"Okay. She needs a name that goes with her reddish-brown coat. Hmmm...something grown up and att.i.tudy."

"Att.i.tudy? Is that even a word?" I asked Kris.

"It is now," she laughed.

"What about Foxy?"

Kris squealed, making both horses jump. They glared up at the teen who was bouncing on her toes, clapping her hands softy, before quickly returning to their hay. "Foxy is perfect for her!"

"Foxy and Sunny it is!" I laughed at the giggly girl until she danced off to retrieve one of the shedding tools.

"Have fun brushing them, but be careful, ok? I'm going to check on Connor and see if he's still p.i.s.sed off at me." I waved at Kris, who seemed to have found her happy place amongst the horses while I backed away toward the trail.

We could do this, the horses were already trained, I could tell. They were healthy; they were strong - why not ride them, instead of noisy and unreliable motorcycles? I didn't understand Connor's reservations about taking them to Los Angeles. Especially since he admitted he could actually ride a horse. On the drive back to the lodge in the truck, I decided to cut back on trying to convince him to take the horses and focus on making them healthy and happy first. He'd come around. Connor always did.

My thoughts had been so preoccupied with getting the trailer onto the property and not startling the horses that I had almost forgotten about the mutilated one we found in the barn. The gruesome scene came flooding back to me as I climbed the porch steps. Out of habit, I looked over my shoulder at the quiet woods. I wondered, not for the first time, what lived inside the gloomy shadows that flanked the tall pine trees. I just hoped whatever it was that had attacked, eaten and dismembered the stable horse was long gone and not in our woods, watching us; waiting for its moment to invade our little community.

I squared my shoulders at the tree line and muttered under my breath, "Not on my watch."

Connor punched the closet door so hard three of his knuckle impressions were left in the painted particleboard. He flinched, staring at the caved-in spots with animosity, as if it was the doors fault his hand hurt, and not his own.

"d.a.m.n!" he cursed at the wood, rubbing over the raw parts of his hand with his other thumb.

She couldn't go, not on a horse, not all the way to Los Angeles. What if she was thrown or the horses got spooked and left them stranded in the middle of nowhere? What if he was thrown, his neck broken and not able to take care of her? With a sigh, he ran a finger over the amygdaliform of one of the indents, tracing the almond shaped hole carefully. She did this to him, riled him up inside; tortured his heart and clouded his mind. It was all her fault that he was falling apart at the seams. But he didn't mind, of course he didn't, because he loved her. And love was...well, messy.

She'd find a way to leave. Even if she started out on foot - he knew she would. Because Riley was the most stubborn woman, he had ever met. That d.a.m.n heart of hers was going to get them both in trouble - or killed. And now Kris wanted to go.

"d.a.m.n it!" he yelled again into the empty bedroom.

He kicked at one of his boots and watched as it flung into the side of the bedframe and bounced to a stop below the open window. Still cursing under his breath, he strode over to the sill, brushing the sheer curtains aside in irritation and peered out into the woods, watching the shadows as they flicked in and out of the safety of the trees as sun shined down through their canopies. Before he turned away, he thought he saw a more solid shape take form but when he squinted to see it better, it shifted and blended in with the rest of the forest shadows.

"Great, now you're seeing things. Right. Just...brilliant," he muttered to himself as he stomped toward the bathroom, kicking the door open and cursing some more when it banged into the wall and swung back into him, catching his elbow painfully.

After splashing cool water on his face and staring at his rugged reflection in the mirror, he wondered what it was that Riley saw in him. His face looked gaunt; the dark circles under his eyes becoming more and more p.r.o.nounced each week. He hadn't bothered to shave in more days than he could count on both hands - and his hair - what a mess that was.

"Oh my G.o.d, you look like s.h.i.t. Complete and total s.h.i.t," he hissed at himself.

He rummaged around in the sink cabinet pulling items off the shelves and dumping them onto the counter until he had everything out that he would need. He figured he had at least a good hour before Riley and Kris would be back from their horse supply trip. And he planned on looking less like a deranged serial killer-turned hippy by the time they returned.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," he sighed. "I wouldn't listen to me either if I looked like this."

And with that comment lodged securely in his brain, he grabbed a fist-full of his dark curls and shoved the hair clippers underneath, snipping at least two inches off in one swipe. He grabbed another clump of hair and repeated the process over and over until the sink was full. After shaking his head to get the loose hairs off, he ran his hands through the shorter waves, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the back of his neck as carefully as he could. The clippings nearly filled the wastebasket after he dumped them. Next, he filled the sink with warm water and lathered his face and neck with shaving cream. When he was done shaving, his skin was smooth and soft. He even trimmed his eyebrows just enough to make them look a little less wild and jumped in the shower to wash all the hairs off.

He felt ten pounds lighter when he dried his body and climbed into clean jeans. Just as he was wrestling a thin t-shirt over his damp head, he heard Zoey bark from downstairs. Not bothering to pull on socks or shoes, he glanced at the oval mirror that hung above the dresser on his way out of the room. It wasn't that long ago where his job demanded a certain amount of attention aimed at keeping his looks agreeable. He had let himself go over the last several months.

He briefly smirked at the cleaner, younger-looking reflection. "Much better. Let her try and argue with that face."

CHAPTER seven.

The instant I stepped into the cabin, I smelled him. The ocean fragrance of his body wash filled the entire lower level of the cabin so much so that I glanced around, thinking he was standing somewhere nearby. Zoey barked for him before padding off into the kitchen and nosily lapped up a generous amount of water before stretching out on the cool floor for a nap.

"Connor?" The room stayed empty but I heard the soft footfalls of his feet as he descended the stairs.

"Hey," he said to my back before I had a chance to turn around.

My mouth dropped open and my eyes glossed over. His shirt stuck to his chest, as if he had just pulled it onto his damp skin. His expression turned amusing as he strode up to me, pecked my cheek swiftly and continued on to the kitchen. Ahh, I see how it is, I thought, as I stared at his firm backside before it disappeared behind the island counter top. Zoey greeted him with a snort, and continued on with her nap.

Snapping my mouth shut and swallowing the lump in my throat, I stepped up to the counter as casually as I could manage and slid onto one of the stools to watch him bustle about.

"You cut your hair," I stated.

"Yup. It was time. Tea?" he asked as he held one of the colorful mugs out at me.

I shook my head and propped my elbows on the tile top. "No, I'm good."

With a shrug, he continued to move around the kitchen, preparing his drink, and ignoring me. Eventually the silence ate away at me and I released my lower lip from my teeth.

"You shaved, too."

He turned around and smiled, flashing his perfectly straight, white teeth. "That I did. You approve?"

"Sure."

I knew what he was doing. He was trying to charm me out of my anger with him. I sucked my lower lip in again and continued to nibble on it, thinking quietly to myself. My eyes couldn't stay on one part of his body for long, so I let them roam his figure, freely. With his back to me, I could stare unabashedly at his shoulders and the rounded muscles of his back and at the two indents above his a.s.s that were visible beneath his shirt. The jeans he chose to wear hung low on his hips but hugged tightly to his legs, leaving not much for the imagination. Not that I didn't already know every inch of his naked form, but the outfit and his newly fresh look was a giant tease to every one of my senses.

Feeling uncomfortable on the wooden stool, I wiggled around, crossing and uncrossing my legs. Unable to find a position that worked, I gave up and walked over to the couch. My body was still sore from the bike crash and the scabs along my jaw seemed destined to stay awhile. But even with the wipeout a recent memory, my mind felt as if it had taken a beating.

"So," Connor said, blowing at the steam that rose from the top of his cup, "I take it you got what you needed for the horses?"

I nodded and leaned deeper into the plush cushions. "We got what we needed. But we won't be returning back to the same farm." I shivered at the mental picture of the severed horse head and tried to replace it with something less gruesome. It didn't work.

"Why? Was the place wiped out?"

"No. Something bad happened there. We'll find another place to rummage through next time," I answered, keeping my tone level and my gaze on the fireplace across from the table my feet rested on.

"Hasn't something bad happened everywhere?" he asked, clearly knowing I didn't want to talk, but pushing anyway.

"It was a different kind of bad. I'll talk to you about it later," I looked up at him, meeting his charmed appearance with a smile. Inside my mind, I chanted over and over: Do not jump him, do not jump him. But after he moved from the kitchen to the neighboring chair, sitting with one leg hooked casually over the other, sipping that d.a.m.n cup and looking s.e.xy as h.e.l.l, all I could think about was ripping his clothes off.

Since I knew that was exactly what he wanted to happen, I rose instead and walked away from the sitting room, not speaking again until my hand was on the wooden staircase banister, "I need a shower, keep your eyes out for Kris, okay?"

The cold water gave me goose b.u.mps, but I still felt flushed. As I stood beneath the streaming water, my mind was full of thoughts ranging from borderline indecent as far as Connor was concerned, to graphic and gory horse parts and on to fear and frustration that too much time had already pa.s.sed since I decided to look for Mariah. She was out there, lost somewhere in a dead city. Finding her had become an obsession and I knew why. I had sent them away. I had killed her brother. Sure, it was self-defense, but that didn't keep the guilt at bay.

Someone had to care about her and for whatever reason I didn't understand, that someone was me. It was illogical. It was border lining on stupidity. The thought that I would locate any trace of her in a city as large as Los Angeles was absurd, but - and I knew this to be true - if it was me out there, I would want someone to come and find me, or to at least try. Connor had to understand that, or I'd end up going alone.

Not that I couldn't go alone. It's not as if I didn't think about it, but that would create an unnecessary problem and probably a small war between Connor and me. A war I wasn't sure I'd win. If I stayed in San Diego, I would be unhappy. If I left for Los Angeles, Connor would be unhappy. It wasn't a matter of right vs. wrong, it was a matter of who won this round. As I scrubbed the smell of horse and dry hay off my skin with my lathered loofa, I repeated one sentence over and over again in my head until I truly began to believe it: I will win this fight.

"Feeling better?" Connor placed a gla.s.s of an antique bronze-colored liquid in front of me as I slid onto the barstool. I intentionally came downstairs after my cold shower in just a loose top - no bra and a short pair of running shorts. It seemed that neither of us was above using our s.e.x appeal on each other.

I let the water drip off the ends of my hair onto the floor underneath the stool. "What is this?" I sniffed at the gla.s.s and winced. "It's strong, whatever it is."

"Try it," he said, taking a sip from a matching gla.s.s. The muscles in his arms rippled as he effortlessly hoisted himself up onto the counter by the sink so he could sit and face me.

"Is it whiskey?" I sniffed again, leery of anything that didn't come from a longneck bottle. Connor could drink me under the table any day. I had learned that fact months ago. The drink was fragrant and confusing on my senses; oak, pears, chocolate, cloves and coffee flooded through my nasal membranes. "I've never smelled anything like it."

Connor chuckled and dragged a hand across his open mouth. "Oh, I'm sure you haven't. This is a very rare drink, my dear."

I leaned forward over the gla.s.s, inhaling its complex aroma once more. "But, it is a whiskey, right?"

He laughed again, leisurely sipping from his gla.s.s. "Taste it, and then I'll tell you what it is," he said with a wink.

Raising the tumbler to my lips, I let only a dribble of the liquid onto my tongue; almost sure I would hate it. The smoothness of it surprised me so I opened my mouth to let in more. With a slow swallow, the sweetness of it warmed my tongue before the bitter oak and chocolate hit the back of my mouth. Heat erupted inside my throat as the drink went down.

Peering up at Connor with one of my eyes squeezed shut I managed to squeak out a few words before coughing, "Yeah, that's good stuff."

He reached behind him and carefully grabbed a tall bottle with a faded red label and jumped off the counter before setting it down between us. I leaned forward to read the dusty label out loud. "Glenfiddich, Rare Collection, 1937...is that the year?"

"Yep." He laughed when my eyes widened and my mouth dropped open.

"Where'd you find it?"

"In one of the big houses on our last Julian trip. Jacks and I hit the jackpot in this dude's wine cellar. I brought back a few things. This bottle I planned to save for a special occasion but then I realized the man that owned it probably thought the same thing and yet, there it stayed, locked behind a gla.s.s cabinet door with a bunch of other rare s.h.i.t. You know, I think only sixty-something bottles of this are out there. You can only find them in Auctions now." His eyes glazed over as he realized what he said. "I mean, before. Whatever, it's a rare whiskey, this is." He sipped from his gla.s.s again and pushed mine closer to my hand.

"It's not bad. But may I ask - why'd you pull it out now?"

"What? You're thinking I planned on getting you drunk enough to promise to stay here in the mountains with the rest of us. And not go riding into the sunset on the back of a horse you don't know, spending a week traveling to one of the most dangerous cities in the country?" The sharp edge to his voice betrayed the smile on his face.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," I said, sipping from my gla.s.s. I couldn't help but wince from the heat.

"And, I take it you came down here dressed like that in order to convince me to let you go?"

"Well, two for two. A smart one you are." I rose my tumbler up. His eyes roamed freely over my shirt, pausing over the material that was stretched across my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Is it working?" I asked with my most seductive smile.

"Maybe, I'll tell you later. We're about to have company." With a nod, he gestured outside and I turned to see the rest of the group walking up the trail to our cabin steps.

"I hope you plan on sharing your whiskey find with the others." I said with a laugh while Zoey met Winchester at the door, all tail wags and jumpy paws.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I?" Connor waved the group in and smirked as I crossed an arm casually over my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"I'll be right back," I said as I waved at the others. I took the stairs up two at a time, hoping the other men weren't staring at my backside as I ran from the room. My plan had backfired. That's okay, I thought, there's always a Plan B. And Connor will eventually have to come upstairs and climb into bed with me.

Connor was still drinking with the other men well past one in the morning. The rare bottle of Glenfiddich had been a treat for them, especially Skip, who wasn't much of a drinker but did enjoy the occasional snifter of whiskey. The bottle was gone in less than an hour and the men had moved on to another amber-colored liquid that I stayed clear of. By the time I dragged myself upstairs, I was more than ready for sleep.

When my head hit the pillow, the weight of my eyelids multiplied exponentially and rather than struggle to keep them open, I submitted to my body's call for sleep. My last conscious thought was about Connor and how I was going to convince him to get on one of the horses as soon as they were ready to ride.

It was the change in the air around the bed that roused me from a dreamless sleep. I heard the curtain from one of the windows drag across the windowsill and sensed its movement as it fluttered up against the gla.s.s. I lifted my head, my vision still blurry and smiled up at the face peering down at me.

"Connor...did you get enough to drink tonight?" I mumbled.

The face leaned forward slightly and I felt the mattress give a little as his elbows pressed into the bed. A chill ran along my cheek, travelling down the side of my face and crawled around to the back of my neck, lifting the small hairs that ran along my spine. The sensation made me shudder and I bolted upright and away from the man kneeling on the worn, wooden floor next to where I had been sleeping.

It wasn't Connor.

Connor stumbled up the stairs, half-laughing and half-grimacing as the drink he'd poured eagerly down his throat threatened to resurface with each step he took up to the second landing. For the first time since Fin, he was happily drunk, without a care in the world. And so was Winchester, who was sprawled out on the living room sofa, and Jacks, who was helped back to the cabin next door by Skip, where a pregnant Ana waited.

He giggled, not bothering to cover his mouth while he pa.s.sed Kris's dark bedroom as the image of Ana came mind. She would be p.i.s.sed to see Jacks indisposed and unable to wait on her. The tongue-lashing she would give the man would be epic and Connor was more than b.u.mmed that he would not be there to hear it.

After precariously weaving down the hallway, he finally made it to the room he shared with Riley. He was surprised to see a crack of light coming from the underside of the closed door and he pushed on it until the heavy wood creaked inward. Riley sat on the mattress, pillows clutched to her chest with her back pressed into the bedframe. She didn't look at him as he nosily entered their bedchambers, tugging at his shirt with one hand and the b.u.t.tons of his jeans with the other.

"Hey baby...you waited for me?" he slurred his words as he kicked off his shoes before plopping down onto the side of the bed.

The shirt was fighting with him and he cursed as the material twisted under his arms and around his neck. He couldn't seem to get the d.a.m.n thing off. "Whada f.u.c.k," he hissed, as the shirt snagged his lips and nose. With both arms awkwardly flailing in mid-air he began to giggle again. "Baaaaby, tink I's need help," he said. A full minute went by in silence as he continued to struggle against the tight fabric before he was free. He tossed the stretched out shirt onto the ground at his feet and noticed a wet stain down the front of it. "Huh."

Riley hadn't said a word since he came into the room. The thought that she was angry occurred to him but his head had begun to spin and the room was tilting and swaying with it.

"Fine. Ya win, baby. I give, mmkay?" His accent was strong, even to his drunk self and that made him giggle again.

When she finally did speak, her voice was flat, devoid of emotion. It didn't even sound like her and for a split second he panicked, thinking he had wandered into the wrong bedroom. "Connor. Be quiet."

He turned his head around to stare at her. Yeah, it was Riley. It was definitely Riley sitting next to him, wearing something strappy and shiny. With a grin, he lifted a hand and fumbled at her shoulder, teasing the spaghetti strap until it slid down her arm. Without a word, she simply shrugged his hand off her shoulder.

"Awww, babe, dannae be like dat." He was drunk but not so drunk that he didn't realize how horrible his speech was. Clearing his throat, he tried again to speak to her but only got a fleeting glance in his direction before she looked away from him again. Feeling slighted, he smirked at her profile and followed her gaze across the room to whatever it was that was more interesting than him.

"Holy f.u.c.k!" he shouted, pushing off the mattress so quickly that he lost his balance and had to flail his arms to keep from falling backwards.

In the far corner stood a man with his back facing them. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, causing his body to sway from side to side. Blood soaked his shirt from the collar to the waist area and in the center, where his shoulder blades should have been, was a dark and fleshy hole. The back of the man's light hair was crusty from dried blood and gra.s.s. Connor didn't need to see the man's face to know exactly who he was. But it couldn't be. He was dead. Dead and buried on a hill not far from there, with a panoramic view of the lake.

The spinning in Connor's head took over and his body pitched forward. Just before he collapsed onto the ground, his eyes rolled back into his head and Fin's rugged voice spoke to him, "Connor...don't let her go, Connor. You can't let her leave us..."