“If you get his contact info in time, maybe you could bring him as your date when you go out with Scott and me,” Becca said, the words coming out in a tone just a bit too nonchalant. “We’re going to the club on Wednesday, remember?”
At first, Selena was worried maybe Dr. Pham was right about her having a concussion. She didn’t have any idea what her friend was talking about. But then she remembered a conversation she and Becca had had last week in the break room about how disappointed her parents were with her relationship status.
“Hold on. You’re not serious, are you?” Selena sat up so quickly, she was worried she’d get dizzy. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. “You’re really going on the blind date your parents set up for you?”
Becca winced. “You don’t have to make it sound so horrible. They’re just concerned because I haven’t met anyone yet and that none of the men I date seem to be interested in long-term relationships. They’re worried their dreams of spoiling their future grandkids are going to disappear in a haze of dull, infrequent, meaningless first dates.”
Selena sighed. She knew what Becca was saying. Finding a good man in this town was tough, but finding one when you spent almost every night grading papers, writing lesson plans, or checking in on troubled students made it even harder.
“Hey, I’m not throwing rocks,” she said, holding up her hands. “My social life is too crappy for me to even consider that. But still, going out with a guy your parents found on a dating site? I mean, have you even talked with him yet?”
Becca shook her head. “We haven’t talked, but we’ve texted. His name is Scott Llewellyn and he’s a tax accountant. He seems nice, and considering how classy my last few dates have been, I’m willing to give nice a chance.”
“You think he’s nice?” Selena said dubiously. “But you still want me to go with you?”
Her friend gave her a sheepish look. “If you don’t mind. I mean, he might be great, but I can’t help remembering that documentary I saw on Jeffrey Dahmer where all his neighbors described him as nice. I think I’d like to have some backup with me when I first meet this guy, just in case.”
Selena couldn’t fault her friend for that. “Okay, I’ll go. But no promises about bringing the cop with me—if I even find him. He could be married for all I know.”
They were still planning their midweek date when the doctor showed up. He checked Selena’s vitals again, flicked his flashlight in her eyes a few times, and asked how her head was feeling. Selena said she felt fine with no lingering effects from the attack at all. That wasn’t exactly true. She still felt really out of it. But she wasn’t going to mention that to him.
After seeing that her pulse, blood pressure, and temperature had dropped to relatively normal levels, he declared she could leave. Selena immediately yanked the blanket off and got out of bed, almost hanging herself with all the wires attached to her. Dr. Pham quickly stepped forward to put a restraining hand on her arm, then unhooked her from the equipment.
“Your vitals are better, Ms. Rosa,” he said. “But you’ve been through a major traumatic event. You’re going to need to take it easy for the next week or two.”
Selena nodded and promised she would. After a lengthy lecture on getting some counseling for post-traumatic stress, he sent the nurse back in with the necessary paperwork for Selena to sign. The moment she was done, she took the clothes Becca had brought and quickly put them on, then got the hell out of there. She appreciated the doctor’s concern, but she hated hospitals, and other than being a little woozy, she felt fine. Besides, she had a lot of stuff to do.
Even though she wasn’t looking forward to it, the first thing on the list was to go back to her classroom and see how much damage had been done. That place wasn’t just her sanctuary. It was her students’, too. After everything that had happened today, her kids were going to need the feeling of safety now more than ever.
* * *
“This can’t wait until later?” Brooks asked.
He had to work hard to keep the anger out of his voice as he followed Zane toward the front of the admin building at the SWAT compound. In the bullpen, the rest of the Pack was discussing teammate Max Lowry’s last-minute wedding plans. The SWAT werewolf and his soul mate, Lana Mason, were getting married that weekend after knowing each other barely a month. FindingThe One, that person who loved and accepted you for being a werewolf, sounded great to Brooks, but still—soul mate or not—getting married after a month together struck him as a little fast.
Zane shook his head. “No. We’ve been trying to get that damn hunter to talk to us for nearly a month with no luck. His lawyer called and said his client has agreed to a meeting, but only with the two of us, and only if we do it tonight.”
Brooks bit back a growl. For hours, he’d been trying to slip away to the hospital so he could check on Selena to make sure she was okay. But everything involving the classroom raid, from clearing all the students out of the school to waiting for the K9 teams to check the place for explosives, had taken ten times longer than it should have. Then when he’d gotten back here with Diego to wrap up the paperwork, he’d found Zane waiting for him so they could go down to the Coffield Unit prison. The place was almost two hours away. Visiting hours at the hospital would be long over before they got back.
“Why the hell would he want to see us now?” he demanded.
Zane stopped to look at him. “I’m not really sure. I asked the same question when Gage told me Oliver’s lawyer called. The only thing we could come up with is that the hunters have decided to dangle him in front of us as bait.”
Brooks frowned, crossing his arms over his chest. “Bait for what?”
Seth Oliver was the only surviving hunter from the attack on the Pack last month. Until now, he’d refused to talk to anyone, but if they could get him to tell them where the hell the other hunters were, they might be able to stop the next attack before it happened.
If Oliver was bait, as Zane suggested, that implied the man had been in contact with the people who’d sent him to Dallas to kill werewolves. Oliver had been on 24/7 lockdown the entire time he’d been in prison at Coffield. He shouldn’t have been able to talk to anyone. But in truth, it was ridiculously easy to get information in and out of prison, especially if you had the right people on the outside to make it happen. The hunters were obviously the right people.
“Intel probably,” Zane said in answer to his question. “The hunters may have knocked us out the last time we fought, but in return, we pretty much wiped them out. Whoever is in charge is probably trying to figure out how that happened. They seem to operate like a militia organization, which means they’ll want to learn more about us. The easiest way to do that is get us to talk to Oliver.”
“Okay, I get that,” Brooks said. “If they assume we’d be stupid enough to tell them anything. But why the two of us? Why not Gage? He’s the Pack alpha. Wouldn’t they want to talk to the man in charge if they’re looking for information about how we operate?”
Zane snorted. “You’re assuming they have a clue what an alpha is. They only care about two things—tracking and killing our kind. The idea that we’re anything more than animals is probably something they’ve never considered. They most likely don’t know there are even different kinds of werewolves. To them, we’re all the same—except for size. Which is probably why they want to talk to you. They probably assume you’re the apex predator since you’re so bloody big.”
Brooks could see Zane’s point. The hunters were damn good at finding werewolves and also coming up with weapons to kill them. They’d filled their bullets with a potent synthetic wolfsbane, which acted like a nerve agent on werewolves but had limited effect on humans. That showed a shocking level of sophistication. But at the same time, they didn’t seem to understand anything about how werewolves lived or their pack structure. In fact, the biggest reason they’d come after Lana last month seemed to be an obsessive fascination with getting a chance to hunt down a female werewolf. Apparently, they hadn’t seen very many.
“If they arranged this meeting with me so Oliver could get a look at the werewolf they think is their biggest physical threat, what’s their angle with you?” Brooks asked. “They just curious about a British werewolf living in Dallas?”
