Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2) Read online

  The idea was thin, ridiculous, but when I looked around at the guys, I was glad to see a chorus of nods. If someone questioned… If they pointed out… I needed this right now and the guys were ready to help, and that’s all I needed to focus on right now. I picked up the closest mass of paper and started flicking through it.

  “This is hopeless,” I said, hours later, settling back in the chair. It wasn’t entirely, since we’d developed a cohesive filing system for Dad’s paperwork. Invoices, bills, notifications, all filed by subject. We’d wrangled most of his documents into an orderly set of piles, but what had we learned?

  “It occurs to me,” Lorcan said, “that anything an intruder would come looking for in the middle of the night wouldn’t just be sitting on his desktop. If it was problematic, incriminated someone, your dad wouldn’t have left it out in the open.”

  “Agreed,” Declan said, dropping his bunch of paperwork into a pile. “I didn’t want to say anything.” His eyes flicked up to meet mine. “I was hoping you would. We need to go through Adam’s desk. His computer, his phone, but yeah, his desk.”

  I eyed the massive piece of furniture, but only Declan and Mase knew what it meant to me. As a kid, I’d pretended it was a castle, a barricade, the wall that kept the unspecified hordes out. Now? I smoothed my hand over the desktop, then dared to let my fingers trail down to the many little carvings all over it.

  “Is there some sort of significance here I’m not getting?” Zack asked, getting to his feet and looking the desk over.

  “The desk has a lot of hidden compartments. It stays with the Spehr family, but the exact layout of the drawers is passed on from alpha to alpha,” Mason replied, watching my fingers shift, pressing down on carvings when I found the right spots. “Paige knows some of them. She was obsessed with finding them all as a kid.”

  “I’m pretty sure I know where they all are,” I said, dropping down under the desktop.

  “You don’t.” My head bobbed up, peering over the top of the desk. “You showed me all of the ones you found, and your father…” Mase shrugged. “He showed me the rest.”

  Me, Declan, Micah, we all stared at Mason, because we were the ones that knew what that signified.

  “He meant for you to take over,” Declan said.

  “It was an insurance policy, nothing more,” he replied, but we didn’t believe him for a second.

  His hands followed mine over the desk, pressing some carvings so that small drawers popped out, then in combinations I couldn’t even follow to produce others. When he stepped back, we moved forward, removing everything we could find, from bundles of old photos, what looked like the original deed to the town, to a well aged bottle of Scotch, about half finished. But there, amongst a dried flower kept pressed between sheets of tissue paper that smelled of the garden and woman, underneath a faded ribbon and next to an old locket, was a flash drive, its crisp, plasticky, brightness incongruous against everything else.

  “What the…? Declan said, peering at it.

  “Data the alpha kept locked away?” Micah asked in a low growl. “Seems like we might have found what they were looking for.”

  But before we could examine the smoking gun, Mason’s phone rang.

  “Mason. Yep. You fucking serious? Kip knows not to take any notice, right? Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll be out in a sec, just keep her where she is.”

  Mason was not happy when he ended the call, frowning as he looked at me.

  “Your aunt’s decided she’s sick of waiting and has hired the local locksmith to try and get inside the gate. Kip’s in a dither because he doesn’t want to say no to a Spehr, but as he was the one who changed the locks and combinations for us in the first place…”

  “Fine, I’ll see her.” I grabbed the flash drive and shoved it in my pocket, nodding to the rest to put everything away. My teeth ground down as we cleared the table away, making it presentable.

  “See her in here,” Lorcan said, sidling close. “Bringing a potential criminal back to the scene of the crime? Bit of a time-honoured tactic.”

  “You can take in her scent, read her heart rate,” Declan said. “Not saying it’s her, but you’d at least be able to rule her out.”

  “Why would she want to attack you though?” Micah asked.

  Why would anyone, wasn’t that the question?

  I could tell my aunt was pissed before she even came through the door, her nostrils flaring. She walked in with a face like a smacked arse, something that didn’t improve when she sat down.

  “Take a seat, Nance,” I said wryly.

  “Aunt Nancy,” she corrected.

  “What brings you to the alpha residence, Aunt Nancy?” I parroted back, matching her tone.

  “What brings me…? The town is in an uproar. Adam’s body is to be exhumed by the coroner! Disturbed after he’d been laid to rest. There’s allegations being thrown around!”

  “They aren’t allegations. The coroner is ruling death by foul play.”

  “On what basis? We haven’t been briefed or kept in the loop on any of this, and then when the heir is attacked in the middle of the night…”

  I watched her eyes begin to shine, her bottom lip starting to waver as her hand went to her mouth, and felt something I hadn’t expected to before I came home—suspicion. I knew my aunty was a bit of a drama queen and a perfumed steamroller, but to be sitting here, watching her reactions and trying to verify if they were real or pretend, was an odd sensation. My hands were pushed into my pockets, my fingers seeking the flash drive like a Christian would worry rosary beads, turning it over and over.

  “I just wanted to see if you were OK,” Nance said finally, a picture of aggrieved concern.

  She put her hands neatly in her lap, straightening her spine into the formal posture she’d always tried to get me to adopt.

  “I haven’t spoken to anyone because I’ve been healing, Nance,” I said, biting off the words and liking the slight flinch in her. “Someone came into the house and fractured my skull, then left me for dead on the floor, so if I haven’t had a chance to meet with anyone about anything, you’ll understand. You and the rest of the family have been locked out because whoever did it was known to me. There were no unusual scents left, nothing to alert me that there was a stranger in the house.”

  “So you assume your own family would…? You think…?”

  If Nance was putting this on, she’d missed her calling as an actress. Her face was a picture of shock and disbelief.

  “So… So, why haven’t you locked out these men?” Her jaw muscles flexed as her eyes sparked with anger. “They are the only others who live on the estate. If you’re looking for someone to point the finger at, why not them? They had motive, wanting to be the next alpha and seeing as you have…the gift you have, they have plenty of incentive to kill Adam and hurt you.”

  “How do you work that out?” Mason asked with a frown.

  “Killing Adam brought Paige back to town, made her gift flare to life, made her do what she’s been trying to avoid—choose. And you have, haven’t you?”

  Nance looked over my pack with a scowl, as if every single one of them personally offended her. But it was Lorcan who became the focus of her ire.

  “And what the hell are you doing, letting the spawn of an Engel into the estate when you’re keeping your own family out? If anyone’s—”

  “Spare me.” Lorcan’s tone was like an idly flicked whip. “If you want to bitch about how shit my family is, get in line. I, however, arrived not long before Paige did. A little fast to be plotting the demise of an alpha I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, but don’t let the facts get in the way of your diatribe.”

  “So why did you come back to town to claim the ‘family estate’?” Nance sneered. “Your father took you away, hoping to raise you outside of the Engel influence. Didn’t stop your mother from crawling back though, did it?”

  “You don’t have to answer,” I said.

  I wanted to know, wanted to know all
of Lorcan’s secrets, but I cared enough not to want him spilling them under the beady eye of my aunt. He flinched when I reached out and took his hand, but when those dark green eyes swung my way, I saw a whole lot teeming within them—fear and anger, desire and need, pain, way too much pain, and something else. I frowned, searching his face, trying to identify what, but his gaze swivelled back to Nance.

  “I’ll never hurt Paige. I can’t.” He turned back to me. “Seeing you on the floor, the blood, then the fucking hospital. You could claw your way through the skin and bone of my ribcage, break my bones and rip out my heart, and it wouldn’t hurt as much as that.” He took a long shuddering breath, then looked at Nance. “For me, it’s Paige, always her, and whatever causes her pain and irritation, I can’t stand. It’s taking everything I fucking have not to pick you up by the scruff of your neck and dropkick you over the fence.”

  Low snarls from Declan and Micah showed my mate had support, but Mason stepped forward.

  “Nancy is a Spehr and is due the respect the name carries,” he said in a low but firm voice. “But there’ll be no more accusations made, Nance. The men in here are Paige’s mates.” Her mouth dropped open at that, and she surveyed them with fresh eyes. “You had your own in Bryan. You know what that means.”

  She did, if the pissed expression was anything to go by. We were right back where we started, with my aunt bristling.

  “The only people we’ve allowed near Paige are her mates and the medical professionals at the hospital, for obvious reasons. The other enforcers have been restricted to outside the house itself.”

  “I will be interviewing each one of them,” I said, “but let’s face it. The enforcers are the strongest, most dominant young men in town, collected together to work for the alpha and support his reign, but it’s not unheard of for them to turn against corrupt or problematic alphas. If the guys wanted to take out Dad, they could’ve done it through open challenge, had their push validated by the town, and that would’ve brought me back. Instead, someone tried to pass this off as a natural death, and I need to work out why.”

  “So will any of the details be shared with the family, or will you continue to keep us in the dark?” Nance replied stiffly.

  “Why would I give away anything when the police are still conducting an investigation? Everyone will be interviewed by them and me, and I’ll be pushing as hard as I can to ensure that all responses are truthful.”

  The air in the room became charged as I let my natural dominance leech into my words.

  “Tell the family to expect a call.” I got to my feet, looking down at her with the weight of my pack at my back. “Tell them that an investigation is underway, and that it will continue until the murderer is found. Tell them I will sort things out with the perpetrator, personally. Tell them the estate is off-limits, that hassling the locksmith or the police or the enforcers or their families will result in my attention being wholly focussed on the instigators. Tell them that there will be no secrets left in this family once I’m done, not until I know. Do you feel sufficiently informed now, Nancy?”

  I left off the familial honorific deliberately, something she noted with a terse nod.

  “We’ll be in touch,” I said as she got to her feet, spinning on her heel before storming out.

  “So… I’m not the only one who got a raging hard-on from that dominance display, am I?” Declan asked, shattering the mood as a series of chuckles and snorts came from my guys. Well, almost all of them.

  My eyes were drawn back to Lorcan, noting the tension in his body, his grim expression, and my hand took his as a matter of course. But like when Pygmalion kisses Galatea, one touch was all it took to unfreeze him.

  “We need a computer to take a look at that drive,” Zack said.

  “I’ll grab Adam’s,” Mason replied. “I’m pretty sure I know his password. We need to take a look at his hard drive anyway.”

  “Do that. I’ll be back, but I need to talk to Lorcan for a second.”

  He looked at me, then nodded, not sure why obviously, but there was something here. His hand tightened around mine and then drew me out the door into the living area before heading for one of the spare rooms. I was about to ask why when he turned to me.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said, finally pulling away.

  “I figured you might. I do too.”

  Chapter 5

  Would I ever get to the point where I wouldn’t feel the pull towards my mates? I definitely hadn’t reached that yet as I moved closer on automatic, my hand sliding around Lorcan’s neck, a long breath leaking out of him as I did so. Whatever he was going to say, whatever I was going to say, paused for a moment while there was just us.

  When I went up on tiptoes to kiss him, he yanked me closer, keeping my body pressed against his with a hand on my arse, making clear how responsive he was feeling. His mouth sucked on mine, moving slowly, kissing me deeply, until I pulled back.

  “You were going to say?”

  I expected him to lighten up or say something snarky, but he just watched me closely before nodding and looking away.

  “I’ve always known it was you, that you’re my mate. I didn’t knot for you at two years old or anything sick, but…” Those eyes darted back, burning intensely now. “I was drawn to you. They used to take me kicking and screaming from your nan’s house when we played together. ‘Pay… Pay…’ I’d cry. I’d be sobbing, you’d be crying. It got to the point your mum always picked you up first, to try to stop the dramas. It was then Dad knew we had to leave town. I was never going to leave the alpha’s daughter alone, and being an Engel…

  “So we moved a few towns away for a new life, where people didn’t know who we were.” He stared at the wall with a deadly intensity. “I cried every fucking night for you for years, feeling this longing that just wouldn’t stop. So I learned to just live with it. Half of my heart was walking around without me, what was left of it ached, and I just slapped a coat of denial and anger over it and called it good.”

  “Fuck… Lorcan.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me.” That was as close to a snap as he dared, his eyes boring into mine. “I didn’t tell you for that reason.”

  “I know, I—”

  “I just want you to know. They… Plenty of townspeople are gonna think it was me who hurt you, just for who I’m related to. I can’t, Paige, I never could. I dreamed of you all the time. Dad told me as I got older that you were some sort of vision of the girl I’d eventually mate with, but not that he knew exactly where you and your family lived. Mum came back here, but didn’t take me. Engel blood breeds true, they say. We cling to each other because no one else will touch us.”

  He pulled away from me, and I hated it.

  “Someone like me shouldn’t touch someone like you. It’s why Dad took us away, why he didn’t tell me. I came back here after he died, because where else was I gonna go? We kept to ourselves in Berkefeld, stayed out of people’s way, and all I had in the world was a shitty derelict house in Lupindorf willed to me.”

  “Lorcan…”

  “They’re gonna think it was me. Fuck, maybe it was one of my family that got the drugs illegally. I could ask around, see what I can find out.” He started to pace back and forth, his words coming out faster, harder. “Fuck… I should’ve thought of them. Maybe it was them that got inside the house. We didn’t smell them in here, but we never checked the backdoor.”

  He didn’t hear me, caught up in his cavalcade of thoughts. I called out to him, said his name, but the words kept coming out in a tumble—what people would think about him, what his family might actually have done to mine, what…

  I stepped in front of him, putting my arms up and grabbing him when he kept on going. For a moment, there was a war between his muscles and mine, our eyes locked together.

  “You’re scared.”

  He balked at my pronunciation, his head jerking back like he’d been slapped. His body went with it, edging away as he glared
down at me, eyes bright silver now.

  “You think I’m a fucking coward?”

  “Jesus, not like that. Lorcan…” I went to grab him, to hold him again, but he kept on backing away. “Stand still. That’s not it.”

  “Damn fucking right it’s not.”

  “But you’re scared that…that my aunt, or the police, or some other fucking nutbag in this town is gonna somehow tie what happened to Dad to you.” He swallowed hard, but he stopped moving. “You’re scared I’m gonna see the name, not the man. You love me, don’t you?”

  I asked that much quieter, much more gently, because even I didn’t have the balls to just declare that. He might see himself as some kind of town refuse, but that wasn’t what I saw, and I hoped like hell he got that in my eyes when I stared at him.

  My answer came when I moved closer and my fingers touched his skin, feeling that bond, our bond, jump like a live wire. His hand went up and cradled the back of my skull, just teasing the hair there gently.

  “With everything I’ve got,” he ground out. “I always have. My heart dropped through the floor when I saw you on that throne on the stage. It was you—a dream made flesh. Possibility, potential…destiny.” He shook his head. “I was a cunt because as I walked up onto that stage, I knew I needed to throw everything I had at your feet, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “It is.”

  “It’s not. What if…? What if one of my family did this?”

  “What if one of mine did?” I snapped back.

  We just stared for a moment, so much in that gaze, but I wouldn’t let it drag out.

  “Lorcan, you’re not an Engel or a Roth or anything other than what you want to be,” I said, pulling his head down. “But mine, you’re mine.”

  “I didn’t want to make it about this, about my family, about—”