Chapter 107

It wasn’t a normal fire,” Lucas whispered, his voice hollow. The minute I’d left the food mart, I called Declan. Together, we checked in on my brothers and got all of them to my house. Roan and Cade joined us, taking up a silent spot in the kitchen. Mom came, mostly because Lucas was a wreck. The kid smelled like smoke and looked more broken than I’d ever seen him. His voice cracked as he said, “I could hear the kids screaming.”

The Ingram’s house had been set on fire late in the night. Both parents, their grandma, and three kids under twelve had been trapped inside. We all felt their loss deeply. Their family had been one of the first in the pack. They went back generations with our family.

“We couldn’t do a fucking thing,” he continued. Mom sat next to him, rubbing his back in an attempt to comfort him. I knew enough to know none of it would fucking matter. The kid would be haunted for life. Some things just stuck with you forever. “The windows wouldn’t break, the doors wouldn’t open, and it was like the water didn’t even touch the flames. Not until…”

He didn’t have to fucking say it. I turned away, running a hand over my face as rage surged inside me. This had to fucking end.

“What do we do?” Finn asked quietly. The poor kid looked as fucking lost as I felt.

“We have to…” I faltered. What the hell were we supposed to do? What could we do? Nowhere was safe. “We need to evacuate the pack.”

“That’s over half the town,” Sam pointed out. “Cedar Harbor can’t run without us here.”

“They’re not fucking safe here!”

“And it’ll financially destroy the entire town,” Declan cut in. “There’s nothing for anyone to fall back on. Most won’t go. They’d rather face the potential of being killed than completely dismantle the entire security of their family.”

“What if I—”

“You can’t single-handedly fund an entire town, honey,” he said over Raven. “We don’t even know how long this is going to last.”

“Not long,” I muttered. How they looked at me only made my stomach turn worse. “She has a fucking plan. I don’t know what that is, but she’s planning something. This is just the beginning.”

“We need to kill her,” Genevieve said. I turned and so did everyone in the room. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation on my sweet wife’s face after saying those words. Instead, she shrugged. “I don’t like it, but what other option do we have? She’s systematically executing our pack. She won’t stop until we’re all gone. Even the most cautious predator will kill another predator if it’s a threat.”

“But we don’t know a thing about her,” Cade commented from his spot on the kitchen counter. “You can’t do shit if you don’t know shit. So, the question becomes, how do we figure out shit?”

“Think outside the box,” Nolan replied. “Don’t ask me what that means, but I just know that what we’re doing isn’t working. We can’t conceivably evacuate half the town or even the whole thing. That’d do more harm than good.”

I paced, my mind racing nearly as fast as my fucking heart. This wasn’t the time to stall on how the fuck to do this. We needed all the information we could get and fast.

“Fuck.” I knew who I needed to call. I asked Genevieve, “Can I use your computer?”

“Okay.” She nodded and hurried upstairs.

It took twenty minutes of finessing to get situated with the laptop and the flimsy file I had put together on Sadie. It took another five minutes to have my family shut the fuck up. And then, it took me ten minutes to remember my fucking password for the damn video chat site I used.

After that, I was about ready to start throwing shit, considering it took another ten minutes to get my contact to answer. I just wasn’t expecting him to answer in a fucking Wookie costume.

“Agent Crawford,” I greeted with a grin. “Did I interrupt something?”

“It’s Star Wars day,” Agent Grant Crawford informed me seriously as he pulled off the fuzzy hood. “Lizzie’s never seen them. She’s finally showing interest, so we’re making a whole day of it. I even made snacks.”

“Did making them involve buying them premade from the store?” I teased.

“Don’t you tell my daughter that,” he warned, but that giant ass smile on his face didn’t match his threat.

“How is my favorite muffin thief?” I asked.

“She’s doing okay,” Grant replied honestly. Grant and I met when his daughter had been taken and I inserted myself into the case. He thought his daughter had been taken by a serial killer. She had, but that serial killer was also a fucking troll with a goddamn attitude problem. Despite how many times Grant tried to get rid of me, I stuck around. In the end, we rescued Lizzie, but neither of them were quite the same. Their world wouldn’t be after what they saw and learned. “I pulled her from school, and my mom moved in to help homeschool her. She’s not sleeping well. We have to have every light on in the house for her to be able to sleep a few hours. The night terrors are bad, and she’s anxious all the time. Her doctor gave her a low dose anti-anxiety to try taking some of the edge off.”

“Did you look into that therapist I recommended?”

“Yeah, Isla’s been great.” He nodded. After meeting Isla, I made sure to give her Grant’s information. Lizzie needed someone to talk to who knew how to handle trauma and who understood our world. “Lizzie likes her, so I think it’ll be good. I don’t know what you did or said, but Isla told me all her fees are waived, so thank you.”

“That wasn’t me,” I told him. “That was Isla’s choice. I’m glad she’s working out. Hopefully, my little muffin thief can find some semblance of normal.”

“Well, normal right now looks like her wanting to grow up to be you, so we’ll see.”

“Fuck.” I chuckled. “I’m sorry about that. We’ll find her a better role model.”

“I’m not sure you’ll ever find a better role model in her eyes after what you did for us.”

“You know you don’t have to keep thanking me,” I reminded him. But he would. Every time we chatted and every time I popped in for a visit, he thanked me. I pointedly stared at the computer to avoid my family. I could feel the heavy weight of them watching me.

“You know I always will,” he said. Clearing his throat, he shifted in his chair and leaned closer. “It’s funny you got in touch. Your name came across my desk this week.”

“In a good way or a bad way?” I asked tentatively.

“Was there a reason you were following James Macoy?” He stared at me expectantly. Fuck, I should’ve known this would’ve come back to bite me in the ass. With the amount of time I’d spent following Macoy around Boston to understand him, it didn’t surprise me I’d been caught on camera. Didn’t fucking help me but didn’t surprise me. “Was he my kind of bad or your kind of bad?”

“My kind of bad,” I said.

“Good enough for me,” Grant replied. “He’s been reported missing. Your name came across as a person of interest because you were following him. Is he going to come back?”

“If he does, you’re going to want to give me a fucking call because zombies are real, and they fuck shit up,” I muttered.

“Zombies are real?” Raven exclaimed behind me, and I bit back a smile. I glanced over at her and nodded.

“I don’t want to know,” Grant told me. I didn’t fucking blame him. “I’ll make sure your name is taken off the interest list. Tell me what you need?”

“I need your help finding out everything you can about someone,” I began and flipped open the file. Joey had emailed me what little he had from the bounty—she’d never been caught. No fucking surprise there. I had a driver’s license and a warrant, but I had a feeling the first was bullshit. “I don’t fucking know if any of the information I have is accurate, but it’s all I’ve got. I need everything you can find on her. Names, aliases, associates, everywhere she’s been, family history, whatever the fuck you can find me and fast.”

“How fast do you need it?”

“I need it yesterday.”

“How bad are we talking, Killian?”

“Let’s just say she’s hunting my pack, and I need help finding her.” That was all he needed to know. I’d spare him the gory details if I could. “It’s bad, and the body count is climbing.”

“Do you need backup?” Grant asked.

“I’ve got backup covered,” I replied. I knew he’d offer in a heartbeat. “You just stay home and take care of Lizzie, all right? And get me whatever you can find on her.”

“I’ll do some digging while we watch Star Wars,” he told me. “I’ll send you whatever I can find. If you need help, I can be on a plane tomorrow, so you just let me know.”

“She’d kill you in a heartbeat, Grant,” I said honestly. “I don’t want you anywhere near this, you understand? And make sure she can’t trace your shit, do you understand?”

“Okay, but you better be safe. Tell me when it’s over. And after you get this shit taken care of, me and Lizzie will make the trek out to visit.”

“I will,” I promised. “And send me a picture of my muffin thief. It’s been a hot minute.”

“You won’t recognize her. She damn near grew half a foot since we saw you last,” he beamed. “Girl’s nothing but a beanstalk.”

“I believe it.” Considering how fucking tall he was, that didn’t surprise me. “Thanks again, Grant.”

“Anytime.”

I closed the laptop as I ended the video chat and stared right back at my family. All eyes were on me—not fucking surprised. There was a fuck ton of things that happened.

“Benjamin Carter was a troll,” I began with a sigh. “He kidnapped little girls between four and eight years old while using magic to pretend to be a school teacher. I knew he kept the girls somewhere remote, I knew he tortured them for over a week, and I knew when he was done with them, he’d cut out their organs before leaving them in the middle of a backroad.”

“Oh, my God.” Mom covered her mouth.

“Agent Crawford’s daughter was Carter’s last victim. She was taken right before I got into town to handle it,” I continued. “Crawford wasn’t too thrilled with my involvement, but I wasn’t fucking going anywhere. We managed to rescue Lizzie, and I killed Carter on the last fucking day. She was five years old. It was three days before her birthday. That’s how I know him.”

I waited for someone to say something, but no one did.

“Since then, he has helped me when he can. He makes sure I don’t get my ass arrested by the feds when shit goes wrong, and he throws cases in my direction when they look like my kind of bad, not his,” I explained. “If anyone can find information on Sadie Grimm, it’ll be him. Unfortunately, that only gets us so far. I still think we need to move all the kids to the pack house. Yes, they can go to school, but any other time, they should be at the pack house. If she’s willing to do what she did to the Ingrams… we have to protect them.”

“I think we should give everyone the option,” Sam replied. He fidgeted in the chair, scratching his nails along the fabric. “Stress the fucking importance of staying and the importance of their kids staying, but make it clear, they have to choose for themselves. We can’t make them do anything.”

“I’m staying in town, but the rest of you should stay at the house,” I told them. Before they could argue, I snapped, “Someone has to be here if she shows up again. The pack house is eight miles outside of town. If something happens, that’s too long of a response time. I need to be here.”

“I’ll stay,” Cade offered.

“The hell you will,” Raven retorted. Her ferocity made me smile. She glanced up at Declan. “You’re not staying either.”

“I’d prefer Cade to stay,” I cut in before they went at it. When she glared at me, I shrugged. “No offense, sweetheart, but he’s tougher than most, and I have a feeling he’s got a lot more bite in him than he lets on.”

I met Cade’s gaze, and he shrugged. There was a reason that man was gunning for alpha of the Lochlan pack. He may have been a freaking ray of sunshine in a baseball uniform, but what little I did know, the man wrestled with his own demons. Which meant he’d do a damn good job at helping with the hunter.

“Then you take my bracelet,” Raven said. She fussed with the bracelet I’d given her.

“I’m staying too,” Genevieve said. I ground my teeth together. There was no way in hell she was staying with me, but I said nothing. I’d argue with her later. Or tie her ass to a bed in the pack house and leave her there for her own goddamn safety.

“The church’s new pastor is a wolf,” Mom began with a heavy sigh. “He wants to hold a vigil tonight at the pack house. All of you need to be there. Before then, you need to think of what you’re going to say. You too, Roan. And maybe… Roan, as much as we love having you here, I think it’s in your pack’s best interest for you to go home. It’s not safe for you here.”

“I’m not leaving when my family’s in trouble,” Roan replied. “And one text to my brothers and Dad and they’ll be here too. Hell, we can get most of the pack here. Double our numbers.”

“No.” Declan shook his head. “If anything, I think we need the Ironwoods to be a safe haven. I think we should suggest sending them down to you. Anyone who can and wants to, should leave. Anyone who stays should be at the pack house. All we can do is stress that. The rest… I guess the rest we just need to brace ourselves for the worst because this isn’t over.”

Not by a long shot.

That singular understanding hung thick in the air around us. My gaze drifted around the room. My brothers weren’t fighters. Sure, they were backyard scrappers, but they weren’t fighters. They didn’t stand a chance against a hunter. Cade was fucking tough—I knew that. But how much fighting skill did he actually have? And Roan? Roan was putting the future of his pack at risk just by being here. He couldn’t fight. I couldn’t risk the future of the Ironwood pack for ours.

“So much for you taking a break,” Roan commented as he joined me, cutting through my brooding.

“I’m taking a fucking break from the pack,” I reminded him under my breath. “But I don’t have a fucking choice when it comes to the hunter. If I do, we’ll all be dead.”

“You think you can kill her, don’t you?” he asked.

“I do,” I said. At least, I fucking hoped so. And if I couldn’t, I’d fucking die trying.