Thornhill

My foot hit something smooth and solid. I glanced at the floor and then crouched down.

“GoddamnitJason.” I breathed the words in a rush as I straightened, one hand still pressing the phone to my ear, the other holding a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

2

THERE WERE FIVE BARS WITHIN STUMBLING DISTANCE OF the motel, but in the end, I found Jason right back where I had started.

More or less.

We were in room eleven. He had made it as far as number seven before slumping to the pavement, bloody and battered, beer and whiskey riding his breath. He’d forgotten the room number. And his key.

That had been thirty minutes ago.

Now he leaned against the bathroom door frame, shirtless, blond hair still dripping from a dunk in the sink. Two cuts crossed his chest—just over his heart—like the X on a pirate’s map. There was a third gash on his upper arm. A broken bottle, he had promised. All three. Not claw marks.

I thought he needed stitches, but he had refused to go to the hospital.

He reached past me and set a bloodstained washcloth on the edge of the sink. “You can’t give me the silent treatment indefinitely.” The slur had left his words, but his voice was slow and cautious.

I stared at his tattoo in the mirror—the black dagger on his neck that marked him as an initiate in the largest anti-werewolf group in the country—before dragging my eyes upward.

Jason’s gaze was brilliant green and bloodshot.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” The words—the first I had spoken since he told me where he had gone— sliced my throat like razor blades.

“No.”

I glanced at the floor where his shirt lay in a crumpled heap. Torn and stained red, it was beyond saving. The cuts were bad, but they weren’t that bad. I’d had enough practice patching people up—my father and, more recently, Jason—to know that much.

“Not all of the blood is yours.” I closed my eyes and gripped the edge of the sink.

“It’s Tracker blood.” There was an undercurrent to Jason’s voice that was as dark as the stains on his shirt. “All of it. We ran into a fleabag and his reg girlfriend. He tried to throw a guy through a wall while she came at me with a busted bottle. Tiny, but fast.”

I tightened my hold on the sink, clutching it so hard that I cut off the circulation in my fingertips. “You could have been killed.” Another thought occurred to me. A group of Trackers didn’t just happen onto a werewolf by chance.

“They were hunting.” Hunting wolves. Hunting people like Kyle. “They went on a hunt and you went with them. Did you . . . did they . . .” I sucked in a deep breath. “What happened to the reg and the werewolf?”

“They got away. Both of them.” There was a faint rustle of denim and then Jason was behind me. I could feel the air he displaced and the heat radiating off his skin. If I turned my head, I’d smell the alcohol on his breath. “I wouldn’t have let them hurt her. The reg.”

“And the wolf?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It almost killed a man. . . .”

“A man who was hunting him.” Jason didn’t deny it. “What if it had been Kyle?”

“What if . . . ? Jesus, Mac. Kyle’s my best friend.”

I opened my eyes. I wanted to say I was sorry and I knew; instead, what came out was, “You promised to stay away from them.”

Jason held my gaze in the mirror. “The local Trackers are the best way to figure out where a wolf in Denver might go. You know that.”

I did know, but if Jason got sucked back into the Trackers, if they ever discovered the part he had played the night their leader had been killed . . .

I had almost lost him to them once.

“I didn’t have a choice, Mac. My father’s going to report the car stolen and Tess is going to report you missing—sooner rather than later. We’re running out of time to find him.”

“And the drinking?”

Jason was standing close enough that I felt him flinch. He reached for me, but I pushed past him and out of the bathroom.

I stopped when I was halfway to the motel room door. I wanted to storm off, but I’d have to come back here eventually. Jason was all I had. I crossed my arms and waited, half hoping, half dreading he would try to talk to me.

He didn’t.

The bathroom door clicked shut. A moment later, the shower clanked to life.

Kyle had once told me that I needed to have faith in people instead of expecting them to let me down. But putting my faith in Jason’s promises had almost gotten him killed.

I couldn’t lose anyone else. Not after Amy.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and punched in a number. A familiar, melodic voice answered on the third ring.

“I need a favor.”

The Denver Bus Center wasn’t hard to find. My hands tightened on the wheel as I pulled off the street and up a ramp marked Public Parking. After today, I would well and truly be on my own.

“I thought we were getting breakfast.” Jason flipped open the glove compartment and dug through a rat’s nest of paper and plastic.

“Lunch,” I corrected as I turned off the ramp. “It’s past noon. And we are.”

He paused his search just long enough to shoot me a skeptical look over the top of his shades. “Week-old sandwiches from a bus station vending machine wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“I’m surprised you want to eat at all, considering you felt too hungover to drive.” I bit my lip and backed Jason’s SUV into a space as he located a small bottle and popped two white tablets. “I just have to do something. You can wait here. I’ll crack a window.”

“Right. Because I’m a child or a puppy.” He followed me out of the car and downstairs.

The inside of the bus terminal seemed unnaturally dark and dingy in contrast to the bright morning outside. A tired-looking woman hauled a screaming toddler toward the restrooms while a junkie rocked back and forth on a bench. A few security guards wandered through the crowd, their yellow shirts the only spots of color.

“Middle America at its finest,” muttered Jason. The corners of his mouth twisted down as he watched a cleaning lady mop up a puddle of vomit. “Want to explain why we’re here?”

I pushed back the coins on the bracelet I wore—Amy’s bracelet—to peer at my watch. I hadn’t factored in traffic and we were a few minutes late.

“You can’t seriously think Kyle’s been hiding out in a hole like this.” Jason made it sound like we were standing on skid row. To someone as rich as he was, maybe the distinction didn’t seem that big.

I fingered the edge of a coin and swallowed. I had rehearsed what I would say all morning, but now that we were here, all my practiced words deserted me.

Before I could recapture them, the crowd shifted and someone squealed my name. I caught a split-second glimpse of dark skin and bright fabric before I was tackled by five feet and one inch of enthusiasm.

“Human ribs,” I gasped. “Can’t. Breathe. Se—re—na.”

A flicker of embarrassment crossed Serena Carson’s face as she released me. “Sorry. I forgot.” She raked a hand through her shoulder-length curls and scanned the crowd to see if anyone had noticed her minuscule slip. Serena was usually very good at hiding her condition. She had to be. Like Kyle, and thousands of other werewolves living underground, she’d be sent to a government rehabilitation camp if anyone found out she had lupine syndrome.