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Remus rumbled. “The coroner estimates she was killed between one and three in the morning.” He paused. “She was shot with a silver bullet.”
My father inhaled sharply and I bared my teeth. “So her killer knew she was a wolf,” I growled, shaking my head. It wasn’t some random act of violence; those were bad enough, but if someone came prepared with silver? Demi Smith had been a target.
The thought made me frown. “I wasn’t shot with silver, though,” I added a moment later. “Was Ryan?”
Remus nodded. “Yes. It took some…work…to remove the bullet,” he said slowly, looking a bit disgusted by what he was implying, “but after analysis, it was determined to be silver. Not that it mattered, given where he was shot. It was instantaneously fatal.”
A wolf couldn’t survive being shot in the brain, nor could they survive a direct shot to the heart, and probably not the lungs. If you wanted to see a wolf suffer, you’d shoot them in the gut with a silver bullet; it wouldn’t kill them instantly, but the silver poisoning would get them before anyone could get the bullet out, and every second hurt.
I frowned. “So why shoot me with a regular bullet if he shot Ryan with silver? That doesn’t make sense.”
Remus shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe the gunman was planning on being gone before you arrived. He wanted you to find Ryan’s body as some sort of sign, perhaps. ‘Get lost or this will happen to you,’ that kind of thing.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “What an idiot.”
My father studied us both. “Perhaps he intended to kill Ryan but intended to wound Eli. We still don’t know if Ryan contacted Eli under duress, if the gunman was aware the meeting was happening and shot Ryan to stop it, or was simply tailing the man and took advantage of his isolation to silence him for good. Holding Ashley as leverage wasn’t working…so perhaps they were looking to upgrade.” He looked at me, his expression stone-cold.
I balked at the idea. “I’m not a Silverstreak wolf,” I argued. “Besides, I don’t fit their profile. I’m not high-risk, and I have clients and family members who’d certainly notice if I didn’t show up where I was meant to be. Hell, my assistant probably knows my schedule better than I do.” I eyed my father, under no illusion that Amber didn’t report to him.
Remus shook his head, expression stormy. “You’re still my half-brother,” he argued. “And out here? You’d be far easier to take than my mate or my children, and you would still be an effective tool against me.”
I paused, not really knowing how to respond to that. In some roundabout way, Remus was admitting that if I was taken, that would matter to him. It would, in some way, alter how he was handling this situation. “Fuck,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“Indeed,” my father grumbled.
He didn’t get it, though. He obviously didn’t get it. If their intention was to take me and Iris the night they killed Ryan, and they had just killed Demi…maybe thatwaswhere Iris had been last night. Maybethatwas the reason she wasn’t picking up her phone — because she couldn’t. Because they either took her or took her phone away.
I didn’t realize how ragged my breathing had gotten until my father put his hand on my knee. He was speaking. It took me another moment to realize he was saying my name “Eli.Eli.Look at me.”
“They have her,” I blurted out, looking at the other two alphas with wild eyes. I could only imagine what I looked like right now. “She went out in the middle of the night. Demi was the only client she had in Austin right now and she won’t pick up her phone it goes right to voicemail they have her—”
“Eli,” my father rumbled again, cutting me off. He leaned back toward me, grabbing one of my forearms. “If they have her, we will find her,” he said, his tone offering no room to argue. “You need to breathe. You’re hyperventilating.”
Am I?
“Am I?” I heard myself saying a moment later. It was like I had no control over my body. “What’s wrong with me?” I wasn’t prone to anxiety or panic. It had been worse when I was a kid, especially with Brock’s reign of terror, but I had learned how to control those feelings as I got older. Cutting that man out of my life had helped a great deal, too.
I could hear my father saying something else, but it didn’t sound like words anymore. All I could hear was the ragged sound of my breathing, and the rush of blood in my ears. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked again, but even my own voice sounded far away. This wasn’t like me at all.
My father said something to Remus, and then my half-brother leaned forward, taking my father’s place. He grabbed both of my arms, firmly, without causing any sort of pain, and pulled me closer. When I managed to look at him, he lifted his hands, cupping my cheeks instead. “Eli,” he rumbled. This close, I could make out the words. “Send it to me. Whatever it is you’re feeling, send it to me.”
“What?” I managed to stutter out, blinking as I tried to comprehend what he was asking me to do.
“Send the emotion to me, Eli.”
I sucked in a breath. And another after that. “I don’t know how.” I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Okay,” Remus replied calmly. He slipped one hand from my face to my chest, pulling his other arm away to place it on his own chest. “Focus on your wolf, then. Focus on your wolf, and focus on mine. We’re blood. They’ll recognize each other.”
I blinked again. “Okay,” I said, still a little breathless. I could think of my wolf. Something seemed to shift in the world around us.
“Good,” Remus rumbled. “Now imagine there’s a string between us. Think of the string, tying my wolf to yours. And think of sending these feelings down that string towards me.” When I paused, Remus rumbled again. “I can handle it, Eli. Send it down the string towards me.”
I simply nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Little by little, I envisioned sending my emotion down that string. My worry. My…whatever this was.
My breathing began to slow back down. I no longer felt like I was sprinting without getting anywhere at all.
Remus let go and I sat back, blinking a few times before focusing on him. “What the hell was that?”
