Clay tugged his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. There was still another hour or so until then.
The minutes seemed to pass as though each their own hour, the time ticking down to midnight. And with each one, Clay grew even more tense. His muscles straining. Veins popping on his wrists and in his temple. I had to erect a wall to block the flow of his discomfort from reaching me through the mate bond.
I had no idea how he was managing to hold himself in human form with all that pent up anger and stress filling him to the brim. Sighing, I scooched closer to the big fucker, pressing myself against his side and shivering a little at his warmth. The night wasn’t all that cold. In fact, it was the perfect temperature for my wolf. But for my human flesh...well let’s just say a sweater might’ve been a good idea.
Clay grunted at the chill of my bare arms and tugged me closer, wrapping his big arms around me with a sigh of his own. “How you’re always this cold, I’ll never understand,” he grumbled to himself. “Wolves are supposed to run hot. In wolf form and out of it. It’s unnatural.”
A quiet laugh pressed against my sealed lips as I tried to remain quiet, and I gave my head a little shake before resting it on his shoulder. “What about me has ever been normal?”
“Fair enough.”
I inhaled his spicy scent, finding it lacked the signature undercurrent of engine grease and orange hand scrub that it once had. He was so busy between the pub and the pack that he hardly spent any time working on bikes anymore. I wondered if he missed it. I knew I did.
Hell, we hadn’t ridden in ages, either.
“Hey, you remember that time a couple of winters ago when we decided to ditch camp for the night?”
His chest rumbled with an almost laugh in reply. “You mean when we had to spend the night in that cave up north because of the storm and you almost died of hypothermia?” he replied, mostly teasing, but even to this day there was a tension in his voice when he recalled it. He’d been so worried, even if he had put a brave face on for me. “How could I forget? I’d had to hunt down wood for a fire to keep you warm in a fucking blizzard.”
“And you kept the fire going for hours with damp wood somehow. We reeked of smoke for weeks after that.”
I didn’t mention the other part. How after I’d stop shaking so much and Clay’s fire and body heat had started to warm my bones, we’d turned to other methods of keeping warm until the storm passed and we could start the journey home.
We were stuck there for two days, and Jared had been frantic trying to find us, but between the storm and how far we’d accidentally wandered, there’d been no hope of that.
Jared had been so pissed at Clay. He hadn’t realized it had been my idea to go off for the night with my other mate. It wasn’t my fault a storm came unannounced to ruin my plans.
“We sure did,” Clay said, squeezing me tight. “It was stupid. I never should’ve agreed to take off like that. I don’t know what got into me.”
“I do,” I teased. “You just can’t say no to me.”
He barked a disapproving sound, but didn’t deny it. Once, he had no problem denying me anything. And he definitely never hesitated to tell me just what he thought when I had a particularly stupid idea, but when push came to shove, I knew I could convince him to go along with just about anything. He knew it, too, though he would never admit it.
Clay stiffened as the sound of a bus engine rumbled down the road, and we separated as we watched it enter the depot, eyes peeled for any sign of a dark wolf or a black-haired girl.
“You see anything?” Clay asked in a hushed tone, leaning forward to army crawl closer to the edge of the dugout-like space beneath the tree.
“No. Not yet.”
If I shifted, I might’ve been able to sense her, but then there would be too great of a chance of her sensing me, too. Not worth the risk. I pulled the binoculars out of the bag and put them to my eyes, lowering myself next to Clay until the smell of cold dirt filled my nose. While in human form, our eyesight was heightened, just like the rest of our senses, but the distance we needed to keep from the depot was a stretch even for my twin soul eyes.
I scanned the area, starting from the tree line cozying up to the western side of the depot and all the way through the platform and in every nook and cranny. I saw nothing amiss.
Once again, no passengers got on the bus when it finally pulled to a stop against the platform, but two did get off. I scrutinized them with the binoculars, but they were clearly human. A younger couple with tattoos who grabbed guitars from the compartment beneath the bus as they departed, walking away up the road as they chatted.
We waited with bated breath as the bus’s air brakes hissed and the doors closed. “She didn’t come.” I whispered, more to myself than for Clay, but he answered anyway.
“Doesn’t mean she still won’t.”
“That was the last bus,” I muttered as it pulled away and disappeared around the back of the building in the direction of the main road.
Clay ground his teeth, and I could tell by the faraway look in his eyes that he was thinking hard about something. His blue eyes flared with the glow of his wolf, and I reached out to rub a hand up his back. “Hey, we can stay. Might as well wait out the night to see—”
“Shh!” he hissed a second later, tensing under my hand, and my heart lurched into my throat as I followed his line of sight. A flash of movement caught my eye in the shadowy channel between bus terminals, and I pressed myself into the dirt, putting the binocular back to my face, barely daring to breathe for fear that I’d be heard.
A sick feeling made my throat slick with the acrid taste of bile as I spotted her. It was hard to be sure at first that it was her, but as the lonely streetlamp caught her in its glow, I became violently certain of it.
My wolf growled within, immediately battering at my defenses, wanting to assert her alpha dominance over Sam without the need for any further proof.
She peered around the depot as she made her way on bare feet down the platform in nothing but a long t-shirt. One that I recognized as Clay’s. That only served to stoke the flames of my rage, and my upper lip curled back. Clay curled a clammy fist around my arm, silently urging me back into silence.
I clenched my teeth hard enough to crack one as I watched, white knuckle grip unfaltering on the binoculars as I recited what I was certain were lies to calm me down.
This doesn’t mean she’s guilty.
This doesn’t mean anything.
She didn’t get on the bus.
She might just like hanging out at vacant bus depots in the middle of the night.
Bull-fucking-shit.
The glow of Sam’s eyes flashed our way as she scanned the area one last time before closing herself inside of the phone booth. She dropped a few coins into the slot and dialed. The glass panes of the booth were so clouded from age that I couldn’t see her very well.
Clay cursed as she began to speak. I listened as hard as I could, but wasn’t able to pick out anything discernible. I pulled back from the binoculars for a second to look at Clay, wondering if he could hear.
He shook his head sharply, and I went back to watching, grinding my teeth to dust.
She shouted something angrily that sounded like ‘fine?’ Or maybe ‘mine?’ It was too smothered by the glass encasement of the phone booth to tell. Right after she shouted, she slammed the receiver down and shoved out the doors of the booth, stamping back toward the shadows where she came from.
I opened my mouth to ask Clay something, but he clamped a hand tightly over my lips to stop me and put a finger to his own to silence me. I realized only a few seconds after he did how the wind had shifted directions. He gently nudged my head toward the earth and began quietly rubbing dirt into my silvery hair, pressing both of us to the ground as we carefully slid backward to get beneath the cover of the wide branches of the pine. Between it and the dirt, she shouldn’t be able to scent us.
My scalp itched as we waited for what fe
lt like ages before finally daring to move or speak. She had to be far enough away by now that it was safe.
“You think she scented us?” I mouthed more than said, just in case, and Clay ran a hand through his own dirt-clogged black hair and blew out a breath.
“Don’t know. Doubt it, though. She looked distracted.”
His eyes darkened.
“Do you think we can star-69 the call she made?”
“I doubt that works on a payphone, and if we go anywhere near it and she comes back—”
“She’ll scent us.”
He nodded.
I mulled over the possibilities for a few minutes before asking the question I knew both of us wanted the answer to. “Who do you think she was calling?”
Clay began gathering our things back into my small pack with a grim expression. “I don’t know, but we need to find out.”
“This may not even mean anything.”
He looked at me like I might be daft, and I had to admit, it sounded stupid even to my own ears. There was something shady going on—there was no denying it. But was it regular shady or the really bad kind?
Clay was right, we needed to find out.
“We know she’s been here more than once. For all we know she comes every damned night. She’ll be back. We just have to be ready.”
I lifted a brow as Clay reached out a hand to help me stand and brushed his fingers roughly over the top of my head, scattering bits of dirt back to the earth before moving to take my jaw into his grip, tipping my head up.
“How?” I asked, genuinely wondering what the actual fuck we could do here without blowing our cover or resorting to the interrogation Jared craved.
“We bug the phone booth,” Clay said like it was the simplest thing in the world.
“Are you serious?”
He dropped his hand and turned to head back the way we’d come from the Chevelle, making me scurry to follow him.
“I know a guy,” he muttered, careful of where he was stepping to avoid making any unnecessary sounds. I tried to follow his footsteps, but still managed to sound like a drunk elephant by comparison. For a guy so damned massive, I’d never understand how he could be so deadly silent.
“How very mysterious.” I rolled my eyes. “Care to elaborate?”
“His name’s Joe. He’s the private investigator I hired to follow Devin when we ran him out of town.”
I shuddered at the reminder of that psycho, remembering the map and images I’d discovered hidden in Clay’s workshop. How he told me that he had needed to make sure that Devin had truly left. That he wasn’t ever coming back. To make certain I was safe. It was the only compromise he could make with himself to keep his wolf from going full protector and hunting the bastard down.
Devin had wound up several states over. He was probably beating up on another girl these days and it made me sick to think that, but it was the truth. The madness I’d seen in his eyes the night he turned me, and many nights before that one couldn’t be cured.
The best anyone could hope was for that fucker to get hit by a bus.
“You’re still in contact with him? I thought you cut him loose a few years ago?”
“I did, but I still have his info. He said he could get me anything I needed. I’ll have him bug it so Sam won’t recognize his scent.”
“How soon do you think he could do that?”
“For the right price?” Clay asked with a raised brow, considering. “I think I could have him do it by tomorrow.”
I chewed my lower lip, imagining another night without finding Destiny. Without Luke, or Trey, or Todd. I sealed my eyes against a lancing pain in my chest and nodded.
“Okay. Call him. Do it now. We don’t have any time to waste.”
15
“Nothing,” Charity reported, head bent and cheekbones flaring as she clenched her jaw. “Not a fucking thing.”
Vivian stalked away from the search party, going to return to her cabin with a black cloud hanging over her head. She hardly left her cabin anymore, unless it was to join a search. She ate in there. Slept in there. I didn’t think she’d showered at all since Destiny vanished.
I sighed and gripped Charity’s shoulder, trying to lend her strength that I didn’t even have to give. “Thanks. Go get some rest and some food.”
“Want me to get a new party out while we’re taking a break?”
I ground my teeth, staring in the direction Vivian went. We’d had at least one search party going every minute of every day since Destiny vanished, but we were all at the end of our rope. The pack was exhausted. Underfed. Worn out.
We all needed a reprieve.
“No,” I said finally, though it hurt me to force the word out. “Take a rest. It’s almost noon now. We’ll send out another search party after dinner.”
Charity grimaced and pushed her heavy dreadlocks back from her face with a nod before departing. The others dispersed, too. Gone to fall into their bunks for a long nap. No one looked particularly excited for food, and I couldn’t blame them. One could only eat so many goddamned potatoes.
The hunting party managed to snag a deer in the early hours of the morning, though, so tonight at least, the pack would be well fed. Tomorrow, too, if we stretched it out. But I had a mind to let everyone eat their fill. They’d earned it. They needed it.
And in a few more days, we’d have our replacement meat order from Portland. Hopefully, we’d only need to order from them a few more times before Sal had his cooler installed. We’d had to pull back our pack from helping him for the time being, but he assured us that all he really needed was a workable space and his cooler and he could at least supply us with what we needed, even if he couldn’t operate for the general public yet.
I hesitated before heading after Vivian, wanting to check on her even though I knew I was probably the last person she wanted to see right now. A ball formed in my throat and sweat beaded at my brow that had nothing to do with the sweltering heat beating down on me from the afternoon sky.
I knocked twice on the door before entering, finding her sitting on the edge of the double bed she and her mate shared, her back bent. Head resting in her palms. She’d put on a t-shirt that I recognized as Destiny’s, and my heart ached at the sight of her in it.
“Viv,” I hedged. “Can I get you anything?”
She dropped her hands and twisted her head to flick her cutting gaze to me. “What do you want, Allie?”
“I just…”
What did I want?
To help her. But I knew damn well that there was nothing I could do except get Destiny back. Nothing else would ease the pain.
Vivian’s brown eyes narrowed on me, and her upper lip curled. “Just go, okay. Tell someone to come get me when the next search goes out.”
I stepped into the shadows inside and closed the door behind me, swallowing hard to try to rid myself of the still-growing lump trapping all the words I wanted to say from coming out. “The next search isn’t going out until after dinner. You should rest and eat, while you can.”
It seemed to take a moment for her to register what I was saying, moving slowly until her spine was erect, showing me just how much she needed to eat. She looked rail thin. The hollows beneath her eyes were turning a bruised purple, and her hands were shaking even though she was clearly trying to force them still, clutching at her thighs.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
My lips parted, but I wasn’t sure what she meant. “What do you—?”
“You’re not sending another party out?” Her tone was accusing, haughty with disdain that made my skin crawl. I’d heard Vivian use that tone on others. Her father. Assholes at school. But never me.
I steeled myself against the rise of panic in my chest and leveled what I hoped was a calm stare on my friend. “They need rest. Between the doubled patrols, the hunting party, the search parties, and extra security at camp, the quarry, and the pub, we are at the end of our—”
“No,” sh
e seethed, getting unsteadily to her feet. Her face paling. “You aren’t giving up on her, Allie. You can’t.”
I held my hand up. “I’m not, Viv. I just need to keep us whole. We can’t find her or protect ourselves if we’re spread too thin.”
The pale tone of her skin quickly turned green, and I only just made it to her side before she fell to her knees and hugged a small trash bin to her chest, heaving bile into it. I rubbed a hand up her back, bracing her as her body wracked and squeezed, twisting every last drop of whatever she’d managed to consume today out.
When she was finished, she wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and sat back heavily, uncaring as she knocked hard into the wood of her bed. “Please, Allie,” she begged, a deadness in her eyes. “I need to find her. I can’t...I can’t…”
Her shoulders shook, and I pulled her in tight, hugging her to me as she began to cry. My own eyes burned too, sharing the pain of my friend, but they burned with fury, as well. My wolf and I not at war for once, but at peace with the promise to destroy whoever did this to us.
“She’s gone…” Vivian sobbed. “She’s really gone…”
She sniffled, clutching on to me so tight I thought she might leave bruises, but I didn’t care. “What if she never comes ba—?”
“Don’t say that,” I interrupted, squeezing her tighter and then unable to help it, I did the thing I promised I wouldn’t. Vivian deserved to know. She had to know or else she was going to go insane. I couldn’t give her details or a name, but I could give her this little piece of hope.
“We have a lead,” I whispered so low that I wasn’t sure if she heard me until she stiffened, my words registering.
She pulled back, still shaking, but the tears at least had stopped. “What do you mean? Who? Who is it? Do you know?”
I shook my head. “I can’t tell you more than that yet.”
I implored her to understand with a look I hope conveyed everything I couldn’t say. Viv was always the best at understanding what I meant with a single look, but she was also the first one to beat the details out of me when she knew I was hiding something from her.
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