Uh—what?The word chased a thrill right through Jessie, and she didn’t want to examine her reaction too closely. She swallowed, and repeated out loud, “Mate?”
“He wants you to produce his offspring,” Kade said.
Jessie’s gut spasmed as her mouth dropped open. “No effing way.”
“He has marked you.” Kade gestured to her shoulder. “Infected you with the Were virus.”
Cara had stopped smiling, and all traces of calm were rapidly fleeing Jessie. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”
Kade sighed. “Yes. I’m afraid it is.”
Jessie remembered the fever she’d had off and on for the three weeks of her captivity. “What does this virus do?”
Cara and Kade exchanged a glance. Cara answered. “If you’re lucky, it will turn you into a Were.”
Her gut twisted as every profane word she knew raced through her brain. An extensive list, to be sure. Turn her into a monster? Because she was bitten, just like the movies? And what did Cara mean, if Jessie waslucky? “And if I’m not?”
Kade cleared his throat. He met her gaze, with eyes glinting gold. “You will die.”
“We will do everything in our power to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Cara was quick to reassure. “I have reason to believe that you might just come through this okay.”
Jessie’s mind reeled. “Why’s that?”
Cara grinned, showing even, pearly white teeth. “Because you’re not human, either.”
13
The morning dawned with a cluster of police cruisers in Zach’s yard.
There were two types. The Winnipeg Police. And the local RCMP. Apparently, jurisdictions overlapped out here in the boonies. Winnipeg’s case, on the RCMP’s turf.
Spike did not understand. It was “his” turf. Zach had to lock him in the bedroom until the police insisted on searching there, too. So he moved Spike to a stall in the barn. The dog’s howls added a mournful counterpoint to Zach’s already bad day.
He’d called in again to work. Wanda had been less than understanding this time. “I’ll have to give your usual deliveries to someone else.” She warned.
“I know, I’m sorry. Things have gotten... complicated.”
“Will you be in Monday?” she asked.
He glanced at the officer standing in his kitchen. The man’shostilityhit him like a hammer. “I will have to let you know.”
“Well, I have to go. This will bugger up my morning.”
“I’m sorry, Wanda.”
She disconnected without saying goodbye, and Zach hung up thinking he’d likely just lost his job due to this mess.
Forty-five minutes into his interview with the officer, it seemed the least of his worries.
“Why would I call you”—Zach held his temper with no small degree of difficulty—“if I was involved in the kidnapping?”
It wasn’t the first time he’d pointed this out. Just like the twelve previous ones, the cynical officer sitting across his kitchen table from him ignored it.
“How do you explain the car ending up alongside your barn?”
They’d been over this too. Zach took a deep breath and tried again. “I can’t. I would have heard it if they’d driven it up. They must have pushed it there.”
“Pushed it.” The officer wasn’t buying it this time, either. “Up your five-hundred-foot drive. And through the mud to the barn.”
