“Abby, call the guys back.” He flipped up a lever on the rifle then shoved it back, and the bullet popped out, then rolled around on the floor.
I pushed my sleeve up and reached into a pot full of greasy water to fish my poor phone out. “Can I use yours?”
Jace swore when he saw my cell dripping on the kitchen floor, then handed his to me.
“You move and I start breaking bones,” he told Hargrove while I scrolled through his contacts for my brother’s number. The hunter looked ready to wet his camouflage pants. “You refuse to answer a single question and I start breaking bones.”
Shit. I couldnotlet him interrogate Hargrove.
“Jace?” Lucas said into my ear.
“No, it’s me. We got Hargrove. Jace wants you all to head back.”
“Be there in ten.” Lucas hung up, and I tossed Jace’s phone back to him.
“Where’s Darren?” My Alpha circled Hargrove slowly, sliding his phone into his jacket pocket.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to let thewholecouncil question him?” I leaned against the counter, watching them both in profile, trying to project a casual interest.
“I will, once I’m sure no more shifters are in imminent danger.”
Damn it.
“Where’s Darren?” Jace repeated.
“Is that your girlfriend?” Hargrove was no longer whispering, now that he’d been caught, but his natural voice was still scratchy and distinctive. “She talks back like a girlfriend.” He shrugged as his gaze slid down from my neck and kept going. “A little small for my taste, but I bet all those shifter bitches are hellcats in bed.”
My fist clenched around the countertop.
“Was Darren here with you?” Jace asked, and I could see from the tension in his arms as he slowly circled his prey that he was itching to punch a hole right through the taxidermist. “Is he a cop?”
“I’d love to get her on my table.” Hargrove licked his lips, staring right at me. “Stuffingthatlittle showpiece would be a real pleasure.”
“She’d rip your balls off and feed them to you.” Jace stepped between me and Hargrove, blocking his view. “You take one more look at her, and I’m going to let her do it. Now, is Darren the cop in the photos?”
Hargrove shrugged. “Who’s Darren?”
Jace circled him in a blur of movement, and I heard a sudden soft snap. The hunter howled, and I’d never in my life heard such a noise come from a human. When Jace stepped back, Hargrove’s left pinkie finger was broken at a ninety-degree angle. Bone showed through a tear in his flesh and a steady dribble of blood dripped into a growing pool on the floor.
“If I have to ask again, I’ll break the next one,” Jace warned. “Good luck stuffinganythingwith two broken fingers.”
Hargrove said nothing, so Jace reached for his hand again.
“He’s a cop!” Hargrove shouted through his sobs. “Ten years on the force in a little town about an hour and a half from here.”
“And the other guys in your fucked-up hunting club? I want the names of the ones still breathing.”
When Hargrove hesitated, Jace lunged toward him, and I flinched when I heard another soft snap. Hargrove screamed again, and snot dripped from his left nostril.
“Names,” Jace demanded, and I tapped the edge of the countertop, growing increasingly desperate for a reasonable excuse to stop the interrogation.
“Carl Wilks and Reggie Lewis are the only others I know by name. But they quit. They got spooked when you guys started picking us off, one by one.”
Whenwe’d… I exhaled slowly, relieved to realize that the hunters thought they were being killed off by Jace and his enforcers. However, Hargrove still possessed afountof information I couldn’t let Jace have.
How the hell was I supposed to stop him from talking, when his silence was rewarded with broken bones?
“Quitting won’t keep them safe,” Jace said while I clutched the countertop at my back to keep from cutting my palms open with my own nails. “Carl and Reggie are dead men.”
