Beneath a Darkening Moon (3 page)

She stopped as trepidation, and something else—something she couldn’t quite define—rippled through her.

It was Cade, just as she’d feared.

For too many minutes, all she could do was stare. This man had haunted her dreams for nigh on ten years, yet except for the crow’s-feet near his eyes, his too handsome features showed no real sign of aging. He was a big man, just over six feet tall, his build lean but powerful, like a sprinter. His hair was dark brown, but the mahogany highlights she’d so adored now contrasted with the flecks of silver that gleamed in the sunlight streaming in through the window behind him. Once upon a time, his hair had been long and tied back carelessly in a ponytail—a ponytail she always used to undo, just so she could run her fingers through its gloriously silken length. Now it was short, barely even brushing the shoulders of his starched blue shirt.

Her gaze finally, inevitably, locked with his. For several heartbeats she couldn’t think, was barely able to breathe. The navy blue of his eyes all but consumed her. Heat prickled across her skin and ignited a familiar ache deep inside her. She knew she had to move, had to do something other than simply stand here. Yet she couldn’t tear herself away from the power of that gaze. From the memories she saw deep within it.

But there was surprise there, too. He hadn’t expected to see her here, and it took her a moment to realize why—he’d known her under another name.

A slight smile touched the lips that were still as sensual as she remembered. Then his gaze rolled languidly down her body—a touch that wasn’t a touch,
and yet one that sent energy singing across every fiber of her being. Her nipples hardened, pressing almost painfully against her shirt, and the deep-down ache grew stronger.

His gaze completed its erotic journey and rose to meet hers again, lingering a little on the scar that marred the left side of her face. But it wasn’t the heat in his look that made her tremble. It was the sudden flash of anger.

As if
he
had anything to be angry about.

“Well,” he said. “Fancy finding you here.”

His voice was husky, deep—and conjured memories of whispered endearments and long, sweaty nights of lovemaking. And even after all the time that had separated them, his voice still had the power to undo her. Maybe because she still heard it in her dreams—dreams in which he’d spun his web of desire and deceit around her as easily as he had in real life.

And it was
those
memories, as well as the anger that was now so visible in the depths of his eyes, that got her moving.

“What are you doing here, Cade?”

The smile that touched his lips never warmed the icy, dark blue depths of his eyes. “You reported a murder. I’m here to investigate.”

She sat down at her desk and waved him to one of the visitor’s chairs. He sat down, his movements still full of power and grace.

“I mean, why are you really here?” She drank more coffee, grateful for the flush of warmth it spread through her otherwise chilled system.

He raised a dark eyebrow. “As I said, I’m here to investigate the murder of a human on this reservation.”

“And did you happen to tell your superiors that you were once involved with the chief ranger of said reservation?”

“How could I, when I didn’t know myself?” His gaze met hers, and all she could see—all she could feel—was his cold, cold anger. The warm caring that had once attracted her to this man had long gone—if indeed it had actually existed. “I knew you as Vannah Harvey, and you certainly had no pretensions of becoming a ranger back then.”

His comment had anger flicking through her, but she somehow reined it in. “And now that you
do
know that I’m the ranger here?”

“It won’t make any difference. You were nothing more than a means to an end, Vannah. A pleasant way to pass the time as I tried to catch a killer.”

Though she’d long known the truth, his words still hurt. After all, she’d once cared deeply for this man. Probably too deeply. To discover it was all nothing more than lies had cut to the quick. Yet his lies were not the worst of his actions. Far from it.

She leaned back in her chair and feigned a calm she didn’t feel. “My name is Savannah. Kindly use it.”

“Savannah,”
he mocked. “Such a sweet name.”

“So was the girl you knew as Vannah. You sure as hell cured her of that.”

Something flashed in his eyes. Not anger, because that was there already, but something deeper, darker. “The girl I knew as Vannah put on a damn good show, but time sure proved otherwise.”

“Time?” She gave an unladylike snort. “We knew each other less than a month.”

But it had been time enough to think she was in
love. Time enough to prove how bad a judge her heart and instincts could sometimes be.

“Sometimes a month is all it takes to prove how very wrong first impressions can be.”

“How very true,” she said dryly. “So why don’t we just drop the Happy Trails memory hour and get down to business?”

“Suits me.”

He crossed his legs, drawing her eye down the powerful line of his thigh and shin to the garish blue and red of his boots. A smile touched her lips. It seemed even the starched blue correctness of the IIS couldn’t break his love of cowboy boots.

“Tell me about the murder.”

Her gaze came back to his. “Everything is in the report, which I’ve no doubt you’ve read.”

“But I want your impressions.”

“Really?” Bitterness crept into her voice. “And why would you want the opinion of a no good—what was the term you used that night? Whore? Strumpet?”

His face closed over. “I thought we were keeping this to business.”

So they were. But it was harder than she thought it would be, especially when the warm mix of sage and tangerine that always accompanied him touched the air, stirring her hormones as much as it did her memories of the nights she’d spent in his arms, drinking in that same scent.

“There’s been a second murder,” she said, the annoyance in her voice aimed more at herself than him. God, anyone would think she was still that dizzy teenager, not the wiser woman she’d become. “Same MO.”

He sat up a little straighter. “Why didn’t you mention this straightaway?”

“It could have something to do with seeing the one person I never wanted to see again.”

Again that darkness flared in his eyes. “Tell me about the second murder.”

“As far as we can tell, it’s exactly the same as the first one. My people are up there now, locking down the scene and taking preliminary photos.”

“Who discovered the body?”

“A local teenager out for an early morning run.”

“You’ve taken his statement?”

Anger flickered through her. What in moons did he think she was, an amateur? “Hell no,” she drawled. “Was I supposed to?”

“Sarcasm is not what either of us needs right now.” His gaze bored into hers. “If you can’t handle me being here on this case, then step aside and let someone else take it.”

She didn’t bother answering. As the IIS officer for this region, he had no choice about being here—and as head ranger, neither did she. But he was right about one thing; she had to get a grip on herself. “The coroner should be up there by now. You got a team following?”

He nodded. “Two people. They should be here this afternoon. We will, of course, take over the investigation, though we’d appreciate your department’s help in dealing with the townsfolk.”

And he was going to need it, because the citizens of Ripple Creek didn’t cotton to the sort of superior attitude he was currently displaying. She took a sip of coffee and asked, “How far behind are they?”

“They’ll be here in a few hours.”

“Are you going to wait for them, or do you want to head up to the crime scene now?”

“I’d like to get up there before the scene gets too contaminated.”

That flicker of anger became a roar. “
My
people are well trained and damn good at their jobs!”

“But they aren’t trained for this sort of investigation, which is why the IIS is always called in.”

The IIS being called in had nothing to do with skill—or the lack thereof—but was simply a means of pacifying the humans who always seemed to think that the murder of one of their own on a werewolf reservation was the first sign of a planned uprising. Humans—or some of them, at least—seemed to live in permanent fear of wolves. Why, she had no idea—especially when humans had all but wiped out the werewolf population in America. Hell, of the twenty reservations that had been originally granted, only eleven now existed. And two of those were in jeopardy from the encroaching human population. Resettlement was currently being discussed, but she knew from her old man that
this
time the wolves were going to give the government the legal fight of its life.

But she didn’t bother saying anything, because voicing her opinion wouldn’t matter a damn. Cade was here, and that was that.

She gulped down the rest of her coffee and rose. “I’ll take you out there now.”

“Good. And on the way, you can give me your opinion about these killings.”

She bit back the instinctive urge to throw another bitchy comment at him. And as she walked past him,
she tried to ignore the warm scent of tangerine in her nostrils. But it wasn’t so easy to ignore his familiar presence at her back, or the way his heat seemed to caress her skin, burning her like the summer sun.

It had been that way the first time she’d met him—a rush of heat, and a fever that had become fiercer the longer she’d stayed in his presence. No wolf before or since had elicited that sort of reaction, and she was damn glad of that fact. These days, she was quite content to spend her time in Ronan’s arms, secure in the knowledge that the sex was good, that she was safe, and that he would never do anything to hurt her.

Kel turned around at the sound of their footsteps, and her gaze went from Savannah to Cade and back again. Though her expression was perfectly pleasant, Savannah was hard pressed not to smile. Cade had a lot of ground to make up if he expected anything more than the most basic assistance from Kel. And considering that the smooth operation of this ranger station greatly depended on the efficiency of its admin assistant, Cade was in deep trouble.

Unless, of course, he brought his own admin assistant—which, considering the sort of money being thrown at the IIS these days, was highly likely.

“Kel, I’m taking Mr. Jones up to Pike’s Clearing. If anything urgent comes up, call Steve in to handle it.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Have you booked rooms for yourself and your people?”

The deep blue of his eyes seemed to bore right through her. “Not yet.”

She repressed a shiver and glanced back at Kel. “And arrange two rooms at one of the local lodges.”

A smile touched Kel’s lips. “Right away.”

Savannah knew that look, and suspected that luxury accommodations—or at least, as close as they got to it here in Ripple Creek—were not in the offing. “In town,” she added, just to ensure they didn’t end up in some godforsaken corner on the outskirts.

Kel pouted, and Savannah smiled and led the way out the door. At least Cade couldn’t berate her about the accommodations—but she very much suspected that he’d have a lot of other things to discuss. Most of them in the past, and most of them things she’d much rather forget.

But if he thought she was still that meek, mild teenager, he had another thing coming. And if he wanted a fight, he’d get one.

Because after ten years of dreaming about those events, she was more than ready for it.

C
ADE SHIFTED SLIGHTLY
in the truck’s seat so he could study Vannah’s profile without being obvious. She’d changed more than he’d thought possible since he’d last seen her, and that surprised him—though why it did he had no idea. After all, he was no longer that green IIS recruit on his first assignment, so why would she still be that free-spirited teenager who’d captivated him so long ago?

The most obvious of those changes was the pale scar over her left eye, but while it caught his gaze, it didn’t really detract from her unconventional beauty. Nothing could—not the scar, or the shorter cut of her once gloriously long hair, or the cold wariness in her green eyes.

He’d always expected that they would meet again
sometime, simply because his work as an IIS officer took him to many different reservations. And though he’d never really thought about how he would react, he’d expected that anger would be first and foremost. It had certainly been there—hard, deep, and furious. But what he hadn’t expected was the rush of desire, or such fierce relief over the fact that she was safe, well, and whole.

And if anything, the flood of those last two emotions only served to make him angrier—at her and at himself. He’d followed the path of desire with her once before, and it had almost ended in his death. He would not go down that path again—not even for the woman who still haunted his dreams.

“Tell me your first impressions of the murders,” he said again, his voice a touch harsher than necessary.

She slanted him a frosty look. “It’s in the report.”

“I want
your
thoughts, not the sanitized summary you wrote for the IIS.”

A smile flirted with her lips—lips whose sensual touch he could still remember. “Do you
really
want to know my thoughts?”

“Do I have to put you on warning?” Maybe that would be a good idea. Two warnings and she’d be off the case, and he would be free to deal with the murders without interference from either her or the past.

“The killer uses a ritual to murder his victims,” she said, voice ultra-professional yet still managing to sound tart. “Blood results showed that the first victim was drugged. And, given there’s no evidence of resistance, I’d say the second victim was, too.”

“The stone circle was present in the second murder as well?”

She nodded. “As were the mutilations.”

“And what do you think of that?”

Her gaze met his briefly, the green depths giving little away. This reserve was new. Once upon a time, he could have read a world of emotions in her eyes. Though he’d learned the hard way that some of those emotions were nothing more than lies.