That had to have been Keely’s doing. Werewolves weren’t particular on the topic of dress, or lack thereof.
Lake’s imprint was light in the dirt, which told me she’d been running full speed, her feet barely touching the ground as she bolted. When the drive gave way to fields of grass, I followed the trajectory she’d been taking before until I hit a more densely wooded area. I found her clothes in shreds, scattered with the force of her forward momentum, her shotgun abandoned beside them.
Knowing what the torn tank top meant, I knelt to the ground and looked for confirmation. I didn’t have to look far.
Paw prints.
“She Shifted.”
The mild voice took me by surprise. I’d been so caught up in tracking Lake that I hadn’t noticed someone else tracking me.
Mitch had the grace not to mention just how easy that task had been. “Lake just needs to run it out for a bit. She’ll head for the mountains, always does. ’Bout halfway there, she’ll turn back.”
It was already getting dark outside.
“Don’t you worry about her, Bryn. I’ve never seen a girl for running like that one. For that matter, haven’t seen many wolves even half as fast. She’ll be back by sunrise. Always is.”
“Why’s she running?” I asked, slipping into the gentle cadence of Mitch’s ambling tone.
“Senate’s coming through,” Mitch commented, sounding for all the world like he was commenting on the weather. Storm’s comin’. It’ll pass.
“But what does the Senate meeting have to do with Lake?” I asked.
Mitch stared at my face, long and hard, taking measure of whatever he saw there before speaking again. “Nothin’ that I know of. I suspect they’ll be talking about this Rabid the two of you have been nosing around at all afternoon.”
And here I’d thought that getting away from Callum meant that I’d have some privacy—and the chance to get the drop on someone, every once in a while.
“Is Callum psychic?” The question slipped off my tongue before I’d even thought about asking it.
“Psychic?” Mitch repeated, biting back a smile that made me feel younger than I was. “Not a word you hear much in our world, Bryn.”
By some definitions, we were all psychic. Pack-bonds connected the Stone River wolves to each other, to their wives, and to me. I could speak to pack members without opening my mouth, and for the past two nights, Chase and I had shared dreams.
We’d pulled the image of a girl from the mind of the Rabid.
“Does Callum know that things are going to happen before they happen?” I asked, rephrasing the question in terms of specifics, as Ali’s question to me in the car floated back into my mind: How many times have you gotten the drop on Callum, Bryn? How many times has anyone?
“Callum’s got good instincts,” Mitch said.
“The kind of instincts that let him see the future?” All of a sudden, I had to know. How it worked. How much Callum knew.
If he’d done this to me on purpose.
“Let’s just say he has a knack for knowing what’s going to happen before it does and leave it at that.”
“A knack?” I snorted. “Like you have a knack for turning into a wolf?”
Mitch ignored my sarcasm. “Something like that.”
“Is it because he’s an alpha?”
“No.”
“Is it because he’s a Were?”
“No.” Mitch put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “It’s just a knack, Bryn. Some people have ’em. Most don’t.”
He made it sound so simple. So matter-of-fact that I wondered why it had never occurred to me before.
“Some people are fast. Some people are strong.” Mitch grinned. “Some people are just real easy to talk to.”
I recognized that grin and knew it meant something. He was teasing me. Real easy to talk to …
“Keely,” I said, my mind spinning. Lake and I had told her what we were doing without even meaning to. The peripheral male who’d warned us the other alphas were coming hadn’t spilled the beans about Callum’s reputed power until Keely had come over to pour my coffee, brushed her shoulder against his, and then, he couldn’t tell us everything we wanted to know fast enough.
No wonder Mitch had a human bartender, if that bartender had a knack for getting secrets out of anyone who passed through.
Knacks. Some people have them. Most don’t.
I saw the next question coming a mile off. I took my time asking it, because I didn’t want to sound as ridiculous as I had when I’d called Callum psychic. “Do I have one?”
Mitch shrugged. “You’d know that better than I would.”
I thought of fighting Devon. Of hiding under the sink. Of forcing my pack-bond onto Chase.
Of fighting back the Rabid in his head.
Was that something? Or was I just lucky and stubborn and everything that any human Marked by an alpha and raised by werewolves would have been?
For his part, Mitch reached out and patted my shoulder as if he were consoling me for all of the knacks I didn’t have. “Way I see it, Bryn, you’ve always been mighty scrappy.”
Scrappy? Scrappy?
Some people could see the future. Some people could loosen other people’s lips just by looking at them. And me?
I was scrappy.
Lucky me.
“Will the alphas stop in the restaurant on their way through?” I asked.
Mitch’s smile hardened. “Some will.”
“Will Keely … use her knack?” The phrasing sounded ridiculous, but I wasn’t sure how else to put it.
Mitch took my meaning and shook his head. “Keely’ll take tomorrow off. I’ll man the restaurant myself.”
I got the feeling he didn’t want any of the alphas to know about Keely or what she could do. Especially since the Wayfarer played host to some of their peripherals.
“And Lake?” I asked. I still didn’t understand why she was running or what exactly she was running from.
“Those alphas won’t see hide or hair of Lake, Bryn. She’ll stay far enough away, they won’t even smell her.”
There was something in his tone that made me think that if Lake hadn’t been inclined to stay away on her own, he’d have seen to it that she did. Given my own mixed feelings about the Senate, I understood the impulse, but not the hardness around Mitch’s eyes.
“Why?”
Mitch sighed, and I wondered if he’d tell me I asked too many questions. Finally, he looked down at the ground and then, as if his shoes had given him the answer, he turned back to me. “Some Weres, especially the dominant ones, get real funny around females, and Lake’s not a kid anymore.”