Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Scarlett thought you were pretty together at Will’s place the other night,” Jesse observed. “But I bet you’ve been drinking since you got up this morning. Smoking too.”

  Whittaker smiled bitterly around the cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t speak until it was lit and he’d taken a long, desperate drag. “We’re two days closer to the full moon now. Only five out. For me it’s tied hard to the moon.” He held up the cigarette and looked at it speculatively. “Every little bit helps.”

  “That why you change between full moons?’ Jesse asked offhandedly. “Does it help keep the magic under control?”

  This time when Whittaker looked at him, his eyes were calculating. “Is that why you here, Detective Jesse Cruz? You Will’s new hall monitor?”

  Jesse hadn’t mentioned his first name.

  He must have reacted, because the werewolf laughed. “Oh, yeah, we know who you are. You’ve been running around town with that, that”—Whittaker’s eyes burned—“that pretty little atrocity. We keep tabs on her.”

  “Will know you do that?”

  Whittaker’s upper lip curled. It was nothing like a smile. “Will may be our alpha, but he doesn’t speak for all of us.”

  “So you do change between moons,” Jesse stated, getting back on topic. Whittaker’s nostrils flared but he remained silent, not denying it. “You ever bite anybody,” Jesse asked casually. “Maybe leave ’em for dead?”

  It happened so fast that Jesse thought for a moment that he’d been sucked into the ground. The werewolf’s speed was disorienting, and before he knew it Jesse had been tackled and Whittaker was on top of him, hands on Jesse’s throat, snarling.

  “I would never,” he screamed, straight into Jesse’s face. Spittle flew. “I would die before I did this to anyone, you piece of shit, coming here like you know the first thing—”

  His rant broke off suddenly as he felt the cold barrel of Jesse’s Glock press into his temple. Jesse hadn’t been able to get it out of the holster before he’d hit the ground, but he had it out now. “I can survive that,” he growled at Jesse.

  The werewolf was pressing down on Jesse’s throat, but not quite hard enough to cut off all his air. “Silver . . . bullets . . .” Jesse wheezed.

  Surprised, Whittaker sprang back, twisting a little in midair to land in a graceful crouch on the bench of the picnic table. Then he remembered where he was and glanced around. Jesse did too.

  No one was watching. Nobody looked out of their windows in this neighborhood.

  Jesse stood up warily, not bothering to brush the dead grass off his clothes. He kept his gun out, but pointed at the ground. “Someone . . . someone was attacked?” Whittaker said. His brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to add large numbers in his head. “She said . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Who’s she?” Jesse asked.

  Whittaker waved a hand. “I meant your girl, Bernard,” he said offhandedly. “She didn’t say anything about attacks when we met the other night.”

  Jesse studied the other man. “You’re high up in the pack,” Jesse reminded him. “If you know something . . .”

  “Yeah, I’m high in the pack,” Whittaker interrupted, his voice sour. “Because I’m powerful. Too powerful, which is exactly why I’m so fucking dangerous. Nobody tells me anything.”

  The werewolf seemed calmer, like his burst of rage had helped him somehow, relieved a little pressure. “Ironically,” he added, “I have much better control as a wolf. But then it becomes worse, afterward. To come back.”

  Jesse could see Whittaker giving in and changing between moons, even going against his alpha . . . but his reaction to Jesse’s question hadn’t been faked. He hadn’t turned someone between moons. However, there was still the problem of Terrence Whittaker’s interest in Scarlett.

  “I believe you,” Jesse said finally. “And honestly, I don’t give a shit what goes on within the pack.” He stepped closer. “But you need to stay away from Scarlett Bernard.”

  Whittaker’s eyes went hollow. “She has a cure,” he said feverishly. “She can make it all go away. She could give me my life back.”

  “No,” Jesse said carefully, “she can’t.” It was the truth. Scarlett might be able to change people, but it also might kill her to try. And she could never give this man back what he had lost.

  Whittaker looked at him just as Riddell had, searching for signs of a lie. Jesse stared him down. Finally, without breaking eye contact, Whittaker muttered, “We’ll see. You’re just a cop. You can’t keep us away from her.”

  Jesse took a deep breath, letting his senses focus on the noise of the neighborhood. He made the calculation, and decided to take the risk. “Maybe I can’t,” he said. Then Jesse raised his gun and shot Whittaker through the meatiest part of the thigh. The werewolf howled and flew to the ground like he’d been knocked down with a wrecking ball. “But I can slow you down,” Jesse added.

  If Whittaker heard this, he didn’t respond, because he was busy screaming as the silver bullet burned its way through his leg. As Jesse understood it, the wound would heal slowly, at a normal human rate, at least until Whittaker changed again. And it would hurt like hell.

  Jesse got back in his car to head west, back toward the 10 freeway and Scarlett. A half mile away from Terrence Whittaker’s house, though, he had to wrench the wheel to the right, pulling the car across two lanes of angry traffic. As soon as he was off the main lanes he threw open the car door and vomited all over the pavement.

  So much for calculated risk.

  Chapter 19

  “You shot a guy?”

  My voice had been too loud, and Jesse made a shushing motion with his hand. Luckily it was four thirty in the afternoon, and nobody else was seated at the little outdoor taco stand on La Cienega. I hadn’t gotten lunch yet, so this was supposed to be a working meal to compare notes on the case. At least, I had thought we were working on the case. Apparently Jesse had decided to appoint himself my own personal assassin instead.

  “Just in the leg,” Jesse muttered. “It was a perfect through-and-through. Just to slow him down, buy us a little time.”

  “This is not a Johnny Cash song, Jesse. You can’t just . . . shoot people who come after me,” I hissed at him. “You’re a cop.”

  “I know,” Jesse said, his voice miserable. He was hunched over his untouched basket of chips and guacamole, his shoulders slumped in guilt or defeat or both.

  “I didn’t ask you to step in,” I went on. I couldn’t seem to get my mouth to stop moving. “I didn’t need your help. Molly and I had it covered.”

  Now Jesse looked up, his gorgeous eyes skeptical. “For how long, Scarlett? They were just going to come after you again while you weren’t with Molly. For all we know, Anastasia is waiting outside your house right now.”

  “They don’t know where I live,” I retorted, trying to keep the uncertainty out of my voice. “But that’s not my point,” I added. “My point is: don’t shoot people.” I took a bite of my burrito and shook it at him for emphasis. “Use your powers for good,” I said, around a big mouthful of chicken and rice.

  “It was a bad decision, okay?” he said tiredly. He poked lifelessly at the chips. “For a second there I thought I could play in their league, go on the offensive. But I didn’t become a cop so I could punish people for things they might do.”

  We sat there for a few minutes in silence. I didn’t know whether to hug him or hit him. Whatever Jesse might say about the shooting, he’d done it to protect me. For obvious reasons, Terrence Whittaker was never going to press charges, but Jesse had still risked his entire career as a cop for me. And that felt . . . big. Too big.

  Jesse continued to stare gloomily at his food. I was eating ferociously, though, because . . . well, I was hungry. And I’ve never been the type to lose my appetite easily. My basic philosophy regarding eating during an emergency breaks down along the lines of “Moral crisis: bad. Spicy chicken burrito: good.”

/>   Jesse was looking at me with a complicated expression that I couldn’t interpret. Guilt? Resentment? “You were going to tell me what you learned from Leah and Kathryn’s people,” he stated.

  “Yeah, but I got a little sidetracked by ‘I shot a guy.’” Jesse gave me a look that I could definitely interpret as annoyance, and I added in a softer voice, “Kate. She went by Kate.”

  He nodded. “What did you learn about Leah and Kate?”

  I passed him my shoddy notes and filled him in on everything I remembered. “So I have a list of names of people that were connected to them—Leah’s boyfriend, Kate’s sister, and so on. And I know of a few activities each one liked. But I couldn’t find any obvious connection between them. The only thing that even comes close to a match are the animal rights groups, but Leah was in this PAW group and Kate’s a member of Humans for the Protection of Animals.”

  Jesse sighed. “Because that would have been just too easy, wouldn’t it.” It wasn’t really a question, but I nodded anyway. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “we’ll widen the circle. You should talk to the parents, if you can find them, and friends, and so on. I’ll try to get some membership rosters for the animal rights groups, too—it’s possible that Leah was in PETA or Kate was in PAW and their roommates just didn’t know about it.”

  “True,” I said, brightening a little.

  “And I’ll keep talking to the werewolves,” Jesse added. I began to protest, but he overrode me. “I know you want me to stay out of your business. But we need to stay on top of the threat against you, and we need to find out if there are any more connections between the nova wolf and the rest of the pack, aside from one of the pack members accidentally attacking someone.” He finally picked up a chip, dunked it liberally in the guacamole, and chewed. “I just know that there’s another connection here. I know it.”

  I sighed. “So who are you going to talk to next?”

  Jesse’s eyes gleamed. “Anastasia.”

  Oh shit. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t bother to protest. I doubted that Anastasia was involved in the nova wolf debacle, but she had certainly proven herself willing to go against the alpha’s orders before. I texted Will to get Ana’s address.

  When my phone chimed I used my hand to shield the screen from the afternoon sun and squinted at it. “Huh.”

  “What?” Jesse asked. Traffic was picking up on La Cienega, and we had to nearly shout to hear each other.

  “Anastasia’s working at the bar tonight.”

  I glanced across the table at him. His eyes were practically bugging out of his head with surprise. “Will’s letting her work, after all the shit she’s stirred up?” he said indignantly.

  I shrugged. “I guess he’s just too short-handed.” Since both Caroline and Eli were . . . off the payroll.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jesse said, remembering. Then he added, “And I suppose the bar gets busy on New Year’s Eve.”

  “That’s today?” I said stupidly. I had completely forgotten.

  Jesse snorted with laugher. “You forgot?”

  “Hey,” I protested. “I lost track of the days because I was in a coma.” I reached across the table and stole one of his chips. Just out of spite.

  “To be fair,” he admitted, “it may have slipped my mind for a minute there too.” His eyes drifted away into what I think of as his “Pensive Cop Face.”

  “There’s not much point in trying to interview more people today,” he concluded. “Everybody’s going to be getting ready for New Year’s Eve stuff.”

  “What do you want to do, then?” I asked. He was still staring off into space, so I picked up another chip and threw it at his nose.

  “What? Hey,” he sputtered.

  “Just getting your attention, Detective,” I said sweetly. “What’s the plan? Go home and ice our extremities?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “I have another idea.”

  Of course he did. “What’s that?”

  “Let’s go stake out Will Carling’s house.”

  Chapter 20

  We knew the nova wolf had changed two days ago, Jesse explained, because Leah Rhodes had died not long after he had attacked her. The nova should need twice as much time before he could change again, but according to Will, he was already more powerful than he should be. “You people are always telling me magic is unpredictable,” Jesse finished. “So it seems possible that the nova wolf can change faster than we expect.”

  “Even if he can,” I argued, “and even if he attacks someone else, there’s no guarantee she’ll . . .” I winced. “You know. Die right away. And there’s no guarantee that he’ll dump the body at Will’s again.”

  “I think he’s going to keep leaving the women at Will’s,” Jesse contended. “It’s too good of a ‘fuck you’ to the werewolf pack. And you—I mean, we,” he amended, “keep helpfully disposing of the dead bodies for him.”

  “Still,” I said, unconvinced.

  “Do you have something better to do?” Jesse asked, innocently raising his eyebrows. I glared at him, not speaking. We both knew I have essentially no life. “I’ll buy you a great big bag of ice,” he wheedled.

  “You can get ice free at any fast food place.”

  Jesse held up two fingers. “Then I’ll buy you two bags of ice,” he said playfully.

  I rolled my eyes and reached for another chip to throw, but he pulled the little paper carton out of my reach. “Is that a yes?” he persisted.

  “No, that’s a ‘fine, I give up.’ Totally different thing.”

  We split up for a couple of hours. Jesse wanted to stop at his place to shower and change, and I wanted to restock my cleaning supplies from my big stash at Molly’s, just in case. At six, we met up on Temescal Canyon Road, which was completely deserted. I left my van on a side street and rode with Jesse in his sedan the rest of the way. On Will’s street we parked as far away from Will’s house as we could while still keeping it in view. I wanted to keep the White Whale close by so we could get to it easily if the nova showed up, but we also wanted it to look like there was nobody around, so the nova would feel like he could get away with dumping another body. And if he’d done any research about the LA Old World, he might know my van.

  We were settled into our stakeout by six thirty. I was sitting in the passenger seat with the promised ice packs above and below my bad knee. They were wrapped in place with an old flannel scarf I’d brought from my van. Jesse had stopped for snacks at a 7-Eleven on his way over, and he was subjecting me to a lesson in the art of the stakeout food.

  “It has to be able to stay in the car for hours,” he explained very seriously, “but not go bad. And it can’t make you have to . . . you know, go to the bathroom right away. So salt is good, because it helps you retain water.” He handed me a small package of pretzels.

  “I thought for sure there would be doughnuts,” I complained. I could not get a friggin’ doughnut on this case.

  “Doughnuts are bad for you,” Jesse said around a mouthful of pretzel shards. “These are naturally fat free.” He swallowed and dug through the plastic grocery bag between us. “But I’ve also got apples, granola bars, let’s see . . . peanuts, Naked Juice, and Diet Coke.” He looked up at me expectantly.

  “Naked Juice? Do the other cops know you’re a closet health nut?” I grumbled.

  “Plenty of cops eat like this,” Jesse said, with great dignity. “You’re just prejudiced. Against the fuzz.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

  Time passed slowly. We got on the topic of car games—as it turned out, both of our families had taken us on road trips as kids—and for a while we played Twenty Questions and My Mother Owns a Grocery Store, which turned out to be basically the same game. After a couple of hours, though, I started to fidget, flipping the compartment between our seats open and closed. I peeked inside—nothing there but CDs. “Do you have any gum?” I asked, and without waiting for an answer I opened the glove compartment. When the little interior light turned
on, I saw a glossy black pistol resting in a specially contoured piece of foam. “Whoa. How many guns do you need?”

  “That should have been locked,” Jesse grumbled. He reached over my lap to close the glove compartment, locking it with the ignition key. “And no, no gum. But I’ll put it on your stakeout wish list for next time.” He put the keys back in the ignition, eyeing my face. “You look cold,” Jesse commented.

  I nodded. It was chilly in the car, and though rotating the ice packs on and off my knee felt great, the ice wasn’t doing me any favors when it came to body heat. I put the ice packs on the floor of the car, and Jesse twisted around to dig in the backseat. He handed me a fleece pullover that smelled like oranges and Armani cologne. I thanked him and spread it over my lap.

  “So did you have any plans for New Year’s Eve?” he asked.

  “Nah,” I admitted. “I was just going to stay up and watch TV or something.”

  “With Molly?”

  “No, she usually . . . goes out.” Party holidays like New Year’s and St. Patrick’s Day are big feeding opportunities for the vampires, especially the ones like Molly who can pass for young people.

  It’s not that I don’t know anyone else in Los Angeles. I know a few people from my hometown who’ve ended up here too, and one of Jack’s ex-girlfriends—not to mention Jack himself, who lives in the city and works at a blood lab owned by Dashiell. But, even aside from the fact that knowing me can be hazardous for one’s health, for the most part I don’t trust myself around humans anymore. It’s too easy to start talking about my day and accidentally let something slip about the . . . people . . . I spend my time with. Then I’d have to go begging Dashiell or Molly to press someone’s mind for me, which would put that person on the Old World’s radar. So I just keep to myself, mostly. It’s not that hard, in a city this big.