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Then again, it wouldn’t have been hard for Paxton to change his hairstyle, lose some muscle, grow a beard, have the tattoo sleeves done. As for becoming Calvin … well, Paxton was always a master at fooling people. Who knew his identical twin better than he did? Who could have more effortlessly slipped into Calvin’s skin and taken over his life?
She opened her mouth, ready to call out to Alex, but then she stilled. No, if this was Paxton, he had to be armed—he wouldn’t have jumped into this situation if he wasn’t confident that he could get himself out of it alive. And he’d just love the opportunity to take out Alex. She wouldn’t give it to him.
“How did you know where your mate was?” Dale asked him.
“I put a GPS tracking app on her cell phone long ago.”
He’d been tracking her? Monitoring her every move? Fucking hell.
Paxton sighed. “Sadly, Bray, I don’t have time to play with you—I have to get her out of here while the wolverines are occupied.”
Wait, wolverines plural?
Dale shook his head. “The person who’ll die here is—” His whole body jerked as two bullets whizzed through the headrest and sank into his forehead. The hyena dropped to the floor of the van like a stone.
Paxton’s gaze slid to Dani as he raised the gun from the headrest. “I was having a very good life until you and my mother started playing your games, making everyone talk about me; making them look for me; making them watch me—or should I say Calvin?—and my little cat so closely that I could barely get near her, especially when I was blamed for the necklaces being dumped in her home.”
Dani shrunk back. “I-I don’t know what you mean, I—”
“Oh, you know. My mother told me how she put the necklaces in a box with one of my old sweaters for a few days, hoping they’d smell of me once she took them out. Everyone assumed I’d broken in when, really, she’d merely opened the window, reached inside, and poured the necklaces onto Bree’s counter … leaving only the merest trace of her scent behind—a trace that had either faded or wafted out of the window by the time my little cat arrived home later that day. A fine trick.”
Bree gaped. It was a fine trick. Now she had to wonder if Bernadette had placed the other necklace on Bree’s kitchen windowsill by merely sticking her hand through an open window.
Her eyes still wide as saucers, Dani swallowed. “I was just—”
“Putting her in danger. Something you’ll now pay dearly for. It really is such a shame we don’t have more time. I would have enjoyed hearing you scream.” He fired a bullet right through Dani’s forehead and, thanks to the damn silencer, it barely made a sound.
Paxton’s dead eyes drifted to Bree. Something flared in their depths—something she couldn’t name. And then it was gone. “Hello, little cat.”
Utterly repelled by that voice, her cat hissed and spat. Bree squirmed, grunted, and struggled against her binds. “You stay the fuck away from me.”
“Easy, there,” he soothed, settling in the driver’s seat. “Or scream and make a fuss so that my cousin comes to help you—we both know how that’ll end for him.” He closed the driver’s door. “So nice of the hyenas to leave the keys in the ignition.”
The van roared to life. The vibration reverberated through her body. And then the van was moving. Fast. Noisily. Making sharp turn after sharp turn. When the warehouse lights no longer shone through the windows, she realized they were outside the building.
Something heavy landed on the roof with a loud thud.
Paxton must have slammed his foot on the pedal, because the van screeched to a stop and she almost rolled along the floor. A body tumbled off the roof and over the hood of the van. “Fuck,” Paxton cursed. In one fluid move, he leapt over the seat, straddled her waist, and rolled her fully onto her stomach. The back doors were yanked open.
“Alex,” she breathed, her heart leaping. He stood there, his eyes cold and hard, his mouth set into a cruel slash. He didn’t move. Probably because Paxton had a gun pointed at the back of her head—she could feel the barrel digging into her skull.
Paxton’s laugh held a cutting, hard edge. “Caught a glimpse of you in the wing mirror heading for the rear of the van. You found her much faster than I thought you would. Shame. But I do thank you for keeping the hyenas occupied.”
“It’s not Calvin,” she told Alex.
“Yeah, I see that,” Alex replied, his voice carefully controlled yet laced with menace. His nostrils flaring, he glared at Paxton, his stare unblinking. “You won’t kill her.”
“I wouldn’t like to kill her,” said Paxton. “But would I shoot her in the head to stop you from having her? Yes. Yes, I would. Especially if I had no way to get out of this situation alive—I never respond well to being cornered.”
