Chapter 17
The not knowing was killing her.
The Pascoe family left, and Sienna watched as they drove away. With their departure, the window of escape they’d offered disappeared. Her family would have to find another way to leave Stoneford.
Without even considering the consequences, she jumped to her feet. “Mama, Papa. I’m going to work. We need information if we’re going to make smart decisions.”
Both of them snapped their gazes to her.
Mama opened her mouth—likely to object—but Papa murmured something low, and Mama gave a reluctant nod.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
Sienna grabbed her coat and handbag and left, her steps brisk. She didn’t see another soul until she reached the main road to the marketplace. An elderly woman pushed a shopping trolley along the footpath—Mrs. Watson, the retired librarian. Human.
A few people were setting up market stalls as Sienna passed, heading for the council offices. They were also human. Had all the shifters left town? It certainly looked that way. The scent of baking bread curled from the nearby coffee shop and bakery—heady, warm, deceptively normal.
A squawk of radio static made her slow. Male voices followed.
Sienna pressed against the bakery’s stone wall, heart pounding, just as boots clomped past on the cobblestones.
Three hunters talking in low, clipped tones.
She caught fragments: “…blood trail…vet’s place… lock down the whole bloody village.”
Her breath caught.
The jump toward a gunshot injury wasn’t a massive leap.
Her feet were moving before the thought fully formed.
If she cut across the road and down the lane behind the council offices, she could beat them to the vet, but she’d have to move fast. As she passed her workplace, a pang of regret twisted in her gut. No time to mourn a job.
She sprinted down the lane, startling a blackbird from the gutter. By the time she skidded to a stop opposite the vet’s surgery, her chest was heaving. His vehicle was gone. No patients waited outside.
A notice in the window caught her eye. She glanced over her shoulder, then darted closer for a better look.
The vet was away indefinitely due to a family emergency. His receptionist, another human, had signed the note. Every shifter who could leave Stoneford had already left.
“Hey, you!” a man shouted, skidding around the corner.
Sienna jerked left, evading his grasping hands, and bolted, her footsteps echoing off the narrow stone walls.
“Grab her!” he yelled.
Hunters in heavy boots bore down on her, their steps uneven on the unforgiving cobblestones. Sienna’s lungs burned as she pushed harder, darting through an open gate into Mrs. Henderson’s prized garden. The elderly woman would have a fit, but desperate times.
A curse rang out behind her as the hunter crashed through the rose bushes she’d nimbly avoided. Her muscles coiled, and she vaulted the six-foot fence in one smooth motion, landing on the balls of her feet.
“Did you see that?” one man panted. “No human jumps like that.”
Shit. Her blood chilled even as sweat stung her eyes. She’d blown her cover.
She couldn’t keep up this pace. Her chest burned with every gasp, and her legs shook like a newborn foal’s.
Think, Sienna.
Where could a local go that strangers wouldn’t?
The old mine shaft.
Dangerous, yes. Every parent had warned them to keep away as kids, but she knew the safe path. Jago and Calan had shown her years ago, swearing her to secrecy.
She veered left down a narrow alley most people didn’t even notice, squeezing between two cottages so close together she had to turn sideways. Rough stone scraped her shoulders through her coat. Behind her, she heard a man try to follow and get stuck.
“Where the hell did she go?”
“There’s a gap here, but I can’t fit through.”
“Go around. Cut her off at the other end!”
Sienna burst onto the moor, her feet sinking into boggy ground. Out here, local knowledge meant everything. One wrong step could leave her waist-deep in marsh water. She stuck to the hidden path only locals knew, stepping where generations of Teagues had walked.
A gunshot cracked.
She dropped instinctively, heart hammering like it might tear free. Were they shooting at her?
Another shot. Then shouting from a different direction.
“We’ve got movement by the old mine workings!”
Relief and fear tangled in her chest. They weren’t after her, but they’d found someone. Who?
Staying low, she crawled to a crumbling stone wall, part of the old mining site, and peered over. Three hunters stood at the shaft entrance, gesturing wildly. One spoke into his radio.
“…definitely heard something…big cat…went into the old mine…”
“Should we follow it in?”
“Are you mental? That place is a death trap. We’ll smoke it out.”
A low rumble echoed from deep in the mine shaft—definitely feline. But something about the call seemed off. The call was too regular. Too perfectly timed.
“What if it dies down there?”
“Then we drag out the body and claim the bounty. Smith doesn’t care whether it’s alive or dead. If it’s dead, he’ll stuff it and mount it for display. All he wants is his prize.”
The casual way they discussed murder made her sick. But that sound bothered her. She’d heard her brothers and father make distress calls, and this wasn’t right.
As she watched, one hunter held up a hand for silence. The rumbling ceased, then started again with the same pitch.
“That’s not a bloody cat,” the hunter muttered. “That’s a recording.”
“What?”
“Listen to it. Same sound, same timing. Someone’s playing games with us.”
Sienna blinked, the pieces finally falling into place. The smugglers. Jamie had mentioned they used the old mine workings. They must have set up the recording to scare off anyone who got too close to their hiding spots.
“Check for footprints. Recent ones.”
“The boss won’t like this. We’ve been chasing shadows while the actual targets slip away.”
One hunter kicked a loose stone. “The locals are playing us for fools.”
Sienna had heard enough. The hunters were desperate now. Angry and unpredictable. She eased back, her mind racing. If the smugglers were using recordings to throw them off, how long before the hunters realized real shifters were still in town?
She had to get home. They needed to leave. Soon.
Each step was slow and deliberate until she was far enough to risk running. Then she bolted, tears streaking her face.
Whoever was down there in the mine would have to survive on their own.
Her family couldn’t save everyone—they could barely save themselves.
She puffed out a sigh of relief when she entered the front door of the cottage almost two hours later.
“Sienna?” Jago appeared, his brow creased. “Your face is red. You okay?”
Jamie loitered behind him, concern on his youthful face.
Sienna inhaled, trying to steady her breath. She’d never run so fast, but fleeing a hunter made it easy. “Most of the shifters are gone. We need to leave too. A van.”
“What happened?” Jago asked.
“The hunters chased me. I didn’t see any sign of Liam, Kitto, or Calan, but the hunters were following a blood trail.” She brought him and Jamie up to speed.
Jago frowned. “Who in the village has a suitable vehicle?”
She knitted her brows. “What are you thinking?”
“We borrow it,” Jago said. “Just long enough to get to the neighboring town. We can leave it there. It mightn’t be legal, but these people owe us.”
Sienna didn’t disagree. “Pa won’t like it.”
Jago snorted, his cat ears pricking. “You kidnapped Liam.”
“Yeah, okay.” Sienna pulled a face. “Fair point. The mayor has a campervan.”
“Huh! If the mayor is smart, he will have taken his wife and kids and gone already. I’ll talk to Papa and Mama.” Jago squared his shoulders. “Wish me luck.”
Jago waved a hand and knocked on their parents’ bedroom door. “Mama? Papa? We need to talk.”
Jamie returned to the kitchen table, where Sienna’s arrival had interrupted his work, threading ribbons through clay hearts. She sat beside him, her hands automatically taking up the task as she listened to the muffled voices from the bedroom.
“Leaving?” Papa’s voice rang out, thick with disbelief. “Jago, this is our home.”
“It’s not safe anymore, Papa. They’re hunting us.”
“This land’s been in my family for four generations,” Papa said, his tone sharpening. “My great-grandfather built this cottage by hand. Every stone, every beam.”
“The clay here is unique,” Mama added, voice tight with worry. “Without it, we’re ordinary potters competing with mass production. How will we survive?”
Jamie’s fingers stilled on the ribbon he was threading. Sienna caught his eye and saw her own anxiety reflected there.
“At least here we know which people to avoid,” Papa continued. “Out there, we’ll be strangers everywhere. What if we can’t find work? What if the boys get sick on the road?”
“Kitto and Calan are missing, possibly hurt, and you’re worried about clay?” Jago’s voice cracked with frustration. “I’m tired of being ashamed of what we look like. Maybe somewhere else, we could live instead of just survive—thrive.”
A long silence followed. When Mama spoke again, her voice was smaller. “We have no references, no connections. Who will hire a family like us?”
“The Pascoes didn’t hesitate,” Jamie said, his voice carrying loud enough for Sienna to hear. “They left.”
Sienna suddenly felt too hot. She pushed back from the table. “I need some air.”
The evening had grown cool, mist beginning to creep in from the moor.
She wrapped her arms around herself and walked to the edge of their small garden, where the land dropped away toward the valley.
In daylight, she could see for miles: rolling hills dotted with sheep, the glint of the stream where she and her brothers had played as children, and the tor where Papa had taught them to shift safely away from prying eyes.