Hungry Like the Wolf(80)
As she knocked on his door a half hour later, she realized she probably should have called first. It was after midnight.
But Zak jerked open the door before she’d even finished knocking. He was wearing jeans and a Texas A&M T-shirt. The way his hair was sticking up all over the place made her think she’d woken him up.
“Mac, thank God! I’ve been worried as hell about you.”
Mac brushed past him. “I think I really screwed up.”
Zak shut the door. “I’ve been calling you for the past two hours. You’re all over the news. Something about machine guns and a barn catching fire. What happened?”
“Hardy sent a bunch of hired guns to kill Gage and me,” she told him. “But that’s not important.”
His eyes went wide behind his glasses. “You almost get killed and it’s not important?”
She waved her hand. “No. I found out what SWAT’s been hiding. And it’s huge.”
“O-kay.” When she didn’t elaborate, he frowned. “So, what is it?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Maybe you should sit down first.”
Zak gave her a curious look, but did as she suggested, parking himself in the overstuffed chair he’d had since his college days. Mac sat on the adjacent matching couch.
“Well?” he prompted.
Mac felt as if he was looking right through her. But he could always do that. The difference now was that she had something to feel guilty about.
“Gage is…”
A werewolf.
It sounded crazy. She’d seen Gage turn into one and she could hardly believe it herself.
“Gage is…what?” Zak asked.
“He’s…” She tried again. And failed miserably. “Maybe I should just show you.”
She took out her camera and turned it on. Her finger hovered over the video playback button, but she didn’t click on it.
“Mac, I thought you dropped the whole idea of doing a story on SWAT.”
“I did. But then I found out what Gage has been hiding and I…”
“Damn Mac, you just couldn’t let this one go, could you?”
She looked up, shocked. He actually sounded mad at her. “It could be the biggest story of my career.”
Zak sat back, studying her from behind his glasses. “But if you run with it, you’ll lose Gage.”
She gave him a miserable look. “I think I already have.”
He sighed. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”
Mac told him everything. Well, not everything. She didn’t talk about the sex, of course. Which meant there were huge periods of time throughout the weekend she didn’t mention at all. And she didn’t tell Zak the things Gage had shared with her about his life before SWAT, when he was an Army Ranger. She didn’t feel right sharing that.
But she told Zak the most important parts. About hanging around her apartment for hours doing nothing more than talking. About the feelings she had for Gage. And believing he’d felt the same things for her.
“So, what changed?” Zak asked.
She told him about going to her favorite restaurant out in Bonham and about Mike calling to tell them Hardy had sent men to kill them, then about the car ramming them, the chase through the woods, and finally the fight in the barn.
“Then when I went outside and saw Gage… Zak, he was…”
Mac faltered—again. Damn it. Why couldn’t she just say it?
“Was it illegal?”
She looked at Zak in confusion. “What?”
“Whatever Gage did,” Zak explained. “Was it illegal?”
“No.”
“Immoral?”
“No.”
“Did it save your life?”
She remembered the burning barn and the gunmen waiting outside to shoot her and Gage the moment they ran out. “Yes.”
“Now for a tough one,” Zak said. “Is Gage—or anyone else on the SWAT team—going to be hurt if you write this story?”
Exposing the truth was her job. She wasn’t responsible for what other people did with that truth once she exposed it. But then she thought about what Gage said—about people hunting him and his pack, conducting research on them, killing them—and she felt ill.
“Yes,” she said softly. “I don’t know what to do, Zak.”
He gave her a small smile. “I’m pretty sure you do, or you wouldn’t have come here to talk to me. You’re looking for someone to tell you it’s okay to do something your gut tells you is wrong. Sorry, but that’s not going to be me.”
Zak was right. “But there’s never been a time in my life when the story didn’t come first. I’m not sure if I know how to let this one go.”