“The wolf ran off into the woods, the eyewitnesses said.” The detective studied her for a moment more, then asked, “But where did you go? Why did you run away?”

“Jake came for me.”

“You’d left your phone charging on the dresser. Only one phone call had been made. To 9-1-1. The sound of the men breaking into the room was captured on tape. They heard the one man cursing up a blue streak as he said, ‘Come on, Cicero, damn it. We’ve gotta get out of here before the police arrive. She’s run off. Holy crap.’ Then there was a lot of grunting and groaning and moaning. We assume that was when he helped the injured man outside. After several minutes, doors were opened and slammed shut. Then a car engine roared to life, and the vehicle tore off down the road. Detective Tandy and I arrived shortly after that.”

“They had guns, Detective. I wasn’t about to hang around to get shot at again. If they could have, they would have come after me, I’m sure.”

“So how did Mr. Silver know to meet you?”

“We had prearranged a meeting.” She patted Jake’s hand with her free hand. “We’ve been seeing each other. We planned to get together last night. Only instead of finding me at the motel, he found me on the road heading for Silver Town.”

The detective’s brows arched heavenward. “Long hike.”

“I didn’t know where else to go, and I was sure Jake was already headed to Crestview. I couldn’t hang around to get shot at again,” she repeated. Then she had to explain her connection to Danny Massaro, who had also murdered her mother, and the other, Cicero, who she hadn’t seen before.

After two long, exhausting hours, the detectives finally left and Alicia felt drained. “They didn’t believe me about the wolf,” she said to the family as Darien walked back into the great room after seeing the detectives out.

“You did fine,” Darien said, his tone reassuring, and she believed he really meant it. “They won’t find a wolf, and Peter has learned that the man you bit never went to any hospital or clinic in the area to get the wound taken care of.”

“It had to have been awful,” Alicia whispered, still feeling bad about what she’d done. “I didn’t mean to bite so hard, but I… I think I crushed the bone. I didn’t know my own strength.”

“I believe he died,” Darien said, matter-of-factly. “Peter had already talked to the eyewitnesses, and they said the one man was practically carrying the other out to the car. The injured man slumped in the seat, his face ice white. If Danny Massaro had to take him someplace any distance from the motel, the man probably died. We know for sure he didn’t take him to any area medical facilities. Peter’s already checked. We still want to confirm the man died, but it appears that way.”

She narrowed her eyes at Darien. “If you already knew that the men had seen a dog, why didn’t you tell me before the detectives arrived?”

“The witnesses hadn’t mentioned a dog,” Peter said, speaking up in Darien’s defense. “I had asked them about the men who had broken into your room, trying to get a description so we could locate them before the police did. The witnesses said the parking lot was dark. And so was the walk in front of the motel because the men had knocked out the lights.

“But when the car’s interior lights came on, the injured man looked pale as death, and the other man was shaking him and hollering at him. The wounded man was unresponsive. The other was cursing as he backed out of the parking lot and roared off. I assumed you’d shot the other man, too. I didn’t realize you had bitten him.” Peter looked contrite. “It was my fault that I didn’t think to ask the witnesses if they’d seen anything else near your room.”

“I have a question for you though, Alicia,” Darien said, his look stern. “Why did Danny Massaro and Mario Constantino kill your mother?”

Chapter 15

Alicia was already upset by all of the police detective questioning she’d had to endure, so Jake wondered why in the hell Darien had to bring up the motive for her mother’s murder on top of all that. Jake knew Darien had good reasons for anything he did, but the timing seemed piss-poor.

But Alicia didn’t seem upset by the query. Instead, her lips parted, and she seemed surprised.

She cleared her throat and held herself stiffly on the couch. “Mario had my mother murdered because she was seeing a man named Tony Thomas. Mario had him murdered as well. Why? I don’t know. I speculated it was because Tony was either copping a deal with the Feds, incriminating Mario in his sordid operations, or trying to go into business for himself.”

She sounded as if the notion didn’t make any difference. Only the end results mattered, maybe because that’s all she dealt with in her line of work. The reason why the perp didn’t show up for trial or see his or her parole officer wasn’t important. Nor was the reason he had committed the crime. All that mattered was that the person was returned to jail.

Suspecting he already knew the answer, Jake ran his hand over hers in an attempt to put her at ease. “Why would Mario want you dead, too?”

“I planned to put him behind bars. Then I turned him in to the cops.”

That was what he’d thought. “Since Danny came after you, the police must not have incarcerated Danny and possibly not Mario, either.” That thought gave Jake major heartburn. These men seemed intent on getting to Alicia, and she wouldn’t be safe until they were stopped.

Alicia dropped her gaze to their locked hands. “Maybe my mother knew something about Tony’s business or Mario’s. Maybe something was going on.” She didn’t say anything for several minutes. Then in a voice that was hollow with defeat, she said, “Then again, I hadn’t wanted to know. I reasoned that the less I knew, the better. But now…”

She took a deep, shaky breath and met his gaze, her eyes swimming in tears. “Maybe if I had known more of what was going on in my mother’s life, I could have put Mario and Danny in prison. Maybe I could have stopped Danny from murdering her.” She looked weary and overcome.

Darien wanted to drop the subject, to give her time to deal with the changes in her life, but they had to know if something her mother had in her possession might further incriminate Mario. If the man was only human, they could turn the evidence over to the police. If he was one of the wolf kind, that could be a different story. But Darien wanted to know if there was more of a connection between Alicia and Mario, and that’s why Mario continued to target her.

“What kind of relationship did you have with Tony? Your mother’s boyfriend who was murdered. How well did you know him?”

Alicia’s jaw tightened as she stared at the coffee table. Jake wondered if there was more to the story than she had let on.

“Sometimes… sometimes I thought he was trying to be the father I never had. I thought maybe he was planning on marrying my mother.” She shrugged. “I didn’t need a father. Hadn’t had one all those years. And at my age, why now? But at other times”—she looked up at Jake—“he would distance himself as if he was afraid to know me. Like he was afraid for me to know him. Which was probably because he was tied to the Mob.”

“Was Tony ever jealous of your relationship with your mother?” Jake thought that could very well be the case.

Alicia shook her head with conviction. “No. That was the oddest thing. He seemed to appreciate my close relationship with Mom. As if I was good for her. I often wondered why he wouldn’t resent that she and I were such good friends. Instead, he seemed to admire our relationship. I don’t know. Maybe he’d never had a mother or father who was there for him growing up. Or maybe he’d been close to his mom and understood.

“He wasn’t exactly like the other men she dated. They were… never intimate with her like Tony was. He tried to hide his affections for my mother when he was with her around me. But even so, I’d catch a shared kiss. Him holding her hand. A warm embrace. The other men were just… there. Accompanying her. I never saw any sign of affection or intimacy.”

That seemed strange to Jake. “Where are your mother’s things? Did you go through them?”

“In my apartment. She’d had a furnished apartment in Dillon. She didn’t have many personal effects. And mostly at the end, she’d been living with Tony in his condo. I gave away all her clothes to the women’s abuse center. There wasn’t much left. I didn’t really take time to look through her things. I never thought she might have anything incriminating against Mario. I… I haven’t returned to my place for the past month, afraid these men would know I’d lived there, and one of them would be waiting for me to show up. So I’ve just paid the bills and stayed clear of the place.”

That was why Jake dreamed that Alicia was in different beds when they made love in their dream states every night. He looked over at Darien to get his okay for what he was about to do next. Darien nodded, giving him his consent.

“I’ll take you back to your apartment,” Jake said. “We’ll see if we can find anything, evidence, something that will clue us in if there was more of a connection to you than you believe. I have a sneaking hunch that Mario coming after you has more to do with you than your attempt at putting him behind bars. And I halfway suspect when we arrive at your place, it’ll look like a tornado hit it.”

***

The drive to Alicia’s apartment seemed to take forever as Jake chauffeured her in his truck, while Peter and Tom rode in Peter’s Suburban as their backup guard. Pete wore his sheriff’s uniform, although he’d be out of his jurisdiction.

Their presence was more than comforting, especially since Alicia couldn’t take her gun with her since the police still had it. But she was armed with a can of pepper spray.

She’d been alone for so long that she enjoyed the sense of belonging that Jake’s pack members had offered her. She still hadn’t come to complete terms with being mated to Jake forever or all the strange things she was learning about her werewolfism and pack-member politics. She could only swallow the news in little bites.