Moon Sworn

None of which helped me get any closer to uncovering the who and what behind the murder that was lurking in the recesses of memory.

I tried variations of the search but still came up empty-handed. Maybe a kill order had been placed on the story—but why would they do that when the other stories were already out there?

Once again, I just didn’t know.

It was a fucking frustrating sensation.

I gave up and turned off the computer. Maybe what I needed was sleep. With any sort of luck, tomorrow would bring new ideas and fresh memories.

S omeone was knocking heavily. Bam, bam, bam it went, relentless and loud. It took me a few minutes to realize the noise was outside my head rather than inside, and I opened a bleary eye.

I was still in that small, uninspiring villa bedroom. The nightmare gremlins hadn’t decided to transport me back to my real life, wherever and whatever that was.

“What?” I said, then winced. Speaking seemed to aggravate the daggers in my head. Apparently, I still had my headache, too.

“Harris is here to see you, Ha

“What time is it?” I glared blearily at the clock on the bedside table, but the little numbers weren’t making a whole lot of sense.

“It’s nearly midday. Get dressed. I’ll have a coffee waiting.”

“Right.” I flung off the blanket and sat up. The room spun violently around me, and my stomach reacted to the sensation by leaping up my throat. God, I felt awful, and I had no idea why. It wasn’t as if I’d taken whatever the damn tablet was that Evin had kept insisting I take.

But maybe that was the problem. Maybe this general feeling of crappiness was a result of coming down off whatever the drug was.

I swallowed heavily and pushed carefully to my feet. A glimpse out the window revealed bright sunshine and blue skies, so I grabbed a tank top and a pair of shorts, and padded out barefoot.

Harris was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, sipping coffee and eating toast.

“Nice to see you’ve made yourself at home,” I said, looking around for Evin but not seeing him. I did see another coffee cup and two bits of buttered toast waiting on the counter, so I sat down on the stool next to Harris and slid the coffee toward me. “Where’s my brother gone?”

“Into town to grab the paper.” Harris looked at me, amusement touching the corners of his blue eyes. It changed his features from merely handsome to extraordinary. “He did mutter something about needing the break from baby-sitting.”

I was tempted to snort, but it would have hurt my head. I took a sip of coffee, wished it wasn’t so damn bitter, and said, somewhat gingerly, “So why are you here? Not to give my brother a break from the baby-sitting duties, I take it.”

“No.” The amusement fell away from his face. “I made a few inquiries, and it appears you are indeed Ha

“You almost sound disappointed.”

“It isn’t often my instincts are wrong.” He shrugged. “I spoke to Tyson London and he backed up everything Evin has said.”

Tyson. Something within me shivered at the sound of that name, so obviously it had once meant something to me. Something unpleasant.

“Did you run any other checks?”

He raised his eyebrows. “The word of a pack leader isn’t enough?”

“Pack leaders aren’t infallible, you know. They lie and scheme as much as the rest of us.”

“You really haven’t got a very high opinion of pack alphas, have you?”

“Apparently not.” I pulled the toast toward me and picked up a piece. “Does this mean I’m no longer a suspect in the crime?”

“No, it simply means you’re not lying about who you are. The whole crime thing is another issue entirely.”

And if he was drinking our coffee and eating toast, then I very much doubted he was here in any official capacity. He seemed the type to be a stickler for rules—written and unwritten—and regular cops didn’t usually sit at a suspect’s kitchen counter eating their toast and drinking their coffee, because any evidence gathered that way would be inadmissible in court.

Which didn’t mean he wasn’t fishing.

“Has the autopsy happened yet?”

He took another drink then shook his head. “These things take a time in this part of the world. I did, however, read about similar crimes in Sydney and Brisbane.”

I nodded. “They’re revenge crimes, just like this one. Which suggests there’s a fairly big organization behind it. There has to be, given they’ve hit people in four places now.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Four?”

“I Googled the murders last night. None of them matched the information my—admittedly faulty—memory is providing.”

“Then how would you even know about it if you didn’t read about it, either online or in the newspapers?”

“I don’t know.” I finished the rest of the toast, then wiped the crumbs off my hands. “Have you sent an information request to the Directorate? This would be their sort of gig.”

“Marcus Landsbury was human, and he was killed by someone wearing a devil mask. That isn’t Directorate territory.”

“It is when the person wearing the mask isn’t human.”

The last hint of friendliness dropped from his gaze. “What makes you say that? There was no scent other than Landsbury’s at the crime scene.”

“And you didn’t find that odd? You’re a wolf. You should have been able to smell the killer given how fresh the kill was.”

He didn’t say anything to that, so I continued. “Besides, Landsbury said his killer was small but he moved him easily. That in itself signals nonhuman involvement, because most humans simply couldn’t have lifted a man his size with any sort of ease.”

“But neither of those is the reason you think there’s nonhuman involvement, is it?”

“No.” I hesitated. “I really do have no idea where half this stuff is coming from, but I didn’t kill Landsbury.”

“If I was accusing you of anything, we’d be down at the police station, not sitting here drinking coffee.”

Which didn’t mean he thought I was i

“If this other crime exists, then there’d at least be a record of it somewhere in the system—”

“Not if it’s a Directorate case.”

“True. But if it was a Directorate case, my sending in an official query about a possible copycat would have prompted a response. So far, it hasn’t.”

“The query would be red-flagged. How fast they get back to you depends on what other cases they have ongoing.” I hesitated. “It also might depend on which Directorate office picks it up.”

“It’ll go direct to Perth. That’s our closest main office.”

“Meaning if an Australia-wide alert hasn’t yet gone out, then it’ll be classed as low priority. You may not hear anything back for a few days.”

Curiosity stirred through his expression. “You seem to know a lot about the Directorate for someone who works as a pack border guard.”

“That’s the thing,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning against the countertop. “I really don’t think I’m a border guard.”

“Meaning your brother is lying?”

“No.” I blew out a breath. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“If Evin is lying, that means your pack leader is, also. And that’s one pretty big fabrication.” His gaze slid down my body then rose to meet mine again. I had absolutely no idea what was going on behind those blue eyes. “I’d have to ask, why would they bother?”

His words stung, though I don’t think he meant them to. “That’s what I need to find out. If this is all part of a fabrication, then why me, and why here?”

“Well, Dunedan is the middle of nowhere. If you wanted to get someone away from everything and everyone, then this is a pretty good start.”