“You can go,” he said.
I nodded and stood, my legs a little unsteady. He watched me the whole time, eyes half-lidded, like a predator bored with the chase. At the door I paused, but he didn’t say anything else.
I made it all the way back to the car before I let myself breathe again. When I closed the door, I had to sit there for a couple of minutes just to keep from throwing up. My wolf was frantic, smashing itself against the inside of my chest, desperate for open air.
I started the car, cranked the heat, and stared out through the windshield as the ice defrosted. The gate was still open. I could see the security camera still watching me.
I took a long, slow breath, then put the car in drive.
He said I was valuable. I believed him.
But I also believed what he’d said would happen if something went wrong.
I felt like crying, but I wouldn’t. What good would it do? I was still alive, and that was all that mattered.
It was past noon by the time I hit the Plainview city limits. I knew I should just go home, lock the doors, grab Rocket and crawl under a blanket with a bottle of whatever, but something in me was buzzing—hungry, unsettled. My stomach still rolled since Ileft Silas’s office, but it wasn’t fear now; it was something closer to anticipation.
My groceries had dwindled down to nothing, and my wine stock was gone as well. And there is no way I could make it without liquid courage, so I stopped at the small local grocery store close to my house. I felt it before I saw it: a shadow, tall and wide, moving behind the rack of magazines near the window. I didn’t turn my head, just kept walking, but every step I took was mirrored by another, silent and steady. When I bent down to pick up a bottle, I caught the reflection in the glass: a man, big as a barn door, standing perfectly still, watching me.
My pulse stuttered, then quickened—not with fear, but with a kind of slow, excited calm. I wasn’t alone in this store. I wasn’t alone anywhere, not anymore. I paid for the groceries, barely registering the exchange, and kept my eyes fixed on the reflection in the cooler door as I left. The man was gone, replaced by my own pale, wide-eyed face, breath fogging the glass.
Outside, the wind had picked up, tearing down the length of the parking lot and making the empty flagpole clatter like bones. I loaded my stuff into the trunk, one eye on the side of the building where the man had vanished. Nothing. Just the parking lot and local people loading groceries into their cars.
I got in the car, shut the door, and for a long time just sat there, hands locked around the steering wheel. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted the man to come back, to fill up the space with his silence and his impossible size. I wanted him to make the next move. What the fuck had my life become? I used to be relatively normal. I had a job, a couple of acquaintances. I did regular things, went out to dinner, went out to bars, and now? I sat in a damn parking lot looking for a stalker that I hoped would visit my house while I waited for another madman to kill me. Fucking movie of the week material there.
When my secret masked stranger didn’t appear, I started my car, pulled onto the main road, and aimed myself toward home.The sunlight played at the edges of the trees, sliding past like the walls of a moving coffin. At the turnoff for my street, I slowed, rolling past the neighbor’s empty horse field, the wind flattening the brown grass in waves.
That was when I saw him again. Just a flicker in the rearview, but enough—a shadow on a motorcycle, crossing the empty road behind me, moving with the precision of someone who’d mapped every inch of this land before I was born. I slammed on the brakes, heart skidding with the tires, and watched the mirror. Nothing. Just the afterimage of him, burned into the glass.
I sat there, engine idling, until my breathing steadied. I checked the rearview again. The world was as empty as before. I was losing my ever-loving mind.
I pulled into my driveway, killed the engine, and waited. For a minute, maybe more. I waited for the man to show himself—maybe on the porch, maybe by the side of the house, maybe right up against the glass where I could see the outline of him, huge and calm and waiting for me to open the door.
But there was nothing. Just the afternoon sun, and the cold, and the familiar beat of my own pulse in my ears.
I grabbed the bags, walked up the steps to the porch, and paused with the keys in my hand. The front door was locked, just like I’d left it. The world was quiet. My wolf was pacing behind my ribs, just beneath the surface of my skin, desperate for something to run from or toward. I could hear Rocket barking inside the house.
I let myself in and was greeted by my little ray of sunshine doing endless circles. I locked the door behind me and quickly set the bags on the counter. My little man needed my attention and I’m sure needed to pee, so I took him to the backyard.
“There you go, sweetie. Go potty.” He took off across the yard, looking for just the right spot to do his business. I couldn’t help but scan the perimeter of the yard, sniffing the air for that oak and citrus scent that had already faded from the stranger’s visitlast night. Nothing. How fucked up was it that I was disappointed that my stalker hadn’t been to my house while I was gone? Rocket ran back up to the deck. Such a good boy. We came back into the silent house. Every shadow in its right place but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the man was already inside, waiting for me to find him. My imagination was really doing a number on me.
“Rocket, did your new friend come and see you today?” I asked him as I did a lap of the house. He followed right on my heels as I checked each room. Living room, clear. Kitchen, empty. Office nook, untouched. Bedroom, cold and still. “Looks like you were on your own today.” His head just tilted left and right. I picked him up and gave him a squeeze. “You are just the sweetest thing.”
I wandered back to the kitchen, and as I unloaded my groceries; I heard the loud roar of a motorcycle going past my house. I ran to the front window just in time to see the back of a giant of a man riding a huge black Harley wearing an Iron Valor cut disappearing into the horizon. Fucking Wrecker Leonard.
“Well Rocket. I’m toast.”
Chapter 7
Wrecker
Icalled the meeting after dark, right after the last customer wheeled his oil-soaked Harley off the lot and the garage settled into its usual after-hours hush. Bronc was already in the war room, the blue light from his phone making his face look younger than it was, or maybe just more haunted. Papa was seated in his usual spot. Arsenal and Doc came in together, Doc with a stack of folders, Arsenal with a handful of sunflower seeds he cracked with his molars and spat into the trash. Gunner drifted in last, still green enough to hover near the door, back to the wall. No one said a word until I shut the door and hit the blackout switch, killing the lights.
Bronc broke the quiet. “Whatever it is, Eli, you got fifteen minutes before Juliet gets here for dinner.” His voice was casual, but the way he stacked his hands on the table said he was expecting a war.
I took the end chair. “Don’t need that long.” My hands were too big for the little thumb drive, but I managed to slot it into the war room laptop and patch it to the wall monitor.
The main screen filled with a low-res video feed. At first, nothing but audio: Parker’s voice, brittle and fast, pacing on someproblem. Then Silas, the cockroach, his words oiled and smug. There wasn’t much video—just a shot of the inside of Parker’s jacket and some glimpses from her watch as she sat in front of Silas’s desk. But the mics were good. You heard every word.
