Cuckqueaned by The Tango Instructor (I Watched Her Take My Husband #15)

Prologue The Attack

Justin Rourke

Agent Justin Rourke had been on the job long enough to know when an assignment was a mistake. This one had felt like a mistake from the moment he stepped out of his car, and the forest swallowed the sound of the engine.

Now, lost somewhere in the remote Appalachian backcountry, he regretted every decision that had led him here.

The missing-persons reports had been piling up for months; hikers, campers, locals.

People vanishing without a trace. The sheriff’s office insisted it was “accidents.”

Park services said that people go missing in the woods and eventually they would turn up.

The Rangers believe it is animal attacks, and that soon they would have control over the situation.

But the FBI, or more specifically, SS SAIC Bishop believes something else is going on out here.

Justin had insisted he could handle it.

He was an idiot.

The trail he’d followed up the ridge had forked somewhere behind him, and he’d taken the wrong branch. He knew it now; the terrain was unfamiliar, the slope wrong, the trees too dense. He turned in a slow circle, trying to find any landmark, any sign of the path back to the parking lot.

Nothing. Just endless trees. The full moon illuminating the wide expanse of nothing familiar.

He checked his phone again. No signal. Not even a flicker.

“Perfect,” he muttered, shoving it back into his pocket.

A low rumble echoed somewhere behind him; not thunder, not wind. Something else. Something heavy. Something moving.

His pulse spiked.

He chose a direction and ran.

Branches whipped his arms. Roots caught his boots. The forest blurred into streaks of green and brown as he sprinted downhill, lungs burning, heart pounding.

He didn’t stop until the terrain changed.

And when it did, he wished he’d never come here at all.

Coming into the clearing he struck what he thought were branches. Until getting a good look at the glowing white limbs. Not limbs or branches. Bones hung from the trees.

Dozens of them. Strung on cords of sinew and twine, swaying gently in the breeze like macabre wind chimes. Some were small; animal bones, maybe. But others…

Others were decidedly not.

Justin froze; breath caught in his throat.

He lifted his phone, using the dim flashlight to illuminate one of the larger bones. The light trembled in his hand.

Human. Definitely human.

His stomach dropped.

The forest went silent. The boulders surrounding the clearing were gouged with large claw marks. The hair on his neck stood straight up.

The silence was unnerving. No insects. No birds. No wind.

Just the sound of his own breathing.

Then he heard it.

Rustling. Slow. Deliberate. Something large moving through the underbrush.

Justin turned toward the sound, raising the phone again. The beam of light shook violently as he tried to steady his hand.

Two glowing eyes stared back at him from the tree line.

Not reflective like a deer’s. Not curious. Not afraid.

Predatory.

A low, haunting howl rolled through the woods; a sound that didn’t belong to any animal he knew. It vibrated through his bones.

Justin stumbled backward, tripping over a root. His phone slipped from his hand and hit the ground, the light spinning wildly.

The creature rushed him.

A blur of massive limbs, claws, fur, or something like fur, barreling out of the darkness with impossible speed.

Justin barely had time to scream.

The woods swallowed the sound.