by Renee George
“Does she think it could have been Mike? Or a new victim?”
I frowned. I hadn’t even thought about a future prediction. I’d just assumed it was a past killing. How could I be so presumptuous? “Honestly, I don’t know.” My phone rang. It was Sunny. “Hold on, I better take this.” I tapped my phone. “Hey, everything okay?”
“Have you seen Jo Jo?” she asked.
I tucked my chin. “No. I called him after you left to tell him we wouldn’t be opening today. But I haven’t seen him. Why?”
“Brady called. He said he’s been trying Jo Jo’s phone and can’t get an answer. He was hoping we were keeping him busy.” I could hear the worry in her tone.
“I’m sure he’s fine, Sunny. He’s young and full of…well, youth. He’s probably on some secret rendezvous with Michele Thompson.”
“I hope so. Call me if you hear anything.”
“You got the doors locked?”
“Yes, mother.”
“Good. I’ll call you later.” I hung up.
“Jo Jo’s missing?” Billy Bob asked.
“Not sure. His dad can’t get ahold of him by phone. It could be a case of dead battery.” I prayed like hell it wasn’t a case of dead kid.
Sheriff Taylor leaned forward. “You think he might be with Michele? Maybe you should call Ruth and see if the girl is home or not.”
The sheriff’s worry increased my anxiety. I called Ruth. “Hey,” I said when she answered. “Is Michele at home?”
“She went out early today, Chav. What’s up?”
I didn’t want to alarm Ruth, especially if this turned out to be a lovers’ tryst. “I thought she might be interested in a job. We have the whole Tri-Council to feed tomorrow, and I can use the extra help.”
“I’ll let her know.” I could feel Ruth’s pride through the phone, and it made me sick with guilt.
“Can you give me her phone number? I’ll call her myself.”
“Sure! And then maybe later you can tell me all about you and certain leggy werewolf doctor.”
My cheeks flared with heat. I knew both Billy Bob and Sheriff Taylor could hear her. “Uhm, sure.”
I got Michele’s number and hung up with Ruth. My call went straight to voicemail. “I could be nothing,” I said, trying to convince myself.
Billy Bob stood up behind me and kneaded my shoulders. “We should look for them.”
“Agreed,” Sheriff Taylor said. “We shouldn’t take any chances.”
I reached up and clutched Billy Bob’s hand on my shoulder. “What if they have him? They said they needed a third sacrifice before the full moon, and since I escaped…” Was this my fault? Had they taken Jo Jo because they couldn’t have me?
Deputy Farrady knocked on the sheriff’s door then poked his head in the room. “Brady Corman is here. He says he found Jo Jo’s car abandoned on the side of the road between their house and town.”
Out in the main room, Brady looked almost wild with panic.
“Is he drinking again?” I heard Tyler Thompson ask.
Brady turned on him, his amber eyes dilated with fear. “No, I’m not fucking drinking, you jackass. My son has been taken.”
“Now, Brady,” the sheriff said. “We don’t know that for sure. Calm down, and we’ll get to the bottom of this. We were just getting ready to go look for him.”
Brady’s dark brown hair pitched into his face as he opened his hand and stared down at his palm. He held a set of car keys and an eight-point star, this one made of metal. His voice was hollow as he spoke. “I found his truck pulled off to the side of the road. The driver’s side door was open, the keys were still in the ignition, his phone was plugged into his charger, and this star was in the middle of his seat.” He slapped the keys and the star onto Farraday’s desk. “Someone’s taken my boy.”
His eyes were sunken and weary as he spun around. Willy Boden held out a Styrofoam cup. “Here,” she said, holding the steaming cup out to him. “Would you like some coffee?”
“I’d really like a shot of whiskey,” Brady said. “But that won’t bring my son home.”
She set the cup down and nodded. “Okay.”
I knew she was trying to be kind, and I’m glad she hadn’t gotten mad when he didn’t respond well to her gesture. Brady had already lost his wife to the same hunters who’d kidnapped me the year before, and he’d barely survived her loss. If something happened to Jo Jo, it would kill him.
“Ms. Boden has offered her assistance in this matter. She has contacts with the FBI,” Sheriff Taylor said.
That explained her presence. I wondered how much she knew about what was going on in our town. She was security for the Tri-Council. If her brother was the killer, she could be helping him hide his tracks.
Brady blinked then looked at me. “We have to find my kid.”
It was ten in the morning now. Dusk would hit around eight-thirty. Impulsively, I casually put my hand over the metal star, took it up, and placed it into my pocket. It was as if I needed to possess the damn thing, the same way I had with the wooden one. Holding the new one made me realize how much I’d lost when I’d left the other behind in the killer’s truck.
I put my hand on Brady’s shoulder. “We only have ten hours before the full moon, so we better organize search parties. We can start in Tiller Woods, but really, we should search anywhere there’s a lot of unsettled acres.” Men needed to “do” things when they were worried. It made them feel like they had some control in an uncontrollable situation.
Brady nodded fiercely, ready to go. However, Deputy Farraday, Connelly, and Thompson all stared at the sheriff, waiting for his orders.
He snapped his fingers. “You heard Miss Trimmel. Do you have to be told twice? Call the town together, and let’s get search parties going.”
Brady slumped against the desk, bumping the coffee. It spilled. “Shit,” he said jumping up.
“I got it,” Willy said. She grabbed a box of tissue from Farraday’s desk and started pulling out wads of it to soak of the spill.
The heavy scent of the black coffee permeated the air. Brady looked up at me. “I can’t do this again.”
I took his hand. “You won’t have to. We’re going to find him, Brady. We’re going to find him and bring him home.”
Deputy Connelly carried over his tablet. On the screen was a topographical map of Peculiar and the surrounding area. He held it out for Brady. “Where did you find his truck?”
My phone rang again. It was Ruth. I picked up the call.
“I can’t find Michele.”
Those four words chilled me to the bone. “Where did she say she was going?”
“She didn’t,” Ruth said. “She’s nineteen-years-old, Chav. She doesn’t always tell me where she’s off to.”
My stomach sank. “I think you better come over to the police station.”
“Why?”
Damn it. I didn’t know what to say. There was no logical reason for the killers to take two people. The murders had been organized, ritualistic. Two victims wouldn’t follow the pattern. “Jo Jo Corman’s been taken. We could use your help.”
I heard her gasp. “You don’t think…”
“I really don’t, but just in case, you should be here.”
“I’m on my way.” She hung up without another word.
Twenty minutes later, most of the town and many of the Jubilee attendees crowded the courthouse lawn. They were divided up into groups and given sections of land to scour. Ruth and Ed had both come, along with their son Taylor, Tyler’s twin, and their next oldest Dakota, to join the search. They stood near Brady—all of them huddled for comfort in a way that made my heart break.
Dominic approached our group, which made Billy Bob squeeze my fingers until I thought my nails would pop off. “Ease up, Doc.”
“I don’t like him.”
“I get that, but he’s really a nice guy.” Absently, I put my hand in my pocket to touch the star I’d lifted from the deputy’s desk.
“Uh huh,’’ he said, looking wholly unconvinced.
“Chavvah.” Dominic flashed me a smile then frowned at Billy Bob. “Dr. Smith.”
“Tartan,” Billy Bob said.
“Ow.” I pinched the top of his hand with my free one until he eased up on his hold. “Do you know where Hans Fisk is? Is he off with the Lowry brothers?”
Dominic’s cheeks dented as if he were chewing on the inside. Finally, he said, “I saw Hans and Bethany Hilliard earlier.”
“Together?”
He shrugged. “It was probably politics. It got pretty heated.”
Could Bethany and Hans be in on the killings together? After all, he’d left the restaurant before me yesterday. He would have had time to get into the restaurant ahead of me. “Hmmm. How early?”
Jo Jo had been gone before Brady had gotten up, and he’d called Sunny around eight.
“I’m not sure. A couple of hours ago maybe.”
“And you,” I asked. “Where were you this morning?”
“Am I a suspect, Chavvah?”
I hadn’t seriously considered Dom a suspect, but his reluctance to answer the question made me suspicious.
Billy Bob had been quiet up until then. “Everyone we don’t know is a suspect, Tartan. You could be one of the killers as easy as anyone.”
“Now, Doc. He was still at the restaurant when I got nabbed yesterday.”
He turned his dark gaze on me with swift rebuke. “There are two of them, Chav. You don’t think one of them could have been out in the public while the other did the dirty work.”
Ouch. I hated to admit it, but my knight in shining gray fur had a point. Only, I wasn’t going to let anyone treat me like a damsel in distress.
“Is Sunny going to join the search?” Dominic asked just as casually as I had posed my question.
My hackles rose. “What do you want with Sunny?”
“I just…” He shook his head, and his shoulders slumped. “I heard she had…gifts.” He almost rolled his eyes then as if the word psychic was too dirty for his mouth.
Well, fuu-uck you, Dominic Tartan. “She has a gift for having babies. That’s about all, as far as I know.”
He crossed his arms. “I thought we were friends, Chavvah.”
I put my hand out to stop Billy Bob from advancing on Dom. Sheesh. I’d never seen the man this tense before. It was a sharp departure from the usually laid-back country doctor. “There are friends,” I said to Dom. “Then there are friends.”
“You can trust me,” he said softly.
“Enough,” Billy Bob said. “Go find another group, Tartan. This one is full up.”
I shook my hand free of the dominant werewolf’s and glared at him. He didn’t back down with the eye contact, which almost made me look away. Almost. “You don’t own me, Billy Bob Smith, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you treat me like a possession. You can trust me to not jump the bones of every man who looks my way, or we can end it here and now because I won’t have it.”
He looked away then. That’s right. This girl was not a pushover.
Babe came over to us then. He raised a brow at the sulky doctor. “Doc Smith.” He nodded to me. “Chavvah.”
I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Hey, bro. We need to get this show on the road. Time’s a tickin,’ and if anything happens to Jo Jo or Michele…” My chest squeezed tight as I allowed myself to envision the worse. “…I don’t know how I’d…”
Billy Bob put his arm around me for comfort, and as a way of forgiving him his he-man routine, I allowed it.
“We’ll find him, Chavvah,” Babe said.
Sheriff Taylor sent everyone off to do their grid search, but when he got to our group, he took Babe, Billy Bob, and me aside. Quietly, he said, “We’ve gotten new information from the FBI. I did a search for similar killings in Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Illinois. I found hits and misses going back as long as they have been keeping records, but five years ago there was a missing person’s filed on a man in Kansas. They found his body out by a ditch on I-70 between Topeka and Wichita. He’d been skinned, his throat slit. I looked the man up. His name was David Brooks, and he was a registered therian, half-vulpes, half-lycan from Midland Grove, one of the Kansas communities.”
Billy Bob and I exchanged looks. Was it a coincidence the victims were hybrid-therians or was that the commonality, the reason they were chosen?
Sheriff Taylor continued, “No other murders were reported, but I suspect, someone started covering up the killings. If it hadn’t been for a human finding David Brooks, I think his death would have stayed a secret as well.”
He didn’t have to say “like the deaths we covered up in Peculiar last year.” It was a given. We tried to keep our tragedies and the way we dealt with injustices in-house.
“If this goes back five years, or at least that we know of, these guys have had a lot of time to perfect their tradecraft.”
The sheriff nodded solemnly. “I’m afraid so.”
“We need to get out there now, Sheriff. We have to find Jo Jo.” I could feel the panic welling again inside.
You cannot help him if you are not clear of mind, sister.
I can’t help him at all! I felt useless. Worse than useless. Helpless.
“What is it?” Billy Bob asked.
“Just my invisible cheerleader trying to give me a pep talk.”
“Brother Wolf?” He sounded surprised.
“Yeah. Him.” I felt as grumpy as I sounded. “What good is it having a spirit guardian when he can’t even see anything on this plane of existence but me? I need him to see Jo Jo, to tell me where he is!”
“You and I are going to have a long talk when this is over.”
I detected a hint of awe and jealousy. Surely, he didn’t think Brother Wolf would put the moves on me.
The gray one is a complicated beast. He wonders why you can talk to me to easily when he must use rituals.
I didn’t have time for a pissing contest over spiritual matters.
I got my brother’s attention. “Billy Bob and I are going. I have a good sniffer, and his is awesome. I’ll call if we find him.”
Babe nodded. “I’ll do the same.”
I looked at my watch. It was just past eleven a.m. I felt chilled to the bone as I thought about how quickly they could skin Jo Jo alive. I’d seen one of the killers work with deft efficiency, and I could only hope they would wait. “We have to find him.” I rubbed my arms. “We have to.”
* * * *
The aroma of pine, peat moss, dirt, and lake water barely made a dent against the stench of my fear. I hadn’t thought I would have such a visceral reaction to being back in these woods. Obviously, I’d thought wrong. The temperature was nearing the high nineties, and the humidity had sweat rolling down the crack of my ass.
“We should change. It will increase our ability to find Jo Jo,” Billy Bob said.
I knew he was right. Most of our group, Ruth and Ed, their boys Tyler and Taylor, Brady Corman, Willy Boden, Chance Lowry, Kyle Avery, and several others had already dropped their clothes and shifted. I was surprised to see Chance had shifted into coyote form. His father Jacob was a beaver. I wondered if he knew what kind of danger being hybrid put him in. Though, why had they taken me? I was pretty sure no one knew that I’d been able to turn into a wolf. Maybe my theory about hybrid-breeds being the target for these killers was wrong.
Whatever their motivation, I wasn’t sure I could bring my coyote to the surface, not as easily as the wolf, and I wasn’t ready for people aka Babe to know yet that I had another animal form. I’m so petty, I thought. While it wasn’t a certainty, I knew in my heart Jo Jo was in extreme danger. I needed to get over myself.
“Okay,” I said, my heart thumping in my throat. I rubbed my clammy, wet palms together and braced my courage. I could do this. Finding Jo Jo was the only thing that mattered. I took my clothes off and passed them to Billy Bob. He took his clothes off, and his woody
was looking log-ish.
“I can’t help it,” he muttered, staring uncomfortably straight ahead. “It happens every time I’m around you.”
“Flatteringly inappropriate,” I said.
“Tell me about it.” He shook his head, his silver hair sticking like rivulets of ore to his heat-damp shoulders. Within seconds, the fur on his body sprouted then laid down as his body morphed into a large gray wolf. I sighed. He made it look so easy.
God, it should be easy. It was a part of me. A part of me I’d wanted to embrace. Otherwise, why even move to Peculiar? I thought about my coyote. I imagined her looking much like Babel and Judah. Reddish-brown fur, thinner, less blocky nose than the wolf, a bushy brown tail with a variety of red, white, and black hair mixed in. I felt myself changing, shifting down. In this form, I could feel the pull of the thunder moon. Its lunar energy called to my beast. Unable to stop myself, I leaned my head back and howled.
Billy Bob’s gray wolf joined in. Soon, howls and other creature noises joined in with mine as we all skirted the eighty acres with one thought in mind. Find Jo Jo.
Five hours of searching yielded nothing. Billy Bob and I trotted back to his truck. Both of us shifting, him getting wood again, and me giving him the eye. We quickly dressed to avoid any further conversation. I checked my phone. I had three text messages from Sunny.
First text message said: Just checking in. Keep me informed.
The second message said: Do you know someone with a white pick-up truck?
My stomach squeezed.
The third message said: I have ur friend. Find a way to come to her cabin alone or her blood will be on ur hands.
Oh my God, oh my God. I wanted to scream my horror. Keep it together, Chav. You can’t let Sunny down. You can’t.
You should tell the gray one.
“Shut up,” I said through gritted teeth.
“What?” Billy Bob asked. “I didn’t say anything. Any news?” He glanced at the phone clutched in my hands.
“No,” I said, trying hard to keep my voice normal. I knew he’d be able to hear my racing heart and my quicker breaths, so I really focused on slowing it all down. Her blood will be on your hands. No. I wouldn’t fail Sunny.