Here I was in a crisis, and I couldn’t stop thinking of Jericho. I groaned against the pillow.
I told myself I’d just close my eyes for a minute, but within moments, I’d fallen asleep humming the song.
***
Jericho burned the tires on his truck as he sped to the address listed on Isabelle’s application. The prestigious neighborhood made him leery of what line of business her boyfriend was involved in. Jericho didn’t think it was legit if he’d gone out of his way to buy a house outside the Breed community, as if he were hiding from someone.
“Park up the street,” Wheeler said. “He knows what you look like. We need to take a stroll up the back way and look inconspicuous.”
“Yeah, we blend.”
“Let’s just be chill and scope it out.”
Jericho cut off the lights and parked behind an RV. “Maybe you should wait in the truck as the lookout.”
“A lookout?” Wheeler angrily popped his door open. “That all you think I can do is sit around and play peepers? I’m your brother. Where you go, I go. So you can drop the solo shit, because we’re doing this together. ’Preciate ya.” He slammed the door and headed between two houses.
“Goddammit,” Jericho murmured, jogging behind him.
“Look how these fuckers live,” Wheeler said quietly as they passed a house with a four-car garage. “We have a big house for a growing pack. These assholes have twenty rooms for two idiots and a poodle.”
“I used to break into homes like these with Izzy. We’d target a house when the owners were out of town and lounge in their pool during the summer.”
“No shit?”
The neighborhood didn’t have alleys, so they walked up the street behind Hawk’s. A dog barked from one of the backyards, and Jericho slowed his pace. Luckily the fences weren’t connected between houses and there was enough space between each home to see the street on the other side. “I think we’re close. Let’s cut through.”
They scoped their surroundings to make sure no humans were watching and jogged between two houses. A motion-sensor light switched on, and they hauled ass. As they reached the homes on Hawk’s street, they slowed down and skulked in the shadows.
“His address is fourteen twenty-four,” Jericho murmured.
“This is it then.” Wheeler tapped his finger against the brick house to his right. “The one across the street is the next odd number. You want a boost into the backyard, or should we break out a window?”
Jericho locked his fingers behind his head, deep in thought. “The neighbors will call the cops if they see us climbing through a window. The fence around back will give us privacy. My goal is to get in that house and make sure Isabelle’s okay. If he has alarms, then so-fucking-what.”
“That’s doubtful,” Wheeler said with a grumble. “He might be hiding his ass in the human district, but I doubt he wants a security system to have a bunch of human police showing up at his house.”
Jericho’s eyes scanned all around. “I just hope he has cheap windows. I didn’t bring my sledgehammer,” he said, tapping his shoe against the fence.
“What if he’s in there? He’s going to hear you knock out the window.”
“Then go up front and ring the doorbell. Create a diversion before I knock him senseless.”
Wheeler stroked the hair on his chin. “Sounds like a plan.”
When Wheeler hoisted him over the fence, Jericho sailed like a bird and then slammed down on a hard slab of concrete.
“Fuckwad!” Jericho gritted through his teeth. He was expecting grass, or at the very least, a bush. Hawk had poured cement in his entire backyard with only a covered hot tub and a few tables near the back door.
Jericho rubbed his shoulder and scoped out the property. There weren’t any signs of security cameras or sensor lights, and Tweety didn’t have drapes on his back windows. Jericho could see all the way inside the house, so he stood against the wall and peered in. The doorbell chimed, but no sign of movement.
Jericho took one of the thin cushions off the chair and held it against the glass door below the knob. He kicked it once as hard as he could—shattering the glass—but the sound was muffled by the cushion. After pulling a loose shard away to prevent it from falling, he reached in to unlock the door.
Glass sliced into his arm. His fingers found the lock, and he twisted it to the left, slowly opening the door. Jericho kept his eyes alert and his fists clenched. His restless wolf paced, snarling and thirsty for a hunt.
Hawk lived in a one-story house with a grand-fucking-piano and a fireplace. Tweety’s fingers were too fat for playing the piano, and Isabelle didn’t have a musical bone in her body. As he looked around at the expensive paintings and sculptures, Jericho came to the conclusion that Hawk was a collector.
He wrinkled his nose at the décor. It looked like a box of SweeTarts had exploded in there.
Jericho whirled around when glass crunched and the door shut behind him.