Page 145 of The Piece You Stole

Fuck.

I run. Shove open the front door. See them just ahead. Saige is backing away, a sharp bite of fear lacing her sweet jasmine scent. Garrett is moving toward her with a crazed, grief-stricken look in his painfully familiar blue eyes.

Whatever instinct Aden has must wake him because no sooner have I tucked Saige behind me and told her to go, his amber and licorice scent is at my back, and he’s leading Saige inside.

I grip Garrett by the nape and force him around the side of the house. “What the fuck are you doing here, Garrett?”

He wriggles. Pointless when a shifter has a hold of him and he’s only human. Just as Mona was.

“It’s her anniversary next week,” he says, as he flails about like a caught fish. All it does is make his leather pants slide down, forcing him to yank them up again. “I go to the Cerberus expecting the men who supposedly loved her would be thinking about her. Instead, I find out that they’ve shacked up with another girl.”

Who…?

Greg.

If he’s back from vacation and he has Sam down there helping him with the knee-deep clearing of the bar, a knock on Cerberus’ front door from Mona’s brother wouldn’t go unanswered. And then…this.Thisis what would happen.

I force Garrett to halt at the side gate, and key in the code to unlock it, not bothering to hide the number since I’ll be changing it as soon as I’ve tossed Garrett out. I swing the gate open and prepare to launch him out into our quiet street, but then I pause. How the fuck did he get his ass in the backyard in the first place?

He couldn’t have gotten in through here. The gate is too high to climb, and with the coded lock hooked up to our security system, any tampering or too many failed attempts would have set off an alarm. We’ve set up motion sensors on the gate at the bottom of the garden that leads into a public forest. There’s no other—

The door on the back gate.

Force a door or break a window would set off an alarm. But unlock it…

Mona had her own set of keys, which we found in her pocket after she’d died. But if she’d had copies made and left a set with her big brother…

I slam Garrett on the side of the house, ignoring his yell as I pat down all his pockets. Front and back. When the back right jingles, I dip my hand in and fish out a set of keys. And, yep, there it is. A key to unlock the back gate and the backdoor. With these, he could’ve walked right in whenever he wanted. He could have followed Saige in, even if she’d locked and bolted the door behind her, as she’d seemed like she was getting ready to do.

I wrench the gate wider and force him out to the edge of our front garden. Since the only cars parked up outside are Dariel’s silver Mercedes and a deep blue Hyundai Tucson, I shove Garrett at the Hyundai and turn away. “Don’t come back here.”

I turn to walk back inside.

He scoffs. “I see how it is. First, you kill my sister, and now you’re preying on some other girl.”

I stop.

Our house is the last on a lonely stretch, not in the nicest of neighborhoods around, but the house was cheap, and we weren’t afraid of putting in a little work to do it up. We don’t have any neighbors close enough to hear Garrett’s accusations, but Saige is a few feet away. If she hears something that makes her feel like she isn’t safe here with us and causes her to run into danger?

My wolf snarls at me to rip Garrett apart.

I release a slow breath. It isn’t often I hold myself back from a fight, but this one would be so one-sided it isn’t even funny. “You’re Mona’s brother. It’s the only reason you’re still alive now. Come back here, Garrett, and not even that will save you. I promise you that.”

“So you’re not even going to deny it!” Garrett shrieks. “Murderer!”

My eyes go to the windows at the front of the house. It’s fucking lucky that the kitchen is at the back because if Saige had been in her room right now, she’d have heard this, and she’d have run.

I angle my head to face him. “You stopped listening to reason years ago. Now fuck off.” I give him a long look at the wolf inside me that doesn’t particularly care whether he’s Mona’s brother or not.

Garrett knows about shifters. Not many humans do, but because we learned too late that Mona could never keep a secret, it wasn’t long before Garrett knew too.

Garrett’s face pales, and he stumbles back against his car, fumbling in his back pocket. I remember the set of keys in my hand, tease out the one that looks like a car key and toss it at him. He doesn’t even try to catch it, just fixes those blue eyes—Mona’s eyes—on me as the key bounces off his chest, and the ripe scent of his terror drifts toward me.

Shaking my head, I turn to enter the house through the front door. I’ll deal with recoding the back door after, but right now, I need to speak to Dariel about this situation with Garrett.

I’m reaching for the smart lock to key in the code when Garrett takes off, just as another car pulls up. Right outside.

I wait for a beat, hoping it’s just someone looking for directions.

---