Eternal Hunter

Chapter 11

“Okay.” Erin turned away from the traffic and focused on the sharp lines of Jude’s profile. “What was all that about back at the house?”

His fingers were at a perfect ten and two position on the wheel. He didn’t glance her way, but the truck accelerated, and weaved in and out of traffic as he flew through the intersection. “Thought I heard something.”

“Something,” she repeated quietly, “or someone?”

She caught the curl of his lip. “What do you think, sweetheart?”

“I think baiting the asshole out there might not be our smartest move, and I think that next time, you better let me know your plans.” Because being in the dark sucked, and if she was going up against the wolf, she wanted to know everything.

“Got it.” A quick glance her way. “But, for the record, I kissed you because I wanted to do it. Because you’ve got the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen, and because I wanted to taste you.”

“Ah…okay.” Erin reached out and fiddled with the air conditioning vent because she was suddenly feeling a little warm. “Fair enough.” His mouth had sure given her plenty of fantasies. It was the scar — scars weren’t sexy, she knew that. Well, they weren’t supposed to be sexy, but his…

Damn. It was his mouth. The man sure knew how to use those lips.

And his tongue. He was very, very good at using his tongue and—

“Your breathing’s changed on me, Erin.” She caught the flare of his nostrils. “And your scent…”

Shifters. She couldn’t quite get used to being around another shifter again. The rules were so different. The whole polite society thing was thrown right out the window. Her legs stretched. Yeah, her scent had changed, and she figured the guy probably had caught the smell of her arousal. No point playing a game with him. “I want you, Jude.” There. That sounded confident and tough and like she didn’t give a crap if he knew that her panties were getting a bit…wet.

Just from thinking about the guy and the things he could do with his mouth.

“Oh, baby.” He accelerated as the pickup zoomed off the ramp and onto the interstate. “You know how to make me suffer, don’t you?”

No, she didn’t.

“Just so you know, we’re getting one room when we get to Lillian.” Gruff words, hard with a lust she couldn’t miss.

Her hand reached out, trailed up his thigh and she felt the strong clench of his muscles. “So I have to wait until then, huh?” A couple of hours. Shouldn’t be too bad.

Her fingers rose just a bit more and traced the swollen length of his cock. Maybe she could—

Jude caught her hand. He tangled his fingers with hers. “Unless you want me plowing into the semi in front of us, yeah, you have to wait.”

Her gaze shot to the windshield and she saw the lumbering big rig.

He rubbed the back of her hand over the ridge of his cock in a rough caress. “But don’t worry, I’ll make it worth the wait.”

Lillian.

She cleared her throat. “You’d better.” Because going home was hard. There were too many secrets there. Too much pain. Being with Jude, touching him, taking the pleasure from his body would help her pull through.

She tugged her hand back. After a slight hesitation, he let her go. Erin settled into her seat and tried not to look at his crotch. Maybe she’d sleep. If she could stop thinking about him. Maybe she’d—

“Gonna tell me about the ‘down and dirty’ Erin?”

She winced. Oh, but she’d known this would come. Her eyes closed. “You’ve already met her. Not much to tell.”

“Ummm…”

Her left eye opened. Then the right.

“Playing with humans, were you?” He shook his head. “You’ll find those males don’t always have the stamina you need.”

A choked laugh broke from her. “Wasn’t really a question of stamina. More like the problem of them freaking out when I got too, um—”

“Rough? Wild?”

Yes, to both.

“Don’t worry. I like wild and I like rough.” His index finger tapped on the wheel. “But I think you already know that.”

One room.

This drive was going to be hell.

“Just so you know…I can also do slow.”

She gulped. Damn dry throat.

“I can do easy. Thrusting as light as you want, kissing and stroking the whole night long.”

Her clothes were too thick. Or maybe the truck’s cab was too hot because she was sure starting to sweat.

“Whatever you want, I can give you.”

Didn’t she know it.

“But, Erin, you’ve got to trust me.”

Easier said than done.

And Jude knew it.

She crossed her legs, fought to ignore the growing tension in her body, and stared out her window at the pine trees.

The silence in the car wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t easy.

Just like her relationship with Jude.

Loose ends were a bitch.

He paced down the shining white hospital corridor, the green scrubs rustling softly as he walked.

If Lee Givens had been an accommodating bastard, he would have already been dead. But no, he was still alive. Still fighting to survive as he clung to life.

And why?

There was no reason for that piece of garbage to keep living.

A woman brushed by him, pretty, but scrawny. Her thin arms were around a kid, some little freckle-faced brat who had thick tears sliding down his cheeks.

“It’s gonna be okay, Tommy,” she whispered, clutching the boy. “It’s gonna be—”

He rounded the corner and caught sight of the room he wanted. 409.

But a guard stood outside. What the hell? He stumbled to a stop. Why was a cop there?

Loose ends were a bitch.

He’d learned that back in Lillian when one of those loose ends had tried to confront him one night. Better to just cut them off before they could do any harm.

Givens hadn’t seen his face. Well, he didn’t think the lawyer had. The road had been dark. Too dark for a human to see, surely and—

“Something I can help you with?” The drawling voice came from behind him and was followed by a tap on his shoulder. One that was a little too hard.

He spun around, his clipboard up and ready. “Uh, what—” He let his eyes widen, then narrow as he studied the man before him.

A Night Watch hunter. He’d seen the guy with Donovan. Tall, dark, with eyes that seemed too sharp for a human’s.

Probably because the guy wasn’t.

His nostrils flared, just a bit, as he caught the hunter’s scent. Not shifter.

But that still left at least a dozen Other possibilities.

He forced a smile. “Just making my rounds.” He shifted the clipboard, a light move to draw attention to it.

“Room 409 isn’t on your rounds, Doctor”—the green gaze dropped to his nametag—“Walters.”

Smug jerk. “No.” He bit back the rage and kept his voice flat. “But room 407 is.” And he was standing right in front of that door then. “So if you’ll excuse me — ah, sorry, who are you?”

“I’m one of the babysitters for room 409.” A grim smile. “Since you don’t know my patient, there’s no need to know me.”

Ripping him apart would be fun. One fast swipe with his claws. He could slash the jerk’s throat. Let the blood spray and soak the too-white tiles and walls. Or he could cut down the guy’s chest. Catch the bastard’s heart and tear it out.

So many choices.

The hunter inclined his head and sauntered toward the waiting cop.

Two guards. Too much attention. The lawyer would have to wait.

A loose end he’d get — sooner or later.

The hunter glanced back at him, eyes narrowed.

Asshole.

With a curt nod, he hurried into room 407. The patient, an elderly man with a white mane of hair, glanced up at his approach. “Fuck. Another one of you assholes?”

Really, it was the wrong thing to say. Because his day was already pretty shitty.

“I’m tired of you pricks coming in here! I’m tired of everybody poking and prodding me. I’m eighty-seven. You can’t fix me. I’m just gonna die.”

Sooner than the jerk realized. He shoved his hand into his pocket. Felt the capped syringe he’d prepared especially for Givens. No sense in letting all that preparation go to waste. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to attack with claws and teeth on this one. Though he sure did prefer to kill that way.

So he’d bribed a nurse. Gotten exactly what he needed for a fast, clean kill.

“Why don’t you just take your overpaid, arrogant ass right back out of my room!”

He smiled and headed toward his patient. Some people really didn’t do much for the world. He stopped at the foot of the bed and glanced at the patient’s chart. “Tell me, Mr. Pope, have you had a good life?”

“What the hell kind of question is that? No, asshole, I haven’t. I got my knee blasted in the war, stupid bitch of a wife sent me to jail for ten years, the cancer fucking ate me up when I got out, and now I have to look at your sorry ass!”

No, some people really didn’t do much for the world. “Don’t worry, sir, you’ll be leaving the hospital soon.”

“The hell I will! I heard them other assholes! I’ll only be leaving in a body bag!”

True enough.

He uncapped the syringe. This wouldn’t hurt. That was the only downside. He rather liked to watch pain and blood.

Hmmm…no blood. Another downside. But it would be fast. And the doctors and nurses would run in, so worried about this patient that they wouldn’t even notice him slipping out.

And a kill would really improve his day.

Not one for Erin this time. Just for him.

It had been so long since the kills had been for him alone.

He rounded the bed. “Just relax, Mr. Pope, this will only take a few seconds of your time.”

The old man gave a grim nod. “Fine, just hurry the hell up.”

They reached Lillian just after lunch. Jude didn’t drive to a motel first, good thing that because she probably would have jumped him. Instead, he took them straight to the police station.

Erin licked her lips as she stared up at the gleaming doors of the Lillian PD. The place was less than half the size of Baton Rouge’s department. It was a fat, square building, one surrounded by police cruisers and motorcycles.

She’d spent hours there before, grilling cops, talking to suspects and perps.

Coming back was bittersweet.

Erin climbed the steps with her head up.

Jude shadowed her. “We need to find out if there were any more attacks after you left town.”

“I didn’t tell a lot of folks I was leaving,” she said, as the doors drew closer. “I didn’t want everyone to know—”

“Because you didn’t trust them.”

She didn’t trust anyone. “I still don’t.” Her clothes were wrinkled, courtesy of the long ride and she hadn’t bothered with makeup that morning — there hadn’t been time — so Erin knew she probably looked like hell.

Not the perfectly pressed ADA image she’d worked so hard to maintain.

Her shoulders straightened. “Only one person knew I was up for the job in Baton Rouge. I wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. The bastard after me seemed to know too much.”

“He still does.” Jude reached for the door and closed his tanned fingers over the gleaming handle. “We’re gonna be seeing the one who knew about your transfer after we leave the station.”

Yeah, they were. Seeing the DA again was one of the reasons she’d wanted to come along. She’d worked hard to disappear. The stalker shouldn’t have found her. Unless someone had told him about her plans.

“Hey, Jerome!” A bellow loud enough to shake her bones. A cop, a tall, skeletally thin black man with faint gray in his hair, jumped up from behind the check-in desk. “You finally brought your butt back home!”

She smiled at him. “Hi, Pat.” Patrick Ramsey. Patrick one-more-year-til-I’m-out-give-me-a-desk Ramsey. The guy had taken four bullets in his career. Tossed hundreds of perps into the pen, and he’d once told her he couldn’t wait for the day he got to kiss the badge good-bye and go lay on a Mexican beach.

He shot around the desk. Pretty fast for a guy whose knee had been blasted two years ago. He wrapped her in a hug that squeezed her bones. He’d always been so much stronger than he looked. “What the hell? You didn’t even tell old Pat good-bye! That tightass DA had to give me the news.”

She tried to breathe. Quick, shallow breaths. That was all she could manage right then.

He dropped his hold.

She sucked in a deep gulp of air. “Sorry, Pat, I–I had some personal things I had to—”

“Personal, huh?” He fired an assessing glance back at Jude. “Guess he’s to blame?”

Her jaw dropped.

But Jude gave a nod. “Guess I am.”

Pat sized him up. “You look like a cop.”

“I’m not.”

Pat’s raised brows called him a liar.

“Bounty hunter.” Jude pulled out his ID. Pat never glanced at it. “Erin’s helping me on a case.”

“You?” He stared down at her and then gave a nod. “Always said the law was too tame for you.”

Too tame. Pat had always been good at seeing below the surface. That was one of the reasons he’d done such good undercover work back in the day. She smiled but the motion of her lips felt too fake. “I need a favor.”

A shrug. “Figure I owe you a few of those.”

Yeah, he did. And she was sure glad he’d been the first cop she saw. Maybe fate was trying to throw her a bone.

But, ah, now for the delicate part. “I need to check some case files. We’re after a guy, a real bad asshole, and I need to see if his MO matches up with any unsolved crimes here.”

Pat scratched his chin. “That’s a bit dicey.”

She stared up at him. “I need this. You know me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

His gaze held hers. Then he smiled and looked ten years younger. “What the hell. I’m down to days here now and it’s not like the bastards are gonna fire me for letting the ex-ADA review some of her old files, right? Besides, Ben isn’t here now. Gone on vacation. So it’ll be all right with the other guys in the—”

Ben isn’t here.

Erin exhaled. One less worry. Because she’d sure been dreading seeing her ex-lover.

She still wasn’t sure what to say to him. How to explain…

“Erin?”

Her head jerked. “Uh, thanks, Pat.” She pointed toward the stairwell. “This way, Jude.” Vince would be on duty. He was always on the day shift. He’d run the search for her, and they’d see what turned up.

The door slammed behind Jude, echoing hollowly. “Who is Ben?”

Her right foot came down too hard on the step.

“I saw your face when the cop mentioned him.” A pause. “He’s…something to you.”

She turned to face him, slowly. “You caught any other shifter scents while you’ve been in the station?”

His brow wrinkled.

“Didn’t think so.” Her arms crossed. “You won’t. The city’s too small. Full of humans. Humans like Detective Ben Greer. Humans who don’t realize what’s really happening in this world.”

“Ah…like that, is it?” But there was still something in his eyes and in the lines bracketing his mouth. Anger.

“The bastard after me — he shot Ben.” Her left foot was tapping. With an effort, she managed to still its fast beat. “Cops on the scene thought it was a robbery gone wrong, but I knew it wasn’t. The bastard left me one of his notes.”

Always the damn notes.

“This Ben — you were seeing him, weren’t you?”

Seeing him. Hoping to live a normal life with him. Even thinking about the brick house and the stupid picket fence with him. “I was, until I realized that being with me wasn’t safe for him.” Not safe for many guys. But it had been easier with Ben. He’d been a good lover. She’d held tight to her control with him. So tight. He’d always been patient, and if he sensed she’d held back, he hadn’t said anything.

Jude caged her with his body. The stairs put them at eye level. “I’m not real worried about being safe.” His gaze searched hers.

Her stomach knotted. “Maybe you should be. You know this guy could set his sights on you, too.”

The tiger’s smile. “That’s what I’m counting on, sweetheart. That’s what I’m counting on.”

And why he had kissed her so hard and deep back at her house. Thought I heard something. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

He shrugged. “I know the rules and the risks — and I’ve always liked to play.”

Yeah, she just bet he did.

His hand lifted and cupped her cheek. “Something I need to know, though.”

His touch jolted her. Callused fingers should never have been so gentle. And his claws, just waiting below the surface. I can do soft and easy. “Wh-what’s that?”

“You carrying a torch for the cop?”

The grated question had her mind going blank.

His eyes narrowed. “I won’t be a stand-in, not for any damn one.”

As if he could ever be. No, Jude was too strong, too dominant, for something like that. “I wanted to be with Ben.” Wanted to fit in. To be loved. “But—”

“But what?” His thumb brushed over her mouth. Her eyes closed at that touch and heat streaked through her.

“But I knew, even before the attack, that we weren’t going to make it.” She’d broken it off with him just days before the attack, but the bastard out there had still gone after him. Her eyes opened and she found Jude watching her with a predatory stare. “Ben had no clue about me.” She swallowed. “Our relationship wasn’t fair to him or to me. So I ended it.” He’d wanted her to be someone that she wasn’t. Someone that she could never be.

Someone normal.

“You got regrets about him?”

“Some.” She’d be honest about that. “But what we had is over.”

He flashed his fangs. “Good.”

His mouth crashed onto hers.

Her hands flattened against his chest. Not normal — she wasn’t, he wasn’t.

But she was still pretending, dammit.

Jude would have to learn the truth about her sooner or later.

Maybe later…much later.

His breath panted when he raised his head. “Now let’s go see what we can find out about the bastard.”

Jude realized right away that the cops liked her. Respected her. It was in their eyes. On their faces. They opened their offices to her. Broke rules that they shouldn’t have and they did it for her.

Jude and Erin poured over files. Searched databases. They looked for clues in the crimes that might have been overlooked. Links that weren’t noticed.

They found jackshit.

At six o’clock that night, Jude leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes and stretching his back. As far as they could tell, the attacks by Erin’s stalker had ended as soon as she left town.

The precinct had been a dead end for them.

Time to try his way.

“Here you go.” A slim female cop with a long braid of red hair tossed a file onto the already overflowing desk. “Last info on the Trent case. Shame about the wife…”

“What?” Erin’s brows snapped together. “What are you talking about, Wendy? What happened to the wife?”

“Ah…” Wendy shifted from her right foot to the left. “Thought you’d heard. Sylvia was the vic in a hit and run. The kids were with the grandmother at the time. Sylvia had just gone out for some groceries. She was walking across the street, headed back to her car when she got hit. Such a shame.”

Erin grabbed the file and began flipping through the notes. “Yeah, it sure as hell is.”

Jude waited until the cop shut the door, then asked, “Did you know her well?” She’d paled at the news of the woman’s death. Her breath had caught.

She glanced up at him. “Donald Trent spent five years beating his wife whenever he wanted. I wanted to put the bastard away, but Sylvia recanted on the stand.” A hard exhalation of air. “She had twins, two little boys, real cute kids.” She licked her lips. “But the boys would jump anytime a door slammed or a voice was raised.”

His hands clenched. Through Night Watch, he’d seen kids, human and Other, with shadows in their eyes — and it always pissed him off to know where those shadows came from. Whenever he could, he tried to make that fear go away.

Permanently.

“She didn’t want him back.” Erin was definite on that. “She had a new life going. She’d moved in with her mother. Filed for divorce. But he got to her. I know he did. Threatened her or the kids, and she changed her story so that he could walk.” Her gaze fell to the folder. “Now she’s dead.”

And the kids would grow up without a mother and with a piss-poor excuse for a father.

“She’s dead and”—her brow furrowed—“and the kids are living with her mother because”—she glanced back up at him—“because Donald Trent has been missing for the last two months.”

Well, well. The trip to the PD might be paying off, after all. They’d already figured the stalking began with the Trent case.

Maybe because the stalking had come from the asshole Trent? “You ever get a sense this guy was more than human?”

“I got a sense the jerk was less than human.”

He reached for the file. Scanned the details available about Donald Trent. Age: forty-five. Height: Six-foot-three. Weight: one ninety. An ex-football player who’d busted his knee the first year in college. He’d bounced around after that, gotten into bar fights, racked up a few restraining orders from former girlfriends.

The guy liked to play rough. And he liked to hurt his ladies.

“You ever see any sign of this guy in Baton Rouge?”

A shake of her head. “You think Trent could be the one after me?”

Maybe. One way to find out. “Let’s go see the grandmother.”

“What? Why?”

“Because old Trent might have been able to hide his shifter scent, but he left his kids behind. They won’t be so skilled at cloaking without dad around.”

“I’ve been around the boys, I never noticed—”

“You said he might have been taking herbs to hide his scent.” He’d heard of that before. Even used some herbs himself once on a case. “Could be he was feeding the kids the same herbs he was taking.” He wouldn’t overlook any possibility. “But with him gone…”

Their systems would be clean.

Erin grabbed her bag. “Let’s go.”

With him gone, no one would have been around to pump the kids up, and if they were hybrids, he’d know it on sight.

Or rather, on scent.

“They don’t talk about their father. They never ask about him.” Katherine LaShaun brushed away a stray lock of gray hair that had escaped from the bun at her neck. “It’s Sylvia they talk about. They keep asking when she’s coming home.”

Erin glanced into the kitchen where the two boys were sitting at the table, pushing bright race cars back and forth. Jude stood over them, talking and smiling.

One of the boys — she’d never been able to tell Jake and Joseph apart — gave a loud laugh and revved his car.

“I’m glad the bastard is gone, and I hope he never comes back. These boys, they’re mine. I know what he did to my Sylvia. He’s not gonna get the chance to hurt my boys, too.”

No, he wouldn’t. “You’re going to call that lawyer, right?” Erin had written down the name and number of the best child custody lawyer she knew. She’d given the slip of paper to Katherine. Just in case, just in case, Trent showed up again, she wanted to make sure Katherine and the boys were protected. Permanently.

Katherine gave a grim nod. “I just — I don’t have much money.”

“Don’t worry about it. Larry does a lot of pro bono work.” Larry Myers. He didn’t handle many cases anymore, but she’d call him and tell him this one was important. His semi-retirement was built for cases like this.

“You sure I can trust him?”

“Yes.” Larry had been the lawyer her father used all those years ago, when she’d first appeared on his doorstep.

Is she coming back? The question had been hers, as she watched her mother’s taillights disappear into the darkness.

Her father — a stranger — had pulled her close. “I hope to God not.”

Erin glanced back at the boys. She’d looked for her mother for so many days after that. Years. But her mother never came back.

Erin blinked, clearing vision gone foggy. Kids always got to her. They were so vulnerable. Too easily hurt.

“You okay?” Jude stood in front of her, eyes seeing too much.

Great. Just what she wanted. Him to see her as some kind of emotional wreck. “Fine. We should go. The boys need to eat their supper.”

“Right.” He offered his hand to Katherine. “Pleasure, ma’am.”

She gave him a weak smile, and her gaze drifted back to her grandchildren.

Moments later, they were out of the house. Back in the heat and the darkness.

Erin waited until they were in Jude’s truck, then asked, “Well?”

He shook his head. “Didn’t catch a trace of shifter on ’em. You?”

“No.” So much for that theory. But if Donald Trent wasn’t the shifter after her—

“Trent pissed you off. Beat his wife. Was a general asshole who made the world a hell of a lot worse by living in it.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and glanced her way. “You went toe-to-toe with this guy in a courtroom.”

Yes, she had. He’d threatened her. Screamed at her. Even had to be restrained by his lawyer once.

“Can’t help but think…the last guy who went after you in court wound up left for dead.”

She knew where this was going, dammit.

“Sure does make me wonder — if Trent isn’t the perp, maybe he’s the victim.”

And in that case, Donald Trent wouldn’t be making an appearance in that town again.

Another present? Hell.

And what about Sylvia? Had she been some twisted gift, too? She and Sylvia had fought that last day in court. In the hallway, where she’d thought they were away from prying eyes.

“Why, Sylvia? Why the hell are you doing this? He’ll walk, and he’ll come after you.”

“I don’t have a choice!” Sylvia had screamed at her. “My life, not yours! You don’t understand, you don’t know—”

Her forehead fell against the glass of the window.

An image of the two boys flashed before her eyes.

Damn you, bastard — stop!