“I understand you, I really do. But I can’t. I can’t leave my grandfather alone,” she said. It had been the excuse she had given Magus and she was sticking to it. Besides, despite everything, she couldn’t leave him alone. If he knew that werewolves existed, odds were good he would wind up on a werewolf hit list to keep him from revealing the truth. She couldn’t let that happen.
She did understand Daniel’s point of view, too. What the Fenners and the Gaudins were doing was dangerous, destructive, wasteful. They risked all their lives because they couldn’t end their longstanding hatred and mistrust of each other. It was childish and unfair of them. Lee and Dom. They should have been able to put aside their own feelings and make peace for the good of their packs. That’s what alphas did, took care of their own.
So it fell to her and Cordelia to straighten out their mess. But the Hounds of God were impatient. “We don’t bring outsiders into our pack,” Daniel said gravely. “But we’d be willing to make an exception, just this once.”
“Exception,” she said carefully.
“You’re special, Katelyn McBride. Worth the risk.”
She was so tired of being that kind of special. But neither was she stupid enough to burn her bridges. Options were the only things she couldn’t afford to run out of.
“I have to talk with my grandfather first. He doesn’t know what I am, about any of this,” she lied.
Whatever happened, she needed Daniel and the other werewolves to keep on believing that Mordecai McBride was in the dark when it came to their kind.
He nodded, agreeing far more easily than she had expected. He reached inside his robe and pulled out a card, which he handed to her. There was a phone number printed on it and nothing else.
“Call when you’ve decided. We’ll be able to pick you up within an hour.”
A chill rippled up her arm as his fingers brushed hers. An hour meant they were definitely sticking around, probably gearing up to take the others out.
“Okay.”
He locked his gaze on her; something about his eyes pushed down hard on her diaphragm. She couldn’t take a breath.
“If you are coming to us, call quickly. You have three nights. Then it’ll be too late.”
9
ALL KATELYN COULD
do was nod in mute shock as Daniel disappeared into the forest. Three nights. Why such a short time? It was impossible.
Maybe they want it to be impossible. They need to justify exterminating two packs to someone else, but they had to give us a chance.
She stared down the Fenners’ drive. She was almost certain no one was at home.
Maybe they had caught wind of the hunters and gone into hiding. Justin had sent Lucy and Jesse away to some cabin. She had no idea where it was — possibly out in the wilderness like the warming hut Dom and his brother had collected Cordelia from.
In any case, it was useless to look for them. She decided to switch her priorities to the mine.
And to do that, she needed to find a painting supposedly showing its location that had been stolen from their house. And since it hadn’t been found in the bog with her grandmother’s silver — the other goods stolen in the burglary — that left the one other place someone had taken the silver. Where she had found one of the missing knives.
She was going to have to break into the Inner Wolf Center again.
Katelyn put the car in reverse and headed out. Trees and darkness; the woods had frightened her when she’d first moved here; now they terrified and enthralled her. But they stayed dark: her werewolf senses had not kicked in in a long time, and she wondered if Daniel Latgale would still think she was an alpha if he knew that.
A little over an hour later, Katelyn rolled up to the chain-link fence where she and Trick had parked on their first trip to investigate the center. It was eerily quiet.
There were two sections: one, a modern, new area, which fronted the ruins of the second, the old spa buildings. Rather than bother with tearing the ramshackle structures down, they had simply been declared off-limits. That was how she and Trick had snuck in before — a trip cut short by the arrival of a ferocious German shepherd guard dog.
The fences were crusted with snow, which hadn’t started to melt in this part of Wolf Springs. She wondered if the attendees at the retreat were resting up in their rooms for a big night of howling.
She got out of her car and gingerly picked up her backpack. The bullets clinked against the gun.
She shut the car door quietly. She had to do this as quickly as possible. It wasn’t good to be out like this. And she didn’t want her grandfather to return to an empty cabin. Given how long the last hunting party had taken she probably didn’t have to worry about that. But there was plenty more to worry about.
Briskly, she moved over to the fence. She scanned the ground to see if there were other pieces of silver. There were none. Next she inspected the fence. There was the hole Trick had cut, but the fabric from his shirt was gone.
She didn’t step through the opening, because no way was she going back into that decrepit, terrifying ruin. If nothing else, she wanted to steer as clear as possible from the German shepherd if it was on patrol.
She returned to the patch of ground where she had originally found the knife. Her grandfather had said that only half the silver service had been recovered, so that left a lot of pieces to be found.
All she saw in the snow were scattered leaves and stones, and the shattered fragments of an amber-colored beer bottle.
Then something glistened, and she honed in on it as if it were prey: another piece of silver.
She picked it up. It was a large spoon, nearly black, with the same pattern peeking from the brown filmy residue. She put it in her jacket pocket. Walking slowly, she stayed parallel to the fence, glancing up as another ramshackle structure came into view. It wasn’t as tall as the other one, but it was topped by a tower, and in it, something seemed to be sitting hunched over. Slumped over.
A body
, she thought fearfully, taking a step backwards. But she didn’t know if that was what it was. And why would anyone stuff a body into a tower?
Why does anyone do anything in Wolf Springs?
She moved to the right, trying to make out the shape as the sunshine fell on it. And her foot came down on another piece of silver. It looked like some kind of skewer.
It looked like it could do some damage.
She picked it up but didn’t pocket it. Instead she held it like a weapon or a magic wand. If only she could wave it, and make all this go away.
She climbed up a rise, keeping the fence in view, skirting around a tree. Nervously, she glanced up, recalling the story of Hangman Jack that she had read in a book of Ozark legends: the thief who hid in the trees and dropped nooses to hang unsuspecting passersby.
Another piece of flatware. A fork this time. It was the filthiest piece yet. Grimacing, she put it with the others, and considered starting a collection in her backpack.
Then she looked up to check on the shape in the tower again. What had seemed like a body was an old bell. Her gaze moved and she saw a break in the hillside, a black circle; as she approached, she realized it was a tunnel.
She crept up to the entrance and peered in. It was too dark. She had brought a flashlight, and she clicked it on.
The floor was littered with debris except for a narrow strip of cement floor that had been swept clean. Lying on the concrete was what appeared to be a piece of maroon velvet. A bag that had come with the silver service? She approached cautiously, not really wanting to touch it, so she poked at it with her silver skewer. Gathering up one corner, she lifted up the fabric and flopped it over. There was gold writing on the other side. She cupped her flashlight again, and squinted at it. There was a B and then some missing letters, then a
ville
, and
Jewelers. Pine Bluff, Arkansas
.
She scooped it up with her skewer.
Then she heard the drumming. Loud, and fierce; and then howls, barreling through the tunnel, bouncing off the walls. The Inner Wolf guys howled and howled, as if they were in some kind of competition. Didn’t they care that one of them had died? People kept dying in Wolf Springs. Wolf Springs had to be the mouth of hell.
Water trickled, echoing off the hard surfaces. She heard the squeak of a rat and her mouth filled with saliva, in anticipation of the hunt. The anticipation instantly morphed into disgust.
Then her werewolf senses kicked in. She could smell the rat. Hear it skittering away. And she could see perfectly, without the flashlight, so she clicked it off. And she could hear, beneath the howling and the drumming, more rats, and scraping insects.
Then the tunnel opened to a flight of concrete stairs. Katelyn peered upward. It was dark; but faint, ambient light was coming from someplace, enough to reassure her that the stairway was empty.
Clutching her backpack tightly to her chest to keep the silver from clanking, she started up, searching for more of her grandfather’s stolen property.
At the first landing she hit pay dirt: another spoon.
She climbed three more flights and saw nothing more. Then at the top of the stairway, she opened a door and stepped out into the empty lobby of a modern building of tinted glass panels, each etched with a wolf paw. The place appeared to be deserted, but she stood quietly just in case. The drumming was deafening; the howls seemed desperate.
As soundlessly as she could, she glided down the hall. To her left was a rustically decorated reception area — rough-hewn furniture and couches upholstered in gray with more wolf paw prints, and the words
INNER WOLF CENTER
in letters made of timber behind a long varnished wood desk, on which stood a trio of computer stations.
So she was in the belly of the beast, the place she and Trick had hoped to investigate together. Pulling out her phone, she snapped some pictures. She wasn’t sure why. It was probably a stupid thing to do, proof that she had been trespassing, but who knew what might be important to remember later on?
Across the hall, there was a carved door of an enormous wolf’s head with the words
Jack Bronson
emblazoned above it. The head was perfectly rendered, and she quivered a little as its eyes gazed at her, so lifelike.
I shouldn’t be doing this
, she thought as she experimentally tried the knob.
A man like this wouldn’t break into our house and steal our painting. But maybe someone on his staff would.
Then again, if he is family, maybe he thought it was his.
That’s . . . crazy. But maybe so is he.
The knob turned.
“Huh,” she muttered.
Cautious, she cracked open the door and waited. No burglar alarm? No security guard? You could just walk right into the CEO’s office?
Guess so.
She pushed the door open wider, and crept into the room.
Her enhanced vision was still in force, and she could see through the darkness that the space she entered was very minimal, holding only a large wooden desk and an austere-looking chair. An enormous oil painting of a wolf, head back howling, hung on the wall. She resisted the urge to look more closely at it.
Go back
, she told herself, but then . . .
. . . then she smelled silver.
Not too far from where she stood, there were two closed doors. She chose the nearer one and crept into a conference area dominated by a large rectangular table.
And on that table:
Oh, my God.
There, sitting right out in the open, were half a dozen pieces of her grandmother’s silver.
And the painting of the heart-shaped rock.
Why did it seem too easy?
When she heard a step behind her and swiveled around, she realized it was a trap.
Standing there, staring at her, an amused expression on his face, was the Inner Wolfman himself. Jack Bronson. Silver hair, trim silver beard, fine wool trousers, a white shirt and a sports coat. In his own element, he seemed even more intimidating than he had when she’d met him one day in town when he’d sent two drunk businessmen packing.
Sweat broke out on her forehead.
Wait. I have a gun
, she thought. She glanced down at her backpack.
I’m not going to shoot this man. Why would I even think that?
“Can I help you?” he asked, amusement in his voice.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Bronson. I-I-I’m Katelyn and I’m doing a school paper and it’s supposed to be a biography and I came here wanting to ask if I could interview you since you’re famous and all.”
She was shocked at how easily the lie rolled off her tongue.
And she was more humiliated than frightened when he laughed.
“On a dare,” she added.
“Cut the crap, Katelyn. I think we both know why you’re here.”
She was stunned and had no idea what to say to him in response.
“Why don’t you just admit that you’re here looking for something?” he asked conversationally.
She struggled not to let her eyes fall on the things on the conference table. She’d gotten to go to court a few times with her father, sitting in the first row of spectators and watching him pull information out of criminals with ease. Facing Bronson, she felt like he could easily do the same to her. If they were talking and he hadn’t already called the police or gotten out a rifle, then maybe he would just let her go.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, hoping that she sounded naïve and innocent, but willing to settle for stubborn.
“You took your time,” he said. “Wasn’t sure he would let you out from underneath his . . . thumb, shall we say, long enough for you to come looking.”
“Why did you steal our stuff?” she asked.
“Who says it belonged to you in the first place?”
“Because it does,” she said, irritation flooding her as she stared at his smug face. She understood intensely at that moment why her grandfather didn’t like him.
“Ah, I don’t suppose your grandfather has told you who I am.”