Raven
Mouse is the last person I expect to see leaning against my car. Which is exactly why my stomach drops the second I spot him.
“Don’t even start,” I say as I approach, keys clenched between my fingers. “If this is about my brother, tell him to—”
“Get in,” Mouse says.
I stop short. “Excuse me?”
He straightens, eyes scanning the lot before coming back to me. He’s calm—too calm. “Wolf asked me to take you somewhere.”
Where is he?” I demand.
Mouse doesn’t answer.
“That’s not an answer.” I cross my arms. “And I don’t get into cars with men who won’t tell me where they’re taking me.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “He said you’d say that.”
“I swear to God, if this is some half-baked plan that ends with him bleeding and me sitting in the dark like an idiot—”
Mouse doesn’t let me finish.
“Keys,” he says quietly, holding out his hand.
I stare at him. “I can drive myself.”
“Not tonight,” he replies. “And not where we’re going.”
Something in his tone alarms me. I drop my keys into his palm.
“If you wreck my car,” I mutter, “I’m haunting all of you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Fair.”
I don’t even wait for him to pull out of the lot before shifting in my seat. “Where’s Wolf? And don’t say ‘busy’ or ‘handling something,’ because that’s bullshit.”
Mouse keeps his eyes on the road as he eases us forward. “He’s where he needs to be.”
“That’s not an answer,” I snap. “He wouldn’t have sent you to get me unless something’s wrong.”
“What’s going on isn’t something he wants you in the middle of,” he says, choosing each word like it might cost him later.
“So you drag me off somewhere instead?” I shoot back.
“It’s safer.”
“For whom?” I ask. “Me or him?”
That makes him glance at me, just once. Long enough to tell me I hit close.
“He asked me to keep you out of it,” Mouse says quietly. “That’s all I can give you right now.”
My chest tightens. “Out of what?”
Silence. Not the awkward kind. The intentional kind.
I look out the window, watching Ashbourne fall away behind us, trees closing in, the road narrowing. “If this is about Ridgeback—”
Mouse’s hands tighten on the wheel. That’s all the confirmation I need.
“Is he doing something stupid?”
“He’s doing something necessary.”
“You tell him,” I say fiercely, “that I’m not a liability. I’m not something to stash away.”
Mouse exhales slowly. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
“And you tell him,” I add, voice shaking now despite myself, “that if he gets hurt doing this alone, I will never forgive him.”
Mouse doesn’t answer.
The car eats up the miles, the trees growing thicker, the road darker. And for the first time since Mouse showed up, real fear settles in my bones.
“Where are we going?” I ask again.
“A place he got outside of town.”
My stomach drops. Sam didn’t tell me that he found a place.
“Is he there now?”
“No.”
That answer scares me more than if he’d said yes.
I press my palm flat against my thigh, grounding myself. “Where is he?”
Mouse doesn’t answer right away. The road curves, trees closing in tighter, shadows stretching longer across the hood.
“He’s handling something,” he says at last.
There it is. The phrase I told him not to use.
I laugh once, short and sharp. “You all use the same words when you’re lying.”
Mouse exhales through his nose. “We use the same words when we’re trying not to scare people.”
“Well, congratulations,” I mutter. “It’s not working.”
The car rolls on, farther from town, farther from everything familiar. The light thins as we go, the sky deepening from blue to bruised gray, trees closing in until Ashbourne feels like a place I imagined instead of lived in.
Mouse slows the car as the road narrows, and pavement gives way to gravel.
Then I hear it. The sound reaches us even with the windows up. It’s steady, constant. Water moving over stone.
“How far out are we?” I ask, my voice quieter now.
“Far enough,” Mouse says.
I swallow hard. “He thinks this will protect me.”
Mouse nods once. “Yeah.”
“And do you?”
Mouse doesn’t answer.
I lean my head back against the seat, eyes closing as fear and fury coil together.
Because whatever Wolf is doing right now, he didn’t want me anywhere near it. That means whatever he’s walking into must be worse than I can imagine.