CoyoteWhispers (11 page)

Chapter Five

Gordie jumped from Steve’s truck when he pulled up to the
curb in front of her childhood home. The place looked quiet, but a raw nerve
twitched deep in her belly. She wasn’t sure what it was but something felt
wrong. Very wrong. Her instincts screamed run but she was done with running
from Marcus and the fear he’d made her live with for months.

Steve stepped up beside her and grabbed her hand, entwining
their fingers. He waited without saying a word while the others pulled up one
car at a time and came to join them on the sidewalk. There wasn’t as much snow
on the ground here as there had been higher up the mountain at Steve’s place,
but there was enough to know nobody had walked up to the house from the street.

“Ready?” Steve gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out through her
mouth. “Yep. Let’s do this.”

They walked up the snow-covered path, their shoes sinking
into the iced-over top with ease. Gordie wore a pair of boots Steve had loaned
her, they were too big and her toes kept bashing into the steel-capped tips as
her feet slid forward with each step. She’d have bruises if she didn’t get out
of them soon. Good thing hers were on the other side of that door.

Gordie froze on the bottom step. She hadn’t even thought
about her purse, never mind her keys. “I don’t have—”

“Here.” Steve held her keys out in his hand.

“Oh. Thank you.” She gripped the key ring, reluctant to find
the right key to open the front door. What was that warning bell going off in
her head all about?”

“What’s wrong?” Dale had come up behind them.

She turned her head and saw everyone else waiting back on
the footpath. “I’m not sure.”

“Want me to go in first?” Dale asked.

Gordie tilted her head and looked up at the second floor
windows and stilled. There’s no way she’d left her bedroom window open. “Yes.”
She handed over the keys.

Steve turned her to face him. “I’ll go in with Dale. You go
wait with the others while we take a look inside, okay?”

She thought about taking the easy way out, just going over
and waiting for someone else to deal with whatever mischief Marcus had wrought
in her house, but she couldn’t do it. “No. I’m coming in with you.”

“Doc.”

“It’s my house, my problem.”

“Dale.” Steve turned to the other man. “Tell her to wait
outside.”

“Can’t. Technically this isn’t an official call, otherwise I
would.” Dale looked at Gordie. “But if I tell you to move you move, got it?”

She nodded. Gordie might be brave enough to go in with them,
but she wasn’t about to question the authority of a sheriff who’d spent years
on the mean streets of a big city.

“Right, let’s go then.” Dale walked to the door, key out.
“Both of you stay behind me.”

Steve shoved her behind him as they entered the house. The
stench hit her full in the face like a brick wall. It was worse than a litter
box. Gordie pinched her nose and breathed through her mouth until she got in
the rhythm of breathing through her mouth only. Puddles of yellow fluid lined
the walls and floor in the foyer and explained where the smell came from.

“Fuck.” Steve pulled her behind him into the living room. “I
take it you didn’t leave the place like that yesterday morning?”

“You take it right.” Gordie quickly scanned the room.
“There’s none in here.”

“No, it appears to just be in the entrance.” Dale strode
toward the dining area.

Gordie held tight to Steve’s hand as they followed the
sheriff through her house. There was another “marking of territory” section at
her back door but nothing else on the lower level appeared to have been
touched. At the stairs she took a deep breath through her mouth and tried to
calm the nerves jumping around inside her. She knew whatever they found
upstairs would be above and beyond the downstairs damage.

Kat’s childhood bedroom was trashed. The furniture had been
overturned and the bedding ripped from the bed. Gordie wanted to cry at the
sight of her sister’s prized collection of porcelain dolls—the clothes were in
tatters and their pretty, painted faces smashed to smithereens.

“Jesus.” Steve tugged on her hand. “Don’t touch anything.
Dale might be able to get fingerprints.”

“I’ll want photos too before you move anything, Gordie,”
Dale said.

She nodded and spun on her heel to leave the room but
stopped when she saw the wall behind her. Gordie’s chest ached when all the air
was sucked from her lungs. Painted on the wall, in crude preschool skill, was a
coyote, his eyes glowed un-naturally yellow, saliva dripped from its jaws and
clamped between wicked-looking teeth was a cat. It didn’t take a genius to work
out what the message was.

“Get her off the street.” Gordie took off at a run, a scream
tearing from her throat. “
Kat!
”

“Gordie, wait.”

She could hear Steve’s boots hitting the hardwood flooring
as he raced after her, but she couldn’t stop. Had to reach Kat before anything
happened. Her feet slid in the borrowed boots and she stumbled on the
staircase. A hand gripped her forearm, fingers dug into her soft flesh and sent
shards of pain slicing through her elbow and wrist. Gordie felt herself spin
midair, her footing gone from underneath her completely but instead of landing
on hard, wooden treads she slammed into the hot, hard wall of Steve’s chest.

He held her close and they went down together. His body
cushioned their fall and air expelled from his lungs as his back hit the stairs
with a thud. Steve groaned in pain and Gordie had visions of snapping vertebrae
before her breasts crushed against his ribs, sucking all breath from her. The
front door burst open beneath them. Footfalls pounded the stairs above and
below them, but she couldn’t get past the look of agony on Steve’s face.

Stars danced in her vision and pain lanced her chest. Gordie
tried to suck in air, tried to move her arms and legs to get off him but
nothing wanted to work properly. Her ears filled with a strange humming sound
that she tried to shake loose but it didn’t stop. Finally her lungs worked,
lifesaving oxygen flowed through her veins bringing with it vital feeling and
function.

She planted her hands on the step beside Steve’s shoulders
and pushed to lift her weight off him. He still hadn’t spoken and the color of
his skin was making her feel sick. She scrambled up, moved to the side and
began to check his limbs for breakage.

“Where does it hurt? Can you feel your toes? Talk to me,
Steve.” She rambled on as she cleared one section after another of any injury.

Steve tried to say something and she bent forward to listen
but couldn’t make out the words. She checked his pupils. Both reacted normally
and Gordie breathed a sigh of relief that he didn’t appear to have banged his
head in the fall. His color was returning along with a harsh breath he dragged
in through clenched teeth.

“Don’t try to move. Let me check the rest of you.” Gordie
ran her hands under his head and another sigh left her chest when she found no
lumps.

“Okay,” he panted. “Catch. Breath.”

“What?”

“Winded.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“Okay, everyone back, give him room.” She thrust out her
hands to ward everyone off without taking her eyes off Steve’s.

“I’m okay, Doc. You can relax now.”

Relax?
They just tumbled down half a flight of stairs
and he wanted her to relax? “Not going to happen until you get up and walk and
talk normally.”

“Give me a second.”

“Here, let me help you sit.” Dale spoke from above them.

Dale shoved his hands under Steve’s shoulders and lifted.
Steve groaned but didn’t change color or faint. That was a win as far as she
was concerned. Gordie moved aside and helped him sit with an arm around his
waist. He leaned in against her and she pushed back to keep them both from
falling into everyone crammed onto the steps below them.

“What happened? Why were you screaming my name at the top of
your lungs?” Kat asked.

Oh God. She’d forgotten about that. Gordie looked at her
sister but couldn’t come up with the words to explain.

“You old room is trashed and there’s a nasty message on one
of the walls,” Dale told everyone.

Kat raised one eyebrow. “Really? What about the rest of the
house?”

“Downstairs is clean except for the piss at the front and
back doors. We only got as far as your room when Gordie panicked about you
being out on the street.”

“Let’s check the rest of the house,” Brogan said.

“Not without me you’re not.” Steve tried to stand.

“Hey, you can’t get up yet.” Gordie tightened her arm around
him but only succeeded in getting pulled to her feet with him. “Okay, you can.”

“I told you I was fine, just had the wind knocked out of
me,” he reassured her.

“At least let me check you over first.”

“The only thing you’re going to find is a few bruises.
Honestly, Doc, I’m fine.”

She wanted to believe him with every fiber of her being but
her heart and her mind wanted proof before he did anything. Gordie checked his
eyes again and found no change, just that penetrating gaze of his. He seemed all
right so she conceded, but she’d be watching him closely for a while.

“Okay, but any dizziness or numbness or pain you tell me
straight away.”

“Yes, Doc.” He grinned and leaned down to drop a kiss on her
mouth. “Thank you for caring.”

Gordie’s cheeks burned. Everyone stood around them and even
though they all knew she and Steve were together now she couldn’t help the
blush that stole over her skin.

Dale cleared his throat. “Let’s get the rest of the upstairs
looked at and then I can take some photos and dust for fingerprints.”

“What good will that do? It’s not like we don’t know who’s
behind it,” Kat said.

“We might know but we need proof because this time he’s not
getting exiled. I want him locked up,” Dale said.

“How will you manage that seeing how he’s not human?” El
asked from over Brogan’s shoulder.

“There are some jails that are shifter friendly.” Dale
grinned.

“So some humans know about shifters?”

“No, but there are shifters who live among humans and a few
are in the correctional services so we have options when it comes to shifters
who break the law. In the old days we’d have had to kill them,” Dale explained.

“Oh.” El wrapped her arms around Brogan’s waist. “That’s
just horrible.”

“It’s the way it was, but there’s been a lot of changes over
the years and being able to lock up criminals whether they’re human or not is
just one of them.” Dale turned and headed back up the stairs.

Gordie kept her arm around Steve’s waist and walked beside
him. He didn’t need her support to stay upright but she needed to feel his
warmth to reminder her he was fine.

Steve let Doc hold him steady. He could walk without her
help but after seeing her trip on the stairs and the vision of her hitting
bottom that had splashed across his mind in the split second before he’d caught
her made him need her touch. She tucked nicely under his arm and he enjoyed the
feel of her beside him.

They stopped at the door to Kat’s room and everyone took a
look inside. Kat whistled and then turned a shade lighter when she got a good
look at the painting. She studied it for ages, stepped closer and touched the
paint.

“It’s dry and if I’m right it’s paint like the sort we used
in art class back in high school,” Kat told them.

Doc reached out a hand and he let her go so the two sisters
could hug. It was a brief squeeze and he soon found Doc cuddled back into his
side.

“Okay, let’s keep going,” Doc said.

The bathroom was undisturbed, the tiled expanse clean and
tidy. Steve and Doc followed Dale as he made his way along the hallway. Another
door revealed a spare room furnished as a home office. This room looked worse
than Kat’s bedroom.

“Damn. That’s a lot of paperwork,” Quinn said.

“Yeah, it’s the DNA records for my research on the coyote
gene. It’s not the first time I’ve found my papers trashed like this but at
least it won’t set me back months like the first time,” Doc said.

“No? Why not?” Steve asked.

“I started keeping a computer record after the first
break-in.” Dale held up a shattered piece of her hard drive. “And I keep a copy
of all my files at an offsite file storage company so my research is safe.”

“Good. I doubt there’s anything in here you can salvage,”
Dale said.

There were two rooms left and Steve turned to Doc. “Which
one?”

“Mom and Dad’s first. I have no doubt mine will be the worst
so we’ll save it for last.”

Doctor and Mrs. Monroe’s room was untouched. Like the
bathroom not one thing had been moved, it was like the Monroes had gotten up
this morning instead of months ago when they’d taken off on their latest
cross-country adventure.

“Anyone else find it bizarre that this room is untouched?”
Quinn asked.

“No. Downstairs is the same.” Dale turned to leave the room.
“He’s not wasting energy on what won’t get a reaction.”

Damn, Dale was right. Everything that had been trashed
caused an emotional reaction. Marcus was playing mind games with them. It
wasn’t just about fear either, the way he’d smashed Kat’s doll collection held
anger but was designed to provoke pain. And the painting, well that had
everything to do with menacing Doc. He wanted her to worry about her sister, to
fear for her well-being and the dolls played into that too. In his twisted way
Marcus was letting Doc know he’d hurt her sister next.

Kat stood next to Dale as he opened the door to Doc’s
bedroom. All color drained from her face and she swayed.

“Dale.” Steve broke his hold on Doc and lunged for her
sister but Dale spun in time to catch her and lower her to the floor.