Chapter 48
Ash
Bram lowers the phone from his ear. “You got this?”
I got it. Luna can’t, not without alpha ears, so Bram gives her the gist.
Reed’s already three steps toward the truck. “That’s eight minutes away.” There’s something in his voice I haven’t heard since the doughnuts this morning, back when this was still a good day. “We can have him.”
“Keys.” Bram tosses them. Reed catches them without looking.
God, my body wants to go. The part of me that spent the last two hours watching a big chunk of a hundred years of my family go up is already in the passenger seat, both hands around Derek’s throat.
But something nags at me.
Ray Potts.
I close my eyes a second and let the name sit there.
Ray Potts, who crosses the street when he sees Bram coming, because Bram has hauled him into the back of a cruiser more times than either of them could count sober. Is that really the kind of man who picks up a phone and calls the law? I think not.
And tonight, of all nights. Two hours after Derek walks onto our land and puts a match to it, Ray Potts decides to do his civic duty.
It’s too clean. It doesn’t add up.
Reed already running toward his truck. “Clock’s ticking, guys,” he says, looking back.
“Ray Potts.” Luna’s voice, quiet. She’s got her arms wrapped around herself at the edge of the light. “Isn’t that the town drunk you told me about one night, Bram? The one who sleeps behind the gas station?”
Bram looks at her. “That’s him.”
“So.” She lifts her chin. “Don’t you think it’s a little fishy? That out of everyone in this whole valley, he’s the one calling in a tip on Derek, tonight.”
Fishy. My thoughts exactly, out of her mouth. I feel it the same second she says it, the certainty threading bright up the bond, the two of us landing in the same place at once.
She catches my eye. She knows I’m already there.
“Okay.” Luna pulls in a breath, and something rides up the bond with it, low and steady. “Guys. Hear me out—”