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Mrs. Donnelly fled, leaving the room with a controlled, swishing walk.
Her husband stood and rounded the desk. He didn’t make the mistake of approaching Zeven. Instead, he casually held out a thin folder and a thick envelope. “I think you will find everything as you requested. All the information I have on the doctor is in the folder. And the first half of the payment, ten thousand, is there as well.”
Zeven claimed the target info and money without another word.
“I’ve heard your reputation for completing jobs. But just to be clear, this target is a threat to us all.” Donnelly said, “us” as if he was one of them. The damn fool wasn’t and obviously never would be. “That doctor can prove the existence of werewolves and has threatened to expose the evidence to the public. We expect you to eliminate all witnesses quickly and quietly. And be sure to recover or destroy any evidence there may be and bring it back to me.”
He gave a short nod and left, making his way out the side entrance. Many of his jobs were focused on eliminating threats to their kind such as witnesses or hunters. So, this job wasn’t all that unexpected. Usually, the clans took care of the easy marks like this one by themselves but if they wanted to throw money his way, he wouldn’t complain.
Even though the Donnelly couple set him on edge, he’d still do the job. Not that he had much love for his own kind, but he wasn’t keen on being hunted by a bunch of racist assholes either.
Then again, maybe if the hunters started with Donnelly and his crazy wife, he might find a way to be unavailable. He’d been hearing stories about the Coyote clan since he was a pup. Their clans had shared a border for nearly a thousand years. His own clan had been far more isolated and violent toward humans, which had often left the two groups at odds.
Personally, he’d always wondered how the Coyote clan managed to live on the fringe of the human world. To him they’d always seemed fairly progressive. Or at least they had in the past. Recently their clan had become twisted and unstable.
How did a human end up leading a werewolf clan anyhow? Unlike the elders who had raised him, he didn’t hate humans. His own mother had been one. But if Jack Donnelly was fit to mate, then his bitch should have bound her magic to him and brought him fully into the clan. Instead, he remained human and clearly submissive. Maybe he was no more than a toy for her but if that was the case then he shouldn’t be allowed the appearance of control. And why bother with a human marriage? The whole situation was seriously, just fucking weird.
From the side entrance he skirted around the house to avoid a gardener and a couple young men lounging in the back yard. His reputation as a violent lone wolf allowed him to ignore most social norms among both humans and his own kind.
With long strides he quickly reached the driveway and slid into his Charger, firing the car to life. The moment he was inside with the engine vibrations roaring evenly, only then did he feel the tension ease out of his overstretched muscles. The Charger was his only comfort and a reliable business partner. While most of his kind had family and clan, all he had was the meticulously restored, dark green metallic ’72 Charger.
Not that he had cared all that much about cars in the beginning. But her words had changed him, and she had dreamed of owning this exact vehicle. Someday he’d find her again. Even if it had been more than five years since his last lead, he wasn’t going to give up.
He dropped aGodsmackCD into the player of the newly installed stereo system and roared out of the gated drive, heading for home.
Or in this case, a rundown, local motel. He maneuvered out of the exclusive suburbs onto the 515 and back toward the heart of Las Vegas. He wouldn’t be heading all the way to casino central, but rather to one of the many smaller hotels tucked around the edges. The motel would smell of humans and all their usual trash, concealing his own presence perfectly. It would suit his needs but couldn’t be called a home. The Charger was the closest he had. All his possessions fit in the trunk and other than a couple of changes of clothes the rest consisted of weapons.
Well, clothes, weapons and an ass-big bag of cash.
This job was just one in a long line of successful business transactions. For better or worse, he was damn good at what he did, and even easy jobs brought in good money. So, he continued to make his living by making other people dead. He was good at it, despite the occasional twinge of guilt.
To ease what remained of his conscience he at least could take a little time to investigate the target. Was this doctor really a threat to their entire werewolf race? Or had the damn fool just gotten in the way of the greedy couple?
He settled the folder onto the passenger side of the seat. Time to see the face of the mark. Not that looking innocent would save the poor bastard. Nah, if the doctor was threatening to expose werewolves, he’d finish the job either way.
The car rumbled along, passing the rest of the Saturday midday traffic. With the window down and the bass way up, he could let the relatively cool air improve his mood. Before long he might not even remember how terrible that study had smelled.
Traffic slowed. Zeven raced the Charger past the more relaxed drivers while flipping the folder open to reveal a twenty-nine-year-old blonde, named Harley Walters.
“Fuck.”
He punched the brakes to avoid crushing a stopped Buick, then swerved around to pass on the median. The picture wasn’t labeled and a glance through the folder showed no ID besides “Doctor H. Lex” which damn sure hadn’t been the girl’s name ten years ago. Had she changed her name? Had she married? Was she married still? Did it matter?
Just the same, his damn mark was also his former lover, the same woman he’d killed his entire clan to protect. The same woman he’d been hunting for ten years.
“Son of a fucking bitch.”
Chapter Three
Harley knew she was in shock and was completely helpless against the biological response. Her breath came too fast, too shallow. Her heart raced. Her vision tunneled down to just the gruesome picture in her shaking hand. For a long second, she stared, gradually making sense of the image. It showed the brutalized remains of the two people she’d abandoned to be killed the night before. Dave and Roxie who’d been murdered in cold blood.
On the back were two words.
You’re next.
Dizziness dragged her down. She fought back the panic attack.Later. I’ll break down properly later.But at the moment that kind of weakness would just get her killed. One deep breath, then another. She needed focus and motion, to pack and run.
After she’d escaped the bar, she had hidden out across town in a little grocery store parking lot. She’d been so wired and stressed that she’d almost taken off then. But this time she’d built a life that was harder to just drop and leave behind. She’d returned to the hospital and handed in the paperwork requesting a leave of absence. She wouldn’t be coming back here, but maybe her three years as an intern wouldn’t be wasted and she could finish at another hospital, somewhere far away.
