Chapter 18 Arden
ARDEN
Arden opened the note as soon as she could get a few minutes alone while everyone else was fussing over getting the satellite internet dish hooked up.
Arden,
We know where you are. We just want to talk. Meet me on the highway at the end of the Windrock road at noon. I’ll be there today and tomorrow. If you don’t meet with us, then we’ll come talk to you there.
The note was unsigned, but Arden knew Sloan’s handwriting very well. Apparently Grant even had to hire someone to write his threats for him.
She thought about not going. “Today and tomorrow” could mean yesterday and today. If she didn’t show up, what were they going to do, come get her?
Well ... yes, if she took the note at face value. By meeting them, she could at least find out what they wanted. She didn’t think they were simply going to kidnap her. If they intended that, Sloan would have done it already.
Arden wasn’t sure what she was going to do if the visitors weren’t gone by the time she had to leave to meet Sloan and Grant, but an hour or so before noon, the party broke up. Baz’s parents got on their motorcycles, teenage Seth drove the van this time, and Tara took the SUV.
The parade wound out of Windrock’s main street, under the wooden sign, while those left behind all waved goodbye.
“I regret this already,” Maida said with a sigh, looking around at the dilapidated houses.
Fern hooked an arm through Maida’s. “Come on, you can pick any house you want. Nobody’s taken the saloon yet.”
“Oh wow, a saloon. Can you see me running a saloon?” But she allowed herself to be led down the street. It was impossible to remain gloomy in the face of Fern’s high spirits.
Baz noticed Arden standing against the wall, the note crumpled in her hand. He came over to put an arm around her. “You okay?” he asked quietly. “What is that, anyway? You looked like you’d seen a ghost. Did you get some bad news?”
“It’s no big deal. It was just a big surprise that anyone knows I’m here.”
“Who’s it from?”
“An old friend. I’ll tell you about it when things settle down.” She shoved the note into her pocket. “Can I help move anything?”
Among the cheerful bustle of getting supplies rearranged and Maida settled in, Arden found that it was no difficulty to step back into the shadows, and then slip away.
It felt like years ago when she had walked up the abandoned road through the woods into the ghost town.
Now, as she walked the other way through the sun-dappled forest, she noticed how much more well-used the road already looked.
She had to skirt around wide puddles left over from the rain, still muddy from the passage of the vehicles that had left not too long ago.
When she reached the place where the creek crossed the road, she discovered that it had spread out wide on either side of the culvert, a shallow lake through the woods.
There were rivulets flowing across the road, but she could still pick her way across.
Arden had come here because she had nowhere else to go, but now she found each step dragging.
The idea of leaving tore her heart—not just leaving Baz, although that was first and foremost, but also the town itself and the people here.
She was even getting used to Declan’s gloomy moods, and she would desperately miss Fern’s sunny cheer and Lexie’s down-to-earth warmth.
She wouldn’t mind being neighbors with Elvy the goat lady.
Even the wild shifter clans in the woods no longer seemed quite so alien and frightening, now that she had met River.
This place was becoming home. And Arden felt her hands ball into fists as she thought about Grant threatening it.
She hadn’t realized before that she was willing to fight for it.
She reached the highway early, but there was a new-model dark SUV idling on the shoulder a little way up the road. When Arden stepped into view, the vehicle started to move, gliding up beside her. Arden tensed, fully prepared to fling herself off the road into the woods if anyone tried to grab her.
The side window lowered, and she could see that Sloan was in the SUV alone. “I’m glad you came, Arden.”
“I see he’s still sending you to do his dirty work. What do you want?”
“We just want to talk. We’re serious about that.”
“Then the plural you,” she said sarcastically, “can get out and talk.”
Sloan turned off the vehicle and stepped out.
The bodyguard’s creased suit pants and dark jacket might be rather downscale in Grant’s world, but looked very out of place on the rural highway with the shadows of the trees falling across him.
Arden was once again conscious of her dirty and sap-stained clothes, which she still hadn’t had a chance to change.
“So you did follow me the other day,” she said. “You told Grant where I am?”
“Of course I did.”
“He really does own your every last brain cell, doesn’t he?”
Sloan frowned. “He hired me to do a job. I’m doing it. And that’s neither here nor there. We know where you’re living, Arden, and more importantly, we know who you’re living with.”
Ice chilled Arden down to her core. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a shifter town, isn’t it? No wonder you figured you’d be safe hiding out there. One of the few places Grant would never look for you.”
Arden folded her arms defensively over her chest, trying not to let her teeth chatter with nervousness.
“So what? Being a shifter isn’t illegal.
It isn’t secret these days, either. Who cares where I am?
It’s still none of his business. Unless you plan to drag me into that SUV and pack me off to Grant, in which case I’m calling the police and a lawyer the first chance I get. ”
“No, you’re right, being a shifter isn’t illegal. But you’ve got some unusual shifters around there, don’t you?”
The ice that had settled in her core seemed to spread. “What are you talking about?”
Sloan reached back into the SUV with one long arm and took a folder off the passenger seat. “I’m going to show you some pictures.”
“I’d really rather you didn’t.”
Sloan opened the folder, but didn’t take anything out immediately. “I was here during the rain yesterday. Do you remember seeing anything unusual?”
A sudden memory flickered through her mind: that great dark thing passing overhead, nearly invisible in the rainy gloom.
“I have no idea what you mean. I was busy looking for my friend who was lost in the storm. Thanks for being helpful with that, by the way.”
“I didn’t know anyone was missing. Are they all right?”
“Yes, but no thanks to you.”
Sloan tipped a large glossy photo out into his hand.
“Anyway, I took some pictures that I think you’re going to want to see.
” He held out the photo. Arden made no move to take it.
“Don’t worry, we’ve got copies. You can keep this one if you like, though you probably won’t want to explain to your new shifter friends where you got it. ”
Arden hated the way that her fingers trembled a little as she took it.
The photo was blurry, and had clearly been taken in haste in the middle of the downpour. It was a big dark ... thing? Arden shook her head. “If this is supposed to mean something to me, it doesn’t. Did you take a picture of your hand by accident?”
“I have some more. See what you think of these.”
Reluctantly she took the next set.
With just one photo, it was nearly impossible to work out what she was looking at. But seeing several of them side by side, from different angles, there was no doubt.
“One of your friends turns into a dragon,” Sloan said.
That would be the big secret everyone kept talking around with Declan, then. Her hand trembled again, vibrating the image. “There’s no way you can get that from any of this. Dragons don’t exist, and your photos are a blurry mess.”
“Really? I bet the conspiracy theorists of the internet would have a great time with them.”
Arden ripped the photos in half and dropped them.
Sloan crouched to pick up the pieces. “I told you we have copies.” He looked up at her. “You didn’t know, did you? I saw it on your face.”
“There’s nothing to know. These are all lies.”
Sloan straightened up. His expression was almost sympathetic. “Your new friends don’t trust you with their secrets, Arden. But then, you don’t trust them with yours, do you? There’s no way you would have come down to meet me alone if you’d already told them everything.”
Arden blinked rapidly, hoping she wasn’t about to start crying. She stiffened her spine. “Is that all? You lured me down here to show me some blurry photos of something you claim is a dragon? If this is Grant’s ace in the hole, I’m not impressed.”
“Just one more thing.” He reached back into the truck and held out a phone. “Since you’re not answering your other one and I can’t be driving out here every time Grant has something to say to you—”
“Are you high?” She took it with two fingers as if it was contaminated. “Is this a flip phone? I didn’t even know they made these anymore.”
“I told Grant you’d be more likely to accept it if you knew we couldn’t install a tracking app on it,” Sloan said wryly. “It’s got his number and mine programmed in. When you’re ready to set up a meet—”
“Which I never will be, so you may as well take it back.”
“—call us. But I wouldn’t wait forever. As you know, Grant isn’t a patient man.” Sloan’s lip curled a little as he said this; Arden knew he had been on the receiving end of Grant’s tirades as often as she had.
It occurred to her that it might be worth following up on that. “Sloan, you can’t possibly enjoy being Grant’s errand boy. You know why I don’t want to come back.”
“Yeah, but are you really better off living in the woods like this? Come on, just take the deal he’s offering. He’ll buy you a nice house somewhere, and you can spend most of your time there and show up a few times a year for photo ops.”
“If you think I’d ever want that,” Arden said quietly, “then you never knew me, Sloan, and I never knew you, either.”
She turned her back on him and walked away. Her shoulders felt like they were up around her ears. She was fully expecting him to do something—chase her, try to grab her.
Instead, he called after her, “Don’t wait too long, Arden. He’s not going to sit on these forever. I’d say you have a week, maybe less, to say your goodbyes to those people you call friends.”
Arden didn’t answer. She marched back up the road into the woods, and it wasn’t until she was out of sight of Sloan that she finally let the tears spill.
They were tears of anger more than anything.
How dare Grant, how dare he! And underneath it all was hurt: she could understand why Baz and his friends hadn’t told her the truth, and it wasn’t like she had a leg to stand on with everything she was keeping from them, but it was still a reminder that as much as she cared for Baz, she remained an outsider among them.
She stopped at the realization that she was still holding the phone. Arden wound up a throw and hurled it into the woods as hard as she could. It vanished among the leaves and the tree trunks.
Choke on that, Grant.
As she stood still, getting herself together, she became aware of the sounds of the forest. An engine noise on the highway was probably Sloan driving away. It was so very quiet here, and in that hush, the snap of a twig breaking in the woods made her jump; it seemed as loud as a gunshot.
“Hello? Who’s there?” Arden turned and looked in that direction. For an instant she thought she saw something move in the woods, a dark shadow ghosting between two trees. And then she had to wonder if she’d imagined it.
She began walking swiftly again, glancing over her shoulder now and then.
There were wild animals out here, as well as the forest shifter clans.
Now that she was looking for it, she kept getting the feeling that someone was following her, but she couldn’t put her finger on whether that was real, or just her paranoia.
Nothing erupted out of the woods at her, and after speed-walking for a few minutes, she stepped in a mud puddle that reminded her to watch where she was putting her feet.
She picked her way through the mildly flooded area around the creek culvert, and by that time she was past that, she had begun to relax.
Maybe it was just paranoia, after all.
One thing she did know for sure. Sloan and Grant were right about one thing if nothing else. She was running, and she was hiding, and it was time to stop doing both. Especially with the people she wanted to trust her more than anyone else in the world.
It’s time to have it out. All our secrets in the open.