Page 41 of Piece You Saved

I peel my eyes open and meet his gaze. “You mean like you have?”

It’s a low blow.

Dariel doesn’t even flinch, just nods. “You’ll do better than I have.” He offers me the pants. “Here, put these on.”

I take them and push myself to my feet. My legs are jelly. The only thing that stops me from colliding with Dariel’s carpeted floor is the hand he wraps around my shoulder.

“Why?”

“You need a good reason to remain human, and I know the perfect distraction from your wolf.”

My wolf.

Shit, I’m never going to get used to that.

“Which is?” I prompt.

He nudges me away from the entryway, but never releases me as he swings the door open. If anything, his grip on my shoulder tightens, as if he can’t or doesn’t trust what I’ll do if he lets go. It’s a gut punch. More proof my control is well and truly gone.

“Kade!” he yells down the stairs. “I need you both up here.”

After he’s yelled his order, he turns to me.

The muscles in my legs tremble, and he eases me down again.

“I don’t understand. Kade is my reason to stay human?”

“No,” he says. “Saige is.”

CHAPTER 12

SAIGE

We sit across from each other at the dining table with the overhead lights on, despite it being the middle of the day. With the kitchen windows boarded up until the contractors come back with glass, we’d be sitting in darkness if they weren’t on.

This whole setup, from the dark wood table, me on one side, a detective on the other, in a harshly lit room, is disturbingly similar to interview room number five. But this cop isn’t looking at me as if he thinks I’m shit on his shoe which he needs to scrape off at the first opportunity.

Maybe that’s why, against my better judgment, I told Kade I would speak with Detective Jake Morgan, when I have no desire to share breathing air with any cop, least of all a detective. Or maybe it was a decision motivated by pity, because I know Rylan, and if this cop thinks Rylan killed his sister, he likely did.

“What makes you think I can help you?” I ask him as my gaze briefly catches Kade’s gray stare.

I was wrong. This setup might have a lot in common with interview room number five, but there’s a pretty big difference. Kade. I don’t know how Detective Jake Morgan can focus so intently on me with Kade staring at the back of his head as if he’s working out what he’s going to do with his dead body.

Detective Morgan looks like he’s approaching thirty, and he’s a detective, not a uniformed cop. His instincts must be screaming that Kade has him in his crosshairs. I know mine would be.

“If anyone knows where he buried the bodies, you would,” Detective Morgan says. “Did you ever see my sister? She is—was—blonde, but we had the same brown eyes.”

After a moment, I shake my head. “No.”

Pity. There’s definitely pity mixed in with my decision to speak with him.

He nods, but he doesn’t look surprised by my answer. “I thought as much. He probably killed her right away. When I first joined the precinct, I asked for help. My boss told me who I was dealing with and that if I wanted a future, I should keep my nose clean. Don’t make any waves. You don’t lock up a man like Rylan Trevailer, he told me. You don’t eventhinkabout arresting him unless you find a body at his feet and a gun in his hand. Look—”

He stretches a hand toward me.

I shove myself to my feet. My chair topples, smashing into the hardwood floor as I back away from the table and the cop on the other side of it.

Kade straightens from the kitchen counter he’s leaning on with murder in his eyes. If Detective Morgan saw the wolf staring at him right now, he’d pull the gun from his holster and not stop shooting until Kade was dead.

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