Page 15 of The Enforcers: KANE

She shook her head.

“Damn, girl, he didn’t look like the shy type. I figured you were good for a couple of O’s, the way he practically tore my head off when I didn’t want to give out your info.” At her frown, he added, “I wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t casino security. He showed me his ID.”

That threw her for another loop. “He’s casino security?” He had to be working undercover. Was he one of the Council’s Enforcers? “Well, at least we know we can trust him, then,” she said.

Manny just snorted. “Just because he’s a security guard doesn’t mean he’s not psycho,” he said.

Rachelle went on back to her dressing room, her head spinning. Kane was the man who’d been watching her show, night after night. So why hadn’t he talked to her? Why had he only showed himself to her in wolf form? If she hadn’t been in trouble, would he have showed himself to her at all?

She had no answers.

At least he wasn’t working for Selina. It had never occurred to her that Kane might be on the other side—the Council’s. It would be easy enough to check—she could call the Council and pretend to be looking for a reliable Enforcer. They’d tell her soon enough if Kane ever worked for them, and what pack he belonged to.

Or if he’d stayed a loner. She knew his childhood pack had been destroyed, although he never talked much about what happened. After leaving Selina’s crew, it was hard to believe he’d have enough trust left in him to join another pack. But he might have started one of his own. He was certainly dominant enough to be alpha of his own pack.

Hell, he might even be mated. That thought gave her a stab of pain in the middle of her stomach.

Stop it, she told herself. It wasn’t like she’d ever had a relationship with Kane. Just a teenage crush. And he hadn’t ever looked at her that way. There was no reason for her to be jealous if he’d managed to get rid of Selina’s influence and bond with someone else. She should be happy for him.

The question was what this meant for the mission. Kane as an Enforcer was better than Kane as one of Selina’s gang. At least it meant she wouldn’t have to take him down—assuming he didn’t come face to face with Selina and end up back in her thrall.

There was still that possibility.

But if Kane was working for the Council, Carmichael and his people would want her to stay far away from him. The last thing they needed was to attract the Council’s attention. The Shifter Council controlled every aspect of shifter life—and their main goals were to protect shifters, both individually and as a whole.

Still, every shifter knew that if they endangered the shifter community by risking exposure to humans, the Shifter Council would put them down. A sacrifice for the greater good, they called it. They didn’t tolerate private, clandestine groups messing in shifter affairs. And that’s what the Agency was.

If Kane was one of the good guys, that might ultimately be more dangerous to her than him being one of the bad guys.

And it might be dangerous for him as well.

Kane was the only person who’d managed to overcome Selina’s rare form of mental coercion. Both the Shifter Council and the Agency had been looking for him—the man known only as Hunter, who’d eluded Selina’s grasp.

And now, Rachelle was the only person who knew that the Shifter Council had had him in their sights the whole time. Of everyone he’d encountered during his time on the Seattle streets, she was the only one who knew his real name.

She’d always claimed she didn’t. She’d never trusted what they might try to do to him if they knew—what kind of experiments they’d feel were justified to find a way to counteract the type of powers Selina had. Neither the Council or the Agency was above considering him another “sacrifice for the greater good.”

No matter what Carmichael wanted, she had to talk to Kane. She had to warn him not to give away their connection.

She refused to admit to herself how much she just wanted to see him again.

By the time Rachelle walked out on the stage, she had more butterflies in her stomach than she’d had the first time she ever performed in public. She’d been half-hoping that Kane would show up early and come to her dressing room before the performance, but he didn’t show. Maybe he wouldn’t show at all.

Maybe now that she knew who he was, he’d disappear again. The thought made her stomach clench.

When the lights came up and Rachelle launched into her first song, she found herself searching the audience for Kane, but his shadowy corner table was empty.

She forced herself to concentrate, to lose herself in the music the way she always did. In the third song, she closed her eyes during the chorus, letting the plaintive notes resonate through her.

When she opened her eyes he was there. Slouched in his chair, drink in his hand, like her voice had conjured him out of the shadows.

Something lifted in her heart—a warm feeling in her chest, laced with old sorrow and pain. It pulled her more deeply into the music, letting the songs sing through her.

She couldn’t tell if her voice, her emotion, touched him at all. But she found herself desperately wishing it would.

Finally, it was time for “Rock Me.” The song she used to sing to him at night, all those years ago. The one he’d never stayed to hear the end of.

Did hearing it hurt him so much? Were the memories too painful? Could she bring back their connection through the song?