Alex swallowed hard. “You don’t think she’ll tell anyone, do you?”
God, he hoped not. They’d had to deal with that situation back when Gage and Mac had first gotten together, and it had almost ended up with all of them leaving the country. He really didn’t want to leave Dallas. He liked it here. He liked Lacey.
“I don’t think so,” Remy said. “But if she does, we’ll just have to deal with it.”
Great. “Do you think we should tell Gage or Xander?”
Remy winced at that. Alex didn’t blame him. He wasn’t thrilled about telling either his team commander or his squad leader that he’d accidently exposed their secret.
“Maybe we should tell Cooper first,” Remy suggested. “He’s really good at fixing crap when one of us fucks up.”
* * *
Lacey’s head was spinning so fast, she wasn’t even sure where she was going until she pulled into a visitor’s space along the front of Wendy’s apartment building. How the hell had she gotten here?
She should turn the car around and go home. It wasn’t like she could tell Wendy what had happened tonight. She didn’t even understand it herself. But that logic didn’t keep her from getting out of the car and climbing the three flights of stairs to her best friend’s apartment. Her feet continued to do their own thing until they reached Wendy’s door, then she was ringing the bell before she could stop herself.
Lacey cringed as the noise echoed inside the one-bedroom apartment. She shouldn’t be here. She should be home checking on Kelsey, then going straight to bed. Maybe she should stop at an all-night convenience store on the way and grab a bottle of wine—or two. That would certainly help.
She was still standing there when Wendy opened the door a few seconds later, wearing an oversized Texas Longhorns sleepshirt. Once again, Lacey told herself she shouldn’t be here, but she knew it was too late to flee now.
Wendy blinked the sleep out of her eyes, then looked around the hall as if she expected someone else to be with her. Alex probably. “Lacey, what are you doing here so late?”
Lacey tried to answer, but all she could do was stand there and sob like a baby, something she hadn’t done since her dad left and her mom died. No matter how hard she tried to make the tears stop, they wouldn’t. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying. She should have been screaming in terror. She’d just learned that the guy she’d been falling for—the guy she’d slept with—was a monster.
Wendy grabbed her hand and tugged her inside, then shut the door and pulled her into a hug. That’s when the waterworks really started.
“It’s okay,” Wendy soothed. “Tell me what happened. Is Kelsey okay?”
Lacey sniffed and shook her head, pulling back to look at her friend. “It’s not Kelsey…it’s…” She hesitated, then forced the words out. “It’s Alex.”
Wendy’s eyes widened. “Oh God, what happened? Is he hurt?”
Lacey swallowed hard, not sure what to say. Finally, the words came spilling out just like her tears had earlier. “He’s not hurt. He’s a…a…monster!”
Wendy looked confused for a moment, then understanding dawned on her face, quickly replaced with fury. “Did that big, stupid son of a bitch try to force himself on you? If he did, I’ll kill him!”
Lacey was taken aback at the anger in her friend’s voice, and it took her a few seconds to catch up to what Wendy was talking about. She shook her head again. Why was this so hard to explain?
“No, he didn’t try to force himself on me. We’ve been sleeping together for the past two days.”
Wendy frowned in confusion. “Then what the heck are you talking about? If he didn’t attack you, what do you mean he’s a monster?”
Lacey groaned in frustration. This was why she hadn’t wanted to say anything in the first place. It was making her sound like a lunatic. She was too frazzled to keep doing this.
“He’s a monster,” she snapped. “You know—with claws, fangs, and glowing yellow eyes. That kind of monster.”
Wendy opened her mouth, then closed it again. Finally, she sighed and shook her head. “I don’t understand a thing you’re saying, and you’re scaring the hell out of me. Maybe we could sit down so you could start from the beginning? What happened tonight?”
Lacey moved over to Wendy’s big, overstuffed couch and flopped down. She hadn’t realized how tired she was until just then. She guessed the adrenaline she’d been riding high on for the last hour was finally running out. Or maybe it wasn’t adrenaline she’d been riding on. Maybe it was good, old-fashioned fear. After everything that had happened tonight, everything she’d seen, she had every right to be terrified.
“I went to Bensen’s junkyard out on 20 again tonight,” she said, eager to get the confession part out of the way and move on with the important stuff, namely the part where Alex had come running out of the darkness like some monster in a horror movie, but she didn’t get a chance.
“Wait a minute,” Wendy interrupted. “Why the hell would you go there again? I told you to stay away from that man. He’s psychotic.”
“You don’t have to tell me he’s psychotic—I already know that,” Lacey said. “I’m the one who found all those dead dogs and that poor girl last night. The police can act like they don’t know who the hell was involved, but I do. It was Bensen. I went there to get something I could use to convince everyone I’m right.”
Wendy looked like she wanted to say something more about that but thankfully held her tongue. “I still think you’re an idiot for sneaking into Bensen’s junkyard, but let’s forget about that for the moment and get to the important stuff. Where does Alex, this monster, and you standing on my doorstep crying fit into this?”
