Lacey closed her eyes, thinking back to the moment Alex had first appeared in the junkyard, the moment everything she’d thought she knew about the man had changed. How had she missed something like that? She should have known he was too good to be true.
“When I got into the junkyard, I tripped over something and ended up knocking a bunch of stupid car parts,” she said. “Guys with guns ran out of the main building like they were under attack. I thought for sure I was dead.”
Wendy’s eyes widened again. Lacey thought cops were supposed to be better at controlling their facial expressions than that.
“I was just about to get shot by one of them when Alex came out of the darkness, running faster than any human had the right to, and slammed into the guy, practically knocking him into next week.”
“So he saved you?” Wendy shook her head. “Sorry, but I’m not seeing the monster part yet—or the problem.”
“Yes, he saved me. Then he turned around. That’s when I saw…everything.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“Wendy, Alex’s face had changed. It was wider…and longer. And there were frigging fangs nearly two inches long sticking out of his mouth. His eyes were glowing so bright that I swore they were on fire. And he had claws, really long freaking claws.”
Lacey didn’t realize her voice had crept up a few octaves until she was done. She forced herself to stop and take a breath. Beside her, doubt was written all over Wendy’s face.
“You said it was dark,” her friend pointed out. “Maybe you just imagined that you saw all those things. Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Maybe you were in shock or something.”
Lacey shook her head, not surprised her friend doubted her. Hell, Lacey had doubted what her eyes had been telling her too, and she’d been right there, ten feet away from Alex, when it happened.
“It wasn’t a trick of the light, Wendy, and it wasn’t shock. Alex had claws and fangs,” she insisted. “But there’s more. When the other guards started running our way, he picked me up like a toy and ran with me—faster than any human can run, with or without carrying anyone in his arms.”
“Alex is really big,” Wendy pointed out. “And muscular as hell.”
“Wendy, he jumped to the top of one of those industrial storage racks Bensen has all over his junkyards. Those things are, like, fifteen feet tall, maybe higher. He jumped to the top with me in his arms. I don’t care how big and strong he is. A normal person can’t do that. And they couldn’t jump over the big security fence around Bensen’s junkyard either, but Alex did that too—with me still in his arms.”
Wendy didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead, she sat there regarding Lacey as if trying to decide whether to believe her. Finally, she sighed.
“What happened then?” she asked. “Did he say anything to you?”
Lacey shrugged. “He tried, but I have to admit I wasn’t exactly in the right frame of mind to have a meaningful conversation. I was in the middle of a nightmare. I pretty much bailed after that and ran to my car. I just left him standing in the street.”
Wendy nodded as if that had been the perfectly rational thing to do. Had it? Lacey had no clue if it was or not. She’d been operating on plain, old-fashioned, fear-induced panic. Driving away from Alex had made her feel like crap, but she’d been so scared. She didn’t know what else she could have done. The guy she’d been sleeping with—the guy she’d let into the house with Kelsey—was a monster. Not the metaphoric kind of monster, but an honest-to-goodness claws, fangs, and violent rampage kind of monster. For all she knew, he’d killed that guard in the junkyard.
“I take it you believe me then?” Lacey asked, unable to take the silence anymore. “About Alex, you know…being a monster?”
“I don’t know about the monster thing,” Wendy admitted. “But I believe you saw what you say you saw—the claws and stuff. I mean, people have said for a while…” She stopped as if she thought she shouldn’t say anything else, but then continued. “Cops talk amongst themselves, you know? A couple of people I know and trust have mentioned that the guys on the SWAT team are a little…different. They’ve done things that maybe they shouldn’t have been able to do or probably should have gotten them killed. I even know a female cop in the narcotics division who was out with a couple of the SWAT guys a week ago, and she told me that one of them…well…tackled a car. He hit it so hard, he almost knocked the damn thing over.”
Lacey waited for the punch line, for her friend to laugh and say she was joking, but Wendy was staring off into the distance, lost in thought.
“Wait a second.” Lacey leaned forward. “What are you trying to say…that the whole Dallas SWAT team is a bunch of monsters?”
Wendy looked at her sharply. “I didn’t see what you saw, Lacey, but even if I had, I’m not sure I’d call them monsters. I don’t know why Alex was at that junkyard tonight, but he saved your ass. The SWAT team has saved a whole lot of asses in the past few years, including more cops than I can count. You can call Alex a monster if you want, but I think I’m going to hold off using that particular word until I have more information.”
Lacey sat there, her face warm from being chastised so blatantly. Yeah, Alex had saved her, she knew that. But she’d slept with the man. Shouldn’t he have told her that he was some kind of…whatever he was? Didn’t sleeping with a man gain you that much trust at least?
“What are you going to do?” Wendy asked quietly.
Lacey thought about that for a while. “I don’t know. What can I do? If I tell anyone besides you, there’d be a race to either put me in jail for breaking into Bensen’s junkyard or fit me with one of those nice white jackets with wraparound sleeves. Even if neither of those things happened, I really don’t want Bensen to know I was there. I honestly think he was involved in that woman’s death, and I don’t want him setting his sights on me.”
“I don’t blame you there,” Wendy muttered, though whether her friend was referring to her ending up in jail, a psych ward, or on Bensen’s hit list, Lacey wasn’t sure.
“I guess it comes down to what you really think you saw,” Wendy said. “Alex with claws and fangs…or a monster?”
Lacey knew what Wendy was trying to say, but right then, she wasn’t sure if she was ready to make the distinction as easily as her friend seemed to be able to. Maybe it was simply because Wendy hadn’t seen Alex change the way she had, but it was hard to think of him the same way now. Part of her insisted that was stupid, considering he’d saved her life. But another part pointed out that he was the first guy she’d ever started to believe in and trust. That belief and trust just didn’t seem to be there anymore.
“You know you don’t have to decide anything now, right?” Wendy said. “Why don’t you go home and think about it for a while?”
