3. Chapter 3
Twenty four minutes after they passed Jenny’s diner, the SUV turned off the highway onto a gravel road that didn't have a sign.
Maren kept her face at her window. Pines on both sides, close enough in that the headlights lit them up and the trees after them dropped back into the dark like a door closing behind her.
No other cars. No other lights. The gravel crunched under the tires the way gravel crunches in a place where nobody else is going.
She kept her grip on the tire iron.
The road took a long curve and opened into a clearing.
A gate came up in the headlights. Tall. Iron. Old. Two poles set into stone on each side. A man standing at the gate didn't have a uniform on but stood the way a man stood when the uniform didn't matter. He put a hand up.
Theo slowed. Window down. A few words were exchanged that Maren didn't catch. With wide eyes, the man looked past Theo into the back seat, met Maren's eyes one beat, long enough for Maren to feel looked-at and not long enough to feel stared-at, nodded respectfully then waved them through.
After another curve, lights appeared.
Not floodlights. Warm lights. Cabins set among trees, porch lights burning orange at doorways, a large building off to one side with most of its windows lit. Smoke from chimneys somewhere in the distance. Snow on the ground between cabins, tamped flat by feet and paws.
Maren's eyes caught on the dogs first. A pair of big ones walking between cabins, slow, ears up, and an even bigger one at the edge of the clearing sitting on its haunches looking at the SUV pull in. All of them the size of calves.
Montana. Montana had big dogs. Her brain put the file where it could reach for it later and left it there.
The SUV stopped in front of the biggest building.
Declan quickly scrambled out.
Jace gave her a quick smile, “Hold up a sec.”
She watched him hurry around the front of the vehicle and come to her door, open it for her, then take a step back.
The cold came at her in one wall. Suitcase handle already in her left hand. Tire iron in her right. She stepped on the gravel and came out slow.
A younger man, young for any of this, came up at an angle to Jace, two steps out of her way, carrying something in each hand. A thermos and a wool blanket folded once. He held them out to Maren the way a person holds out food to a stray.
“Welcome, Luna.”
Word had run ahead of the SUV somehow. They had not had her twenty minutes and the kid already carried a name for her she didn't answer to, a title in a language she didn't speak yet.
She looked at the blanket. Looked at the thermos. Looked at the kid's face. He couldn't have been more than 18. He wasn't looking at her directly. His eyes were on her collarbone, which wasn't a place people looked at you unless they'd been raised not to look at your face.
“Maren,” she corrected.
He just smiled as he held the blanket and the thermos out again. When she didn’t make a move for them, Jace said, “Here, Tyler. I’ll take them.”
The kid stepped back. Still not looking at her face.
Jace walked her to a cabin at the far edge of the clearing.
Not the one closest to the lodge. Not one up near the others.
A cabin set by itself, a longer walk, one lit porch light above its door and dark windows past that.
She counted the other cabins behind her as she walked.
Counted the spaces between them. Counted the number of paces from her door to the tree line.
Eighteen.
Jace opened the door for her then stepped back. He didn't step inside.
She stopped on the threshold. Looked in.
One room. A woodstove at the far wall already going, the orange of it showing through the little grate.
A kettle on the top, not whistling, not close.
A small table, bed against the left wall.
A single window. A door to what had to be a bathroom.
The place was hot in a way a cabin got when somebody had lit the stove an hour before a person arrived.
“Locks on both sides,” Jace said from behind her. “Inside bolt. You set it, nothing comes through that door that you don't let in.”
Maren turned her head a quarter toward him.
She nodded once as she set the suitcase just inside the door, its handle up.
Jace handed her the blanket and thermos.
“I'm in the lodge,” Jace said. “Two doors over on the right if you walked down there. You won't need to. But I'll be there.”
She set her palm against the doorway wood. Didn't cross it yet.
“Why are you doing this?” She said it like she was reading him the bill. “The cabin. A stove somebody lit an hour before I got here. You don't know me.”
He held the distance he'd kept all night. He looked like a man choosing between the short answer and the true one.
“You were in trouble in my town,” he said. “Most of it, anyway.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest I'll tell you when you've slept more than an hour in one go.” The start of a grin showed. “Fair warning. It's a better story than the cabin.”
“What's it cost me?”
“Nothing. You keep the bolt, the tire iron, and every exit on this mountain. The price doesn't change.”
She studied him for one full breath. Three years had taught her that nothing was the most expensive word a man could use.
Maren looked at him. He was a pace off the porch, arms at his sides, and the porch light was making the color in his eyes do the thing it had done in the stairwell. She was too tired to file it this time. It went somewhere under the files she'd already opened.
“Okay,” she said.
He dipped his head once. Turned. Walked back up the path toward the lodge without looking behind him.
She went in.
Closed the door.
Turned the inside bolt. It slid heavy. A real bolt, new-looking, set by somebody who knew how to set a bolt.
She checked the window latches. Both of them. Twice.
Suitcase by the bed. Tire iron on the pillow.
She sat on the edge of the mattress in her coat. Wasn't ready to take anything off yet. The kettle on the stove began to whistle. She stood up, took it off the heat, set it on the wood floor so it wouldn't. Looked at it a second. Didn't pour.
She lay down on top of the blanket with her boots on, tire iron against her right side, and slept the kind of sleep she did when nothing else was going to stop her body from doing it.
When she woke it was light.
She didn't know how light. The window had snow-brightness at it, the kind that told her it was at least full morning and maybe more than that. Her boots were still on. Her tire iron was still where she'd put it.
A knock at her door.
She was on her feet with the iron up before her eyes were all the way open.
“Jace,” Jace said through the door. “Coffee. Not coming in.”
She looked at the door. At the bolt. At the tire iron.
She slid the bolt back.
Jace stood on the porch. A mug in each hand and a muffin balanced on top of one of them in a napkin. He didn't lean on the door frame. He stayed the pace off he'd stayed last night.
She opened the door halfway.
One breath, in, held a second. Not hers to read. She filed it with the eye thing and the dogs.
“How do you take it?” he said.
“Black.”
“Smart woman.” He passed her one of the mugs and the muffin on top.
Kept the other mug for himself. Didn't step forward.
“Elena never makes it strong enough. I gave up and started making my own.” A beat.
His face did something that was almost a wince.
“But if you tell her I said that I will deny it to my dying day.”
Something in her chest turned over a quarter-inch.
“Okay,” she said.
He nodded, like they'd made a pact.
Jace didn't sit. There was a chair on the porch. He didn't take it. He stood a pace back and drank his coffee and looked at the clearing, not at her.
She took the mug in both hands. The muffin was warm through the napkin.
“You been a waitress long?” Jace said.
“A while.”
He nodded. Didn't push.
“I worked at Jenny's one summer when I was seventeen,” he said.
“She let me bus tables. Two weeks in I dropped a whole tray of dishes on a Saturday night.
She made me work the next month without pay.
Told me a waitress she'd hired that month did more in one shift than I did all summer.” He took a drink, then gave a small grin. “She was right.”
Maren's mouth moved a fraction. Not a smile. Close to one.
She stopped it.
“She tell you to bring me coffee?” Maren said.
“Nope.” Jace looked at the clearing. “Elena said coffee. Jenny said don't screw it up.”
Maren looked at her mug.
“She called you?”
“Twice, but it's still early.”
“The kid last night,” she said. “Tyler. The word got aimed at my collarbone instead of my face. Luna.”
“A title.” He drank his coffee, easy. “Around here it lands somewhere between honored guest and don't screw this up. The second part's aimed at us, not you.”
“A title for what?”
“For a woman the pack has decided matters.” He said it level, eyes on the clearing. Then the grin from the diner made a brief appearance. “You could try making them quit it. Take you about ten years, and you'd lose.”
“I don't like titles.”
“I know. You corrected Tyler before your boots hit the gravel. He told the kitchen you're terrifying.” He tipped his mug at her. “Tyler has eighty pounds on you.”
She looked away at the clearing, fast, before her mouth could finish what it was starting.
After the coffee Jace took Maren to the lodge.
A room Jace called the ops room was off to one side, behind a door that closed heavy behind them.
A woman with dark hair cut sharp at her jaw sat at a long table behind a computer with three monitors, a laptop and whiteboard behind her with writing Maren didn't read yet.
Nearby, another man was on one of the phones.
Theo leaned against the wall by the door.
Rhys did the two-finger peck on a laptop keyboard while Declan texted on his phone as fast as a teenager.
Everybody looked up when Jace came in. Nobody stared at Maren. They looked, read her for what they needed, went back to their work the way professionals went back to their work when the boss brought a stranger in.
“Freya,” Jace said. “This is Maren.”
The woman behind the monitors dipped her head. No name-and-handshake theater. “Maren.”
“Whatever you've got,” Jace said. “She hears it all.”
Freya started talking. She rattled it off, Maren thought, like an order called to the diner's kitchen, fast, with every piece set down clean.
“Dead wolf was Zale Bernard, 34, from Thornwood.” She glanced at Maren and gave a quick explanation, “Neighboring pack, to the northwest.”
Maren looked confused but Freya kept going. “Phone's locked, but we’ll be inside it tonight. Other guy was also Thornwood. He got picked up by a trail car two blocks south.” She glanced at the men. “Fair warning: Brennan was still bitching about it this morning.”
She glanced at Maren. “We don’t have a name yet on who sent them but we’ll get it.”
Declan looked up from his phone. “Thornwood is known to provide ‘security’ services for those skirting the right side of the law.”
Freya glanced at Maren again. “One more thing.
If this ever runs back to real money, the kind that buys a pack's silence, there's a federal name I keep crossing.
An agent named Morales, financial crimes.
We don't have near enough to take to her yet, and we're not handing her your name until we do. Walking you into a federal file too early is its own way of getting you killed.”
Maren noted that nobody looked at her for reactions.
“You obviously already know this but the last name you gave Jenny was fake so we don’t have last name on you yet,” Freya said to her, not unkind. “That's a thing I'd like. When you can.”
Maren kept the tire iron in her lap in the chair she'd taken. She'd sat by the door on purpose.
Maren thought about Freya’s request. A last name was such a simple thing, but three years of running had taught her to be careful of what she shared, even with these people who had clearly been awake all night searching for information on the man who tried to take her.
Finally she said, “I'm not ready to say.”
Freya smiled as she nodded. “Okay. Just let me know when you are.”
That was all.
Nobody pushed.
Jace watched Maren take a slow breath.
That night she sat by her window in the dark.
The tire iron sat within reach on the pillow. Her bat was in Braxton somewhere in a studio she wasn’t going back to. The suitcase was by the door.
Elena, of the kitchen and weak coffee, had provided some of the best food Maren had ever tasted for lunch and dinner then sent fresh cookies on a plate wrapped in a kitchen towel for an evening snack.
Maren had opened the bolt once for the kid who brought it to her porch and closed it after him. He'd called her Luna again. She'd told him her name was Maren. He'd ducked his chin, said yes ma'am, then went.
The porch light was off.
There was a big dog on her porch steps.
Not walking around. Not sniffing as dogs do. Just lying with his head down between his paws, side rising and falling slow, like a dog who had decided this was where he slept tonight.
The same one she'd seen at the edge of the clearing last night, maybe. A darker one. Bigger than the rest.
She stood at the window a long while. Watched the dog breathe. Her own chest slowed down without her making it.
Her breath went in and out at the same pace as his.
Three years, and her body hadn't once let her go to sleep at anyone's pace but its own.
She went back to the bed.
Thought about taking off her coat, her boots. Decided against it. Not yet.
Reached for the tire iron.
Through the window, the dog's ribs rose and fell.
She matched her breathing to his.
And went under.