Ready to Were (3 page)

“I’m a little disappointed that you want to be a model, Essie,” Granny sighed. “You have brains and a mean right hook. Never thought you’d try to coast by with your looks.”

I gave Dwayne the
I’ll kill you if you tell her I’m an agent on a mission
look and thankfully he understood. While I hated that my granny thought I was shallow and jobless, it was far safer that she didn’t know why I was really here.

“Well, you know…I just need to make a few bucks, then get back to my life in the big city,” I mumbled. I was a sucky liar around my granny and she knew it.

“Hmmm,” she said, staring daggers at me.

“What?” I asked, not exactly making eye contact.

“Nothin’. I’m just lookin’,” she challenged.

“And what are you looking at?” I blew out an exasperated sigh and met her eyes. A challenge was a challenge and I
was
a Werewolf…

“A bald face little fibber girl,” she crowed. “Spill it or I’ll whoop your butt again.”

Dwayne quickly backed himself into a corner and slid his phone out of his pocket. That shit was going to video my ass kicking. I had several choices here…destroy Dwayne’s phone, elaborate on my lie or come clean. The only good option was the phone.

“Fine,” I snapped and sucked in a huge breath. The truth will set you free or result in a trip to the ER… “I’m an agent with the Council—a trained killer for WTF and I’m good at it. The fact that I’m a magnet for trouble has finally paid off. I’m down here to find out who in the hell is killing Werewolves before it blows up in our faces. I plan to find the perps and destroy them with my own hands or a gun, whichever will be most painful. Then I’m going to castrate Hank with a dull butter knife. I plan on a short vacation when I’m done before going back to Chicago.”

For the first time in my twenty-eight years on Earth, Granny was mute. It was all kinds of awesome.

“Can I come on the vacation?” Dwayne asked.

“Yes. Cat got your tongue, old woman?” I asked.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said almost inaudibly. “I suppose this shouldn’t surprise me. You are a female alpha bitch.”

“No,” I corrected her. “I’m a lone wolf who wants nothing to do with Pack politics. Ever.”

Granny sat her skinny bottom down on her plastic slipcovered floral couch and shook her head. “Ever is a long time, little girl. Well, I suppose I should tell you something now,” she said gravely and worried her bottom lip.

“Oh my god, are you sick?” I gasped. Introspective thought was way out of my granny’s normal behavior pattern. My stomach roiled. She was all I had left in the world and as much as I wanted to skin her alive, I loved her even more.

“Weres don’t get sick. It’s about your mamma and daddy. Sit down. And Dwayne, hand over your phone. If I find out you have loose lips, I’ll remove them,” she told my bestie.

I sat. Dwayne handed. I had thought I knew everything there was to know about my parents, but clearly I was mistaken. Hugely mistaken.

“You remember when I told you your mamma and daddy died in a car accident?”

“Yes,” I replied slowly. “You showed me the newspaper articles.”

“That’s right.” She nodded. “They did die in a car, but it wasn’t no accident.”

Movement was necessary or I thought I might throw up. I paced the room and tried to untangle my thoughts. It wasn’t like I’d even known my parents, but they were mine and now I felt cheated somehow. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. My heart pounded so loudly in my chest I was sure the neighbors could hear it. My parents were murdered and this was the first time I was hearing about it?

“Again. Say that again.” Surely I’d misunderstood. I’d always been one to jump to conclusions my entire life, but the look on Granny’s face told me that this wasn’t one of those times.

“They didn’t own a hardware store. Well, actually I think they did, but it was just a cover.”

“For what?” I asked, fairly sure I knew where this was going.

“They were WTF agents, child, and they were taken out,” she said and wrapped her skinny little arms around herself. “Broke my heart—still does.”

“And you never told me this? Why?” I demanded and got right up in her face.

“I don’t rightly know,” she said quietly. “I wanted you to grow up happy and not feel the need for revenge.”

She stroked my cheek the way she did when I was a child and I leaned into her hand for comfort. I was angry, but she did what she thought was right. Needless to say, she wasn’t right, but…

“Wait, why would I have felt the need for revenge?” I asked. Something was missing.

“The Council was never able to find out who did it, and after a while they gave up.”

Everything about that statement was so wrong I didn’t know how to react. They gave up? What the hell was that? The Council never gave up. I was trained to get to the bottom of everything. Always.

“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. The Council always gets their answers.”

Granny shrugged her thin shoulders and rearranged the knickknacks on her coffee table. Wait. Did the Council know more about me than I did? Did my boss Angela know more of my history than I’d ever known?

“I knew that recruiter they sent down here,” Granny muttered. “I told him to stay away from you. Told him the Council already took my daughter and son-in-law and they couldn’t have you.”

“He didn’t pay me any more attention than he did anyone else,” I told her.

“What did the flyer say that he gave you?”

“Same as everybody’s—salary, training, benefits, car, apartment.”

“Damn it to hell,” she shouted. “No one else’s flyer said that. I confiscated them all after the bastard left. I couldn’t get to yours cause you were shacking up with the sheriff.”

“You lived with Hank the Hooker?” Dwayne gasped. “I thought you just dated a little.”

“Hell to the no,” Granny corrected Dwayne. “She was engaged. Left the alpha of the Georgia Pack high and dry.”

“Enough,” I snapped. “Ancient history. I’m more concerned about what kind of cow patty I’ve stepped in with the Council. The
sheriff
knows why I left. Maybe the Council accepted me cause I can shoot stuff and I have no fear and they have to hire a certain quota of women and…”

“And they want to make sure you don’t dig into the past,” Dwayne added unhelpfully.

“You’re a smart bloodsucker,” Granny chimed in.

“Thank you.”

“You think the Council had something to do with it,” I said. This screwed with my chi almost as much as the Hank situation from a year ago. I had finally done something on my own and it might turn out I hadn’t earned any of it.

“I’m not sayin’ nothing like that,” Granny admonished harshly. “And neither should you. You could get killed.”

She was partially correct, but I was the one they sent to kill people who broke Council laws. However, speaking against the Council wasn’t breaking the law. The living room had grown too small for my need to move and I prowled the rest of the house with Granny and Dwayne on my heels. I stopped short and gaped at my empty bedroom.

“Where in the hell is my furniture?”

“You moved all your stuff to Hank’s and he won’t give it back,” Granny informed me.

An intense thrill shot through my body, but I tamped it down immediately. I was done with him and he was surely done with me. No one humiliated an alpha and got a second chance. Besides, I didn’t want one… Dwayne’s snicker earned him a glare that made him hide behind Granny in fear.

“Did you even try to get my stuff back?” I demanded.

“Of course I did,” she huffed. “That was your mamma’s set from when she was a child. I expected you’d use it for your own daughter someday.”

My mamma…My beautiful mamma who’d been murdered along with my daddy. The possibility that the Council had been involved was gnawing at my insides in a bad way.

“I have to compartmentalize this for a minute or at least a couple of weeks,” I said as I stood in the middle of my empty bedroom. “I have to do what I was sent here for. But when I’m done, I’ll get answers and vengeance.”

“Does that mean no vacation?” Dwayne asked.

I stared at Dwayne like he’d grown three heads. He was getting terribly good at rendering me mute.

“That was a good question, Dwayne.” Granny patted him on the head like a dog and he preened. “Essie, your mamma and daddy would want you to have a vacation before you get killed finding out what happened to them.”

“Can we go to Jamaica?” Dwayne asked.

“Ohhh, I’ve never been to Jamaica,” Granny volunteered.

They were both batshit crazy, but Jamaica did sound kind of nice…

“Fine, but you’re paying,” I told Dwayne. He was richer than Midas. He’d made outstanding investments in his three hundred years.

“Yayayayayayay!” he squealed.

“I’ll call the travel agent,” Granny said. “How long do you need to get the bad guy?”

“A week. Give me a week.”

Chapter 4

“Well, great balls of fire ain’t you a sight for sore eyes!” Junior shouted, came out from behind his desk and trapped me in a hug that made breathing difficult. “Damn girl, if you ain’t prettier! What do they put in the water up there in Chicago?”

Junior, aka Jacob
only to his mother
, was the Deputy Sheriff of Hung Island and the Beta of our Pack. He was also Hank’s older brother. Hence, I wasn’t sure what my reception would be. If the jaws-of-life hug was anything to go by, everything would be just fine. Junior actually should have become Alpha when his dad retired, but he was just a lazy good ol’ boy, so the honor went to his younger brother Hank the Cheater.

Junior was every bit as good looking as his brother, but he never did it for me. However, he apparently did it for most of the women within a fifty mile radius.

“I tell you what,” he drawled. “I am happy to see you. My baby brother has been in a mood since you left.”

“He’s been in a mood for a year?” I snorted in disbelief and again tamped down the excited butterflies in my stomach. “I was sure he’d moved on by now.”

“Gimme a break, sugar. He’s got it so bad for you, it ain’t funny.”

“Well, he sure had a funny way of showing it,” I muttered. Confusion didn’t even begin to cover what I was feeling.

“That’s interesting,” a deep, sexier than hell voice added from behind me. “I could say the same about you.”

The air in the room shifted and the seductive power of his voice made me weak. Everything in my body tensed and stood at attention, including my traitorous nipples. Thank god my bra had a little padding—although the padding was useless. Weres could tell everything by scent and there was very little mistaking the cinnamon-laced scent of lust wafting through the room. His and mine. Crap.

Holding my breath, I turned around to face my foe and had to grab onto Junior for purchase so my butt didn’t hit the floor…forget about my jaw. Damn it, why could Hank have gotten bald, fat and ugly? He was more beautiful than I remembered. Six foot four of absolute perfection. Dark brown just a little bit too long hair, full lips, cheekbones that could cut glass and an ass that could stop traffic. The only consolation I had was his sharp intake of breath and the way his eyes turned from crystal green to icy blue. That was what happened to wolves when they couldn’t mask their desire.

I quickly lowered my eyes, not out of respect. I simply prayed my hazel green eyes hadn’t turned blue in response.

“My office. Now,” he snapped. “Junior, hold my calls and don’t step foot in my office unless you hear gunshots. You understand?”

“You got it, little bro-bro.” Junior was grinning from ear to ear and gave me a shove toward Hank’s office. I discreetly made sure my gun was still strapped to my inner thigh. I’d worn a sundress to conceal my weapon,
not
because I knew Hank loved them. Wait. Was he planning on shooting me? He so had another thing coming if he tried.

I made my way into the familiar office and bit back every nasty thing I wanted to say. As the door shut behind me I casually took a seat in front of the massive desk we’d had sex on countless times. Crapcrapcrap. Being alone with him was a very bad idea. Where the hell was my self-respect? I did not need a man who wanted me and half the town. I was better than that.

“You’ve got some explaining to do.” He sat down behind his desk in the chair we’d nicknamed the BJ Mobile and crossed his stupidly muscled arms over his stupidly muscled chest.

“No,” I said as I regained my confidence and professionalism that had deserted me in the lobby. “I don’t. You need to get me up to speed on the case and I need to do what I’ve been trained to do. Period.”

He watched me through narrowed eyes and his jaw worked angrily. Whatever. He had huge balls to think I had explaining to do.

“You left in the middle of the damn night. It took me a week of harassing your granny and massive detective work to find you.”

“You knew where I was?” I was shocked. I figured he was so pissed and horny for all the other gals he’d been seeing he’d have been happy I left.

“I know where you live, your patterns, your friends, your grocery, your place of business and where you order takeout from.”

“Oookay, that’s just creepy.” I rolled my eyes and wondered who he’d sent to watch me. It couldn’t have been Junior. I would have busted his butt in a minute flat. “Who’d you have on me?”

“I was on you, princess. And when I wasn’t, I had a chatty friend who was all too willing to talk about you till the cows came home.” He smiled and I wanted to slap the dimple off of his left cheek.

“You paid someone to watch me?” I shouted. I refused to acknowledge that he’d been in Chicago spying on me.
And why in the hell did that turn me on?

“Nope. Didn’t have to.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” I snapped. “No one would watch someone for free.”

“If they didn’t know they were watching you they would.”

“When did you go all James Bond?”

“A man does what a man has to do,” he replied.

“Yeah, well most men don’t become the town vacuum cleaner,” I shot back and then slapped my hand over my mouth. Damn it, I wasn’t going to go there.