Douglas Watts had been an abusive bastard. Cabal’s initial investigation into the man’s background had turned up surprising information. Information such as the fact that he had abused several ex-girlfriends. Yet there had been no proof that he had abused his wife, but Cabal knew in his gut.
Cabal hadn’t needed proof; he knew instinctively that Watts had to have abused his wife. He wouldn’t have changed his pattern, even for love. If he had known how to love, and Cabal had no doubt in his mind that Watts had not loved his wife. The investigation he had conducted had shown several instances where the man had cheated on his new wife.
Did Cassa know that her husband of barely a year had had a new lover every other month? Mostly one-night stands. Women he had barely known. He’d had the perfect, faithful wife, and he had betrayed not just her emotions and their vows, but the principles she had lived by and the battle that she had accepted as her own.
Breed freedom. He had sold Breed freedom for a paltry couple of hundred thousand dollars. He had sold information on the majority of the rescues he had covered with his wife. Not all of them, he’d been smarter than that, smart enough that he’d managed to slip past Jonas Wyatt, and that wasn’t an easy feat.
And here Cabal was, more than eleven years later, still in conflict with himself over Watts’ wife. Over his own mate.
He watched as she continued her slow stroll along the bank of the river, obviously scouring the area for some clue as to the missing former mayor’s fate.
There was nothing to find. Cabal and his team had searched that bank more times than they should have. There were no clues, it was that simple. Just as there had been none at the scene of Alonzo’s murder. It was as though David Banks had simply walked off the face of the earth. Or had been jerked from it. Which, Cabal couldn’t say for certain. The only thing he was certain of was that Banks had been a part of the Deadly Dozen, the group of men responsible for the abductions and deaths of Breeds who had escaped the labs before Breed Law.
Banks, as well as Watts, had been a close associate of Brandenmore and Engalls, the pharmaceutical giants currently under indictment for the attempted murder of Breeds as well as suspected illegal Breed genetic research. Both men had been known to hunt with the pharmaceutical family, for the four-legged variety of prey as well.
Watts had been as evil and as vicious as his scent had indicated seconds before Cabal had killed him. But did his wife know what he had been?
Cabal clenched his teeth at the thought of Watts touching her. For eleven years it had tortured him, knowing that she had been married to Watts. Tortured him? It enraged the man as well as the animal that lived within. It was like an acid burning in his gut, knowing she had lain with him, that she had loved him.
He watched her now, the glands beneath his tongue throbbing as he tasted the hormone seeping from them. The spicy taste was stronger now, the need to claim her growing more desperate.
He had to get away from her. If he didn’t, he was going to destroy them both. He could feel the need to snarl in rage at the thought of Watts touching her. The fact that he had been married to her didn’t matter. Cabal didn’t give a f**k. She’d had no business wearing Watts’s ring, allowing his touch.
And Cabal also knew he had no business blaming her for it. He shook his head. He was falling into the same pit he fell into each time she was too close for too long. The same conflicts. And the same angers.
He saw her, ached for her, and each time he saw the men and women who had died in that pit, because of her husband. Not because of her. It wasn’t her fault, he knew that. Douglas Watts had betrayed those rescues on his own. He hadn’t even needed his marriage to Cassa to do it. He had already been chosen to cover those rescues. So what the f**k was Cabal’s problem? Other than a green-eyed monster that refused to f**king let him go. And a hunger that threatened to destroy him.
His brother Tanner had warned him this was coming. The brother he hadn’t known he’d had until his rescue. His biological twin brother. Tanner had known on sight what they were to each other; it had taken Cabal a few months to accept it.
But only his blood could be as damned conniving as he was himself. Yeah, Tanner was his brother, and Cabal had accepted it. Just as he’d finally accepted that Cassa was his mate.
Cassa paused at the edge of the water and stared into the rock-strewn edge as minute waves lapped at the darkened soil.
This was the path David Banks normally took for his evening walk. He had been seen here the evening he had disappeared. Right here, in this very spot, below the falls and the old water management plant.
She stared across the water at the brick building with its hollow spillways and boarded windows. In the overcast light it appeared brooding, sinister.
Kanawha Falls. The water that crashed into the small lake ran its course back into the river and continued along its way. And here David Banks had been standing, staring up at the old plant, the last time he had been seen.
That had been two weeks before.
There had been an extensive search of the river. Divers had been called in, satellites had been aimed into the murky depths and remote search bots had canvassed the water for days. Nothing had been found.
The sheriff, Danna Lacey, had led search teams through the area. Not so much as a clue to what had happened to the former mayor had been found. It was as though he had disappeared off the face of the earth.
Shaking her head, Cassa turned and stared up the sloped bank that led back to the parking area and a small picnic location. Winter-dried bamboo saplings waved in the breeze, while the hulking skeletons of bare trees cast dark shadows out over the bank and reminded her that nothing in this beautiful little town was as it seemed.
Breathing out roughly, she made her way back up to the parking area before turning and heading into the edge of the trees that led back to the main river on the other side.
There had been nothing to indicate that David Banks had walked into the forested area. It wasn’t part of Banks’s known walking trail, and it had been searched many times. She didn’t expect to find anything to indicate that he had been there; rather, she was making note of whom she saw and what she saw.
One thing she had made note of was the fact that she was being followed by none other than Cabal himself. She had seen two other Breed Enforcers in town earlier, at the small café where she had breakfast. Rule Breaker and Lawe Justice had been quietly amused as they watched her. They had then traded off duties with Cabal after she left the café.
He’d been following her ever since.
Didn’t he have his own investigation to see to? She was certain he had more resources in the area than she had managed to dig up, despite the fact that she was acquainted with several of the journalists in town, as well as the sheriff.
There was a dead end here on Banks as well as H. R. Alonzo’s murder. And what made it even worse, one of the first news stories of the morning was the report that H. R. Alonzo had died in a blaze that had swept through his Missouri home. The cause of that blaze was yet to be determined, but the unofficial report was that HR’s fireplace and the fire that had burned within it had somehow been the cause.