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According the anonymous emails she had received and the small bottle of round white pills that had arrived at her apartment the week before, it was definitely possible. And she had been crazy enough tonight to actually take one. To slip it onto her tongue, to allow it to dissolve and enter her system before she left her cabin.
Her own recklessness had concerned her, but only for a moment. As many of her fellow reporters knew, Cassa had often been known to dare death. It was one of her faults, many said. She considered it one of her strengths. After all, her days were numbered and she knew it. She may as well get away with as much as possible until the day of reckoning arrived.
In this case, intuition had spurred her on though. The pictures of bloody bodies, the emails that had warned her that a rogue Breed was taking vengeance for some
unknown crimes, and the pills that arrived with a message stating that the past always returned and wouldn’t she like to know the truth before it knocked on her door had pushed her into this choice.
The past was always hovering at her shoulder and now she had a feeling that someone might possibly know the secret she had fought to hide for so long.
The truth. The truth was, Cassa had spilled blood herself. The truth was, once her secrets were revealed, she would die. The Breeds would never allow her to live once they knew the truth.
She slipped past yet another Breed guard. Mordecai. One of their best trackers, rumored to be one of their most merciless Coyote Breeds. On silent feet she moved slowly through the shadows, along the wet ground, heart racing, mouth dry until she was a safe distance from him.
The chilly winter air gave no hint that spring was just around the corner. The cold penetrated flesh and bone, but nothing could still the excitement racing through her now. It was working. They hadn’t scented her; they hadn’t scented her.
God, this couldn’t be possible.
Pressing her back tight to the thick trunk of a pine, she stared up at the moonless sky and whispered a silent prayer that at least one of the Breeds patrolling the area would scent her.
A drug like this could be deadly, just as her source had warned her it was.
Pushing away from the tree, Cassa skirted around several maples bare of leaves and dripping a chilly rain as she slid through the night.
There was a whisper of voices ahead, the sound of soft footfalls coming nearer. Ducking behind the evergreen shrubs that grew around an enclosed picnic area, she waited for them to pass.
“Are you certain of your information?” Jonas Wyatt’s voice came through the night clearly as the pair grew closer.
“Five dead, Jonas, that’s hard to mistake. Each one was rumored to be part of a twelve man hunting party that came together several times a year to hunt down escaped Breeds. Each one was killed in the same manner, using the same pattern. There’s no mistake.”
The voice that answered had Cassa’s heart tripping, then speeding up in awareness. She fought back the response, bit her lip and prayed that little miracle pill would cover the scent of arousal as well.
Cabal St. Laurents had a voice that made women want to melt to the floor in a puddle of orgasmic bliss. It rasped over the senses with a velvet cadence Cassa had never been able to ignore.
“Hell.” Jonas paused, no more than four feet from where she crouched.
As bad as she wanted to peek over the border of shrubs, she didn’t dare. The scent of her body may be masked, but there would be no way in hell it would affect the men’s exceptional eyesight.
“That’s a good description of what we’re facing,” Cabal answered the curse. “It’s not over. The hunters are becoming the prey, and if the first five are any indication, we could be looking at some pretty high-profile individuals. The former mayor that was killed last week was a well-known individual throughout the nation. We’re looking at a PR nightmare here.”
“PR is your brother’s area,” Jonas growled. “I’ll let Tanner worry about the sugar coating. I want the killer caught, Cabal. That’s your job.”
“It’s hard to do a job when there’s no evidence to go on, Jonas,” Cabal snapped, his voice irritated. “There’s no DNA left on the scene, and no scent. We were notified within hours of the mayor’s death. When we arrived, you could smell the scent of his terror, but the scent of his killer was no where to be found.”
Cassa felt her mouth go dry. The former mayor that had disappeared recently was David Banks, a proponent of Breed rights. David Banks had gone for his evening walk one night in the little town of Glen Ferris, West Virginia. He hadn’t been seen again. His body hadn’t been found. There was no trace, no clue where he might have gone. Until now. He had argued for Breed Law, and had been known to host several charity parties a year in honor of the Breeds. Now, he was also rumored to have been a member of a group of men that once hunted Breeds?
She could believe it. She had never liked Banks, but she knew his popularity, his smooth, charming smile and his soft voice had fooled more than one journalist.
“Find something, Cabal,” Jonas ordered. “We’re working on borrowed time here. If you don’t find the killer before news of this leaks to the press, then we’re fucked.”
“It looks to me as though we’re fucked either way,” Cabal informed him, his voice cold. “Horace Engalls and Phillip Brandenmore are making certain of that.”
Brandenmore and Engalls. The owners of a pharmaceutical and drug research company were under indictment for the drugging of the Breeds’ doctor, Elyiana Morrey, and for conspiracy to murder in several Breed deaths. They had been caught attempting to buy research conducted by Dr. Morrey from her two assistants and were rumored to be conducting research into an aging phenomena the Breeds and their wives were supposedly experiencing.
There was no supposition to it. Cassa knew the truth of it. The Breeds were experiencing a slow down in the aging process once they went into mating heat. The phenomena was making Breed doctors crazy as they tried to figure it out, and sending the breed ruling cabinet into a frenzy each time the gossip tabloids came up with another angle to tell the story.
So far, it wasn’t being taken seriously. But that couldn’t continue much longer. It had been ten years since the Feline Breed alpha had announced the existence of the breeds. Ten years since he or his wife had aged in any noticeable way.
Cassa was one of the few people who knew the truth, and she knew the consequences of ever writing that story or revealing her knowledge of it. The non-disclosure agreement she had signed in return for special consideration in interviews and breaking Breed stories had been frightening. She may have signed away her soul, her first born child, and her cat’s blood. Or something close.
