2. Chapter 2 #2
“Empty. Nobody’s been in it today but you.”
She picked up the keys. Didn't look at him while doing it.
The big watchful one stepped aside as she passed him, eyes still on the lot, not on her. The stairs looked taller than they had an hour ago.
She kept her ear tuned behind her the whole way up.
Jenny vouched for him. Said his name, Jace Holbrook, plain and certain, the way you say a name you've got no doubt about.
Not a drop in her voice. No hedge. Said she'd known him since he was a boy.
But a woman could know a boy his whole life and still be wrong about the man he'd turned into.
Women were wrong about men all the time.
At the top she pushed the door open with her boot, back to the railing, tire iron up.
The same apartment she'd walked out of before dawn. Coffee from this morning in the air. The lavender plug-in she kept in the kitchen because the building smelled like wet laundry. A lumpy couch that had come with the place and was probably left behind ten tenants ago.
Seven days she'd spent in this room. Nothing in it was hers.
Except the thing by the door.
The suitcase sat where it had sat every night of every apartment for three years, handle up, zipped, ready. Small with a hard shell. The handle taped where the plastic had cracked a few apartments before this one.
Everything inside it she'd need for a week on the road. Cash. A driver's license with a name that didn’t match the one in her purse.
Three years of knowing that if she woke up and something was wrong she could close her fist on that handle and be down the stairs before the door latched behind her.
She closed her fist on it.
Her eyes went once to the bedroom doorway. The baseball bat leaned against the nightstand where she'd put it her first night in this apartment and left it every morning since. She had the tire iron already. Not worth going that far in for the bat.
Her ear stayed tuned to the stairs behind her for the sound of a footstep that wasn't hers. Nothing.
She grabbed the suitcase handle, pulled the door shut and turned the key in the knob out of habit. Left the dead bolt open. No point.
She took the stairs down one at a time, tire iron in her right, suitcase and key ring in her left. At the bottom the big watchful one stepped aside for her without turning his head.
Jace was where she'd left him. He looked at the suitcase in her grip.
She didn't tell him anything.
He didn't ask.
She gave a last glance toward the body then took a step towards the SUV.
Jace held out his hand, palm up.
She looked at the hand.
It was a wide hand. Steady. Open. No pressure in it. An offer only.
She ignored his hand and kept walking. He fell in beside her.
They crossed the lot together past the man on the ground. He kept his body between hers and the shape on the pavement. She felt him breathe in once, slow, and hold it a second, as if he were tasting the air.
When they reached the SUV he let go.
The lot looked different than it had ten minutes ago. One black SUV at the alley mouth, driver's door open, engine idling. Dome light off. The three men who had been behind Jace were now spread around the lot, looking outward, not at her.
One car. She had counted two pairs of headlights behind her on the highway. Theirs and his. Four men in one SUV, total, on his side. Her brain tried to do math with the number and gave up.
Jace opened the back door of the nearer SUV. Window seat on her side, right side of the vehicle, the door she would be sitting against. He held the door without leaning on it.
She got in.
The tire iron stayed clutched in her hand. The suitcase went between her feet on the floor.
The big man who reported their car was three blocks away took the driver's seat.
The quieter one who'd hung back on the lot slid into the passenger seat and scanned mirrors before his door had closed.
Jace got in after her and slid to the middle.
The man who discovered the tracker came around the far side of the back row and got in behind the driver. He had a phone out already.
The SUV rolled. Smooth. No siren, no speed. Out of the lot, onto the street, through Braxton at the speed of a pickup going home late.
Maren watched her building shrink in the side mirror. The back lot, the dumpster, the dead man on the ground under the streetlight. Her old blue sedan getting smaller next to him. Gone.
She would learn later that Freya's people had the lot scrubbed before the sun came up, the body handled pack-side, the sedan towed to a yard that kept no records, so that all the breakfast shift at Jenny's found in the morning was Maren gone and a clean stretch of asphalt where a dead man had been.
Jace cleared his throat and introduced the men in the car. “You know I’m Jace. Theo is driving. Rhys is beside him and Declan is in the back with us.”
Theo and Rhys dipped their heads slightly as Jace introduced them. Declan grinned as he did the same.
She gave a brief polite smile to the car then tracked their route from her window.
Nobody said anything for six blocks.
They passed the diner on the way out of town. Light still on in the pass. Jenny at the counter wiping down. Not looking up. Maren watched her until the SUV turned and the diner wasn't there anymore.
Highway. Two-lane. Dark.
The men were quiet in a way she didn't have a word for. Not the quiet of people who hadn't spoken yet. The quiet of people who were speaking without using their mouths.
She didn't believe that thought. She kept it anyway.
Jace shifted beside her. Forearms on his knees. His thigh was an inch from hers and not touching. He was the size of a man who should have been crowding her and he wasn't. He was holding himself off the middle of the seat on purpose.
“So—” Jace said.
He was interrupted by the two men in the front breaking into loud fits of coughing as they shook their heads. Almost in unison.
She could just make out Declan murmur, “Don't do it. Don’t—”
Jace ignored them all.
“So, here’s the thing.” He took a deep breath then let it out. “I can shift into a wolf.”
The driver's shoulders went very still. In the passenger seat, the quiet one cleared his throat into his fist. Behind the driver, the fourth man dropped his face into his palm.
“And we're mates,” Jace gave her a charming smile.
Maren rolled her eyes and turned to the window, too tired and on edge for whatever game he was trying to play.
The man behind the driver made a sharp pained sound, like somebody stepped on his foot.
Nobody said anything else.
Maren watched the road. The highway narrowed. Pines came in closer. The white line at the edge of the shoulder went from dashed to solid, then away. Pavement was just pavement. The trees were thick enough to be a wall.
Her hand was white on the tire iron.
Jace's thigh stayed an inch from hers.
She didn't know what she was doing. She knew she wasn't in the stairwell anymore. Knew she wasn't dead. Knew the man beside her had killed another man without a word, and then offered her his hand, palm up, and stepped aside so she could walk past him on her own.
Too tired to decide any of it right now.
The trees got denser.
She kept her eyes open, tracking the road.