He laughed and put his arm around my waist as the path widened enough for two. "For breakfast?"
"You said I could have whatever I wanted."
"Can I get you some fruit to balance that meal?"
"No, but you can dig up some bacon. Bacon and eggs."
"Dare I ask for a little help?"
"I"ll make coffee."
He laughed again, "Thanks a h.e.l.l of a-"
He stopped. We"d come to the forest"s edge and stepped through to the backyard. There, on the back patio, less than fifty feet away, stood Jeremy . . . surrounded by five or six unfamiliar human faces, all of which turned the second we walked from the woods. Clay growled an oath and stepped in front of me, covering my nakedness. Jeremy wheeled around and ushered the group off to the side. It took a few seconds for them to move, and a few more for them to stop staring.
When the visitors had vanished around the side of the garage, I grabbed Clay"s arm and made a run for the back door, not stopping until we were upstairs. Before he could say anything, I shoved him into his room and went to my own. I"d only put on panties and a bra before I heard Clay"s door open. Expecting him to head downstairs to confront the trespa.s.sers, I hurried to my door and yanked it open, only to find him holding the handle.
"Hey," he said, grinning as he recovered his balance. "If you"re that eager to let me into your bedroom, I should offer to make breakfast more often."
"I was-You"re not-You"re okay?"
"I"m fine, darling. Just coming to round you up for breakfast while Jeremy gets rid of our uninvited guests." He leaned forward, put a hand against my back, and kissed me. "And no, I"m not going out to help him. I"m in too good a mood to let a bunch of humans spoil it. Jeremy can handle them."
"Good," I said, putting my arms around his neck.
"Glad you approve. So let"s get breakfast going, then we can dream up a few ways to distract ourselves until Jeremy"s ready to tell us how he plans to deal with Marsten and Cain."
As he leaned forward to kiss me again, someone cleared his throat in the doorway. I peeked over Clay"s shoulder to see Jeremy there, arms crossed, a slight smile on his lips.
"Sorry to interrupt," he said. "But I need Elena downstairs. Fully dressed if we ever intend to get rid of these men."
"Yes, sir," I said, disentangling myself from Clay. "I"ll be right there."
"Hold up," Clay said as Jeremy turned to leave the room. "I need to talk to you."
They left. I could hear Clay apologizing for his behavior the night before, but quickly tuned them out, not wanting to intrude. I finished dressing, ran a brush through my hair, checked in the mirror, then went into the hall. Jeremy and Clay were still there.
"I"ll start breakfast," Clay said, heading off down the stairs. "Have fun, darling."
"I"m sure I will," I said. As we went down the steps, I glanced over my shoulder at Jeremy. "Sorry about that. The walking naked from the woods thing. We didn"t expect visitors."
"Nor should you," he said, steering me toward the back door. "There"s no need to apologize. You should be able to come and go as you like here. It"s these d.a.m.ned intrusions that. . ." He shook his head and didn"t finish.
"What is it this time?"
"Another missing person."
"The boy from the other day?"
Jeremy shook his head as he held open the back door for me. "This time they"re looking for one of the men who came on the property Friday. The middle-aged one. The leader."
"He"s missing?"
"Not just missing, but missing after having left a message for a friend saying he was coming here last night to check things again. Something about this place was bothering him. He wanted another look around."
"Oh, s.h.i.t."
"In a nutsh.e.l.l-exactly."
Mistrust
There were six people in the search party, three local cops and three civilians. Jeremy, Peter, Nick, and I went out to help them look while Antonio returned to the house to keep an eye on Clay, in case his commitment to noninterference didn"t last. The four of us played the role of good and concerned citizens, scouring the bushes while keeping our noses on alert for anything we didn"t want the searchers to find. One thing I would have rather they hadn"t found turned up early in the quest.
"Got something!" one of the men yelled.
"Is it Mike?" another called, rushing from our sides.
As everyone converged on the scene, Nick"s voice rang out, choked with barely contained laughter. "Forget it. It"s-uh-nothing important."
"What the h.e.l.l do you mean?" the first man said. "Maybe this is all a joke to you, son, but. . ."
The rest of the sentence trailed off as we burst into the clearing to find one of the searchers bending over a ripped shirt. Torn clothing littered the ground, more hung from bushes. Nick held up half a pair of white panties and grinned at me.
"Wild dogs? Or just Clayton?"
"Oh G.o.d," I muttered under my breath.
I walked over to s.n.a.t.c.h the underwear from him, but he held it over his head, grinning like a schoolboy.
"I see Paris, I see France, I see Elena"s underpants," he chanted.
"Everyone"s already seen much more than that," Jeremy said. "I think we can safely resume the search."
Peter plucked Clay"s shirt from a low-hanging branch and held it up, peering through a hole in the middle. "You guys can really do some damage. Where"s the hidden video when you need it?"
"So this-uh-wasn"t done by wild dogs?" one of the searchers said.
Peter grinned and tossed the shirt to the ground. "Nope. Just wild hormones."
The other men, who"d finally stopped casting sidelong glances at me after the "naked in the yard" incident, now looked me over with renewed interest. I smiled, trying hard not to bare my teeth, then hurried back into the woods.
Jeremy, two of the searchers, and I were beating the bushes in the northeast quadrant of the woods when we heard another shout, this time infused with enough urgency to make us run. When we got there, Nick and two searchers were standing over a body. Nick looked up, caught my eye and gave me a look that said he"d tried unsuccessfully to distract the men"s attention. Jeremy and I walked to the body and looked down. It was the missing man. His shirt collar was torn and drenched with blood. Above the collar his throat was shredded, flaps of flesh hanging from the wound. Empty eye sockets stared up at us. Crows or turkey vultures had found him first, lying exposed in the clearing. Besides taking his eyes, they"d pecked at his face, leaving b.l.o.o.d.y holes where white bone peeked through. Bits of scattered flesh covered his shirtfront and surrounded his head, as if the searchers had scared the scavengers mid-meal.
"Like the others," one man said, then turned away from the sight.
"One difference," another said. "He wasn"t eaten. Not by the dogs at least. Birds got to him though. b.u.g.g.e.rs don"t waste any time."
A younger man bolted for the woods. Seconds later, the sound of retching filled the air. Two of the men shook their heads in sympathy, both looking a little green themselves. My stomach wasn"t feeling so great either, though it had nothing to do with seeing a dead body. When the younger man stopped throwing up, he was quiet a moment, then ran from the thicket.
"Come here! You guys have to see this!"
I knew what he"d found. I knew it and I dreaded stepping into that thicket to confirm my suspicions, but Jeremy prodded me on. When I stepped into the woods, the sickly sweet smell of vomit made my gorge rise. Then I looked down at the ground, following the path of the young man"s finger. There, in the damp earth, were paw prints.
"Can you believe the size of those things?" the young man said. "Christ, they"re as big as saucers. Just like those kids said. These dogs are huge!"
As I surveyed the thicket, my eyes caught sight of something snagged on a thornbush. A tuft of fur, shining golden even in the shadows. While everyone stared at the paw prints, I slipped over to the bush, stood in front of it, reached behind my back, and slid the fur into my pocket. Then I looked around for more. When I didn"t see any, I glanced back at the paw prints, as recognizable as footprints from a familiar pair of shoes. As I stared at them, I felt sick. Then the disappointment turned to something else. Anger.
"I have to go," I muttered, turning from the thicket.
No one tried to stop me, the humans a.s.suming it was a delayed reaction to the sight of the dead man, and the Pack not wanting to make a scene.
"Clayton!" I shouted as the back door slammed behind me.
Clay appeared in the kitchen doorway, wooden spoon in hand. "That didn"t take long. Come in and get the coffee going."
I didn"t move. "Aren"t you going to ask if they found the missing man?"
"That would imply I give a d.a.m.n."
"They found him."
"Good, so I presume they"re leaving. All the better. Now come in and-"
"I found this by the body," I said, pulling the tuft of fur from my pocket.
"Huh. Looks like mine."
"It is yours. Your prints were there, too."
Clay leaned against the doorpost. "My fur and my prints in my forest? Fancy that. I hope you"re not implying what I think you"re implying, darling, "cause if you recall, I was with you all last night, which is when Tonio says this guy went missing."
"You weren"t with me this morning when I woke up."
Clay sputtered, nearly dropping the spoon. "I was gone five minutes! Five minutes to track and kill a guy? I"m good, but I"m not that good."
"I have no idea how long you were gone."
"Yes, you do, because I"m telling you. Come on, you know I didn"t do it. Use your head, Elena. If I lost control and killed this guy, I"d have told you about it. I"d have asked for your help getting rid of the body and deciding what to tell Jeremy. I wouldn"t have been frolicking in the pond while some dead human is lying in our forest waiting for another group of hunters to trip over him."
"You didn"t expect an immediate search party, so you thought you had more time. You planned to hide the body later, after you got me out of the way."
"That"s bulls.h.i.t and you know it. I don"t hide things from you. I don"t lie to you. I don"t deceive you. Not ever."
I stepped forward, lifting my face to his. "Oh, really? Somehow, I forget the discussion we had before you bit me, when you told me what you were planning to do. Convenient amnesia, I guess."
"I did not plan that," Clay said, looming over me. The wooden spoon snapped in two as he clenched his fist. "We"ve been through this before. I panicked and-"
"I don"t want to hear your excuses."
"You never do, do you? You"d rather talk about things I didn"t didn"t do, then toss that in for good measure when the opportunity arises. Why do I bother defending myself ? You"ve made up your mind about everything I do and don"t do, and the reasons I do them. Nothing I can ever say will change that." do, then toss that in for good measure when the opportunity arises. Why do I bother defending myself ? You"ve made up your mind about everything I do and don"t do, and the reasons I do them. Nothing I can ever say will change that."
He spun on his heel and stalked back to the kitchen. I turned the opposite way, strode into the study, and slammed the door.
As I sat in the study, I realized with some surprise that I had no urge to bolt. My fight with Clay hadn"t left me with the usual overwhelming impulse to get free of Stonehaven. Yes, last night had been a mistake, but an instructive one. I"d let down my guard, given in to my most subconscious desire to be with Clay again, and what had happened? Within hours he was lying to me. Even while we"d been together in the woods, while I"d been sleeping, he was off indulging the darkest side of his nature. He wouldn"t change. I couldn"t change him. He was violent, selfish, and completely untrustworthy. If it took one regrettable night to remind me of that, it"d been worth it.
About twenty minutes later, the study door opened and Nick peeked around. I"d been curled up in Jeremy"s armchair. When Nick opened the door, I unfolded myself and straightened up.
"Can I come in?" he asked.
"I smell food. If you can share, you"re more than welcome."
He slipped into the room and put a plate of pancakes and ham on the footstool. The pancakes were plain, finger food without b.u.t.ter and syrup. I picked up one and gulped it too fast to taste it, not wanting to remember who"d made them and why.
"All done outside?" I asked.
Nick lowered himself onto the sofa and stretched out. "Pretty much. A couple more cops showed up. Jeremy sent Peter and me in."
Antonio walked through the door. "Are they investigating the scene?" he asked, pushing his son"s legs off the sofa and sitting down.
Nick shrugged. "I guess so. They brought cameras and a bag of stuff. Someone from the morgue is on the way to pick up the body."
"Do you think they"ll find anything?" Antonio asked me.
"Hopefully nothing that doesn"t link this killing to a wild dog," I said. "If it seems clear-cut, they should wrap up the investigation pretty fast and devote their efforts to finding the dogs. No sense wasting time gathering evidence when the presumed killers will never see a courtroom."
"Just the business end of a shotgun," Antonio said. "If they see so much as a flash of fur in the woods, they"ll shoot. When we need to run, we"re going to have to find someplace far from here and BearValley."
"d.a.m.n," Nick said, shaking his head. "When we find out who"s responsible, they"re going to pay for this."
"Oh, I have a good idea who"s responsible," I said.
I took the tuft of fur from my pocket and tossed it on the footrest. Nick stared at it a moment, confused. Then his eyes widened and he looked at me. I avoided his gaze, not wanting to see the disbelief I knew would be there. Antonio took one look at the fur, then sat back in his seat, and said nothing.