Frostbitten (2 page)

He held out a paper-thin white rectangle, making me think they really had done a lot with personal alarms since I’d last seen one. But it was a business card.

“My wife runs Taser parties.”

“Taser…?”

“You know, like Tupperware parties. A bunch of women get together, have a good time, share some potluck and get a demonstration of the latest in personal security devices.”

I searched his face for some sign that he was joking. He wasn’t. I thanked him again and hurried out of the stairwell.

Reese’s trail led out the front door. As I went after him, I realized I was still holding the card, which featured a cute little red Taser that I’m sure fit into a purse and accessorized very nicely, for women who carried purses or accessorized.

From Tupperware parties to lingerie parties to Taser parties. I shook my head and stuffed the card into my pocket. Right now, I actually wouldn’t mind a Taser. It might be the only way to stop Reese. Of course, I’d need to get close enough to use it, which wasn’t looking very likely.

* * * *

Three blocks later, I finally caught up with Reese on a rooftop. He’d climbed up the fire escape, probably thinking I wouldn’t follow.

When I swung over the top, he broke into a run, heading for the opposite side, boots sliding on the gravel. When I realized he wasn’t going to veer at the last second, I threw on the brakes, gravel crunching as I skidded to a stop.

“Okay,” I called. “I’m not coming any closer. I just want to talk to you.”

He was close enough to the edge to make my heart race. He slowly pivoted to face me.

Reese Williams, twenty years old, and recently emigrated from Australia. With broad shoulders, sun-streaked wavy blond hair and the remnants of a tan, he looked like the kind of kid who should be leading tour groups into the outback, all smiles and corny jokes. Only he wasn’t joking or smiling now.

“My name is Elena—” I began.

“I know who you are,” he said. “But where is
he
?”

“Not here, obviously.” I gestured around me. “In two days, you haven’t caught a whiff of any werewolf except me, which should be a sure sign that he’s not around.”

“So you’re alone?” The sarcasm in his voice made that a statement. I was the only female werewolf.
Obviously
I needed protection, which must be why I’d taken refuge with the Pack and, for a mate, had chosen the Alpha’s second-in-command—the baddest, craziest werewolf around.

“He’s teaching,” I said. “Georgia State University, this week.”

His glower said he didn’t appreciate my joke. I wasn’t kidding—that bad and crazy werewolf also had a Ph.D. in anthropology and was currently lecturing at a symposium on cult worship in ancient Egypt. But there was no way Reese would believe that.

“Fine,” I said. “You think he’s been lurking in the shadows, out of sight and downwind for two days. Unobtrusive is one word that’s never been applied to Clay but, sure, let’s go with that theory. Unless he’s learned to fly, though, the only way up is that ladder behind me, so you’re going to see him coming. Now, let’s take a minute and chat. The reason I’ve been chasing you for two days is that I want to talk to you about—”

“South Carolina.”

“Right.”

“I didn’t kill those humans.”

“I know.”

He allowed himself two seconds of surprise, and in those two seconds, he looked like a kid on his first day away at college—lonely, confused and hoping he’d found someone to help. Then his face hardened again. He might be no older than a college student, but he wasn’t that naive or that optimistic, not anymore.

I hurried on. “You emigrated last year and hooked up with a couple of morons named Liam Malloy and Ramon Santos. They promised to show you the ropes of werewolf life in America. Then the half-eaten bodies started showing up—”

“I didn’t do it.”

“No, they did, and they’re blaming you for it. We know—”

He inched back toward the edge.

“Don’t—” I began. “Just stop there. Better yet, take a step toward me.”

“Am I making you nervous?”

I met his gaze. “Yes.”

“A jumper would be a real mess to clean up, wouldn’t it? Better to calm me down and get me into a nice stretch of forest for easy burial.”

“That’s not—” An exasperated sigh hissed through my teeth. “Fine. You’re convinced I’m going to kill you. The only question, then, is—”

He stepped back… and plummeted.

I lunged so fast I nearly did a face plant in the gravel, scrabbling to get to the edge, heart in my throat, cursing myself for being so careless, so flippant—

Then I saw the second roof, two stories below, and Reese running across it.

Clay would have taken a dramatic flying leap. I felt the urge, but reminded myself I was the mother of two and would turn forty in a few months. Even if I had the body of a bionic thirty-year-old, I had responsibilities to my family, to my Alpha and, most important right now, to this dumbass kid who’d get killed if I broke my ankle and couldn’t warn him about Liam and Ramon.

So I crouched on the edge, checked my trajectory and jumped carefully. I landed on my feet and took off after Reese. I was barely on the second rooftop before he was off it. It was a three-story drop this time, which was a bit much even for a twenty-year-old werewolf. The thump of a hard landing and a gasp of pain confirmed that.

I picked up speed, hoping I’d see him huddled below, hurt and unable to run. But the pavement was empty, as was the parking lot beyond. I caught a flash of movement in a recessed doorway, where he crouched, hidden in the shadows, waiting to ambush me. Good thing I
hadn’t
pulled a Clay and charged headlong after my prey.

I walked to the adjoining edge, lowered myself over, then dropped. Twin shocks of pain blasted through my legs as I hit the asphalt. I was going to pay for that in the morning. For now, I rubbed it out, then snuck to the corner of the building.

The wind shifted and I caught a whiff of Reese, his scent heavy with fear. It wasn’t me he should be afraid of, though, but his old traveling buddies.

Liam and Ramon had killed three humans in South Carolina and set up Reese to take the fall. Now they were hoping to find and kill him before I got his side of the story.

How was I so sure of this?

Because they’d done it before. Five years ago they’d befriended a twenty-three-year-old immigrant werewolf named Yuli Etxeberria. When evidence of man-killing pointed to Etxeberria, Clay had wanted to swoop in and grab him. I’d held back. I’d been suspicious, but not suspicious enough. Liam killed Etxeberria and mailed us his hand, as if expecting a commendation for taking care of this “man eater.”

That wouldn’t happen this time. I strode down the grassy strip between the building and the parking lot, as if I was scanning that lot, giving Reese the perfect ambush target.

When I reached the recessed doorway, I dove. Reese’s shadow passed over me, pouncing and catching only air. I leapt up, grabbed the back of his jacket and threw him onto the grass.

He landed with a thud. He tried to roll out of it and bounce up swinging, but a twenty-year-old with a werewolf’s strength and agility is like a twenty-year-old behind the wheel of a Lamborghini—all that power but not enough experience using it—and he fumbled the bounce back to his feet.

I tossed him face-first onto the grass again. This time he stayed where he landed.

“Where did we leave off?” I said. “Right. Liam and Ramon and their plot to end your existence.”

“Kill me?” He slowly rose. “Why would they—?”

He charged, hoping to catch me off guard. I stepped aside and he smacked into the wall, then wheeled fast and came at me again. Again, I stepped aside, this time grabbing him and pitching him through the air.

As he hit the ground, he let out a stream of profanity.

I shook my head. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t be throwing you on the
grass
, would I?”

“Right, you’re here to help me, after getting tipped off that I’m a man-eater. Do you really expect me to—”

He tried the dash-in-midsentence trick again, making a break for the alley. I tore after him. As I caught the back of his jacket, he spun and hit me with an upper cut that sent me sailing off my feet.

I kept my grip on his coat, and we both went down. I tried to scramble up, but he pinned me. It was then that his wolf brain kicked in. His pupils dilated, his breathing quickened, his erection pressed into my thigh, his wolf side telling him this wasn’t a fight—it was foreplay, and damn, I smelled good.

He froze as the still-human part of his brain warned him that what the wolf wanted was a very bad idea. But his nostrils still flared, drinking in my scent.

I knew which side would win, and that’s when things always got ugly.

So while he fought his inner battle, I heaved him off me.

“That’s why I don’t do hand-to-hand combat with mutts,” I said.

He nodded as he got to his feet, rubbing his face briskly with his sleeve, gaze down, cheeks flaming. He pinched his nose and shook his head, trying to clear my scent.

It took a smart kid to back off that fast. And Reese
was
smart—that was the problem. If he’d been a dumb lunk who’d keep trying to hump my leg, then he’d have believed me when I said I was here to rescue him. Instead, he saw all the ways it could be a trick.

“Liam and Ramon
are
after you,” I said. “You haven’t noticed because they aren’t nearly as good at tracking as I am. Give them a few weeks to catch up and—”

He charged, switching to the dash-while-your-
opponent
-is-in-midspeech tactic. Again, I sidestepped. Only this time, he hooked the back of my knee. I stumbled, but came up swinging. Unfortunately, he was already ten feet away, running for the road.

I took off after him.

I lost him. The condensed version is that Reese Williams possessed an admirable blend of intelligence and humility, and I was accustomed to dealing with mutts who’d sooner cut off their balls than run from a woman.

Reese did exactly what I’d have done if pursued through a city core by a more experienced werewolf. He ran for the nearest populated place—a busy restaurant. While I waited at the back door, he must have darted out the front and swiped someone’s cab. By the time I realized he was gone, it was too late to follow.

Now, an hour later, I was in a cab of my own, getting out at the Pittsburgh International Airport.

What led me here wasn’t good old-fashioned legwork. Ever since the werewolves rejoined the supernatural council, our mutt tracking has gone high tech. We now have Paige Winterbourne, genius computer hacker, at our disposal.

We knew Reese had been using stolen credit cards, alternating between at least three. Paige had identified two and was tracking transactions.

I didn’t even get a chance to tell her I’d lost him before she was calling to say he’d used a credit card at the airport. As for
where
he was going, that proved more problematic. Paige had access to all the major airline computers, but this was a small one she hadn’t ever needed to crack. So I was back to leg- and nose work.

“You’re booked on a flight to Miami,” Jeremy said as I got out of the cab, cell phone to my ear. “That will get you through security. But from the sounds of it, you’ve delivered your message. If he’s refusing to listen, I’m not sure what you plan to do about that.”

“I want to tell him what happened to Yuli Etxeberria. If that doesn’t work, I’ll hog-tie him and haul his ass someplace safe until he smartens up.”

Silence as I walked through the doors. It lasted so long that with anyone else I’d have wondered if the line disconnected.

“You don’t need to keep chasing him, Elena.”

“Just one more day. The kids are okay, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they’re fine. Clay called an hour ago. His last meeting was canceled, so he can help with Reese.”

“Great. He can catch up with me tomorrow, after he stops in there and sees the kids.”

“While I’m sure he’d love to see them, right now he wants to get to you. As soon as you figure out where you’re going, he’ll meet up with you.”

I didn’t argue. It’d been two weeks since I’d seen Clay—longer than we’d been apart in years. I was so accustomed to having him around that for two weeks I’d been unbalanced and off-kilter. And when it came to hunting Reese without my partner, I’d definitely been off my game.

“Etxeberria wasn’t your fault, Elena,” Jeremy said.

Ah, right to the crux of the matter, as usual.

“One more day,” I said. “Just give me—”

“I’ll give you all the time you need. You know that. Then once you’re done, take an extra night with Clay before you come back.”

* * * *

We hadn’t intended to be apart so long. For Clay, even separate day trips were too much. That’s the wolf in him, wanting his mate nearby at all times. Most werewolves inherit the genes and don’t transform until their late teens, but Clay was bitten as a child, and that makes him more wolf than human.