Red

  “You probably even know which mushrooms are safe to eat, don’t you?”

  “No. Dad wasn’t into mushrooms, so that wasn’t on his list of Must Teach. Speaking of dads, yours should be back from Knoxville. What exactly did you tell him? Please say you at least left a note before you came after me.”

  “Of course I left a note.”

  “Which said . . . ?” she prompted.

  “That I needed space, and I’d be back in a few days.”

  One dark brow winged up.

  “What?”

  “And you habitually just disappear like that for days at a time without him calling out a search party?”

  I shrugged. “Not usually for days. But we’re at a point where we’re having dominance issues being under the same roof. He’ll get it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I really hated the skeptical way she said that.

  “And where did you leave your Jeep?”

  I thought about it. “It’s still at the lab.”

  “You think your dad isn’t gonna know something’s weird since you didn’t take your Jeep? And didn’t apparently leave from home?”

  “Not if he assumes I left on four feet.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’ll cover my ass for as long as it’ll take us to get back.”

  “Get back?” She stopped stirring whatever was in the pot.

  “Of course. You know the truth. There’s no reason for you to stay out here and keep running.”

  “No reason— Sawyer, did you forget the fact that someone is trying to kill me?”

  “Of course not. But it seems to me that it would be a good idea to bring in somebody else to help. There’s no reason for you to face this alone anymore.”

  I wasn’t what you’d call thrilled with bringing in my dad. We still had a ton of unresolved issues between us. But I wasn’t about to let my pride or ego or whatever the hell get in the way of doing whatever I could to keep Elodie safe. If that meant tucking my tail and seeking out his guidance, I’d choke it down.

  “And who would we bring in? The sheriff? Some other authorities? What would we tell them? That there’s a lunatic out there who is the latest in a long line of lunatics who are determined to exterminate my family line? Because that’s what this is, Sawyer. This goes back eighteen generations. We may have had the details about what we are completely wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that someone’s been trying to wipe us out for the last three hundred years.”

  “How can you trust anything you think you know about this?” It was so . . . ludicrous. And yet I couldn’t deny that someone had absolutely tried to run her down.

  “Because unlike the specifics of turning into a werewolf, death records can be verified. Most of my ancestors were slaughtered by now, at least the ones who didn’t die in childbirth or by suicide. And I can only assume that I’m still here because my dad ran and changed our names and did every possible thing to keep us from being found.”

  “Except that apparently it didn’t work. Look, I understand you not wanting to go to the authorities, but my dad could help. He has contacts—”

  Elodie was already shaking her head. “No. I’m not bringing anybody else in on this. I’m not risking anybody else. I don’t want to risk you, but I know precisely where you’d suggest I shove it if I tried to send you home, so I’m not wasting my breath.”

  “At least we’re on the same page about something.” I paced out into the hollow. This was so stupid and reckless. How could she not see how reckless it was? How could she not care?

  I paced back. “What exactly is your plan then?” I knew I was echoing her father, and I could tell by the mutinous look on her face she didn’t appreciate it. But it was a valid question.

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly, adding some more liquid to the pot—was that chicken stock?—and giving it another stir. “I admit I hadn’t thought further than leading him away from Dad. From you. Rich was bait, Sawyer. I know it in my gut. I have no idea why the hunter would choose him. But that whole scene was a trap meant for me. By extension it could have revealed you.”

  The muscles across my shoulders tightened with the memory of fighting the wolf for control and nearly losing.

  “How do you know it was meant for you? You’ve said yourself Rich wasn’t someone important to you.”

  “Maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe he was convenient. Or maybe the hunter saw Rich hitting on me and mistook that for us being involved. I don’t know. But you said it yourself. It was on the freaking anniversary of Mom’s disappearance. That’s a pretty fucking big coincidence.”

  “Then how would the hunter—” I felt ridiculous calling him that, but I didn’t have a better term, “—know that you’d be the one to stumble upon it?”

  “Presumably because he knows I’m into search and rescue.”

  “And how would he know that? Unless—”

  “Unless he’s been tracking me for a long time.”

  The thought of someone researching her, learning her interests, her habits, all the things you should know about your prey, made my blood boil.

  “Dad picked a small town because strangers would stand out. We’d hear about anybody who was around for longer than a few days. Anybody who didn’t act like a tourist to the park. I think whoever this is has been around longer than that.”

  “You think it’s someone you know?”

  Elodie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” She swapped out the coffee pot for a skillet. “All I know is that by leaving I draw him out.”

  “Not if he doesn’t know you left. Or thinks you left town.”

  “I’d planned to lay a trail. Deliberately draw him in once I have it sorted out how I wanted to handle things. That way I become the bait, and maybe I get a chance to stop him.”

  “Stop him how?” I knew the answer, but I needed to hear her say it.

  She raised her eyes to mine, her face grim. “There’s only one end to this. Either I die and my line ends with me or he does.”

  “And you’re prepared to kill someone other than yourself?” I knew the answer to that too, and I felt like an asshole for pushing her. But maybe it would cause her to see some sense, to agree to go back.

  Her movements were lupine when she rose from her crouch and paced the same circuit I had minutes before. I wasn’t surprised to see her eyes flash gold when she turned back to me. “No. Of course I’m not. How can I be?” she demanded. “How can I possibly take another life and not become the very thing I fear most? How does that make me anything other than the monster he hunts?”

  I could explain to her how it worked. How, as a wolf, you still mostly retain your human reason, human faculties. How, with training, she’d be able to control it. But she wouldn’t believe me. Not yet. Not until she shifted and felt it herself. I caught her as she stalked within arm’s length, tugging her close and wrapping my arms around her because I needed the contact and she needed the comfort. “You aren’t a monster. And defending yourself doesn’t make you one.”

  Her wolf faded as she looked up at me, replaced by a look of miserable skepticism. She may have believed everything I told her last night, but after how she’d been raised, she had a long way to go before she actually accepted the truth of it. If I had anything to do with it, she’d never be put in a position of having to make that life or death choice that I wasn’t entirely sure she could live with.

  “What if there were another way?” I said, my brain taking the seed of an idea and turning it over, enlarging it.

  “What other way?”

  “Well, you think that the person who’s after you is the same person who kidnapped Rich and his sister, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kidnapping is a major crime. If we could find evidence to link him to that, figure out who he is, we could let the actual cops take over. He’d be prosecuted, convicted, and put away. Then he couldn’t touch you.”

  It was skepticism rather than hope I saw kindled in her eyes.

  ?
??And what kind of proof could we find that they couldn’t?”

  “The cabin. Rich said they were held at a cabin. The cops never found it.”

  I could see the wheels of her brain starting to turn.

  “If we could find it, there’s bound to be at least trace scent left that would help us identify who it is.” She curled her hands in my shirt, and began speaking faster. “And maybe there could even be some kind of actual physical evidence. It would give the cops more leads, a means to focus their investigation. We might even be able to give them a name.” She threw her arms around me. “Sawyer, you’re a genius!” She gave me a hard and fast kiss then raced back into the cave, probably after maps.

  I wasn’t so sure about genius, but it gave her hope, and that was a valuable commodity just now. And at least it gave us something to do other than just running. Something resembling a plan. I knew she’d feel better with one. I wished I did.

  ~*~

  Elodie

  “Rich and Molly disappeared here.” I made a tiny X with my pen on the topographical map I’d spread across the top of our makeshift table. “We found Rich here.” I leaned over and made another X. “Neither of which is wholly useful for locating this cabin because a vehicle was involved in both cases. We need to know where Molly was found. That cave was in walking distance of wherever they were kept. Neither of them could have gotten too terribly far in the condition they were in.”

  Sawyer leaned in beside me. “Rich said it was a cabin by the river. Which river?” He reached out and traced his fingers over the myriad of tributaries that snaked through the park.

  I crossed my arms. “Rich isn’t the kind of guy who would differentiate between a river and a stream and a piddly little creek even under the best of circumstances. The police combed the banks of the actual river and found nothing, so I’m betting it’s along something smaller. They might not have actually seen it, just heard the running water.”

  “Which narrows things down to . . . oh, thirty or forty square miles or so?”

  I bumped him with my shoulder. “Hey, power of positive thinking. If we can narrow down where Molly was found, it would help a lot. You were there when the call came in. Do you remember anything of the call?”

  “Mostly just ‘We found her.’ I was pretty focused on getting loose to come find you.”

  “Think,” I prompted. “They would’ve been giving coordinates, saying something about landmarks, trailheads, anything. Eileen would’ve had to update the logs.”

  He frowned, thinking. “I want to say I remember something about Endicott. But that was probably one of the searcher’s names.”

  I leaned back over, studying the map. “Could it have been Kennicott?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Kennicott Ridge is within spitting distance of the Tennessee-North Carolina border.”

  “How far is that?” he asked.

  “Maybe thirty miles by car. On foot, as the crow flies? Just under fifteen. Still within our county. I think.”

  “You know, the fact that you say that as if it’s a city block really scares me.”

  “Wuss,” I teased. “It gets to be pretty rough country. It’d be a day of hard hiking to get there. Two if we took our time. We’ve got ample supplies. If we leave within the hour, we could get to the halfway point here,” I tapped the map, “in plenty of time to relax and set up camp before sunrise.”

  “You want to travel by night?”

  “Why not? We avoid running into any other hikers, and let’s face it. We’re awake. What else are we doing to do all night?”

  His face shifted and I quickly laid a finger over his lips.

  “Don’t answer that.”

  He chuckled and leaned back over to peer at the map. “Bristol Falls?” he asked.

  “Nature’s shower.”

  “Hey, what’re you trying to say?”

  “That I’d love to get clean and it’s a beautiful place to do so.”

  Sawyer linked his hands behind my back, eyes going gold. “So tell me, Miss Prepared, did you pack a bikini in all of your get away gear?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Of course I had. But it was fun to tease him, to see that wolfish grin curve his lips and feel the accompanying heat thrown off by his body as he tugged me closer with a playful growl.

  He nipped at my throat and made my knees go weak. Before my resolve could follow, I pulled away, though my hand lingered in the soft waves of his hair. “Time to pack.”

  “Slave driver. Just for that, we’ll do more reflex training on the way, as payback.”

  “Great. So you can whap me in the head with more aluminum plates?” The surprise lesson at the river during dish duty had not gone well.

  “You’re suppressing your wolf, so you’re not getting access to all of your senses. You’ve got to stop being afraid of it.”

  I began sorting supplies for a multi-day hike. That was easy for him to say. For him this was totally normal, not a sign he was becoming the devil incarnate. For me . . . Well it was one thing to accept that I didn’t have to kill myself. I hadn’t wanted to do that in the first place. But moving past years of false belief, years of fear was something else entirely.

  Sawyer moved behind me, running his hands down my arms to capture my hands and wrapping himself around me in a move that left me goosebumply and aching for him.

  “You stopped being afraid of me,” he said softly.

  “I was never afraid of you specifically. I’m terrified of how you make me feel.”

  “And how is that?” he asked.

  “Electrified,” I said breathlessly. “And wolfish. When I’m with you I want—” Needs and desires tangled my tongue, and my skin, where he touched it, was on fire.

  “What do you want?” he asked, lips against my throat.

  “You,” I whispered, closing my eyes to ride the sensation. “Just you.”

  He was my ultimate forbidden fruit. And if what he’d told me was true, he wasn’t forbidden anymore. If he’d turned me then, if he’d kissed me, I think I’d have been lost. Thankfully at least one of us had some self-restraint.

  With no small amount of effort, he set me away from him. I didn’t turn to look at him. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. “We have to go.”

  It was obvious enough that if we didn’t, what control he had left was going to slip as well. I swallowed hard, though it did nothing to wet my parched throat. “Maybe you could go pack up the camp stove.” Which was outside.

  Sawyer walked out without another word. Which was totally fine. Because if he’d spoken again, the sound of his voice might have overcome the reservations that were hanging on by mere fingernails, and this was so not the time for that. I knew he wasn’t angry. I could smell that much. We both just needed a little time to find our equilibrium again.

  Right. Equilibrium. That was it.

  I was starting to understand exactly how my ancestors had gotten into trouble. If they’d felt a fraction of this kind of desire, this need, it was easy to see how sense had been over ridden. Because in the moment, nothing else mattered but the heat.

  Hoo boy.

  Packing didn’t take long. Both of us were motivated to get going and work off this frustration. Or maybe just to get to the falls and get under that icy water. Nature’s cold shower.

  We hit the trail with the white elephant of our attraction stomping between us. I threw myself into the hike, setting a pace that most people would have difficulty matching. Sawyer, of course, was right behind. We marched up hill, over dale, until my legs screamed for relief and my shoulders started to cramp. Then it wasn’t just my shoulders, but my back and my legs, until I fell to my knees in a full body Charlie horse.

  “Elodie.” Sawyer was there, pulling off my pack. “Breathe,” he ordered.

  But I couldn’t breathe. I curled my body, trying to stop the siege on my muscles, but it fought against me, arching back so hard, I cried out.

  “You gotta breathe.” His hand grabbed mine,
and I clamped on, as another spasm hit.

  I rolled my head and saw the muscle in my shoulder swell and writhe like a snake beneath my skin. A keening noise built in my throat. It spilled out on the next wave as my legs jack-knifed and slammed into the ground. I curled, rolled to my hands and knees, retching, though nothing came up. It felt like my vocal chords were stretching, straining, breaking.

  Then it was over as suddenly as it had begun. I lay panting, on the ground, my hand still clamped around Sawyer’s. My cheek was pressed against his thigh, and he stroked my hair back from my face.

  “What the fuck was that?” I wheezed.

  “Body cramp. I didn’t think you’d be getting those yet. They’ll start coming more often the closer you get to shifting. It’ll get worse before it gets better, I’m afraid.”

  “Greeeeeeeat.” I lay there until my harsh breathing evened out. “Is shifting always like that?”

  “No. Eventually it gets easy. More like a full body stretch than . . . ” He seemed to search for a word..

  “Labor,” I supplied.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s like labor. Giving birth from one form to another.”

  Even from upside down in the moonlight, I could see the vaguely queasy expression on his face at that comparison. Typical guy.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Obviously he wasn’t gonna touch that one with a ten foot pole.

  I took inventory. My muscles seemed to be more or less back to the size and shape they were supposed to be. I guessed I was done with the freak routine for a while. But everything ached. “I hurt. There’s ibuprofen in my pack.”

  “Of course there is. Where?”

  “Top left side pouch.”

  He leaned over and rummaged around, grabbing the painkillers. He helped me to sit up and handed me three pills and a canteen. “Prescription dose. You’re gonna need it.”

  I knocked them back, then just sat. “Shit, that takes a lot out of you.”

  Behind me Sawyer put his hands on my shoulders, big, strong fingers digging into knots of muscle. I let out an incoherent groan. I kept waiting for the heat, for a different kind of knots, but this wasn’t sexy, just straight up therapeutic. And that was . . . a relief. Like I was finally free of the chokehold of desire. For now.