The Beast Within. Suzanne Mcminn
damn well going to get what she came for.
Kieran didn’t care about her. Maybe he never had, despite their three years of marriage. He’d abandoned her and the PAX League without the slightest effort at defending himself or explaining the mystery of that final, fatal night.
How could he have so completely turned his back on everything they believed in? How could he have turned his back on her?
She’d seen the evidence, and it had damned him. Even so, the charges against him had been hard to buy. But she’d had to buy one thing—he’d left her, without a word of explanation or even a goodbye.
Now, she just wanted the long nightmare to end. She wanted a new life, and that meant leaving PAX.
And divorcing Kieran.
She left the beach and entered the thick woods. A rush of birds lifted up from the trees, the beat of their wings filling the air above her, followed by a scampering—-squirrels, or raccoons—from somewhere ahead. Through the shadows, she heard the tap-tap of a woodpecker. The maritime forest was home to countless animals, including the red wolf that Kieran had spent so much time studying as part of his work in PAX.
She supposed it wasn’t so strange that when he’d taken flight, he had buried himself in a place that was home to those same wolves.
She’d written, called, finally visited every family member, colleague, friend, distant acquaintance of Kieran’s. PAX had looked for him, too, she knew. He was their agent, even if he had turned his back on them. They wanted him back—and not to continue his ectoplasmic research. When they found him, he would be placed in a prison isolation facility for the rest of his life if what they believed about him was true.
For some stupid reason she didn’t dare examine, she couldn’t stand the thought of Kieran living the rest of his life in a government lockup. And maybe she was as crazy as they believed he was to still believe he could be innocent of the terrible charges that had been lodged against him. She’d conducted her own search quietly, carefully, behind the scenes.
When she’d visited Kieran’s cousin, Dub Walker, for the third time and he’d finally admitted he knew where she could find him…if she promised to keep Kieran’s secret, she’d agreed. And Dub had believed her for one reason.
She had loved Kieran with all her heart.
But like the song said, what did love have to do with it? Love had betrayed her, broken her soul, destroyed her dreams. She’d trusted him. And he’d let her down in the worst way.
She wasn’t sure what she wanted now, but she knew it had to start with closure. She could have divorced Kieran without the signature—there were ways, she’d investigated them. But she’d never be able to move on without facing him, one last time.
Damn Kieran for making it so hard.
She kept an eye on the time as she worked her way into the island forest. It was a strange, almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere of slash pine growth born of the disruptive force of fires and hurricanes that occasionally recreated the barrier island habitat. Shade-tolerant hardwood reached up within the pines, slowly taking over the swampy wood with hauntingly romantic palmettos and live oaks strung with creeper vines and Spanish moss.
The maritime jungle was so thick, the canopy of leaves cloaked the sky, and it was preternaturally shadowed, a world of endless twilight and unknowable sounds. Paige carefully hiked a grid pattern through the woods, mindful of the approaching weather…and the eerie sensation of being watched.
The noise of the helicopter must surely have announced her arrival. He would know it wasn’t Dub. His cousin—at least in his legal line of work—was a commercial fisherman, which was how Kieran had made his way to Callula Island. Dub hadn’t given her too many details, but she knew Dub brought Kieran supplies on a regular basis. Not directly to the island, but in sealed bundles packed in crates and set free such that they would eventually come ashore on Callula’s long beach. Every precaution had been taken along the way to protect the secrecy of Kieran’s location.
“He could be dead for all I know,” Dub had told her. “How could he have survived all this time, alone, on that island? But the crates keep disappearing off the beach. And so I keep bringing them. I don’t want to believe he’s dead.”
Paige understood how he felt. She didn’t want to believe Kieran was dead either. He had been the most vibrant person she’d ever known.
And she would know if he had died, wouldn’t she?
He was alive. She felt him watching her. Her pulse sped, and she glanced back, almost expecting to see him there. Eyes glowed out at her from the dense brush of the thick woods.
Kieran.
Then the eyes moved, and a shape formed from the shadows. It was a wolf, sleek and lean and beautiful. Paige watched the creature for a long moment, a sense of loss keening through her chest as it disappeared back into the forest.
She was too close to the edge, emotionally, and she had to get hold of herself. She was imagining things. Imagining Kieran’s eyes on her. Imagining that she knew Kieran, could feel Kieran.
How utterly, painfully ridiculous.
What if he was dead? What if she found his body, his skeleton?
She felt sick, and with all the training PAX had given her, she blanked the image of Kieran, dead, from her mind. She looked at her watch, pushed the button that lit the digital display. She’d been searching for three hours. Her legs hurt and her lungs burned as she kept up a steady pace. She had no time to waste. She had to keep on track, keep moving.
Had Dub lied to her? She couldn’t dismiss the possibility, but she had to search, had to hope that he’d told her the truth.
Continuing to hike the grid she’d mapped out, she found herself on higher ground. The forest became less swampy, more rocky and hilly, though still dense. Above, wind rustled louder.
The storm was coming. The helicopter pilot would be impatient. The hurricane was real, and it was coming, and she couldn’t ignore its dangers.
Suddenly, from out of the forest, a cliff-face rose before her. It took long, thudding pulse beats for her to recognize the large yawning darkness near the bottom for what it was—a cave. It blended into the mossy rock so seamlessly, she’d almost missed it.
She barely felt her feet, barely breathed, as she took one step, then another, as if in slow motion. She felt every pound of her heart. Blood rushed in her ears.
Then a hand clamped down on her mouth, an arm took hold of her waist, and an achingly familiar voice ground in her ear, “I want you off my island now.”
He twisted her in his arms, forcing her to face him. Paige’s eyes were wide, frightened—of him—and a gasp of shock exploded out of her against his palm. He knew what she saw, and it wasn’t the Kieran Holt she’d known. His brown hair was long, to his shoulders, and he hadn’t shaved in months. He was as wild as anything on this godforsaken island. Wilder.
And much more dangerous.
“Don’t scream,” he warned her, still holding tightly to her arms even as he dropped his hand from her mouth. She had adrenaline charging her strength, but he was stronger. Especially these days.
She blinked, said nothing, just stared at him for a long, horrible beat. He could feel her body trembling against him, feel her soft warmth even in the thick chill of the approaching storm.
“Kieran,” she breathed finally, almost a question, as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.
She smelled like lemons and sunrises and faraway dreams. It was nearly drugging, holding her this way. His sense of smell, like his eyesight, was sharper now. Almost painfully so. And nothing was more painful in his dark world than Paige.
He couldn’t bear to look in her eyes, that damnably burning blue that he could still see all too well, and found himself looking everywhere else—at her sweet, wide mouth, pale