“Who is it?” I dared to ask.
“Dallas. I recognized his scent a while back, and my night vision is good enough that I can see him clearly now.”
Stunned, I was barely aware of a tug on the clothes I held in my arms. I released them. The inside of my mind was screaming, Who would do this? Why would they do it? Only one answer came to mind: Bio-Chrome.
Connor wrapped his arms around me. He’d put his jeans back on, but he was shirtless. I could feel the warmth of his skin against my cheek.
“You okay?” he asked.
With him so near, I could now ask for the answer I’d been dreading. “How did he die?”
Connor’s hold on me tightened as though he needed as much comfort as I did. “Looks like someone—or something—ripped out his throat.”
TEN
Connor hadn’t put his shirt back on because he’d draped it over Dallas’s face and shoulders. When Lucas, Rafe, and Zander, another Shifter, arrived with flashlights to illuminate the grim scene, I was grateful to see nothing more gruesome than a stained, hunter-green T-shirt.
“You didn’t notice anyone around here?” Lucas asked.
“No,” Connor responded.
I felt a touch on my arm and jerked my head to the side. It was Rafe. I couldn’t believe how glad I was to see him, to know for sure that he was all right. His gaze wandered slowly over me as though he wanted to make sure that it wasn’t any of my blood tainting the air.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice raspier than usual, the way mine got when I had a scare.
I nodded quickly—too quickly. “Yeah, I just…I’m okay.”
He left my side then, and I felt keenly the loss of his presence. He knelt down and peered beneath the T-shirt. “Looks like the real deal,” Rafe said.
He was referring to the bite—it was real, not a wound that someone had made so it would look as though Dallas had been attacked by a wolf.
“Thought you were supposed to be watching him,” Connor said, irritation in his voice. I wasn’t convinced it was just because Rafe had neglected his duties.
“We were going to grab a burger at the Sly Fox, but he wanted to shower first. I didn’t think I needed to sit in his room, so I went to wait for him at the bar. When he didn’t show, I went back to the hotel. He wasn’t there.”
“I wonder what happened,” I murmured.
“Maybe someone figured out he wanted to help us—and didn’t like it,” Rafe said, his voice sympathetic. I felt the force of his gaze on me and knew I should probably look away, but I couldn’t. “The clerk at the desk said some big dude had been looking for him.”
“One of the mercenaries from Bio-Chrome?” I asked, my voice low.
“That’d be my guess. If so, looks like he found him.”
“We need to alert the sheriff,” Lucas said.
“Do we want to get the police involved?” Rafe asked.
“I don’t see that we have a choice. He’s not one of ours. He could have family somewhere.”
Sheriff Riley, however, was one of ours. He’d play this any way he could in order to keep the press low-key and to ensure the National Enquirer didn’t start poking around for a story on rabid wolves or werewolves that tore out the throats of unsuspecting tourists.
“I’m going to take Lindsey back to her cabin,” Connor said.
“Okay,” Lucas said, distracted, staring at the body.
I didn’t remember anything about the walk back to my cabin, except that it had been silent. The owls weren’t even hooting. It was as though the entire forest had gone into mourning.
When we got to my cabin, I opened the door and walked in. Connor followed.
Kayla was sitting up in bed. She threw back the covers and hurried over to me. I wondered what my face showed—maybe she saw that all the blood had drained from it. I felt like a walking zombie. “Are you okay?” she asked.
I was beginning to think that was the dumbest question in the entire world. Why would people ask that when it was obvious I wasn’t?
“Tell her, okay?” I asked Connor. “I want to take a shower.”
I strolled into the bathroom and closed the door. I turned the knob on the shower as far as it would go in the direction of hot water. It was summer and the nights were cool, but I felt as though I’d just walked across the frozen tundra. Without removing my clothes, I stepped into the shower, sat on the floor, and just let the water slam into me. I felt like the scent of blood had saturated my skin and clothing. I drew up my legs, wrapped my arms around them, pressed my forehead to my knees, and started to cry.
As a rule, I wasn’t much of a crier. But Dallas hadn’t seemed like a bad guy. He wanted to help us. Why hadn’t we realized the risk he was taking? We’d met several of the Bio-Chrome scientists—they cared about one thing and one thing only: getting to the root of our DNA.
I heard the door open and a bit of coolness seeped into the room that was now cloudy with steam. I was probably scalding myself, but I seemed incapable of feeling anything.
“Lindsey?” Kayla asked as she drew the curtain aside just a bit.
“Please don’t ask me if I’m okay,” I insisted.
“I won’t.” She reached over and turned off the water. “Let’s get you dry.”
“I can do it.” Somehow I did. I managed to get out of my wet clothes, dry off, and put on the pajamas she’d set on the counter for me. When I was finished, I left the bathroom and crawled into my bed beside hers.
“Where’s Connor?” I asked.
“He left. He wanted to go back and help Lucas figure out what happened.” She sat on the edge of my bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“When my parents were killed, I didn’t talk about it,” Kayla said. “That kind of trauma can mess with your head.”
“We barely knew the guy,” I reminded her. “But he seemed nice.” It didn’t even sound like me talking. Where were these words coming from?
“Connor said he doesn’t think it was a random animal attack. He thinks it was murder,” Kayla said. “Either one of us has gone over to the dark side, or one of the Bio-Chrome people has a trained dog or wolf.”
“We were the only ones who knew he was going to help us,” I said. But I couldn’t help but believe that Bio-Chrome was involved.