“You killed them?” A panicked noise bubbled out of her. “Oh, my God.” Her struggle intensified. “Let me go! I have to see my sister.”
“No, you don’t.” He was never going to purge the sight of it from his memory, and he was only sparing her the same. “She’s gone.”
“Let me go!” The heel of her cowboy boot came down hard on his foot.
Razor cursed, but the pain hardly registered. “Listen, lady, I’m trying to help you.”
“The same way you helped Laurel? Fuck off, vampire!”
She kept bucking against his hold, even though it was useless. Razor wasn’t even using his full strength to restrain her. More than anything, he was just trying to be careful to not let her hurt herself. Shifting his grasp on her, he turned her around to face him, holding her by biceps.
She stared at him wild-eyed and shaking with grief. She was a fighter, but she was hurting. From the stark look in her gaze, she was cracking wide open inside.
Inexplicably, Razor wanted to pull her close and wrap his arms around her, if only to erase some of the pain that was etched into her soft features. But that wasn’t why he was here.
“Your sister is dead. Those two cops down on the pass had a hand in it. Do you know why they’d want to kill Laurel?”
Mutely, she slowly shook her head. Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Please. I need to see her. I can help her. I have to try to save her!”
That was the second time she’d insisted she might be able to do something to save her sister. Was her shock so deep she wasn’t grasping what she was hearing or seeing? She seemed clear-headed enough, so why was she refusing to accept the truth?
“No one can save your sister. I was going to try, but I got here only hours too late. Someone shot her in the head, then burned down the cabin with her inside. She’s gone.”
Tears welled in her stark gaze. “I want to see her.”
“No, you don’t. Believe me. After I found her burned body in the rubble, I buried her. I couldn’t leave her where she was.” He couldn’t leave her because he’d thought the woman in the ashes had been the one staring back at him now. The beauty he’d been practically obsessed with like some kind of pathetic, long-distance stalker. “I dug a grave with my bare hands and I put her in it.”
Laurel’s sister reeled back in his grasp, but at least she wasn’t fighting him anymore. Whether from exhaustion or grief, or some of both, she seemed to lean into his grasp as if he were the only thing keeping her standing. “Where is she?”
He gestured with his chin. “Over there, under the shade of the pines.”
Her gaze moved past him to the mound of freshly turned earth he’d left. Razor watched her take in the entire scene of destruction. He didn’t have to look to know what she was seeing under the pale moonlight. The blackened remains of the cabin. The ghostly column of the scorched river rock chimney. The rubble and ashes that spoke of the violence that had been done to her sister in her final moments of life.
The prolonged, horrified silence of Laurel’s sister was almost too much for Razor to take, but he didn’t know what to say or do. He was piss-poor at sympathy and other soft emotions. Just part of the fallout from the way he’d been bred and trained as a Hunter.
All he knew, even now, was killing and cold justice.
He would get back to dealing in both soon enough. Right now, he had a bigger problem to deal with. He was scowling as those big green eyes of hers came back to meet his gaze in the darkness.
There was no fight left in her now. Only confusion and emptiness. Only pain.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She blinked once, then swallowed on a dry-sounding throat. “Willow. Willow Valcourt.”
Razor gave a terse nod. “If you want to live, Willow Valcourt, you need to come with me.”
CHAPTER 4
She didn’t want to believe it.
Her twin sister—her best friend—couldn’t be gone. Not like this. Even though thousands of miles had separated them until a few months ago, Laurel had been Willow’s beacon all her life. She couldn’t be gone for good now. Her heart refused to accept it.
Willow lifted her gaze to Razor’s grim face and shook her head. “Why should I believe you? Prove it. Prove to me it was my sister you buried.”
His frown deepened. “Are you saying you want me to dig her back up?”
God, no.She recoiled at the thought. She couldn’t bear that. The idea of seeing Laurel the way Razor had briefly described her was too much for her to stomach. She didn’t think she could handle the horror and pain of seeing what little remained of her sister.
