Chapter 21
It took him twenty minutes to return to human.
Twenty fucking minutes of breathing exercises, Zen mantras, and reciting the Constitution in his head before he could look at his hands without seeing the horror on Holly’s face or feeling the seething satisfaction of when he’d slammed Johnny into the floor.
Twenty minutes of remembering why he was a monster now and could never, ever live in a civilized world.
Tonya tried to help him. She talked about ways young shifters find to settle the beast inside, but every time she spoke, he grew angrier.
This wasn’t supposed to be his life. He’d nearly become a constitutional scholar.
He read poetry just to appreciate the eloquence of words.
And in his spare time, he did crossword puzzles.
Such a man did not relish terrifying people, even if they were ignorant rednecks who had made some really piss-poor choices in their lives.
Eventually Tonya fell silent, though she’d ended with the words, “Everyone has to find their own way.”
Maybe. And maybe his way was to end Elisabeth however possible, including his own death.
But what if he survived the bitch’s capture?
What if he lived beyond the woman’s end?
Tonya was right now coordinating with local law enforcement to raid Elisabeth’s house.
That would likely end in an arrest, not murder.
A few days ago, that would not have been an acceptable outcome.
But now he wasn’t so sure. Now he was thinking like a lawyer again—sometimes—and revisiting all his views on vigilante justice.
It came from sitting in a cop’s car and watching the most beautiful deputy in the world do her job.
She was a law-and-order kind of girl, and he wanted desperately for the happily ever after she believed they could have.
But how could she possibly love anyone who gleefully embraced killing?
And it would be gleeful for him. It would be positively delightful for him to end Elisabeth once and for all.
He was still brooding as they made it to Grand Rapids. Brooding and trying not to stare at Tonya’s belly and imagine his child growing inside her. Their child, their life together. It wasn’t possible...
Was it?
She pulled her car over in a middle-class suburban neighborhood.
The kind that had front porches, curtains on the windows, and basketball hoops attached to the garage roof.
But only some of the lawns were mowed, a few sported sunflowers in brilliant yellow glory, and a few more were entirely choked with weeds.
A neighborhood going to seed. Or maybe struggling to build into better. Hard to tell.
Tonya parked the car and turned to him. “We’re waiting for the search warrant. It’ll come soon. Just stay with me and don’t go off half-cocked.”
“Which half? Cock or doodle?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know you’re not half as funny as you think.”
“Yeah, but you like me even at fifty percent.”
“Yeah,” she agreed softly. “Yeah, I do.” Then her expression turned serious. “We’re doing this the right way, Alan. It’s how it has to be.”
He shook his head. “She’s a cougar-shifter and a violent psychopath. There’s no way the normal justice system can handle her.”
“We’ve got plenty on her without bringing in the shifter stuff. We just need to keep it together for a little bit longer.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “It’s time to choose, Alan. You’ve spent your adult life working inside the justice system. Tell me you remember that now.”
“Of course I remember it.” The question was whether he was still believed in it or wanted to live entirely outside of it.
She heard the subtext. Of course she did, and she released a heavy sigh. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
He wiggled his brows. “We haven’t tried that yet. Want to?” It was comfortable to drop back into sexual banter, however lame. It gave them a sense of preabduction normalcy. But Tonya wasn’t fooled.
“God, Alan, please be the man I love. Please.”
His leer faded. “Shouldn’t you love your man no matter what? Isn’t that what love is?”
She nodded, not even hesitating. “There’s love and there’s the real world. Hear this clearly. You go off the rails now and I will put you in cuffs.”
“That won’t stop—”
“I will go full bear in front of all these people, Alan. I’ll expose the whole fucking shifting thing if it keeps you from doing something you’re going to regret for the rest of your life.”
He grimaced and stared at his hands. “That’s the problem, Tonya. I don’t think I’ll regret it. Not one tiny bit.”
“Then trust me,” she said, her expression fierce. “Trust that I know you better than you do right now. I know you’ll find your balance. And I know that when you do, you won’t want a murder on your hands. Not even of the one person who most deserves it.”
He nodded because she wanted him to. Because when she had that peculiarly Tonya look—half pleading, half commanding—he wanted to give her whatever she asked.
“I don’t know that I can control it,” he abruptly confessed.
“I want to. I’m trying. But…” His voice trailed away, but in his mind, the words kept spilling out.
But what if when he sees the bitch, he rips out her throat out?
He’d imagined that and worse a million times.
What if he couldn’t be the man she wanted because the monster was stronger?
He expected her to be sympathetic, to say something encouraging. Instead, she hit him with a hard glare.
“Work harder, Alan. Or go home.” She pressed the car keys into his hands, the message clear.
She needed him to be a man not a monster.
And for the first time since this entire disaster began, he felt a fierce, bright light kindle inside him.
Hope? Determination? Love? Whatever it was, he grabbed it with both hands.
He would be the man she wanted or die trying.
He squeezed her fingers, but before he could speak, a couple police officers pulled up in a Chevrolet Impala.
Tonya glanced over her shoulder, then shot him a quick smile. “I think they’re going to tell me they got the warrant. Give me a sec.” She climbed out of her car and went to speak to the big guys in suits. Probably GR detectives.
Alan remained in the car, watching the quick conversation.
But as the discussion went on and on, his attention wandered to the house where Elisabeth was supposedly holed up.
The phone number from Holly was a landline to this address.
Coupled with the sighting of Elisabeth nearby, they might get a warrant.
Except looking at the nicely maintained two-story home, Alan began to wonder.
It all looked too good. No toys cluttered the lawn, the hedges were trimmed, and the flower bed was pretty.
There was a decorative flag hanging next to the door and whimsical flowers with solar lights along the front walk.
It didn’t make sense that a woman on the run with two children would be in a place so charming.
Unless she had some connection to whomever lived inside.
With that thought in mind, Alan got out of the car.
Tonya was arguing with the two GR police, her gestures tight and her expression fierce.
Bet she didn’t get the warrant after all.
Legally speaking, that was probably the correct judicial response.
Fortunately, he wasn’t a police officer, so he had more latitude than Tonya in what he could do, starting with walking right up the front walk and banging on the door.
He got about five feet before Tonya grabbed his arm.
“Jesus, you don’t listen to a damned thing I say, do you?”
“Get the warrant?”
“No.” She blew out a breath. “The place is owned by an older couple with no obvious links to Elisabeth.”
“So I’ll just have a chat—” She put her hand on his arm, gripping him with her shifter strength.
“Alan. You promised to let me handle it.”
Actually he hadn’t, but once again, she gave him that look. Fierce and pleading all at once. He raised his hands and backed up to the car. “Fine. Ten minutes.”
“Twenty.”
He snorted. “Fifteen and then I’m coming in.”
She shot him an arch look. “Twenty, and you’ll text before you enter.
” Trust Tonya to not negotiate. Then before he could argue, she gestured to the local cops.
All three of them climbed onto the porch, then rang the doorbell.
Alan hung back, watching from the car as an elderly woman answered the door and sweetly gestured them inside.
Too easy.
Alan narrowed his eyes as the door closed behind Tonya.
He stood quietly fuming in the late afternoon light and wondered at his compliance.
It was almost as if he were bowing to her greater experience and wisdom in crime fighting.
That he was returning to his place as a lawyer.
And yet part of him itched right beneath the skin.
Part of him wasn’t going to delay a damned thing in his search for vengeance.
And that part—the monster part—wasn’t staying down.
He looked around the neighborhood and tried to think of options.
If he were a psychotic cougar-shifter, where would he hide?
They already knew what the bitch wanted.
She was working to repopulate the cougar-shifters.
That meant activating the two kids she had and raising them as best she could.
In quiet. Probably with the help of her big, beefy, and stoic cousin from Arizona.