Red (17 page)

“
We’re taking you to the
hospital.” He was already up, grabbing his keys.

“
Dad that’s completely
unnecessary. Really. It’s just bruising. Seriously, I
walked
all the way home from the site. If something was seriously wrong, I
wouldn’t have been able to do that. It’s just bruised. I’ll be sore
for a few days.”

He grunted. “We’ll let it go until tomorrow,
then reassess. Where’s your car?”

I told him where I’d left it.

“
I’ll call for a tow.
Finish cleaning up.”

I’d familiarized myself with all my visible
scrapes and bruises by the time he came back. I was afraid of what
I was going to see when I undressed and checked my back in the
mirror.

“
I’m gonna meet Jim up at
the car. Will you be okay here for a little while?”

It was such an uncharacteristic thing for
him to ask. Multiple sarcastic replies sprang to mind, but instead
I said, “Yeah. I’ll be fine. I think I’m gonna go up and have a
bath. Clean up. Then take some aspirin and go to bed early.”

“
I’ll check in when I get
back.”

Not until he’d walked out the door, cranked
the truck and pulled out of the driveway did I budge from the
table. Now that the adrenaline rush was wearing off, the pain was
coming back, and along with it a vicious headache, so I moved a lot
slower as I finished cleaning the floor properly and packing up the
First Aid kit. Once I was satisfied that all traces of the wolf
were gone, I dumped some detergent and Oxiclean into the washer and
started the load. I thought about adding what I was wearing to the
mix, but I wasn’t even sure yet if it was salvageable.

Upstairs I stripped out of my clothes and
swiveled in front of the bathroom mirror.

“
Holy shit.”

The deep purple bruise ran in a diagonal
stripe from my right shoulder down to my hip. It was nearly five
inches across in places. It was a miracle my spine hadn’t been
broken on impact. The skin of my back was abraded from the bark of
the tree, and my t-shirt was ripped in several spots. Not
salvageable then. I was missing the top layer of skin from much of
my right arm and leg, as if I’d skidded along the ground. Maybe I
had. Maybe that’s what had slowed my impact enough to save me. I
couldn’t remember.

I stepped into the shower to wash off the
ground in dirt as best I could. The immediate sting of water and
soap made me grit my teeth and whimper, but it cleared my head
enough to think again.

Someone had tried to run me down.
Deliberately. He’d sped up and changed lanes. But he hadn’t made
it. Despite the relatively short distance between us, he hadn’t
actually hit me. I didn’t know what kind of truck it was, but an
engine that big should have been able to make up the distance. So
why hadn’t he? Sure, part of it was that the wolf had knocked me
out of the way, but I should never have been able to make it to the
end of the pass in the first place. So if the driver hadn’t
intended to kill me, what purpose would nearly running me down
serve? Some kind of sick joke? Let’s terrify the lone walker for
kicks. Or maybe . . . maybe it had been more personal. Maybe it was
to see exactly how fast I could go.

A werewolf should be able to outrun a
car.

I wanted to dismiss the thought immediately
but forced myself to think it through.

My car had been running totally
fine
until this evening. I’d been away from the lab all day. Somebody
could have messed with it, fixed it so that I’d break down on the
way home. Which would mean that someone knew my schedule, my route.
I’d been on edge for weeks now, feeling like someone was watching
me, following me. I’d been sure I was just crazy. But just because
you’re paranoid doesn’t mean no one’s after you.

And just because you get attacked doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re the target. What if Rich’s kidnapping
hadn’t really been about him at all? That whole scene had just been
bizarre. Awful, but so apparently
random
. If he’d fallen
prey to some true nut job, wouldn’t the guy have killed him? Why
trap him and leave him there with all the animal blood and gore
unless you knew something else was supposed to be out there?
Something for which such a set up should be the perfect bait. I was
later than all my predecessors in my change. If I’d already
shifted, almost certainly I would have been compromised and
revealed myself.

Maybe there was no pattern. Maybe
independently it all meant nothing. But taken together I couldn’t
help but consider the possibility—what if a hunter had found
me?

The thought made me go cold, despite the
scalding water.

According to the journals, there hadn’t been
a hunter involved in three generations. But what if the hunters
hadn’t actually disappeared or lost track of us? What if they’d
just gotten smarter and more subtle about how they went about the
whole process? I mean, they’d have to, right? Forensics had gotten
way better over the last several decades. They’d have to be a lot
more careful about killing to avoid getting caught.

But how the hell could he have tracked me
down? Everything about our lives since we got the letter had been
about staying below the radar. We changed our names. We moved. I
gave up friends, hobbies, a life. I avoided the internet. I did
nothing
to draw attention. The entire point was to avoid
being found. Had all this hell been for nothing?

I was changing anyway. I’d long ago resigned
myself to the fact that if it happened, I would have the strength
to take myself out of the equation before I could hurt someone. To
end the line with me, so no one else had to go through the
nightmare. I’d just always thought it would be on my terms, my
schedule.

I snapped the towel off the rack.

Damn if I was going to let a hunter decide
it for me.

If this was all some kind of game intended
to draw me out and verify that I was a werewolf, the hunter was
going to be sorely disappointed. So far I hadn’t reacted the way he
expected. Surely that bought me some time.

But time for what? To wait around for the
next attempt on my life? That was hardly practical. It could come
at any time, in any form. What if the next time I wasn’t alone? Who
else might be endangered just by being near me? Dad? Sawyer? The
thought of either of them being hurt made me nauseous. I wasn’t
willing to risk anyone’s life but my own.

As I looked in the mirror I noticed with
fascinated horror that the abrasions on my arm were already half
healed. The change was coming. Sooner or later, the hunter would
hit upon something that would confirm his suspicions. And he would
try to kill me for real.

Now was not the time to stay passive and
quiet.

I had to leave.

The contingency plan was in place. Had been
for months. I just hadn’t honestly expected to have to use it.
Certainly it’s not what Dad would expect me to do with all the
training he’d put me through. For him, I think that was more about
vicariously saving Mom or something. We never talked about it. He’d
be pissed if he knew I’d been squirreling supplies away for this
long. But he taught me to be prepared for anything. He couldn’t be
mad that I’d taken him seriously.

I’d need a day or two to put things in
place. Figure out how to tell Dad. Or not. No matter what we’d
prepared for, I didn’t think he was actually ready to let me go. So
maybe a letter explaining things would be better. Otherwise he’d
try to stop me. Or come with me. And the whole point of this was to
draw the hunter away from him. It was my turn to protect him.

I had to say goodbye to Sawyer. There was an
ache under my breastbone at the thought. He’d become so important
to me so fast. We were just friends—I’d known that’s all we could
ever be. But after this morning, I’d let myself entertain the idea
that we could be more. That just made the whole thing worse,
probably for both of us. He wouldn’t understand. He’d think he
scared me off with what he’d said. What he didn’t know was how
lucky I was to have had him in
my
life. Even if it was just
for a few weeks, he made me feel normal for the first time in four
years. But I had to go. I couldn’t possibly put him in a position
to lose someone else, even just a friend, the way he’d lost his
mother.

There was a soft knock on my door.
“Ellie?”

Dad stuck his head in. I could just make out
his outline silhouetted by the hall light.

“
Yeah?”

“
We got your car. I had it
towed to the garage. Jim’s gonna take a look at it tomorrow, figure
out what went wrong.”

“
Okay. Thanks.”

He hesitated. “Are you okay?”

No, I was most definitely not okay. No
amount of training could prepare me for what I was going to do. But
it would give me a fighting chance, and that was more than my
ancestors got. I had to make the most of it.

“
I’m fine, Dad. I’ll see
you in the morning.”

~*~

Elodie

“
Bleach?” Sheriff Beasley’s
caterpillar eyebrows lifted, creating a whole different set of
wrinkles in his weathered face.

“
Yes, sir,” said Jim. “See,
it accelerates the rust process in the gas tank, and in an older
car like hers, it added to years of normal wear, so that the rust
particles gunk up the engine and make it stop. The engine’s
probably toast, and the gas tank will definitely have to be
replaced.”

“
How long would this
process take?”

“
Usually a few days, but in
a car that old, hours.”

Sheriff Beasley nodded at that. “So the
bleach could’ve been added sometime between yesterday morning and,
say, lunchtime?”

“
Probably,” agreed
Jim.

The sheriff turned his attention to me. “Is
there anybody you can think of who might want to prank you?”

Before I could respond, Dad interrupted.
“Someone deliberately sabotaged my daughter’s car and then nearly
ran her down.” He was barely keeping it together. His hands were
curled, white knuckled around the edge of the sheriff’s desk and
his voice shook with the effort not to shout.

“
Now hold on Nate, let’s
not jump to conclusions.” Sheriff Beasley looked back at me. “How
about it, Elodie? Is there anybody who might want to . . .
retaliate against you by sabotaging your car?”

I froze and hoped my eyes weren’t bugging
out of my head. The sheriff knew about my run-in with Amber. And
judging by the look on his face, he knew I knew he knew.

“
Don’t be ridiculous,” said
Dad. “My daughter isn’t the type to get into fights or piss people
off enough to do something like
this.
”

Had Amber filed charges? Was this the part
where my dad finally found out that I broke protocol and stood up
for myself in a totally excessive manner? I looked at the sheriff,
begging him with my eyes not to rat me out. His expression seemed
to say,
Do you want to tell him, or should I?

Shit.
I swallowed.

“
There’s this girl at
school,” I began.

I felt Dad’s gaze swivel toward me and knew
I was getting The Look. My hand fisted around the scrap of Sawyer’s
t-shirt in my hoodie pocket. I could get through this.

“
She’s never liked me. I
don’t know why.” Truth. “The guy she likes was hitting on me
earlier this summer, and she didn’t like it.”
Understatement.

Damn, Dad. Turn down the laser
vision,
I thought. I could practically feel his eyes searing my
face.

“
I wasn’t interested, and I
blew him off, but she didn’t care much about that. She backed over
my bike in the parking lot of Hansen’s.”

“
You didn’t report it,”
said the sheriff.

“
It was a bike,” I
shrugged. “I figured she would consider that payback and be done
with it.”

“
But she wasn’t,” said the
sheriff.

“
She seems to think that my
saving his life means I’m actually interested in him.”

“
You mean Rich
Phillips.”

Surely I was getting a pattern burned into
my cheek as hard as Dad was staring. My nose flared as I caught the
scent of his anger. So. Not. Good.

“
I’d have gone on the
search no matter who was missing. You know that. Rich might be an
arrogant jerk, but he didn’t deserve what was done to
him.”

“
Let me get this straight,”
Dad began. “You’re telling me that some girl poured bleach in your
gas tank, destroying your car, because of some guy?”

“
It’s a possibility,” I
admitted. I glanced up at Sheriff Beasley, waiting to see if he was
going to make me finish it. He was. Damn it. “I kind of got into a
tussle with her yesterday morning.”

“
You what?” On no. That
low, careful enunciation was never ever good.

“
She was provoked according
to Bob Hansen. Apparently this young lady has been harassing your
daughter for a long time.”

The toes of my shoes were suddenly very
interesting.

“
Elodie?” demanded Dad. “Is
this true?”

I bobbed my head once.

“
How long?”

“
Since eighth grade,” I
mumbled.

“
You’ve managed to avoid
getting into a fight with her for this long. What did she say to
provoke you?” Dad asked.

I shook my head. No way did I want to get
into this.

“
Elodie.”

Damn it. He had to pull out the Don’t You
Dare Refuse To Answer Me Parent tone.