Page 117 of Her Wolf

Finn swallowed hard. It wasn’t that he was scared of dogs, but he’d only ever been on the receiving end of their attacks. Pitbulls had jaws of steel, and the tenacity of a fucking mountain goat making its way up a sheer cliff.

Finn crept deeper inside the house.

The first door to the left was a small sitting room. A fire was dying on the heart, only red hot coals still glowing.

That wasn’t where the smell had come from.

Finn moved to the next doorway.

A dining room.

“Christ,” Kane muttered behind him. “You’d think someone like Zachary West could afford a maid or two.”

Finn didn’t want to agree, but he had too. The place was a mess; dirty dishes, flies…a rat scurried away into one corner when Kane shone his flashlight over the filthy table. The light trained on two plates. Cleaner than the rest, they both had remnants of a meal on them.

The sight made Finn’s skin crawl. It was possibly Zachary and Duncan had eaten here before heading to the party, but—

“At least we know he doesn’t plan on killing her just yet,” Kane said almost conversationally from behind him. Apparently, the man had surmised that the pitbulls were in fact not here, because he didn’t bother lowering his voice.

“He fed her,” Finn supplied, turning on his heel and catching the faintest trace of surprise in Kane’s hazel eyes.

Kane nodded, and shone his light just ahead of Finn as they headed for the hallway.

They searched the bathroom, a small storage room, and a guest bedroom. Then Kane’s flashlight shone a yellow circle against the slightly ajar door down the hall.

Master bedroom.

It was always the master bedroom, wasn’t it?

Finn fought hard for breath as he moved down the hall. He could already sense the room beyond was empty, but at the same time his beast had begun to pace and wicker to itself like an unsettled horse.

He pushed the door open, and couldn’t wait for Kane’s light to sweep the room so he fumbled for the light switch.

Light blossomed.

“Mother Mary have mercy,” came Kane’s voice behind him. He couldn’t quite make out if the words were reverential, filled with disgust, or both.

Finn stepped inside, immediately pressing the back of his hand against his nose. It didn’t help; rank putrefaction hung in the air like a diseased fog.

His eyes kept shying away from the body on the bed. Not because he’d never seen a corpse at such a late stage of decomposition, but because he kept thinking he recognized those bloated features.

Kane stepped past him, his flashlight going into his pocket as he crouched beside the bed to study the dead body.

Finn checked the en-suite bathroom. Empty, and filthy. The smell in here was almost as bad as it was in the room.

He came to stand beside Kane as he took his phone from his pocket.

It was a call he didn’t want to make; his throat closed up at the thought. But Lars and Bailey had to know that he’d failed.

That they’d failed.

Kane took a pen from his pocket, and leaned closer.

Finn grabbed his arm, yanking him back. “The fuck are you doing?” he snapped, in a voice too loud for this room.

“Checking something,” Kane murmured, tugging his arm free. He glanced up at Finn, as bright eyed as a professor sharing intimate knowledge of some arcane subject with a pupil. “He’s American, see, but I’m convinced there are Santerian influences in some of the punishments he meters out to his enemies.”

“Punishment?” Finn repeated, wondering if Kane even realized what he was saying.

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