Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

Violet

Skylar. I know enough about body language to know Skylar is someone who matters to him. He moves like he's at war, preparing for an ambush, and whoever's responsible for hurting Skylar's going down.

Yikes.

Who is it? An ex? I doubt she's a current girlfriend or significant other. He's the type that would want a woman who mattered to him nearby, under his protection and watchful eye. I haven't missed the way his team trains right here on his property.

I go through a myriad of feelings at once.

Elation— he hired me!

Fear— will this go the way I planned?

Panic— what does this mean? What's happened to Skylar?

He walks at a clip I have to run to keep up with, either oblivious or unconcerned with my trailing behind him. I don't mind it, though. Moving fast burns the adrenaline that courses through me like fire.

When we reach the house, a tall, lanky man with a shaved head comes out. Two meaty pit bulls circle Lanky Man's legs, prowling as if they smell the blood of someone new in their territory.

My heart swells. God, I love pit bulls. What most people don't know about them is that they used to be nanny dogs, hired to watch over and protect babies and small children. A cross between terriers and bulldogs, pit bulls were once used as symbols of American strength during the First World War.

They're fiercely loyal and protective to a fault, though. And once trained to guard illegal activity, drug dealers and the like used them for their own benefit. When they attack, they don't let go. They'll bite to kill. And while that might've once kept children safe, pit bulls have gotten a bad rap in recent years.

I love them. I want to kneel in front of them and nuzzle their chocolate-brown necks and scratch their perky ears.

I've always been attracted to powerful, lethal creatures.

"Just got a call from Lottie."

Cain nods. "And?"

"Said she never came home last night. They expected her at midnight, and when she didn't show, they figured she was spending the night with her date."

His jaw clenches, but he doesn't otherwise react. "And?"

"And when she didn't come home this morning, Lottie got scared. Said she didn't know what to do or how to reach her, and thought you'd want to know."

"I would've wanted to know last night," he says through gritted teeth.

I'm glad I'm not the one on the receiving end of that anger. It boils at a low simmer, threatening to scald and eradicate anything it touches.

"Right, sir, but you were traveling, and not even due back until today."

Cain curses under his breath, then turns and jerks his chin at me. "You. Come with me." Like I'm going anywhere else? I'm wearing his damn T-shirt, and he just hired me. If he gave me a cot to sleep on, I'd camp right here.

I thought there were a lot of people around his house before. Now, it seems like people that work for him come out of the damn woodwork. Big, muscled guys. A few in military fatigues and others in civilian clothing mill around the large house, talking in hushed tones. None of them speak to Cain, and it takes me a minute to realize the reason they don't is because they're waiting for his command.

"Who's Skylar?" I ask, panting as I follow him up the steps two at a time.

His jaw tenses before he responds.

"My sister."

Oh, wow. Shit. Now that didn't show up in the search history. And why is a part of me relieved she's family, that she isn't a woman he has romantic ties to? My gut reaction spells danger, but I shove it down. I'll deal with that later. Now, I've got shit to do.

His sister… Has everything I read about him been a lie? Do I really know anything about him at all?

He shoves open the door to his office, and I'm not surprised by the way it looks. His desk is large, sturdy, and intimidating, a paragon of masculinity… just like him. Massive windows look out at the pool below, and on another wall one overlooks the waterfront view. Storm clouds gather to block the sun, darkening the room even though it's still daytime. He flicks on a switch, and bright overhead lighting illuminates the room.

"Sit."

He gestures for me to take a seat across from him.

Why me? Why now? Doesn't he have anyone else that works for him that could do whatever it is he wants me to do?

Lanky follows us into the room.

"Joe, meet Miss Price, our new hire."

I give him a little wave. "Hey."

Joe takes a seat beside me and leans forward, elbows on his knees.

Cain pulls out his phone and swipes. A grid shows up, with a little squiggly arrow, and he curses under his breath. "It shows her home, and it shows she hasn't left since Wednesday. That can't be right."

Joe shakes his head. "I was worried about this."

Cain blows out a breath. "Cut the shit, Joe. You don't have to be polite. You not only worried about this, you warned me about this. Said she wouldn't go for it."

I gather up my courage and clear my throat. They both look at me. "If I'm working for you, it would be helpful if you could fill me in a little?"

Joe looks to Cain for permission, and when he gets it, he nods. "Skylar's his younger sister."

"Got it. How old is she?"

"Only eighteen."

I cringe. Anything could've happened to an eighteen-year-old. She could've hung out at some guy's house and drank the night away, be still wrapped up in his sheets and not bothering with the time. She could've lost her phone or hooked up with someone and decided a trip to Vegas would be a smart idea. Really, anything goes.

Joe continues. "We put tracking software on her phone, because Cain wanted to keep an eye on her."

"Are you her guardian?"

A muscle tenses in his jaw. "No."

"Does she know you track her?"

"Found out two weeks ago."

"And lemme guess. Wasn't too fond of her big brother keeping tabs on her anymore?"

He huffs out a breath. "How'd you know?"

I nod. "It's kind of a given."

"Yeah, so she took all tracking off her phone…"

"But you're not dumb enough to really not keep tabs on her."

People frown all the time, a common facial expression one might say. When Cain Master frowns, the temperature in the room shifts, and my skin prickles. "Of course not."

He flips open his laptop, and the screen flashes to life. Cameras outside of a coffee shop show people entering and exiting with paper bags and steaming cups of coffee. Another camera shows the inside of a typical college kid's apartment, complete with beer cans stacked in blue plastic recycling bins, empty pizza boxes, and about ten pairs of shoes scattered haphazardly around the couch.

"Her place?"

"Yeah."

"She know about those cameras?"

He scowls at me. "What do you think?"

It's a rhetorical question, but I want in on this case, so I jump right in as if he really wants to know what I think. "I think you need to talk to her roommate and get everything she knows. Find out where she was last, who she was seeing, if she had plans. And I think you need to call the police."

The last suggestion was a test.

"You were spot on until you got to the police."

He passed the test. Still, I need to needle him a bit to get to more of the truth.

"You're not going to report a missing person?" Le gasp. Oh, my, Mr. Master, are you above the law? Don't trust our criminal justice system? ::Hand to brow::

"Lottie already did," Joe says with a scowl. "Police say she's not a missing person until she's been gone for twenty-four hours and wouldn't listen to her impassioned plea about why this was a special case."

"Right."

He scrubs a hand across his brow and shoots Cain a furtive glance before he looks back at me. "And if you're working with us, you might as well know as soon as they find out who she is, they won't touch it anyway."

I exhale. They don't know Candi, but something tells me I should tell them. "Just so you know, my best friend's an officer."

Again, no register of surprise. Either the man has an ironclad poker face like nothing I've ever seen before, or he already knows what I'm telling him. Great. Not a big fan of either of those options.

He's back on his laptop, swiping at the board. "I'll fill you in as quickly as I can. There will be time for more questions later, but we don't fuck around with this."

"Understood."

"Skylar was my mother's youngest child. My mother remarried when I enlisted in the army."

If he enlisted right out of high school, that puts him probably somewhere in his mid-thirties. My instincts tell me that if he'd reached seventeen or eighteen years of military service, he'd be almost untouchable, and very unlikely dishonorably discharged.

He pushes up from the table and stalks over to a large, framed print on the wall. He moves it to the side magically, like it's cast beneath a spell, before he punches in a code.

"Under normal circumstances, we'd have a training period, then initiation. No time for that, so you'll work with me and I'll fill you in as we go. We have an armory here at the house, but I keep some things personally locked up. My team knows I have this here and has the code. No one else knows and I'd like to keep it that way." He pauses, glancing at the ragged, soaked tee that clings to my body like plastic wrap. I nod and will myself not to be embarrassed by my total lack of clothing. I need gear.

He spits out words like they're bullets. I know he's concerned about his sister but I can't help wondering if I bring out his anger, too. "You're part of the team, but you'll have to earn your place. Going forward you'll keep a change of clothes on site. Am I clear?"

That gets my hackles up, and I inwardly cringe. Earn my place, like a dog begging for his table scraps? We'll see about that. I play nice, though. "Yes, of course."

I watch as he slides a handgun into a concealed holster at his waist.

"Do you know how to use a gun?"

Shit. My silence is response enough. He curses under his breath.

"You may be a skilled fighter, Miss Price, but you'll need something to keep you safe at long range. For now, you'll stay with me and have a guard on you, but you'll join me at the shooting range when they open tomorrow morning."

"Which is…?"

"Five o'clock."

"In the morning?"

He gives me a withering look and doesn't reply.

Five in the morning?

"How did you get here?"

I have a sneaking suspicion he knows but wants everything out in the open.

"I got a ride." I bite my tongue so I don't snap back to remind him it's his employee's fault I don't have a car.

"Right. I'll make sure you get one back, and you'll need a car."

Wow, okay then. "You don't have to give me a car as part of our arrangement?—"

"I do. All my employees need reliable transportation. It's for my own peace of mind more than anything." His voice sharpens. "I won't have people that work for me taking a fucking Uber to work."

Ouch.

I need to remind him of something, though. "I'm not your employee, Mr. Master."

He purses his lips and doesn't reply, but I can feel the judgy judgment in the air. Grrr.

We're walking at a good clip, and he shouts out commands as we go. He tells one guy to run surveillance at the college (I'm guessing the one his sister goes to?), another to load "Goldie" with ammo (Who is Goldie and why does she need ammo?), and a third to keep a watch on all video surveillance of Skylar. Joe takes off.

He pulls out his phone and barks out a few commands.

As we walk through his house, as people dressed in fatigues start moving and calling him sir, it doesn't feel like a home but a compound or a military base.

At the door, Joe comes up to us with a folded pile of clothing and hands it to me.

"Take those with you," Cain orders.

With me? What the hell?

He looks up at Lanky—er, Joe. "Have Claude track my location and copy everything we say and do. No one follows us. I do not want backup until I call for it, is that clear?"

"Yessir."

He clicks a key fob, and bright lights and a beep light up a truck a few yards away from us.

Oh my God.

When I was a teen, I had a few friends who got their licenses, and everyone wanted a car. Some just wanted a set of wheels to get from point A to point B, some freedom and independence. Some wanted a nicer car that would take them to job interviews or on road trips.

I wanted a truck. Specifically, a Toyota Tundra 4WD with a crew cab and thirty-eight-inch mud terrain tires with eighteen-inch Rockstar rims.

Cain Master drives my dream truck.

His truck's like him, sturdy and fearless, a veritable force of nature. The wheels alone come up to my chest. Good God . Two-tone black rawhide leather seats with red inlay matches the candy blood-red paint job, and if it wasn't for Massachusetts' insanely strict gun laws, this baby would house a gun rack in the back perfect for a twelve-gauge shotgun or semi.

And is that… no. Behind this truck, in the back, there's an even bigger truck.

"You do not drive a Ford 650!"

He gives me a curious look. "I do, but it's too big to take tonight."

"Will you let me touch it? Please? I just want to touch it, just once."

Cain's lips twitch, and he mutters, "That may be crossing a line, Miss Price."

I don't dignify his response with a reply, and don't speak because I don't trust my voice.

"Not now." He's right, I know he is. We have to get moving. Still, one day I just want to sit in that beautiful truck.

I hoist myself up on the metal platform of the Toyota. I want to get into the cab before he notes how small I am compared to this thing and decides to do something drastic and chauvinistic like touch me and help me in.

He's your boss, I remind myself. Your ridiculously hot, very scary, very dominant alpha male boss who just joked about…

No, wait. Not boss. Not boss.

Business associate or…something.

Whatever.

I hop in so quickly I manage to smash my shins on the unyielding metal step. Fuck, that'll bruise. I don't wince or say a word but silently slide onto the passenger seat. He, naturally, swings himself in with one smooth motion like this truck was custom-built to accommodate him.

I take a quick look at the clothes in my hands. Some kinda faded khaki pants that could be men's or women's, but there's an adjustable waistband and elastic to help them fit. A small black tank top, pair of socks, pair of boots.

He stares down at the boots. "Those are the smallest size we had, but something tells me you'll still have to stuff them."

"I'm not that small."

It's a stupid thing to say when I'm sitting next to a man so big he could double in Green Giant ads. His hands are three times the size of mine, his arms bigger than my thighs, and those aren't even the most intimidating things about him. Normal humans are composed of skin and tissue and strung together with muscle. Cain defies normal human body structure, because every inch of him seems to be nothing but raw, corded muscle. If we broke down, I feel as if he could hitch this truck to his shoulders and haul us home without breaking a sweat.

"I'd guess you're five feet tall, just over a hundred pounds."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to ask a woman her weight?"

I sigh. Exactly one-ten the last time I checked.

"I'm not asking. My point is, you're small. Pointless trying to argue."

He revs the engine, and heat pulses low between my legs. If this truck proposed to me, I'd accept. Gah.

"It can come in handy, you know," I say in protest.

"What can?"

"Being small."

He shifts in his seat and mutters to himself, "Could be a fuckin' issue, too."

"Not like I can help it."

He doesn't respond but launches straight into giving me more details about his sister. "Things to know. Skylar has the shittiest taste in boyfriends and won't ever bring them to meet me for dinner or anything before she dates them."

"Does that surprise you?"

He pauses, flicking on his directionals before he takes a turn, then cruises back up to a breakneck speed. I guess not only does he not have a use for the police, but he obviously seems to think they can't touch him.

"No."

"If I had a brother like you, I don't think I'd bring my skinny little boyfriends home to roast marshmallows by your bonfire either."

A glimmer of something like amusement flits across his face, but he quickly goes back to the scary mask.

He grunts. "Especially the kinds of assholes she dates."

"Okay, so this is important information to note if I'm going to help you with this investigation. Little sis dates assholes."

He nods. We've left the shore and are heading into the heart of the city. I love Salem, with its aged houses and history. As we leave the shore, we draw closer to the historical parts of Salem—the Witch House, other museums, and the House of the Seven Gables.

"Skylar wrote to me when I was stationed in Europe and didn't travel much. Didn't like coming home, didn't prioritize it."

Why didn't he like coming home? My radar pings again, adding to my growing list of things I need to find out about Cain Master .

"Well, I know how that goes," I say softly, almost to myself. I do. Some of us would give anything to never come home again. "You and Skylar. How close are you?"

"Pretty close. She wrote to me constantly when she was a kid and I was deployed. Slowed when she got older, but I still have those letters."

I nod.

"Right. When I got back… she lived at my place for a time. She got tired of finding my mom passed out on the couch or her flavor of the week in her bedroom. I was beyond done with it. She stayed here a few months. She needed some structure, guidance. I gave her that."

Yeah, I bet he's good at giving people structure and…guidance. I stifle a shiver.

I note how he chooses his words carefully but doesn't sugarcoat a thing, a master at precision in his speech.

"She wanted to date." He spits out the words like they're distasteful. "She was old enough to. Let's just say we didn't see eye to eye when it came to who she chose to date."

I nod. "Let me piece this together, then. She's raised by a mom who let her do whatever she wanted. Doesn't get what she needs. You went off and enlisted which gave you the structure and accountability you needed. She had none of that, so when you came back, you did your best to provide that for her." He nods. "She wasn't too fond of your rules and expectations, but she was maybe grateful for a roof over her head and a large, scary big brother who'd keep her safe."

He draws in his breath with practiced patience and gives me a look I can only classify as a warning. "Yeah."

"So she rebelled. On the one hand, wanted your protection and everything you could offer, but on the other, didn't like being treated like a child and wanted you to damn well know that."

"Right."

"So at the first chance she got, when her friends got an apartment, she took off. Maybe checked in with you from time to time but didn't do much more than that."

"Very good, Miss Price."

"I got the basics then."

"Enough chitchat. That more or less brings you up to speed. Two boyfriends ago, she dated a guy who told me, I shit you not, that he was leaving that night to go become a vampire. And the next one after that came wearing a fucking cape and black boots. In July." Something tells me he wouldn't forgive black boots and a cape even in the dead of winter.

"We do live in Salem."

He huffs out a breath.

"And… let me guess… she didn't bring anyone else to see you after that?"

He grunts like a caveman. I'd pay good money to hear what he said to those two boyfriends.

"Cape. Boots. Salem. Is your sister involved in anything with witchcraft? Wiccan?"

His back goes so rigid, I could trace a straight line from the top of his spine to his seat. "Yeah."

But he doesn't offer any other details.

"How so?"

"What do you mean?"

"Is she actually Wiccan?"

I watch his reaction. He looks like he wants to wince, but he catches himself. Instead, his fingers tighten on the wheel, his knuckles white. He does not like that his sister's involved with the crowd she is, not one little bit.

"Involved in witchcraft?" He makes a face like he just ate a rotten apple. "She's got friends that do it, but…"

Aww. Is the big bad alpha too scared to admit his sister's involved in something outside his control?

"Are you in denial about her involvement, Cain?"

His eyes narrow on the road ahead of him, but he still manages to give me a brief sidelong look. "Be careful, Miss Price."

Something in me thrills at the warning he gives me, my skin prickling with heat. His voice has dropped, and is it my imagination, or has the inside of this car just heated up about twenty degrees?

"Careful about what?"

"Treading into areas you know nothing about."

I release a breath patiently. "Mr. Master, if I'm going to work with you, it doesn't make sense for you to hold anything back from me."

He gives me a sharp, sideways glance before he looks in front of him again. "You'll help me find my sister. You'll help me make sure she's safe and that the idiots she shares living space with haven't done something brainless like sign her up to be sacrificed to their fucking gods for the summer solstice."

"They can't do that."

"Why not?"

"It's August. Summer solstice is in June."

I think I actually see little tendrils of smoke come out of his ears.

Easy, Violet. Don't poke the bear too hard.

"You think you're clever, don't you?" He shakes his head as he flicks on his directionals again and takes a left so hard, I swear the tires leave the ground for a fraction of a second, a hard feat considering what this monstrosity weighs. When my stomach settles back to where it should be, I remember to protest.

"I—"

"You think you have it all figured out. I'm an overprotective brother who doesn't know jack shit about teens and boyfriends and how to relate ."

Well… If the shoe fits…

"What you don't know is that I goddamn know what it's like to be the ostracized freak who can't rely on his parents. I know what it's like to want to fit in, to find a peer group you can socialize with who'll value you for who you are, not what you do."

Oof .

"So yeah, maybe it looks like I don't have a lot of respect for this witchcraft thing. And maybe I don't. I value what I can see. What I can hold. What I can touch."

I nod. It takes me a few seconds to realize I'm clutching at my neck, like he's a vampire who's going to bite me. My blood thrums through my veins, hot and visceral, and my skin feels too tight. I have to get control of the situation. He continues.

"I don't have a lot of use for bullshit. I will find the truth if I have to hunt it into dark valleys and hold it at knife point. Do we understand each other, Miss Price?"

I draw in a breath and release it slowly as I unfold the clothing in my lap. "Perfectly, sir." I cast a glance around the small interior of his truck. "Now where am I supposed to be getting dressed?"