“Trust issues. I have them. However, in this case, I also have my reasons.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel.
“I wonder if I should go back and apologize,” she mused. She really hadn’t given Dash any specific reason to trust her. She was asking him to take a lot on faith.
“Probably,” he said.
“You think?” she said, surprised. Was she actually having a rational conversation with Pyotr? Will wonders never cease, she thought.
“Yes. However, unfortunately, that’s not going to be an option.” His voice had suddenly taken on a tone of menace.
“What?” Isadora said, startled. Suddenly, she didn’t know why, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She slammed on the brakes and reached for her car door.
Then she felt the sharp jab of a needle in her arm, and suddenly the world went all rippley.
“You want me to identify Zador Horvath for you?” he said with a sneer, as she fell into darkness. “My pleasure. I’m Zador Horvath, pleased to meet you.”
* * *
Dash stood on the front porch, cursing silently to himself. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed Isadora so hard. It just stung that she still kept him at arm’s length.
Two of Steele’s police officers were sitting on a porch swing eating breakfast. Because Roxanne was an anomaly, a human who could give birth to a shifter, they were especially worried that she might be a target. There were half a dozen more men who lived in town who’d slept in the living room on cots, in case there were any kind of attempt to abduct her and Steele’s son.
The front door banged open. “Everything okay?” Steele walked out onto the porch, holding his mug of steaming coffee.
“Yeah, fine. Minor spat with Isadora,” Dash said glumly.
“She’s a hellcat, all right.” Steele shook his head. “You’ll have your hands full with that one.”
“She may not come back,” Dash said grimly. He realized that the thought of her never coming back cut him deeply. Was he actually thinking of trying to make things work with her? Forever?
He thought about a future without Isadora, and it seemed bleak and gray. Safe, predictable, and not worth living.
“She’ll come back.” Steele sounded more confident than Dash felt. “I see the way that she looks at you.”
Dash raised an eyebrow. “Really? How does she look at me?”
“Like a cat looking at a bowl of cream. She’s always liked you. Why do you think she only misbehaved when you were on duty?”
Dash shrugged, trying to look indifferent, but he was secretly pleased. His lynx liked him. Every couple got in arguments from time to time; he could work through this. “You could be right. Anyway, no point in sitting around and brooding on it. What’s on the agenda for today?”
“We’re pretty much just keeping watch. All of my men are on duty, pulling overtime, for now. We’ve got fire spotting towers that are manned by volunteers. They’ll radio us if they see anything suspicious.”
“What about the Gunds?” Dash said. “They’re shifters, they could be a target. We don’t know what Bradwell and his men are after.”
“The Gunds are all staying on their property, except for Edvin and Axel, who share a room in town.”
“Wasn’t Edvin dating the mayor’s daughter, or something like that?”
“They’re engaged now. Speak of the devil,” Steele added, nodding towards their car, which was headed in their direction. Edvin pulled in and parked.
“What’s up?” Steele asked as Axel and Edvin strolled up, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but can I scent your truck?” Axel said to Dash, then glanced around. “Where is your truck?”
“Isadora drove off in it a few minutes ago. Why?” Dash asked, a feeling of alarm rippling through him.
Axel grimaced, rubbing his face with his hands. “There was a familiar scent that I smelled. It was bothering me yesterday. It reminded me of when I was held in the lab. There was a scientist who worked there sometimes. When I was walking by your truck, I thought I scented him, but then I thought, I must be crazy. He couldn’t be riding around in a truck with you. It’s been bothering me all night, though. If I could just scent it, I can put my mind at ease.”
“What did the scientist look like? And what was his name?” Dash demanded.
“They called him Dr. Smith, but it was like a joke, because clearly he was from some Eastern European country. His looks, let’s see, he was a Caucasian male probably in his fifties, with bad scarring on his face, mostly on one side.”
“No!” Dash howled, fur rippling on his face and fury raging through his body. “The man with us was named Pyotr, and he was a survivor of a similar laboratory in Korslovia – but he can’t be Korvath,” he said, turning to Steele. “He was a wolf shifter.”
“The man who worked in the lab – he smelled like a wolf shifter,” Axel said. “I always thought it was just from being so close to us all of the time, or maybe some treatment that he did on himself. I only saw him a couple of times, but I remember him.” His tone went grim and angry when he said that.
“Did you ever tell anyone that one of the scientists working at the lab smelled like a wolf shifter?” Dash asked.
Axel shook his head. “No. I didn’t like to talk about everything that happened there.”
Then he looked around. “The man you travelled with, where is he now? If I see him, I’ll know.”
“We were approaching Steele’s house but he ran off…when he saw all the people there.”
Axel stared at him. “You mean, when he saw me here. Because he knew I’d recognize him.”
Dash felt anger rippling through his body. Where was Pyotr now? Isadora was out there, alone.
“Steele, I need to borrow your car.”
Steele pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Let’s go.” As he hurried towards his car, he called out to the two police officers on the porch swing. “Stay here and keep an eye on my family!”
“Check on Sally and Thomas and make sure they’re all right!” Dash yelled out to them.
“I’m coming too!” Axel said. “You might need backup.” He and Edvin jumped in his car.
“How could the scientist be a shifter?” Steele demanded, as they climbed into his patrol car.
Dash said. “Here’s what I think. Dr. Horvath finally succeeded in turning himself, at that lab in Korslovia, but then he was forced to blow up the lab and lost all his research. I think that’s how he convinced Bradwell that a human really could turn into a shifter – he used himself as proof. And he probably got that facial scarring when he destroyed the lab.”
“You said he was travelling around the country, living with Hobos,” Steele said. “Why would he do that?”
“It’s the perfect cover. Think about it. He wouldn’t have to explain why he didn’t belong to a pack. When he wasn’t working at the lab, he could travel, finding out where the local packs live, and tip off Bradwell so that he could snatch up shifters. He could live among shifters and study their habits, posing as one of them.”
As they drove, Dash looked around, worried. He didn’t see his pickup truck anywhere.
“Call her,” Steele suggested.
“She doesn’t have her phone with her any more.”
Steele’s phone rang, and he answered it as he drove. Dash looked out the window, scanning the streets as Dash talked.
“That was Officer Waterford. Sally’s gone too. Thomas is still there,” he said.
“Isadora left by herself. Sally wasn’t with her. I don’t like either of them being out without protection, with Korvath being so close.” His fangs descended, and the bones shifted under his skin. He just wanted to shift, and kill something. He rolled down his window and partially shifted, just his head, sniffing at the air to see if he could pick up Isadora’s scent. Nothing.
A few minutes later, Steele’s phone rang again.
“One of the fire spotters saw what he thinks is your truck, headed out of town.” Steele pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
Chapter Twelve
Isadora lay on the pickup truck bed as it jounced down a dirt road so bumpy that it made her teeth rattle. She’d awoken to find that she’d been hogtied hand and foot, her mouth duct taped, and a tarp pulled over her.
Ha. Zador was an amateur. She’d already chewed and clawed her way free.
Just as she was about to shift to lynx form and leap out of the pickup truck bed, the truck slowed to a halt, and the engine shut off. She tensed as she listened to Zador speaking to someone on a cell phone. He was still inside the truck.
“You’re going to have to send your men to come get me. No, I can not risk driving out of town. There is only one main road, I’d be too easy to spot. I’m just going to lay low here on this off road and wait for you. Don’t worry, I can handle the bitch. By the time you get here, I will know everything she knows.”
As he talked, she heard somebody scrambling into the pickup truck bed, and the tarp lifted. Sally slid under the tarp with her. She was spattered in dirt and mud.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded in a whisper. “Get out of here! Go!”