“A friend sent me.” She shrugged. That movement caused the gentle curve of her br**sts to rise a shade above the scooped neckline of the sleeveless top she wore.
Red. Dammit, it should be a crime for a woman that damned pretty to wear red. He glanced at her. Her brown eyes, clear and wide, studied the motor intently, rather than looking at him. The sweet spice of her need wrapped around him, making his c**k harden demandingly. Big problem, Callan thought. Literally.
“So who sent you?” he questioned her with mild interest. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”
“Maybe not.” She glanced up at him, suspicion riding her expression. “But your mother had a few. My father sent me to extend his condolences and to see if you needed anything.”
He glanced at the woman again. Her gaze was knowing now. She had found him and she was more than aware of it. He laid the wrench down on the side of the truck and took a deep breath.
“You should return to your home, Ms. Tyler,” he told her quietly, warningly. “This is not the place for you or your father’s questions.”
Merinus looked around casually, careful to keep her voice low.
“Father can help you, Callan. That’s why I’m here.”
Frustration filled him now. The naivety of journalists often astounded him. They believed so deeply in their freedoms, the public’s right to know and their convictions of justice that they could not see the evil that shrouded them all. The innocence of this journalist fairly took his damned breath away.
“Come with me.” He rose to his full height, staring down at her as he took her slender arm in his hand and began pulling her along with him.
“Come where with you?” Suspicion laced her voice. There was no fear though, and he wanted to rail at her for her courage. The ignorance of her belief that she would come to no harm.
“Upstairs. To the office.” He pulled her through the garage to the back corner and up the steep stairs that led to Taber’s office.
The garage and attached store was owned by the Pride, as were all their holdings. But Taber was listed as sole owner on paper. It was better that way. Less suspicion. Less chance of being found. Callan jerked the door open and pushed her inside. Closing it carefully behind them, he turned the lock, reasonably confident of privacy now, considering the sound proof room they were standing in. He would have one chance to bluff his way through this, and one chance only. He was considering how to begin when she drew an envelope out of her purse and pulled out the damning evidence.
“Don’t bother to lie to me.” There was a vein of hurt in her voice, as though she knew what he had intended.
Callan crossed his arms over his chest. He narrowed his eyes on her and let his frustration free in a harsh, rumbling growl that he hadn’t intended to give voice to. The low snarl, catlike in sound, dangerous in purpose, filled the air.
He watched the woman blink. The pictures fluttered from her hand, the heat of her body rose, the scent of it thicker, mixed now with fear. The pictures lay on the floor now, incriminating, damning. Callan, as a child, a thick lion’s fur covering his body, his eyes, amber gold and bright, shining into the camera. The fur had slowly fallen away, until only a smooth, light scattering of fine, nearly invisible, ultra soft hair remained. The other was a sonogram, and Callan knew pertinent information was recorded on the back of it. Blood type, DNA sequence, anomalies. All recorded. All nails in a coffin that Merinus Tyler could help build.
* * * * *
Merinus watched the tall, powerful man as he bent and scooped the pictures from the floor. His face was expressionless, his eyes hard, brilliant amber in the tan darkened features of his face. She hadn’t intended to show him the proof she carried with her, but she had known he was ready to lie to her. The knowledge had vibrated through her body. Lie. The word had been like a whisper, dark and vibrating. But Merinus had proof. She hadn’t come to him with supposition and half-truths. The evidence Maria Morales had sent John Tyler had been conclusive, irrefutable. But to bring truth to the test results and pictures, they needed the man. She hadn’t meant to drop the pictures, but the smooth rumble of warning from his throat had been more than a surprise
“Maria was like a little packrat,” he sighed, shaking his head as he stared down at the pictures. Long, thick, coarse, tawny gold hair lay below the nape of his neck, framing a sharply lined face, savage in its angles. Wide, tilted eyes, thick lashes and cheekbones with an odd flattened angle where they should curve high and sharp. His nose was aristocratic, but the ridge seemed smoothed out, much as the cheekbones were.
Merinus ignored the hard beat of her heart as he finally looked at her. Her womb tightened uncomfortably, making her cunt clutch and protest the emptiness there. It was unusual, this sensation. She was well aware it was arousal washing over her. It made her br**sts feel swollen, made her ni**les harden uncomfortably, and those unusual eyes did not miss the reaction.
“She asked Father to help you,” she said, trying to cover her nervousness. “He wants you to come in with me. He has safeguards set up—”
He laughed. His lips twisted into a humorless curve and the bitterness in the sound struck at her heart. He shook his head, his gaze mocking.
“If this is why you have come here, Ms. Tyler, then you have wasted your time.” Gone was the good ole boy, in its place a cold, hard creature. She saw it in the tense readiness of his large body, the flash of sharpened incisors at the sides of his mouth.
“You aren’t safe,” she told him worriedly. “Our research into this has uncovered a plot to kill—”
“And eventually they will succeed.” He shrugged as though unconcerned. “When they do, steal the body and write your story and good luck to you in living. Until then, I need no help of yours.”
Surprise flared inside her.
“You don’t intend to try to stop them? To keep this from happening again?”
“It has already happened again and again and again,” he told her coldly. “They used wolves as well. To my knowledge, I am the only known success they have achieved.”
Merinus shook her head. She had seen the pictures of those pitiful forms, born so deformed that there was no hope of life. Only Callan, as he said, had been their success.
“You can’t hide forever,” she pointed out. “You’re letting them win, Mr. Lyons.”