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The falcon was circling, and it screeched loud enough to reach Hallie’s ears.
Derek yanked her upward and dragged her toward the house, but Hallie tried to keep her focus on the bird. It was the last beautiful thing she would see.
Oh, she knew what this was. Derek wouldn’t be able to talk her into coming back in line in this house. He meant her harm. He was paying this man an insane amount of money to help him bring her harm.
Hallie struggled and got one last look at her car, parked sideways in the dirt driveway, before she was yanked inside.
The slamming of the door behind her was the loneliest sound in the world.
“Tie her to the chair,” Derek said, gesturing to a ladder-back chair at the table. There was a huge window that overlooked a back deck, and Derek saw it at the same time she did.
There was a man on the back porch, his back to them, his hands in his pockets. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans. He was looking toward the woods.
“Who the fuck is that?” Derek demanded.
The man who held her by the back of the neck had frozen. “I don’t fuckin’ know.”
The man outside turned his face, and her heart kicked up to a gallop. She knew that face.
Hallie smiled. “You are in so much trouble.”
Gunner turned and settled his glowing bi-colored eyes on them through the window, and then twitched his head. Come here.
“Is that one of those fucking shifters?” Derek asked.
“That’s…that’s…” The man looked terrified, and her smile grew wider at the memory of Gunner holding him up in the air with one hand.
“Gunner Walker,” she murmured. She lifted her voice higher and repeated what Derek had said earlier. “Bear shifter, the son of Haydan and Cassie Walker, raised in the Ashe Crew—”
“Shut up!” Derek roared.
Gunner turned his entire body and lifted his chin, stared directly at Derek with the devil’s smile painting his lips. “If you pull a trigger anywhere near her, I will pull every limb from your body. Slowly. No one will hear you scream.”
Chills lifted up her spine. He meant it. She could tell.
“I didn’t sign up for this,” the guy beside her said.
“Get out there and shoot him.”
The man was already backing away. “It was different when they weren’t involved.”
“Shoot him!” Derek ordered.
“Yeah, shoot me,” Gunner called through the window. “Shoot me again, Ben Snider.”
The gun clattered to the floor and the man held his hands up in surrender, backing toward the front door.
Hallie dove for the gun, but Derek was closer and faster. He grabbed it and shoved her into the table, then launched at her. He grabbed her hair and put the barrel of the gun to her temple. “Move,” he ordered, shoving her forward.
Breath coming in short bursts, she allowed him to move her forward through the back door and onto the deck.
Gunner’s terrifying eyes tracked her, and then he turned toward the forest again as Derek maneuvered her ten feet away from him, facing the same direction.
“I’m going to kill you,” Gunner promised him.
“I’ll pull the trigger before you can get to her,” Derek countered.
“I can tell you’re not from around here. Clearly you have no idea what you stepped in the middle of.”
