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“He wouldn’t have done it.” Danna shook her head furiously as she turned and stalked to the house.
Cabal eased in closer, moving in along the house, listening carefully as they entered.
“Who else could have done it, Danna?” Myron yelled, the anger thick in his voice. “You know he did it.”
“He’s not answering his sat phone. Again.” Frustration filled her voice. “Rand and Jason were on-site, they haven’t heard from him either. No one can contact him.”
There was a note of fear in Danna’s voice now.
“God! I checked the cabin. He’s not there either.” Myron paused. “The cabin was cleaned out, Danna. Everything. It’s empty as hell.”
Silence filled the house as the scent of fear and sadness seeped from the building. As though they were mourning him.
“He’s okay.” Danna was fighting to believe that. Cabal could hear it in her voice. “He has to be okay, Myron.”
Myron didn’t say anything for long moments.
“Have you called Walt?” Danna finally asked. “I couldn’t reach him earlier.”
“He wasn’t answering,” Myron stated. “And he has David. If Walt and David are missing, then the rest of the Dozen could have figured out that he’s still alive. If they have, then he’s screwed.”
Cabal snarled silently, gripped the doorknob and in one smooth motion opened the door and stepped into the sheriff’s kitchen.
He had his weapon on them even as Danna reached for hers.
“Now, we don’t want to do that, Sheriff,” he drawled as he watched both of them pale.
He knew what they saw. The stripe across his face, and the other stripes now running down his body. The markings of his genetics that only surfaced when the animal inside him rose to the fore. When a killing fury was on him. And there was a need for blood now. A need to kill.
Danna eased her hand back from her weapon as Cabal stepped forward and jerked it from its holster.
“So Banks is alive?” He stepped back. “And good ole Walt is taking care of him.” He eyed them both with a hard smile. “Where has he been hiding him?”
Danna and Myron glanced at each other, fear thick in their scents and their expressions.
“Come on now, let’s keep the bloodshed to a minimum. I’d hate to have to hurt one of you.”
Danna shook her head. “He doesn’t have your mate, Cabal. We would have known if he did. Rick was insistent that he wouldn’t strike at her. She was just here to distract you.”
“Consider me distracted.” He smiled thinly. “Now, where is Walt’s cabin? Don’t make me go looking for it. You wouldn’t like the consequences and neither would they.”
“Cabal, we weren’t involved in this.” Danna’s voice broke with fear and nerves. “This wasn’t planned.”
He lifted his lip in a curl of anger, revealing the canines at one side of his mouth. The stripes on his face darkened with his rage, only barely contained.
“Do you
want to die today, Sheriff?” he asked her before he turned to Myron. “Do you want to see your daughters grow up and have children of their own? I could make certain you don’t live to see that if you prefer.”
He would make certain of it. He’d stood back and denied his mate for too many years. Out of arrogance, out of stubbornness, for whatever reason. Now that he had claimed her, he wasn’t willing to lose her. Not for any reason. Especially not a rogue Breed’s hunger for vengeance.
He turned his head, staring around the house, inhaling slowly. He could barely detect that hint of cinnamon in the sherrif’s house now. The same scent that had caught his senses before when he had been here. The same scent he had detected in the air during Cassa’s kidnapping.
“Who is Rick?” He turned back to the sheriff, the name filtering through his mind for possible Breeds that he could identify.
Danna inhaled swiftly at the name, perhaps only now realizing she had used it. She shook her head slowly, her eyes sheen ing with tears.
“Rick,” he mused, a picture flashing before his mind. A picture found on the bank of the river where Cash Winslow had died. A picture of a Breed who should have been dead.
