A limo with two military vehicles in front and two behind pulled onto his street.
He sat on the porch whittling a small unicorn from a hunk of wood he’d found in the backyard and didn’t move until the limo stopped in front of his house.
He stood, dusting the wood shavings off his jeans and Jimi Hendrix T-shirt.
The limo door opened and his granddaughter came out. She looked so much like her mother it made his heart hurt, but he didn’t tell her that. She had enough to worry about.
The middle girl followed. She had a bloody nose and a black eye. She might have gotten it scrapping with some military types, but something told Charles that it had come from her older sister. That little honey badger was nothing but trouble and very hard to control.
And, finally, the youngest. She had her big backpack strapped to her shoulders, and she ran awkwardly to keep up with her bigger sisters.
“Pop,” his granddaughter said as she walked by.
“Pop-Pop,” said the little Asian one.
“Hello, Grandfather,” said the youngest.
“Welcome back.”
She stopped to smile up at him and he smiled back. She’d cried once when he hadn’t returned her smile, so he always smiled back. Always.
He placed the unicorn in her hand and she grinned. “Lovely artistry,” she murmured, studying it before disappearing into the house.
Before he turned around again, he knew that there was a wolf standing within ten feet of him.
Taking his time, Charles looked over his shoulder until he locked eyes with what had to be a Van Holtz. An old Van Holtz, but still, at any age, Charles’s Pack had always avoided Van Holtz wolves.
“What?” Charles asked.
“Edgar Van Holtz.”
“I don’t care.”
He smirked. “You should. I’m the reason your granddaughter and her sisters are back with your Pack and not in maximum detention at some army base. They did do some damage. There are many who think that at least the oldest should be charged.”
Now Charles smirked. “Please. Like you could hold onto any of them.”
Van Holtz nodded, grinned. “Good point.” He looked at the door the three girls had disappeared behind. “My suggestion—”
“Which I didn’t ask for.”
“But you’ll get it anyway. Put the little one out there. Like when she was into music. But now do it for science.” He handed Charles a folder. “Give this to the oldest. Get Stevie signed up for these science competitions and special grants. It will get her name out there.”
“And do what? Make her a bigger target?”
“Our government won’t be able to just take her without every news source in the universe going after them, wondering what happened to Stevie MacKilligan. And other governments will have to deal with the US if they try to take her. Again.”
“Again?”
“Some foreign interests, when they found out she was too tightly watched at the base, sent in agents to put her down.”
Charles’s angry frown was so vicious that Van Holtz raised his hands. “Calm down. It was handled.”
“By you? Or my girls?”
That smirk. “Good luck, backwoods wolf,” Van Holtz said, returning to his limo. “You’ll need it with those three.”
Charles sneered at what he was sure was a tailored suit hanging off that man. Nothing he hated more than snobby wolves.
His eldest granddaughter came out of the house and stood beside him, watching all the vehicles head off.
“Everyone okay?” he asked.
“Yep.”
He handed her the file of information the wolf had given her.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Competitions, grants, all that stuff. You need to get your sister involved.”
“For the money?”
“For safety. Get her name out there. Get her known. We don’t want anyone doing this to her again.”
His granddaughter nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
He knew that. She took care of everything. Weight of the world sat on those shoulders.
“Look,” he said, turning toward her so they faced each other. “Do whatever you’ve gotta do to protect your sisters. I’ve got your back.”
“I know you do. I just—”
The screams of sibling hostility exploded from inside the house, and his eldest granddaughter closed her eyes, letting out a huge sigh. She hated when her sisters fought, but Charles didn’t mind it so much. It was the only normal thing about the three of them.
She turned to go into the house but stopped long enough to go up on her toes and kiss his cheek.
Without a word, she moved away from him and he faced the yard again, staring straight ahead. He heard the front screen door open, and his eldest granddaughter barked, “Max! Untwist Stevie’s tongue right this second! I don’t care what she said to—hey! That does not mean grab her throat! Release Stevie’s throat right this second. This very second or I swear by all that is holy—”
Charles smiled. Although he knew he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t condone their behavior, but how could he not find that just so cute?
chapter ONE
Thirteen years later . . .
Doreen thought she was dreaming. Thought it was all imaginary. Something sad and twisted in her subconscious. But when she turned over . . .
The small but powerfully built woman was straddling her elderly husband, her knees pinning his arms to the bed, a pillow over his face. Her husband, Peter MacKilligan, was struggling with all his might to dislodge the woman who was on top of him. But nothing he did worked.
Her husband was old. Nearly eighty-five. But his body didn’t show his true age. He looked like he was still in his fifties. He was strong. Still boxed, lifted weights, swam every day in their indoor pool. He’d always told her it was genetic. “The men in my family are all like that,” he’d say.
And yet . . . he couldn’t get this woman off him.
Doreen turned and reached for her cell phone, but that’s when the woman spoke.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said. She had an accent. Sounded like her husband’s half-siblings from Scotland.
Doreen looked at the woman over her shoulder. She was still on top of Pete. Still pinning him to the bed. Still smothering him with a pillow.
“Here’s the thing, luv,” the woman calmly explained in the midst of killing a man. She even had a smile. A large, bright smile. “You can call for help. Use your phone. Or just scream for one of Pete’s boys. And help will come. I’ll run, of course. They won’t catch me. I’m fast, ya see. I’ll be gone and you’ll have stopped this. How proud you’ll be. But then . . . one night . . . when everyone’s forgotten about you, I’ll be back.”
Pete’s struggles slowed and, after a little longer, stopped.
Leaning back, the woman pulled away the pillow and pressed two fingers to Pete’s throat. Satisfied, she slipped off him and came around their bed, sitting down next to Doreen.
Brushing her hands against each other, as if she was dusting off flour after making bread, she continued, “And when I come back, I’ll peel that pretty face right from your skull. Wouldn’t like that, now would ya?
“Of course not,” she said, patting Doreen’s knee through the bed sheet. “I’m sure you wouldn’t like that at all. My Great-Uncle Pete always had an eye for the beautiful ladies. What are you? Wife number six?” She shook her head. “I never get it. You marry once, I understand. You marry twice . . . sure. First one could have easily been a mistake. But after that . . . you’re just an idiot.”
She crossed her legs, picked some lint off her jeans.
“Now,” she went on, “like I said, you could scream and cry and call for help. Or, you can wisely keep your mouth shut. Wait until I’m long gone and call for one of Pete’s boys. They’ll think he died natural. Let them. They won’t want an autopsy. MacKilligans don’t like that sort of thing.” She sighed, sounding disappointed. “That’s why I had to do it this way, you see. I would have much preferred to put a leather strap around his throat and wring the life from him. It would have taken ages, too, but there’s honor in that—for both of us. Because for our kind . . . it takes a lot to kill us. But I guess you don’t know much about that, huh?” She sniffed the air. “Yeah, full-human . . . so you don’t know about any of that. But you can count yourself lucky. You’ll get a nice bit of cash from the estate and can go on and live your life as long as the Almighty allows. Won’t that be nice? Rather than waking up again . . . and finding me standing over you?”
Doreen forced herself to nod.
“That’s a good lass.” Again, she patted her knee and Doreen fought the urge to recoil. To run screaming from the room, the building . . . the state.
The woman stood, stretched her back. The sound of bones cracking had Doreen cringing.
She watched the woman walk across the room to the open window she’d probably come through.
“Now don’t forget,” she added before slipping back out as soundlessly as she’d slipped in. “Lots of tears for his sons, and lots of ‘He can’t be dead. He can’t be dead.’ That’ll impress the family. And they deserve that, don’t you think?”
Then with that disturbing grin still on her face, she was out the window and out of Doreen’s life.
Shaking with a fear she’d never known, Doreen slipped deep into the covers next to her dead husband and waited until the alarm clock went off. Then she got up, went to one of her stepson’s rooms, and, while the family gathered, rushing around to call the doctor they had on payroll and the lawyer who kept them all out of prison, she sobbed and sobbed and kept repeating, “He can’t be dead. He can’t be dead.”
* * *
When he went to bed late that night, he thought she’d be there to complain about his long hours working, but then he remembered . . . he didn’t have a wife like everyone else. He had Irene Conridge. The genius.