Full Moon Rachel Hawthorne (top 10 novels .TXT) 📖

“I don’t see that we have a choice. He’s not one of ours. He could have family somewhere.”

Sheriff Riley, however, was one of ours. He’d play this any way he could in order to keep the press low-key and to ensure the National Enquirer didn’t start poking around for a story on rabid wolves or werewolves that tore out the throats of unsuspecting tourists.

“I’m going to take Lindsey back to her cabin,” Connor said.

“Okay,” Lucas said, distracted, staring at the body.

I didn’t remember anything about the walk back to my cabin, except that it had been silent. The owls weren’t even hooting. It was as though the entire forest had gone into mourning.

When we got to my cabin, I opened the door and walked in. Connor followed.

Kayla was sitting up in bed. She threw back the covers and hurried over to me. I wondered what my face showed—maybe she saw that all the blood had drained from it. I felt like a walking zombie. “Are you okay?” she asked.

I was beginning to think that was the dumbest question in the entire world. Why would people ask that when it was obvious I wasn’t?

“Tell her, okay?” I asked Connor. “I want to take a shower.”

I strolled into the bathroom and closed the door. I turned the knob on the shower as far as it would go in the direction of hot water. It was summer and the nights were cool, but I felt as though I’d just walked across the frozen tundra. Without removing my clothes, I stepped into the shower, sat on the floor, and just let the water slam into me. I felt like the scent of blood had saturated my skin and clothing. I drew up my legs, wrapped my arms around them, pressed my forehead to my knees, and started to cry.

As a rule, I wasn’t much of a crier. But Dallas hadn’t seemed like a bad guy. He wanted to help us. Why hadn’t we realized the risk he was taking? We’d met several of the Bio-Chrome scientists—they cared about one thing and one thing only: getting to the root of our DNA.

I heard the door open and a bit of coolness seeped into the room that was now cloudy with steam. I was probably scalding myself, but I seemed incapable of feeling anything.

“Lindsey?” Kayla asked as she drew the curtain aside just a bit.

“Please don’t ask me if I’m okay,” I insisted.

“I won’t.” She reached over and turned off the water. “Let’s get you dry.”

“I can do it.” Somehow I did. I managed to get out of my wet clothes, dry off, and put on the pajamas she’d set on the counter for me. When I was finished, I left the bathroom and crawled into my bed beside hers.

“Where’s Connor?” I asked.

“He left. He wanted to go back and help Lucas figure out what happened.” She sat on the edge of my bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“When my parents were killed, I didn’t talk about it,” Kayla said. “That kind of trauma can mess with your head.”

“We barely knew the guy,” I reminded her. “But he seemed nice.” It didn’t even sound like me talking. Where were these words coming from?

“Connor said he doesn’t think it was a random animal attack. He thinks it was murder,” Kayla said. “Either one of us has gone over to the dark side, or one of the Bio-Chrome people has a trained dog or wolf.”

“We were the only ones who knew he was going to help us,” I said. But I couldn’t help but believe that Bio-Chrome was involved.

I was still cold. I slipped further beneath the blankets and looked at Kayla. “I guess we’ll find the answers when we find that Bio-Chrome lab,” I said.

“I wonder how much harder that’s going to be now.”

“I don’t know, but hard isn’t impossible. At least we know the direction to go in.”

“Unless he lied,” Kayla said quietly. “Maybe his mission was to put us off track.”

“Well, we can’t solve the mystery tonight. I’m going to sleep.”

“Are you sure you’re—”

“I’m totally fine,” I answered before she could finish. I rolled over, giving her my back. I heard her bed creak as she settled in. Then the lamp between our beds was clicked off.

I lay there for the longest time, exhausted but unable to sleep. I was acutely aware of Kayla becoming absolutely still. She was never restless in sleep. Then I sensed something beyond the door—a scuffling sound, like someone had stepped onto the porch.

Slipping out of bed, I crept barefoot across the cabin and slowly, quietly opened the door. I stepped onto the porch and drew the door closed. I wasn’t sure how I knew it would be Rafe there. I just knew. I wanted to walk into his embrace, to hold him and let him hold me. I thought about the argument Connor and I had been having. Did he mean what he’d said? Was he right? Did I need to explore these feelings I had for Rafe?

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Rafe said quietly, standing with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

“You didn’t.”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

I felt the tears sting my eyes. “Rafe, I think maybe it’s my fault he was killed.”

“What? No.” Reaching out, he tenderly skimmed his fingers along my cheek. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“But if I hadn’t gone to look for blackberries, if he hadn’t seen you in wolf form—”

He touched his finger to my lips to silence me, then drew me up against him. I drew comfort from his hands stroking my back.

“If he’d told us everything that first night, things might have gone differently. We’ll never know. Things played out the way they did, but none of us had control over that. The only thing we know for sure is that someone was looking for him and now he’s dead. But you can’t carry that burden.”

I