Paige reentered the house through the kitchen door. Located next to the staff’s parking area and just off the west side of the three story, multi-wing mansion, the kitchen entrance was opposite Bradley’s rooms and the door to his basement lab in the east wing, which made it the safest way for her to get in and out without attracting attention.
She reset the alarm, wondering if Joseph had considered following her. He probably could have reached the house before the ground sensors reactivated, but he wouldn’t be able to enter the house now without setting off other alarms. Her stepfather was paranoid about security and privacy, so the systems around and inside the mansion were state-of-the-art. It was also why they had a ten foot stone wall surrounding the property in a neighborhood with few such structures separating estates. Even a crazy man who thought he was a tiger shifter wasn’t likely to get past it all.
If he could have, she realized, he would have done it years ago.
She waited for her eyes to adjust to the even darker interior of the main kitchen, then headed for the back stairs so she wouldn’t have to chance seeing her stepfather if he happened to be up and about this late. It wasn’t likely, but she’d learned long ago not to take chances.
Given his reaction to the news that his wife had died, she doubted he was up wandering around, deep in grief.
When she reached the second floor, she paused and listened, putting a hand to her stomach to quiet the anxiety churning there. The stairs came out at a midway point in the main building which separated her wing from Bradley’s. For long moments, she held perfectly still and waited for any tale-tell sound to warn her of movement.
She didn’t hear anything, so she stepped into the corridor and turned toward her rooms. A familiar and loathed voice stopped her.
“Pretty Paige all dressed in black,” Bradley sang softly.
She closed her eyes briefly to steel herself, then turned to face him. He’d come up the grand staircase from the front of the house and stood silhouetted against the ambient night light coming in from the entryway’s huge windows. His dark blond hair looked paler in this light, almost as pale as hers, though it was cut short and neat. She couldn’t see his eyes, but that was better. He had the kind of ice-chip blue eyes that gave her the creeps even before he spoke.
“Up so late? Poor little Paige.”
“I thought you were in your lab,” she said, with as much neutrality as she could manage. She fisted her hands so he wouldn’t see the slight tremor.
His smile slashed a white line through his shadowed features, a predatory baring of teeth. He strolled closer, giving the appearance of casual elegance. She knew better. He was stalking, looking for a weakness on which to pounce.
“I was,” he said. “But some things need to cook for a while so I’m calling it a night. Where were you this late at night? And does Dad know?”
“Our mother just passed away.”
“What’s your point?”
She swallowed any reaction. Even anger would come as a sign of weakness to him right now. “I’m sad about it. I went for a walk in the garden.”
He moved closer. Too close. The hairs on her neck stood up and her gut clenched.
He shook his head at her excuse and tsked. “Dangerous to play outside at night, little Paige.”
“I’m your older sister.”
“But significantly smaller than me.” He looked her over in a dismissive sweep of a gaze. “But yes, definitely older.”
She refused to rise to the bait. “Goodnight, Bradley.”
He waved a hand over his shoulder as he turned toward his wing. “Lock your door, sis. Bad things come out this time of night.”
Of that she was certain because one of those bad things lived under the same roof. She thought of Joseph again. Her family might consider him a “bad thing” if they knew why he was here.
She waited until Bradley had disappeared into the darkness of his wing, around the L bend in the building, then she turned, making a beeline for her bedroom door. The hair on the back of her neck prickled again, as if Bradley was still watching her. Scrambling inside, she did lock her door, then set her forehead against the cold wood and breathed until her heartbeat slowed.
She had to get out of this house. She couldn’t live this way anymore. If she didn’t get out soon, she was afraid she wouldn’t survive to see her fortieth birthday.
*****
Joseph sat in the tree the next night, waiting for Paige. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this. He should have taken advantage of the break in the security system last night to go inside and kill Bradley. Victor would likely find him here tonight, tomorrow at the latest. He didn’t have time to waste talking to Paige.
He’d been honest with her last night, though. He would find it very satisfying to see Bradley destroyed publicly before he ripped his head off. It was an intellectual kind of satisfaction, not an actual feeling, but still something more than just the basic drive for revenge.
Bradley had stripped him of everything when he’d killed Su-jin. Their mother had died not long after Su-jin was born, and Su-jin was the only connection Joseph and his father had had left to her. Su-jin had been a spoiled, beautiful child, and a willful, stubborn woman who’d been the center of their world.
He remembered the frustration and love he’d felt for his sister in a vague way he couldn’t feel anymore, but the memories still drove him.
He didn’t often think about those remembered emotions, but sitting on a tree limb, waiting for Paige, he allowed himself to remember Su-jin in the weeks before she’d been taken from them.
Her death broke their father well before Joseph succumbed to the destruction of his own anger and grief. The old man had gone into the woods and never returned. Victor and Alexis had found his body, in tiger form, a few weeks after it was clear he wasn’t coming back—apparently he’d died of “natural causes” though Joseph never found out the specifics.
Victor had delivered the news to him while he’d been in confinement that first time, making sure to tell him his father hadn’t suffered in the end.
As much as anything else Victor had done over the years, Joseph thought he might hate him most for that moment.
The realization that he was thinking about those devastating months, a period of time he’d mostly locked out of his conscious thoughts years ago, made him frown into the darkness.
What had changed?
He was still mulling over that question when he caught her scent—roses and a leafy earthiness like summer and heat. Her natural essence was more enticing than he might have expected, given his initial opinion of her personality. There was more to it than was obvious at first. Like the woman herself.
She’d surprised him, as much as that was possible now. He wasn’t sure what to make of her or his reaction to her. And he didn’t try to analyze it. He waited in the tree, watching her cross the huge expanse of lawn until she was almost to the pedestrian gate. Then he leapt softly to the ground and waited for her to come out.
He glanced at his watch. Three in the morning again. The night had gone faster than he realized.
When she stepped through the gate, she looked at him immediately, without having to hunt around. He narrowed his eyes at that. He was standing in the dark under the tree, out of the ambient night light or any lights from the distantly scattered homes. She shouldn’t have been able to spot him so unerringly.
She smiled a little as she joined him and Joseph felt an odd compunction to smile back, though he wasn’t sure he even remembered how to smile.
“Hello,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sure you’d really be here.”
“I haven’t gone far.”
“Yes,” she said with another faint smile.
“How was your day?” he asked instead of dwelling on her comment.
“Bad.” She shrugged. “My mother’s death was officially announced. There will be a lot of formalities now. Funeral with all the appropriate people in attendance, that kind of thing.”
“You don’t want to attend?” He couldn’t quite decipher how she felt about her mother’s death. Her scent was confused and jumbled, the tangle of emotions too complex even for his tiger to parse out.
She started walking along the grassy shoulder flanking the estate wall, moving away from the main gate that opened to the estate’s long driveway. He fell into step beside her. The streets were deserted this time of night, the wealthy neighborhood as quiet as a tomb. A cold breeze whistled past, fluttering through her hair and carrying a faint scent of the distant highway and river. She was dressed a little more appropriately for the weather tonight, in a black wool peacoat and jeans, but she wasn’t wearing a hat and her pale blond hair glowed in the faint moonlight.
Without looking at him, she said, “I would rather mourn my mother in private, not in front of a dozen cameras while half the DC politicians my stepfather owns pretend to be understanding and sympathetic. I hate the way they talk to me. And over me as if I’m some—”
She cut herself off with a hiss. He waited but she didn’t say more. So he asked, “When is the funeral?”
“Day after tomorrow. Time for the coroner to finish the exam and all the paperwork to be sorted.”
“How did she die?” He hadn’t asked last night, but it seemed important now for some reason.
“Drug overdose. A long time in coming.” She shrugged. “She’s been drunk and drugged for most of my life. I’m a little surprised she lasted this long.”
“Why?”
She glanced at him. “Why what?”
“Why was she drunk and drugged? An addict? Or more?” He wasn’t sure why he asked. He didn’t really care.
“More,” Paige said quietly. “For as long as I can remember, she complained of…physical pain. She said the drugs and alcohol were the only things that made life bearable. Well, that and being pregnant. Though after Bradley, she never managed to get pregnant again.” She crossed her arms, as if hugging herself. “My mother had a very sad life. She was extremely beautiful. Stunning.” She glanced at him. “Did you ever see her?”
He nodded. He’d come across all the Williams at one point or another over the years.
“Then you know. She was…ethereal. Like a goddess.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s what others have said about her to me. ‘Your mother is so beautiful, Paige. What’s it like to be the daughter of someone so gorgeous?’ Little did they know.”
“You look a lot like her,” he said, then wondered why he had pointed out the obvious. To his surprise, she snorted, a sound so sardonic and full of bitterness, he could practically taste the acrid flavor.
“No need to lie to me,” she said. “I have a mirror. And even if I didn’t, everyone else in my life has made my…deficiencies when compared to my mother’s assets very clear.” She gave him a sideways look. “I’m surprised you of all people would bother with that kind of condescending attempt at smoothing over my ego.”
“Why?” Not that that’s what he’d been trying to do.
“You don’t seem to care enough to offer pointless false flatteries.”
“I don’t care. I was stating a fact.” He hadn’t meant to flatter her, falsely or otherwise, or even condescend. She really did bear a very strong resemblance to her mother. She was smaller and thinner, her figure not so overtly lush, but her features and coloring were very similar. “Your mother was like a diamond—flash and glitter. You’re more like a pearl. Subtler but no less beautiful.”
She paused to stare at him. He stared back, wondering what she saw. Typically for a tiger, he looked a lot like his Russian father, but he hadn’t looked in a mirror much over the last ten years so he couldn’t swear to the resemblance still being there.
After a moment, she gave him that faint smile again and moved on, shaking her head.
“You realize, Joseph, that the thing I like most about you is the fact that you don’t care about any of this.”
That she would “like” him at all was something of a shock and left him momentarily unable to comment.
She continued as if she didn’t notice his lapse. “Things will settle down after the funeral. I’ll be able to do more then.”
“What’s your plan?”
A part of him, somewhere deep inside, was uncomfortable leaving her to go after evidence against Bradley on her own. He wasn’t sure why. She was a grown woman, capable of making her own choices. None of her efforts should have any impact on his own plans. And yet, he hadn’t made an effort to get at Bradley in the last twenty-four hours. He’d waited for her tonight, wondering what she’d done during the day and remembering things he’d prefer not to think about.
“He keeps his lab locked and secured. I can’t get inside. But when he’s gone, I can slip into his rooms in the house.”
“You think he’ll leave incriminating evidence here? In the open? Where you and his parents live?” Bradley had several houses scattered around Pennsylvania, Maryland, and D.C. Joseph couldn’t imagine him keeping anything here when he could hide evidence in any number of less vulnerable locations.
She shrugged. Then rolled her eyes. “I know you’re right. But it’s a place to start. It will take some maneuvering to search his other homes, and he might have places he goes that I don’t know about.”
“He does.”
She stopped and looked at him. “Do you know all of his movements? Where he goes?” She swallowed visibly and said, “Do you know where he…kills?”
“No.”
If he did, he’d have tracked Bradley there and ripped him to pieces in the place where he killed others. He never had enough time to track down the killing places before Victor interfered and forced him away from the hunt. He’d thought he’d come close once but realized when he found the barn it had been abandoned for years—likely one of Bradley’s earlier retreats and no longer a place he used to torture and murder. Even after years of disuse, the place had still stank of blood and fear.
Paige pulled in a shaky breath and resumed walking. She didn’t seem to have a destination in mind, just the need to move. “If I can figure out what place he uses now,” she said, “I can send the police there. That might help provide enough evidence to actually convict him of murder this time.”
“You disagreed with the outcome of his trial?” He could hear it in her voice.
Despite being caught with a dangerous drug while breaking and entering with intent to kidnap, Bradley’s lawyers had run circles around the prosecution in his one and only trial. He’d gotten a very light sentence for the kidnapping attempt, spent a few months in a minimum security prison, and never been convicted of anything more serious. He hadn’t even been charged with the murder of the chemist who’d helped him develop the drug because his lawyers had ensured all that evidence was inadmissible.
Joseph always suspected the judge had been bribed as well, but he’d been locked up and unable to do more than watch the pathetic excuse for a trial.
“I wanted him to get a harsher sentence,” she said quietly. “I hoped he’d be convicted for that scientist’s murder. But… Well, with my stepfather’s resources…” She waved a hand in the air in a vague circle before clenching her fist and dropping her arm to her side. “Anyway, it will take serious evidence to convict him, to get around all our lawyers’ machinations.”
“Caught in the act didn’t work.”
“He wasn’t caught killing someone.”
“And isn’t likely to be caught killing.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “No. I’ve spent the last day thinking about what would be enough to actually send him away for good—short of being caught with a knife and a victim. And even then, I wouldn’t put it past him to have an excuse the lawyers could make stick. But there has to be a way, there has to be something they can’t have dismissed.”
“Does he have a computer in his lab?”
She glanced at him. “I don’t know. There were computer files with the chemist. He might not keep any now because of that.”
“If he’s doing more work developing drugs, he’d need records and access to current research.”
“He’s got that through the family pharmaceutical company. He’s not allowed to work for that company anymore—a condition of his light sentence—but I’d bet he still has access to the records and research files through backdoors. My stepfather wouldn’t bother preventing that if it made his son happy.”
“Why? Bradley might get arrested again.”
“Both my stepfather and Bradley believe they are too smart and are above other human beings. They don’t consider ‘ordinary mortals’ to be a threat.”
He was quiet a moment before asking, “Why did your stepfather marry your mother?” Though Carmen was beautiful, she was also from a less than savory background and given what Paige said of her stepfather, it seemed an odd match. Why not just keep Carmen as a mistress? Why would Duke Williams marry someone he obviously considered beneath him?
Paige shrugged. “She was a prize. Despite her history, despite me, there were a lot of men after her. They all wanted to own her, to claim her as theirs. My stepfather wasn’t even the wealthiest of them. He was just the most…convincing. Once he had her, though, and she gave birth to his beloved son, she was less prize and more burden. Her constant complaints of pain and her abuse of drugs left him cold.”
She stared ahead for a long moment before saying, “I think he might have believed he felt something for her at one stage. I have vague memories of him being very kind and attentive to her when she was pregnant with Bradley. I was young, only four and a half years old, but old enough to understand the difference between kindness and cruelty.”
“Did you know your father?” He’d never looked into Paige’s past because it had nothing to do with his goal of killing Bradley. He knew she wasn’t related by blood to Duke, but beyond that, he’d never cared to research.
“He was already in jail for armed robbery and murder by the time I was two. I can’t remember anything about him.”
“Was he married to your mother?”
“They were when I was born. During one of her drunken confessions, she admitted to me that he’d been the love of her life, even if he was cruel and a criminal.”
“Why did she divorce him, then?”
“She didn’t. He divorced her from jail when she wouldn’t sleep with a guard to get him better conditions inside.”
Joseph considered that in silence. Carmen truly had had a sad life. If he could feel pity, he might have considered pitying Paige’s mother. After a few moments, he said, “Your mother didn’t make very good decisions with her life.”
Paige laughed, and there was a great deal of irony in her tone when she said, “That, my dear man, is an understatement.” When her laughter died, she grew more serious again. “And her daughter has followed in her footsteps.”
She spoke quietly, so he probably wasn’t supposed to hear this last bit, but his tiger hearing was superb. “What do you consider your bad decisions?” He was genuinely curious.
“Not turning in my murdering brother to the police would be considered a supremely bad decision to most people. Hiding and giving in to fear. A lifetime wasted.” She snorted. “I have more than enough bad decisions to write a book.”
He didn’t have a response to that, so he didn’t say anything.
They walked on in silence for a while, following the curve of the road away from her house, turning a few times to take side streets. After she stumbled twice on the uneven shoulder, they moved onto the smoothly paved road. There weren’t many cars to worry about this time of night in this neighborhood, but even if one did come along, he’d hear it well before Paige was in any danger.
When they’d gone a mile, he asked, “Are we going somewhere specific?”
“No. I just need the fresh air.” She glanced at him. “Do you mind?”
“No.”
She gave him a small smile again. His shoulders relaxed a little when she looked at him that way, but he couldn’t understand why.
More silence. Then she said, “Do you really believe you can turn into a tiger?”
“I can.”
“Would you show me?”
Her request made him stop and look at her. “Why?”
She tried to meet his gaze but after a moment, hers slid away, focusing on the street behind him while she fingered something around her left wrist, under the coat sleeve. “I don’t know. I guess… Never mind. I don’t really care if you’re crazy or not.”
“My ability to change into a tiger wouldn’t make any difference to whether I was crazy or not. I could be a tiger shifter and still be crazy. Or be a tiger shifter and be sane.”
She tilted her head in acknowledgement. “Or you could be insane because you believe in tiger shifters.”
“Yes.”
She met his gaze. “I would like to know which of those things it is.”
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because…I feel more comfortable with a crazy stranger than I do in my own home. And I would like to know what kind of crazy person I’m feeling so comfortable around.”
His mouth ticked up at one corner. “I can’t shift on the street. I might be seen.”
“You care about people seeing you?”
“I’d rather not be hunted while I still have to kill your brother.”
Her eyebrows popped upward at that and she pursed her lips. “Fair enough. I doubt anyone would see you here at this time of night anyway, but…” She glanced up and down the dark street. “Would you turn into a tiger for me if we had somewhere private?”
“If you like. It’s not pretty. You’ll probably find it terrifying.”
She dropped her chin to stare at him. “I live with a serial killer brother and a sociopathic stepfather. I’m used to terrifying.”
He had to admit she had a point. “I’ll have to strip.” It was a warning. While tigers didn’t care about nudity, most humans were squeamish about it.
Her pale cheeks turned pink. “I won’t look, I promise.”
“I don’t care if you do.”
She huffed a half-laugh. “I suppose you wouldn’t, would you?” After a moment, she narrowed her gaze at him. “You really would show me how you turn into a tiger?”
He shrugged. “If you really want to see my tiger, I’ll show you.”
He didn’t go tiger very often these days, not for the last four years or so. Mostly because he was so close to his animal side now, he was afraid he’d change and never go back to his human form. He couldn’t allow that until after he’d killed Bradley. His tiger wanted revenge as much as he did, but the tiger lived more in the moment and relied on the human half of his nature to consider and plan for the future. What remained of Joseph’s human side was the only thing that kept him focused enough to keep after Bradley. Once the murderer was dead, though, Joseph wouldn’t have to worry about returning to his human form.
To satisfy Paige’s curiosity, he was willing to make the shift. It would release some of the tension building in his muscles, a stretch he could use after so long in this form.
“Does it hurt?” she asked as she nibbled at the edge of one fingernail, before scowling at her hand and wiping her finger on her pant leg.
“No. I was born to it.”
“Can you… If you really are a shapeshifter… Can you make someone else a tiger?”
The faint hint of hope in her voice, the genuine need in her scent seemed odd to him. So much so that when he said, “No,” he was sorry to have to admit that truth to her.
She nodded and her shoulders slumped. “Shame. I like tigers.”
She remained quiet for a very long time. They stood there in the dark, in the center of the deserted road, wealthy homes scattered around them. The breeze changed, bringing the scent of cut grass and water to him. Beyond that he was aware of the trees that surrounded the neighborhood and wound around it back to a national park less than a mile behind the Williams’ estate.
And closer, the faint essence of roses, earth, and Paige wrapped around him.
Joseph watched her as she stared at the road, surprised by his inability to look away.
She looked up and took a deep breath. “There’s a thick enough copse of trees near here, where this road dead ends. It’s far enough from any houses that it should give us some privacy.”
He continued to watch her for another moment before saying. “This could be considered a bad decision.”
She laughed, a lighter sound than any he’d heard from her before this. “Yes, I think this is probably a very bad decision. But one I’d like to make because I want to and not because I’m afraid of the alternative.”
He raised his brows and nodded, then motioned her to lead the way.
Some part of him recognized this as a delay, a diversion from his goal of killing Bradley. And yet, even with that, he couldn’t seem to care.