The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told Read Online Free PDF Page A

Christmas.
    Restlessness had him pacing: there were no plans to make, no wrongs to right. Finally he unlocked the safe and pulled out a couple of the newer rifles. He needed to put some time in with them anyway.
    An hour of shooting staved off the restlessness, but only until he locked the guns up again. He’d have to go for a run. When he emptied his pockets in preparation, he noticed he had missed a call while he’d been shooting. He glanced at the number, frowning when he didn’t recognize it. Most of his jobs came through an agent who knew better than to give out his cell number. Before he could decide if he wanted to return the call, his phone rang again, a call from the same number.
    “Christiansen,” he answered briskly.
    There was a long silence. “Papa?”
    He closed his eyes and sank back in his chair feeling his heart expand with almost painful intentness as his wolf fought with the man who knew his daughter hated him: didn’t want to see him, ever. She had been there when her mother died.
    “Stella?” He couldn’t imagine what it took to make her break almost forty years of silence. “Are you all right? Is there something wrong?” Someone he could kill for her? A building to blow up? Anything at all.
    She swallowed. He could hear it over the line. He waited for her to hang up.
    Instead, when she spoke again, her voice was brisk and the wavery pain that colored that first “Papa” was gone as if it had never been. “I was wondering if you would consider doing a favor for me.”
    “What do you need?” He was proud that came out evenly. Always better to know what you’re getting into, he told himself. He wanted to tell her that she could ask him for anything—but he didn’t want to scare her.
    “I run an agency that places foster kids,” she told him, as if he didn’t know. As if her brothers hadn’t told her how he quizzed them to find out how she was doing and what she was up to. He hoped she never found out about her ex-boyfriend who’d turned stalker. He hadn’t killed that one, though his willingness to do so had made it easier to persuade the man that he wanted to take up permanent residence in a different state.
    “I know,” he said because it seemed like she needed a response.
    “There’s something—” she hesitated. “Look, this might not have been the best idea.”
    He was losing her again. He had to breathe deeply to keep the panic from his voice. “Why don’t you tell me about it anyway? Do you have something better to do?”
    “I remember that,” she said. “I remember you doing that with Mom. She’d be hysterical, throwing dishes or books, and you’d sit down and say, ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’”
    Did she want to talk about her mother now? About the one time he’d needed to be calm and failed? He hadn’t known he was a werewolf until it was too late. Until after he’d killed his wife and the lover she’d taken while David had been fighting for God and country, both of whom had forgotten him. She’d been waiting until he came home to tell him that she was leaving—it was a mistake she’d had no time to regret. He, on the other hand, might have forever to regret it for her.
    He never spoke of it. Not to anyone. For Stella he’d do it, but she knew the story anyway. She’d been there.
    “Do you want to talk about your mother?” he asked, his voice carrying into a lower timbre; as it did when the wolf was close.
    “No. Not that,” she said hurriedly. “Nothing like that. I’m sorry. This isn’t a good idea.”
    She was going to hang up. He drew on his hard-earned control and thought fast.
    Forty years as a hunter and leader of men had given him a lot of practice reading between the lines. If he could put aside the fact that she was his daughter, maybe he could salvage this.
    She’d told him she ran a foster agency like it was important to the rest of what she had to say.
    “It’s about your work?” he asked, trying to figure out what a