He was damned thankful his need to investigate the situation had prompted him to search Chris’s house. Never in a millennium would Rourke have believed that Chris had been involved. Without the evidence, they all might have been clueless about Chris’s involvement until it was too late.

He heard a noise on the back patio, and thinking Meara and Finn were trying to get in, Rourke headed for the back door to open it for them.

His heart thundering, Rourke stared at Chris, who stood at the back door looking in through the kitchen window. When Chris caught Rourke’s eye, he cast him an evil smile. Chris walked over to the back door and tried to unlock it with a lockpick.

“You know, Rourke, you’re supposed to be at your apartment,” Chris said through the door.

The lockpick twisted some more. Rourke’s skin chilled.

“You’re not supposed to be driving your vehicle, either.”

Twist, grind, twist.

“You’re supposed to be waiting for me until I pick you up to take you to the newspaper office.”

Click.

“Why are you here at Hunter’s house? Don’t you know that’s illegal? Breaking and entering? Hunter will not be pleased.”

Rourke raced back into the living room and shoved the incriminating papers underneath the couch cushion. Should he shift? He had no weapon on him.

“So, what are you doing here? Dave said you wanted to speak to me about investigating this situation further concerning Allan’s shooter. What was it you wished to ask me?”

Rourke bolted for the guest bedroom where he’d slept before and locked the door behind him. He was beginning to shuck his clothes when he heard the back door squeak open.

He should have brought the evidence of Chris’s involvement in here.

“You’re not hiding from me, are you?” Chris asked. “You’re supposed to be a big bad wolf now, not a rabbit, Rourke. Are you still a rabbit?”

Rourke swore under his breath as he stood naked in the guest room, unable to the shift.

“Are you in one of the bedrooms?” Chris asked, heading down the hall. “Hmm, only one door closed. Are you hiding behind Door Number 1? The big question is why?”

“How did you know I was here?” Rourke asked, hoping that he could delay the inevitable so that Finn and Meara would have a chance to arrive.

“I just happened to be leaving Meara’s house when who should I see roar lickety-split down the road in his truck past the place but my buddy Rourke, who was supposed to still be at his apartment. So I followed you here. Found where you hid your vehicle and gave the order to disable it, if you thought to leave again anytime soon. You weren’t supposed to be driving, you know.”

Someone else was with Chris? Hell, he’d never get out of this alive. “You said that already, Chris.”

“Yeah, well, you seem to need more direction. So why are you here, and why, when you saw me at the door, didn’t you let me in? You didn’t think I’d just go away, did you?”

“Hunter’s on his way here.”

“Really. Well, a little birdie told me he’s having a rough day of it on his own. I’d planned to oversee operations at the safe house, but… well, this seemed like something that needed looking into right away.”

Rourke’s heart was beating so hard that he figured Chris could hear it through the door. But no matter how many times he tried to tell himself to shift, it wasn’t having any effect. “How did you learn where Hunter is?”

“That’s the wonder of a mate who wasn’t a wolf. She was worried about Hunter and called Dave to see if he could check on him. Since Dave is in the middle of a crisis, trying to track down a runaway teen, he asked me to look into it. That’s all I needed to wrap this up. The location of the safe house.”

If Chris managed to kill Hunter because of Tessa’s mistake, she’d never be able to live with herself.

Again, Rourke tried to will himself to shift. Nothing. Hell, why was it that just when he thought he had the shifting down pat, it eluded him?

“So exactly why are we having this scene?” Chris asked with an odd tone to his voice. Like he was ready to end this now. But Rourke figured Chris was dying to know what Rourke had learned and possibly who he had told.

A lockpick was shoved in the bedroom door lock, and Rourke glanced from the door to the window, wondering what he could do even if he escaped that way when he was naked, when he heard the familiar click that told him the door was unlocked and ready to open.

Rourke expected Chris to open the door by throwing it aside. But instead, he did it in his usual quiet manner, slowly, no doubt listening to see if Rourke was a wolf ready to pounce. Rourke figured Chris probably hadn’t shifted himself yet.

“Rourke,” Chris said, his voice low and cold, testing to see if Rourke could still respond as a human.

But Rourke wouldn’t ease Chris’s mind one bit and kept silent, while he kept praying he’d shift.

Chris didn’t push the door open wide enough to allow Rourke to see him. Then Chris moved away from the door. “Just for your information, Cyn should be here any minute now. The supposed squabble that cabin renters were having at Meara’s place? Really just me and Cyn making some last-minute plans. He’s the one who is sabotaging your vehicle. He wanted a piece of you, too. He doesn’t like newly turned wolves at all and reporters in general, but I’ve waited long enough for this, and you’re all mine.”

Rourke heard Chris’s zipper slide down. Chris was going to strip and shift.

Rourke cursed his inability to shift at will. He really loved being a werewolf, but he wouldn’t be one for very much longer if he couldn’t summon the ability to become a wolf like—now!

A tingling started rushing through his veins, heating him to the marrow of his bones, the muscles stretching, welcoming the wolf side of him, and for a moment, he felt relief. But just as he shifted and looked up from the floor, Rourke saw Chris standing in the doorway, a wolf ready to rip him to shreds, his amber eyes and mouth wickedly smiling.

His fur standing on end, his heart thundering, Rourke figured maybe he should have thought this out a little more. While he’d still had the chance, maybe he should have attempted to flee out the window, and then shifted and run like hell until Finn showed up.

It was now or never. Chris growled with a second of warning, then lunged at him.

***

Finn figured the reason Meara couldn’t reach Hunter, Anna, or the rest of the SEAL team on the phone was because they had shifted into their wolf forms and were possibly in a fight. Meara was trying not to show how anxious she was, but he was certain she was even more worried about Rourke than she was about her brother or the others. They were trained in combat. Rourke was not. And he was alone.

“Does he still have problems shifting?” Finn asked, not having been around newly turned wolves much.

“Yes. That’s why he’s always got to have a mentor when he’s out. He’s not supposed to be driving until he can prove he’s got this shifting business under control.”

Finn hadn’t even thought of that. He could just imagine a newly turned wolf trying to drive, getting the urge to strip and shift, and veering off the coast road into the Pacific Ocean.

Meara suddenly stopped, and Finn grabbed her arm as he heard a man’s voice at the house.

“Chris,” she whispered, her voice fearful.

“Stay here, Meara. I’ll take care of it.”

“No.” She pursed her lips. “I’ll speak with him. He supposedly wants me. I’ll distract him. Then you can get the drop on him. But if you just go in, he could kill Rourke first.”

“It’s too risky. Stay here.”

She ground her teeth, knowing that Finn was used to operations like this, but she still thought her plan had merit.

Finn stripped off his clothes shifted in record time, and looked back at Meara as if doubting his decision to leave her alone. When she motioned for him to go, he turned and raced through the woods toward Hunter’s home.

As soon as he was nearly out of sight, a twig snapped behind Meara, and she swung around and gasped.

“You want me to shoot Finn, I will, Meara,” Cyn warned, his hair longer than she’d remembered it, his amber eyes gleaming with power, his voice threatening. “Come here,” he growled.

She moved away from the cliff and toward Cyn as slowly as she could without aggravating him further.

“You and your damned brother ruined everything for me,” he said, his voice low and menacing.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought you wanted to date me. But I guess that wasn’t the master plan, was it?”

He snorted. “As if it would ever have worked out with your brother running things. My sister wasn’t supposed to die the way she did.”

She knew it. He would kill her for revenge because his sister was dead. But why would someone have changed the location of the meeting on the beach? If the team had gone to the other location, they would have all died and so would have the hostages.

Knowing the answer to the question, she asked anyway, wanting to hear him say it. “Why do you want me dead?”

“Hell, Meara, I wanted you. Period. I genuinely liked you. But you told Hunter you didn’t wish to see me. That I wasn’t good enough for you like I wasn’t good enough for Hunter’s precious team.”

She scowled at him and folded her arms at her waist. “That’s not true. I told Hunter I wanted to see you.”

He turned to look in the direction of Hunter’s house where they could hear the sound of growling wolves. “Damn your brother for lying to me.” He looked back at Meara. “I thought you decided I wasn’t worthy to see you. Hunter told me as much and then said the same thing about including me on his team.”

“It wasn’t so.” And knowing Hunter, he wouldn’t have said anything so cruel. She figured that Cyn had heard what he wanted to hear. “Why did you want to be on the team so badly? To save your sister?”