She knew she was stupid for exposing her location, and sure as hell, Jeremy spun in her direction and started shooting. The clank of the high-caliber rifle rounds hitting the metal drum forced her back to her feet.
Jeremy’s boots thumped on the gravel behind her. But her stomach was starting to feel better, and she easily pulled away from him.
Then a random bullet bounced off the heavy bumper of a car as she ran past, clipping her right thigh and almost putting her on her ass again as it tore its way through her leg. Getting hit with the ricochet hurt worse than a straight shot, and she didn’t even want to look down. She knew the damage was bad. Some of the bullet was still in her leg but Jeremy was coming fast and she didn’t have time to check. She’d barely crawled under the rusted-out remains of an old clunker when Jeremy raced into the clearing.
Jeremy saw the blood on the ground. Khaki knew that Jeremy had spent a lot of time hunting in Canada and Alaska. He enjoyed tracking animals, especially after he’d shot them and they tried to run. He never let any of them get away from him alive.
She was a werewolf, but Jeremy was a monster. She was twice wounded and unable to get her inner animal to come out; he was armed and in his element. She’d seriously screwed up by coming here to face him alone.
Khaki peeked through the grass and weeds that grew around the car, trying to see if she’d left a trail of blood. She didn’t see anything, even with her werewolf-enhanced vision. But still, she held her breath as Jeremy bent and searched the ground. After a moment, he looked up and swept the area with his gaze.
“You think all of this is about you leaving me, you stupid bitch?” Jeremy shouted into the night. “Was I pissed that you decided to leave town rather than stay with me? Hell yeah. Not as pissed as when you tricked me with that candy-ass martial arts move and put me on the floor of the bull pen in front of everyone before you left though. I almost shot you then. If there hadn’t been a room full of cops around, I would have.”
Jeremy crossed the clearing as he spoke, disappearing between two cars. Now that the nasty smells of the junkyard had faded into the background, she was able to pick out Jeremy’s distinct scent and use it to help pinpoint his location. He was definitely moving away from her.
Khaki resisted the urge to immediately roll out from under the car and run the other way. She needed to calm down, figure out how badly she’d been hit, then come up with a plan. The hell with that. She needed to shift, now.
“But I calmed down after you left, especially after I realized that it was your loss and that I could move on to any woman I wanted,” Jeremy continued. “Then a day later, Silver calls me into his office. He had internal affairs in there with him, and they started asking me about all kinds of bullshit about whether I harassed you, blackballed you, and convinced other officers not to respond to your calls for backup. They even asked whether I had lied on official police reports to make you look bad. I told them that was crap and that you were the one who’d been screwing up. That I’d tried to help you. But internal affairs pulled out statements and reports saying otherwise.”
Khaki had only been half listening, more focused on her wounds. But that got her attention.
“All the people who claimed to be my friends turned on me!” Jeremy shouted. “They told internal affairs I almost got you killed, that I assaulted you, and that you left to get away from me. They didn’t want to listen to a damn thing I said. They fucking suspended me, pending some bullshit ethics review. The union rep is telling me I’m never going to work in law enforcement again. Did you hear that, you bitch? You cost me my job. My reputation. My life!”
Khaki would have laughed if her leg hadn’t hurt so much. She had no idea what kind of mental game of Twister Jeremy was playing that allowed him to blame his suspension and possible unemployment on her, but he was.
He was moving around the area in a circular search pattern now. Sooner or later he was going to stumble over a blood trail or a footprint, something that would lead him to her hiding place.
She closed her eyes and tried doing the mental exercises Xander had taught her so she could get her claws and fangs to come out, but it didn’t work nearly as well as Xander’s voice. After a few minutes, she was forced to give up again. The pain she was trying to find relief from was also preventing her from calming down enough to bring on a shift. It didn’t help that she was worried about Jeremy finding her.
She slowly rolled out from under the car and crawled to her feet as quietly as she could, quickly looked for Jeremy, and then slowly limped in the opposite direction, toward the big building in the center of the junkyard. Her best bet now was to get inside and find a phone so she could call for help. She hated the idea of admitting to Dixon and the rest of the guys what she’d been planning to do to Jeremy, but she didn’t have a choice now.
“Funny how things work out,” Jeremy said from somewhere off to her left.
She immediately veered to the right. She was still heading for the building, but was willing to take a longer path to get there to avoid Jeremy.
“My original plan was to show up at your apartment and woo you into coming back to Lakefront with me. I figured if I could come back with you at my side all my problems would go away.”
Jeremy suddenly started moving in her direction. Had he heard her? That wasn’t possible. She moved a little more to the right and kept going, making sure to keep close to a car or some other piece of heavy metal—anything that would stop a bullet if she had to jump behind it.
“How the hell was I to know you’d go and sleep with the first Neanderthal who’d pull your panties down? You never were too bright. But then I saw in the news how you saved those snot-nosed kids from the bank robbers. I even saw the video clip. It pissed me off pretty good. No way in hell were you going to have a dream job here in Dallas while I filed for unemployment. That’s when I decided to kill you and your SWAT boyfriend.”
Khaki walked backward as she listened to Jeremy, hoping to keep a lock on exactly where he was. How could he casually talk about killing two fellow cops like that?
“But then your Corporal Riggs went and lived. Still not sure how the hell that’s even possible when I put three armor-piercing bullets through the center of his chest. I guess the Dallas PD can afford better Kevlar vests than Lakefront.”
She was still backing toward the main building when the overwhelming scent of blood reached up and grabbed her attention from behind. But it was too late. She stumbled over something, jarring her leg so hard when she hit the ground she almost cried out.
She looked down and saw that she’d tripped over a man…and a dog. The man’s arms were wrapped around the dog, and there were three bullet holes in the center of his back. As if he’d been trying to protect his dog from Jeremy. Based on the animal’s still body and the amount of blood all over both of them, the man’s efforts had been in vain. Rage surged through her. Damn him to hell. It was stupid to even think it, but why’d he have to shoot the dog?
Her jaws and fingers ached with the urge to rip Jeremy to shreds. But no matter how much she strained to get her fangs and claws to come out, they stubbornly stayed where they were. She was so focused on trying to shift she didn’t realize Jeremy had worked his way closer until she heard him walking just on the other side of a row of minivans to her right. If she hadn’t tripped over the man and his dog, Jeremy would have seen and killed her already.
Considering the fact that he was just about at the end of the row of soccer mom wagons, she guessed Jeremy was about to see—and kill—her soon.
* * *
It took Becker a while to call in with Khaki’s location, and by the time he got to them, they’d gone nearly twenty miles too far to the east on U.S. Route 80. Swearing, Hale jerked his FJ Cruiser into the grassy median and did a U-turn, getting them heading back to I-635.
“Her cell phone is stationary about a half mile from a junkyard called Eastside Chop and Shop,” Becker said over Alex’s phone. “The area around there is mostly residential subdivisions, so the junkyard is probably where she’s heading. And, Xander, her car hasn’t moved for almost fifteen minutes.”
