Terry Spear - A SEAL in Wolf's Clothing

“I don’t know. As soon as I picked up the evidence at Chris’s place, I took off.”

“All right, all right. I’ll get hold of Hunter. Stay low until we get there. Don’t call anyone else. I don’t want to tip off the other pack members if anyone else is involved.”

“I’m sorry, Meara.”

“Yeah, so am I.” Meara ended the call. She tried to get hold of Hunter but only got a busy signal.

“What’s up?” Finn asked, his voice dark with threat.

“Rourke, the new guy, found evidence at Chris’s house.” Meara set his phone in the cup holder.

Finn’s brows rose.

“Apparently Chris is involved in this whole sordid mess.”

“Where’s the evidence?”

“Rourke’s got it. He’s bringing it to Hunter and Tessa’s house.”

Finn let out his breath and reached over to rub Meara’s arm. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “Chris has been with our pack since the early years. How could he be involved in something so hideous?”

“I don’t know. Right incentive, maybe mad at Hunter over some slight? I don’t know.”

Meara grabbed the phone and tried calling Hunter again. No luck. “Can you drive faster?”

“What exactly was the evidence?”

“Rourke has the tarot cards, minus the Knight of Swords that was left with Allan. And he discovered a plane-ticket receipt for Pompano Beach.”

“Pompano Beach? Hell, don’t tell me it was around the time that Allan got shot.”

“Yeah, same time. Then, too, Chris wasn’t supposed to know that I was having dinner with Cyn that time I was shopping in Sacramento. But Rourke found a picture of me eating dinner at the restaurant with Cyn.”

“So Chris knew all about it.”

“Yeah. Rourke left Chris’s place in a hurry before he was discovered.”

“So Chris was the one who shot Allan? I’ll kill the SOB myself. How did Rourke even begin digging into this stuff?”

“He’s an investigative reporter.”

Finn smiled. “Sounds like he’s a good addition to the pack.”

“Yeah,” she said, still fuming about Chris and wishing that they’d trusted Rourke more to do what was right. “Sounds like you’re right. Chris is a dead man, though,” Meara promised.

“Where is Chris now?”

Meara looked at Finn. “My house.”

“That’s not far from Hunter’s place.”

“A little more than a mile. He won’t suspect any of us are there. Hunter’s supposed to be wherever we are at some safe house, as far as Chris knows.”

“Yeah, but you know how well-laid plans can go awry.”

Rourke parked some distance down the road south of Hunter and Tessa’s house, hiding the car in the woods since the place didn’t have a garage. He could just envision Chris driving by the pack leader’s place, seeing Rourke’s vehicle parked in front, and wondering what the hell he was doing there since Hunter wasn’t home.

Rourke locked his car doors. Then with the evidence tucked under his arm, he bolted through the trees to reach the house. When he got there, he went around to the back door and picked the lock, memories flooding him of when he’d stayed there to help Hunter protect Tessa during a winter storm, electrical outages, and fights with bad guys. And how he’d wanted Tessa, but the SEAL had won out. Who could compete with a SEAL who was a wolf on top of that?

Now Rourke would help Finn to protect Meara, which was almost the same scenario. Only Rourke wasn’t interested in Meara the way he’d had a crush on Tessa. Meara was too… unpredictable for him.

He locked the door to the place.

Rourke glanced at his wrist and then remembered he no longer wore a watch as a werewolf. It was one of the hardest things he’d had to get used to. At first, he’d fought the idea—until he’d stripped out of his clothes, forgot his watch, shifted, and lost his prized watch in the woods.

Meara and Finn should be here by now. They were probably hiding their vehicle like he had done and were on foot in the woods, headed in this direction.

He was damned thankful his need to investigate the situation had prompted him to search Chris’s house. Never in a millennium would Rourke have believed that Chris had been involved. Without the evidence, they all might have been clueless about Chris’s involvement until it was too late.

He heard a noise on the back patio, and thinking Meara and Finn were trying to get in, Rourke headed for the back door to open it for them.

His heart thundering, Rourke stared at Chris, who stood at the back door looking in through the kitchen window. When Chris caught Rourke’s eye, he cast him an evil smile. Chris walked over to the back door and tried to unlock it with a lockpick.

“You know, Rourke, you’re supposed to be at your apartment,” Chris said through the door.

The lockpick twisted some more. Rourke’s skin chilled.

“You’re not supposed to be driving your vehicle, either.”

Twist, grind, twist.

“You’re supposed to be waiting for me until I pick you up to take you to the newspaper office.”

Click.

“Why are you here at Hunter’s house? Don’t you know that’s illegal? Breaking and entering? Hunter will not be pleased.”

Rourke raced back into the living room and shoved the incriminating papers underneath the couch cushion. Should he shift? He had no weapon on him.

“So, what are you doing here? Dave said you wanted to speak to me about investigating this situation further concerning Allan’s shooter. What was it you wished to ask me?”

Rourke bolted for the guest bedroom where he’d slept before and locked the door behind him. He was beginning to shuck his clothes when he heard the back door squeak open.

He should have brought the evidence of Chris’s involvement in here.

“You’re not hiding from me, are you?” Chris asked. “You’re supposed to be a big bad wolf now, not a rabbit, Rourke. Are you still a rabbit?”

Rourke swore under his breath as he stood naked in the guest room, unable to the shift.

“Are you in one of the bedrooms?” Chris asked, heading down the hall. “Hmm, only one door closed. Are you hiding behind Door Number 1? The big question is why?”

“How did you know I was here?” Rourke asked, hoping that he could delay the inevitable so that Finn and Meara would have a chance to arrive.

“I just happened to be leaving Meara’s house when who should I see roar lickety-split down the road in his truck past the place but my buddy Rourke, who was supposed to still be at his apartment. So I followed you here. Found where you hid your vehicle and gave the order to disable it, if you thought to leave again anytime soon. You weren’t supposed to be driving, you know.”

Someone else was with Chris? Hell, he’d never get out of this alive. “You said that already, Chris.”

“Yeah, well, you seem to need more direction. So why are you here, and why, when you saw me at the door, didn’t you let me in? You didn’t think I’d just go away, did you?”

“Hunter’s on his way here.”

“Really. Well, a little birdie told me he’s having a rough day of it on his own. I’d planned to oversee operations at the safe house, but… well, this seemed like something that needed looking into right away.”

Rourke’s heart was beating so hard that he figured Chris could hear it through the door. But no matter how many times he tried to tell himself to shift, it wasn’t having any effect. “How did you learn where Hunter is?”

“That’s the wonder of a mate who wasn’t a wolf. She was worried about Hunter and called Dave to see if he could check on him. Since Dave is in the middle of a crisis, trying to track down a runaway teen, he asked me to look into it. That’s all I needed to wrap this up. The location of the safe house.”