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I also appreciated that Shane didn’t say a damned thing when I explained why Morgan wanted me dead. I was marrying a werewolf king. I was part werewolf. He’d just nodded. I didn’t love having to tell him the truth, but it would be asking too much not to explain what Morgan was, and telling him the truth meant there were no unanswered questions.
When I’d told Holden where to go, he’d given me a look like he meant to make a stink about it, but he didn’t.
The gate of Lucas’s estate was unlocked and ajar. A scan of the lawn told me my gut had been right. Morgan’s hunter-green Porsche was parked at an odd angle in front of the main steps.
“She’s here,” I said, barely believing it.
“Unreal.” Shane leaned forwards and squinted to see the car through the darkness. “How the hell did you know she’d come here?”
“She’s a wolf,” I said with a shrug. “This is home. Werewolves tend to go back to their pack’s safe place when they panic. I’m betting she didn’t count on me knowing that since she always thought I was such a fucking outsider.”
“You think that’s why she was gunning for you?”
“No.” I climbed over Shane, careful to avoid his injured shoulder, and awkwardly straddling him on my way out of the car. He followed close behind me, and Holden brought up the rear. “I don’t think she ever planned to make such a scene of things. She probably figured once I found out Lucas wasn’t coming, I’d run off somewhere to bury my head in the sand and she’d be able to take me out.
“You can’t blame her for the thought process,” Holden said. “I mean, you do sort of have a history of making a run for it when things get tough.”
Shane must have seen my shoulders tense because he quickly asked, “But how does that benefit her at all?”
I continued. “With me out of the picture, she could be queen. What I don’t get, though, is why she didn’t just tell me in the first place…” Maybe she thought if I’d known ahead of time Lucas wasn’t coming, I’d go to him. I was finding it hard to track the logic of someone who was clearly fucking nuts, though. “I guess when she realized it wasn’t going to go as planned, she decided to finish the job anyway.”
“Women,” Holden huffed. “Push come to shove, it’s always about who gets to wear the tiara.”
I stopped walking and turned back to him. “I didn’t ask for this,” I snapped.
“Maybe not.” He unzipped the duffel bag and tossed me a spare clip for my SIG. “But you didn’t fight against it very hard, either, did you?”
Shane cast a glance from Holden to me and back again. “Are you really pushing her buttons right now, man? She’s carrying a fucking sword.”
“She’s a big girl,” Holden replied, handing Shane a loaded Glock, my old favorite gun. “I’m not telling her anything she hasn’t thought herself.”
“When this is all over, you and I are going to have a very long chat,” I snarled.
“Yes. And won’t that be fun?”
“Go check the house. Shane, there’s a pool house out back.” I indicated the west side of the mansion.
“Where are you going?” Shane asked.
“I’ve been meaning to take a tour of the hedge maze,” I said. “Now seems like as good a time as any.”
Chapter Forty-Six
I’d only seen The Shining once, but once was enough for me to remember the scene where the little boy tried to escape his psychotic father and ended up running around in the maze in the pitch darkness.
I’d also seen the fourth Harry Potter movie and remembered how awesome mazes had turned out for poor Cedric Diggory.
If movies taught me anything, it was that nothing good ever happened in a maze at night.
Mazes in general were just a fucking freaky thing. I’d never asked Lucas why he had one. Given its size and height it had probably been built by his grandfather and remained a standard feature on the Rain mansion’s grounds ever since.
I hadn’t ventured near it on any of my previous visits to the house because enclosed spaces made me uneasy and I wasn’t a fan of getting lost on purpose.
But if I were going to hide, it was exactly where I’d go.
And Morgan was smart enough to think the same thing.
I slipped the sheath off my katana and left it at the entrance. If the time came when I needed to use the sword, I didn’t want to waste precious seconds shucking off the cover, and I wanted to know where I’d left it when I came out the other side.
