Chapter 20

Mac rubbed his eyes, staring at the computer screen he, Blake, and Bruin were gathered around. They’d been out all night, but hadn’t found a trace of his mate. He’d caught her deliciously tangy scent several times, but not one more glimpse of her. He hadn’t even known where to look! They’d worked their way out from the warehouse in a circle, but hadn’t found one trace of her. Not even when they searched through the large air vent she’d popped out of. No fingerprints. No stray hairs, nothing.

Blake yawned, collapsing into his chair. “My vision is blurry, Mac, we’ve already looked at over a thousand mug shots. He pointed to the clock on the wall. “We’ve been here for hours. I can’t do this all day, I gotta work tonight.”

“You’re done when I say you’re done,” Mac growled. The dead body they’d found in the apartment upstairs with the fingerprints on the blunt and bloody trophy next to him that didn’t match any they had in their system rankled him. Officers were already whispering that his mate was a murderer, but that shit didn’t sit right with Mac. She’d been protecting herself, or she’d been set up, something. He’d gotten a sense of who she was when they’d touched, and she was hard, she was tough, but she wasn’t a murderer.

He had to find her, before anyone else did.

Wade came in the duty room, and by the look on his face, Mac knew he’d been filled in on everything by someone.

Wade walked over. “Blake, you’re dismissed. Mac, I want you to go home.”

Blake disappeared quickly, avoiding Mac’s glare as he ran for the exit. Mac stood and faced Wade. “Not yet. I want to listen to the 911 call again.” He gestured to the computer. “Plus there’s thousands of mug shots we haven’t gone through yet. I need someone who saw her face-”

Wade cut him off. “They all left. They’re all home sleeping. Go home. If I see you back here before five hours have elapsed, you’re gonna regret it.”

Mac looked to the side, not trusting himself to answer. Wade didn’t have a whole lot to hold over his head, but Mac still needed Wade’s protection and approval, especially if his mate was in some sort of trouble.

Wade looked him right in the eye. “I mean it. Home. You don’t have anything to go on, so all you can do at this point is get some rest.”

Mac swore but stepped off. Shit. More waiting, more sleeping. Without his mate. “Bruin, I’m gonna take the truck home. I’ll see you tonight.”

Bruin nodded, heaving himself out of his chair, his entire body drooping with tiredness. “Meet you here at sunset? I need at least six hours of shut-eye, or I’m a mess.”

Mac stalked off, not looking at Wade, barely looking at Bruin. “I’ll call you.”

***

Rogue drove slowly, putting way too much of a gap between her and the guy she was following, but he was a cop, he had to be, and if she tailed too close, he would spot her for sure.

Luckily, he was in a huge black truck that was easy to see, even from blocks away. She frowned, wondering if it was the same one that had pulled up outside of the Englewood Post Office, just as she had been leaving, the wolf and angel pendants in her hands.

It would have been too much of a coincidence for her to even think about believing, except her life seemed to be nothing but a series of coincidences and craziness lately. Ever since her 25th birthday.

One of the police officers had called her guy ‘Mac’. She frowned, trying to remember Mac’s exact words to her and to the other cops. He’d wanted to see her face, wanted to know her name, then freaked right the fuck out when his brothers in blue had taken their guns out, even though she’d had a knife to his neck, maybe even had stabbed him a little bit.

She rubbed her temples, feeling bad about that. Had it been unavoidable? Even if it hadn’t, was that really an acceptable excuse? She’d always prided herself on not hurting anyone, not stealing from anyone who didn’t deserve it. Criminals stealing from criminals was her domain, and one she rarely strayed from, at least not since she’d been in charge of her own crimes.

The truck turned left, then right, heading out of town. Rogue followed single-mindedly. She had to know who this guy was, and why he was so interested in her. The one thing she knew he couldn’t be, was a werewolf. Right? There’s no way a werewolf could be a cop. The rest of them would have figured out something was strange about him.

What if he was her cop? The one that she thought about so obsessively it made her stupid? She hadn’t gotten a good look at him, but the guy who starred in her mind movies didn’t usually have a face, anyway. He certainly was big enough, brash enough, badass enough. And the way he smelled… Ugh, Rogue had to stop her eyes from rolling back in her head. He smelled good enough to eat, literally. Like if he were ever on the menu, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from taking a long, leisurely trip through his pants.

Fuck. Just what she needed. A crush. Or worse, an obsession. What she really should be doing was getting the hell out of Dodge, but here she was, still in Serenity, hadn’t even been home yet, following some cop just to see what his connection was to her. Not her smartest moment.

But she couldn’t help herself.

After several more miles, he turned right down a farm road, pulling into one of the newer subdivisions that had been built around old farmhouses, then right again, disappearing from her sight. Rogue had put even more distance between the two of them, because traffic was light out here. For a brief moment, she wondered if he knew she was following him, and if he was doing a quick U-turn to get into position to turn the tables on her. The thought of him confronting her made her heart speed up, but, as she pulled level with the road he’d turned down, she saw his truck parked in front of an ordinary looking house, no one inside.

She cruised past, checking out houses on the next street until she found an obviously empty home. Real estate sign out front. Grass a little too long. Lock box on the front door. No trash, no cars, no signs of life. Rogue parked her car a block down, grabbed a bag from the back, walked as quickly as she could to the house, straight up the front walk like she belonged there, put her hand on the door knob, and clunk, she was inside with a mental twist of the lock. She shook her head as she went in. If she wasn’t meant to be a criminal, why did her biology make it so damn easy? Even if she had to get out her picks, she would have been inside in less than thirty seconds, but the ability to spring a lock with only a touch? It suited her.

She prowled through the empty house, straight to the back porch, which was off the kitchen on the second floor. Perfect.

She fished a pair of binoculars out of her bag and trained them on the house Mac’s truck was parked in front of. It was one level, and all the windows she could see in showed nothing but empty rooms: part of a dining room, a sparse kitchen, and a bedroom.

Wait, there he was. He stalked into the bedroom, his face almost sad, his shoulders lowered like he was defeated. She frowned, wanting to know what made him feel that way, then frowned again because something about him was so familiar it almost hurt, like she just had to figure it out. He stopped in front of the bed and stared at it like he hated it, head drooping. She took the time to trace his face with minute movements of her head, the binoculars making it jump into stark focus. His jaw was chiseled, his eyes hard as diamonds, thick stubble giving him a harsh look. His almost-light hair was cut short, just the way she liked it, and his body, from what she could see of it, was broadly perfect. Thick arms, wide torso, slim hips, muscles filling out his shirt in a delectable way. She licked her lips, caught herself doing it, stopped, and trained the binocs on his neck, wanting to see how bad the slice was that she’d made.

There was only smooth, unbroken skin.

Rogue let the binocs fall for a second, perplexed, then picked them up again, focusing harder. Mac turned away from the bed and looked out the window, away from her, his expression still sorrowful, but contemplative. His shoulders twitched and he shook his head slightly, giving her the feeling he wasn’t comfortable with the contemplation. He looked like more of a man of action.

She could see all of his neck now, and there was no injury. Impossible! She could see the blood on his shirt that had dripped down from a slice in his neck that was no longer there!

Rogue dropped the binoculars, her mind spinning furiously. No one healed that fast. No one. It had been… she counted back, not even ten hours since she’d cut him. He should have something there!

She wanted to go outside, scale the fence between the yards, then press her face up against his window, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even go into his yard. She got the feeling he would… smell her or something.

Rogue’s hands shook. She tightened her fingers on the binoculars, but they fell out of her hand anyway, the sound of their impact on the hardwood floor shocking in the empty house.

Get ahold of yourself. It doesn’t mean anything. She tried to bend to grab the binoculars and ended up falling on her ass, instead. She’d seen Twilight, mostly to see what all the fuss was about. The werewolves in that movie had healed lightning fast.

Did her werewolf obsession really hold water? Was she not crazy? Not pushing through life because that was the only thing left to do? Because sitting at home doing nothing because you thought you were insane was so gauche as to be stupid?

Unable to gather her will, Rogue let the shaking go, let it move right through her until it dissipated, since she was unable to do anything else, then, when she was still again, she stood, certain Mac would no longer be visible in the window. Certain she had fucked up somehow.

But he was there, sitting on the bed, a pen in his hand, as he wrote furiously in a notebook on his lap.

She watched until he filled a page, then held the book to his chest like a life preserver as he laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. Only when his eyes slipped closed did she move from the room, leave the house, and head out into the real world, trying to figure out what she could possibly do now.