Under a Rogue Moon

Chapter 3

Chapter 3She recognized his face long before she remembered his name. More specifically, she remembered those vivid eyes, the engaging curve of those full lips, the very wrong thoughts of what kissing him would feel like. What she couldn’t remember was if she’d somehow managed to give him her name in those few minutes they’d talked to each other in front of Rage. She didn’t think so. Yet he called her by it, knew she carried a gun.

More importantly, he was here. He’d been looking for her. That couldn’t be good.

He wasn’t moving from where he’d stopped, eyes intense as he regarded her. “I would’ve liked to do this at your house,” he said. “But I saw you leaving for your run and thought that maybe it might be better if we were alone.”

“Is this a fight?” Her voice was clipped and cold, her muscles already preparing for the worst.

Jason looked pointedly at where his hands were still up in the air before looking back to her, his smile widening. “It would be an awfully short one if it was.”

Flanna frowned. No fight then. But…why was he here?

“Did you hear the part where I said I wanted to talk?” he said when she didn’t reply right away. “I couldn’t tell if you were actually listening to me or too busy trying to figure out who the hell I was.” He paused, and his head c****d to the side. “You do know who I am, right?”

“I know your name,” she said. “And I know you don’t belong in this country.”

“Well, that’s awfully Colonial of you.”

She remembered this, this quickness of tongue. It had pissed her off in New York, and it was beginning to piss her off here.

“What is it you want to talk about, Mr. Randolph?”

Addressing him by his last name seemed to amuse him further, and his teeth gleamed white under the moonlight. “Why I’m here, of course. You’re not in the least bit curious?”

“That depends on your motive. My enemies don’t last long in my presence.”

The threat she put into her voice seemed to sober him.

“I’m not your enemy,” Jason said.

He took a small, tentative step closer to her, making all her nerves race to attention. There was an athletic grace to his movements, as if he’d spent years training at some racing type of sport. A swimmer maybe, judging by his build. Or a runner. Forced to choose, Flanna would select the latter.

“I would’ve done this in New York if you’d given me the chance,” he said. “That was why I was at the club. I was looking for you.”

His voice was low and soothing, like someone trying to gentle a wild animal, but she refused to acknowledge her ebbing trepidation. “If you’re hoping to make your case sound better,” she said, “you should probably know you’re failing miserably. You sound like a stalker.”

“That’s because you left the country. You didn’t give me a choice.”

None of this was telling her what it was he wanted. But the longer Jason talked, the more Flanna felt the easy allure of his charm. She wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing.

“So, if you’re not my enemy, then you’re…what? My friend?” She shook her head. “Friends don’t slink around in the middle of the night. They show up on your doorstep and you offer them a cup of tea.”

“Well, I’m more of a coffee drinker myself, but tea will do in a pinch.” When he took another step toward her, Flanna retreated the same distance, unwilling to allow him any closer until she knew what was going on. Jason immediately stopped, though he lowered his hands until they hung at his sides. “I know what you do,” he said, his tone all serious again. “I’m here because you missed that third wolf in Connecticut. You killed his pack, which now puts you at the top of his most wanted list. You can bet he’ll be wherever you are, come the next full moon.”

She felt the color leech from her cheeks. “How do you know about that?” she asked.

A trick of the moonlight made his eyes gleam silver. “Because I was there,” Jason said. “I’ve been hunting the Romm brothers for four months now. You just beat me to the kill.”

* * * *

Against her better judgment, she let him follow her back to the house, leaving his car where it was parked on the side of the road. He chattered a good part of the way; Flanna wondered if it was a nervous reaction or merely part of his personality that he had to talk so much. But, apart from the occasional joke that seemed especially designed to provoke her, he had a natural ease that relaxed her further by the time they reached her front door. She was even smiling slightly as she invited him inside.

The front room was dim. Only the light spilling through the slightly ajar door to the kitchen gave them any illumination at all. With a slight tilt of her head, Flanna had Jason follow her through the lounge, stopping when she reached the doorway and her father looked up from his maps.

“You’re back early,” he began, but his good mood hardened when he saw the stranger hovering behind her shoulder. “Who’s this?”

She didn’t get the opportunity to answer.

“Jason Randolph,” Jason said, stepping around Flanna to offer his hand in greeting. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. McRae.”

Colin took the hand with a small frown, his gaze jumping between his daughter and Jason. “You’re not bringing home strays now, are you?” he asked her lightly, though the undercurrent of severity in his tone told her just how serious he found this.

“No, he’s a—”

“Hunter,” Jason finished for her. He ignored the furious look she shot him for cutting her off. “Like your daughter, sir. Like you were, I hear, before she took over the family responsibility.”

If Flanna was a private person, her father was doubly so, and the fact that a young man that he’d obviously never seen before knew what they did made Colin’s skin flush, his nostrils flare, as he fought not to rise to his feet.

“The family responsibility is the shop in town center,” he said, turning back to his maps. “Surely Flanna told you that.”

She slid into the chair next to her father, pushing aside his books so that he was forced to look at her. “He was there when I killed the Romms,” she said. “He came looking for me because of the one that got away.”

His lips thinned as he regarded her with a heavy stare. “You never said you were working with someone in the States.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Your daughter is in grave danger,” Jason said. He didn’t sit at the table, though he did position himself so that he stood opposite Colin. “I’ve been hunting the Romms for months now. I know how they work. How they think. What drives them. With his brothers dead, Dominic is going to come after Flanna to avenge what she did. He won’t stop. He doesn’t stop. That’s the kind of monster he is.”

The announcement shifted Colin’s hostility into something more wary, concern for his daughter clearly taking over. “And you came here out of the goodness of your heart to protect her?” he asked, disbelieving.

“No, I came out of my own selfishness to find Romm and finish the job.”

His tone was so matter-of-fact that Flanna had no doubts that it was true. Part of her was a little disappointed that his motives hadn’t been more altruistic.

“If this is true, Romm won’t attack until the next full moon,” her father said. “He’s human now. He would have no interest in harming Flanna.”

“No offense, sir, but that kind of thinking is going to get your daughter dead before any of you can cry wolf.” Setting his hands against the table, Jason leaned forward as he addressed Colin, blue eyes flashing into a brilliant midnight. “I know you have a strict policy about who and what you kill, and I would never ask you to consider hunting an innocent. But being a werewolf didn’t change the kind of man Dominic Romm was. It enhanced it. He was evil before he was bitten, and he’s going to be evil until the day someone finally gets some silver into him. He won’t wait to come after her. In fact, I’ll lay odds he’s on his way now.”

There was no denying the passion behind Jason’s words. Even Colin seemed impressed by it, and that, more than the actual threat, caused a frisson of fear to ripple down Flanna’s spine.

“What did you say your name was again, young man?” Colin asked, reaching for a pen. He scribbled it down when Jason said it, his writing like chicken scratch across the top of the map he’d used for paper. “If you’re a hunter as you say, people will know. You can’t lie about such things to a McRae.”

“Dig all you want,” Jason said. “I’m telling you the truth.”

Colin just grunted, pushing back from the table and rising to his feet. “Escort Mr. Randolph off the property, Flanna,” he instructed. “We have work to do tonight.”

When it was just the two of them in the kitchen, Jason finally turned his attention back to her. “I thought I’d heard everything, but background checks for demonhunters is a new one to me.”

She rose, uncomfortable beneath his steady gaze. “My father is nothing if not thorough, Mr. Randolph.”

He trotted after her as she walked back to the front of the house. “At least call me Jason,” he said. “I have a feeling that your dad’s going to have a monopoly on my last name.”

Flanna didn’t reply. Stepping out into the cool night air, she waited for him to join her on the front step, trying to ignore how closely he stood next to her when he emerged. Deliberately, she locked the door behind him, but as she was pocketing the key, she glanced up and saw the curious light in his eye.

“What?” she demanded.

“Are you keeping him in or locking me out?” he asked.

In such proximity, their nearly matched heights meant she couldn’t avoid the intensity of his gaze. The scents of his sweat and fading cologne mingled to tickle her nose, but it was the way his eyes had darkened so noticeably since they’d stepped outside that captured her attention. Though common sense told her it was in response to the shift in lighting, Flanna wondered if maybe some other physical need hadn’t contributed to his dilated pupils.

Before the images could run away on her, though, she shoved them aside. He’s an attractive man, she thought. Handsome in an almost pretty way. He was probably accustomed to lots of women going all warm and silly in his presence, which perhaps explained why she amused him so.

She wasn’t going to be one of those women. Even if the impulse to be so lurked at the periphery of her awareness.

“Where are you staying?” she asked, ignoring the question he’d posed. She pushed past him to start the trek back to his car, keeping her neck stiff as she fought the urge to look back at him.

“That depends.” He matched her stride all too easily, his arm brushing up against hers as they walked. “Where’s the nearest hotel?”

She came to a dead halt. Jason walked a few more feet before realizing she wasn’t keeping up, and then turned quizzically to see where she had gone.

“You don’t have a hotel?” Flanna asked in disbelief.

“Isn’t that what I just said?”

“What were you thinking?”

His head tilted as he considered her question. “I was thinking,” he said, “that I had to find you. I thought that was a little more important than looking for the local Holiday Inn.”

“You could’ve found me in the morning. After you’d checked in somewhere.”

Something in his face steeled. “Romm works at night. Just because there isn’t a full moon for another three weeks doesn’t make him any less dangerous.”

“You keep saying that.” Her brows drew together, and she took a step closer, wishing she could read him better in the dim light. “Why? What’s he done?”

“The better question is, what hasn’t he done?” Ticking them off on his fingers, his eyes never left hers as he spoke. “Extortion. Rape. Murder. All under police radar. I don’t think he’s ever been caught.”

The words were chilling. Flanna couldn’t suppress the shiver that made her hug her arms close to her body.

Before she realized it, Jason had closed the distance between them, a strong hand reaching to rub her shoulder in comfort. It took a moment for her to realize just how soothing his touch really was, and even longer to pull away. “You’re used to hunting monsters,” he said. His voice was low but firm, affording no brook of his assertions. “But I think you and your father forget that sometimes those monsters can wear human faces, too.”

Her skin prickled at the weight of his words. “What if you hadn’t found me?”

Jason shook his head. “That wasn’t an option.”

They stood there, facing each other, two sets of shoulders equally squared. Frankly, it shocked the hell out of Flanna that he’d been that single-minded in this so-called search of his. There had to be more to why he was going to such lengths to find Romm; even though she was as dedicated as any to what they did, she wasn’t entirely sure she would try to search for a werewolf outside of a full moon.

Only one thing could convince her to do something so foolhardy.

“Who did he kill?” she asked, deliberately softening her tone.

Her words startled him, but Jason recovered from his almost imperceptible flinch to smile at her widely. “Romm’s killed a lot of people,” he said. “I hope you’re a better shot with your weapons than you are with your interrogations.”

“You’re emotionally invested in this,” Flanna continued. “That makes you weak.”

As quickly as it had appeared, all humor vanished. The hardness of the man now standing before her took her breath away.

“It makes me determined,” he corrected. “So before you start judging how effective I am at what I do, I suggest you wait and see me in action. If you’re alive enough at the time to do that, that is.”

He whirled on his heel and marched down the drive, his shoes making the gravel crunch beneath his soles. Flanna was left gaping, watching as the night swallowed up his lean form. Before he disappeared completely, she called out, “Where are you going?”

“Away from here.”

“And where are you going to sleep?”

The sound of his footsteps died out, and she thought she caught a silvery glint of moonlight off his eyes as he glanced back at her.

“Some of us don’t actually sleep at night,” Jason said. “Some of us are too busy to.”

This time when he walked away, he didn’t stop.