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“And you allowed him to escape.” Her voice was raw, thick with tears she couldn’t shed.
Jonas’s lips quirked. “We may have made it a bit easier for the Coyote team that rescued him to get to him.” He shrugged. “He’s been a little irate since he learned you and Cabal had mated. It seems he still believes he has a hold on you, Ms. Hawkins.”
Cassa wrapped her arms across her breasts and shook her head. Douglas no longer had a hold on her. He had nothing more on her than old, bitter memories.
“What purpose did it serve to allow him to escape?” she asked acerbically.
The master puppeteer. That was Jonas. Always conniving, always manipulating. Always with a plan.
“The rogue Breed we’re after contacted you, drew you here, hoping to draw Watts out,” Jonas told her. “We believe he’s a mate that’s gone feral and now he’s killing the men who killed his mate.”
“And Douglas raped her.” She had to force the words past her throat.
Jonas nodded. “About a y
ear and a half ago word leaked, somehow, to the Council that Watts was still alive and was being held by us. How the rogue got the information, we’re not certain yet.” He moved back to the table set up in the middle of the room and took his seat with an outward calm she doubted he truly felt.
“We believe,” he continued, “that he bribed one of the human guards we had working there. Several months later, the first victim, Dr. Ryan Damron, was killed after he called Phillip Brandenmore requesting a meeting. They were to meet here at the hunting cabin Brandenmore keeps in the Hawk’s Nest forest.”
Once again, Cabal moved behind her. His warmth surrounded her, like a blanket to hold out the cold, a solace against the pain she could feel raging inside her and the hatred that boiled black and ugly.
“Dr. Damron disappeared before he could reach the cabin. He was found several weeks later, several states from here, mauled and bled out. Since then, six other suspected members of the Deadly Dozen have turned up dead.”
“The information Damron carried was the suspected location where Watts was being held.” Cabal spoke quietly behind her. “Damron was still working for the Council, and we believe Watts had demanded that the Council facilitate his release.”
“You should have killed him,” she whispered.
She wondered if she would burn in hell for that one. If he were dead, then perhaps the Breed now killing wouldn’t have turned feral. And she wouldn’t be facing her past or the weak person she had once been.
“He had information,” Jonas explained with a shrug. “And death would have been an easy punishment. I don’t like making it easy on my enemies. Neither does Cabal.”
She well believed that. Jonas didn’t even like making things easy for those he considered his friends.
“So you arranged to allow for his release.” It was an accusation. “To what purpose?”
She didn’t want to believe he was still alive. Hell, she hated the thought that suddenly he was again breathing the same air she was breathing. That he was on the same planet. And a part of her was terrified as well. Douglas was a vicious, cruel man, and any and every weakness he could find he knew how to put to good use.
“To allow us to capture the rogue we’re after now,” Jonas told her. “We believe Douglas knows the identity of our rogue. When he learned of the killings, he became more determined than ever to escape, when he should have been eager to stay. After all, he’s the one the killer ultimately wants.”
“And how do you know this?” She pushed away from Cabal, her head turning to catch the expression of regret on his face before he wiped it away. “How do you know the killer is after Douglas?”
“We suspected when we learned he had contacted you,” Cabal answered. “We learned Watts was part of the Deadly Dozen years ago, but we’d never learned the identity of the others. That was information we were trying to get out of him when the killings began.”
“And after eleven years you still didn’t have that information?” She scoffed furiously. “Bullshit, Cabal. What were you doing, playing with him? Don’t tell me you couldn’t have learned what you wanted to know in this amount of time.”
“The truth serums we’ve developed couldn’t be used on him because of his weakened physical condition,” Jonas stated. “We didn’t want him dead, not quite yet. And he’d never fully recovered from that steel stake Cabal drove into his back.” A mocking quirk of his lips accompanied the statement.
“Do you have any suspects?” She had to stay focused. Cassa felt as though she were going to shake apart from the inside out. Anger and fear ate at her insides, tearing at them until she felt the raw, bleeding wounds in her soul. If she didn’t focus on something besides that pain, then she might not survive, she might not get out of this room before humiliating herself and breaking down entirely.
“As of now, we have no fucking clue.” Disgust flickered in his gaze and on his face.
Cassa believed him. Not that she wasn’t certain he would lie about it if he did have a suspect, but that flash of self-disgust and anger in his eyes convinced her that he truly didn’t know who the killer was.
“That’s why we allowed Watts to escape,” Cabal stated. “To draw the rogue out. If we watch Watts close enough, then we’ll be there when the killer goes for him.”
“And you’re certain he’s headed here?” she asked as she turned to her mate, to the man she had hoped would eventually love her. Now she wondered if she had a chance. If she had ever had a chance. She kept forgetting the fact that she had been involved with the most horrifying event of his life. The deaths of his family. And now she wouldn’t be the only one facing that past, he would be as well. And there was no way he couldn’t remember exactly the role she had played.
She had allowed Douglas in. She had been the reason he had the information, she had given him the chance to sell the information on the rescue of that facility. Because of her, Cabal had lost so much.
