Red (35 page)

“
Four days ago my father
and I had a fight.”

“
About what?” asked
Beasley.

“
What do you think?” she
asked, injecting just the right amount of irritated teenager in her
voice. “It was a continuation of the verbal butt whipping he
started to give me in your office. He wasn’t inclined to get over
it that quickly.”

The sheriff inclined his head in
acknowledgment.

“
I was angry, so I packed a
bag and left.”

“
Running away,” he
clarified.

“
Getting some space,” she
corrected. “I figured after a few days away, he’d realize I’m not a
child he can control anymore.”

“
Why the park?”

“
As you are well aware, my
car had been sabotaged. I needed to get away on foot. The park is
right out my back door, so it seemed the best option.”

“
Even after someone nearly
ran you down.”

“
I thought that was Amber.
Or someone with Amber. And she’s got about the same amount of
survival skills as a two year old. She’d never come after me there.
I didn’t think I was in any real danger or I’d never have
gone.”

“
So you entered the park
behind your house. What happened then?” His eyes flicked to me,
shrewd and questioning. “Did you have plans to meet Mr.
McGrath?”

Ah, he’d asked the wrong question.

“
No. I just hiked in to do
some camping. I didn’t know I was being followed.” She fell to
silence, closing her eyes as if remembering her ordeal. A shudder
ran the length of her body and she pressed her face to my shoulder.
Maybe she was remembering. I curled my arm tighter around her
shoulders.

“
What happened next?”
Beasley prompted.

Fast forward
, I thought.

But before she could continue, a set of
running footsteps came pounding down the hall.

My father skidded to a halt in the doorway.
He was breathing hard, his hair in disarray, his eyes far more gold
than green. I could smell the fear on him.

“
Sir, this is a private—”
began one of the deputies.

“
That’s my son,” Dad
snapped. “Sawyer, are you okay?” There was a whip of temper in his
voice, but I recognized the desperation beneath. Only then did I
realize what he’d probably been going through since I
left.

“
I’m fine,” I said. I
leaned closer to Elodie. “We’re both fine. Sorry I worried you.” As
apologies went, it was about fifty miles shy of what was called
for, but with our current audience, this was as good as it was
gonna get for now.

He released a breath on a long exhale and
nodded.

“
If we can proceed?” said
Sheriff Beasley.

Elodie took a deep breath. “Nothing happened
the first night. But the next day, I ran into Dr. Everett.”

“
You didn’t think that
strange?”

“
I’ve been interning for
Dr. McGrath and Dr. Everett. We’ve been out in the park all summer,
doing analysis on the feasibility of reintroducing red wolves into
the wild here. He said he was doing a prey density analysis in that
sector. He wouldn’t be the first scientist to work on the
weekends.”

“
Did you feel
threatened?”

“
No. No, I didn’t suspect a
thing.” Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “That’s what they
always say when reporters interview the neighbors of serial
killers. ‘He seemed like such a normal guy.’”

Dad had gone very still, very pale in the
door as he listened to her account.

Elodie took another breath and continued.
“He let me go at that point. Said he’d see me at work next week. It
was hours later before I realized I was being followed. I thought I
was just being paranoid. Until he tried to shoot me.” Her voice
broke and her hand dug into my arm, her scent spiking to fear.

“
It’s okay,” I murmured.
“I’m right here.”

One of the deputies handed her a glass of
water. She sipped and set it to the side.

“
Dr. Everett shot at you,”
prompted Beasley.

“
Tranquilizer darts. I got
lucky when it hit the padded strap of my pack.”

“
Did you know it was Dr.
Everett?”

“
No, and I wasn’t sticking
around to find out. I ran.”

“
Why didn’t you try to get
out of the park, come for help?”

She glared at him. “I’m sorry, in the
process of running away, I kind of lost my direction. Getting away
from the psycho with the gun was a slightly higher priority. I lost
him, but I couldn’t find my way back.”

The lie smelled bitter on her skin.

“
I found a cave and hid.
And I found this.” She pulled some pink, girly hair thing out of
her pocket. “It’s Molly’s.”

“
Then what
happened?”

“
Well, this is supposition
on my part, but he went for the only person who’d be able to track
me. My father. It was all under the guise of being part of the
search and rescue team.”

“
So your father is the one
who tracked you down.”

“
He is the one who trained
me, after all,” she said. “Dr. Everett shot us both with
tranquilizer darts right after they found me.” Elodie rubbed a hand
against her neck, though the puncture wound had already healed. “I
don’t know where he took us or how long I was out. The next thing I
remember was waking up in the woods tied up next to his
campfire.”

“
Did he say anything about
why he took you? What he was planning on doing with
you?”

“
He wanted to finish what
he’d started with Rich and Molly before they’d escaped. Presumably
that means he planned to wound us and then watch while we were
eaten alive by local predators. I really wasn’t in a chatty frame
of mind, Sheriff.”

“
And how did you
escape?”

This was the part where I jumped in. “I
found them. I’d seen Patrick grabbing some tranq guns and extra
darts after hours. It was weird behavior, so I followed him. I kept
up for a while, but then I lost him, and got lost myself.” I did my
best to look embarrassed by that.

“
Then I stumbled across a
radio. One of the ones the rescue team uses. I picked it up and I
was standing there thinking about whether or not I was over my head
and should call for someone to get the hell out of the woods, or if
I still had any hope of finding my own way back. But then I heard
radio chatter about Dr. Everett and Mr. Rose searching for Elodie
and what direction they were headed. Well, I
was
a Boy
Scout, so I start started heading that way and just hoped I wasn’t
going in the opposite direction. I mean, I still didn’t know what
was going on with Dr. Everett, but finding out that there was a
search underway for Elodie, I wanted to find them and help. I know
I should have used the radio,” I looked down and scuffed my foot on
the floor, trying to look sheepish, “but I wanted to help, not use
up the rescue team’s resources looking for me, too, and then get
sent home.

“
Anyway, it was probably
more dumb luck than anything that I got anywhere near them. It was
smoke that eventually led me to their campsite, and more dumb luck
that I was too tired to call out and actually got a look at the
situation before giving myself away.”

I outlined the fight with as much accuracy
as possible, leaving out the part about Elodie and me being fanged
and furry, until it came to the end. “He was waving the knife at
us, trying to keep us back, and he slipped and went over the
cliff.” This was the really iffy part. “I don’t know if the fall
would have killed him or not, but he fell on his own knife.”

Before search and rescue had arrived, we’d
tossed Patrick’s body over the side, staging things to look like
he’d landed on the knife. It was the best we could come up with on
the spot. If anybody decided to do some serious forensic analysis
of the scene or the body, we had no way to explain the reality.

“
Then we radioed for help.
You know the rest,” said Elodie.

“
There were bite marks on
the corpse,” said Beasley.

My stomach twisted into a knot. We hadn’t
been able to come up with an explanation for this. Had hoped they
wouldn’t ask.

“
Bite marks?” asked
Elodie.

“
Looks like an animal or
something. On his arm and shoulder.”

Elodie just looked at him with one brow
raised in question. “Would you like to take impressions of
my
teeth, Sheriff?”

“
You don’t know what bit
him?”

“
I don’t know what may have
decided to investigate the body after we left. We didn’t stick
around to guard it.”

Beasley still looked somewhat skeptical, as
if he knew something we were saying didn’t quite add up, but he
couldn’t put his finger on what. He opened his mouth to ask
something else, but my father interrupted, stepping fully into the
room.

“
They’ve given you their
statements, Sheriff. It’s very late. They both need some rest.
You’re done here.”

I felt the full weight of an alpha behind
the order. Apparently so did Beasley because he rounded up his
people to go.

As he was walking out, I said, “If you
search Patrick’s truck, you might find evidence that he transported
Rich and Molly.”

“
I’ll get my people on it.
In the meantime, y’all don’t leave town.”

The door shut behind him and we were left
alone with my dad. We all listened as the pack of footsteps receded
down the hall. Then Elodie slumped, exhaustion taking its toll.

“
So how much of that story
was actually true?” Dad asked.

When she lifted her head, her eyes glowed
gold. “The part about Patrick hunting me like an animal and Sawyer
saving my life. Repeatedly.”

Dad actually took a step back. He tilted his
head, got a whiff of her new scent beyond the antiseptic. His brow
furrowed. “You two have a lot of explaining to do. Not the least of
which,” he said, turning fully to me, “is explaining why you didn’t
come to me when you were in trouble.”

“
I wouldn’t let him.
Patrick and those who came before him have been after my family for
a long, long time. I felt like it was my fight, and my fight alone.
My bullheadedness put Sawyer in danger, though, and I’m sorry for
that. He was nearly killed because of me.”

I wanted to snap at her, tell her she didn’t
have anything to be sorry for. But that didn’t seem like the right
thing, so I just squeezed her hand.

Dad continued to study her. “Because of you?
I brought that maniac to you. And my misplaced trust put my son
and
his mate in danger.”

We both flinched, surprised, though I
probably shouldn’t have been.

Dad reached out and took Elodie’s other
hand. Patted it. “By God I want answers out of you two, but I can
wait until you’ve had some rest. No more secrets,” he said, more
strongly, pointing his finger at me and giving me the alpha glare.
For some reason, it didn’t seem as potent as it usually was, and it
didn’t make me angry.

“
Yeah, sure
Dad.”

“
Right now I’m just glad
you’re okay. I wish you’d come to me for help, but you handled
things. You took care of your mate. I’m proud of you,
son.”

I swallowed, unable to think of a reply. We
stood on opposite sides of Elodie and stared at each other for a
long moment before he turned on his heel. “I’ll go talk to your
father and see if he’ll consent to letting me check you out to come
home with us. You’ll rest better outside a hospital.” Then he
walked out.

Elodie and I were silent for a moment.

“
Well, that was intense,” I
said.

“
But it was good, right?”
She squeezed my hand. “You two are good?”

“
Yeah, it’s all good.” And
I was surprised to find that I actually meant it.

Epilogue

Elodie

The shrill scream of the bell reached into
my brain like a claw. Closing my eyes, I dropped my head forward,
wishing the cold kiss of metal was soothing to the ache. All around
me lockers slammed, footsteps shuffled and pounded down the
industrial tile halls in a mass exodus stampede. The sounds
ricocheted through me like bullets. I still couldn’t control the
super hearing on my own.

Happy first day of senior year.

“
Elodie?”

I lifted my head to find Rich Phillips about
two feet away. He leaned awkwardly against the bank of lockers,
less a product of some new lack of confidence than to the permanent
damage to his leg. He wore long pants, despite the August heat that
our school’s air conditioner couldn’t combat. A backpack was slung
over one shoulder, and his fingers moved restlessly over the strap
in a vaguely familiar gesture I finally realized as guitar chords.
He still wore that over-powering deodorant to cover the
testosterone boy reek, but this time it was laced with an
under-current of nerves.

I made Rich Phillips nervous?

“
Hey,” I said.

He started to say something and seemed to
change his mind in midstream. “You look . . . different.”

I glanced down at the red tank and khaki
shorts. Yeah, I was wearing color. An outfit that couldn’t double
as military fatigues. I even had on
jewelry
—a set of silver
crescent moon earrings and matching necklace from Sawyer. Rich
wasn’t the first person to give me a second look today, but he was
the first person who’d mentioned it.