She nodded eagerly. “Sure.”
Connor bit back a growl as he watched Trevor add his number to his sister’s contacts. He and his pack mates might get into scuffles with each other on an almost daily basis, but the thought of seriously hurting any of them had never entered his mind until now.
Before anyone could say anything else that bordered on stupid, Connor motioned for the door. “I’m really sorry to rush this, but we need to go. Kat and I will be back as soon as we can.” He gave his teammate a scowl. “Trevor will be busy doing something else, I’m sure.”
Connor shoved his pack mate toward the door before Trevor could reply, then stepped back so Kat could walk out ahead of him. His sister was still telling them to be careful when he closed the door, forcing a sigh from his throat. Something told him that his confusing and complicated life had just taken a turn for the worse.
Chapter 16
“What the hell was all that about?” Connor demanded the moment the three of them were seated in his truck and headed toward the address Trevor had provided. Kat had seen this coming from a mile away, so she carefully bit her tongue to hold in the laugh threatening to slip out. “Macking on my sister like that, dude? And don’t even try to act like you didn’t already know that Jenna is off-limits.”
“Seriously?” Trevor snorted from the back seat. “Off-limits to who…me?”
“To everyone!” Connor snarled.
Beside him, Kat could tell he was fighting the urge to turn around and rip his teammate’s face off. When his claws actually came out, she reached over and rested one of her much smaller hands on his as he gripped the steering wheel so hard, it creaked. She made soft soothing sounds that thankfully seemed to help.
“Connor, relax. It’s okay,” she said softly. “No one’s going to hurt Jenna, especially not Trevor.”
“Hurt her?” Trevor said in a shocked voice. “What are you talking about? You don’t think I’d actually do anything to hurt your sister, do you? What kind of guy do you think I am?”
Connor didn’t respond right away, seemingly content to let Kat’s soothing touch calm him a little more. She could practically see the thoughts spinning through his head.
“It’s not you,” Connor finally said, glancing at Trevor in the rearview mirror. “It’s Jenna. You already know what happened to my older sister and what happened to Jenna after Hannah disappeared. I worry that whatever she saw that night has damaged her beyond repair, and I don’t think it will help having you mess with her head.”
“I’m not messing with her head,” Trevor growled. “She’s the sister of one of my pack mates. One of my friends. I was being nice to her.”
“And if, in her fragile state of mind, Jenna perceives yourbeing niceas something more than that? Are you prepared to go further if that’s what she thinks she wants? What she needs? Would you leave the Pack and move to LA, the only world she knows and feels comfortable in, if she decided after a few days that she was in love with you? What if you said no and it crushed her? My sister has already dealt with a tremendous amount of loss. She simply can’t take anymore.”
“I think you’re underestimating your sister,” Trevor said softly. “The fact that she survived what happened when she was a kid makes me believe she’s a lot stronger than you give her credit for.”
“Maybe,” Connor agreed. “But I lost Hannah ten years ago, and for all intents and purposes, I lost my parents the same night. As far as I’m concerned, Jenna is the only family I have left, and I can’t lose her. You can say I’m being overprotective, but I won’t let anyone hurt her. No one.”
Connor and Trevor both fell silent after that, and Kat feared she’d just seen the end of their friendship. The two of them might belong to the same pack, but Connor had essentially come out and said Trevor wasn’t good enough for his sister. She knew Connor was simply trying to protect Jenna, but words like that had a way of sticking with people for a long time.
When the silence started to get uncomfortable, Kat decided that if she didn’t want it to continue, it was going to be up to her to say something.
“Connor and I talked to Davina DeMirci last night, and she said she’ll use her contacts at STAT to do a deep dive into each of the kids that Marko kidnapped,” Kat said, glancing over her shoulder at Trevor. “Hopefully she can find a connection between them that the rest of us have so far missed.”
“We probably should have thought to ask them before now,” Trevor said. “STAT has more resources than the DPD ever will, especially if the connection we’re looking for is supernatural in nature.”
Kat glanced at Connor, hoping he might have something to add to the conversation, but he kept his eyes fixed on the road, acting like he hadn’t heard a word that had been said.
“She’s also looking closer at the murder in San Antonio,” Kat added when it was obvious that her first attempt at building a bridge between Connor and Trevor had failed. “Davina is certain that what happened down there is connected to what we’re dealing with here in Dallas. Either as a dry run to what Marko plans to do this time, or maybe some kind of ritual to collect and store magical energy.”
“Collect and store magical energy?” Trevor asked, mirroring the same question Connor had asked when he heard the phrase last night. “That sounds ominous. What does it mean?”
“You missed out on one of my earlier lessons on magic,” Kat said, remembering that Trevor hadn’t been in Addy’s room when she talked about this. “Bottom line, magic exists in every living thing, but especially in people. Davina reminded me that there are some rituals—nasty, dark, ugly rituals—that will let a witch or warlock tear that magic out of a person and either use it or store it, at least temporarily. Few witches or warlocks would ever consider trying it because trying to control raw power like that is dangerous as hell, but Marko definitely has the ego to attempt it.”
Trevor let out a breath. “That sounds horrifying. What the hell could Marko be planning to do with all this raw power?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Connor said, finally joining the conversation. “We talked about it for over an hour with Davina and still didn’t come up with anything concrete.”
Kat was glad to see that Connor was willing to talk to Trevor again, and the three of them spent the next few minutes of the drive going through different what-if scenarios concerning what Marko might be up to. But after a while, it became clear they were all simply making crap up. The truth was, all they really knew for sure about Marko was that he was a psychopath. The idea that they could even guess what someone like him was planning was ludicrous.
When they’d reached the address Trevor had given them, there were loads of police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and media vans parked along the street in front of the apartment building. The exterior walls on one of the upper floors had been ripped away, exposing the rooms beyond. Smoke still slowly rolled out of several places, and broken glass, bricks, and concrete rubble littered the street and sidewalk. It looked like the scene of a terrorist attack.
“What the hell happened here?” Connor asked as he tried to find a place to park, eventually turning around and pulling up on the curb about a quarter mile from the damaged building.
