“I think I’m going to go to the restaurant and harass Lake,” I told Ali. “She’s waiting tables this afternoon, and I’d kind of like to see her in action.”
I didn’t mention that the action I most wanted to see Lake enact was the way she’d respond when I asked her if she had any weapons other than a shotgun. If she didn’t, she’d know where to find them and she’d take disturbing joy in doing so. I’d be Santa Claus, just for asking.
And while Lake requisitioned supplies, I’d track our Rabid. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew I’d do it, the same way I knew that Ali wouldn’t object to me going to talk to Lake.
“She doing okay?” Ali asked, transferring her maternal instincts from me to Lake.
“She’ll be fine until the alphas come back through, and then she’ll be fine again after that.”
If I could figure out where our prey was hiding, Lake wouldn’t have to stay inside when the alphas came back through Montana. We’d be well on our way to No-Man’s-Land by then.
The Wayfarer was nearly empty when I slid into a corner booth. Lake, notepad in hand, slid in across from me.
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking my order?” I asked.
“Bite me. And then you can tell me what’s wrong.” She paused. “Aren’t you supposed to be with …?”
She gestured elaborately, and I filled in the blank. Lake had known my plan for this morning. I’d promised to report back, and here I was.
“Been there. Done that. Didn’t go so well.”
Lake threw her notepad to the side, summarily ignoring the three other occupied tables in the restaurant. “Didn’t go so well as in you didn’t see anything, or didn’t go so well as in you didn’t like what you saw?”
“More like heard,” I corrected her. “But the second one.”
“The Rabid escaped again?” Lake guessed. “They have no idea where he is?”
“Oh, no,” I replied, my voice forcefully cheerful, because it was the only way I could keep from yelling. “Nothing like that.
Apparently, he has something the alphas want, so they’re not going to hunt him. They voted.”
“Voted?” Lake asked incredulously. Clearly, she couldn’t imagine Callum voting on anything, not when his word was, in her experience, pretty much law.
“Callum was in the minority. They outvoted him. Nothing he could do.”
Lies, lies, lies. He could have done something. If he’d wanted to.
“Sucks,” Lake opined. “So when are we leaving?”
She didn’t even have to ask what I intended to do now. She knew, and she was with me, the same way Chase was. Two teenage werewolves and one human girl against an enemy the pack had chosen not to cross.
This Rabid was going down if it killed me. I tried not to think about the fact that it probably would.
“We leave as soon as I figure out where we’re going,” I said, concentrating on what needed to be done, right here, right now. “In the meantime, can you rustle up some …?” I didn’t want to say the word weapons out loud, but Lake took my meaning.
“Supplies?” she asked, her eyes sparkling, but hard. “I might know where we could get some. Just let me tell Keely I’m out of here.”
I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Lake “telling” Keely anything—not when I knew that it was disturbingly easy to tell Keely way too much—but Lake couldn’t exactly take off without explanation. Not if we wanted to keep Ali and Mitch in the dark.
“Be right back,” Lake told me, heading for the bar.
“Excuse me,” a man—human—at a nearby table called. “Could I get a refill on my—?”
“Nope.” Lake didn’t even look for him as she zeroed in on Keely. I hung back, figuring that the less I spoke to the World’s Best Listener, the better.
For her part, Keely took one look at Lake and frowned. “Whatever it is, the answer is no.”
“But you don’t even know what the question is,” Lake said.
“I don’t have to. I know that look. That look is trouble.”
Lake wheedled. “I just need to cut out early today. Bryn needs my help.”
Keely blew a wisp of hair out of her face. “Fine, but you breathe a word to your daddy about me letting you out of here without a cross-examination, and you and I are going to have words. Clear?”
Lake smiled in response, and I added Keely to the list of people, including Ali and Mitch, who’d be ready to kill us the moment they figured out where we’d gone.
Five minutes later, Lake and I were outside and on our own.