Beneath a Darkening Moon (34 page)

“Then what does it matter?”

It didn’t matter, because the hunger in the other woman’s eyes, the sudden sharpness of her breathing, gave Savannah the answer. This was bloodlust. She squeezed her hand, making the blood run faster.

“Imagine it,” she continued softly. “Your home until you die will be ten feet of concrete and bars. No wind to ruffle your coat. No sunlight to warm your skin. No earth under your paws.”

She paused again. The hunger was sharper, Candy’s expression more avid, more haunted.

“No prey to hunt and bring down. No flesh to rend. No blood to lap, fresh and warm from the body.” That last bit was a guess, but a fairly safe one. Candy had to be the one doing that, since it was the only real difference from the Rosehall murders.

But how had she known all the details in the first place? Whether or not she was Jontee’s kid, she hadn’t been at Rosehall. So who told her?
Was
Nelle involved?

A growl rumbled up Candy’s throat. “I’d rather be dead.”

“That can be arranged.”

Candy snarled, but the hunger in her eyes was giving way to desperation. “You wouldn’t. You were always such a Goody Two-shoes.”

Savannah raised an eyebrow and raised her hand, so that Candy could see the drops of blood falling from her palm. The other woman’s gaze followed it avidly, her mouth open, her breath little more than savage pants. Savannah reached out telepathically. The shields were still there, still impossibly strong.

Blood wasn’t going to be enough. She was going to need help with this.

“And how would you know something like that?” she asked, at the same time reaching out mentally to her sister.
Neva?

Still here at the mansion, and still bored shitless. What can I do for you?

Can’t explain why, but I need to siphon your psychic abilities
. Neva had extremely strong empathic skills, and when combined with the pack’s naturally strong
telepathic skills, it was a formidable weapon—one that had saved both their lives in the past.

Sure. Can I help?

No. I’m questioning a suspect, and I want you out of it in case it goes belly-up
.

You’re as overprotective as my damn mate
.

Hey, I want to be there when my nephews or nieces are born. I don’t want it to happen early through overexertion
.

No chance of that
, Neva grumbled.
I can’t even take a walk without someone in this damn place fussing over me
. She hesitated.
Okay. I’m comfortable. Take what you need
.

Thanks, Sis
. She reached deeper, forming a connection. Just for an instant, she felt other energies; bright, shiny, and new energies, bursting with life and curiosity. The babies, she realized with a sense of wonder, but shut
that
part of the connection down quickly. There was no way on this earth she was going to endanger them in
any
way. She studied Candy for a moment longer, then she said, “You and I have never met before yesterday, and you haven’t been in Ripple Creek that long. So why would you think I’m such a Goody Two-shoes—especially since you know I was at Rosehall?”

Candy flashed a bloody smile. “Rosehall was a long time ago, ranger. And I hear things.”

“From whom?” She raised her hand and slowly licked at the blood dripping from her palm. She’d never enjoyed the taste of blood, which is why she avoided hunting in wolf form. But she’d sucked at cuts to clean them enough times not to blanch at the taste now.

Candy’s nostrils flared, and the craving in her eyes became fierce. The hunger in the air became a fire of need that burned across Savannah’s borrowed empathic senses, like the electricity touching the air before a storm.

She reached out empathetically, just enough to gather the emotions burning through the air and thrust them Candy’s way—soaking her, drowning her, in her own passions and fears. And under the flood, Candy’s shields began to weaken. They were still extremely strong, but this was definitely working.

She raised her hand again. “Smell the blood, Candy. Smell the richness of it. Imagine never being able to taste it again.”

The other woman snarled, her form wavering, changing to something more than human but less than wolf. The proximity of the silver was preventing the full change. Savannah just hoped that it would also prevent Candy from breaking out, because if that happened, she’d be dead meat.

Now
, Cade said, even as she gathered her psychic forces.

She hit the other wolf as hard as she could. Hit her with not only the emotions that burned through the air, but also her own. She reached deep within herself, gathering all the anger and all the horror that had been building since that first murder, weeks ago. She gathered, too, the soul-deep loneliness that had haunted her since Rosehall—a loneliness that had been buried so deep it had only come out in her dreams. She mixed it with the despair that burned in her now—a secret despair born of the fear that her time with Cade was at an end. All of that she flung at Candy, and the
force of the emotive blow hit like a punch to the chin, smashing Candy backward, making her stagger and gasp as her head cracked hard against the rear of the cell. In that precise moment of confusion and dazedness, Savannah raided Candy’s mind.

And learned that the woman Candy reported to, the woman who was the brains behind it all was her mother, Jina Hawkins.

Only Jina Hawkins was the woman she knew as Anni Hawkins.

“I
T DOESN
’
T MAKE
any sense,” Savannah said, slamming the door behind her as she walked to the window. She shoved her hands into her pockets, her expression dark but eyes distant as she continued, “If Anni is behind these attacks, why wait six months? Why not just kill me and get it over with?”

Cade shrugged as he sat down on one of the visitor chairs. “She wants my death as much as yours.”

“So what’s wrong with one at a time?”

“Nothing, but it’s easier if we’re both in the same place. And think about it—the first thing we did when we got here was locate and talk to everyone who was new to Ripple Creek. Maybe she was aware of procedure and wanted to cement her place before she did anything.”

“It’s possible, I guess.”

He studied her for a moment, seeing the tension in her and wondering if its sole cause was the knowledge that she’d lived above a crazed killer for six months. He had a feeling it wasn’t. He’d felt the power of her assault on Candy, and he knew its source wasn’t just a reflection of Candy’s hunger for blood and her terror
of being contained in a small space. Much of the fear in that assault had been Vannah’s. And the source of her fear was
his
fault, because he kept throwing hints at what he wanted, but he wouldn’t really talk to her. Wouldn’t confirm what he was feeling, or where he thought their future might lie. And not really knowing or understanding those things himself was no excuse.

Or was that just another excuse?

“At least it explains how Candy spotted you that night at the club.”

She nodded. “Anni was in the shop, so it’s possible she saw me leave for the club in my disguise.”

“And couldn’t Anni be Nelle? It’s been ten years since you’ve seen her. That’s time enough for someone to change beyond recognition.”

Vannah shook her head. “Nelle was a couple of inches taller.”

“Time stoops us all, and Nelle would be over fifty by now.”

She glanced at him, amusement sparking briefly in her shadowed green eyes. “Fifty isn’t old for a wolf, you know that. Besides, the whole shape of her face is wrong. Anni isn’t Nelle.”

As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, he had to trust Vannah’s judgment. Besides, he’d had a brief glimpse of Anni after the note had been left on Vannah’s windshield, and he had to agree—there was little resemblance to Nelle. “Then that leaves us with no connection between her and Rosehall, other than the psychic one Candy mentioned.” He hesitated. “Did Jontee ever mention his past when you were with him?”

The words tasted bitter on his tongue even as he said them. It had all happened ten years ago, and yet he still couldn’t get past the hurt, the anger. Was it just his pride? Or was it the acidic taste of knowing that he’d never been good enough to hold her solely to himself?

Was that same fear stopping him from doing the right thing now?

Probably
, he thought wearily. And it was wrong. Yes, he’d been hurt, but so had she. Too much had been left unsaid between them, and history was repeating itself. Unless he did something about it, he stood the chance of losing her all over again.

He couldn’t face that a second time. He had to do something
now
rather than wait until after this mess was cleaned up. If he died, then at least she’d know how he really felt—the confusion, the fear, and the desperate, driving need to hold her all to himself. Now and forever.

He stood abruptly, unable to sit still, unwilling to think more than necessary. Thinking had always gotten him into trouble when it came to the emotional stuff, which is why he tended to steer away from it. But this—Vannah—was far too important.

“I mean,” he continued, “you were with him for quite a while. Surely you learned a little something about him.”

She crossed her arms and shook her head. “He rarely spoke about where he came from. I didn’t even know he’d come from the Merron reservation.”

He walked across the room and stood beside her, his arm brushing hers lightly and somehow intimately. Heat flowed between them, warming his skin,
warming his soul. “So he never even mentioned that he had a daughter?”

“No.” She hesitated. “Although he did say something weird at breakfast one morning—that there were people who would put things right if all this went to hell.”

By murdering all those responsible for Rosehall’s downfall? Was Jina or Anni or whatever the hell her name really was as crazy as he’d been? “And when was this?”

“A few weeks before you arrived.” She paused again. “It was about that time I began to notice a darkness in him. A frustration. I know it sounds clichéd, but it was as if the Jontee I knew and cared for was gradually being swallowed by that darkness.”

“Maybe some part of him hated what he was doing.”

She glanced at him, amusement glittering briefly in her eyes. “That’s the first almost nice thing I’ve heard you say about him.”

He grimaced. “No one is ever a complete monster.” And if Jontee had been, Vannah wouldn’t have gone near him. He was sure of that, if nothing else. “He didn’t say anything else about it after that?”

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t be drawn out. He was like a kid with a naughty secret. He just kept saying that
she
knew what was going on and would make it right in the end.”

“And he never said who this person was?”

“No. I did ask but he refused to say anything else, except that she was his fail-safe.”

Cade grunted. “That almost suggests that he knew I was coming to Rosehall.”

“Well, he certainly seemed on edge those last few weeks, and it wasn’t just the growing darkness in him. Maybe he
did
know. As I said, he had an otherworldly quality about him.”

She leaned into him, wrapping him in heat and her erotic, sensual aroma. His reaction was instant and intense, his erection pressing painfully against the fly of his jeans. The pain was made fiercer by the knowledge that he couldn’t do anything here. Or even in the near future. So he contented himself with wrapping an arm around her shoulder and drawing her even closer.

And it felt so good, so right, that he almost wished they could just stay here, right in this office, keeping the world at bay as they concentrated on themselves.

Just for a little while.

“Did Jontee have many visitors while he was locked up?” she continued, after what seemed like a long, contented sigh. “Maybe Anni was one of them.”

“Besides his lawyers, he only had two other visitors, and neither were women.”

“What about phone calls?”

“Only from his defense team.” He frowned, remembering the trial, trying to recall the faces. But the only one he’d been concentrating on was Jontee, and to a lesser extent, his lawyer. Watching their reactions, listening to their thoughts. Everything else—every
one
else—was a blur.

“Do you have your investigation notes here?” she asked.

“On the computer in my room.”

“Then why don’t we get over there and check them out?”

“Because I know what’s in those notes. I’ve been studying them since the first murder.”

“All this time you were convinced that Nelle was behind these murders. Maybe that certainty caused you to miss other clues.”

He opened his mouth to refute her statement, but closed it. Maybe he
had
missed something. He’d been so certain Nelle was involved that it was entirely possible he had overlooked some key point. And while Trista and Anton had studied those files as much as he had, they hadn’t been involved in the original investigation and would never know it as intimately as he did.

“Good point,” he said, and tightened his grip on her shoulders to stop her from moving. “But first, I have to do something.”