Quinn Security Page 12

  “I think I need to see it,” she told him and this time he didn’t have to ask her what she meant.

  She wanted to see him shift into his wolf form.

  But Troy wasn’t sure she knew what she was asking. He wasn’t confident that she was prepared to see the transformation, or the tremendous beast of a wolf that he would become in the blink of an eye.

  “Would you show me?” she asked when he’d said nothing.

  Bringing his large, warm hand to her cheek, he said, “I’m going to break all kinds of rules with you, aren’t I?”

  ***

  At about the time Troy was delivering another series of tender kisses across Reece’s neck to stall, prolonging the inevitable just in case she became horrified at his wolf form and never wanted to talk to him again, Jack Quagmire was shepherding Angel into her house, having stayed with her in Jackson Hole until she was discharged from the hospital.

  Technically, she hadn’t so much been formally discharged as released by her very reluctant doctor after she’d insisted over and over again that she couldn’t stand to be cooped up in her hospital room for one minute longer. She’d hated the smell—rubbing alcohol, iodine, and death—and the florescent lights and the tasteless food that seemed to have been microwaved twelve times over but defiantly retained no heat.

  Jack had supported her decision and had offered to see to it that she got home safely. He didn’t really want her to have to be alone in her house. She hadn’t remembered a damn thing that had happened to her, and the last thing Jack wanted was for the episode to repeat itself all over again. At least if he was with her, he could keep her safe. Lord knew the Quinns wouldn’t, and as solid as his friendship with the sheriff was, he didn’t exactly trust Rick to handle this with two hands.

  Once Angel was in the foyer, he flipped on the lights, closed and locked the door, and offered her his arm to use for balance as she kicked off her sneakers.

  Jack had tended to several of her needs while she was holed up in the hospital, one of which was making the trip back to the Fist to collect some of her street clothes so that she wouldn’t have to leave the hospital in the tattered, muddy nightgown she’d arrived in.

  “Would you like to lie down?” he offered as he escorted her into the living room.

  Though Angel had been determined to get out of the hospital, and though Jack had fully backed her up, it was gravely concerning to see how disoriented she was in her own home. Her otherwise sparkly eyes looked clouded over, her expression bewildered as though she didn’t fully recognize where she was.

  Leaving her where she was standing in a lost fog, Jack flipped on the lamps on the end tables at both sides of the couch, having reasoned that the overheads might be too bright for her.

  “Have a seat at least,” he suggested, taking caring hold of her arm and guiding her to the couch.

  She lowered down slowly, glancing around the living room as though she was trying to get her bearings.

  “I think I feel worse here,” she deduced in a far-away voice. “Like my brain is heavy or mushy.”

  “Worse than the hospital?” he asked, sitting beside her and taking hold of her hand.

  He hated that she was going through this. He really did. But it was bringing them close together. Jack could’ve easily spent the rest of his entire life admiring her from afar, wishing and hoping, but never being so bold. The last thing he wanted was to feel elated that Angel had suffered this trauma, but it was hard to contain his gratitude.

  “I think so,” she murmured after much consideration. “I feel high, sort of.”

  “You haven’t eaten in a number of hours,” he reminded her, hopping up from the couch and starting for the kitchen. “Let me make you a little something.”

  “Okay,” she said in a hollow voice.

  Jack kept his eye on her here and there as he perused her refrigerator, hoping to high heaven that she had all the makings for a grilled cheese sandwich. He wasn’t much of a cook, that was for damn sure. Hell, he spent most every meal at Angel’s Food, eager to turn over every last dollar he had just to taste Angel’s good, ol’ fashioned cooking.

  He was in luck, thank Jesus. There was whole wheat bread in the breadbox, Swiss cheese in the fridge, as well as enough butter to fry the sandwich until it got crispy brown. He placed a pan on the burner and as the butter began to melt and sizzle, he glanced up at the living room couch where Angel should’ve been.

  “Angel?” he asked, starting through the living room and using his heightened werewolf hearing to locate her.

  It was the smell that hit him first.

  Distinct. Unmistakable. But in the setting of Angel’s house, it made no sense.

  The scent of a shifter.

  He heard a thud coming from the second floor just as he reached the bottom of the staircase.

  He sprinted up the stairs in a blind panic and barreled down the wallpapered hallway, following the sounds of shattering glass until he dove into the bathroom.

  Where he expected to find Angel, perhaps collapsed on the floor, Jack came face to face with a shimmering, white wolf.

  “Angel?” he repeated, in total disbelief of his eyes.

  The white wolf looked deeply into his eyes, and Jack saw the essence of Angel Mercer, the woman he’d fallen in love with over the years, behind them.

  She was a werewolf.

  All of a sudden, she was a werewolf.

  Just what in the hell had happened to her out in those woods?

  ***

  Troy had his large hand cupped around Reece’s supple breast. He’d boldly slipped his fingers under her bra this time and they were no longer seated upright on the couch.

  Angling over her, Troy used his knees to spread her legs apart and ease his weight down onto her. Reece let out an aroused moan, feeling his shape pressing against her, pinning her. He hadn’t taken his lips off of hers, but it was now that he deepened their kiss.

  Stalling was going fabulously. But if Troy thought Reece had completely forgotten about her request that he shift into his wolf form for her, he was gravely mistaken.

  “Troy,” she breathed, squirming her lips out from under his, which only caused him to focus all of his attention on her neck again. Judging by the sounds she was making, she liked that, but not enough to lose her train of thought. “Troy? I can’t just blindly get involved with a bodyguard who claims to be a werewolf,” she breathed with an edge of assertion.

  “Yes, you can,” he said in soft encouragement as he silenced her with another kiss.

  She wriggled her mouth free again, and insisted, “I really need to see it.”

  “I’m not a carnival act, you know,” he stated with an air of humor. “I’m not a one-trick pony.”

  “No, but you could be if you auditioned.”

  “I like this sense of humor I’ve been seeing,” he complimented, but again, she wouldn’t be distracted or deterred. “Fine,” he groaned, lifting off of her.

  They sat upright and Reece did what she could to smooth out the messy bubbles in her hair. Her red-frame glasses were still on the coffee table where she’d left them, so she put those on in order to see with perfect vision.

  Reluctantly, Troy got to his feet and walked out from behind the coffee table so that he’d be standing in the middle of the living room with plenty of room on all sides.

  Reece smiled like a kid in a movie theater as the house lights came down.

  Troy took a deep breath, but she stopped him, blurting out, “Wait.”

  She hopped off the couch and quickly padded into her bedroom. Two seconds later, she returned with her notepad and a pen in hand.

  “You’re going to take notes?” he asked as a crooked grin tugged at one corner of his mouth.

  “For the novel,” she confirmed, as she plopped back down onto the couch, pushed her red-frame glasses up her button nose, and pressed pen to notepad, poised to document the transformation.

  But if Reece thought that anything about what she was s
oon to witness was so tame that she’d be able to jot her thoughts here and there while it unfolded in front of her very eyes, then it was her turn to be gravely mistaken.

  Troy tapped into his inner-wolf, awakening the beast within. With flexing shoulders and a jolt of his arms, he collapsed into his wolf form in an instant, his hands shifting into huge paws by the time they struck the wooden floor.

  Reece gasped and scrambled back on the couch, staring in wide-eyed disbelief at his tremendous size.

  Raven-black fur, eyes as dark as gleaming onyx-stone, fangs long and fatally sharp, as a wolf Troy was just as towering and intimidating as he was in human form. In some ways, thanks to his domineering presence, he might have even looked larger.

  It looked like Reece was having difficulty steadying her quivering breathing, as though her galloping heart rate was making it impossible to catch her breath, as she sat, knees to chin, on the couch.

  Troy was tempted to near her, nuzzle his head in her lap, show her how tender he could be, even as a monstrous beast, but he feared that if he so much as took one step closer, she’d panic and bolt.

  Reece suddenly shrieked, startling at the sound of Troy’s cell phone vibrating on the coffee table.

  As she let out a rocky breath, giggling at how tightly wound she was, Troy shifted back into his human form and answered the call.

  It was Jack Quagmire.

  “What’s up?” Troy asked as he glanced at Reece, who was coming back into her sultry self. “How’s Angel?”

  “You’re not going to believe this.”

  ***

  “What was I supposed to do?” Troy hissed at his brother from where he stood outside of Angel Mercer’s house. “Leave her at her cottage when there’s a rogue Younger on the prowl? I swore to protect her. I couldn’t leave her home all by herself.”

  Troy cut his eyes from Shane over to his pickup truck. Inside, Reece was sitting in the passenger’s seat, waiting patiently, but staring at the heated exchange he was having with his brother.

  Shane looked furious. Troy could practically see the steam piping out of his ears and he could definitely feel the heat rolling off of him like smoke from a percolating volcano about to fully erupt. Shane also looked insane. Not only was he outfitted in his usual army fatigues, but he’d slapped two strips of black grease under his eyes like a linebacker ready to fight dirty in a defensive tackle on the fifty-yard line. He was wearing more weapons than usual, too.

  “We have a real situation inside,” Shane reminded him, speaking at a curt, hushed volume. His glaring eyes didn’t leave Reece, who offered a bewildered smile back. A little wave came next and when Shane huffed his distaste, she gave Troy a little shrug as though she wasn’t sure what the problem was.

  Neither was he.

  “She’ll be fine in the truck.”

  “I’m sure she will be,” Shane agreed angrily. “She would’ve been fine at her cottage if she kept the doors and windows locked.”

  “Are you so sure about that?”

  “What’s the hold up?” That was Kaleb. He broke away from Conor and Dean, who were buzzing around the front entrance door of the house. “Jack’s inside going out of his mind.”

  “The hold up,” Shane began, “is that Reece Gladstone is sitting in Troy’s truck.”

  “Meaning?” asked Kaleb.

  “Yeah, Troy,” Shane barked, angling his furious eyes up at his brother. “What is the meaning, exactly? You two have been getting awfully close, that’s the word around town—”

  “The word around town,” Troy balked as though this was so typical of the Fist, he couldn’t even stomach it. “You think I give a rat’s ass about the word around town?”

  “I certainly do,” Shane maintained.

  Catching on, Kaleb asked Troy directly, “Have you told her?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” Shane reinforced.

  Troy wasn’t sure he’d ever lied to his brothers in all his life, and he wasn’t about to start now, which is why he started for the front of the house without answering.

  “Christ, you did, didn’t you?” Shane demanded, stomping up behind him at his heels. “She knows.”

  “Does she, man?” asked Kaleb, now fully concerned. “The last thing we need is for this thing to spread like wildfire and expose all of us.”

  Troy barked, “Then we better get in the house and figure out just what in the hell happened to Angel.”

  Dean commented to his brothers, “What’s gotten into him?” as Troy barreled past him.

  “Stupidity, as far as I can tell,” Shane complained.

  Jack was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. He was pacing as though it would burn off all of his nervous energy. “I fed her two hunks of sirloin I found in the fridge.”

  “How could this have happened?” Conor asked no one in particular.

  Troy had a theory, and even though now didn’t seem like the best time to introduce it—if anything they should discuss shifting into their wolf forms to deal with Angel—he brushed over it, anyway.

  “We’ve been functioning under the assumption that Holly’s fatal attack was the work of a Younger. If the same werewolf that took her life did this to Angel, then it couldn’t be a Younger.”

  The brothers stared at one another, gravely touching eyes, as Conor guessed, “A Royal?”

  “Who else would have the ability? The power?” Troy suggested.

  Jack took off in a strange lap around the living room, his hands planted on his hips, and muttered, “Christ.”

  “Until she shifts back—” Troy went on, but Dean didn’t let him finish the optimistic point he was about to make about the hope that Angel might regain her memory.

  “How’re we going to get her to do that? I’ve dealt with my fair share of Youngers who couldn’t control themselves, but at least they were pure bred and could shift with enough pressure. If she was turned by some other means…”

  “Won’t know until we get up there,” Troy said, waving Jack over and inviting him to lead the way.

  The second floor of the house was as frilly as the first, the hallway lined with flowery wallpaper and smelling of potpourri. The Quinn brothers followed Jack to the first door on the left then paused with his hand on the doorknob.

  Troy could almost read the man’s thoughts. Jack was terrified. When it came to werewolves and their one true mates, if the significant other was a mortal, as Angel surely had been, then whoever had turned her would claim her. She would belong to them for the rest of this life and into the next. Jack had been praying for that privilege. When Xavier had been alive to lead the pack, Jack had gone to him privately on an annual basis to ask if Angel was meant for him. Every year, Xavier had reiterated the same bad news, that if she was, he couldn’t see it yet. And Jack had obeyed. If some other Royal, Younger, or plain old werewolf in general had come in and done this to her, claimed her as their one true mate, it would make for a very bleak existence as far as Jack would be concerned.

  Having pressed his ear to the door, Jack quietly told them, “I think the steaks worked. She doesn’t sound riled up.”

  With that, he eased the door open and slipped inside. When Troy slipped in after, Jack was holding the most beautiful white wolf that he’d ever seen. Angel’s fur wasn’t simply white. It was shimmering like angel wings.

  There wasn’t much space in the little bathroom, but the brothers piled in. Dean was the last inside and he closed the door, securing it so that Angel wouldn’t be able to lunge against it and escape.

  She didn’t look like she was in any danger of bolting, however. Jack had sat on the edge of the tub and was rubbing her head as she panted happily.

  “It’d be great if that foresight of yours would kick in right about now,” Shane commented and he was right. If Troy had foresight, he would have crystal clear hindsight as well. He’d be able to touch Angel and see everything she had over the past few days, hell the past few years if he wanted to. But it would likely be decades
before he fully developed the hindsight ability, and no one within the four walls of this tiny bathroom had that kind of patience.

  “Troy has a point,” said Kaleb, referring to the brand-new theory Troy had introduced downstairs. “It could be a Royal.”

  “But who?” Conor questioned. “There aren’t that many Royals left and we know all of them.”

  “It’s gotta be someone we just plain don’t know about,” Dean chimed in, taking the theory to its farthest supposition.

  “This pisses me off,” Shane complained. “You couldn’t get a thing out of Grandmother Sasha?”

  Troy didn’t much appreciate the blameful edge in his brother’s tone.

  “She’s taken that vow.”

  “Oh, screw the vow!” Shane barked, which got Angel all riled up.

  As she whined and bucked, Jack tried to calm her with a few soothing strokes.

  Using a far more delicate tone, Shane repeated, “Screw the vow. Doesn’t she understand that we are in a constant state of being exposed? This—” he gestured angrily at Angel, “is just the curveball we need for the whole town to discover us all.”

  “Not if we coax her back,” Jack offered, “get her into her human form, teach her how to control it. Treat her like a Younger in that sense. We can do it. I can do it,” he offered when all five brothers looked beyond skeptical. “If she’s claimed, though…”

  Dean finished his thought, stating grimly, “Then any time you spend with her is going to put your life in danger.”

  Troy hadn’t much experience with the rules in this department, but he could see the anguish building behind Jack’s almost ancient eyes. “If it’s a rogue Royal that’s done this, if it’s one of our own that went outside of the pack to cause this kind of destruction, then I don’t care what eternal bonds have been tied. I’ll break them.”

  It was like the air had been sucked out of the room. All of the Quinn brothers stared at him as Jack’s eyes misted over with tears. “You will?”