Dogfight (Alpha MC: The McKinnon Brothers Book 1) (7 page)

Aidan met Connor’s eyes before pulling out his large phone and bending his head over it.

Ronan stood with his thumbs in his belt loops. Though he hadn’t ridden, his wore leather chaps over his jeans, boots, and a leather vest over a plain gray tee shirt, old tattoos snaked up his arms. Their patch was simple; a howling wolf. They didn’t have three-piece patches because they weren’t in the politics of MCs, as Casey had guessed, it was just a cover for their pack. Though she didn’t know they were a pack. The howling wolf adorned the back of all the riders’ jackets and vests, whatever they wore while they rode.

Connor’s leather vest was in his apartment, waiting for him to return to it.

He greeted Ronan with a respectful embrace. The old man’s hold was strong.

“Who’s the woman?” His icy blue eyes watched Casey where she stared at them out the back window.

“Favor for Frankie.”

Ronan’s eyes met Connor’s. He did his best to keep himself calm. Ronan would pick up on any lies. Not that he would lie to an alpha. He valued his life too much.

“This is a job, Connor,” Ronan said, turning his gaze on the riders as they finished with the tire. “You’re not here to mess around with Frankie’s mate.”

“I’m not—”

Ronan’s hard look cut him off. “Do I look like a fool?”

Connor could have kicked himself. He’d just had his fingers inside Casey, wiped them on his jeans, there was no way Ronan and the others couldn’t smell her on him. He felt his face warm.

He bowed his head in apology.

The riders finished. Ronan clapped a hand on Connor’s shoulder, the squeeze painful enough to buckle Connor’s knees.

“Finish the job and get home. We’ll discuss punishment for you lack of control when you return.”

He left Connor standing on the side of the highway, his skin icy under the hot sun. Finding his legs, he walked Aidan back to his bike. Emmett was close, so they didn’t speak openly.

Aidan tucked his phone into his pocket and put his sunglasses back on.

“I’ll be in touch,” Aidan said. They embraced, and Aidan climbed back on his bike.

Connor stepped back as the four bikes roared to life, cutting into traffic with the help of the large van. He watched them go, a shiver of apprehension rippling over his shoulders as he thought about how he was going to be punished.

God damn woman. God damn him. He’d have to be more careful around her. No more getting too close. She was Frankie’s problem and not part of Connor’s job.

He climbed in the car, the cool air shocking him.

“Everything okay?” Her voice was loud in the silence.

Connor didn’t answer. He put the car in drive and eased into the traffic.

“No more talking,” he said as he sped up. He needed to get some miles behind them if they were going to make Frankie’s by nightfall. The sooner he got there and proved that Frankie was a heartless dogfighter, the sooner he could kill him and go home.

And face the alphas.

Chapter Sixteen

Casey watched Connor from the corner of her eye. She didn’t dare speak after he’d declared they talk no more. He seemed in a foul mood, and she didn’t want to give him a reason to touch her again.

She could still feel him inside her, the pressure of his fingers, the weight of him over her. She licked her lips, pulling her knees up in an attempt to stop the heat from pooling low in her belly.

Why had she responded like that? She didn’t like rough sex, never had, but when Connor pinned her, all caution had gone out the window. She’d let him do that to her, and, what made her sick was she wanted him to do it again.

Casey wasn’t a prude; she used sex as a way to get close to people during a job, a way to distract them from her real intentions. Nor was she into girlish fantasies. Sex and love were two separate things, and her response to Connor was purely sexual. He was fucking gorgeous, and dangerous, and those two together brought out some animalistic desire in her. Easily forgotten. At least, that’s what she told herself.

And she knew he was right; if Frankie was going to use sex as a way of interrogation, it was going to hurt. She would handle it; she could handle anything, even rough sex with Frankie Sway, as long as she didn’t end up dead.

What she was beginning to think she couldn’t handle, was being in this car much longer with Connor McKinnon.

He smelled too good, distracted her. She needed to focus, needed to remember that she hated him; that he was in the way. If she was going to convince Frankie she was there for him—until she got his dogs out of there anyway—she needed to get Connor off her mind.

Another two hours passed and Casey was bored as hell. She’d spent enough time as the docile Jenny Cartwright, quiet and unassuming. She didn’t feel like being her anymore, but she had to, she reminded herself. They would be at Frankie’s soon, and she was supposed to be a swooning mess, all over that murdering bastard. She was so close to finishing this mission and there was a very real chance that it could all go so wrong so quickly.

“Was that Aidan?” she said, startling him.

“What?” he snapped.

She wasn’t deterred. She was bored. “The one with the glasses, that was Aidan, right?”

He grunted.

“He’s cute. Doesn’t look like a guy who’d be into hacking.”

He kept his eyes on the road.

“Did you tell him how much info I found on you?” She grinned when he pressed his lips together. “If it makes you feel better, I’m a really good hacker. Had to bypass some walls to find what I did.”

He only stared ahead, mouth set, grip hard on the wheel.

She sighed. “This is going to be a long trip if you don’t talk to me.”

“You could stop talking.”

“Not likely.”

He turned to her, his eyes full of anger and heat. She felt her lower belly clench in response to those eyes. And then his look changed, became curious. “Hungry?”

“Starving.”

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the car, the A/C blasting, paper bags of food open in their laps. Casey swallowed a bite of salad, watching Connor devour a cheeseburger.

“Meat’s not actually good for you, despite what we’re told,” she said.

“No?” he said, but seemed utterly uninterested. He stuffed a few fries in his mouth. Casey felt her stomach clench when his tongue darted out, licking the salt off his lips.

“I don’t eat meat, but not because it’s bad for me. Well that, too, but I don’t kill. Not even for food.”

“Very noble of you.” He took a bite of burger, the grease dripping down his chin. She had the crazy urge to lick it off.

“We don’t need meat to survive, you know. You can live off other forms of protein.”

“I like meat.”

“I don’t. I can’t look at a burger and not think about the cow it was.”

He finished his burger and turned those mesmerizing eyes on her. He stared at her for a moment, and then his mouth quirked up at the corners.

“Me and my family are big meat eaters. Can’t live without it.”

“Yes you could.”

“We really couldn’t.” The way he said it, the earnestness in his voice, it sent a shiver of unease through her. There was something in his eyes, something sad and buried, and it shut her up about eating meat.

While Connor eased back into the slowing afternoon traffic, Casey reached back into her bag and pulled out her handheld. It was lucky she’d been keeping it in her bag; otherwise she doubted Connor would have grabbed it.

She woke the device, a cross between a mini laptop and a tablet, but much more advanced, and opened a new search. Connor, old fogie that he was, paid her no attention; probably assuming this was a handheld video game. He must have told Aidan about her ease at finding out about them; much of the information she had found earlier was gone, wiped somehow from the Internet. She was very interested in meeting this Aidan McKinnon.

Her general search about Alphas, the name of their MC, brought up articles about an old TV show, a website for the MC with very little information, and wolves.

She bit her lip, her brow furrowing. She narrowed the search to wolves and alphas. There were links for information about the animals. Something was gnawing at her. She felt like she was on the right track, but she had no idea what she was looking for.

Connor yawned; his teeth bright white and flat; normal teeth. His canines didn’t look that sharp. She touched her collarbone, remembering the sharp pain when he’d bitten her.

For shits and giggles, a term her father used to be quite fond of, she searched for information on werewolves. Most of the stuff available to the general public was ridicules nonsense. But she could access the kind of information that was normally given to high-level government workers.

It took a lot of digging, bypassing so much security, and a few passwords she overrode with her own algorithm. And she found nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Casey bit her lip, staring at the blinking cursor in the search bar. He was keeping something from her. Something to do with his teeth, with wolves… She searched “werewolf sightings.” And she found it.

The sun was low, shining through the windshield, hot on her face. The A/C chilled her skin. She felt herself go cold.

Casey stared at the grainy image on her screen. She’d found a story from the sixties; one of those supermarket rags, the kind people laughed at while waiting to buy that night’s dinner. There was no more information about it on the Internet, but with everything Connor had said about needing meat, with his teeth getting sharp and then not, she had the horrible feeling that this was one story that wasn’t fake.

She stared at the picture, a grainy image taken on the edge of the woods, of a man with a huge handlebar mustache and beard, in the middle of turning into a wolf. If she hadn’t seen Connor’s president just a couple of hours ago, she could have laughed off this photo and the accompanying story. But she had seen Connor’s president, and there was no mistaking him, even if this picture had been taken years ago, before Connor was born, before there was an MC.

Ronan O’Neill was a werewolf. Which meant Connor’s entire family were werewolves. A pack.

Her hands shook.

“You okay?”

Casey jumped, meeting those intense eyes. She nodded, her heart racing, and turned off her device. Could he hear her heartbeat? Smell her fear? If he could, he wasn’t showing any sign.

She took deep, calming breaths. No. It wasn’t true. It was just a doctored photo. It if had been real it wouldn’t have ended up in that cheap magazine. The government would be all over it, scientists would be clamoring to do tests and find out all that they could. There was no more truth to that story than there were to stories about Bigfoot and the Boogeyman. The man in it just happened to look like Connor’s MC president. He was human. His family was human. There was nothing to be afraid of.

And then they turned off the highway. Frankie’s farm was getting close. There was plenty to be afraid of.

Chapter Seventeen

Connor breathed a sigh of relief as Frankie’s farm loomed up out of the dense tree line. They had been driving on his property for twenty minutes, following a winding road past an orchard, horse stables with larger than life horses grazing serenely nearby, and then a huge pond when he finally saw the big, white house in the distance.

Casey, for whatever reason, had been silent since they ate. He wondered if she had come up with a plan on how to best convince Frankie of her undying love. But it didn’t matter, they were here, and Connor didn’t care. She wasn’t his problem anymore.

He parked the car and trailer in front of the house. A wide porch wrapped around the first floor, tall windows stood open to a warm summer breeze, and a wreath of flowers adorned the front door. It looked like a perfect, peaceful farmhouse, but Connor knew the horror that it contained would be concealed somewhere beyond this picturesque sight.

“Let’s go,” he said, reaching for his seatbelt. Casey jumped as if he was going to beat her. She finally looked scared. “I’m not gonna drag you inside. Frankie’ll be waiting,” he said and climbed out.

He had no doubt that Casey wanted to run, but she wouldn’t get far and running would make her look guilty, so he went around to the trailer and began unhitching it.

Victor came around the side of the house, his hulking frame donning a black, canvas jacket, and thick, leather gloves. Apprehension slid into Connor’s stomach. He watched Casey step out of the car, her legs a bit shaky, her heart racing too fast. She needed to calm down if she was going to put on a good show.

“Frankie’s waiting for you both. Leave the bike here.” Victor turned and headed back the way he came, obviously expecting them to follow.

Casey hesitated, her bright eyes wide. Connor stepped toward her, and she flinched, backing away. He understood why she would be scared right now, but not of him.

“Ladies first,” he said.

Her big eyes turned in his direction and he saw the fear that she was trying so hard to mask. Not fear of Frankie and the death she might meet at the hands of a psychopath, that was there, but she had fight in her for that battle. It was fear of him, of Connor. He could think of only one reason she would be that afraid of him, but how would she have found out?

And then he remembered that thing she’d been playing with in the car. Maybe it wasn’t a video game after all.

With a blink, she hurried ahead of him. They rounded the house, followed a path through high, flowering hedges, through a privacy fence, and into a large, enclosed area that included a long stable and huge barn.

Victor led them into the barn. In the middle there was a low wall, and inside, two dogs were viciously attacking a weaker, slightly smaller dog.

Connor steeled himself, watching as though it interested him. Frankie cracked a belt at the dogs whenever they started to ease up on the third.

He heard Casey’s quick intake of breath, but he was the only to hear it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the horror in her eyes, the sickness and shock. He moved, stepping in front of her, blocking her from Frankie’s view. Why he did it, he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was because he was feeling the same way, and could hide it, but wanted to rage and rip Frankie apart.  Perhaps it was because he needed to find out what she knew about him, how she found it. Perhaps it was because she might know his secret, and that in itself was an odd feeling. No one knew about him, no human anyway, and it gave him a strange sense of detachment from his pack, one that he sort of liked, and feared.

Frankie glanced in their direction, his dark eyes unreadable in the blood red light from the setting sun. Connor nodded in greeting. Frankie returned the nod, then gave his attention back to the dogs.

He whipped the belt at them, catching one of the dogs on its back. It yelped, snarled, and went for the kill.

It was over in a matter of minutes. The two fighting dogs stood panting over the corpse of the smaller dog, blood in their mouths. Connor kept his face impassive, all the while fighting the bile rising in his throat.

This was it, the evidence he needed to take Frankie and his whole crew out. He should do it now. Shift and kill them all. He could even command the dogs to help him if he wanted.

His heart beat too hard in his chest.
Now is the moment, Connor,
he thought.

But he hesitated, and he knew why.

Casey stood behind him, shaking. He turned, catching the fear in her eyes. He wanted to reach out and comfort her. But since he was a large part of the reason for her fear, he kept his hands at his sides.

As Frankie came toward them, Connor spoke quietly so only she could hear.

“You’re on, Casey.”

She stared up at him for a moment longer with those bright, pretty eyes, and then she straightened her shoulders, smiled, and though he could still sense her fear, she opened her arms to Frankie.

Connor stepped out of the way as she sauntered over, letting Frankie wrap his arms around her, kissing her. She was good, he had to give it to her. She kissed him as though he were the only man in the world that she wanted.

He bit the inside of his cheek and watched Casey rub herself against Frankie’s groin, Frankie’s hands grabbing her ass and lifting her.

Connor looked away.

Victor watched with interest and a hard on. There were four others in Frankie’s crew there. Two took the fighters out of the barn, while another disposed of the dead dog.

He knew what the alphas would say. No one outside the family knew about them. They married other shifters, were homeschooled by shifters, and grew up surrounded by shifters. There was no place in the world for anyone who wasn’t a shifter to know about them. Not that she definitely knew about him. He only guessed that she did.

Frankie surfaced, his dark eyes peering down into Casey’s light ones. He was also good at playing a part, Connor thought, as Frankie smiled. He glanced at Connor.

“Dinner’s in thirty minutes. Why don’t you go settle in, any room on the second floor is fine, and meet us behind the house?”

Connor nodded. “Your bike?”

Frankie wrapped an arm around Casey’s waist and led her toward the house. “My men will unload it. The parts will be here tomorrow.”

Connor watched him and Casey disappear through the fence. So Frankie was going to play it cool, wait to see if one of them slipped up. He could sense the suspicion in Frankie, smell the anger, but the man did nothing. Frankie was going to let this play out.

Connor smelled sweat and onions a moment before he felt the heavy form of Victor loom behind him.

“Luis, Gio, get the bike,” the big man barked.

Connor turned, nodding at him. He only glared in return. Two of the men hurried off, and Connor followed.

When he got to the car, Luis and Gio had already taken the bike off the trailer and were pushing it into a detached garage. Connor grabbed his things, left his car where it was, and headed into the house. Frankie sure went all out with this whole farmhouse thing.

Flowery upholstery on the couches and chairs, a huge wooden table in the dining room, creaky stairs leading up the second floor. There were four bedrooms, none occupied, so he took the one at the end of the hall, out of the way. His room was simple; large bed, old dresser, wooden trunk filled with extra blankets. It felt too much like the birthing room at home, but it had a view of the stable and barn out back. He could also see a table and chairs in a smaller area with lights strung around it. He assumed that’s where they would be having dinner.

Pausing a moment, Connor let the house settle around him, taking in the scent of apples, mint, and horse on the cool breeze, the feel of the branches scratching the siding, the pulse of the dogs outside.

And then he felt something else; a steady, panicked heartbeat. It came from overhead.

The heartbeat moved across the upstairs hall and down the stairs. She was running. He could let her. She meant nothing to him. She would actually be better off if she could get away. And, if they caught her, she’d be out of his life for good and he could get on with his job.

But, bastard that he was, he went into the hall to intercept her.

Chapter Eighteen

Casey paced in the room Frankie had left her in. He’d given her a long, sensuous kiss, one she tried hard to return, even though she wanted to throw up in his mouth. She had fully expected him to start his interrogation right then and there, but then he’d told her to freshen up and meet him outside for dinner.

The room was huge with pale gray walls and black silk sheets. It took up the entire third floor, and was adorned with an enormous bed, master bath, a sitting area, and a massage table.

She paced the room, staring out each window in turn, until she reached those that looked out back, on the barn.

There was no telling the horror inside from here, but she knew. And she had to get out. She had never seen one of the dogs killed before. Mariam had shown her pictures, and she had looked up plenty, but she had never been there to witness the carnage.

And she never wanted to see it again.

What the hell was she thinking? She couldn’t go up against someone like Frankie Sway. Didn’t Mariam tell her that before she went in as Jenny Cartwright? And now she was stuck here with a man who suspected her of hacking his computer and had just casually watched a dog get brutally murdered.

The sun finally set, blanketing the house and yard in velvety darkness. The only light came from the moon, stars, and the lights inside. She was going, that was it. Connor could take the fall, or tell Frankie it had been her, she didn’t care. She couldn’t stay here another minute. She and Mariam could come back for the dogs together. No, fuck that. They could call the police and report the bastard.

Grabbing her bag, Casey crept quickly from the room and down the stairs. She could walk to the edge of the property, hitchhike for a ride, and then head for Maine.

She was at the top of the landing on the second floor, about to head down to the main floor, when an arm snaked around her waist, pinning her against a hard body, and a hand clamped over her mouth. She knew that hand, that body, and her fear only increased.

She fought hard as he carried her back upstairs to her room. He shut the door, leaning against it, with Casey still held tight in his arms.

“Enough,” he growled into her ear. She understood now why his growl had sounded so animalistic; it wasn’t human. “You know what I am?” he whispered.

She hesitated. She could deny it; he wouldn’t know the truth.

“Casey…” his voice in her ear sent shivers down her spine, whether fear or something else she couldn’t tell.

She nodded.

“Then you know what I can do to you if you try to scream?”

She swallowed hard.

“I’m not going to hurt you unless you give me a reason.”

She nodded again. He moved his hand.

“How do you know?”

She knew what he meant and spoke quietly, afraid to make him angry. “Internet. Old story on Ronan. There was a picture.”

He sighed hard through his nose.

Slowly, he released her. Once free, she stumbled away from him, farther into the room. She had no doubt that if she even opened her mouth to scream, he would silence her. And honestly, did she expect help from Frankie and his crew?

No, she could use Connor to help her get away, couldn’t she? Or was she so expendable?

“Good girl,” he smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes. He glanced at her bag. “Where you headed?”

She shrugged. No use pretending with him. “I’m rethinking this whole mission. Doesn’t feel very safe anymore.”

“Because of me or Frankie?”

She stared at him, her eyes locked with his. Her knees only shook a little. “Both.”

He nodded. She had never truly appreciated how big he was. He wasn’t overwhelmingly tall, but he was wide and muscular, his shoulders and neck like a boxer’s. And to know that that body contained the kind of power a werewolf must possess was terrifying.

“You can’t leave,” he said simply, meeting her eyes with his cold ones.