Page 9 of Watch Me Burn
“And then what?”
Silence stretches between us. We both know the answer. I’ll watch him and wait for him to give me a reason for what’s already decided. If he so much as looks at Luna wrong again, he’s a dead man.
“One more thing.” I glance back at the screen, but Luna’s kitchen sits empty now. “Make an anonymous donation to Luna’s sanctuary. One hundred thousand. Enough to build her bobcat enclosure and then some.”
Cade raises an eyebrow. “Anonymous how? She’ll ask questions about a donation that large.”
With a few quick strokes on my keyboard, the screen changes to inside the sanctuary’s main room. Luna is going about her morning business of greeting and feeding the animals.
“Figure it out. Just not the same trust we used to pay off her debts. And make sure she can’t trace it back to me.” She shouldn’t have to struggle when I have more money than I can spend in ten lifetimes. “And make it today.”
“This is only going to make her more suspicious if she digs.”
“She won’t. She needs the money too much to question its source.” At least, I hope she won’t. But even if she does, it’s worth the risk to see the worry about that bobcat disappear from her beautiful face.
Cade clears his throat as his eyebrow arches. “If you’re done mooning, can we hit today’s highlights?”
I drag my attention back to business as we prepare for the morning meetings that pulled me to Denver, away from the mountains where my heart lives. But my eyes keep shifting to the screen over Cade’s shoulder. Luna is feeding what looks like oatmeal to that pervy raccoon of hers, as he keeps trying to grab her breasts.
Part of my mind stays fixed on the impossible problem of loving someone who doesn’t know I’m deceiving her. When she finds out that her wolf and Damien are the same man, she’ll run from me. Never forgive me.
And I’d rather live with this aching deception than lose her. Even if it destroys me.
Chapter three
Damien
The lingering scent of death permeates the air in the basement. It should make me gag, but all it does is give me purpose and excitement. Even after forty years, the scent of the girls who died screaming within these walls at Jeremiah Morrison’s hands still clings to the stone foundation. Tonight, it mingles with Julian Pembroke’s terror, sweat, and the metallic tang of fresh blood.
I’ve spilled more blood in this basement in four months than Morrison did in two years. But I don’t kill innocents. Only monsters.
Julian sways from the ceiling beam, suspended by chains I installed last week. They creak as he twists, blood trickling from his shackled wrists down his forearms. The silver wolf mask covers my face, its familiar weight a comfort as I circle my prey.
Through the eyeholes, I study the man who’s been running an illegal fighting ring for exotic cats in warehouses across Colorado.
“You know what you did.”
My voice cuts through the basement’s silence, and Julian’s broken face snaps toward the sound. Cold satisfaction spreads through my chest at the terror that floods his eyes.
“Please.” Blood and saliva bubble at the corner of his split lip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The lie hits me like a match to gasoline. Heat floods through my chest and down into my hands, fingers curling into fists so tight my knuckles go white.
I’ve spent weeks documenting his crimes—the starved jaguars forced to fight to the death, the mountain lions with broken bones left to suffer, the young lynx bred in captivity for one purpose. All so rich assholes could bet on which magnificent creature would die first.
I pick up the cattle prod from my table of tools. “Let me refresh your memory.”
The electricity arcs across his ribs, and his screams echo off the stone walls, vibrating through my bones, awakening the same primal satisfaction I feel when Luna arches beneath me.
“The warehouse in Commerce City.” I move the prod to his thigh. “Twenty-three big cats found dead. Some still in their cages, others torn apart in your fighting pit.”
Another jolt. Julian convulses against the chains, his body a symphony of pain that I conduct like a maestro.
“You made them fight to the death, then didn’t even bother to dispose of their ravaged bodies.” The rage builds in my voice despite my efforts to stay controlled. “Beautiful, powerful creatures reduced to entertainment for degenerates with too much money.”
I place the prod back on the table and select a pair of bolt cutters. Metal reflects the dim light, and Julian’s face drains of what little color remains.
“No, no, please—”
