Wolf at the Door (19 page)

He gave a low snort, sending a leaf
skittering out from under the bush. Then again, common sense had
always been in short supply in the human population. Shifters
becoming public knowledge hadn’t made people smarter.

His gaze traveled over the small, ranch-style
house, his nose twitching in the slight breeze. Timber’s scent was
there, faint, along with another woman’s. He could have laughed.
Shifter Town Enforcement had thought they were so smart moving her,
but Charles knew how to wait. He was very, very patient.

The front door opened and Charles watched the
Hound slip out. A woman stood behind him, a soft smile on her face,
before she shut the door and left him on the steps. He didn’t
recognize the strange woman, but her scent read wolf. Shifter Town
Enforcement thought they’d hide Timber with a wolf?

Now, that was laughable.

Had they forgotten the number of wolves he’d
killed already? There was a trick to it, especially if she was
already watching for him, alert to the danger. But in the end
wolf-shifters were still human, and people tended to get lazy. They
stopped watching their car mirrors at night when they got in their
car, stopped checking the bushes on the way up the sidewalk to
their house. They missed bolting a window shut in the summer,
preferring let in a soft breeze.

They always, always made a mistake.

And a good hunter knew how to watch for
mistakes.

The Hound made his way down the concrete
steps and Charles crept closer. He was careful not to give his
hiding place away. The wind was in his favor, blowing toward
Charles, ferrying scents toward him, not away. He tilted his head
into the small, teasing breeze and inhaled. Son of a bitch. He
barely held back the growl as the damn dog’s scent rolled through
him. It was ripe with Timber’s. This one here was getting too damn
close to Charles’s mate for his liking.

The Hound needed to learn to back the fuck
off.

He watched the Hound get into the sleek,
black vehicle parked in the driveway. It wasn’t a marked STE car,
but what else did big, black SUV say? Charles wasn’t a fool, not
like they were. He turned his attention back to the house as soon
he heard the Hound start his car. In a few minutes he could be
inside and he could have her again. Timber would be back where she
belonged. Finally.

His long tongue ran out over his muzzle,
relishing the lethal sharpness of his canines. There was one hitch
to the plan, and Charles eyed the SUV when the brake lights
flashed, followed by the reverse lights. So far, that Hound had
stuck to Timber like glue.

He’d yet to abandon her. Even after one of
his own had been killed. Charles had fucking made the message
perfectly clear, and instead the Hound had simply moved Timber
somewhere else. No. He didn’t think this particular man was about
to give up. Worse, Charles suspected that if the Hound was as close
to Timber as he suspected, the dog might try and track her down
after Charles had taken her.

And he didn’t like being the hunted.
Predators weren’t supposed to be prey.

No. Some threats had to be eliminated before
you could take the ultimate prize, and this particular Hound was
one of them. The vehicle turned out onto the street, headlights
cutting through the darkness, and Charles flattened himself to the
ground when they sliced through the bushes over him. It pulled away
from the little house where Timber hid, and Charles slipped out
across the lawn.

He took one last look in Timber’s direction
and then followed the car when it rounded the corner. He’d be back
for her. He’d always be back for her. First, though, there was
something he needed to take care of.

***

Timber stood at Shay’s bathroom sink, her
long wet hair flopped down over her shoulders, dampening her navy
T-shirt. She heard Shay coming down the hall toward her, and took a
deep breath.

Some things in life you just had to say out
loud. Sometimes you needed an opinion from someone rational who
wasn’t attached to the outcome.

Shay paused at the open bathroom door and
Timber just blurted it out, “I’m thinking of dyeing my hair.”

Shay huffed a soft, teasing laugh. “To what?
Bubble gum pink?”

Timber smiled as she fluffed her wet hair.
Still soaked from the shower, it looked darker, closer to black
than the eye-popping purple it normally was. She couldn’t quite
blame Shay for the bubble gum pink quip.

“No. To something more normal. Brown, maybe?
It used to be brown. A chocolate shade, with gold highlights in the
sun.” And she realized as she said it that part of her missed that.
The plain Jane brown hair she’d been born with. Except, when her
bloodcurdling screams woke her last night and she’d bolted into the
bathroom as she always did, the bright purple beacon on her head,
her hair, had been the first thing to ease the frantic fear. What
if she looked in the mirror and saw the past?

What if she couldn’t break free because all
she saw in the mirror was the woman she’d once been?

Shay hitched herself up onto the counter, her
back to the mirror, and studied Timber. “You could go blonde. Well,
more of a light golden brown. It’d look good on you.”

And it would still be different. But
different enough to help her past the nightmare-induced panic?
Timber gnawed on her bottom lip. There was only one way to find
out. Timber eyed Shay. “Care to run to the store with me?”

The other woman laughed.

“Like I’d let you go without me.” She slid
off the sink and turned to look at Timber’s reflection in the
mirror, then back to Timber. “Just tell me one thing. Why?”

She didn’t know how to explain. In a way, the
brightly colored hair was still hiding her. She’d dyed it in a
reaction to Charles and the nightmares that had followed, as a way
to cope with the horrors. A way to separate the then from the
now.

Except it hadn’t resolved anything. She
hadn’t really moved on. She didn’t think dyeing her hair yet
another color would stop the nightmares, not anymore, but she
couldn’t help hoping that it just might help her move on. It was
one step closer to discovering the person she wanted to be.

“I’m just ready for the change. To find
me
again, you know?”

“Yeah.” Shay squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll get
the keys.”

Timber ignored the uneasy flip in her
stomach. Change was good, even if sometimes it made the world feel
a little lopsided. It just took time to adjust. Then Shay was
standing in front of her grinning, and Timber found herself smiling
back. Hope blossomed in her chest. “Let’s do this.”

The nearest store was a five minute drive,
made faster by Shay’s disregard for the speed limit. Inside,
however, took longer. “Crap. That’s a lot of colors.”

Shay’s smooth laugh sounded from behind her.
“Didn’t you look the last time you dyed your hair?”

“No. Purple? Doesn’t really take much
thought. I liked the color and it was crazy. Crazy enough to work.
I didn’t even look at the normal colors.” She squatted in front of
the golden browns. Well, burnished bronze, golden delight, light
brown, sun bronze, and the list went on and on. The various shades
were overwhelming. “I just want...”

Hell. Any of them would do. She reached in
and scooped a box out.

“Let’s try this one instead,” Shay said,
exchanging her choice for the box Timber had picked out. “That one
will look too light on you. And trust me, my hair has run the
gauntlet. You’re in good hands.”

Timber looked at Shay’s short-cropped, spiked
hair and scrunched her nose. “Yeah. Not reassuring.”

Shay’s grin widened. “Shut up and let’s go.
The one you picked would have made your skin look a bit bleached
out.”

Shay maneuvered them in the direction of
checkout, and Timber decided to surrender to the tsunami that was
Shay. She figured anything would look better than what she had now.
“Do you think it’ll cover the purple?” she asked over her
shoulder.

A woman in the lane next to them snickered,
but Timber ignored her. She’d gotten accustomed to weird looks when
she’d first chosen the color. And it had been purple for so long,
she barely even registered the double-take most people still did
when they passed her.

They probably thought she was a bit nuts or
some punk-teen wannabe who refused to grow up.

They didn’t need to know the truth. It didn’t
matter. She had known.

“Another reason I think this shade would work
better? It’s darker. It won’t have to work as hard to conceal the
purple.” Shay stepped up to the register and handed the box to the
checker. Timber paid, and as they strode to the car, Shay finished
her though. “It still might end up a bit darker than what is on the
box, but it shouldn’t be purple anymore.”

That was all she wanted right now.

The hardest part was the wait. Letting the
color work its way into her hair, waiting to on tenterhooks rinse
it out. They waited at the bar in Shay’s kitchen, poking at the
subs they’d picked up on the way home, using a food as a way to
pass the time.

“You’re going to be okay,” Shay said softly
when the timer dinged and Timber hesitated. “He didn’t break you
then, he hasn’t broken you now. You’ll find a way through the
nightmares. Believe me, there
are
ways.”

Timber smiled. For the first time,
surprisingly, she hadn’t needed the reassurance. And after she
rinsed her hair and dried it, she stared in the mirror, speechless.
The woman staring back at her looked completely different. She
looked vibrant, beautiful.

Stronger.

Chapter Eighteen

A car
horn blared down the street as Brandt slammed the door of his STE
vehicle and waited for Tate to come around and join him, his
attention already focused on the alley behind the old burger and
grill. A dumpster sat beside the back door, one lid flipped up. A
man stood beside the door, his cigarette bobbing as he lifted the
smoke for another drag.

The owner, Brandt presumed. He looked as
rattled as he’d sounded on the phone. Then again, finding a
mutilated body in your dumpster first thing in the morning tended
to have that effect. It had been four days since they moved Timber.
Brandt supposed they should have expected another body, since they
had been fairly sure Wolfe had another woman when he’d trashed
Timber’s house.

And yet he hadn’t expected this.

Even from their position by the car, Brandt
could smell the blood. He’d hoped the guy on the phone was
exaggerating. Brandt strode up to the dumpster, nodding at the man
standing there. “Elliot Rogers?”

“Yeah.” The man blew out a breath of smoke. A
shudder trailed down his spine. His face was white, lips pinched.
The look of a man who’d never seen a body outside of a funeral home
before.

“Brandt Lawrence.” He extended his hand but
the man shook his head.

“Look, man, I don’t want shit to do with
this. Let’s get this over with so I can just pretend it didn’t
happen.”

Tate moved closer to Rogers and began
questioning him, leaving Brandt to examine the body. Stepping up on
the back steps, Brandt looked down into the large green dumpster. A
woman, mid-forties, stared up at him. Her dark brown hair was
matted with blood.

“Looks like she got mauled by a fucking dog
and then dumped here,” the bar owner said shakily.

Brandt had suspected something different,
even when they got the initial call. Dogs didn’t strip their
victims naked before they attacked them. Hovering over the
dumpster, he knew for a fact that it was Wolfe. He could smell the
man on her. And Wolfe had really done a number on this one. He’d
literally ripped her apart.

“Thank you,” Tate was saying behind him and
Brandt turned to see that the Crime Scene Unit had arrived. They
looked about as grim as he felt. The medical examiner stepped up on
the stairs behind him.

“Poor woman,” the woman said softly.

“She was probably raped. Check for sexual
assault.” For someone who claimed to already have a mate, Charles
Wolfe sure raped a lot of women.

“Boss,” Tate said, and Brandt left the
medical examiner to do her job. Tate was already on his way back to
the car.

“What is it?”

“Owner recognized the car and Wolfe. Said he
thinks he’s staying down on Park Street. Says he passes it most
days parked in front of a brick house there. Hasn’t seen it in a
few.” Tate swung into the car. “Pretty much since we announced on
the news that we were looking for info on the car.”

Shit. Brandt started the car and pulled onto
the road, and going in the direction Tate was pointing. “Turn right
on Park. Guy said it was two blocks down. Should be on the left.
Beat-up looking place. Said he thought it’d been foreclosed on last
year, but houses these days can look pretty shitty, but as long as
they’re livable, people still try.”

Hell, in this economy there were people who
tried anyway. It beat being on the street.

And a house like that would make sense for
Wolfe. In a crappy neighborhood, the chances of people caring about
someone squatting were pretty slim. And plenty of neighbors turned
a blind eye and a deaf ear to shouts and screams, especially in
rougher parts of town. Nobody wanted to deal with cops, and that
included Hounds.

Brandt pulled up in front of 83 Park Street.
The brick house looked more than a little run down. The windows
were boarded up, there were large cracks running through the front
pillars, the wooden steps leading up to the front porch looked
rotted, and the roof was more tarp than shingles. The house should
have been condemned.

It probably had.

Then again, as Brandt looked down the street,
he realized it wasn’t the only house standing on its last shitty
leg, and more than a few of them had junker cars parked out front.
“Let’s go have a look,” Tate said. There was a level of authority
in Tate’s voice. He was getting more and more accustomed to running
the pack.