Chapter 34
ROWAN
“First step,” Charlotte says. “Look for clues.”
I glare at her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I shout. “This isn’t a goddamn game. We aren’t playing Sherlock Holmes.”
“Keep your voice down.” Charlotte pushes past me, grabs my wrist, and drags me along after her. “A human did this. He left signs.” She looks at me, her eyes flashing in the dark. “Like scent. You picked up on it, didn’t you? That sour, spiky smell?”
I jerk my arm away from her. “Yes,” I say stiffly. “It’s adrenaline, isn’t it?”
Charlotte smiles. “Yeah, it is. Slow down. Breathe it in. Focus on it. See if you can pick up a trail.”
I stare at her, panic surging through my veins. I don’t want to focus on anything. I sure as hell don’t want to slow down.
“This is how you’re going to find her, “ Charlotte says gently. “It took me a while to learn how to do it, but I think you’ve got desperation on your side.”
“What I don’t have is time,” I growl.
“Which is why you need to stop arguing with me.”
I hate that she’s right about that. I whip away from Charlotte and look out at the graveyard. At the road.
He would have driven here. He took her away, and Abi wouldn’t have gone willingly. It’s not like he could have carried her out in the open without drawing attention to himself.
I step through the grass, past the sunflowers, heading to the road.
As I walk, I breathe in, trying to separate all the scents billowing around me.
I’ve done this before, even if I didn’t realize it—even if I thought it was something everyone could do.
It was how I would track down men for Uncle Vic.
Business partners who didn’t pay their bills on time.
Double-crossing mob guys. That sort of thing.
I used to resent it. Now, it feels like it was practice, preparing me for this moment.
There are a lot of scents in the Rosado night. There’s the beach and the ocean and the animals that live in the sand. There’s the metallic tang of the roads, the dieselly scent of car exhaust. A dry, papery scent that I think might be the dead lying in the ground.
But there’s also Charlotte’s fear and her kidnapper’s disgusting adrenaline.
I catch a thread of that adrenaline, starting at the tree and winding down to the road. There’s something else layered underneath it, though, and when I come to the curb, I see it:
A few splatters of blood.
“He drove her away from here,” I say numbly.
“That doesn’t matter.” Charlotte comes up behind me and crouches down in the grass, her nose wrinkling up. “We can track him. You smell that?” She looks over at me. “The exhaust. He was in a pickup truck.”
All I can smell is Abi’s blood. Her terror. How could something that smelled so sweet when we were in her office together fill me with such a sick, terrible worry right now?
“Rowan,” Charlotte says sharply. “You’ve got to focus.”
“I smell her,” I whisper, blinking back tears. God, I don’t want Charlotte to see me cry. I can only imagine she’ll react the way Uncle Nash did: mock me, beat me. I’m supposed to be a killer, after all. I’m supposed to be a Hunter.
“I know you do.” Charlotte stands and moves toward me. “But the exhaust will be easier.”
I wipe the back of my hand over my eyes before I look over her. If she notices, she doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she says, “Focus. I want both of us to have the scent in case the other loses it.”
“Why are you helping me?” I say darkly.
“Because this is my fault.” Charlotte’s face is shadowed in the darkness. “And you’re my little brother. I was hoping we could be friends. But I need you to fucking focus right now, okay?”
I believe her, mostly because I have to. There’s only one thing that matters right now, and that’s finding Abi. So I close my eyes, and I breathe in deep, sifting through the scents—
And I catch it. The exhaust. It’s pungent and sharper than the other mechanical scents on the air, and it seems to take off on a trail heading toward the shoreline.
“It’s going that way,” I say, opening my eyes. I point to the right. “I think it’s heading toward the beach.”
“I think you’re right.” Charlotte beeps the lock on her car, making the headlights flash. “Get in. I’ll drive, you track.”
It feels a little like what we did earlier, tracking our victims along the highway. Two predators working in tandem. But this time, our prey is precious.
Charlotte rolls down the windows as we drive along the dark road and into the little park that runs up alongside the graveyard. I stick my head out the window like a dog, breathing in the air. Following the trail.
It’s bright. As bright as the moon hanging heavy and full in the sky, casting everything in thin, silvery light.
“Turn left,” I say. “Toward the beach.”
Charlotte’s already turning, though, like she sensed it, too.
She takes us down a narrow residential street, and my skin prickles, because there’s too much conflicting noise out here.
Not just the scents of all the people in the houses, but other things.
Their voices. Their presence. Their humanity.
“Fuck, I lost it,” Charlotte says, her eyes fixed on the road, her hands gripping the wheel tight. “Tell me you didn’t.”
She sounds genuinely concerned, which I appreciate. It’s the least she could do.
“No,” I say, although the trail is definitely fainter now. Drowned out by all the fucking humans that aren’t Abi. “Keep going. Toward the beach. They went to the beach.”
I don’t like that, them being on the beach. Images keep flashing through my head: Abi’s blood turning black on the moonlit sand. Abi’s pale body drifting in the waves, her lungs flooded with seawater. Abi’s screams being torn away by the wind.
We drive until we come to the road that runs parallel to the strand, although this is the empty part, away from hotels and tourist spots. Beach houses rise against the horizon, although they’re dark. They look empty.
The trail seems to strengthen.
“Got it again,” Charlotte says, pressing down hard on the gas. The car’s engine roars as we fly down the road. “Seems stronger. I think we’re close.”
I don’t say anything, though, because I’ve got something else. A faint whiff of Abi’s fear, like a distant shout. I push my head further out the window, trying to listen past the rush of the sea wind.
I swear, just for a second, I hear her scream. Maybe it’s my imagination, but terror burns hot in my chest anyway.
“Hurry,” I murmur, clutching at the car door. “Before she—”
And then it all hits me at once: a racing heartbeat, a rush of blood. A music I’ve been memorizing since I was eighteen years old.
“Here! Here!” I scream, dragging myself back in the car. “Turn left!”
Charlotte jerks the steering wheel, making the tires squeal. We slam into a narrow side street marked by a big painted sign: Future site of the La Playa Del Sol subdivision! Half-built beach houses rise out of the sand like storks.
“Which one?” Charlotte breathes out. “I can’t narrow it down.”
I can. Abi’s heartbeat is like a beacon screaming into the night. For a moment, I swear I can see it, like a lighthouse marking danger in the dark.
“That one there.” I point to a dark house on the corner, illuminated by a yellow streetlamp. It’s half-built, the walls nothing but plaster. But she’s in there. And she’s still alive.
Charlotte’s barely slowed down before I fling the door open and throw myself out onto the street.
“What the fu—” That’s all I hear before she slams on the brakes, flooding the street with red light.
I take off running toward the house, my blood pumping hot in my veins.
It’s like when we killed people earlier, but so much more focused.
I have a single purpose: to destroy whoever took Abi from me.
But then Charlotte jumps in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I snarl, moving to shove her aside. She stops me, of course, her grip on my wrist almost painful.
“You need to think this through,” Charlotte says in a sharp whisper. “She’s still alive in there. I can feel her.”
So can I. It’s all I can feel, actually, and I look past Charlotte at the beach house, my blood surging.
“She’s not alone.”
I jerk my gaze over to Charlotte’s face. “I’ll kill him,” I say.
“Not if he kills you first.” Charlotte lets go of my hand and steps back. “We technically do die, remember? We come back, but not right away. It could take months. Maybe even years. And that’s time Abi can’t afford.”
I take deep, choking breaths. I don’t care about dying. I only care about Abi living.
But I also know that Charlotte is right. There’s someone else in there. Someone human. Someone male.
And his blood is up, too.
Anger twists in my chest. “I have to get to her,” I snarl.
“I’m not trying to stop you,” Charlotte says. “I’m telling you to be fucking careful and to go in there with a plan. This isn’t like—”
“I’ve been killing men since I was thirteen years old,” I say. “I know what I’m fucking doing.”
Charlotte’s eyes flash. “I’m sure you do. But you’re not exactly in the best frame of mi—”
A scream tears through the night.
Charlotte freezes, and I shove her aside just as a swell of Abi’s terror comes rushing over me with the sea wind.
Her terror—
And the fresh, sharp scent of her blood.