“Do you.” Nadine gazed at him bleakly.
“I do.” He reached out to tug at a soft lock of her hair, twisting it in her fingers. “So tense.” Pulling a little more firmly, he tugged her face closer to his. “What is it about me that makes you nervous? Is it my body? Or just—me?”
Nadine made a sharp noise and yanked on the door handle, spilling herself out of the car and causing the seatbelt to snap back so sharply that Cal had to lean back to avoid getting struck by the metal buckle. He laughed again. “Goodnight, Nadine. Dream of me.”
Her face furrowed. “You—”
With a grin, he peeled away. He saw her take several unsteady steps back onto the curb. It was too dark to see her face but he found that he could quite easily conjure it in his mind’s eye.
As he returned to the looming specter of his family home, his smile faded. She was clever and no amount of teasing would distract her from her purpose. Ben already had her in his sights and seemed intent on driving them apart. Doubtless, his father would only do the same. She didn’t have the composure of his mother and Noelle. Nadine would not be content to sit in a glass case and fucking endure while gunshots went off in the woods.
But then, what was the alternative?
He remembered that girl from his youth—the first person he had ever let himself believe he could perhaps one day grow to love. Though those feelings had long since faded, Cal still remembered the taste of her lips, the shards of sunlight-yellow in her jade green eyes, the soft way she had yielded to him as he fucked her on the forest floor with his hands tangled in her hair.
He had almost been out of his teen years, drunk on the pleasure of discovery and possibility.
But now, he mostly just remembered the look in her eyes as Ben slit her throat.
C H A P T E R
F O U R
taming his instincts
There was only one road in and out of the mountains and it was currently blocked by a pile-up. “It’s bad,” Rael said. According to his father, two of those involved had been pronounced dead on the scene. The others were in critical condition.
The upcoming festival had Sheriff Crocker antsy and not just because of the mounting pressure from Cal’s own father. Plata County had a lot of missing persons, many of them disappearing while heading to—or from—Argentum, the Bermuda Triangle of the Sierras. He didn’t want any lingering taint of tragedy for the festival.
“That’s unfortunate,” Cal said mildly. “What caused the accident?”
“First rain of the season.” Rael’s tone was hard. “The roads were slick.”
The accusation gave Cal pause; when he breathed out, it held a hint of a graveled laugh. “My father is not a god. Not even he can command the elements.”Much as he’d like to.
“No, but you know what that means. More deaths laid at your family’s door.”
More scrutiny, he meant. Cal scoffed but he closed the doors to the office, just in case any of the staff happened to be lingering nearby. “They’d pin us for every murder from here to Bishop, if they could. Your father has few friends in neighboring counties, if I recall. Mine has even fewer. Last I heard, the local gossips had me running young girls down on horseback in some sort ofjus primae noctis. I don’t know why. I could fit far more women in the back of my car.”
“Speaking of,” Rael said deliberately, “Ben’s little sister-in-law is back in town.”
“Oh, believe me, I’m well aware ofthat.” Cal picked up the black coffee he’d set down on the credenza and took a long sip. To his irritation, it had gone cold. “She actually came here to see me—and then fainted dead away in the middle of the big confrontation.” His mouth twisted. “I really must paint quite the terrifying picture.”
Rael’s eyebrows shot up. “Does she know?”
“I suspect she knows far more than she should, but less than she thinks. Otherwise she never would have gotten into that car with me when I offered to drive her home.”
“You drove her home?”
“You’re not usually so echolalic, Rael.”
His friend didn’t so much as crack a smile, his freckled face stern and unrelenting as granite. “Your father isn’t going to like this.”
“He doesn’t.” Cal took another sip without breaking eye contact. “But he can hardly make her disappear without finding out what she knows. His sense of honor won’t let him—and to be honest, I don’t really care. I have my own life now, independent of his. I can leave if he cuts me off. Perhaps I’ll take her with me when I do.” He thumbed a bit of foam from the edge of the porcelain. “It’s been a while since someone caught my interest.”
Rael picked up his baseball cap from the low table, winding it in his large hands. “You should get rid of her,” he advised, a line between his reddish brows. “Before your father does, in his way. It’s too close to the festival, and between the girl and the other deaths—”
He didn’t finish, didn’t need to. His father always chose to uphold the legacy.
