“I’m your father!” Jenkins said, now looking like the most innocent one of the group.
Ali actually shrugged. “My plan worked. I got the DEA agent here like you wanted. Plus a bonus, the town sheriff.”
The DEA agent. Not Theo.
She glanced over her shoulder at Hollaroy. “I’m in.”
He smacked her shoulder and she stumbled forward slightly.
“Then you know what to do.”
She raised the gun and aimed it at Holt. “Yeah, I can’t have these two sniffing around.”
Then she pulled the trigger.
Holt flinched, then dropped to his knees, then forward. His hands didn’t stop his fall.
Holy. Fucking. Shit. She did it. She shot him.
My gaze whipped up to meet Ali’s and the smoking gun. The barrel shifted to me. Her steady gaze met mine. Then she fired again.
I felt the bullet pierce my flesh, sink into my body. I fell, hit the ground hard, the crushed grass pressing into my face. Fuck, it hurt. I blacked out.
It couldn’t have been for long because I heard, “Damn, girl. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Hollaroy.
I bit back a moan of pain. I wondered about Holt, but I’d seen him shot. I knew she got him in the chest. We’d never learned if she could shoot, but we knew the answer now. Her aim was true. She’d hit us both right in the fucking heart.
“Let’s get one thing straight. I fooled them. I fooled you. Don’t fuck with me.” She’d never spoken like this before, in a voice I barely recognized. One laced with hatred and… evil.
Hollaroy chuckled, but didn’t argue.
I heard her footsteps approach and I lay still. I was too hurt to move when her hand ran down my side. At first, I thought she was checking to see if I was alive, but I soon realized she was pulling my wallet and my cell from my pocket. She moved to Holt and I presumed she did the same with him.
“They won’t need these.” I envisioned her holding up the items. “And we can’t have them identified.”
The pain in my chest made it difficult to breathe, hard to even move. I was concentrating on staying conscious, not throwing up. Blood seeped from the wound, but I wouldn’t die. I’d be in hell for a while, but my shifter genes were already hard at work. The bullet would come out. Eventually. Hours from now.
Fuck, I hurt. I wasn’t going to die, but maybe it would be better if I did because our mate, the one we loved and craved and needed to survive, had just shot us, and left us for dead.
14
ALI
Dear God, please say I didn’t kill them.
Please let them still be alive.
I’d been careful—shot them close to their hearts, but not in direct line. I had to trust what Rachel had told me was true: that bullets didn’t kill shifters. Not unless they were shot in the head.
But… fuck!
I was scared I’d killed them. So scared. I’d never shot anything more than tin cans.
I knelt at Holt’s side, my heart hammering in my ears. He blinked at me, wheezing, but no words came out. Then he passed out.
Fuck! I’d planned to explain to him what was happening, that it had all been a trap. Now there was no time—Hollaroy was watching me. With shaky hands, I grabbed his gun, wallet and cell phone.
“They dead?” Hollaroy demanded, walking closer.
I sped to Theo’s side and snatched up his things before Hollaroy got there. “Yeah. Both are dead.”
I blinked back the heat and moisture in my eyes. I couldn’t fuck this up now. Not when it was almost over.
Hollaroy had wanted them dead, and he’d wanted me to prove myself. To prove that I was in on his scheme. Otherwise, he’d said he’d kill both my dad and me. I’d had the last few hours since dinner to come up with this plan. Me shooting Theo and Holt in a strategic way to make it look like they’d died was the only thing I could come up with. Kill or be killed. Except shifters couldn’t be killed. So I had to make it convincing enough for Hollaroy to leave their bodies so they could regenerate, or whatever it was called when they magically healed.
But I was operating on very little information. One short conversation in the women’s restroom at the diner didn’t make me an expert. It made my plan thin at best.
What if I’d actually killed them? The men I loved. Had I just murdered the two best things that had ever happened to me?
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. No, I couldn’t go there. I needed to keep it together until the guys healed and arrested these assholes. I had to believe that they wouldn’t die. That they would survive this, and finish their investigation. Hold me again. Tell me they wanted me forever.
Clinging to that thought, I squared my shoulders and marched over to Hollaroy. “Here’s their stuff.”
He stepped back, refusing to touch it. He even held his hands up to stop me. “You get rid of it. You did the crime.”
I sucked in a breath, ice cold rushing from my scalp to the soles of my feet. This guy was pure evil. I’d been shaking like a leaf since the minute he walked into our house, but now I could barely put one foot in front of the other. And he was right. I’d been the one to pull the trigger and shoot two law enforcement officers.
This was bad. This was really bad.
“Boss, what do you want to do with the bodies?” one of Hollaroy’s men asked.
“Leave them for the wolves,” I called out instead of Hollaroy.
“And their vehicle? They had to have gotten here somehow.”
“Find it, and make it disappear,” Hollaroy added.
“On it.”
I had no choice but to leave Theo and Holt. I had to follow through. The hard part was done, right? Pulling the trigger. Twice. Now I had to leave them, which, it turned out, was just as horrible. Were they dying right now, and I was just… leaving?
I climbed into Hollaroy’s truck. The engine revved and we drove off.
Things had gone horribly wrong, and I’d had only a few hours to figure out how to save all of us. But what if I hadn’t saved Theo and Holt? What if I’d just killed the two men I loved?
HOLT
What. In the fuck. Just happened?
“Our mate just shot us, that’s what happened,” Theo groaned, flopping over onto his back.
I must have spoken the question out loud. We were lying in the grass, the scent of blood overpowering my senses. It covered my chest, soaking my shirt.
“They left us for fucking dead,” I groaned, turning painfully to my side. “Fuck, that hurts.”
I set my fingers to the bullet hole, which still bled freely. We needed to shift to speed the healing, otherwise we might be here for days.
I closed my eyes and shuddered as my wolf wanted to push forth so I could shift and heal. Soon, but not yet.
The pain was excruciating, both in the wound in the center of my chest, and in my heart from the pain of Ali’s betrayal.
“What the fuck are we going to do?” I said, my breathing ragged. “We’re going to go fucking moon mad.”
“Yeah,” he groaned. “She knew what we were and, shit, had no interest in becoming our mate. She deceived us. Was all of it fake?”
“Can you walk?” I grunted, not able to process everything.