Black Rook Read Online Free PDF Page B

mine?”
    Sink or swim time, foolish girl.
    She turned her head and caught Rook’s gaze. Even from a few feet away, bright flecks of copper glinted in dark brown eyes that watched from an expressionless face, and she was struck by the irrational urge to make him smile. Or at least to stop looking at her as if she’d been scraped from the bottom of his shoe. “I wanted to meet you,” she said to him.
    “Me?” Rook gave her a disdainful look that made her want to melt into the floor. “Don’t tell me you’re a band groupie.”
    She nearly laughed, and that amusement buoyed her waning confidence. “Hardly. I didn’t even know who you were until a few days ago, much less that you’re a musician.”
    His frown deepened, and if a man could physically bristle, he managed it. “Then why me? I’m positive I don’t know you.”
    “You don’t.”
    “What do you want with Rook?” Thomas asked, his tone protective. Deadly.
    Brynn kept her gaze steadily trained on Rook, too nervous to look away and see the suspicion and accusation coming from the loup surrounding her. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, determined to tell as much of the truth as she could. “I’m here because I want to look into the eyes of the man who kills my father.”

Chapter Three
    “Huh?” The grunted word wasn’t Rook’s most intelligent response ever, but it was about all he could manage. The man who kills my father swirled through his mind like a sixteen-measure chorus, spoken by Brynn with the conviction of someone who’d already witnessed the crime. But he didn’t know Brynn or her father, and he sure as hell had never killed anyone.
    His father growled—a low tone that he used as a message of warning when his run members were testing his patience. “That’s a very serious allegation,” he said. “Accusing someone of murder.”
    Brynn’s entire body was trembling, and she looked as though she wanted to climb inside the bookcase and hide. She stood there, though, head up. “I didn’t say it was murder.”
    “You said ‘kills’,” Knight said. “As in future, right?”
    She glanced at him, nodded. “Yes.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “I saw it in a vision last week. Him”—she pointed at Rook—“standing over my father’s mangled body with blood all over his hands.”
    Rook’s guts tightened with disgust. Being accused of killing someone was bad enough, but she made it sound as though he’d ripped the man apart with his bare hands. And while beating a man to death was, as a Black Wolf, theoretically possible, he couldn’t ever imagine a scenario in which he’d actually do it.
    No, that wasn’t completely true. He could imagine killing a man in defense of his family or his run’s safety. Hypothetically and in self-defense. Not murder.
    “And you interpreted this vision to mean that Rook kills him?” Father asked.
    “No one else was in the vision. He was covered in my father’s blood. How would you have interpreted it?”
    “You don’t know me,” Rook snapped, finding his voice again. “But because I’m loup garou you assume I’m a killer? Or is it just the tattoos?” In the band, the markings and piercings had made him cool, made him part of the scene. At home in Cornerstone, it made him scary and different, especially when he shifted and the gauges remained in his ears.
    Brynn flinched, and her façade of confidence cracked. “I assume you’re a killer because of what I saw.”
    “These visions,” Father said. “Do you see futures that will happen, or futures that may happen unless a course is altered?” Perfect redirect of the conversation.
    She gave her attention back to him. “I see what will happen, but the ability isn’t well-defined, and I can’t control it. Sometimes I see things months in advance. Other times, I see things that happen seconds later, so there’s no possibility of trying to change them.”
    “Not well-defined?” Bishop asked with a derisive snort.