If they wanted to protect me, they could. They could be my backup; once we got Wilson into town, I’d even step back and leave the kill to someone else. But first, we had to get him into town, and this was our best chance to do it.
“How’s he going to know you’re there?” Lake asked finally. “We can’t exactly take out an ad.”
I glanced at Chase and thought of the way this Rabid had tracked us both, set us up, and moved in for the not-quite kill.
“How did he track us in the first place?” I asked, throwing out the rhetorical question. “Scent, genotype, Craigslist—I don’t care. Maybe he just has a knack for finding Resilients. And even if he doesn’t, at least one of those kids saw me in the woods. This guy’s a hunter, and I’d be very surprised if he didn’t already have my scent. He’ll come. But if we want to make doubly sure, I’d lay money on someone in town having his number.” As segregated as Ark Valley was, it still abided by the natural laws of small towns. Everyone had everyone’s phone number, if they had a phone. “I’ll go to the restaurant or the hardware store or wherever and ask whoever’s in charge to give Wilson a call, something along the lines of ‘There’s a girl here asking for you. She says her name is Bronwyn.’”
“That’ll do it,” Dev said. “Crankypants can’t possibly know that many Bronwyns.”
None of them were happy with the idea, but at this point, we didn’t have any other options. It hurt my ego to admit it, but I could do more to hurt the Rabid as bait than I ever would as a hunter. As long as he ended up dead, that was something I could live with. And as I looked at my friends and at Chase, one by one, they gave me their silent consent, even though I knew that if something happened to me and victory came at too high a cost, none of them could live with it.
“Look at the bright side, guys. He’s not going to kill me. Worse comes to worst, he’ll attack me, and I’ll Change.” The words hung in the air, but no one was comforted by my bravado. Not even me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“CAN I GET YOU ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE?”
My cup was still three-quarters full, and the waitress hadn’t bothered to bring the pot back with her, so I recognized a fact-finding mission when I saw one. Towns like Ark Valley and Alpine Creek didn’t get many visitors, and I was well acquainted with the expression in the waitress’s eyes: a particular mix of boredom, curiosity, and suspicion. She hadn’t hesitated when I’d asked her to call “Mr. Wilson,” immediately replying “The one who lives in the woods?” and letting loose with a sound somewhere between a hmmm and a harrumph, I couldn’t tell which.
“I’m good, thanks,” I said. She waited for a moment and then gave me a look, one I’d seen before on a variety of other faces, telling me that I was different and editorializing on that fact. Out of habit, I held the woman’s gaze, and she made that same hybrid sound a second time. She wanted to look away and couldn’t seem to bring herself to do it. Finally, I let her go, decreasing the intensity of my stare without ever taking my eyes from her face. She looked down, and I turned my attention back to my coffee: too bitter for my taste and so rich in smell that I couldn’t keep from believing that maybe the next sip wouldn’t taste quite so bad.
“Suit yourself,” the waitress mumbled, and I could almost hear the admonition—you’re an odd one, aren’t you?—in her tone. “Mr. Wilson said to tell you he’s on his way.” The emphasis on the Rabid’s name told me that I wasn’t the only one this woman saw as an outsider, and not for the first time, I wondered why humans seemed to trust their eyes more than their instincts when their gut said something was off.
Wilson wasn’t just odd. He was a psychopath, and he wasn’t human. And there I was, playing bait. I steadied my hands on the coffee cup and let the smell of java stave off the shard of fear that wanted to jab into my stomach and my side and the oldest, most instinctual part of my brain.
Did you guys get that? I asked silently, sending the thought out to the others in the hopes of keeping them from noticing the slight acceleration in my heartbeat. The Rabid’s on his way.
From the edges of town, Devon, Lake, and Chase replied in the affirmative. It was killing them to hold off, to leave me in this two-bit restaurant alone, but our target might not come if he knew I had backup, so they had to stay far enough away that he wouldn’t sense them until it was too late. Once the Rabid got here, I’d stall. Devon, Lake, and Chase would get into position, and then I’d let Wilson lead me outside. He’d feel them coming, but we were banking on the fact that once he saw me, once I was so close to being in his grasp, he wouldn’t be able to just walk away.
Protect.
Protect.
Protect.
My pack, as small as it was, wanted to come. They wanted to come now. Their wolves were fighting for control, gnashing their teeth, tearing their way to the surface.
Calm. Down, I told them, and with my words, they settled. Waiting. Soon, they would attack.
I sat there for five minutes, ten, fifteen, and two cups of coffee, before a man with brown hair and kind brown eyes slid into the booth across from me. In the corners of my mind, I felt Chase, Devon, and Lake release, sprinting toward us.
Five minutes.
I just had to stall for five minutes.
“You were looking for me, little one?”
I recognized his voice from Chase’s dreams—Change. Change back. Change. Change back—and it disturbed me that he’d called me “little one,” the same endearment Callum had used the night he’d saved me from this man’s jaws. It disturbed me even more that up close, Wilson didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a man, the monstrous features in my dreams—teeth smeared with blood, sparkling eyes—melding into something almost run-of-the-mill in person. He could have been Callum or Chase or the one I’d once called “Daddy.” He could have been Casey, installing a nanny cam in the twins’ bedroom.
The monster under my bed, the wolf stalking my nightmares, the person who’d changed the course of my entire life in one night—he looked human, and he wasn’t supposed to.
“You hurt me,” I said. This wasn’t how I’d planned to stall, but I was struggling to remember that this was part of a plan at all.
“Hurting you was never my intention,” the man said. “I wanted to give you something. A gift.” He paused. “I would have taken care of you.”