Page 16 of The Enforcers: KANE

She held up her hand to the quartet leader just before he launched into the opening bars. Instead, she spoke directly into the microphone, something she never did during her show.

“This song has a special meaning for me,” she said, her voice husky. “It reminds me of someone I cared about very much, who disappeared from my life a long time ago. Someone I always hoped to find again.”

She gave a nod to the musicians, and the instruments swung into the haunting intro to the song. Rachelle closed her eyes and poured her heart into the words.

She was interrupted by the loud scrape of table legs on the wooden floor. Kane had risen to his feet, banging into the table in his hurry. He shoved at his chair, almost toppling it over, and blundered out of the room.

Rachelle almost missed a line, but the musicians covered for her, and she kept singing. Gradually she got back into the song, but her mind was on Kane. Why had he left? Did he really hate so much to remember? If he didn’t want to be reminded of the past, why did he come in here night after night?

She cut her set short, not coming out for an encore the way she usually did. She had to talk to Kane.

She had to get some answers.

Chapter 7

Kane stumbled out the side door into the night, doubled over from the pain in his belly. Wolf was close to bursting out through his skin—he’d almost changed right there in the middle of the lounge. He hadn’t come this close to an uncontrolled shift in years.

He barely made it to the edge of the woods and started to undress before Wolf exploded out of him with a feral growl. Barely knowing what he was doing, he took off into the forest, looking for blood.

He picked up the scent of a raccoon. He didn’t use any stealth or guile to track it—just ran it down and tore it to pieces, the hot blood spurting into his mouth.

He stood over the remnants of the carcass, shaking, his tail tucked down.

Shit. He couldn’t do this anymore. He kept his mind under control to keep his wolf under control. He changed when he had to, but he rarely ran with the others. He was afraid to. Afraid of letting Wolf run wild.

Because all he wanted to do was kill.

They all made fun of him, calling him “Sir Stick-up-his-ass.” He knew it. But they didn’t know that without that rigid control, without Israel to bloody him when he was going too far, he’d be rogue.

Sometimes he hated his wolf.

He trotted back through the forest. Wolf was sated, for the moment, but his human side felt sick. He couldn’t be around Rachelle. He couldn’t be around anyone. If this was the effect she had on him—the effect his past had on him—then he had to stay away from her.

He found his way back to the underbrush where he’d shifted, looking for his clothes. He’d better change and go home. Assign someone else to this job, and go to Tennessee for a while. Or Siberia.

It wasn’t until he made his second pass that he realized his clothes were gone.

Shit.

Someone must have been out in the woods and found them. Maybe they thought they were trash, or that someone was out getting some booty in the woods, and they’d taken the clothes as a joke.

Either way, he was going to have to get back to his truck and get his spares without anyone seeing him.

Kane made his way through the woods, circling the perimeter of the parking lot. He always parked in a shadowy, out-of-the-way corner, in case something happened and he had to approach his truck in wolf form. Or naked.

Except this time, he’d outsmarted himself. His clothes were neatly folded and stacked on the hood of his truck, his boots lined up next to them.

And sitting next to the pile, straddling his hood ornament, was Rachelle.

* * *

Rachelle saw Kane’s wolf freeze as soon as he came out of the darkness and saw her. He must have really been off his game, because he should have scented her long before that.

He stood there, looking at her, one paw still in the air as if he had forgotten he was about to take a step.

He was beautiful.

“There you are,” she said. “Took you long enough.”