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A different man. A different time.

We werenothing.

It hurt, but it also helped me to gain back control, so that when I looked at him again, I was half as angry. Half as guilty, too. Just more tired.

I stood up, seeing no other reason to keep dragging this on. The only thing I managed to do whenever I talked to him—ordidn’t—was to hurt myself.

“That was the last time I lied for you, Dominic. I’m on this case, and if I see you again, if I find out anything that involves you about Crackdown, I’m going to report it. Please believe me. I mean it.”

His face twisted as if he was suddenly in pain again, like I’d slapped him instead of spoken to him.

I don’t care.

With my purse in hand, I turned around to walk away. I was done.

“Thank you,” he said, just as I opened the back door of the house. “For what you did for Agnes. I appreciate it.”

I turned my head to him, too curious to just walk out like I should have. “Who are these children, Dominic? Where are their parents?”

I didn’t expect an answer. I was talking to Dominic Dane, after all, and I wasn’tthreateningto expose him this time. But he surprised me.

“Their parents are dead. Their packs kicked them out. Derek and I are taking care of them until their first shifts,” he said, eyes on the table, like he couldn’t stand to look at me anymore.

Tears pricked the back of my eyes when I remembered the story he’d told me on that mountain. How his pack had thrown him and Derek out after their parents ended up dead. How he’d been raised in the human foster system…and apparently, the consequences of that still followed him to this day. He still had trouble controlling his animal because he was never properly taught how to dominate him in the first place.

I nodded, words pressing the back of my throat, but I knew that if I spoke now, my voice would break. I’d start crying.

So, I slipped inside the house and closed the door behind me without another look his way. There would probably come a time when Dominic Dane would make sense to me, but today wasn’t it.

ChapterSeven

The pumpkin spicelatte had me so bloated, I was minutes away from unbuttoning my trousers. Hunter texted—again, asking if I wanted company, but I said no. Why would I waste his time when there wasnothinggoing on here at all? I’d been sitting in the car parked across the street from Dave’s Grill for the past three hours, and I hadn’t seen one suspicious person coming or going. Which sucked because I had no lead. Refreshing the email app on my phone every few seconds didn’t magically make the Research crew send me an email where they said they knewexactlywhat Crackdown was. I’d been in a room full of that drug just last night and I couldn’t get hold of a single syringe to take it in for testing. Some agent I was.

But then again, I’d been distracted.

We had an ID on the guy I’d killed—James Hopkins, an incubi, who had no address on record, no job, paid no taxes, and didn’t even have a bank account to his name. Made you wonder how he got around living like a ghost in this place. Not that it would be a problem if you were connected with the right people who could produce false documents for you in a heartbeat. Who even knew if hisrealname was James Hopkins, anyway? His fingerprints said so, but he could have different identities, too, and we’d never know because we didn’t even have an address connected to his name.

And the Research crew wasn’t hopeful that they had enough of the drug to test it properly, see what it was made of, or at least what kind of magic it possessed.

Maybe I should have told Dominic what I suspected about his brother—that he was maybe fed the same drug—or the samemagic—that made Crackdown when they were kids. It was just a hunch, but it had made sense the first time it occurred to me, and now my gut insisted that there was something more to it. Werewolves didn’t justlosetheir beast. They had trouble controlling it, like Dominic already proved, but they didn’t lose it unless there was heavy magic involved. The same kind of magic that made Crackdown.

But no. He was already having trouble on his own. Telling him that would only stress him out more. I was on the case, anyway. I’d get to the bottom of it one way or the other. And when I did, if my hunch was right and it had something to do with Derek’s condition, he’d know.

Fear spread all over me—again—at the thought of what he might do now that he’d had that drug injected in him, and it had worked. It had—I’d seen it with my own eyes. Dominic had been calm that morning, had talked to me without straining like usual. He hadn’t wanted to answer my questions, but he’d sat there and talked to me anyway. Which was saying something. Yeah, Crackdown worked, but what if he ignored my warnings—which was probable—and went searching for it again? How long did the effect even last? We had mixed reports at the ODP. Some witnesses said it lasted a couple days, while others claimed it only affected them for a few hours.

Too many thoughts in my head, and more than enough time to dwell on them, which wasn’t good, but at least I could talk myself out of going crazy because I was all alone in the car. Nobody was going to hear me.

Still, I spent another whole hour forcing my thoughts to steer away from Dominic and all he made me feel, but I wasn’t very successful.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be close to you?

Which made you wonder, didIdo that to him? Did I make it hard for him to control his wolf? Shivers washed all over me and my flesh raised in goose bumps. No—he said he’d always had trouble controlling his animal side because he was never properly taught. It had nothing to do with me.

And if it did, he wouldn’t be suffering like that. He’d be at my door, like I’d dreamed of probably a thousand times, telling me that he’d changed his mind, and he wanted to be with me, give it a try, see what happened, and I wouldn’t have todreamabout making pancakes and getting grabbed by him (and those claws) from behind. All of it would actually become reality.

“You’re killing me here,” I said to the empty car, and my own mind. How many times would he have to show me how little he cared for me to finally see it? How many times would he walk right by me without a single glance my way for me to accept it? “Silly pixie,” I mumbled, tapping the leather of the steering wheel.

But before my mind could force images of him touching me, kissing me, fucking me like he had in that shower—which, to be honest, felt more like a dream now, and I could almost swear it had never happened—I finally caught a break. The doors of Dave’s Grill opened, and out came a guy whose face I recognized. It was the skinny guy who had been in the office the night before, the same one who ran away before anyone else, while Dominic and I were still fighting his friends.


Tags: D.N. Hoxa Paranormal