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“I’m sorry…I can’t stay here. She could still be alive.”
“And if she’s…if she isn’t?”
Before Mosa could answer, the door to the cabin jerked inward. Mallory came out carrying the recycling bin in his left hand, Mosa’s 9mm tucked into his belt, and a duffel bag over his right shoulder.
“You’ve got Justine’s Hellcat, but did she teach you to shoot it?” he growled as he handed over the weapon. “She was one hell of a shooter.”
“Still is,” Mosa answered, her voice breaking at the end.
He shoved the recycling bin at me. “Head down to the stump and put down four cans or tins, each about two inches apart. Save the bottles until I tell ya.”
Once I had the first row in place, I retreated ten feet. Mosa got into a firing position. Mallory shook his head then immediately corrected her stance. The stump was a good twenty yards from where they stood, but I could hear him just as clearly as if he was jabbering straight into my ear.
“So, obviously, she didn’t teach you.”
Mosa shot him a look. It was an angry look and it made her even sexier. I didn’t think that was possible.
“I haven’t been allowed near a gun in about a decade,” she snapped at the old wolf. “Henric’s orders after I stared at him a little too long at the firing range.”
Her sassing the old man made me smile. I figured she hadn’t been able to openly stick up for herself for a long while. But she hadn’t gone soft in that time. Heck, she’d hopped freight trains to get here.
“You better be a natural,” Mallory shot back. “Or you can’t come with me when I rescue Justine. Hell, you shouldn’t go anyway.”
Not only could I see her posture change, I felt it. Her shoulders and biceps got real tight, then her fingers as they gripped the 9mm. So much tension ran through her, she was going to squ—
A fat chunk of the bark remaining on the stump exploded to dust. Leaving the recycling bin down range, I started walking toward the old man and Mosa.
“She needs an instructor, not a Marine Corps drill sergeant,” I barked. Not that any of us would have any idea what a drill sergeant from any branch of service was like. Once things like blood typing became standard, the military stopped being an option for shifters.
Mallory pried the gun from Mosa, adopted a two-handed firing stance, and took four quick shots, knocking each of the cans I’d set up off the stump. As I reached where they stood, he motioned Mosa to step back and for me to stand next to him.
Agitation rolled off the old wolf. It was hard for me to know exactly why. Was it fatherly concern, him basically knowing that Mosa wasn’t going to stay here until she knew her mother was safe? Or was this all about Justine?
Or maybe he just wanted to kill this Henric guy.
“Now show me,” Mallory ordered.
I had already noted where the cans landed. One was a little more than a foot to the left of the stump, another had come down to the right, just shy of nine feet away, but at a fifty-degree angle from the center of the stump. The third and fourth shot had landed in the weeds, just a hint of the silvery aluminum revealing their location.
Taking a sideways stance, I held the gun out, its body turned forty-five degrees counterclockwise from a normal standing pose. I didn’t look down range. I looked at the old man. Two quick pops took out the cans in the weeds, my hand moving less than an inch between the first shot and the second. The far shot came third and then the easiest shot, the one where the can was just to the left of the stump.
Only confidence and the sound of the bullets hitting their targets told me my aim was true each time. Not once did I break the hold I had on Mallory’s gaze.
“Well,” Mallory said and spit at the ground, “Guess I can’t say you’re totally worthless.”
He jerked his hand at the bin. “I’ll be gone about an hour. There are some things I need to pick up before we head out. Make sure she can shoot by the time I get back.”
CHAPTER16
JUSTINE
The dull beatof my heart echoed inside me, the pace a slow pendulum winding down to nothing. Icy creek water flowed all around my flesh, entering through the dime-sized holes of Henric's metal box. Guards were set to watch in case of a rescue attempt I knew would never materialize.
I couldn't see the guards, just feel their cold, disdainful presence and frequent amusement at my torture. I imagined the squawk of their radios and the cruel jokes they made at my expense. But I couldn't hear the sounds above the constant rush of water and the intermittent submersions as the chains holding my cage bobbed from the whipping and bending of the trees to which they were tied.
It was a cheap and highly effective torture, the method's invention and execution the only kind of thing at which my husband truly excelled. There was no need to take me out and warm me up so I wouldn't die. The alpha strain within me healed over and over, reviving tissue continually drowned and frozen. Healing was its own layer of excruciating pain, the sensation comprised of rusty razor blades slicing in unison at a frenzied speed.
The only warmth I could muster was to think of my beautiful daughter far away, safe in the motley pack that had already defeated two Champaign wolf clans and a small pride of lions when they tried to take back the Parry girl. Henric had refused to help the wolves. He would get no help in return.
