Joy to the Wolves (Red Wolf #1) - Terry Spear Page 0,35

when I checked the place out.”

Ohmigod, he was the man who had carried the box into the shop for her earlier when the mail carrier delivered it. She should have recognized his voice from earlier!

“We should have checked there first.” The man climbed up the stairs to the attic door, every footstep making the stairs creak, causing Brooke’s heart to beat even faster. When he reached the landing, he paused. She envisioned him surveying the boxes and trunks, maybe looking to see if someone was hiding in the room.

“Anything up there?” the other guy asked.

“More damn boxes and junk.” The floorboards creaked, and he went straight for one of the trunks.

The other guy came up the stairs. Just great. He started to walk across the floor headed for the other trunk—the bigger of the two that she was crouched behind.

Angry they had broken in and no longer afraid, maybe because she was wearing her wolf coat, Brooke curbed the urge to growl and come out and bite them. She had to keep her wits about her and let the police detective—if he ever got here!—handle matters.

The first of the men swore. “The damn thing has a lock on it I can’t open.”

“Same with this one.”

She smiled with some satisfaction.

“Shoot them off,” the one man said.

Then her phone lit up. She’d turned the sound off, but someone was trying to call her. She prayed that the men wouldn’t see the light go off where her clothes were, close by her.

“What the hell,” the one guy said and began to move around the steamer trunk.

She was a dead wolf if she didn’t take him down first. The floor creaked where he was walking toward her, and both men took the safeties off their guns. She readied herself to lunge.

Chapter 9

When Josh pulled up in front of the antique shop, his sirens still going, he heard the distinctive sound of shots being fired, coming from the attic. Cold chills ran up his spine. That was where Brooke was supposed to be. He envisioned her wearing her red wolf coat and dodging bullets, damn it.

His heart doing double time, he jumped out of the car, pulling his gun out, and yelled to his brother, “Head around back so they can’t get away that way. Watch yourself. They’re armed and dangerous.”

“Hell, yeah.”

The front door to the shop was shut, but when Josh tried the knob, it was unlocked. His first thought was that Brooke hadn’t locked the door, just like she hadn’t locked the gate to her courtyard the other night. Not that he blamed her. She had a lot on her mind—lots to do and no one to help her do it—and it was easy to forget things. He threw the door open, and it banged against the wall.

Right now, all that mattered was that the two people firing shots in her attic hadn’t ceased, even with his siren wailing. They had to be concentrating so hard on shooting at her that they hadn’t heard his siren. He couldn’t imagine she would have survived the onslaught, and that made his stomach knot with tension.

“Police officers! Come down with your hands up!” Josh was certain someone else living nearby would have heard the shots and called the police. He just had to protect Brooke if she was in her wolf form.

He headed up the stairs, the darn steps creaking with his weight, warning them he was on his way. Neither of the men responded, and he worried they might try to take him out before he reached the attic. He had no cover here, but he had to reach Brooke as quickly as he could.

A couple more shots were fired. God damn it.

Josh was running up the stairs when he heard a banging noise and then glass breaking. He reached the landing and peered into the attic room. The front window was broken. The men were gone.

Someone was running up the stairs behind him, and Josh whirled around to see his red-faced brother, just as angry as he was, rifle in hand.

“They got away out front. Brooke?” Josh called out, afraid she might not be able to respond, not wanting to consider the worst-case scenario. He was searching behind the antique trunks and stacked boxes, but he hadn’t located her. “It’s me, Josh Wilding, and my brother.”

Wearing her red wolf coat, Brooke came out from behind a bunch of boxes full of bullet holes. She was limping, bloodied, her tail down. She managed a small