Last Wolf Standing (29 page)

“And we can’t overlook the obvious,” Jeremy added, crossing his arms over his chest. “Stefan Drake is a racist asshole who hates humans. I could too easily see him in the role.”

“I agree about Drake,” Mason grunted. “As for the other Elders, they’re too new for any of us to know much about.”

“Mason’s right,” Cian muttered. “We don’t know these people. I mean really know them enough to be able to determine if they’d be capable of something like this. We’re too disengaged from the pack.”

“You guys could always ask your precious Dylan what he thinks,” Brody interjected, his voice snide. The year before, Dylan’s sister had run Brody’s heart through the wringer, and it was no secret that there was no love lost between the Runner and the Elder. Not that Mason could blame the man who was like his brother. Having your heart ripped out tended to make a guy kinda bitter, and Brody had already been dealt enough shit to deal with in life.

“I’m picking up your sarcasm,” Jeremy drawled, “but you’re right, Brody. Dylan could help us.”

“Unfortunately, Dylan is still unreachable. And no matter how loyal he is to us, his first loyalty is still to the League,” Mason said grimly. “We need another plan.” He knew the reaction his suggestion was going to get, but it had to be said. “Maybe we should call in Jillian.”

Just as he’d expected, Jeremy whipped around, pinning him with a hard, incredulous glare. “Over my dead body.”

“If we don’t get some help here, it just might come to that, Jeremy. We need to talk to someone who has their pulse on the pack as well as the League. Who knows them better than Jillian?”

“She’d never do it,” his partner argued, while his face went dark, the healing wounds on the side of his throat standing out in stark contrast against the violent color of his anger. “She couldn’t give a damn about helping us.”

“I disagree,” he countered. “Jillian has always wanted what was best for her people. There’s no way she hasn’t picked up on the trouble within the Silvercrest, and she’s the most unprejudiced member of the pack I know, aside from Dylan. If we ask her, she will help us. And we need it.”

Jeremy shook his head from side to side, his fingers clenched around his glass so fiercely it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. “I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, and while you’re fuming about it, why don’t you think about why the idea of being near her, of having her working with us, pisses you off so badly?”

“It. Won’t. Work.”

“You got a better idea?” he growled.

Jeremy opened his mouth, but Cian’s lazy drawl broke into the argument. “Maybe one of us should return to Shadow Peak ourselves, accept our place within the pack and hunt the traitor from within?”

Silence followed his words, thick and heavy, like something you could sink into. The three standing Runners stared at one another while the idea ran its way through their minds, arguments and affirmations battling against one another. Casting a curious glance at their hard expressions, Cian rocked back on the chair’s rear legs and quietly laughed. “If you three could only see your faces. Priceless.”

Brody’s scowl deepened, making him look even scarier than usual. “Son of a bitch,” he grunted. “That’s diabolical.”

“But brilliant,” the Irishman drawled, his white teeth flashing in a wide smile.

Jeremy studied him through narrowed eyes. “You volunteering for the job, Hennessey?”

“Hell, no!” he barked, shaking his dark head. “I’m not that insane. We’d have to make it fair somehow.”

Brody thought it over, nodding as an idea occurred to him. “We could draw straws for it.”

“I don’t like it,” Jeremy argued, slamming his glass down on the counter.

“I don’t like it, either,” Mason agreed. “But…it might be our best shot, Jeremy. Whoever was on the inside would have complete access to the pack—to everything. They could work with Jillian, and we could get to the bottom of this thing before it explodes in our faces.”

Jeremy scrubbed his hands down his face, muttering, “Oh, Christ,” under his breath. “And I thought your plan was insane.”

“It could—” Brody started to say, when a loud banging noise sounded from the living room.

“That’s Elliot,” Jeremy grunted, his voice grim.

Together, the group rushed into the other room, fanning out around the locked door that led downstairs, the teenager’s pounding growing louder against the wood. “Dillinger! Burns!” he called out hoarsely, and Mason unlocked the door, whipping it open.

The light spilled into the shadowed stairway, revealing Elliot’s slumped, sweat-drenched form curled up on the top stair, his dark eyes wild with emotion. “I—” He swallowed thickly, unable to get the words out. “I…I was asleep. Dreaming,” he panted, the words ragged, “about, about that…night. I know where we were,” he growled, running the back of his hand over his mouth, his upper lip dotted with beads of sweat. “There was a cliff. Water. The sound of a waterfall.”

“Flat Rock,” Jeremy muttered. “On the western ridge.”

“Let’s check it out,” Brody rumbled, already moving toward the door. “There’s a north and a south side that we’ll need to search.”

Cian nodded, heading after his partner. “Well take the north first,” he called back over his shoulder, “then—”

“I’ll take the south,” Mason cut in.

The two Runners stopped in their tracks, turning back. “You can’t go it alone, Dillinger.”

“Jeremy can’t go, and I need him to stay here anyway. If I run into anything, I’ll give you a call before I get myself into something I can’t handle.”

Brody scowled. “You better call us,” he muttered, stalking out the door with his partner.

“You did good, Elliot,” Mason said gruffly, watching as Jeremy helped the trembling kid to his feet, one arm slung around the young Lycan’s shoulders.

Elliot nodded numbly, his expression blank, as if he were trapped within some kind of internal nightmare, and Mason knew the teen was thinking about his dream. If Elliot remembered where he’d killed the girl, then he’d most likely relived the killing, as well.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Jeremy grunted in answer to Mason’s unspoken concern. “Just get on outta here and see what you can find.”

“I’ll go let Torrance know that I’m leaving.”

“Sounds good, man. And whatever you do, stay frosty,” Jeremy called out, taking Elliot down the stairs.

Mason had just shut the door when he heard a voice say, “You’re leaving?”

He turned to find Torrance standing at the edge of the living room, the hallway at her back. “We may have a lead on where Simmons is,” he told her, “but I have to hurry. When Jeremy comes back up, he can fill you in on everything.”

She nodded, and even across the length of the room, he could see her face go pale. “Be careful, Mason.”

“I will,” he promised, her concern for him evident, and that strange sense of belonging pierced through him again, making him want to pull her into his arms, take her to the floor and bury himself inside of her sweet warmth until she could thaw out the cold fear that filled him up inside. “If this wasn’t so important, I wouldn’t be going.”

She nodded, but remained silent, slender arms wrapped around her middle.

“Elliot is pretty shaken up,” he added. “It might make him feel better if you could talk to him again. Maybe even keep him company.”

“Of course I will,” she said, her own worry for the young man creasing her brow.

For a moment Mason just stood there, caught in indecision as his eyes moved over her face, settling on every precious feature, committing them to memory. There was so much he needed to say, but now wasn’t the time. “Wait up for me?” he asked.

She hesitated for only a moment, then softly said, “Okay.”

Chapter 12

T ick. Tick. Tick.

Torrance watched the hands of the sleek, modern clock hanging upon the wall tick away the seconds, one by one, their sluggish pace as slow and thick as molasses. God, she couldn’t take this. The waiting was going to destroy her sanity. Mason had been gone for hours, and with each minute that passed, her worry and fear multiplied at an exponential rate.

She sat at one end of the leather sofa in the basement—Elliot at the other, watching the MTV countdown—while her mind chewed over her troubling thoughts, trying to make sense of the chaos that had become her life. She didn’t find any answers, but her head now hurt like hell.

Then the downstairs phone rang out on Jeremy’s bedside table, and she looked over her shoulder to watch him set his Clive Cussler novel aside. He answered the call, and seconds later his brow pulled into a tight grimace. “Okay, hold on just a sec. I’ve got him right here, honey.”

“Yo, Elliot,” he called out over the music, putting one hand over the receiver. “This one’s for you.”

The teenager looked up, reluctantly taking his dark eyes from the half-naked girls dancing in one the latest hip-hop videos. “It’s for me?” he asked, frowning.

Jeremy shrugged, holding his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s some girl. No idea how she knows you’re here, but she sounds pretty upset. I think you should take it.”

At the mention of a girl, Elliot rushed across the room, snatching the phone out of Jeremy’s hand. Wanting to give him as much privacy as possible, Torrance stood up and headed toward the stairs, thinking she’d try to find some aspirin for her head, when a loud thwump from the other side of the room stopped her. She spun back around, unable to believe the horrific scene playing out before her eyes. Jeremy lay slumped on the floor, blood oozing from a gash on his temple, while Elliot stood over him, the phone still clutched in his fingers…dripping with blood.

“Ohmygod! What happened?” she shouted, rushing to Jeremy and dropping to her knees beside him. She grabbed a discarded T-shirt from where it lay on the foot of his bed and pressed the soft cotton against the gash in his head.

“He’s fine,” Elliot panted, staring down at her. “I didn’t hit him too hard. Just enough to knock him out. I didn’t hurt him.”

“How do you know if you hurt him?” she growled, glaring up at the pale-faced teenager. “You bashed his head in, Elliot! Of course he’s hurt!”

Torrance watched as he walked to his bed and picked up the sweatshirt that Mason had loaned him, pulling it on over his T-shirt. He ran his palms up and down his thighs, then turned back toward her, his eyes all but glowing within the paleness of his face. “You’ve got to come with me, Torrance.”

“What the hell’s going on, Elliot? Who was on the phone?”

Moving slowly, she reached toward the cell phone hooked on Jeremy’s belt, but Elliot rushed forward, unclipping it and hurling it toward the wall on the opposite side of the room. It hit with a sharp, metallic sound, tumbling to the floor in scattered pieces. “You can’t call him!” he shouted, shoving his hands into his hair, his arms curled over his head, panic riding him hard. “You can’t call anyone!”

Just stay calm, Torrance. Do not freak out.

Taking a deep breath, she went back to applying pressure to Jeremy’s temple, trying to make sense out of what was happening—but it was too bizarre, like something out of a dream. “Why are you doing this?” she asked as calmly as possible, when what she really wanted to do was scream. “Was it Simmons?”

“It was Marly. Simmons has her,” Elliot said huskily, looking ill. “And…and Mason’s mother.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to think over the pounding in her head. She tried to stay calm, but panic was sinking too deeply into her system, Jeremy’s warm blood seeping through the thin cotton, wetting her fingers. “God, Elliot. If that’s true, Jeremy could have helped us!”

“No!” he shouted. “You don’t understand. She said they’re going to kill them both if we don’t go to him. Now.”

“Like hell,” she cried, lunging for the blood-covered phone that he’d tossed on the bed. Before she could touch it, Elliot had her trapped against him, her back to his front, one lean but impossibly strong arm locked around her waist.

“Please,” he rasped against her ear. “Don’t make me hurt you, Torrance. I swear I’m telling you the truth.”

She wanted to struggle but took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to reason with him. “Are you sure it was Marly? Maybe he was just trying to trick you, Elliot.”

“I’m sure. And he said to tell you that he has the bitch’s necklace and her…her pictures of her boys. What’s he talking about?”

“This can’t be happening,” she groaned, her head falling forward as the enormity of the situation pressed in on her, like a crushing pain in her chest, making it difficult to breathe. “He’s talking about Olivia Dillinger’s locket. She has Mason’s picture in it, along with his brother’s. We need to wait for them to get back, Elliot. We can’t do this alone.”

“No,” he argued. “We’ve got to go now. I c-can’t leave her up there with him.”

“Elliot,” she said numbly, reluctantly accepting what she had to do. He was too terrified for Marly’s safety to listen to reason, and she couldn’t leave Olivia on her own with that monster. But, God, Mason was going to kill her when he got his hands on her. Furious wasn’t even going to begin to cover how he’d react when he learned that she’d allowed herself to end up in Simmons’s clutches, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice. She only hoped he got back in time to help Jeremy. She didn’t think the wound would be serious for a Lycan, but she still hated to leave him alone.