Jaxson(36)

She thought Riverwise was a place she could do that, but now…

Now she was certain she would have to leave. The sooner the better. Staying would only hurt Jaxson. The sooner she was gone, the sooner he could go back to holding things together and taking care of people and rescuing shifters.

The only problem was that leaving felt like ripping out her heart and stomping on it.

Olivia flicked off the TV and curled tighter on the couch. She let her head fall against the edge of the sofa and closed her eyes. A torrent of emotions swam behind her eyelids. She would need all her resolve to march into Riverwise and quit.

Today was Saturday.

It could wait until Monday.

By then, she would have cried out all her tears.





Jaxson searched yet another restricted access-only database but still came up empty.

Olivia’s digital footprint was incredibly light.

He’d wandered home in a daze after she stormed out of the office, crying and claiming to love another man. His wolf howled at that, jealous and heartbroken, but Jaxson couldn’t believe it. He knew she had been hiding something, some dark well of sadness that would bubble up at the strangest of times, but he never figured her for the kind of woman willing to be just something on the side. A fling for some asshole who just wanted her for the hot sex.

His wolf’s howl turned to a growl that wanted to tear something limb from limb.

Preferably the asshole.

Jaxson shook his head and focused. He’d only gotten a few hours of sleep, tossing and turning, before he was back in the office, using Riverwise’s considerable investigative resources to figure out who the hell Olivia was seeing. He wasn’t going to storm up to the guy’s house and take him out… probably… but he definitely needed to know what the competition looked like.

And why Olivia was drawn to him.

He’d spent half the morning searching everything he could find on her, but her story just wasn’t holding up. Either she was lying or the asshole had supernatural security protocols in place such that he never left a fingerprint on her life. Possible, but everyone slipped up.

And assholes weren’t usually that careful.

Jaxson pushed away from his desk where he’d been hunched for an hour. He ran two hands through his hair, took a deep breath, and stretched the aches from his back. It was past noon, and Olivia still wasn’t returning his calls. Which meant she was definitely ignoring him. He considered a stale sandwich from the vending machines downstairs, but opted to just slam back the half cup of cold coffee he had at the desk. He’d tracked down every facet of Olivia’s life that could be gleaned from the public, and less public, databases, and he still had only the barest sketch of her days on the planet.

Foster care. Odd jobs. Tax forms filed, but income too low to pay much in the way of taxes. In fact, he was amazed at how little she got by on. No wonder she was so concerned about the rent. He logged on to Riverwise’s account and authorized an advance on her next three paychecks to be direct deposited to her bank today. No matter what happened between them, he wanted to make sure she had some cushion going forward.

The idea that some asshole was bedding her but leaving her vulnerable to being kicked out of her apartment… Jaxson had to shove away from the computer again and pace his office a while to get his rage under control. How could anyone spend more than two minutes with Olivia and not understand how special she was? He would give anything to have the chance to take care of her, and this guy was just…

He stopped his pacing, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples. Focus, Jaxson.

He stalked back to the computer and dove into his research again.

Maybe he didn’t go back far enough. Maybe there was some connection in her childhood, before foster care, to this creep. Jaxson had access to even the most confidential files, but it only took a simple search of the newspapers around the time of her placement in foster care to pull up what happened to her parents.

She had told him they were dead. He didn’t know they had died in an apartment fire that almost took Olivia’s life as well. The official report said the cause of the fire was unknown, but maybe there was something there… some connection that the asshole was holding over her… Jaxson searched the gossip rags and underground newspapers and e-zines. He focused on her parents. Sometimes the most tenuous connections would be whispered in the digital shadows…

Olivia’s mother was a witch.

Jaxson’s hand froze on the mouse. He’d stumbled into a darknet forum thread titled, Hunters, Witches, and Other Black Arts. His search had pinged Rowan Lilyfield in that thread, and it was clear that someone thought Olivia’s mother was a witch. There was a whole thread on her: suspected dark art spells performed, a description that matched the other online images he had found of her, and most telling of all… she was raised in a well-known coven on the south side of Seattle. She was a full-blooded witch, although apparently she had married a research professor of some kind rather than taking a male witch for a husband. Then again, male witches were almost as rare as female shifters.