Savage (7 page)

He was standing right in front of her now, close enough that she could feel his breath, hear his heart. His eyes burned into her; she could taste bile spilling into her mouth.

“Girl, you tell me right now what happened.”

Strike first
, said a voice inside her head.

5

STRIKE FIRST.

Katelyn took a deep breath as some kind of switch turned on and adrenaline surged through her, pouring into her veins, feeding her aggression impulse. Ed practically tapped his booted toes on the cabin floor and waited for her to explain herself. Swimming in the river? It was snowing outside. Snowball fight. Snow wouldn’t make her this filthy.

He crossed his arms, the wintry sun catching the sheen of the blade and throwing the reflection around the room. The rows of animal heads on his walls seemed to blink at her. This man killed things.

So did she. So would she. She knew it.

“Tree,” she blurted out. “A tree fell and it was blocking me. And with the snow and all . . .”

“Did you even
try
to call me?” he asked her.

“No service.” There was an excellent chance that that was true. “And it didn’t look that big. But I slipped. In the snow.” She forced a goofy, abashed smile on her face. “It was just a-a sapling but the ground is all muddy and, um, here I am.”

He scowled at her. “You should have gone back to Paulette’s and called me. I have a chainsaw.”

“Maybe I could keep it in my car,” she said, and then she quaked, because saying that might remind him that she still had his gun that shot silver bullets. Justin had it now. Maybe if her grandfather asked to see it, she could say that it had been stolen.

His face worked as if he were about to say something, maybe about how ridiculous it was to continue to live in a cabin in the middle of a forest on a mountain where people were getting killed, and you had to think about packing a gun and a chainsaw just to get home and back. And that he had forced her to move there with him. She knew now that he had had his reasons. She just wasn’t sure what they were.

“So anyway, next time I’ll call,” she said, darting past him. Then she stopped. She had to know. “Is Trick okay?”

That made him smile. “Yeah, the boy’s okay. Got sprung from jail. No evidence to connect him to Mike Wright’s death. They’re saying animal attack.”

“Oh, Grandpa,” she said in a rush. “That’s good. That’s so good.”

They shared a moment. It felt as if Trick was practically in the room with them, and she looked down at her filthy fingernails. “Can I go take a shower?”

“Katie,” he said, and then he pursed his lips together as if to prevent his saying something and gave her a nod. “Did Paulette’s mama feed you at least?”

“Yes, Grandpa,” she lied. She didn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, and she was starving. But lying clearly was the better course of action. “Pancakes.”

“Sure. Go take a shower. A long one.” He cricked his head toward the stairs, and Katelyn escaped.

She checked her phone for texts and messages from Justin and Cordelia. Nothing.

She gave herself the gift — there was that word again — of a fleeting smile, took a long shower, and collapsed into bed.

Dreams came:

Katelyn
.

Click click click.

Don’t run from me.

In the room.

I marked you.

Hot breath on her cheek. In her ear.

Come with me.

Voices woke her. Moonlit snowflakes drifted down from her skylight and she got up. She peeled out of her pajamas and quickly dressed in jeans, a sports bra, and a plaid shirt, grabbing a pair of socks as she left her room and went to the top of the stairs.

She froze.

Men and women were milling about in the cabin’s front room. They were warmly dressed and heavily armed — shotguns slung over their shoulders, one man sighting down a handgun as he raised it toward the ceiling. Some of them were drinking coffee.

The front door opened, and Trick stood in the doorway in his sheepherder’s jacket and a pair of leather gloves. Snowflakes dusted the crown of his black cowboy hat and he kicked the snow off his boots before he crossed the threshold. He was holding a rifle at his side.

He looked up and saw her, and hurried across the room toward her. She flew down the stairs as he set down his rifle and threw his arms around her, planting a kiss on her lips. That kiss loosened something inside her that she’d been holding onto very tightly, and she fought hard to stay in control. She wanted to crawl inside a little place where it was just her and Trick and nothing else, not a thing, certainly none of this.

“Hey, girl,” he said softly, kissing her again. He pressed his cheek against the side of her head and she heard his thundering heartbeat. He smelled so good. He felt even better. She wanted to stay like this forever.

He whispered something against her hair, in Russian, and she looked up at him.

“What did you say?”

Her field of vision was nothing but his eyes. “I think you know,” he murmured. And then the light in his eyes faded. Something had replaced his joy in seeing her.

“What’s going on? What’s happened?” she asked, indicating the crowd in her grandfather’s living room.

“Oh, darlin’,” he said, and he wrapped his arms around her again. He cradled the back of her head and rubbed his cheek against her temple. She wanted to melt against him again but now she was too afraid.

“Someone’s died? Someone else has been killed?” she said.

“Yes.”

The news hit her like a punch to her stomach. More death. “Who?”

“I don’t know. Your pappy didn’t say. He called, I came.”

She shut her eyes tightly. “Mauled?” she ground out.

“Neck broke first, looks like. Before the . . . mauling. So maybe this time it really was just a wild animal.”

She looked at the milling crowd. Faces were vaguely familiar — she’d seen a lot of these people around town, but hadn’t actually met many of them.

“Folks in Wolf Springs are used to taking care of things themselves,” Trick said, following her gaze. “It’s not like our police department can do much. We only have two officers.”

“But it’s dark out. It’s dangerous. Guns, a big group—”

“Exactly why I am going,” he said in a soft voice. At her look, he added, “Don’t want Doc out there without me.”

She was touched beyond words. Her grandfather was Trick’s godfather, and Trick called him “Doc” because Mordecai McBride had a PhD in philosophy. He had taught at the University of Arkansas for many years.

“You don’t tell him I said that, hear? Man’s got his pride,” Trick said.

“He told me you’ve been cleared of suspicion in Mike’s murder.” She made a little face in case it wasn’t cool with him to talk about it.

His face hardened. “Official word is lack of evidence. Unofficially? I think my parents made a donation to the police officers’ benevolent fund.”

“Oh, my God, a
bribe
?” she blurted.

He rolled his eyes. “And you thought graft and corruption were just big-city values.”

“But I met Sergeant Lewis. He helped find our silver. He wouldn’t take a bribe.”

He gave his head a little shake. “Your daddy was a district attorney, yes? I’ll bet he knew some real nice police officers who took freebies now and then. First you give Officer Friendly a cup of coffee here, a donut there, tickets to a Lakers game. Then she fixes your parking ticket. Next she withholds evidence so your kid stays out of jail.” He blanched. “I didn’t mean it that way. No evidence is being withheld on my account.”

She flashed back to the first time she’d met him, when he had made a big deal out of having to be formally invited into the cabin before he entered. He’d said it was “a court thing.” He’d been falsely accused of breaking into people’s houses.

Just like he’d been falsely accused of murder?

And someone broke into our cabin.

She couldn’t even believe she was thinking like that. Was she so twisted that she could even
suspect
Trick of doing anything wrong?

“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he said. “All of it. We’re going to figure it out.”

“No. Just stop it,” she said.

“You’re shaking like a leaf.” He put his hands on either side of her face. “I’m going to make these woods safe for you, Katelyn. Or . . . I’m going to take you out of them.”

You can’t
, she thought, but a dozen images of life with Trick unfolded like flowers: getting away from here; being together for the rest of their lives, with him knowing what had happened to her, and dealing with it.

“Trick,” she whispered, but she didn’t know what to say next. She had almost bitten him out of sheer selfish desire to have him. She couldn’t have him. Period.

“I’ll watch out for him,” he promised, misreading her tone. “I know he’s all the family you’ve got left.”

You. I want
you
to be my family
. But she held her tongue and inclined her head as if in thanks.

“Trick,” her grandfather called. “Time.” Then the older man looked at Katelyn. “You stay home. With your gun.”

If he asked to see the gun, she was sunk. She was too off-balance to lie convincingly. Holding her breath, she nodded and said, “Okay, Ed. Grandpa. But please, please tell me. Who was it?”

He came over to her as the front door opened and the crowd filed out. Truck engines began to roar.

“Was it Mr. Henderson?” she asked, so afraid of the answer. She had liked their history teacher — missing now for some weeks — started to connect with him. He was a person to her.

“Another Inner Wolf attendee,” Mordecai said. He smiled grimly. “This gets out, maybe that place will finally shut down.”

She blinked. Given the immediate circumstance, that was a pretty cold-blooded way to think.

“Where’s your weapon?” her grandfather continued. “You leave it in your car? I can fetch it for you.”

“It’s in my room,” she said quickly.

“Let me check it out, make sure it’s working.” He looked so worried.

“We gotta go, Doc. She knows how to check her weapon,” Trick said. He looked at Katelyn. “You’ll get it out and stay put, right?”

She blinked. Was he covering for her? Uneasily, she nodded.

“There, you see?” Trick said. He turned to Katelyn. “Anybody knocks and tells you they’re selling Girl Scout cookies, you blow ’em away.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “I will.”

Trick and her grandfather joined the parade to the vehicles parked up and down their little country road. Trick climbed into the passenger’s side of her grandfather’s truck, unrolled the window, and gave Katelyn a wave as she watched from the window. She wasn’t allowed to go outside after dark, not even on the porch. When she had first arrived in Wolf Springs, she had chafed at the edict. She’d thought her grandfather was super-overprotective.

Then I hated him for making me come somewhere that was so dangerous. But . . . am I safer here than I would have been in Los Angeles?

She texted Justin:

HUNTING PARTY 2NITE. SOMEONE ELSE KILLED.

She hesitated. She was assuming Justin was alive, that he had made it back safe. She didn’t know the current status of the pack, let alone her own. But in the event that they were out in the woods, they had to know, to be warned. She hit send and waited.

She would have preferred never to speak to any of the Fenners again, but she was still connected to the pack. What happened to them happened to her. Justin didn’t answer. She almost phoned him but she didn’t know where he was, and if he was with Lucy, that might be enough for his almost-fiancée to renew her challenge to a fight to the death. Katelyn was probably alive now only because news of Cordelia’s marriage to Dom Gaudin had interrupted their fight.

She texted Cordelia the same message. As with Justin, there was no answer. Katelyn pictured the raging forest fire and the Hellhound and worried. She would have thought both of them would be on tenterhooks waiting for word from her, and made plans to communicate back.

Sliding her phone into her pocket, she put on her shoes and socks, grabbed a flashlight and crept outside toward the garage. Her objective was to find another gun that shot silver bullets so she’d have one to show her grandfather next time. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t look too closely at it.

She didn’t bother with a jacket despite the light snowfall that piled drifts around the door to the garage. Werewolves weren’t as sensitive to the cold as humans.

Looking left and right, she confirmed that she was alone and darted into the garage. She flicked on the flashlight and played the beam over the towers of dusty packing cartons as she headed for the section where she had found the ammo box filled with silver bullets and the incriminating newspaper clipping that had revealed the story of her father’s wolf bite. And her mother’s handwritten note:
I told you so
.

Detective Cranston had found a silver bullet in the wreckage of their house.

Her grandfather had come to Los Angeles for her father’s funeral, so maybe he had brought some silver bullets with him.