Wolf's Secret (District Shifters Book 3) Read online

  Suddenly, her eyes registered movement in one of the alleys, and her heart sped up more. She could feel real panic taking hold of her. She squinted her eyes, and a sigh of relief escaped her when she saw the flash of a sandy colored tail. It was just a dog. A large dog, but still just a dog. Dogs didn’t worry Brianna; people did. She could still feel eyes on her, though, and she spun around quickly to look behind her.

  “Seriously, Brianna, what’s wrong?” Caroline asked. Brianna thought she could hear a nervous edge to her voice, too, and she whirled to face her.

  “I feel like we’re being followed. You feel it, too, right?” she demanded.

  Caroline shook her head slowly. “No. You’re just making me nervous, jumping at shadows.”

  “I… Oh,” Brianna said, her shoulders slumping slightly. “I guess I’m just being paranoid.”

  “You don’t say,” Caroline laughed. “It must be because of New York.”

  Brianna’s heart fluttered. What did Caroline know about New York?

  “You can relax, Brianna,” she went on, seeming not to notice Brianna’s reaction to her words. “I know New York is kind of dodgy at times and you have to stay vigilant, but nothing bad ever happens here.”

  Brianna nodded. Caroline was right about Brianna being paranoid and about it being because of New York, even if she was wrong about the reason for it. Brianna forced herself to keep her eyes in front of her, ignoring the feeling of eyes on her back and the way she felt sure that, if she just turned around quickly enough, she would catch someone sneaking up on them.

  “Besides,” Caroline continued, “I’m pretty dangerous myself.” She pulled her handbag open and showed Brianna a can of pepper spray. “Anyone who messes with us will regret it,” she giggled.

  Brianna found herself laughing with Caroline, and some of the tension went out of her rigid muscles. The pepper spray made her feel slightly better, and they were less than a minute away from her building now. She would feel so much calmer once they were inside. She kept pace with Caroline, resisting the urge to break into a jog. She had come here to avoid feeling this way, and if she gave into that urge even just once, she was afraid she would end up jumping at shadows every time she went out.

  They reached Brianna’s apartment building with no mishaps, and Brianna was about ready to accept that her mind had been playing tricks on her. It must be the hangover. She knew it wasn’t, but she didn’t want to let what had happened in New York define her whole life. Raina and Logan had risked their lives to save hers when the Matchmaker had kidnapped her, and she felt like she owed it to them to live her life to the fullest, and not turn into some basket case who didn’t dare go outside.

  She opened her handbag and dug around in it for her key. She spotted a flash of metal and pushed her hand down the side of her bag until she was touching it. She pulled it out and took a step towards the door. As she stepped forward, Caroline gave a little scream. Brianna turned her head in time to see Caroline crumple to the ground.

  “Caroline?” Brianna dropped the key back into her bag and fell to her knees beside her friend. “Caroline? What happened?”

  Caroline’s eyes rolled back in her head. Brianna was panicking again, but this time for a much more tangible reason. She could see red flowers blooming across Caroline’s shirt, coming from her side. She lifted her top and gasped when she saw blood all over Caroline’s skin. She pulled her cell phone out and called 911.

  “911. What is your emergency?” a calm female voice said.

  “My friend. I think… I think she’s been shot. I need an ambulance to the Dover building on Memphis Street.”

  The voice was still talking, but Brianna couldn’t afford to be distracted. She had been right about them being followed, and she had a horrible feeling the bullet Caroline had taken had been meant for her. She ended the call, dropping her cell phone back into her bag and ignoring it when it rang again.

  She lifted Caroline’s top again, knowing enough basic first aid to know she had to put pressure on the wound. This time, she was prepared for what she saw, and she realized with relief that the wound wasn’t as bad as she had first feared. It wasn’t gushing with blood. The bullet couldn’t have gone too deep.

  Brianna took her jacket off quickly and rolled it into a tight ball.

  “You’re going to be okay. The ambulance is on its way,” she told Caroline.

  She pressed the wadded-up jacket against the bullet hole. Caroline flinched, even though she was still unconscious, and Brianna wondered if she was doing the right thing. The bleeding wasn’t that heavy, and maybe applying pressure was pushing the bullet further in. She moved her jacket and risked another look at the wound. The bleeding had all but stopped now, only a tiny trickle still running from it, and Brianna’s jacket had cleared enough of the spilled blood from Caroline’s body to see the wound properly.

  She saw a flash of silver inside it. The bullet had barely grazed her. It was less than an inch inside of her. The relief Brianna felt at seeing that soon disappeared when she saw the angry looking black jagged lines coming from the wound.

  “What the fuck?” she whispered to herself.

  Her heart slammed in her chest, and she jumped back away from Caroline for a moment as the reality of what had happened hit her. Caroline wasn’t at all who she seemed to be. She had to be a shifter. Why else would someone use a silver bullet on her? She crawled back to Caroline’s side again and looked at the black lines. Somehow, she knew what she was seeing. Silver poisoning.

  Tears ran down Brianna’s face, and she wasn’t sure if she was grieving the inevitable loss of her friend, or if she was crying with relief at Caroline having been dealt with. She couldn’t help but think back over all of the questions, some of them strange. And Caroline’s so-called jewelry making business that paid for medical school. She had to be a Matchmaker.

  The bullet hadn’t been for Brianna, and whoever she had felt following them wasn’t because of her, either. Whoever had done this had likely just saved her. She looked around, but there was no sign of anyone. It was both a blessing and a curse to live off the main street.

  She heard a siren in the distance getting closer. Caroline moaned again, and Brianna took her hand in hers. Maybe she had been a Matchmaker trying to get close to Brianna, but maybe she hadn’t. Either way, Brianna couldn’t just sit here and not offer Caroline comfort as she died.

  The black lines were getting thicker and longer before Brianna’s eyes, and Caroline’s moans became louder. Her eyes fluttered open, wide and staring, and her mouth parted in a silent scream. Tears ran down her face, and her back arched as her body convulsed.

  “Caroline, stay with me,” Brianna said through her tears. She knew it was no use, though. The paramedics wouldn’t know how to fix silver poisoning, even if that was possible.

  Caroline’s body flopped back down, and she was still and silent. Brianna knew without checking for a pulse that she was dead. She reached out and gently closed the girl’s staring but unseeing eyes.

  The sirens were almost upon her now, and she looked up to see the sheriff’s car and an ambulance approaching her. The paramedics ran to Caroline’s body with a stretcher. She stood up and moved back out of the way. The sheriff approached her.

  “I’m Sheriff Stanton. What happened?” he asked.

  “She was shot,” Brianna said. She told him everything that had happened. He nodded along, taking notes as she talked. She noticed the paramedics pushing the stretcher towards the ambulance. A white sheet covered Caroline’s face.

  “Excuse me a moment,” the sheriff said. He moved away to talk to the paramedics, and Brianna leaned back against the wall of her apartment building.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened her eyes when she heard footsteps approaching her. The sheriff was back. She had to know what he made of it all. His expression told her what news he was about to deliver.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “She didn’t make it. She was already gone
when the paramedics got to her. They tried everything, but it was too late.”

  Brianna frowned. “But I saw the wound, sheriff. It was barely more than a scratch.”

  He shook his head sadly. “No, miss. You must have been mistaken. The bullet clipped an artery.”

  “Oh,” Brianna said. She knew the sheriff was lying, but she didn’t want to press the matter and give away exactly how much she knew.

  He couldn’t possibly believe that Caroline had died from blood loss. He had to know about the supernatural world. This was some sort of cover up. It sparked Brianna’s curiosity, but she told herself not to get involved. She knew there was a fair chance she had once more avoided being captured by a Matchmaker, and she should just be grateful and let it go.

  “Are you all right, miss? Do you need to go to the emergency room?” the sheriff asked.

  It was the last thing Brianna wanted to do. She wasn’t sure she could keep biting her tongue to stop herself from asking too many questions. She shook her head.

  “No. Thank you. I’m fine. I guess I’m a little shaken, but I’ll be all right. I’ve only known Caroline since yesterday. We were both new medical students,” she said.

  Sheriff Stanton seemed to accept her refusal to go to the emergency room. He nodded his head and walked back to his car. It was the confirmation Brianna needed that he was covering this up. Why wasn’t he questioning her more about Caroline’s murder? She was the only witness. He didn’t want Brianna asking questions any more than she wanted to ask them.

  She watched his car pull away, followed by the ambulance. Its sirens were silent now. They disappeared from sight, and Brianna felt empty, like she didn’t know what to do. Caroline had to be a Matchmaker. Why else would a shifter have taken an interest in her? Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe she was genuinely just here for medical school.

  Surely, if she was here for me, Brianna thought, I would already have been taken. She could have taken me any time last night while I slept in her dorm room. Or maybe she was waiting for a buyer. It’s not like she had to worry about losing me.

  She thought of Raina, the bear shifter who had saved her in New York. Had she saved her once again? She shook her head. No, Raina wouldn’t have just slunk away. She’d have come forward now that the sheriff had gone.

  She looked around, working out where Caroline was standing when she got hit and where the bullet had come from. She pinpointed a location and made her way around to the side of the building. The shooter would have been behind the building, just poking their gun out when the time was right. She peered cautiously around the corner, but the area there was deserted, too. She looked down at the ground, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw them. Paw prints. Huge paw prints.

  Again, everything pointed to the sheriff covering this up. He hadn’t even bothered to come around here and check it out. He hadn’t cordoned anything off as a crime scene or taken any photos. He had no intention of looking for Caroline’s killer, because he already knew who it was.

  Brianna crouched down to look at the paw prints. She frowned. They didn’t look like the prints of a bear. She pulled her cell phone out and took a quick photo. As she walked back to the door of her building, an image came into her mind; an image of a large sandy-colored dog. And she knew then it hadn’t been a dog. It had been a wolf. She googled wolf prints and saw that she was right.

  What the hell have I got myself mixed up in here? she asked herself, getting in the elevator and heading up to her apartment.

  4

  Archer stood up as the sheriff entered the office. Sheriff Stanton’s office was small, barely big enough for his desk, but he always seemed to be at home there. Looking at the stacks of paperwork in no particular order made Archer feel sick, thinking of his own neat stacks, but the sheriff somehow understood his haphazard system, and he could instantly locate any file or piece of paper that crossed his desk.

  “You fucked up,” Stanton said as he walked in, ignoring Archer’s outstretched hand. “There was a witness. You must have seen Caroline was with another girl when you shot her.”

  Archer felt his wolf stirring inside of himself, and he bit it back. His wolf had come in useful earlier to stalk Caroline once she and the other girl had left the diner, but it wouldn’t do for it to make an appearance now.

  “Of course I saw her,” he snapped, sitting back down as the sheriff fought his way behind his desk and sat down himself. “But it was the best chance I had. It was the only time she wasn’t somewhere where there would have been multiple witnesses.”

  “And you absolutely had to do this today?”

  Archer nodded. “As I told you on the phone, Caroline had plans to harm a professor from the university. I didn’t want to take any chances. She was damned dangerous, and believe me when I say your town is much safer with her gone. Now how about you lose the attitude and remember that.”

  “The girl was suspicious. I told her the bullet nicked an artery and her friend bled out. She played like she bought it, but she didn’t. She saw the wound. She described it as barely a scratch.”

  “She’s a mortal, sheriff. I would have sensed it if she was a shifter of any kind. She might be confused now, but she’ll think about it for a time, and she’ll convince herself her mind was playing tricks on her and that you must have been right. It’s what mortals do when they can’t explain something. You and I both know that.”

  Stanton sighed. “You were lucky this time, Archer. The paramedics were two of my guys. But just be careful, okay? I promised to stay out of your business as long as it doesn’t affect mine, and this almost did.”

  “If by that, you mean I saved someone you couldn’t have, then yes, it affected your business,” Archer said. He kept his voice low and calm, but he knew by the sheriff’s expression that he could sense the anger simmering beneath the surface. Stanton knew when to push it and when not to, and he nodded his head.

  “Yes, you’re right. Thank you. And thank you for the heads-up,” he said.

  Archer nodded and stood up. This time, when he offered the sheriff his hand, Stanton shook it.

  “I take it you can see yourself out?”

  “I think I can manage that,” Archer said.

  He left the sheriff’s office and headed back towards his own. His mind was spinning. He didn’t like to leave loose ends, and the girl was definitely a loose end. He had no intention of hurting her. She wasn’t a part of this world; he had known it the second he’d gotten close enough to sniff her scent. Still, he thought it would be a good idea to find out exactly how much she knew and whether or not she had bought Stanton’s story. Once he was back in his office, Archer sent a text message to Sven, asking him to meet him there, and Sven was there within minutes.

  “How did it go?” Sven asked as he walked in. He took in the set of Archer’s jaw. “Not well, I take it?”

  Archer told Sven about the deal Caroline had presented him with, and that he obviously couldn’t take it. He told him he had followed her and managed to take her out, and that the sheriff was dealing with the body. He didn’t mention that there was a witness. That was his problem to take care of, not Sven’s.

  “So she didn’t tell you anything about the hunter?”

  “Not a lot,” Archer said. “Just that he’s not working directly with the Venandi Lupi. He’s an ex-member, but he’s no longer one of them. So, hopefully, he’s just a lone hunter that’s stumbled across us rather than this being an orchestrated attack.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Sven said.

  “Yes. And Caroline knew his name and where to find him. Of course she wouldn’t tell me that without me making the deal with her, and I couldn’t do that. But she has associates. Someone must know something. I want you to gather two or three of our most trusted people, have them track down any of Caroline’s associates, and see what they can get.”

  Sven nodded and stood up. “I’m on it.”

  Archer thought back to the girl again once he was alone. H
e could still smell her scent in his nose, and as much as he didn’t want to, he could feel his body reacting to it. It was a sweet scent, like honey, and his wolf was rather taken with it.

  Stop it, Archer warned himself. Don’t go complicating matters. She’s a mortal. Nothing can ever happen between you. And you don’t want to pull her into this world. You just have to find out how much she knows and work out whether or not you need to bring in a vampire to wipe her memory of the shooting.

  He knew where she lived: the building he had followed Caroline to. It hadn’t been Caroline who had pulled out a door key. The girl had to live there. He debated going over there now, but he knew it was too dangerous. Bursting in like that and demanding answers would only scare the girl, and it could get ugly. He was determined not to hurt her. She was innocent in all of this. She obviously had bad taste in friends, but that wasn’t worth dying for.

  From what Stanton had said, she suspected something wasn’t quite right about Caroline’s death, but it didn’t mean she knew anything. She couldn’t know anything about their world. He just had to confirm that and be done with this whole mess.

  He thought about Caroline telling him she had a teacher in her sights, and it all clicked into place. She must have enrolled in the university to get intel on the teacher. That meant the girl was likely a student there, too. He would wait until Monday and scope the school out. He had her scent, and he would be able to identify her again, even in a crowd. His wolf would home in on the single scent and find her, even if the scent wasn’t so damned attractive.

  * * *

  Archer knew he had been right the moment he set foot on campus on Monday morning. He could smell the girl. She was somewhere in the building, and his senses told him she was likely on the second floor. He looked at the floor plan. Medical school. Great. No wonder she hadn’t bought Stanton’s story. He shook his head. It was the first day of term, and the girl wasn’t medically trained. Not yet.