Downing the rest of his coffee, Knox scooped up one more handful of popcorn, then stood and headed for the door. Once there, he paused with his hand on the knob to glance over his shoulder at Rachel. She looked exhausted, and he wanted to tell her to get some sleep, but he was pretty sure the concern would be wasted on her.
Chapter 3
Rachel gaped as she and her pack mates entered the Lloyd mansion the next morning. She’d never been in a place this posh in her life. With its marble floors, crystal chandeliers, and breathtaking view of the Dallas skyline, the immense two-story house looked like it should be on one of those shows on HGTV featuring luxury homes of the rich and famous. It made Rachel wonder why Jennifer was working as an assistant DA. She and her family clearly weren’t hurting for cash. And while Rachel completely understood the idea of putting your life on the line for what you believed in because she did it every day, she had a hard time believing a woman who came from this kind of money would risk her life going after people like Alton Marshall.
“You have no idea how glad I am you’re here.”
Rachel turned to see Dominic Janikowski, the investigator from the DA’s office they’d met yesterday, closing the door behind her and the guys. Shorter than any of them, he was a stocky, blond-haired guy with wire-rimmed glasses. “I know the private security Jennifer’s husband hired are supposed to be all that and a bag of donuts, but I can’t imagine any of them taking a bullet for her.”
The man kept his voice low, like he thought the aforementioned security people were going to overhear, which Rachel doubted. Unless they were werewolves, of course.
As Dominic led them from the foyer and through a long hallway to the back of the house, Rachel fell into step beside Diego while Zane and Trey moved ahead of them, listening to the guy vent about the fancy security guys being more interested in how much they were getting paid than keeping an eye on Jennifer.
“Did you find a sleeping pill that actually works on werewolves or something?” Diego asked softly. “You look more rested than you have in weeks.”
Rachel felt more rested, too. To her surprise, she’d fallen asleep on the couch after Knox had left and stayed that way until the alarm clock in her bedroom had gone off. She’d slept deeply and contentedly, free of the nightmares that normally invaded her slumber every time she closed her eyes. While she was grateful for it, she had absolutely no idea why.
“No sleeping pill,” she said. “I guess I finally got tired enough.”
“That’s good.”
She nodded in agreement, but at the same time, she found herself wondering if maybe confronting Knox—whom she was convinced was the personification of her inner demon—had somehow helped. After agreeing to help the hunter learn how to be a werewolf, she’d expected to be bouncing off the walls. Instead, she’d felt…calm.
Rachel was still thinking about that when the smell of leather and gun oil hit her. She had a moment to wonder why she’d pick up those scents in the Lloyd home of all places as she and the guys followed Dominic into a library that was bigger than her whole apartment. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined all four walls. And above, accessible only by a spiral staircase in one corner, was a catwalk of sorts around the perimeter of the room, so someone could get to the topmost shelves. The only window in the room was up there, too, but it was so big that it let in a tremendous amount of natural light.
The room was dominated by a huge fireplace. With a modern-looking stainless steel chimney that went all the way to the ceiling, it was completely enclosed in glass on the bottom, so you could see though it on all sides, from wherever you were in the library. A reading area made up of comfortable seating was on one side while a large oval table with a dozen chairs took up space on the other.
Jennifer and her husband sat at the table with three men in dark suits—one of whom was none other than former-hunter-turned-werewolf Knox Lawson.
Are you effing kidding me?
Rachel froze halfway into the room, praying he was some kind of delusion, another sign of her impending nervous breakdown. While losing her mind was scary as hell, it was better than Knox really being there. But hewasthere—and he was staring straight at her.
Or more precisely, at her and her three pack mates, who were staring right back at him. Like they knew he was a hunter.
When none of the guys lost it and went into full-on werewolf mode right then and there, Rachel forced herself to take a deep breath and relax. There was no way Diego and her other teammates could know Knox was a hunter. Corporal Jayden Brooks was the only member of her pack who’d actually seen him during the shootout at the SWAT compound, so as long as he never saw Knox face-to-face, everything should be fine.
But while her pack mates might not know Knox was a former hunter, they obviously knew he was a werewolf. The scent was a dead giveaway. Luckily, stumbling across a werewolf in Dallas they didn’t know wasn’t unusual. The city had become a haven for them since the hunters had become more prevalent.
Rachel followed the guys over to the table, holding out her hand to shake with each of the men on Knox’s team. When she got to him, she gave him the same smile she’d given the others, silently screaming at him with her eyes to play along and not say something stupid. Thankfully, he returned her smile and said it was nice to meet her.
Relief surged through her. Thank God the man wasn’t an idiot. If Knox started making noise about already knowing her, the questions from her pack mates would never have ended.
Rachel chose a seat on the far side of the table from Knox, going out of her way not to sit directly across from him. That would have been way too distracting and she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t give herself away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Diego glance her way and prayed he hadn’t noticed she was suddenly so discombobulated.
Sitting beside Jennifer at one end of the table, the tall, distinguished-looking Conrad Lloyd didn’t seem nearly as thrilled about having Rachel and her teammates there as Dominic. He didn’t come right out and say it, but it was obvious he thought his private security would do a much better job of protecting his family than four cops. It was equally clear that his wife preferred to put her faith in the police she worked with every day. As a result, the tension between the two was thick enough to cut with a chainsaw.
Rachel did her best to casually take in the men from Direct Action Personal Security, a task made more difficult by the habit her gaze had of constantly gravitating back to Knox. Dammit, it was like she couldn’t take her eyes off the man.
But if she kept staring at Knox, someone was going to notice. Dragging her gaze away from him, she studied each of his coworkers.
In his midforties, curly-haired Theo was the oldest of the three. He sat on the other side of Conrad, and when he wasn’t trying to blow sunshine up the rich man’s ass, he was making sure they all knew he owned the security company they’d be working with. The other man was a young guy in his midtwenties named Ethan Porter. Like Knox, he seemed to be new at the company and didn’t talk much after the introductions had been made. Then again, Theo did enough talking for all of them.
As important as the subject might be, Rachel had to admit she quickly lost interest as Theo and Zane started going into the details of how they planned to protect Jennifer and her family. She couldn’t focus on what they were saying, mostly because her head was still spinning over the realization that Knox was working for the security company that was protecting the same Dallas prosecutor as SWAT.
So, instead of worrying about her shift schedule or who she’d be working with, Rachel sat there glancing at Knox out of the corner of her eye and replaying the little she’d learned from him last night.
If Knox was telling the truth about that night at the wedding reception, then she owed him her life. Well, probably not her life, since a random gunshot from a hunter fifty feet away was unlikely to have been fatal. But she doubted Knox would have known that, so he honestly thought he’d saved her life. If nothing else, he’d saved her from a lot of pain. No one enjoyed getting shot, not even a werewolf.
