Enjoy this excerpt from DOWN WILL COME TIGER (Tiger Shifters 6) out now!
Chapter One
The ambulance had driven away from the estate two hours ago.
Joseph Bennett watched from his perch in a tree outside the massive security
walls as the vehicle left silently. He hadn’t been close enough to catch a
scent, so he wasn’t sure which of the estate’s occupants had been inside, if
any. Given the size of the staff in the mansion, it could have been anyone.
Now, hours later, he continued to study the distant lights
of the main house, wondering.
He pulled in a deep breath, taking in the night scents, the
green taste of the coming spring mixing with the cold remains of winter,
manicured grass and damp soil, the distant chlorine tang from the estate’s
swimming pool, the even more distant fresh water bite of the river. He released
his breath slowly, carefully.
He wasn’t sure whether to hope Bradley Williams was still
inside or not.
Rather than decide, he watched the estate and waited for a
sign of the human man he wanted to kill more than he wanted anything else in
the world.
He had tonight, tomorrow night, maybe the night after before
Victor Romanov, his former boss and best friend, tracked him down and forced
him away from Bradley. Again.
He was tempted, not for the first time, to kill Victor and
get him out of the way. He wasn’t sure why he never went through with it. Maybe
the fact that Victor’s wife Alexis might get to him before he could get to
Bradley?
It was as good an explanation as any.
As he contemplated a way to get through the various security
alarms and close to the house, a movement across the huge expanse of lawn caught
his attention. The Williams didn’t keep deer on their property and that figure
was too large to be a dog. He scented the air, then lifted his eyebrows.
Paige Williams. Oldest daughter of Carmen Williams.
Stepdaughter to Duke Williams. Half sister to Bradley Williams.
Years of stalking Bradley meant Joseph was well acquainted
with who she was, at least in general. She was a weak human, always deferring
to her father, avoiding eye contact in public, staying away from attention or
notice. He’d seen the video of her attending her brother’s trial for attempted
kidnapping ten years ago—Joseph had been in confinement at the time or he’d
have gone to the courthouse in person to murder the man. Paige had looked…bland
and timid.
Since then, he’d barely caught glimpses of her, as when she
did leave the estate it was usually in a limo with black windows, going to her
father’s Philadelphia office where she ran a charitable something-or-other.
He’d never cared enough to find out the details. He knew, in all the times he’d
sat in this very tree, watching this estate, he’d never seen Paige Williams
take a walk through the grounds. Especially not at three in the morning.
Even from this distance, he could see she had her arms
wrapped tightly around her body, her head down. A dark hat covered her pale
blond hair. Her clothes were loose and dark, too, not really hinting at a
figure, and she wasn’t wearing a coat, though it was March and still too cold
for a human to be out without one.
Interesting.
She was heading right for him, and the small pedestrian gate
in the wall not far from his tree perch. He watched her approach, her scent
carried to him on the wind. His eyes narrowed.
*****
Paige Williams tightened her arms around her stomach,
hugging herself against the cold she didn’t really feel. Her body was numb even
as her brain exploded with so much chaos she couldn’t think.
She reached the pedestrian gate in the northern part of the
wall near the main road without realizing she’d walked that far. Keying in the
alarm code, she pushed open the steel door and stepped out onto the grassy
shoulder lining the road, making sure the door closed behind her out of habit
more than conscious thought. Once beyond the walls of her prison, she just
stood there, staring into the dark.
What now? What did she think this would do for her?
Pulling in a deep gulp of cold air, she let the night scents
and sounds wash through her as she closed her eyes and tried with everything
she had not to think.
She frowned when a slight shiver moved down her spine, an
awareness of…something. Not like the feeling she got when she knew her brother
was watching her, smirking at her, or when her stepfather was around. At those
times, the hair on her nape rose and her shoulders hunched under the
ever-looming sense of threat and judgment from the men in her life.
This was different. She didn’t actually have any emotional
response to the sensation, just a vague sort of awareness of… She didn’t know
how to explain it, though this wasn’t the first time she’d felt it. If not for
having experienced the sensation before, she might have wondered if it was her
mother’s ghost.
Did ghosts come back to haunt you only hours after dying?
She snorted at the idea. She couldn’t imagine her mother
pulling together the psychic strength to haunt anyone anyway.
Glancing around the quiet road, Paige wondered if maybe
after all these years she really was going crazy, if the stress of her life, of
hiding in plain sight from her family, had finally broken her. Shouldn’t she
feel something about the death of her mother? Shouldn’t she hurt?
Should relief really be the only sensation coursing through
her blood?
She growled at nothing and started to walk. She’d only gone
a few hundred yards before she turned back. She reached the pedestrian gate,
put her hand to the alarm panel, cursed, and stalked away again. She didn’t
want to go back inside. She didn’t want to be in that house, that prison, where
her mother had died and her stepfather greeted the news with a raised brow and
a snort of disgust. Where her half brother barely paused to hear the news
before shrugging and continuing on to his wing of the house.
Paige had spent years, years,
inside that mansion, playing a part, keeping everything she felt, everything
she knew buried deep in her heart
where no one could see. For her mother’s sake.
Because despite everything, Carmen Williams had loved her
children. Bradley didn’t deserve it, but then their mother didn’t really know
the truth about the creature she’d given birth to, and given everything else Carmen
had gone through in her sad life, Paige was grateful for that. She’d actively
worked to keep her own knowledge of Bradley away from their mother.
It was one of the very few kindnesses she’d been able to
give Carmen.
Now her mother was dead.
Paige stopped where the estate wall veered away from the
road and stared into the darkness. Her mother was gone. There was no longer a
reason to hide.
She’d squirrelled away resources and money, things neither
her brother nor stepfather knew about. She could just…go. Now. Leave everything
behind and go.
The relief at that thought almost dropped her to her knees.
She actually had to lean against a tree skirting the road to keep from falling.
No more judgmental stepfather, no more psychotic brother. No more pretending to
be as weak and malleable as her mother.
Enough. Done.
Her heart pounded hard as the chaos churning through her
mind quieted and the clarity of a possible future descended. A vision of hope
she hadn’t dared consider, even as she’d planned for it.
She was so caught up in the thought of just…going, she
didn’t recognize when that awareness of something she could never pinpoint got
stronger. But her instincts had been honed on the stone wheel of years of
living as potential prey to the predatory men in her life. So she was already
turning, preparing to scream and fight and run, when she heard the very slight
sound of shoes shuffling over grass.
The scream building in her throat caught at the sight of the
stranger. His features were impossible to discern in the darkness, though she
had excellent night vision, but his face seemed full of shadows and sharp
edges. He was considerably taller and wider than her. His hand were at his
sides, loose and weaponless. He wore a black hoodie and jeans, dark enough that
he blended with the background, and somewhat to her surprise, she lost sight of
him once or twice even though he didn’t move.
It was his stillness that really struck her. He didn’t even
seem to be breathing.
She swallowed to wet a dry throat and considered questioning
him, but she was afraid to end the standoff, afraid if she said anything at
all, it would break him out of his stillness. She was almost positive that once
this man went into motion, there would be no stopping him.
And because she’d lived in the same house with a killer for
most of her life, she recognized another one when she saw him.
He spoke, shattering the tense silence. “It’s late. You
shouldn’t be out here alone.”
His voice was husky and deep, rough like he didn’t use it
much, and completely emotionless. He might as well have asked what time it was
or noted that the grass was green. She couldn’t tell if he’d intended his
comment to be a warning or a threat. Or simply a statement like the sky is
blue.
She pulled herself up to her full height—which wasn’t very
impressive—and tried to put on the privileged, icy aura she adopted when all
else failed. She infused prim frost into her tone, something her stepfather had
forced her to learn, when she said, “And you would be?”
He tilted his head to one side as he considered her.
“Roses,” he murmured.
He said it so quietly she suspected she wasn’t supposed to
hear his comment. Or maybe he just didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud.
“Are you going to answer my question or should I call the
police?” she asked, still in that same clipped tone.
“You don’t have a phone with you.”
She blinked. He couldn’t possibly know that. She had left
her cell behind on purpose, but she was wearing loose clothing with pockets.
She could easily have it.
To make her point, she reached into her pocket, pretending
to grip a phone that wasn’t there. “I will call the cops, whoever you are. I
suggest you leave.”
“Who was in the ambulance?”
Again, surprise made her blink. “You’ve been watching my
home? Are you a paparazzi? I assure you, there’s no story here.”
His shoulders moved, just a little, not a threat but…a
gesture she couldn’t interpret.
“Who was in the ambulance?” he asked again.
She pursed her lips. He didn’t have an obvious camera on him
so he wasn’t likely someone out for gossip. He felt too dangerous, too intense,
for a paparazzo anyway. And there was that stillness, that emotionlessness in
his voice.
For some reason, the mere fact that he didn’t seem to care
about this conversation much one way or the other made her feel better. She
shrugged and answered honestly. “My mother.”
“She’s sick?”
“Dead.”
His head moved just slightly, maybe a nod of acknowledgement
at the news. She waited for him to offer the expected condolences. But the
silence stretched on. He didn’t say or do anything beyond that almost nod.
She held his intense stare, easier because she couldn’t
actually see his eyes, just the shadowed area where his eyes were on his face.
“Are you sad?” he finally asked.
“Of course,” she snapped. “What a stupid question.” She
realized she’d dropped her guard and instantly put the wall back up.
But for the first time since confronting him, she saw
something almost like an expression move across his face—one corner of his
mouth lifted fractionally. It might have been a smile, though it could also
just as easily have been a facial tic since in the next moment his mouth was
flat and emotionless again.
