“Then there must be two of them.”
“Great.” Darien ran his hands through his hair. “Now that I recall, I distinctively smelled the odor of decomposing leaves, but no smell of any lupus garou in human form, just that god-awful perfume Larissa was wearing. Do you think the perpetrator was wearing human’s hunter spray to disguise his scent?”
“I’ll have Uncle Sheridan check out the location and see if rotting leaves were in the vicinity. Now that you mention it, I smelled it also. But remember the red I got a whiff of?”
“He was in wolf form and couldn’t have strangled her.”
“True. What about this Leidolf? Are you sure we shouldn’t contact him?”
“We don’t know who he is really. Peter is looking into it. What I want to know is did she have a bag and if so, was it stolen?”
Jake stared out the window at the mountain view where clouds perched on top in a mist, coating the peaks like whipped topping. “Trevor questioned Mrs. Hastings who said her grandkids were visiting when Larissa checked in, so she was distracted and didn’t see if Larissa had a bag or not. She paid in cash and—”
“What name did she register under?”
“Melanie Weber.”
His eyes narrowed, Darien thought about the name. “The name sounds familiar.” He rubbed his chin as he thought back to her earlier comments. “She kept asking to see a Doctor Weber. He’s got to be real.” Darien glanced at Doc’s medical degrees and other certificates displayed across the wall, updated periodically over the decades to make it appear Doc wasn’t as old as he was. “I want you to find anybody by that name in the state who’s a practicing physician.”
“But Leidolf says she’s from Portland.”
“Deputy Smith said he was sure she was from Colorado. Another thing, Larissa said she received a letter from Lelandi before she died. It wasn’t in her purse. If it was in her bag, it’s gone. Apparently, a lupus was blackmailing Lelandi.”
Jake swore under his breath. “One of ours?”
If it led to her death, whoever had been blackmailing Darien’s mate was a dead lupus garou. “The letter didn’t say.”
“Larissa told you this when she was out of it?”
“She seemed pretty lucid, but she might not have been. Hell, I don’t know.”
“Where else could the letter be?” Jake asked.
“Maybe she burned it in the fireplace, or hid it somewhere else at the B&B. Mrs. Hastings mentioned Larissa was holding a letter in her lap in the loft and a teenaged guest said Larissa had been crying. It must have been the letter.”
The answer struck them at once. “Her clothes,” they said simultaneously.
They hastened back to her room where Larissa was still sound asleep, and Darien jerked open the metal locker. Empty.
“I’ll find out what happened to them,” Jake said.
Apparently eavesdropping from the hallway, Silva walked into the room. “I took them home to wash.”
“Silva,” Darien said, annoyed.
She smiled. “Sorry, bad habit of mine. Used to overhearing conversations in the bar. Guess because my life is dull at times.”
“Her clothes?”
“They were bloody so I took them home to wash. Cleaned her jeans. With the bullet holes in it, the shirt was a total loss. She’ll need a new peach lace bra to match her panties, if anyone’s interested.” Silva paused for effect.
Darien could have wrung her neck, although she got the result she wanted. The image of Larissa’s lace bra and the creamy mounds they had confined came to mind. He knew damn well what she’d looked like beneath the turtleneck, and he didn’t want to be reminded.
“I cleaned the lining of her leather jacket, too, but it’ll need some patchwork. Oh, and I washed your shirt, too.”
“The letter?” he asked, too angrily.
Smiling, Silva pulled an envelope from her pocket. “I had to soak up the blood, so the letter’s a little hard to read in spots. Found it in a hidden pocket inside her leather jacket. It crinkled when I was mopping up the blood on the lining, otherwise I probably would have missed it.”
“Why didn’t you mention it before?” He stretched his hand out for the envelope.
She withheld it. “I was waiting for you to be in a better mood. Appeared that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.”
Darien seized the letter from her.
“You might want to sit down when you read it.”
“Larissa already told me what it said.” He yanked the letter out of the envelope, barely aware Jake stood breathing down his neck to get a glimpse of it.
“Then you already know your mate had a living husband.” Darien jerked his head up and stared at Silva, not believing her words.
Silva folded her arms and looked smug.
Hell, he knew it. His worse nightmare realized. Lupus garous didn’t divorce. They mated for a lifetime and only mated again if they lost their lifemate, if they found someone else they couldn’t live without. That meant a female was a virgin when first mated unless she was widowed, or in rare cases had been with a human. Lelandi hadn’t been a virgin. Too hung up on her to learn anything he didn’t want to know, he hadn’t questioned her.
He sat down hard on the chair next to Larissa’s bed, hating that Silva knew how horrible the news hit him. So was it a red blackmailing Lelandi for mating a gray when she was already mated to a red? Or a gray who’d learned the truth, blackmailing her so that he wouldn’t tell Darien? But why kill her?
Staring at the letter, he couldn’t make himself open it. Now he wondered if the man who had accosted Larissa had been Lelandi’s mate.
Her nightmares were now becoming his own.
Jake stood next to the chair, waiting.
Pack leaders had to keep their packs together. No matter what, Darien had to get through whatever life dealt him. Clenching his teeth, he opened the letter and began to read.
Dear Lelandi,
He glanced up at Jake.
“So the letter’s from her,” Jake said, jerking his thumb at Larissa. “It’s not from her sister.”
If you’re reading this, I’m dead. Might as well say it like it is. You know me, that’s the way I always could be with you. No one else. Just you, sis.
“Hell, no, it can’t be from her,” Darien said, waving his hand at the hospital bed. “Not if the letter is supposed to be from the dead twin.”
“Then Lelandi was Larissa and Larissa was Lelandi? I’ll never get it straight.”
Darien felt a colossal pool of tension collecting in his temple. The more he found out about his mate, the more he realized she wasn’t who he thought she was.
“Seems that way.”
“That’s why she kept saying she was Lelandi when we called her Larissa. I thought her confusion was a direct result of her wounds, and then later from the medication.”
So what else had his mate lied about? Having a family, a pack, a husband, her name. Part of him wanted to know, but part of him wanted the secrets kept buried. What difference did it make to know all the sordid details now?
I could never be what you thought I should, the good daughter, the perfect wife, but you always forgave me as a sister. You tried to steer me right a million times, but I finally had to find my own way. Who would have ever thought little ol’ me would end up with two husbands living at the same time, eh? Sorry, L. Just like the rest of our family, we don’t exactly go along with pack rules. In our blood, I guess.
If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t have been born. Honest.
I wanted to be just like you. Hope you don’t mind too terribly. Didn’t try to cause you any trouble. Don’t ever get hooked up with the wrong wolf, and then find the right one.
But if Darien was the right one, why was she so unhappy? None of it made any sense.
One of the lupus found out. He’s been blackmailing me. Been getting death threats, too. If Darien learns about my other mate, he’ll be wishing I’d died the first time around.
The fear she’d be found out—that’s what made her so inconsolable.
I’ve made a real mess of things. Like I usually do with my life.
Give Mom and Papa my love. I know they’re white-haired by now over all of my shenanigans. Love you, sis. Find the happiness I was never meant to have. Larissa
He looked at—Lelandi, still sleeping soundly, wondering how the hell Larissa had sent her the letter after she had died.
“Maybe we ought to let him have some private time?” Silva said to Jake.
“You need anything, Darien?” Jake asked.
He shook his head, feeling like his whole body had sifted through a grinder. Leaning back in the chair, he closed his eyes. He’d wanted his mate to tell him what upset her so.
Now he almost wished he didn’t know.
Later that afternoon, Jake poked his head in the room while Lelandi slept soundly and said to Darien, “We’ve got problems with one of the leather tanning machines, and I really need help on this one.”
Darien figured he didn’t, but wanted to get his mind off his troubles. As it turned out, it took more than an hour to fix it and Darien was thankful for the diversion.
Returning to the hospital, Jake opened the back door. “I can’t believe anyone could screw up the leather tanning machine that badly.”
“At least no one was injured,” Darien said, “like the last time.”
Ritka sleeping at the nurse’s station caught his attention. She could be a real bitch, but she always worked hard, never slacking off.
“What the hell.”
Jake gave her arm a rough shake. “She’s out cold.”
Darien’s stomach clenched, and he glanced down the hall. A janitor was passed out next to a bucket of mop water, and Deputy Peter lay sprawled on the floor next to his chair in front of Lelandi’s room.
“Shit.” Darien bolted down the hall and slammed Lelandi’s door open, the force banging it against the wall. Lelandi was gasping for air, a black plastic bag covering her face, suffocating her.