48. Coyote
FORTY-EIGHT
COYOTE
Dingo put me in a cab and sent me on my way, but he’d never know that instead of going home like he’d intended, I had the cabbie let me out at the edge of the Guild.
I would find her if it killed me. I needed to bring her home before Jackal started breaking things. Dingo was already obsessively cleaning things to keep from worrying. Jackal had bitten his own fucking lip so many times this week that it was a miracle his mouth was still intact.
I was giving myself scars to keep me awake, convinced if I closed my eyes for even a second, that she’d disappear for good, and we’d never find her. I was sick with the need for her to be back beside me, even if it meant I had to chain her up and keep her hooked to the couch.
Even if it meant turning her into my dog.
When I finally found her—and I would—I wasn’t letting her go for a very long time.
Possibly never.
I spotted my bike at a convenience store and ducked around the corner, knowing damn well ten minutes ago Dingo was across town. Which meant he’d been led here by a called-in sighting.
Ivy had to be close.
She had to be.
Dingo emerged from the building without a thing in his hands, confirming my suspicion that he was there looking for her. Without a word, he followed a cashier around the side of the building, into the alley beyond, and didn’t emerge for a few minutes.
Every second counted, but I stayed out of sight, knowing he’d stop me if I tried to help. I couldn’t afford to stop, not now.
Not until I knew she was safe.
When Dingo hopped on my dirtbike and sped out of the parking lot, I took the chance, rushing into the convenience store to find the clerk he’d just spoken with.
Dude was immediately on edge when I started asking him the same things as Dingo just had.
“If yer working together, then how come he didn’t tell you what was what?”
I growled as he squinted at me, a teenager who had no business working this close to the edge of the dangerous South End. “Port Wylde’s police department doesn’t pay you to play cops and robbers, little man. Tell me what I want to know.”
He acted tough until I grabbed him by the collar and backed him against the wall. All of a sudden, he was full of information, even things he’d conveniently forgotten to tell Dingo.
“She came i-in the front and bought a-a-a soda and a snack cake. Paid with c-cash, man. She was on foot. W-w-went around the back and then came back in and asked for some paper towels. Her hands were red; I-I just thought she’d spilled some transmission fluid or something.”
“When did you find the body?”
He was white as a ghost, so I set his feet back on the floor as he shook and sputtered, trying to get his answers out so I’d leave. “I didn’t. When she came back in, she wrote something on a piece of paper and passed it to me. A big red smiley face was sprayed on the back wall in red paint when I took out the trash. I called the number on the back of the receipt and told them what I saw.” He frowned, brushing off his pants as I released him. “That’s when your buddy showed up and started asking questions.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, marching around to the side of the building where Dingo had just been.
Sprayed on the wall in dripping, still-wet paint, was the Neon Dogs logo, if we were to have one: a sadistic smiling face, done up in bright red, a phone number listed next to it that I realized was hers.
So I called it.
“Not all who wander are lost.” A pause, then she cleared her throat. “But there are always those who seek what doesn’t want to be found. I hope you won’t waste your time looking for me.”
“I’ll decide what’s a waste and what’s not,” I growled to the emptiness around me, looking for any sign that told me where she’d gone. Anything that could hint at her direction, her whereabouts, anything.
The red paint dripped around to the front of the building, but she hadn’t noticed the faint footprints she left as she walked away, pointing me toward her.
I was so close I could practically smell her.
Taste her lips on mine. Smell her shampoo, feel the soft skin of her neck as I leaned down next to her and nuzzled her like an animal.
I was hallucinating now, and it would likely get worse if I didn’t rest. But I was so close; quitting now was out of the question.
I followed those footprints to the nearby abandoned park, aware the light was fading quickly and this innocent-looking place would become very dangerous very fast. Someone who grew up on the rich end of town didn’t stand a chance in this area after dark, no matter how many men she’d killed.
The need to find her grew inside me, along with a new worry that she’d die before I could tell her how I felt.
I didn’t know love. Hadn’t since I was a small child. And I wasn’t sure I could even give it, considering I didn’t understand it. But I needed her like I needed sleep, like I needed air to breathe, water to quench my thirst, food to calm my empty stomach. She was my survival, and though I couldn’t give her a normal life, I could give her mine.
Now. Forever. Until death came to claim us both.
Where are you, Ivy?
She was a smart girl; she’d likely have someplace easily defendable to hole up. Some place that was not immediately obvious to the naked eye. My eyes scanned the darkening ground and found a few little indentations in the dirt. With a prayer to my dead parents, I pleaded with them to give me a shot of good luck, and make those her tracks.
I followed them until the trees created a midnight-dark environment, and then I fell to my knees and started feeling around for them, hoping to find them with my fingertips, searching for any unnatural-shaped indent in the soft dirt?—
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Two hands gripped my shoulders, a rough, raspy voice in my ear sending a shiver down my spine. I spun to find a man staring at me, his features barely discernible in the faint moonlight.
He was missing an eye, a patch breaking up a thick scar that ran top to bottom of his face. A shock of brown hair stuck out from under a beanie, and he wore a mismatch of clothes that had clearly seen better days, most of it too big for his lean frame.
“You’re not from around here,” the Southie muttered, his one good eye wildly roving over me, assessing me as a foe. “What you want in this part of town?”
“None of your business,” I growled, hunched over like a half-man, half-animal. “Get out of my way.”
“Make me.”
Just as I prepared to fight this wild, unhinged, possibly mentally insane man in the woods, a bat swung from out of the darkness behind him and connected with the side of his head.
He dropped like a pile of bricks, and I watched in awe as Ivy stepped over his limp body, her eyes on me?—
Looking as if she’d seen death and dared him to take her away.
She was pale, her face haggard, hair that hadn’t been brushed in days tossed half-assed into a ponytail to keep it out of her face. She’d been on the streets for a week and change, and she looked rough .
But I’d never seen a more beautiful thing in my entire life.
“Ivy,” I breathed, stuck in place, frozen with the fear that if I moved too suddenly, I might spook her. “You’re alive.”
“Why are you following me still? Didn’t you get the message?”
I frowned at her callousness. “Not all who wander are lost,” I parroted to her, knowing she’d picked that line because of a quote we’d read one night on the couch together. “But without you, I am. We all are.”
She looked down at her feet, avoiding my gaze as it burned for her. “You were just fine without me before. You’ll be just fine now that I’m gone.”
“Come home,” I pleaded, dropping to my knees at her feet. “Whatever you want, it’s yours, just come back.”
She scoffed at the words that tore from the depths of my very soul and finally let me speak them, giving voice to the deepest emotions in me. “You reciting epic love stories now, Coyote? Poems not advanced enough for you anymore?”
I would read a thousand more books, learn a hundred more languages, if only to speak to you in all of them. “Why did you leave?” I said instead, hating that her words could make me shrivel inside myself so quickly.
“Things change, Coyote. People change.” Her eyes glazed over like she was seeing something I could never view myself. “What’s the point anymore? I’m just waiting for something to come along that’s big enough to take me out.”
“You’re killing,” I pointed out, “all over town.”
Her shoulders lifted indifferently. “They deserved it.”
“You’re hunting.”
“And I suppose you’re here to stop me?” She swung that bat menacingly at her side, making a loop with the tip of it. “Make me see the error of my ways?”
Something in me shifted when I realized there was only one way to bring her home .
I had to help her.
“Let’s hunt,” I said instead, saving the flowery admissions of emotion for later. “Together.”