Free A Justified Kill by Marylynn Bast Page A

damned knife she had used to cut the tape from Hanna’s wrist and dropped back onto the table . S he shook her head at the realization , remembering in the jeep that she had also thought she should have grabbed it then . Real smart Amber , real smart . She was definitely going to have to pay closer attention.
    Lucky for her , Gerald had not gotten a good hold and had only sliced her rather than stabbing , otherwise she c ould be d e ad. Amber frowned at the thought and gave a slight shiver. A pep talk was in order and hoped that her wolf was listening. “Going forward, only animals are on the menu, got that?”
    Following her original plan of no human prey would have solved her problem. She wouldn’t be standing with hands on hips staring at a mutilated body. It wasn’t an option to just lea ve him, nor was it possible for her to just clean up the campsite and make it look like he had left and never come back. There was too much blood for that. Then for some reason the thought hit her , m ost people had first aid kits for the just in case . Rummaging around in the small storage locker he had standing outside the tent, she found an unopened kit. The locker looked like it was military, in fact, the tent was military too as well as the first aid kit and she wondered briefly how he had gotten his hands on this kind of equipment. She didn’t know the local Army Surplus stores sold this kind of stuff, migh t do to check it out sometime.
    Grabbing the kit, she opened it up and inspected its contents. It was exactly what she needed. Pealing the mud from her si de, she grabbed the bottle of water she had stashed in her pack and quickly washed the remaining mud from her side. Clenching her teeth she refused to allow a sound to escape when the water ran into the wound. L earning to apply field dressing s at a young age, Amber knew how to bind the injury. He had sliced her deep enough that it needed stitches, but not enough to see ribs, so that was good. Taking a deep breath, she gritted her teeth and pulled the skin together, applying the bandage in a way t hat forced the wound together, taped it closed, then applied gauze and more tape to keep the cut from seeping blood onto her clothing.  If she had been able to stay in her were-form for another couple of minutes , the wound would have healed completely. As it was, in the short time it took her to shift, she had already begun healing she probably would not have been able to stop the bleeding so easily. Although it hadn’t closed up completely, she would mend fairly quickly even in her human form, another plus at having werewolf genetics. Although she had a feeling it was going to leave a scar.
    She was uncomfortable while she moved around the campsite , but pushed it out of her mind and continued . She couldn’t help but think of how her first kill had turned into one big mess. Werewolves killed things every full moon phase , why was this such an ordeal for her ? While she worked, she couldn’t stop the attack from playing over and over in her mind. What her wolf should have done differently. The cut could have been fatal if he had gotten a better hold on the knife . Amber shook her head at the thought and had to face the fact that it cou ld have been a huge possibility. It was a hard but good lesson the wolf had to learn. She would definitely have to be more careful in the future.
    This time, f ixing her screw up would be easy s ince he smoked and everyone knew he drank a lot, and conveniently there happened to be a bottle of whiskey next to his grungy mattress in the tent. Amber dragged him over to the bed and rolled him on top of it. Positioning his body , he looked like he had crawled in to bed to go to sleep . She draped his hand across his chest, placing a cigarette between his fingers and poured whiskey across his face and down his mangled throat. Her plan was to make him look as if he had merely fallen asleep with the cigarette in his hand . Well, he would if it