by Christa Wick
“Nothing like that,” he growled, my face apparently giving my thoughts away. “Not only do I not want to tangle with that damn cat who’s been sniffing after you for half a decade, I already have a mate.”
That was news to me. I was pretty sure it would be news to everyone in the pack. I wracked my brain trying to think which female he might be talking about.
All of a sudden it hit me—Delilah Frost.
Seriously? I mean, Mallory was an “old wolf” to me, but he was really only somewhere in his late forties, or so I figured.
Reading my face once again, he laughed. “You’re getting warmer. And don’t think I didn’t notice you hand signaling Rooster for another slow song.”
I blushed. It hadn’t been my nicest moment. And Delilah was beautiful—silver haired and regal, eyes sparkling with a vivacious wit and hard earned wisdom. With our regenerative powers, shifters aged gracefully. Still, she wouldn’t be giving Mallory any cubs.
Only he had said I was getting warmer, not that I had figured it out.
“You actually helped me with that prank, gave me a chance for a proper talk with Dame Frost.”
“So it is Delilah?” I shook my head, the confusion a much needed distraction from all the drama of the last two days.
“Nope,” Mallory answered, his wolfish grin giving nothing away. “You’ll give yourself an aneurysm before you figure it out, so stop trying. And don’t go blabbing when we get back to Night Falls.”
I rolled my eyes then returned to looking out the window. Once all this mess was over, I would figure out who his mystery mate was. Until then, I had real problems to deal with and needed the old man’s help.
Whether or not I wanted to admit it.
Chapter 19
Clover
The entrance to the interstate was blocked in both directions by local cop cars. An actual checkpoint was set up to inspect vehicles using the access roads along the highway to get out of town. Seeing the state patrol set up ahead of us, Mallory barked for me to tuck away my piece.
The sedan eased forward, the whole world feeling like it was moving in slow motion. One of the state boys was leaning into the vehicles, looking around, asking drivers to voluntarily pop their trunks. Those who didn’t were getting flagged to the side.
“Might be a problem if they got the dogs out,” Mallory muttered under his breath.
He was right. Many animals treated shifters as apex predators, which we are. Some critters would freeze up, others would growl and gnash their teeth, others would experience an involuntary release of their bladder. It had taken several visits before the animals up at Holly Ulster’s place would act like I wasn’t out to suck the marrow from their bones.
“Don’t smell any,” I answered, my window down.
“Just a matter of time. That’s why they’re flagging vehicles over to the shoulder.”
The car two spots ahead of us cleared the checkpoint.
“They ask you why you’re in the back, say you get car sick sitting up front. You’re my niece. Up here for some shopping, couldn’t find anything you liked.”
“Got it.”
I could smell the anxiety rolling off the old wolf. He had tussled with human law enforcement all through his younger years and half of his middle during the pack wars. Everyone figured Mallory Craw wasn’t the name he had before he came to Night Falls. Whatever trouble he’d gotten into before, it was in an era when every last inmate wasn’t swabbed for DNA as soon as they walked through the prison door. Even watching an episode of Cops made the old wolf break out in a sweat nowadays.
The car ahead of us rolled its driver side window down. Mallory and I instantly lifted our snouts at the faint odor of marijuana coming from the car.
“Hallelujah,” Mallory whispered, his expression flat in the mirror but a jubilant energy rolling off him as the cop ordered the driver ahead of us out of his vehicle.
A second cop approached our vehicle, his eyes scanning the interior of the sedan as he spoke to Mallory.
“Mind popping the trunk, sir?”
“No problem.” Mallory reached down by his knees and pressed a button. His constant level of preparedness for runs like these insured that he knew where the button was even though this was his first time driving the sedan.
The cop walked around back. I imagined the contents of the trunk. Mallory would have made sure there was just enough in there not to raise suspicion and not so much in there that a cop’s curiosity was triggered. Some of the innocuous looking things could actually be quite dangerous.
Before he had become secretary of the Woodsmen, the old wolf was its sergeant-at-arms. He was still the pack’s cleaner, charged with doing whatever necessary when there was a chance our nature might become exposed to the human world. That role didn’t make me any less angry over how he had led the initial resistance to sheltering Paisley when she found out about us.
The officer returned to Mallory and gave a tap on the roof. “Just pull around the vehicle in front of you, sir, and proceed through the checkpoint.”
As we drove way, the cop didn’t offer so much as a glance back. He just moved on to the truck behind us as the driver in the weed vehicle was put in handcuffs.
With the drama over, I rolled my window up and settled deeper into the back seat. It was twenty miles until the next highway entrance with a posted speed of forty-five. Mallory turned the radio on to whatever old ass country music station he’d been listening to on the drive up.
I went into the settings on my phone to see if the radio had a blu-tooth option so I could override his music selection. The only thing that showed up was Mallory’s phone.
#StoneAge
#BarneyRubbleHasABetterRide
Sighing, I opened up my text messages to see if Paisley had sent anything since the deletion of her earlier texts. Nothing there, either.
I looked out the windows at more nothing. The checkpoint was becoming a massive chokepoint. There were no cars behind us on the road. The few that had been ahead of us had turned down backroads so that the world was just me, Mallory, tall pines and Conway Twitty.
The radio turned to static. Mallory twisted the dial but none of the stations would come in clear enough to listen to. He hit the power button and started humming the last song played.
“For the love of all that is holy,” I grumbled, “drive faster.”
Humming louder, he eased his foot off the accelerator, the car slowing from forty-five miles an hour to forty. I snapped my mouth shut before another complaint erupted and he slowed to thirty-five.
I opened the camera on my phone and took a selfie, twisting in the seat so that I got Mallory in the pic, my tongue twisted and sticking out in his direction. I thumbed to the album, reviewed the picture then sent it to his phone.
Hearing the alert for the incoming photo, Mallory growled. I slid back in my seat with a grin, my thumb accidentally swiping to the next photo in the album.
The grin faded. Somehow I had managed to go more than a week without adding a new photo—or deleting the last one taken.
I stared at me and Joshua at the wedding banquet, his arm around my shoulder, my body drawn tight against him. I looked shocked and slightly annoyed.
He looked happy.
Not smirky, not smug.
Happy.
I swiped over to my contacts to where Reeves’ number appeared. My thumb hovered with indecision. Should I send him a text message to be careful?
#DontGetYourselfKilled
I chewed at my lip, bit down hard and held it. The car jerked lightly. Tightening my grip on the phone, I glanced up at Mallory.
His gaze was wide, a distinct wave of apprehension rolling off him as he looked in the side mirror. I whipped my head around in time to see an SUV behind us, driving in the wrong direction in the oncoming lane with it’s right front bumper a few feet from our left rear bumper.
My first thought was the vehicle was going to pass us. Then I saw the driver, a sick familiarity snak
ing through my stomach.
Long fangs flashing in a snarl, the driver jerked the steering wheel and slammed into the side of the sedan’s trunk. The impact sent me flying across the back seat. My shoulder hit the door. The phone flew out of my hand. Half a second later, my head bounced against the window. A starburst of pain exploded across my skull as the car arced in a semi-circle before rolling down the embankment on the other side of the road.
We hit the bottom, everything happening too fast for me to brace my body. Another starburst of pain erupted as my face smashed against the interior of the sedan’s roof. My nose turned into a fountain of blood, its taste coating my tongue.
My vision blurred, then grayed before a quick fade to black. The door was sheered open. Clawed hands wrapped around my ankles and dragged me from the car.
The last thing I remembered before passing out was Joshua’s voice calling my name.
Chapter 20
Joshua
The phone rang, Clover’s number flashing on my screen. I immediately accepted the call. My tongue tripped trying to decide what to say.
Her name? Mine? Wassup, Beautiful?
Before I could decide, I heard a hard hit and a hurt protest. Tires screeched in the background.
“Clover, where are you?” I yelled to no reply.
Metal crunched, collapsed. Crunched some more.
“Baby, tell me where you are!”
Mallory screamed for Clover to hold on, the sound of metal folding around itself repeated over and over. Another hard hit and a sharp cry of pain—her pain.
Metal sheering.
Me screaming her name and then a laugh.
Not a laugh—a giggle.
The line went dead. I swiped through to the location app, my legs propelling me through the clubhouse. I snatched Hex’s sunglasses off the bar and the bandana off Joker’s head.
“Borrowing these,” I said then eyed Joker’s jacket.
His gaze clouded with hesitation for half a second but then he peeled it off just as the app gave me Clover’s last signal location.
A side road off the interstate.
“Pieces on the bar,” I growled. “Now.”
They pulled their firearms out so fast and slammed them down so hard, it was miracle there wasn’t an accidental discharge. Hex was carrying a 9mm, Joker had a Smith & Wesson M&P Bodyguard 380. I shoved the 9mm in my waist band then shrugged on the jacket and shoved the Bodyguard into a pocket.
Heading through the kitchen I hit Braeden’s number. He and half a dozen Woodsmen were supposed to be on their way to Buckley. Mallory had arrived in advance because the other shifters had to be rounded up and convinced to come, even if it was their pack leader ordering their resistant asses to action. We also wanted Clover safely out and halfway home before the Woodsmen rolled into town.
Slamming open the back door, I heard Braeden’s voicemail kick in and cursed. I walked over and climbed into Clover’s Jeep, waiting for the prompt to speak.
“The hyenas have Clover and Mallory,” I said, my voice calm and clear despite the hard hammering going on inside my chest. “I’m headed to her last location at Rouchfort Road ten-point-three miles south of the Buckley onramp.”
I hung up and quickly typed the same message in a text to Paisley and told her to put it on blast, then I cranked up the Jeep and shot onto the street. I clamped down on the urge clawing at my chest to weave in and out of traffic and shoot through every light.
Locked in the back of a cop car, there would be nothing I could do to save Clover.
They should have been on the highway, not Rouchfort Road, but one of the Buckley Woodsmen had reported that a checkpoint had sprung up. With all the backroads around Buckley, it was a useless gesture—or an excuse to catch minor infractions.
Of course, maybe the cops were operating on a tip—one phoned in by the kidnappers as a ruse.
Shit. I hoped they weren’t that cunning. I couldn’t even imagine how they knew Clover was on the road unless they had somehow tracked us to the clubhouse. Perhaps they thought kidnapping the waitress would flush us out if we were still in town—kind of like sending a dog into some bushes to shoot at the ducks when they took wing.
I turned down a road leading south about a mile before the highway, followed it six miles then headed east, then turned south onto Rouchfort. Five minutes later, I found the sedan turned upside down at the bottom of an embankment, the incline shielding the accident from view unless someone was looking for it.
Skid marks from the sedan and another vehicle blackened the gray asphalt. I parked the Jeep along the narrow shoulder near where the second vehicle had stopped. The stink of the hyenas was in the air as climbed out, at least four separate individuals, maybe more if the rest had remained inside. I could also smell the scent signatures of Clover and Mallory.
Getting down on my knees, I found where they had rested Mallory long enough for the ground to soak up his flavor. Staying alert for blood on the ground, I ran down to the sedan, the contents of the trunk strewn around the embankment.
Reaching the car, I looked in the cabin first. My gaze went immediately to where the right rear window was cracked from the inside, dozens of fine lines pushing out from a center dent in the glass. An image of Clover smashing against the window instantly filled my mind. I shook my head, dislodging the thought only to have another send shockwaves through me as I saw where blood and mucus stained a fist size spot on the back seat’s roof.
Up front, it was the steering wheel painted red.
I grabbed the keys then ran a quick circle around the vehicle. Clover’s scent was so strong up by the road I doubted she had escaped into the woods, but I had to check. As I ran, I called Mallory’s phone and hers. I didn’t expect an answer and I knew one of the hyenas had taken at least temporary possession of Clover’s phone. But either device could have been dropped.
No matter what happened today, I couldn’t risk leaving a link to Night Falls behind.
Finished checking the perimeter, I darted to the rear of the vehicle. The trunk had come open, its contents scattered around the ground. I searched for Mallory’s cleaning kit. The old wolf was a pro like that, which was exactly why Braeden had picked him despite their long running hostilities. Mallory knew every trick ever thought up to hide our nature from the outside world. And there was no way in hell he left Night Falls without a cleaning kit.
I spotted a steel twenty-ounce tumbler halfway up the embankment. Wrapped around it was a woven cord that looked like a bit of leather adornment. I sprinted to retrieve it. Screwing off the lid, my stomach tried to crawl out my ass. Inside was a gelatinous material that was mostly wood pulp and flash paper. Mixed in, I could smell the saltpeter and nitroglycol. Unwinding the woven bracelet, I confirmed that it was a detonating cord.
This was serious shit, but stable as long as the detonator wasn’t in contact with the gel and set off.
Putting the tumbler down, I ran up to the Jeep, pulled it forward until it was even with the sedan. I got out, leaving the door open and the engine running.
Retrieving the gel, I filled the tumbler’s plastic lid. The rest I dripped on the ground as I walked toward the sedan. Inside the vehicle, I set the lid down then placed one end of the cord in it. I unstrung the remaining length as far up the embankment as it would go. I came up five feet short of the Jeep. I didn’t know the rate of travel on the cord, just knew it was faster than me.
Faster than the Jeep, too.
Balls tighter than they had ever been, I set off the blasting cap.
Sheer curiosity tried to hold me in place. How would it light, was it sparkly, how fast would it go?
But I already knew that the relationship between curiosity and cats could be quite painful. I leapt straight into the Jeep, threw it in drive and slammed on the gas with the door still open.
The blast battered the Jeep, rocking the door shut and lifting the wheels on the left side off the ground.
Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw flam
e and smoke shooting into the air.
Knowing the road had been empty of other vehicles far longer than I deserved, I kept the gas pedal pressed all the way down. I took the first side road I came to and then the next until I parked the Jeep behind an abandoned feed store. Ignoring the notifications for new voice and text messages, I turned the tracking app on. It didn’t update with a new location, most likely because the hyenas had powered the phone completely off.
I turned next to text messages. Paisley was apparently running communications point and told me Braeden and the first wave of Woodsmen were fifty minutes out. A second wave had just roared through Night Falls, putting them a little under two hours away.
I texted back.
Tell B no one goes near last location. Too hot and empty.
Her reply appeared with superhuman speed.
Where then?
The woman I loved was missing, maybe dead, and I had no fucking plan. I didn’t know in which direction the vehicle had headed or what they had packed Clover and Mallory into—although it needed to be big enough to transport six people without drawing attention.
Another text popped up.
?!!!
I didn’t know where the hyenas were going, but I knew where they had been—in the woods about a mile and a half from the restaurant. With the cops still covering the place, I couldn’t get near the Rolling Pin to track them from our entry point. I started the Jeep and put it in gear as I typed my reply.
Trees N side of Ford lot on Apache Drive. Tell B to follow my scent.
I drove away from the feed store listening to the voice messages of Paisley and Braeden. There was nothing that I didn’t already know from Paisley’s text. All I got extra from the voice mail was a rising sense of panic and doom.
Chapter 21
Joshua
Entering the woods behind the car dealership, I set my phone to vibrate, pulled out the Bodyguard in my pocket and ran. I didn’t have mine or Clover’s trail to follow, just the faint odor of mint where it didn’t belong and my memory of the location where we had rolled around in the patch. From the patch, I made it to where we left the creek bed, then I was back to relying on memory until I hit the spot where we entered the water.