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  Copyright © 2016 by Paige Tyler

  Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover art by Kris Keller

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  A Sneak Peek at Wolf Hunt

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband, without whose help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant any girl could ask for!

  Thank you.

  Prologue

  Rochester, New York, July 2012

  “Lake-3, this is dispatch. Proceed to the two-hundred block of Burley Road and investigate reports of a noise disturbance in the area. Possible fireworks. Do you copy?”

  At the sound of his patrol cruiser’s call sign, Officer Alex Trevino snatched the radio mic off the hook on the dash, trying to visualize the area dispatch had described. Rochester wasn’t exactly New York City, but it was still damn big, and since he’d only been patrolling there for a few months, he needed to look at the map on his screen every once in a while to figure out where the hell he was supposed to go.

  “Roger that, dispatch,” he said, finally figuring out that the road was near the river. “Proceeding to the two-hundred block of Burley. ETA ten minutes.”

  He spun his car in a U-turn and headed north, flipping on the flashing lights. It was probably just a couple of kids popping off some leftover fireworks from the Fourth of July. That end of Burley was close to the woods and the Genesee River Trail, and teens frequently went there at night to drink and make out. He wouldn’t be surprised to find a few of them fooling around with cherry bombs and bottle rockets.

  It was nearly one a.m., so it took him even less time to get to the address dispatch had given him than he estimated. It was one of the reasons he liked working the night shift. During the day, it could take a cop fifteen or twenty minutes to get across the Lake Area patrol district, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. He’d made it in five.

  Alex slowed as he drove toward the end of Burley Road. He rolled down his window but didn’t hear anything. He was just passing a two-story colonial on the right when an older man wearing pajamas, a robe, and slippers hurried out and waved him down. Alex pulled up to the curb and got out of his cruiser.

  “You got here fast.” The man gave him an appraising look, taking in Alex’s crisp blue uniform and shiny badge. “I was sleeping when I heard the noise, so I’m not even sure exactly which direction it came from, but it sounded like gunshots. Could have been firecrackers, I guess. Figured I should call the cops just to be on the safe side.”

  “You did the right thing,” Alex said. He thumbed the mic on the radio clipped on his shoulder, letting dispatch know he was on the scene, then slowly walked along the road, eyeing each house as he went. Nothing seemed off. Maybe he should check out the trail, see if there was anything suspicious in the woods.

  He turned to head that way when he heard a noise coming from a house on the other side of the street. It almost sounded like a bottle rocket but not quite. He walked back over to the older man.

  “Do you know who lives in that house?” Alex asked.

  “Archie and Carole Barrett and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Jessica. My grandson took her to the middle-school dance back in the spring.” He frowned, his eyes filling with concern. “I hope they’re okay.”

  The man started across the road, but Alex quickly held out his arm, barring his way. “Please go back inside your house, sir, while I check it out.”

  He crossed the street and strode over the freshly mowed lawn, praying the neighbor didn’t do anything stupid—like try to follow. Climbing the two steps to the front porch, he knocked on the door.

  “Rochester Police. Anyone home?”

  No answer. He gave it a few seconds and rapped on the wood again, harder this time. Still nothing.

  He peeked in the long rectangular window to one side of the door, but the house was too dark to see anything. Hoping the picture window on the other side might offer a better view since there was a streetlamp nearby, he stepped into the flower bed and took a look but didn’t see anything to alarm him.

  Alex scowled. While his eyes and ears told him the sound he’d heard had simply been some kids goofing off in the woods behind the house, he knew that sometimes you couldn’t believe everything you saw or heard. Sometimes you had to go with what your gut was telling you instead.

  Not counting his time in the police academy, Alex had been on the street as a patrol officer for barely more than a year, but his time in the Marine Corps made him trust his instincts more than most new cops. He’d spent the past four years in the 1st Recon Battalion, deploying three times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. He’d learned that when your gut talked, you listened. And right now, it was shouting that something was wrong inside that home.

  He circled around to the back of the house, past the colorful swing set that looked like it hadn’t been used in a while and the covered pool, until he came to the sliding glass door. The house blocked any light coming from the street, so he couldn’t see a damn thing inside it from here, either.

  Cursing under his breath, he turned to go around to the front so he could bang on the door again, when he caught sight of a metal dog bowl half filled with water on the concrete patio. He glanced around, frowning at the chewed-up rawhide bone and a few other dog toys. If the Barretts had a dog, why hadn’t the animal barked when Alex knocked on the door? There wasn’t a dog on the planet who’d accept a stranger stomping around his territory.

  Alex reached for the handle of the sliding glass door before his head even figured out what he was doing. His st
omach plummeted when it slid open. Most people didn’t leave their doors unlocked, regardless of how nice the neighborhood was.

  He rested his hand on his weapon as he entered the house, wanting to be ready if he needed to use it. “Mr. and Mrs. Barrett, this is Officer Trevino of the Rochester Police Department. I heard a noise coming from in here. Are you all right?”

  Silence.

  Alex opened his mouth to call out again when he heard a soft, high-pitched sound that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

  What the hell?

  He drew his Glock and ran across the dark living room in the direction of the noise, reaching up to thumb the mic on his radio as he circled around a coffee table.

  “Dispatch, this is Lake-3,” he said softly. “Possible home invasion in progress. Requesting backup.”

  Alex finished rattling off the address on the way up the steps, almost tripping over the man lying on the floor at the top. Dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, he stared at Alex unseeingly. Despite the single bullet to the chest, Alex dropped to one knee and pressed his fingers to the side of the man’s neck to confirm what he already suspected. The man was dead, but hadn’t been that way for long.

  There wasn’t anything he could do for Mr. Barrett, but he might still be able to save the man’s wife and daughter. There was a good possibility that whoever had murdered Mr. Barrett was up here somewhere. Alex would bet a month’s pay the intruder had Mrs. Bennett and Jessica with them.

  Ignoring the dispatcher on the radio asking for details, Alex cautiously moved down the hallway. All the instruction in the police academy, not to mention four years of room-to-room clearance training he’d gotten in the Corps, took over as he left the first victim behind and continued along the dark hallway looking for the women and praying he’d find them alive. He cleared the bathroom first, then the laundry room, before coming to the master bedroom and the body of a middle-aged woman lying half off the bed, her throat slit. Dark red blood stained the pillow and sheets, spilling onto the carpeted floor.

  Shit.

  Alex swallowed hard. He’d seen wounds like this enough times in Iraq and Afghanistan to know there wasn’t any hope she was still alive.

  Turning on his heel, he strode for the last room at the end of the hall. The door, adorned with a poster of some boy band hunk that Alex couldn’t have identified even in good light, was closed. There was part of Alex that didn’t want to open it.

  He’d seen enough death when he was in the Corps. It was one of the biggest reasons he’d gotten out and become a cop. He’d hoped that as a police officer, he could actually save lives instead of seeing carnage every day.

  That wasn’t working out so far tonight.

  His heart in his throat, Alex turned the knob. He’d seen more than his fair share of man’s inhumanity to man, but even he wasn’t quite ready for what he found when he opened the door.

  The bedroom was bathed in the glow of an active computer monitor sitting on the desk by the far wall. Jessica was tied to a chair a few feet away, her eyes wide and filled with tears above the duct tape covering her mouth, her curly red hair tousled all over the place.

  But all the tape in the world couldn’t keep the girl quiet, not with the man standing behind her holding a long kitchen knife to her throat. Smirking, he pressed the blade more tightly against her skin. In his twenties, with short blond hair, he seemed so relaxed he might as well have been standing in line at Starbucks.

  Alex lined up the three glowing dots on the Glock’s sights with the man’s head at the same time as he scanned the small room. The asshole in front of him was the obvious threat, but being in Force Recon had taught him that the most dangerous threat was frequently the one you didn’t see until it was too late. But there wasn’t much else to see, not unless you counted the closed closet door and boy band posters lining the walls.

  That was when he caught sight of the big dog lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, blood matting the animal’s fur and staining the carpet, his side heaving as he labored to breathe.

  Shit.

  Alex’s gaze snapped back to the man behind Jessica, his finger tightening on the trigger. One little pull and the .45 caliber bullet would cleanly blow off the man’s head from this distance.

  “Drop the knife and step away from the girl.”

  He didn’t intend to give the asshole a lot of time to decide how this was going to go. The guy had already demonstrated he was more than willing to kill. If he refused to step away from the girl, Alex would have no problem putting him down.

  The jackass only smiled broader and dug the blade into Jessica’s neck even more. She screamed louder under the tape covering her mouth.

  Fuck this. He didn’t have time to talk this guy down.

  Alex had just started squeezing the trigger when he realized that Jessica wasn’t looking at him or even up at the sicko holding the knife to her throat. She was staring at something over Alex’s left shoulder. Suddenly, the panic in her eyes sent a completely different message than the one he’d received earlier.

  Gut clenching, Alex spun around just as a big blond man with a beard burst out of the closet and started shooting.

  The first bullet hit Alex in the center of the chest and knocked him backward, driving the air out of his lungs and hurting like hell. He would be dead if it weren’t for the bulletpoof vest he was wearing.

  He was still getting his feet back under him when the second and third shot hit him in the side, just under his left arm. He knew he was screwed the second the bullets tore through him. Lightweight covert Kevlar vests like the one he wore under his duty uniform weren’t meant to protect every inch of your torso, just as much as was practical. The sides were one of their weak areas.

  Alex fell back hard, the intense pain in his chest telling him the shots had hit something that was vitally important to his continued existence. Ignoring the long-term implications of that, he brought his right hand around until his Glock was pointing at the gunman. He squeezed off two shots and was rewarded with the image of both rounds drilling the sneaky fucker right through the center of the chest.

  Suddenly, breathing seemed more painful than it was worth. Alex’s whole chest felt like it was on fire. He wanted to say the hell with it. He’d fought hard and taken out a lot of bad guys in his time—including the son of a bitch hiding in the closet—and he liked to think all that had earned him a pain-free express checkout. But he couldn’t leave yet. Jessica was still in trouble with a psychopath holding a knife to her throat. There was more to do before he was finished.

  Gritting his teeth, he rolled onto his left side, dragging his right arm off the floor and straining with every muscle in his body to get his gun pointed in the general direction of the guy with the knife. Only, the asshole wasn’t standing behind the girl anymore. He was right there in Alex’s face, kicking his Glock out of his hand and sending it bouncing across the carpet.

  Alex braced himself, expecting the guy to plunge the knife into him, but instead, the bastard kicked him in the ribs, head, face, stomach, and anywhere else he could reach.

  Pain exploded through Alex’s body. He got his right arm up—his left wouldn’t even function now—and tried to defend himself, but it was useless. He was losing buckets of blood by the second. Sooner or later, the guy would get tired of what he was doing and skewer him with that damn knife.

  Just then, a snarl broke through the wave of darkness washing over him. Alex opened his eyes to see a big, furry shape lunge at the guy. The dog, covered in his own blood and so weak he’d barely been able to breathe moments ago, had somehow found the strength to clamp his teeth down on the man’s arm.

  The asshole shouted in pain and turned his attention on the dog, lifting the knife to stab the animal.

  Jessica screamed behind the tape, probably begging the dog to run and save himself. But that wasn’t the way th
is dog was going to go out. Alex decided it wasn’t the way he was going out, either.

  The gun was too far across the room to reach, but he still had one weapon left—his feet. He lashed out with his right leg, catching the psychopath in the side of the knee with his heavy patrol shoes. The kick didn’t have a lot of force behind it, but then again, knees weren’t built to bend sideways, so it didn’t take a lot. The man’s leg buckled, and he went down hard, the dog still on him.

  Climbing on top of the guy, Alex grabbed his knife hand, wrenching it away from the dog. The man struggled to get free of both him and the dog, and it was all Alex could do to keep his bloody hands wrapped around the asshole’s wrist.

  He had to hurry up and finish this—before the guy finished him.

  Growling as loudly as the dog helping him, he yanked the knife out of the killer’s hands, even though it sliced his fingers to the bone to do it. The man balled his free hand into a fist and punched Alex solidly in the jaw.

  Ignoring the pain, Alex took a deep breath and twisted the knife around to get it lined up with the psychopath’s chest. Then he collapsed on the hilt, driving the blade deep. The guy jerked once, then went still.

  Alex’s vision went black as the adrenaline rush disappeared, and he closed his eyes, unable to muster the energy to do anything else.

  Something wet and warm lapped his face, and he opened his eyes just as a smooth, slimy tongue hit his cheek. He groaned and halfheartedly shoved the animal away. But the beast refused to stop, instead licking even more insistently. It was like he was trying to keep Alex from giving up. This dog was too frigging much.

  Alex pushed himself off the dead guy and flopped onto his back, so weak he could barely move. The dog lay on the floor beside him, gazing at him with pain and sadness in his eyes. The animal’s breathing was so labored that Alex wasn’t sure how the dog had been able to attack the killer as fiercely as he had.

  Wincing, Alex spared a quick glance down at his side, then looked away just as fast. Shit, there was a lot of blood down there. He didn’t know a person could lose so much and still be conscious. Then again, he’d always been a little slow picking up the obvious.