Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  I left a ten on the bar to cover the beer and a tip, and waved to Clara as I headed for the door. Fingers crossed Doc would have the horse tranqs ready and I could pick those up and head home. Luke would call, he’d bring Lincoln and the team back, and the book would reveal what I needed to do to save the werewolf. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

  I snorted to myself, shaking my head at the absurdity of anything going that well, and shoved the door open. It bounced off a solid wall of chest and I found myself staring at an enormous goon of a man with dark hair and eyes and a scowl fit for a grizzly.

  He retreated, pushing back four more massive dudes in high-tech, high-speed hiking gear, and it took me a second to realize one of the dudes was a woman. She’d shaved her head, so it was hard to tell. I cleared my throat and looked past them, pretending to focus on where I was going instead of the way my heart jumped to my throat and panic boiled in my veins. “’Scuse me.”

  I got about a step and a half past them when the dark-eyed goon in the lead caught my arm and pulled me up short. “Hold on a minute.”

  My breath caught and I narrowed my eyes, turning with enough speed and force that I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. I’d learned long ago it was best to play your hand aggressively when confronted by tough guys who tried to throw their weight around. “I beg your pardon.”

  My tone should have warned him off, but none of them looked particularly bright. The lead one leaned closer, his eyes glinting in the sun. “You... look familiar.”

  “Worst pickup line ever,” I snapped, starting to stomp off even though my heart battered against my ribs and nearly broke free. Strangers dressed like that had to be the other group of feds. They couldn’t be anyone else. They definitely weren’t the standard tourists, and something about the confidence in the way they moved and how at least one of them was always scanning the street around them for threats communicated very clearly that they were not there on a holiday. “Fuck off.”

  But two of the other goons shifted their weight and blocked my escape, and one of them inhaled deeply right near me, as if... as if he were sniffing me. Searching for a hint of scent. Like an animal, or someone who could turn into an animal. I folded my arms over my chest and refused to react to the implied and real threat as I faced the leader. “I don’t know who the fuck you guys think you are, but this is the wrong game to be playing in this town. You got a question? Find your manners first.”

  His expression didn’t change, and instead he drew a flat wallet from inside his jacket to flash a badge at me before putting it away. “We’re federal agents here on official business. Your cooperation is required.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. I wondered if there was any use in shouting for help when there weren’t many people on the street to notice I was being questioned. Maybe Janice was watching from the window and would send the Doc out to help. Or maybe a unicorn would float down from the clouds and whisk me away to a castle in the mountains. “Get a warrant and then I’ll talk, after I call my lawyer. I was just minding my own business and you’re trying to illegally stop me.”

  “I just have a few questions,” he said, unperturbed. I started to sweat, and it took all my effort to maintain the pissed-the-fuck-off look without panicking. The lead agent folded his arms over his chest. “Do you work on one of the ranches or in the national park? Any work with livestock? Hunting?”

  “No to all of the above,” I said. “And that’s the last thing I’m saying to you.”

  “We’re searching for wolves,” he said, and leaned to pluck a few scraggly gray-and-white hairs from my sleeve. “And you seem to have hairs remarkably similar to the... type we’re looking for.”

  Werewolves. I didn’t blink, relying on the many years of facing off with crazy relatives to keep my cool, and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket instead. “No idea what you’re talking about, but you’ve got ten seconds to get out of my way before I call my favorite militia brothers. They’d really like to chat with you feds.”

  His eyes narrowed more as he considered me, then his gaze flicked to the men behind me, and he brushed a few more strands of hair off my shoulder. “Brave little thing, aren’t you? Very well. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Great,” I said. I turned on my heel and stalked back toward the doctors’ office, though my knees knocked and I thought for sure my legs would give out when I had to go up the steps to the reception area. Holy crap on a cracker. I checked my phone as soon as I was inside and the door closed behind me, and I could collapse into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs before I face-planted on the tile and Janice decided to commit me. No message from Luke, no message from anyone else.

  My fingers shook a little as I typed up a text message to Luke, since maybe that would make it through the spotty cellular connection when an actual call might not. Tell Lincoln he’s got friends in town making trouble. Need to return ASAP to deal with it.

  It went through, so I crossed my fingers that Luke would see it and they would all figure out how urgent it was. Lincoln didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who wanted others checking up on his team. Hopefully his own outrage would overshadow whatever attention I’d managed to draw with the werewolf hair. With that creepy dude sniffing at me, maybe they could tell there was a werewolf nearby. I didn’t dare reveal I knew what they were actually looking for, since there was no telling how much trouble Lincoln would get into for telling me about the real problem.

  Or how much trouble I’d get into just for being a witch. Or for killing eleven werewolves. Or for keeping one in my shed.

  Janice puttered into the reception area with a small paper bag and an alarmed expression. “Luckett, you’re going to lie down in the back so Harry can give you some fluids. You look terrible.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, forcing myself to smile. “Really. I think the sun isn’t agreeing with me.”

  “Understatement of the year,” she said. “You’re turning into your sister.”

  “God forbid.” I took the bag she offered and tucked it into my sack lunch, and waggled my phone at her. “I’ll call if I don’t feel better tomorrow. I promise.”

  She waved me off and turned her mothering to the scrawny ranch hand with an arm bending the wrong way who swayed in his chair and turned green every time he moved. I retreated, though I checked the street to see whether the feds lingered, and headed back to my car using the back way. No sense taking any chances.

  My hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel as I headed out of town, and I checked the rearview mirror a dozen times before I was certain that one of those dark SUVs was following me home.

  Chapter 35

  I didn’t dare actually drive up to the house, not with a werewolf in the shed and two witches doing the Book only knew what kind of magic in the yard. The last thing we needed was for Olivia to get trigger-happy and end up shooting a federal agent right on our front lawn. No amount of magic could undo that.

  So instead I circled back to the fort, since it was kind of on the way, and hoped one of the friendly rangers was on duty. I made mental notes as I drove and avoided a tourist’s car that wandered out of its lane as they tried to drive and read a map at the same time. I could ask the rangers about reaching Eddie on his radio, and whether they’d seen my horse. At least it would give me the chance to call back to the house and make sure everything was normal before I led any strangers back there. My stomach clenched and sweat trickled down my back. I was in over my head. I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of cops and other weird magical people. I didn’t really like things in Rattler’s Run, but I didn’t want them to change too much unless I got to change with them.

  I parked near the ranger station across from the entry to the fort, taking my time getting out of the car so I could see whether I was paranoid about the SUV following or if the creepy dude and the goon took stalker to a new level. The SUV rolled to a stop near where a tourist bus idled and a bunch of people in visors and backpacks and sandals climbed off, but I could still se
e the goon through the windshield. Bell damn them all to hell.

  Kicking open the door didn’t make me feel any better; neither did shoving my way into the small front office of the ranger station. I tried to keep an eye on my car through the front window, wondering if those goons would try to put something on it to keep track of me, but smiled when one of the newer rangers appeared from the back room. “Hey Drew.”

  “Luckett,” he said, a bit of surprise raising his eyebrows. “You’re back. We thought you were all at the reservation.”

  “Yeah, I had a problem at home to deal with.” I craned my neck to see out the front window, frowning when it looked like the feds had gotten out of their SUV and disappeared. “I headed back to town earlier this morning, but I’m trying to reach Eddie. Have you heard from him on the radio?”

  He wandered over to a bunch of radio equipment and fiddled with the dials and buttons and stuff. “He called in a bit ago. They made it to the reservation.”

  “Great. I need to get him and Lincoln a message, if you don’t mind.”

  The ranger adjusted something else on the equipment, though most of his attention remained on me. “It have anything to do with those federal guys who were throwing their weight around in town?”

  “How’d you know?” I asked, trying to smile.

  “They’re standing outside,” he said under his breath and tilted his head at the door.

  I refused to react even as panic nearly overwhelmed me. So this was how the wolf packs felt when they were hunted down and slaughtered from helicopters by Land Management. “Great.”

  Before I could say anything else, the door creaked open and the goon and his minion both walked in. The goon pulled off his sunglasses, revealing those cold eyes, and barely acknowledged my presence. “Ranger. Any luck locating my colleagues?”

  Drew didn’t look at me, bless his heart, but a muscle ticked in his clenched jaw as he surveyed the two men. Apparently something had gone down when the new feds arrived, because the tension was thicker than Gran’s carrot cake. But Drew maintained his professionalism and only raised an eyebrow. “Agent Heathrow. We heard from the ranger with them a short while ago. I can try to radio back so you can speak with them.”

  Heathrow tucked the sunglasses inside his coat, attention drifting to me. “You can assist the young lady, since she was here first.”

  “I’ll keep,” I said, leaning against the wall and folding my arms over my chest. Hopefully they couldn’t tell I was so nervous my ass was sweating. “Go ahead, Hollywood.”

  “It’s Heathrow,” he said. No sense of humor at all.

  At least Drew smiled, a slight twitch of the lips that I caught out of the corner of my eye. The ranger flipped a radio switch and said a bunch of gibberish into a microphone, and static came back for far too long. He tried again and waited, and I could swear even the soles of my feet were sweating from sheer terror. If they talked to Lincoln, maybe they’d leave me alone. But if Drew couldn’t reach anyone, then there was no hope of Lincoln intervening to keep the new feds away from me. And the werewolf in my shed.

  Just as it looked like Heathrow would turn his attention back to me and get out the thumbscrews, the radio crackled and then Eddie’s disembodied voice came back with some of the gibberish before he said, “Is there an issue, Drew? Over.”

  “Got some visitors for your federal pal, that Lincoln guy. Showed up in town a couple of days ago. Over.”

  “Roger. The cell phones aren’t working yet. Put ‘em on, I’ve got Lincoln right here. Over.”

  Drew held up the microphone and handed it over as Heathrow walked up, passing way too close to me despite there being a whole empty room, and the ranger rolled his eyes as he stood back. The fed cleared his throat before speaking. “Agent O’Connell, this is Agent Heathrow. Headquarters dispatched us to assist you when you failed to check in after a week. My team will remain in this location until you are able to return. Over.”

  A long silence was the only answer, and Heathrow pressed the button to talk once more. “O’Connell, come in. Did you copy?”

  For a second the static on the line sounded distinctly like growling and maybe even muttered cursing, then Lincoln’s smooth voice reached through the air and managed to calm me and piss off the other fed at the same time. “Hugh, I’m surprised you bothered to land west of the Mississippi. Everything is fine and we’ve got our report ready to submit. Your team can depart immediately for headquarters. We wouldn’t want to waste your... expertise out here. We found the problem and dealt with it. Over.”

  The way he said “over” sounded like both a command and a threat.

  But Heathrow hardly reacted at all. He moved only to look at me, and I felt his attention like a brick in the face. “I’ve orders to stay until we’re certain your team is well and the anomalies are dealt with. While you may have handled the problem out there, it seems we might have another problem a lot closer to home. Take your time. My team can deal with it. Over.”

  He, too, could make two syllables sound like a curse.

  More silence followed, and I would have given almost anything to have overheard what Lincoln and Hazel said to each other on the other end of that radio. As we waited for another message, my cell phone rang loud enough it made me jump. I nearly sang with relief to see Luke’s name show up on the screen, and I held it up to my ear as I nodded to Drew. “I’ve gotta take this. I’ll swing by later to talk about that other issue.”

  He nodded, and even winked when both of the feds frowned at me, and I skedaddled out of there as soon as I could. My voice came out thready and breathless as I jumped in the car and started it up, hoping I could get away from the fort before the feds could follow. “Hey. I’m actually glad to hear from you for once, you son of a bitch.”

  “Is that really how you answer the phone?” Lincoln’s voice sounded far too amused and relaxed.

  “You’re supposed to be distracting those asshole friends of yours,” I hissed into the phone, staring in the rearview mirror to see whether the two goons returned to their SUV. “What the hell? Get back on the radio before that jackass starts following me again.”

  “What? Heathrow and his guys are following you? How did you know about the radio?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “But seriously, can you guys get back here and deal with these assholes? He already tried to detain me in the street.”

  He was quiet for quite a while, and in the background, I could hear different voices. Maybe he spoke to Heathrow on the radio, then to me on the phone, then back to the radio. I gripped the steering wheel harder as I turned off the main road and took some of the farm roads closer to the house. The second I got off the phone with Lincoln, I needed to call my sisters so they could do something to hide the werewolf and the shed.

  Lincoln cleared his throat. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m borrowing a truck from Luke and I’ll drive straight there. Heathrow and his guys are staying at The Inn?”

  “Yeah. But look for the SUVs and the pissed-off locals, and you’ll find him.”

  “He’s dangerous,” Lincoln said, quiet enough that I knew he was serious. “Be careful. Just stay out of his way until I get there. Hide out at the house, and don’t... do anything exciting to draw his attention. He’s got someone on his team like Hazel who will be able to tell if things get interesting.”

  “He’s got someone like Mason and Nelson, too,” I said under my breath. “The creeper sniffed me when I walked past.”

  There was definitely more stress in his words when he spoke. “I’ll fix it. Just get home and stay there. It’ll take us an hour or two to get there on the highway.”

  “Get here fast,” I said, and exhaled some of that worry. At least he was on his way. There would still be time to fix the ridiculous plan to save the werewolf before either Heathrow or Lincoln found out about it.

  The line went dead and I didn’t pause before dialing Lucia, and I didn’t wait for her to say hello before I blurted out, “Ther
e’s a problem.”

  “No shit,” she snapped. “This goddamn werewolf is tearing up the shed. Get your ass back here. We’re either going to heal him or kill him, because the wards aren’t doing anything.”

  “We can’t,” I said, my stomach in knots. “Those feds in town have a witch. They’ll be able to tell if we do anything big.”

  “We might have to risk it, Sass, unless you want to shoot the damn thing?”

  I’d made some poor decisions in my life, but this week certainly topped them all for sheer stupidity. “I’ll be home in ten minutes.”

  She hung up without another word, and I tossed my phone into the passenger seat, cursing and pounding my fist on the wheel. Bell damn it. Fucking damn it. My lungs clenched and I couldn’t breathe, and I pressed the gas pedal almost to the floor as the sedan bounced down the rutted farm road.

  It felt like an eternity before I whipped the sedan into the drive and bounced up to the yard. Olivia and Lucia both stood on the porch holding rifles, ready to shoot the werewolf if he broke out. And it sounded like he’d been trying for a while. Boards had fallen out of the shed’s walls and the door hung on broken hinges.

  “I ran into the feds,” I said as I kicked open the door and hauled myself out. My head spun and I teetered, grabbing the car to keep from falling over, and took a long moment to gather myself. Good grief. “They’re…they might know about this.” And I gestured at the shed.

  “How the fuck do they know about this?” Lucia demanded, storming up. She grabbed the keys to her car from me, scowling at all the dust and dirt I’d accumulated on the rough ride through the farm country. “Jesus, Sass, what—”

  “Some of the werewolf hair stuck to me,” I said. I brushed at my sleeve to dislodge the rest of the fur, and to show them I wasn’t a complete fuck-up. “They have a shifter or something that can smell it. I left them at the ranger station, so I don’t think they followed me back here.”

  Liv dragged herself closer to the shed, looking pale and wan once more despite holding the rifle like a champ. “You don’t think? Come on, Sass. They’ll ask anyone in town where to find you and next thing we know, they’ll be knocking on the door. And I do not want them to find a fucking werewolf in our shed. If we even still have a shed.”