Chapter Twenty-One
LJ
R age. Fury .
It’s stronger than fear. It has to be, or I’d cave in.
I let the three of them keep shouting and yank the first phone I see from its cord, swipe, dial.
She can’t be dead. I’d know it. I’d feel it.
Then Scarlet notices me. “Who the fuck are you calling?”
I ignore him.
Zayn picks up on the second ring. “Hey. What’s—”
“They took her,” I bark. “She’s gone. They fucking—”
“Slow down, slow down. They? Who’s—”
“I don’t know,” I growl. “That’s why I’m calling you. You want to help? Then fucking help!”
Tuck
I’VE NEVER TALKED SOMEONE through a system override while they were driving eighty miles an hour before.
But I can learn. For Maren.
“Okay,” I say, wedging my phone between shoulder and cheek, fingers flying over my own keyboard, scrolling and skimming a pirated user guide. “You’re gonna open the AVL login screen. A-V-L,” I spell out for him. “Automatic Vehicle Loc—”
“I know what AVL stands for,” Zayn snaps. “That’s for dispatchers. I don’t—”
“Your credentials should still work,” I say, and hope it’s true.
Three agonizing seconds of road noise and silence.
“I’m in.” I hear his blinker click. He’s making a turn. “But I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
The relief is full-body, and temporary. Because we still have to get to her. And I am a panicked mess, ragged instincts surging over my thought patterns every other heartbeat as my wolf wars for dominance.
But I have to think. I have to.
“Old interface. It’s bad—it doesn’t matter. You just need to filter by active units only. Anything? Anything out of place, anything not—”
“Yeah,” Zayn says. “It’s...out by you. Forest road.” A squeal of tires as he brakes, surge of engine as he revs. “I’m—”
“Text the coordinates,” I bark. Slam down the phone, slam shut the computer.
The other three stare down at me.
“What are you waiting for?” I yell, already on my feet, already letting the shift ripple up my spine, out my limbs, swallowing the last human word as it leaves my throat.
“ Go! ”
Will
THE WIND TEARS AT ME , but I tear back.
It hurts. My wings ache. The landscape rolls beneath me in greens and browns and I can’t fucking see any of the rest of them, only vaguely know I’m going the right direction but know that I have to keep going.
Because all I can see is her.
The grease-stained girl in the shitty garage.
The frightened, fierce one sleeping in her car.
The woman in ballgowns and cutoffs and a scowl and a smile, in my arms, in my bed, in my life.
The healer. Of everything.
I bank hard to the left, rocketing low, burning from the inside with heat and rage.
I can’t bear it, I fucking can’t bear that that would be all I’d get—of Maren, of all of us.
I can’t bear thinking that we failed her.
That we might be too late.
Rob
THE TRUCK SHUDDERS , struggles on forest road, tires spitting and debris flying everywhere. Fuck the suspension—I slam the gas anyway, take a sinkhole so hard the crossbow nearly falls from the seat to the floor.
But I steady it, and the wheel. And myself.
I could’ve shifted. Could’ve run on paws, silent and fast. But not this time.
This time, I’m going in as a man.
Face them down like a man.
Die like a man. If I have to.
Something threatens at the corner of my eye, but I swipe it away. I ain’t gonna let that win. Not today.
I grip the wheel harder and floor it.
C’mon, pretty lady, I think. Just hang in there.