Frankie felt her brows snap together. “Why?”
“The people who first arrived at the scene called out your name, but you didn’t answer. They followed your scent down to the basement. You were hiding there, ghost white and shaking.”
“Really?” Frankie walked around, looking for another door, and . . . There. It was hanging on its hinges, so she carefully pushed it open, grimacing as it left the chalky feel of dust on her hands. At first the space looked like a large cupboard. But then she saw that there was another door. Frankie opened it, satisfied to find that it led to the basement.
Lydia made a pained sound in the back of her throat. “Frankie, don’t do this to yourself.”
“I’m not trying to torment myself. I can’t explain it well, but I just need to do it.”
Lydia flapped her arms. “All right.”
The wooden steps groaned as they descended into the basement. Frankie’s nose wrinkled. It didn’t smell any better down there. Must, mold, and damp concrete. Even with the sunlight lancing through the wide window, it was as dark as it was cold, so it was a damn good thing that shifters could see well in the dark.
Her shoes scraped on the concrete floor as she explored the large basement. No boxes were stacked anywhere. Nothing stood on the shelves. The storage cupboard was completely bare. Aside from cobwebs and damp spots, the only things to see were the breaker box, a furnace, a water tank, and pipes.
“Well, I think it’s safe to say that none of the kids who broke into the cabin over the years ever came down here.” There was no litter or graffiti.
“Can’t say I blame them.” Lydia shuddered. “Basements are creepy.”
“Where was I hiding that night?”
Turning, Lydia pointed to the far corner. “You were huddled behind the dryer, which they used to keep over there.”
The idea of that made Frankie swallow hard. She had to have seen something. A child didn’t hide in a spooky basement unless they were running from something much, much scarier.
Lydia rubbed at her upper arms. “Can we go now? I really do hate basements.”
“Yeah.” Frankie sighed. “We can head back.”
“Good, because I’m about to freak out. Let’s talk about something cheery.”
“Okay. Did Jaime tell you that she passed out on girls’ night?” The memory made Frankie’s mouth twitch despite her sour mood.
“No, she didn’t. She did tell me about Trick’s ex-fling, Rio. You stabbed his hand, right?”
“Wouldn’t you have done the same if Cam’s ex insisted he wasn’t your true mate?”
Lydia blinked, mouth falling open. “Rio said that? I thought he was just giving you grief out of spite.”
“He did a little of that too. The way he sees it, I can’t possibly be what Trick needs, since Rio is convinced that Trick is gay. Apparently he’d also hoped that Trick would one day treat him as more than a fling. He hates that I ended his hopes.”
“Seeing you and Trick together will have made him face that Trick isn’t gay, which means he also had to face that you’re able to give Trick something he can’t ever give him—not unless he’s interested in a sex change, anyway.”
Frankie stumbled to a halt as it hit her. Like a slap across the face. All this time, she hadn’t seen it. Not even once.
“What?” asked Lydia.
“You’re right. He probably hates me. He had it in his head, despite what the facts suggested, that he’d have Trick one day. Because of me, it’ll never happen. But he also truly believes that Trick is gay. In Rio’s head, I somehow duped Trick. I’m the bad guy.” And just the same way, her mother had been the bad guy, she now realized.
“Pretty much, yeah. Honey, you’ve gone very pale. Is something—oh my God.” She grabbed Frankie’s arm, pulling her to an abrupt stop.
“What?” She tracked Lydia’s gaze. “What the fuck?” On the floor someone had drawn a large pentagram. It was surrounded by candles and symbols. Worse, there was a huge reddish-brown stain that was quite clearly old blood.
“Oh my Jesus.” Lydia put a hand to her chest. “It was probably just kids being stupid, fooling around and thinking they could summon spirits or demons. Right?”
“That’s blood, Lydia. Look at what’s in the center of the pentagram.” Even though it was peppered with dust, Frankie could see it easily enough.
Lydia drew back, her heart now pounding as fast as Frankie’s. “That’s a photo of Christopher.” Her fingers dug into Frankie’s arm as she asked, “Do you think kids were trying to invoke his spirit or something weird like that?”
“I think someone wanted to talk to him.” Someone crazy enough to not only sacrifice a living creature but think that it would actually work. She jumped as the phone in her pocket rang. Taking a shaky breath, Frankie fished it out of her pocket. “It’s Trick.” She answered, “Hello.”
“Baby, what’s wrong? I can feel your anxiety. What is it?”
She licked her lower lip. “Well, I’m at the old cabin.”
He sighed. “Frankie, you shouldn’t have gone there without me. Look, I’m on my way to you now, okay—there was no sign of Morelli at the landfill. Just go back to Iris’s house and wait for me.”
A board creaked over their heads. And another. And another. Her gut dropped. “Someone’s here.”
“Probably Marcus or Roni,” said Lydia.
“I don’t think so,” she said as another board softly creaked. Because the person above them was trying very hard to be quiet, like they hoped to sneak up on her. “I know who killed my parents.”
“What?” both he and Lydia demanded at once.
“I know who it was.” She listened as the footsteps crossed the floorboards, trying to determine which way the newcomer was heading. Even if she and Lydia hadn’t left footprints in the dust that broadcast their location, the shifter would be able to follow their scents. “And I think they’re here.”
Trick swore. “I’ll be fifteen minutes at most. Go back to Iris’s cabin and wait for—What the hell?” She heard the roar of metal clashing, the screech of tires, and the shattering of glass.
“Trick? Trick!” Frankie looked at her phone, shell-shocked. “The line went dead,” she told Lydia. “It sounded like the SUV crashed into something.” Her wolf completely freaked out—raged, snarled, howled, battered at Frankie to go to him.
Panic punched Frankie right in the stomach, stealing her breath. The only thing that stopped her from joining her wolf in that crazed state was that she knew he wasn’t dead; she could feel him. He was unconscious, but he was alive.
“Shit!” Lydia grabbed her arm. “We have to go now.”
The hinges squealed as the basement door opened. Frankie’s heart missed a beat, and her breaths started to come loud and quick.
Heavy footsteps creaked their way down the stairs. “I know you’re down there, Frankie.” Spoken like a taunt.
Lydia gasped as the male reached the bottom step. “Cruz?”
He grinned at her. “That would be me.” His gaze cut to Frankie. “You don’t look so surprised to see me.”
Frankie swallowed. “I figured it out. Eventually.” She remembered the photo albums, remembered how Cruz had often looked at Christopher, remembered seeing photos of them standing almost intimately close. She also remembered Cruz often glaring at Brad the same way Rio had stared at Frankie. But it wasn’t Brad he’d been glaring at, she now realized. He’d been glaring at Caroline.
“You were supposed to be in bed that night,” said Cruz, as though she were the one who’d done wrong. “You weren’t supposed to hear or see anything.”
Lydia’s footsteps dragged as she shuffled backward, shaking her head in denial. But then he raised his hand and cocked the trigger of the pistol he held. Lydia froze, and every muscle in Frankie’s body went rigid. Fuck.
“Hands up where I can see them, girls. That’s good. Don’t count on your bodyguards coming to help you.” He smirked. “I paid some of the juveniles to
lure them into the woods.”
That wouldn’t be enough, thought Frankie. No. Cam would feel Lydia’s anxiety, just as Trick would feel Frankie’s. Someone would come. They had to. Until then, she had to . . . what? She couldn’t think. Couldn’t reason. Not when she knew Trick was hurt and in danger. She needed to get to him.
Her eyes darted around the basement. The only exit other than the stairway was the grimy window behind Cruz. Getting out meant somehow getting past him and his pistol without getting shot. How the fuck were they supposed to do that? She had no idea.
Her wolf wanted to surface and rip the fucker limb from limb. Frankie would have shifted and given the animal the chance if she weren’t so sure that Cruz would put a bullet through her head before she was able to finish the shift.
Hoping to distract him from thoughts of shooting her and Lydia, Frankie flicked a look at the pentagram and asked, “Is that your handiwork?”
Sadness briefly glittered in his eyes. “I missed him. I wanted to apologize for shooting him. I didn’t go there that night to hurt him.”
“You do know that making a blood sacrifice to try to speak to a ghost is pretty fucked up, right?”
“Depends on a person’s definition of fucked up. My definition? Someone tricking a guy into believing she’s their true mate—depriving him of what he truly needs and wants—is fucked up. Caroline trapped him into being with her.”
Frankie clenched her fists. “So you killed her.” Bastard.
“I hadn’t planned to kill her. Just scare her. Make her listen. So I took the gun. That bullet should have killed her, not my Christopher.”
Flicking a look at the pistol pointed at her, she said, “You sure like to use firearms, don’t you?”
“It seems fitting that you’ll die from a bullet, just like your mother should have done.”
Her wolf peeled back her upper lip and lunged for him, but Frankie managed to retain control. “You were Christopher’s lover for a while, before he met my mother.”
His chin lifted. “I was more than that. Sure, we weren’t exclusive. He needed to sow his oats first—I got that. I understood him. Not like Caroline. She didn’t know him the way I did. She didn’t get him like I did.”
Frankie felt Trick regain consciousness. A pulse of his pain traveled down their bond. A lump of sheer terror clogged her throat. Fuck it all, she needed to get to him. Her heart was slamming so hard against her ribs that she wouldn’t have been surprised if one cracked. But she didn’t dare move. Not yet. There was no rationality in Cruz’s eyes, and she knew that she was looking at somebody who was capable of absolutely anything in that moment.
She didn’t want to die. She sure didn’t want Trick to die, but it was unlikely that he’d survive the breaking of their mating bond, despite it not being fully formed. For that reason alone, she’d fight. But really, there was nothing she could do that didn’t involve throwing herself in harm’s way. There was nothing to hide behind. Nothing to throw at Cruz. Nothing to distract him with. He was bigger. Bulkier. Stronger. And motherfucking armed.
He dipped his free hand into his pocket and pulled out a small device that looked a little like an iPod. Without moving his gaze from Frankie and Lydia, he pressed the screen with his thumb and . . . and nothing. He gave them a wide, eerie smile. That was when something above them rumbled, shook, and roared as it collapsed. Shingles tumbled off the roof, and the cabin shuddered.
Frankie swallowed as her stomach bottomed. “What did you do?”
“Made sure that we wouldn’t be disturbed. That’s just parts of the porch roof collapsing near the front and back doors. Can’t have anyone trying to get inside, now can we?” He returned the little device—which was obviously a remote—to his pocket. “I wired the place when I heard you’d asked Josh for permission to walk through the cabin.”
Frankie gaped at him. Was he high? “The entire place could collapse.”
“I know. That’s why it’s so perfect. My world collapsed when Christopher died. Now yours is going to collapse too.” His grin dimmed as he looked at Lydia. “I’m sorry that you’ll go down with us. I really am.”
“Then let her go,” said Frankie.
“It’s too late for that.”
“Why do this?” Lydia whispered. “Why, Cruz?”
“It’s not my fault,” he insisted, indignant. He jabbed a finger at Frankie. “It’s hers.” He sneered at Frankie. “I knew when I first saw you at Phoenix territory that either you or your wolf remembered something. I just wasn’t sure what or how much. Then you started digging, asking questions, poking around in Iris’s attic. I heard you wanted to walk through here too, and I knew it was only a matter of time before you worked it out. I had to do something.”
A light shudder rocked the cabin walls. Things clattered and rolled along the floor above them, and she wondered if they were the glass bottles they’d found.
“See, I ain’t gonna be executed. No. I control my fate. If I’m going to die, Frankie, it’ll happen when and where I choose. Understand? And I choose to die in the same place my Christopher died. And since it’s your fault that it’s come to this, you’re going to die with me. I’ve been waiting for you to finally come here—you sealed both our fates as soon as you walked through that front door. You know, I think Christopher will probably be happy that I’m sending his daughter to him, don’t you?” He laughed, as if that were hilarious.
Frankie’s gut twisted at the glitter of madness in his eyes. “You’ve been riding the crazy train for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I have.” And then he fired.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Trick groaned. The god-awful ringing in his ears just wouldn’t stop.
He tried opening his eyes, but it didn’t happen. The scents only aggravated his pounding headache. Blood, gas, oil, and burned rubber. He could taste blood, and he realized he’d bitten his tongue. Even with adrenaline pumping through him, he started to feel the ache of several injuries. What the hell had—
Images flashed before him, and his eyes snapped open. A black car hitting the passenger side. His neck snapping sideways. The SUV tipping. His head smacking into the window as they rolled and tumbled down, down, down.
Apparently the SUV had righted itself when it finally stopped rolling. Trick glanced out the broken window. They were in a vast, dry pit among high mounds of sand and rubble. As he saw the tall, stairlike sloped walls, he cursed. The fuckers had sent them crashing to the bottom of a goddamn quarry.
Unmanned machinery was nearby, including bulldozers, cranes, tractors, and pumps to remove pooling water. It was no doubt thanks to those pumps that the bed of the quarry was dry.
Trick winced as he tried to move. The seat belt had snapped taut in front of him and fuck his chest hurt. He was pretty sure that at least one rib was fractured, if not broken. Others were badly bruised. “Knew we should have gone for the model with the side airbags,” he muttered.
Clawing open the belt, he took a deep painful breath. His neck hurt like a bitch from the way it had snapped from side to side as they’d rolled. He’d definitely cut his head on the window, because he could feel the burning slice of pain and smell his blood.
He had a concussion for sure, but he couldn’t let that matter. His injuries probably would have been a damn sight worse if he’d been human. Shifters were hard to hurt. Half the bruises would be gone within the hour, but that didn’t mean Morelli wouldn’t pay for every single one of them.
Someone moaned behind him while another cursed.
Trick tried to glance over his shoulder, but pain shot through his neck and he swore. “Any of you dead?”
Beside him, Ryan grunted.
“Feels like it,” rasped Dominic. “What the hell just happened?”
“It was a trap,” said Trey, voice strained with pain. “Morelli lured us out here, and then he or one of his friends crashed into us.”
Eyes narrowed, Ryan peered out the window. “Said ‘friends’
are outside in their wolf forms, pacing on the wide stairs. I count eleven. Don’t know if that includes Morelli—I’ve never seen him in his wolf form.”
“His pack was a lot bigger,” said Dominic. “Either it split after they abandoned their territory or the others are nearby.”
“I think it’s the first,” said Trey. “His pack was made up of lone shifters and people whose Alphas and pack mates he destroyed. I doubt many of them would have felt a burning need to stick by his side—especially when he’s made an enemy of us and, by extension, our allies. These wolves here are likely his only loyal followers.”
“Why haven’t they just pounced on us already?” asked Dominic.
“They’re playing with us,” said Trick, carefully brushing shards of glass from his hair. “They want us to see that we’re no safer outside than we are in here. Doesn’t matter either way. We’ve got to get out.” Smoke hissed out from under the slightly raised hood. That couldn’t be good. “Anyone have their phone handy? I dropped mine somewhere.”
Ryan grunted, unzipped his jacket pocket, dug out his cell, and pressed what Trick knew was the panic button. It would send an alert and their GPS coordinates to each of their pack mates. “The cavalry should arrive soon.”
Carefully twisting in his seat, Trick got a good look at each of his pack mates. Bruised, bleeding, and rumpled, they didn’t look any better than he did. But they were alive, and the need to hurt practically shone from their eyes. “Ready to get out there?”
“Raring to get out there,” Dominic ground out.
As his wolf raked at him, wanting his attention, Trick pressed his fingers to his aching temple. There was something . . . something he needed to do. Someone who—
Frankie. Trick gripped the edge of his seat. “I need to get to Frankie.” He told them about their phone call. “If she’s right and the person in that cabin killed her parents, she’s in danger.”
“We’ll get to her,” Trey assured him in a “Keep the fuck calm” voice, “but we have to get out of this shit first. She has Roni and Marcus; they’ll protect her.”