Chapter 47
CADE
The figure approached our little fire like something out of a dream. I was startled because I hadn't expected anyone to track me down in this weather.
Especially not Suzanne.
She was dressed in hunting clothes and carrying a rifle. She was on snowshoes, which made sense. Too bad I had not grabbed a pair myself.
“What the fuck, Suzanne?” I said, not graciously. I looked beyond her for Brandon, since I rarely saw one without the other, but there was no sign of him. I could probably use some help, but I hated to admit it to them. “Are you the rescue party?”
She glided into the firelight. Barney knew her, but he kept on growling. He’d never liked Suzanne much.
“You need rescuing, Cade?”
There was something strange about her tone. She was brittle. Sharp in a way I’d never seen in her. Well, maybe I’d seen it, but I’d averted my eyes. I’d grown weary of her attitude a long time ago.
“I don't, but my dog does. How’d you find me?”
“Your silly little wife told me you were hunting grouse. In a blizzard, Cade? Not too smart.”
My silly little wife? What was eating her…the bitch ought to know better than to speak to her alpha that way.
“What’s wrong with the dog?”
“Trap got his leg. It’s bleeding, broken. Do you happen to have a sat phone? Cellular network is unreachable.”
She lifted her rifle and pointed it at Barney. “No problem. I’ll end his pain. Couldn't do it yourself?”
What the fuck? Not funny.
“Say the word, Cade. It’ll be a lot quicker than a trip to the vet.”
A wave of sickness wrenched me as I realized she was serious. For a second all I could think of was Jess, sobbing with the memory of the creep who had murdered her dog, Dusty. Rage swept through me. I couldn't quite make sense of it yet, but Suzanne was not the rescue party.
“Suzanne,” I barked at her. “Lower the fucking rifle.” It was a rifle, not the sort of shotgun she might use for hunting grouse. “Shoot my dog and you’re dead.”
She adjusted her aim so she was pointing at me. There was a steeliness to her jaw and a glitter in her eyes. My brain was racing through my options, but they weren't good. And I was listening hard for Brandon, whom I expected to emerge at any moment. Two against one was bad odds.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jake’s enigmatic texts surfaced in my brain. He’d needed to speak to me. Another attack. The victim had talked. Named the perp?
Did this have something to do with Brandon and Suzanne?
I thought fast. Since my hands were still in my pockets trying to keep warm, I silently pressed a couple of buttons on my cell phone. The battery wasn’t dead. I couldn’t make a call, but I could record everything that was said here. In case I didn’t make it out, which was beginning to look like a distinct possibility.
“What’s wrong with me? You. You’re the one who’s wrong, Cade. You always were. Wrong for me and wrong for the pack.”
“I guess I’m not surprised,” I drawled, while my brain sorted through the possibilities. I took a chance. “Jake got through to me before my phone died. He had some news for me.”
Yeah, too bad I didn’t know exactly what the fuck it was.
She swallowed the bait. Suzanne was wily, but she had never been all that smart. “So you know. My mistake. I should have made absolutely certain Jock’s bitch was dead so she couldn’t spill any deathbed confessions.”
Holy fuck. “It was you who killed that MC drug dealer. Are you using? Need a little high now and then? What’d he do, sell you and your boyfriend some bad shit?”
She laughed. “You don't even realize, do you? Haven’t figured it out yet, alpha? Jock’s old lady didn’t admit she was also trying to blackmail me? She deserved what she got for that, the stupid cunt. What made either of those lowlifes think they could blackmail a shifter and live?”
“If you’re planning to shoot that thing, hurry up about it. It is fucking cold out here.”
Weird as this was, I didn't think she would shoot. I mean, hell, I’d fucked her. She'd even been a little in love with me. She sure had not been pleased when I’d ended things. But that crap about hell hath no fury was total bullshit, right? Brandon, though…smile and smile and be a villain. He'd blast me if he had the chance.
Or…light dawned. If I were dead, Brandon would be elected alpha leader. Which was what she’d always wanted, once both my brother and I had fucked her and dumped her and she’d taken up with Brandon instead.
And then I knew.
It was as if a slot opened and revealed the inner workings. The pieces came together and I fucking knew.
“You shouldn’t be where you are. No one ever expected it. Aaron, yes. He had charisma. But not you.”
“Hey! I got charisma.” I was stalling because I couldn’t reach my shotgun. I could shift to my wolf and leap for her throat, but she had the advantage there. I’d hunted with Suzanne and Brandon many times. They were both expert shots and Brandon was probably in the trees somewhere with a bead on my skull at the moment, anyway. The wind direction meant I couldn’t catch his scent, just as I hadn’t caught hers.
“You didn’t have the skills to be pack leader. If you had, I’d have held onto you, honey. But it didn’t take long before I knew you were flawed clay.”
Flawed clay? If I hadn’t been so fucking cold, I’d have laughed at the metaphor. If she meant I’d have cracked in the pottery oven, I wished to hell we could test it out. I could use a nice baking right about now.
Besides, I’d been the one to dump her.
She adjusted her rifle. I blinked, snowflakes in my eyes, still not quite believing what my brain knew to be true. Maybe because I was so fucking cold, all the pieces didn’t quite fit. Where the fuck was Brandon? He wasn’t the type to lurk in the background while allowing his mate to take all the risks.
“It was you, wasn’t it? That shoot-out four years ago was some kind of set up. You had my brother killed because you thought Brandon would take his place as pack leader. Like so many others, you didn’t take my candidacy seriously. You figured once Aaron was gone, you’d rule the fucking roost with your mate.”
“Took you long enough to figure it out.”
Fuck. This bitch had killed my brother? The fury that was rising in me was starting to be beyond my ability to control.
“What about Brandon? Did he set this up? The two of you worked it together? Shame he lost the election, then. That must have come as quite a shock.” I was trying to keep my head. Make a plan. I’d been weakened by my own stupidity in this fucking storm, but I needed a way to defeat or outwit her.
My adrenaline was high and all my senses were evaluating the surroundings at quantum speeds. I was part wolf already in that respect. My body ached to go full wolf, but wolf against rifle was never good odds.
I remembered the night the two of them had tried to run me off the road. Had that been an actual attempt to kill my ass? Instead, they’d startled poor Tom so much that he’d careened into a curve and lost control.
The same night I’d fallen for Jess.
What they’d done was almost unthinkable. Brandon could have fought me for pack leadership. That was the old way, no longer practiced very often, but still considered legitimate. Turned to their wolf forms, rivals could battle it out for dominance.
For the loser, the fight marked the end. If he survived, he’d be driven out of the pack. As it happened in nature, so it was in a traditional shifter wolf pack.
But murder? Humans did that shit, not shifters. At least, not the shifters in the Whittier, Montana pack.
“Where’s your partner?” I sneered. “I get why you, a weak female, feels the need of a weapon, but I’d have expected Brandon to be brave enough to fight me man to man.”
“Brandon knows nothing of this. He’s a better man than you are, but not even he had the guts to challenge the Derringer dominance of the pack. If I hadn’t taken the initiative, your damn brother would still be alive, and Brandon would be kowtowing to Aaron even more than he kowtows to you.”
The thought of Brandon kowtowing to anyone was laughable. Was she telling the truth? I sensed she was. She had nothing to lose. She was planning to kill, and I wouldn’t be giving away her secrets. Unless someone found the recording on my phone.
With me gone, Brandon was the logical heir. Suzanne would become the alpha female to Brandon’s alpha male. She might even murder my mother and Heck. Why not? Suzanne’s hands were covered with blood already.
Fuck my life, I’d underestimated her.
Enough. My clothing fell away as I started to shift. And no one shifted as fast as I did.
This bitch should have pulled the trigger while she had the chance.