“Miss Weitz, what really happened? And this time, try telling the truth.”
“That is the truth!” she snapped, pissed that she would have to confess this private detail. It was bad enough that she’d been sucking face while Theo was missing, but to tell it to Tonya was beyond humiliating.
And then a voice came from the other room, the rumble deep and gravelly, but Becca would know it anywhere. It was Carl, his voice rough in a totally sexy way.
“I was distracted.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “I was… we…”
Stunned silence filled the room. And in that moment, Becca’s gaze caught and held Carl’s. In his eyes, she saw guilt and embarrassment. Probably an exact echo of her own. But more than that, she saw a quiet longing in the way his eyes never wavered from hers. His hands clutched the doorframe to his bedroom; he was clearly swaying on his feet, but his eyes—damn, his eyes—were locked on her.
“How are you?” he rasped.
“I’m fine. I didn’t get a half dozen tranq darts in me.” She scanned his body for wounds. He was in sweat pants and without his shirt. Except for the few bandages that dotted his torso, she could see every carved hill and valley of his chest and abdominals. Stunningly beautiful and covered in scars. A zillion of them, some very old. If anything told her exactly what kind of bizarro world she’d landed in, it was his body. Raw and powerful, but also carrying the memory of wounds she could barely comprehend. She wanted to shy away from it. All those scars were like a sign saying Danger! But she couldn’t. He mesmerized her.
“I’m fine,” he repeated when she finally looked back into his eyes. “Bears can take a lot.”
Which is when the other two seemed to unfreeze. Alan was on his feet, crossing to where his brother sagged against the doorframe. “A tyrannosaurus rex can’t take that much,” he said as he wrapped an arm around Carl’s bare trunk. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
“No. The couch. And I can walk.”
“Sure you can. But humor me and let me help.”
“I spend my life humoring you,” Carl groused and his brother grinned in response.
“Because I’m the only one who tolerates your pissy moods.”
The two bickered as only brothers can while Becca cleared a space on the couch. Tonya just watched everything with her coldly assessing gaze. She didn’t comment or help while Alan asked his medical questions.
“Any pain?”
“Yes. You.”
“What about headache, nausea?”
“I’m fine.”
“What day is it?”
“The day you tell me what the fuck happened after I passed out.”
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”
“Yes. Have we heard from Theo? Is Justin okay? What are we doing to find them?”
Which is when the officer took over, reporting as she might to a commanding officer. It was mostly names and locations rolled out with variations on the phrase “they haven’t seen anything unusual.” And while Carl got up to speed, Becca had a chance to look closer at his injuries. His torso was a mass of bruises and small cuts, but one bandage on the top of his arm stood out. It was small by comparison, but it had a dark red spot in the middle.
“What happened here?” she said as she touched the bandage.
She hadn’t meant to interrupt. The question just slipped out. It was a measure of how much his mere presence took over her brain that she lost all awareness of everything but him. And while the room went silent, Carl set his hand over hers.
“I have no idea,” he said.
Then Officer Bitch answered. “That’s a bullet hole, Miss Weitz. By someone who doesn’t understand how to shoot shifters.”
A bullet. Right. The guy with the gun who had missed her when Carl roared.
She felt bile roll through her gut, thoughts mixing with memory, and all of them leading up to horror.
“Oh, shit,” said Alan as he grabbed the wastepaper basket. He was just in time. She barely missed him as she emptied her stomach, ginger tea and crackers pouring out of her in choking gasps.
