Page 4 of License to Kill

Ma narrowed her eyes. “I got offered money to get rid of you and any of the evidence associated with your death. Your pa wanted to bring you home for a while. That part of what I texted you was true. I just changed his plans is all. Now you’ll get to visit for a long time. You two can rest together.” Ma pointed the gun at my leg, steadied the weapon, and squeezed the trigger.

The fox in me barked and chittered in my head, and her fury flared. Before I could comprehend more than the flash of pain in my leg, the beast took over.

She’d done so once before in England, and she’d battled for our survival.

Those enemies hadn’t been family, but the fox in me didn’t care.

Ma had killed Pa, and if I let her, she’d kill me, too.

Terror didn’t belong in the den, and we could die another day.

One of us wouldn’t be walking away alive, and the fox didn’t want us to be the one to fall.

Not like this.

Rather than voice her rage, she made use of our good leg and lunged for my ma, groping for the gun. A second shot went off, and I yelped at the thump. I couldn’t even tell where I’d been hit.

It didn’t matter.

She fired several more rounds before the fox got a hold of a weapon and closed my fingers around the grip.

Long years of training took over, and my body moved without any intervention from me. The first second of possessing her firearm, I took aim at my Ma’s temple. The next, I stabilized the weapon, made certain of my aim, and I fired.

We collapsed onto the cold, hard ground.

I breathed. Ma didn’t.

I dropped the weapon, turned to the trailer, and crawled there, trailing blood in my wake. I couldn’t tell where I’d been shot; the shock numbed my body, and it wouldn’t be long until I lost the ability to even crawl.

Before I lost the war I waged against my own body, I needed to see what she’d done to my pa.

The stench of death promised there’d be no happy ending for any of us, but until I confirmed with my own eyes, I refused to believe. My hand shook, but I caught hold of the door’s latched and opened it.

Pa rested a few feet inside, and three entry holes in the skull promised he hadn’t suffered long. According to the skin color and state of his body, he hadn’t been dead for more than a few hours. My fox’s grief joined with my own, and I made it the few feet to his body, sighed, and slumped beside my pa, regretting everything in my life that had led to that moment, leaving me alone in a world that no longer wanted me in it.

By all rights, I should have died. In either a cruel twist of fate or the world determined to prove life wasn’t fair, a wolf found me before I could make a permanent escape from my misery. I’d never seen her before, but my nose told the truth.

The wolf wore a woman’s body, and she kept me alive through the unfair usage of bandages and basic medical treatment. Whoever she was, she knew her way around field treatments, and by the time she finished with me, I’d come out on the other side of recovering with a few more scars to show for the latest turn my life had taken.

Instead of taking me to a hospital, she dumped me into the back of an SUV that had seen better days, buckled me in, and headed west.

“Are you going to ask who I am, where I’m taking you, why I’m taking you, or how I found you?” she asked.

Her amusement intrigued my fox. It annoyed me.

I lacked the strength to care.

“Unless you’re planning on shooting me and dumping me in a ditch somewhere, why waste the effort?”

“I see you’re going to be a tough nut to crack. Here’s the deal, princess. You know I’m not human. I caught you sniffing at me when I got close, and you’re married to someone in a pack, and us Fenerec don’t keep that secret long once marriage is involved. As such, let’s get down to the chase. We’ve got a bit of a system we use to communicate with each other, and while I’m not in a pack right now, I pay attention. Last night, two things happened. One, the black market had a hit put out for you—the lethal kind, which landed you in that mess at that trailer. Good job on not dying, by the way. You’re worth a cool two million dead right now, and I enjoy when I can stick it to the assholes who decide to go the murder route. Well, I’m not the only one who noticed that kill order. Your husband’s pack put out word you were MIA, that you’d been notified you’d be returning to FBI duty, and that you’d bailed town. Fenerec are damned stupid sometimes, and in some misguided effort to try to make sure you get back to where you belong, they laid out the situation in a fairly frank manner. They benched you for too long, and you’d found your limit on being benched, so you decided you’re done. And they tried to put you back on the roster without your consent, so they don’t have a foot to stand on, since you’re past the medical leave limitations and had tendered your resignation.”

“Can’t postpone that one, can they?” I asked, allowing my bitterness to enter my tone.

“No, they can’t. Add in how the Alphas of the pack are disputing your status as mated with your mate, and it’s quite the problem. They’re idiots. Male wolves don’t bring a female into their homes without being invested, and the files say you were living with him and married to him, so he’s invested. I don’t know or care about that, frankly. I just don’t like seeing people get knocked off because they’re inconvenient.”

Inconvenient was one way to put it. “Well, he came home at night smelling of other women, and that was that. I had enough, so I left. Since they care about scents that much, he can just go fuck himself and like it.”

“Well, I’d be pretty pissed over that, too. I’m just telling you he’s going to try to get you back once he gets his head out of his ass. That’s what Fenerec males do.”