I’d never really noticed how comforting the huge man’s alpha scent was. Heath’s scent had always meant the best kind of forbidden danger, in whatever part of my lizard brain was wired to process that kind of shit. But Gage smelled like a bakery at Christmas, and I had to sternly prevent myself from taking a surreptitious sniff.
The phone pinged success, and a map popped up with a red marker pin in the middle. I didn’t immediately recognize the area, but Gage scowled.
“Fuck. Is that the old silos out by McKinley?” he asked, pinching and zooming the screen.
I peered at the map. “I thought those were getting demolished? Wasn’t it on the news a while back?”
He shook his head. “It got tied up in red tape or something. How reliable is this app?”
I shrugged. “It’s not like it’s going to randomly show your phone in some old derelict area miles from here if it’s actually hidden under a couch cushion downstairs.”
Gage straightened. “Okay. We’ve gotta go, then. I need to get Jez back here before Heath comes back from wherever the hell he stormed off to.”
“Heath’s not here?” I asked, although of course if he had been, he would’ve heard the commotion and come running before now.”
Gage huffed out a frustrated breath. “No, he’s... well, I don’t know where he is. Pretty sure I pissed him off earlier.”
I didn’t really want to poke at that if I didn’t have to. “Right. So, my phone’s running on fumes. Have you got a charging port in your car? Because my car’s too old to have one.” I waited for his nod, and glanced down pointedly at his feet. “And, um, you might also want some shoes.”
He followed my gaze. “Oh. Yeah. Shoes would probably be good.”
Forty-five minutes later we were hurtling down the Stevenson Expressway in Gage’s white GMC Yukon, while I babysat the finder app to make sure the phone’s location didn’t move somewhere else while we were on the way.
“Why would she come all the way out here?” Gage muttered, as he took an exit to cross the river.
And that did seem pretty weird. But...
“After she rescued me by killing my stepfather, I tried to find her,” I said. “But it was like she’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Maybe she was here? Could there be, like, a homeless encampment in the silos or something?”
“Maybe,” Gage replied, although he didn’t sound convinced.
Silence stretched for a couple of minutes as we drove toward 28thStreet. Then Gage spoke again.
“Look... this is none of my business, but I been meaning to ask you. It seemed like you shut down pretty quick when I mentioned Heath earlier. Is everything okay there?”
My breath caught, even as my heart did a stupid little stutter. Did Gage know that I’d slept with his packmate?
I tried to play it casual. “What? Yeah, of course everything’s okay. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Gage didn’t answer for long enough that I started to squirm.
“No reason,” he said, and jerked his chin at the windshield. “That’s the silos over there. I think this is the turnoff.”
I pressed my lips together tightly and followed the gesture. The massive derelict structure towered over its landscape of grass and weeds in the middle distance, gray and brown and dingy against the morning sky. As we approached, I could see the tall chain link fence surrounding the property, some of its posts bent with age like drunken sailors.
“Wait. That ain’t right,” Gage said, as he slowed the Yukon and pulled off the road, coming to a stop next to a pair of massive double gates. Inside, parked next to a bleak rectangular warehouse set next to the cylindrical grain silos, sat a dark van and a couple of high-end SUVs.
Only one kind of person drove expensive black SUVs with aftermarket rims that cost more than my monthly income, and also hung out in places like this abandoned urban hellscape. Would Jez have connections with people like that? And if shedid, would she have run straight to those people immediately after escaping the pack house?
Clammy sweat broke out on my chest.
“Gage,” I whispered. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”
