’t come through for me.

  Cole.

  She sat straight up in bed. That was Cole’s voice. She’d heard it before, once, when she was running. At the time, she thought that she was going crazy, imagining his voice because she was so obsessed with him.

  Now, she could easily convince herself that the voice was a product of her imagination, simply part of her dream.

  But it didn’t make any sense in the context of her dream, and it didn’t seem like something she would imagine Cole saying.

  So she let out the part of her wolf that could hear, and listened as hard as she could with her razor sharp wolf hearing, for the voice.

  She heard someone else. Someone who wasn’t Cole.

  You sacrificed Ella for her. You were sure it would work, and now it hasn’t.

  Ella was the first name of the rogue that Dana had killed.

  I’m sorry. I was so certain. Cole’s voice again.

  You are blind when it comes to Dana Gray. We have all told you so.

  Dana vaulted out of bed, throwing back the covers. Who was talking? Where was that person? She wasn’t imagining it. She was hearing it with her wolf hearing. It was real.

  No, said Cole. I see her clearly. But perhaps I expected results too quickly.

  Dana flew out of her bedroom. She had to follow the voice that was talking to Cole. She had to find it. This was how he communicated. He spoke.

  Avery sat up on the couch. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going, Gray?”

  She tapped her ear. “Listen.” She threw open the door and ran out into the hallway.

  Avery came after her. “Listen? There’s nothing to hear.”

  “Use your wolf hearing,” she said.

  Well, th
en, you are telling us to simply wait? Wait until you can convince her to free you? said the voice that wasn’t Cole’s.

  That is the only plan I have now, said Cole.

  “Shit,” said Avery. “What is that?”

  “He’s talking to somebody,” she said, sprinting down the hallway, heading in the direction of the voice. “But they’re listening with their wolf abilities. They could be very far apart and still hear each other.”

  Certainly, there must be some better option.

  Dana burst out into the night air. There was a faint chill, but it was springtime, so it wasn’t cold. She could hear the sounds of crickets in the distance, frogs on a nearby lake, the wind rustling new leaves, and cars going down a nearby road.

  It was too much, all the sound. How would she single out the voice she was hearing? How would she know what direction it came from?

  If only she could smell whoever spoke. She was good at tracking scent. She’d never used hearing to track before.

  An opportunity will present itself, said Cole. We simply must wait.

  Dana turned in a circle. She knew where Cole’s voice was coming from. He must be in his cell. His voice was carrying outside because of her intensified hearing. Could she pinpoint the other voice in relation to his?

  She waited.

  Avery caught up to her, a little out of breath.

  She strained to hear over the sound of him wheezing.

  “I don’t hear anything,” said Avery.

  She didn’t either. Did Cole realize that someone was listening to him?

  She stayed outside for the good part of an hour, hoping to hear the voices again, but she didn’t.

  * * *

  “Well, at least we know how he communicates,” said Avery.

  “But we don’t know who he was communicating with,” said Dana. “He’s got someone on the outside, someone he’s talking to. And he’s been doing it right under our noses this whole time. He doesn’t need to use email when he has werewolf hearing. We’re such idiots.”

  “We’re not,” said Avery. “The only people at the SF who have that kind of training are trackers like us, and we never think to turn on our super hearing in headquarters. We aren’t stupid. He’s brilliant.”

  “Right,” she muttered. She sighed. “No, he knew that I would figure it out last night, because he told me to listen. And that’s why he made sure not to reveal anything while he and the other wolf were talking.”

  “They were talking about getting Randall out of here, weren’t they? About how he wanted you to do it, but you weren’t cooperating?”

  She nodded. “I think so, yes.”

  “He hasn’t given up, then. He’s going to find a way.”

  “Well, we have to stop him,” she said. “We need to keep him in a soundproof cell or something.”

  “How are we going to do that? We don’t have a cell like that.”

  “We need to talk to King,” she said. “She’ll pass it along to the higher-ups. He can’t be allowed to communicate with the outside world. And he can’t be allowed to force anymore of his betas to shift.”

  “Well, we don’t know how many betas he has, do we?” said Avery.

  “No,” said Dana. “We need his scent so that we can test it on the rogues we have in custody.”

  “And we didn’t get it yesterday.”

  Dana crossed her arms over her chest. “God damn it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “I don’t know about this,” said the stringy, dark haired youth that was pushing the laundry cart down the hall.

  “Come on,” said Avery. “It’s one article of clothing. You can say it fell out.”

  “Yeah, that’s the thing,” said the guy. “It’s sort of my job to make sure that nothing happens to these clothes, you know.”

  “They’re prison uniforms,” said Avery. He was glaring at the guy.

  Dana put a hand on his shoulder. Avery was getting angry, like usual. She smiled at the guy. “Look, this is really important. You’d be helping us save lives.”

  The guy didn’t look convinced. “That’s the other thing. You guys say that you’re trackers for the SF, but you don’t have badges. Even I got a badge, and I just do laundry. I don’t know if I even believe you. What if you’re going to do something terrible, and I let you, huh?”

  Avery rolled his eyes.

  Dana smiled tightly and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a twenty dollar bill and some crumpled ones. She offered them to the guy. “How about it?”

  The guy furrowed his brow. “Why do you really want this laundry, huh?”

  Avery stepped closer to him. “Look, take the money and shut up, or I’ll knock you out and we’ll take what we’re looking for.”

  The guy snatched the money out of Dana’s hand. He backed away from Avery. “Chill out, man.”

  Avery nodded at the laundry cart. “You smell him?”

  Dana sniffed. There were a lot of smells there, but Cole’s was unmistakable. “Yeah,” she said, digging through the clothes until she found Cole’s jumpsuit. She yanked it out of the laundry cart, bundled it up and put it in a plastic bag. Hopefully, having it sealed would preserve the scent. “Thanks,” she said to the laundry guy.

  He shoved the money in his pocket. “If I find out that you used that jumpsuit to do something wrong—”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Avery. He turned to Dana. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Coraline Shirley whined and backed into the corner of the room, tucking her head into her chest.

  All Dana had done was open the plastic bag that contained half of Cole’s jumpsuit. They’d cut it in two so that she and Avery both had a piece for interrogating rogues.

  “Coraline?” said Dana. “Are you okay?”

  Coraline peered up at her, still curled up. “Is he here?”

  “Who?” said Dana.

  “I can smell him,” said Coraline.

  Dana held up Cole’s jumpsuit. “You’ve smelled him before?”

  Coraline nodded. “I told you about it. I didn’t remember before, but I remember it now.”

  Dana closed the plastic bag. She gestured to the conference table. “Do you think we could talk about that?”

  Coraline got to her feet hesitantly. She made her way over to the table and sat down. Dana joined her.

  “Okay,” said Dana, “what can you tell me about smelling this wolf?”

  “It was nine or ten months ago,” said Coraline. “I was out in the woods on a full moon, and I saw a werewolf. He smelled like... that. The smell you have. He jumped on me. He dug his claws into me, nipped at my neck with his teeth.”

  “Just like that?” said Dana. “Out of nowhere?” She was thinking about how similar that sounded to what Cole had done to her in his living room. He’d leapt on her. She remembered his teeth in her neck. She couldn’t help but finger the scars there, tiny raised bumps of skin.

  “Yes,” she said. “I didn’t have time to think. I shifted immediately. It seemed like the... the right thing to do. With his teeth there, I felt something calling me to shift. And so I did.” She took a deep breath. “When I woke up, it was all fuzzy. I couldn’t really remember it.”

  “So you just went about your business,” said Dana. “Until the night you suddenly shifted.”

  “That’s right,” said Coraline. “Do you know who that wolf is? What did he do to me?”

  Dana debated. She and Avery hadn’t talked about how much they’d debrief the rogues. But Coraline had a right to know what was happening to her. “The scent belongs to Cole Randall. And he made himself into your alpha, which means he can make you shift into a werewolf at any time.”

  “Cole Randall,” said Coraline. “The werewolf killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “He can control me?”

  “He can make you shift, and he can call you,” said Dana. “But we’re working on making it so he can’t. We really are.”

  * *
*

  “That’s gotta be the last one,” said Ryan Brown. He worked on the hall where the rogues were being kept. “I can’t cover for you guys any longer. I hope you got what you needed.”

  Avery had just emerged from talking to Arnold Phelps. “Yeah, we’re good.”

  Dana nodded in agreement.

  “If King found out I let you guys do interrogations while you’re suspended—”

  “We know,” said Dana.

  “Thanks, man,” said Avery. “We really appreciate it.” He grasped Ryan’s hand.

  “I’m happy to help out,” said Ryan. “But now, get the hell out of here before someone sees you.”

  “You got it,” said Avery. He and Dana hurried down the hallway into the elevator. Once the doors closed, he turned to her. “Did they all react?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And get this. Coraline Shirley actually remembers what happened. She said that she was attacked by a wolf in the woods, and that he bit her neck, and it caused her to shift right away.” She lifted her hair away from her neck and showed her scars to Avery. “It’s basically exactly what he did to me, but I didn’t shift.”

  “You didn’t submit,” said Avery.

  “Yeah,” said Dana. “Cole told me that he killed the wolves that weren’t useful to him.”

  “So, we’ve been looking at it the wrong way all along,” said Avery. “The kills we found of Randall’s were incidental. He wasn’t out to kill those wolves. He was out to make them into betas. When he couldn’t do that, he killed them.”

  “All of them except me,” said Dana.

  “So what do you think he wanted to do with this pack of his that he created?” asked Avery.

  “Kill people,” she said. “That’s what he thinks wolves are supposed to do. He wanted a big pack of killers, so that he could balance the ecosystem or whatever.” She rubbed her face. “He’s absolutely crazy. I don’t know how any part of me can want him.”

  “I actually had a thought about that,” said Avery. The elevator door opened.

  She stepped into the hall. “Yeah?”

  He followed her. “It was something that he said when we were talking to him earlier. He said that other guys like Hollis and me were sniffing around you.”

  “So what?” said Dana.

  “He also said you were his,” said Avery.

  “Like I said, he’s crazy.” She quickened her pace, heading down the hallway faster, because thinking about Cole had suddenly made her remember his mouth on her body, wrenching moans from her lips. And she wanted to outrun that sensation. Get away from it. She wanted it to end. She glanced over her shoulder. “Your apartment or mine?”