Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(32)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“That’s where the next attack happens,” Callum said. “You won’t get there in time to stop it.”

“But if we move quickly,” I said, “she might still be in the area when we get there.”

Maddy wouldn’t stay in the immediate area—she was too smart for that, but if she was hiding out in the mountains, she might retreat to the place I’d seen in the dream. Assuming it was close by, we might be able to put two and two together and find it.

Find her.

“Be careful, Bryn. Things could get bad, and I’d not have you dying, not for this, not now.”

“Don’t worry,” I said reflexively. “Rumor has it I’m hard to kill.”

For the first time in memory, I hung up the phone on him first. There was something Callum wasn’t telling me—

probably lots of somethings. That was nothing new, but this time, I couldn’t tell whether this was just another stage of the Let Her Make Her Own Mistakes plan in which he seemed to revel, or if there was another reason for keeping me in the dark.

If my knowing something would cause me to act differently than I otherwise would have, and if that difference led to an undesirable future, Callum wouldn’t bat an eye at keeping things to himself—even if those were things I wanted—and maybe even needed—to know.

Then again, I hadn’t exactly told him that Maddy was pregnant.

“This is my cue to leave.” Archer kept his distance and very wisely did not put a hand on my shoulder this time. “I was happy to help, but I gave up danger for Lent.”

“It’s August,” I told him.

“Global warming,” he replied, without missing a beat.

“Fine,” I said. “Go.” I didn’t even watch him leave. Instead, I turned my attention back to the others.

“We’re going north,” I said. “Weapon up.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

WINCHESTER, IDAHO, WAS A TWO-BIT TOWN COVERED in dirt. Winchester, Montana, wasn’t much better. The two sat nestled beside each other in the middle of a pile of rocks that looked less like a mountain than an environmental death trap.

“Ski resort?” I muttered. “Yeah, right. And I’m Molly Ringwald.”

In the silence that followed my words, I felt Devon’s absence like a missing piece of my own body. I wasn’t sure how he would have replied to my sarcastic statement, but I was almost certain it would have involved some variation on the phrase pretty in pink.

Getting to Winchester hadn’t been easy—especially since we didn’t have the option of entering from the west. The Montana side of Winchester wasn’t exactly accessible by car—not if you didn’t want to risk blowing a couple of tires, at least. Since we couldn’t risk trespassing on Shadow Bluff territory, that left us traversing the last few miles by foot.

Chase and Lake could have made the distance in short time, but Caroline, Jed, and I were stuck with “slow and steady,” and when we finally made our way to the edges of “town,” it was already abuzz with news of the body that had been found, right outside the Bait & Tackle. They were calling it an animal attack, but I knew better.

Most animals didn’t play with a corpse and then leave it in the middle of Main Street, like a present for the masses. Then again, most werewolves didn’t, either.

“Victim’s a teenage girl, and she wasn’t killed here.” Caroline’s voice was quiet enough that if she hadn’t been standing right next to me, I wouldn’t have heard it. Still, talking about this in the light of day, out where anyone could hear us, didn’t seem like the best idea in the world. “The blood’s not right,” she murmured, “and the body …”

We were standing far enough away that my eyes couldn’t make out the details, but Caroline had incredible long-distance vision. The same thing that let her hit a target a football field away meant that even from our vantage point, a block away, she could still make out the details of the scene.

Unlike in bigger cities, there was no police tape here. Just a sheriff, a couple of deputies, and an off-white sheet that someone used to cover the body.

Badly.

“I’m starting to think our killer wants to get caught.” Jed’s voice was just as low as Caroline’s. “You all got any reason to believe that’s true?”

I thought back to the dream Maddy and I had shared. She’d been quiet, self-contained, maybe a little unhinged, with the way she’d insisted that she hadn’t done anything and immediately gone on to qualify that she hadn’t meant to.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if she’s the one who did this, or why she’d choose to do it like this.”

The one thing I was sure about was that if Maddy was killing, it wasn’t because she wanted to. It was because she couldn’t stop.

“It’s like a hound,” Lake said, “dropping a dead bird on your front porch and expecting you to be pleased.”

From the way they were talking, you would have thought that Maddy did this—all of this—for me.

That thought never left my mind—not as we made our way to the lone Winchester gas station and not as Jed gave our cover story, which involved fly-fishing, family bonding, a very bad sense of direction, and a car running out of gas. The possibility that Maddy had killed to get my attention was there as I listened to the loud whispers of the town folk, fascination warring with horror in their tones.

“I reckon it was a bear. Strange that it would come this far into town, but the Sutton boys have been at their old tricks again—probably led it straight to us.”

“Those Suttons are a menace. And that poor Johnson girl. First, her daddy kills her mama, and now this. Earl and Betsy must be taking it hard.”

I didn’t get to find out who Earl and Betsy were, because at that exact moment, I noticed a change in the pack-bond. Across the room, Chase stiffened, his nostrils flaring outward, his fingertips curling slightly inward, like claws.

“—just coming home from work, and now she’s gone. Funeral won’t be open casket, that’s for sure—”

Beside Chase, Lake paused, too. They smelled something.

Someone.

Making my way out to the front of the gas station, I scanned the streets for Maddy. Surely, she wouldn’t have come back here. Surely, she wouldn’t have stayed so close to a kill.

I smell … I smell …, Chase whispered the words straight into my mind.