[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
on a boat holding a fish still on the line. Pale yanked the
center drawer, snapping the lock in two. Inside was the
Dee Tenorio
Tempting the Enemy
same standard deal as above—pens, paper, staples, velvet
necklace box.
He only hesitated a second. Pulling out the box, he
handed it to Victor. He’d give the kid credit, Victor didn’t
flinch at brushing Wolf claws. But he almost threw up
when he opened it.
“What is it? What did you find?” Kennison asked,
the only one moving in the squad room. He walked up to
the desk, frowning.
Victor put the box on top of Jorgensen’s desk and
backed away, still gagging. Inside, a piece of skin, cured
into leather, lay stretched and mounted. The red tattoo,
dark brown now, could have been a snake, given the
horror it produced. The others didn’t know what the tattoo
meant, but they all recognized the triangular shape.
Pale glared pitilessly at the captain. “We just found
the Woodsman.”
Kennison looked down, then closed his eyes, dread
aging him in a heartbeat.
“He has my mate.” Let them decide what they
thought of that on their own. Even humans, for all their
prejudice and purposeful blindness, knew the danger of
coming between a Wolf and his mate. And every man
there knew what the Woodsman had planned for her.
Carter, the last face he’d expect to show compassion,
dared to shake his head in pity.
Flinching, Pale glared back down at the desk. There
had to be something there. Some clue, some slip. His gaze
snagged on the picture frame. Jorgensen on his boat, little
more than a dingy, on the still and greenish waters of a
lake. In the background, an old cabin sagged among the
trees. “Where is this?” He held out the picture.
262
263
A few heads shook. Victor shrugged.
“That’s his place on Lake Salderon,” Kennison
mumbled, taking the frame in hand, frowning down at it.
That lake was an hour away, up over the mountain.
Pale reached for Kennison’s tie, yanking the man forward
and nearly off his feet, scaring the ever-living shit out of
everyone nearby at the same time. Everyone took a step
back, if not two. No one seemed interested in freeing their
captain from his grip.
He leaned down, almost pressing his nose to that of
the man in his hold. “Do whatever you have to, call
whoever, but you get me up there. Now.”
Kennison didn’t so much as blink.
“If she dies, Kennison, trust me when I tell you that
the Sibile will be the last people on your list to be afraid
of.”
The captain nodded, but Pale took no pleasure in it.
He snatched back the framed photo, staring at the
dilapidated cabin. The glass cracked in his fingers, falling
to the surface of the desk. Irritated, he snatched the
picture out, dumping the broken frame with the rest of the
glass.
“There’s something—”
Pale half turned, finding Victor reaching for the
photo.
His hands snapped back in surrender. “On the back.
It says something.”
Looking down, he flipped the picture over. A man’s
scrawl wrote only one line. Rysen—her heart can only
belong to one of us.
In a haze of pain, Pale remembered every heart he’d
found in the woods. Torn straight out of a woman’s chest
and left uselessly on the ground in shredded pieces. No,
Dee Tenorio
Tempting the Enemy
not just a woman’s chest. A Wolf’s chest. All except the
last, the only one to have her heart pulled out in a single
strike.
They hadn’t been sport.
They were practice.
“He
knew
she
was
coming,”
he
breathed,
remembering what she’d said about his precognition.
They’d been thinking too focused, closing in on the kills
and not the pattern. The Wolves were practice. The
scarlets were bait.
Jade was always the prize.
Jorgensen’s desk went flying across the room,
landing with a crash, the surface shredded by his claws.
For all the noise it made, there was nothing else he could
do. Pale held on to the part of her in his heart, the glowing
vitality of her soul bonded to his. Stay alive, Jade. Wait
for me…
But until he could find a way up that mountain, she
was on her own.
264
Chapter Eighteen
Jade spun her back toward the mirror, facing the tall
man, her hand at her throat where his touch left a numb
pain behind. He’d burned her with the dark, somehow, but
instead of the heat she’d expected, she found ice flakes on
her skin. The garish hint of humanity floating in the
nothingness faded to blackness as he slipped backward
into shadow.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]