Page 164 of Secret Shifters Next Door

My brother jolted to a stop and looked at me. The shame and guilt on his face hurt more than any physical pain I’d ever experienced. In an instant, he went from being a grown man to a little boy. A boy who’d been caught doing something wrong. Something terrible.

“Kellan, how did you know about the box?”

His eyes widened. “The box? Um… you… no, sorry. Steff, he told me.”

“You told me a few minutes ago that you hadn’t spoken to Steff. He didn’t tell you,” I said, keeping my voice calm, almost like I was explaining something to a child.

“Uh… the news. I guess I saw it on the news, right?”

I shook my head slowly. “The cops haven’t released that information to the media yet. The only people that know what was in that box are me, Steff, his friends, and…” I paused for a moment, taking a steadying breath, “and the person who put it on my porch.”

From beside me a voice screamed from the tiny speakers. Steff’s voice. “April, get the fuck out. Get out now!”

Kellan’s eyes jerked to the phone then back to me. The look on his face was almost comical. Then I saw his eyes, and my blood ran cold. They weren’t the eyes of my brother. They were the eyes of a crazed, panicked animal.

The tears were already slipping from my eyes. “Kellan… what did you do?”

He sucked in breath after breath, literally hyperventilating. When the words came, they spilled out in a chaotic rush. “They said you wouldn’t get hurt. Said it was only to scare you. They said if I did it, then Aiden would be safe. He told me that I had to do it or… or… the next time,” Kellan started to sob, snot and tears streaming down his face, “that the next time they took my boy, they’d video what they did to him. That they’d mail piecesof him back to me. I had to do it, April. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” He slid to his knees, holding his hands out to me as if in supplication. “But I had to protect my son. My beautiful boy. I had to. They could take him anytime they wanted. I had to keep him safe.”

I stared at him in horror and disbelief. My brother had never looked so destroyed. Even when Aiden had been taken. At least then it had been an unknown evil. Now? He’d been threatened, sent to the verge of madness with fear. Ryland had broken him and used him as a weapon against me. I’d already forgiven him. If it had been my own son? I knew in my soul I’d have made the same deal with the same devil.

Steff’s voice was still screaming from the phone, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I was about to stand up and go to Kellan, take him in my arms and tell him everything would be all right. Just as I shifted positions, the first bullet slammed through the window. The pop of glass and the puff of drywall happened a millisecond before we heard the first gunshot.

The house exploded in noise and chaos. Thepop-pop-popof gunfire shattered the silence of the afternoon. Holes riddled the wall across the window. I sat, frozen, in shock. My hair fluttered up and a sharpzapsound buzzed in my ear as a bullet missed my head by less than an inch.

Kellan leaped to his feet and tackled me off the ottoman. The breath whooshed out of me as his full weight collapsed on top of my body. I gagged and tried to suck in a breath as I pushed and shoved at him, trying to fight him off. Was he attacking me? Trying to subdue me until the hunters got there?

Then his voice was screaming in my ear. “We have to get out. You have to run.”

Finally getting air into my lungs, I gasped, “What’s happening?”

Before he could answer, the front door shattered inward. Kellan rolled off me and pushed me behind him. We stood slowly, watching as three men stepped through the door. None of them were Ryland, but they all looked terrifying. The two in the back held what looked like submachine guns. The biggest man in front carried a pistol, which hung casually in his right hand. Kellan inched us backward, keeping his body between them and me.

The man in front shook his head sadly. “All you had to do was what you were told, Mr. Knight. It was not a hard assignment. All you needed to do was keep your damn shifter-loving mouth shut.”

My body quaked in fear. I’d never been so close to death in my life. My ears were ringing from the gunfire, but I could still hear the tinny voice of Steff screaming for me through my phone. The man glanced down at my cell on the floor. He then looked at us and grinned. Without hesitation, his pistol swept up toward us. Kellan roared in defiance, I screamed in terror, and the gunshot shattered everything.

THIRTY-TWO

STEFF

“April!” There was only silence after the last, deafening gunshot. My stomach heaved, and I forced down the bile that rose to my throat. I threw the phone to the floor. “Goddamn it, hurry, Miles.”

I was in the passenger seat. Miles already had the truck going as fast as it would go, but it still seemed like we were sitting still. In the rearview, I could see Tate’s truck right behind us with Blayne in the passenger seat. We were maybe three minutes away from Kellan’s neighborhood. It might as well have been a thousand miles.

The initial phone call had come in while I’d been at the office with the guys. At first I didn’t understand what was going on. When what was happening had become clear, I panicked. The sound of April questioning Kellan had sent me into a frenzy. I’d told her to stay home with her family, to not to leave the house. It had been confusing to hear her talking to Kellan.

I understood my mistake as we drove. I’d assumed April’s parents would simply stay at her house. They must have taken her for a visit to Kellan’s. Maybe to see Aiden. All I’d told April was to stay with family. Being too afraid to tell her more, I never told her to stay away from Kellan. How could I have withouttelling her what we’d found? I’d been an idiot. I should have told her the minute we knew he had a part in it. The very fucking second I saw Kellan’s face on the screen. Now I was paying for that stupidity. Maybe paying for it with April’s life.

I shook my head violently, trying to throw that thought out of my mind. Unable to do anything while we drove, I slammed my shoulder into the door in frustration.

“Bro, I’m going as fast as I can,” Miles said. “It’s going to be okay.”

He couldn’t know that. He wasn’t the one who’d heard the gunshots like fireworks going off through the phone speaker. He hadn’t listened to April and Kellan screaming. He couldn’t know what I was going through. It wasn’t his fault, but I still wanted to slug him for saying everything would be okay. What if they weren’t? What if?

Miles rounded the corner, barely staying on four wheels. Up ahead, I saw the flashing lights of police cars and an ambulance. My breath caught in my throat. The neighbors must have called the cops as soon as they heard the gunshots. The front of Kellan’s house looked like Swiss cheese. Dozens of bullet holes peppered the siding and windows. I leapt from the truck before Miles had even slowed down. The only thing keeping me from falling face first into the pavement was my shifter speed and balance.

I sprinted across the lawn toward the house. I glimpsed one of Kellan’s neighbors pointing down the street. The woman had tears in her eyes as she spoke to a police officer. I was near the front steps when a deputy grabbed me by my shoulder, stopping me.

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