Lydia’s face went pale, her heart suddenly beating out of control. “That’s it! This whole thing is over!” She turned to Kamden, clutching his arm. “I refuse to let you go through with this if it means I could lose parts of you. Any part of you!”
Kamden wrapped his arms around her, hugging her close as he looked at Kat, his expression pleading. “You’re saying that might happen. But if you know about the possibility, that means you can be ready for it and come up with a way to stop it from happening, right? Like using the warding circle.”
“The circle is part of it,” Kat admitted, looking back and forth between Lydia and Kamden, and making Carter feel like he and Hadley were intruding on something private. “I’m hoping to use a circle in conjunction with some kind of containment vessel where I can stash the skinwalker part while keeping your human side safe.”
Carter didn’t know anything about magic, but Kat’s plan sounded kind of dangerous, not to mention painful. From the expression on Lydia’s face, it seemed she was of a similar mind.
“Hey,” Kamden said, tilting Lydia’s chin up with his fingers. “It’s going to be okay. Kat can do this.”
“Before you get too carried away, it’s important to realize that even if I come up with a way to filter out the Kamden parts from the skinwalker parts, I’m still going to need to figure out what to do with them,” Kat said quickly. “Those seventy-some years of power and essence won’t simply disappear because we want them to even if we put them outside a warding circle. It’s got to go somewhere, and letting it go into the ether isn’t an option.”
“Why not?” Hadley asked.
“Because it’d be akin to dumping a couple hundred barrels of toxic nuclear waste into a river and hoping nobody drinks it,” Kat explained.
Carter hooked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “How do we do that? I mean, is there some kind of acceptable dumping ground for stuff like this?”
Kat let out a sigh. “Unfortunately, no. If we’re going to do this. We have to find a living vessel strong enough to contain it.”
“Wait a minute,” Lydia said with a frown. “Are you seriously suggesting we turn someone into a skinwalker against their will?”
Even Kamden, as eager as he was to escape his fate as a skinwalker, looked more than a little concerned. But Kat shook her head.
“No, we aren’t doing anything like that,” she assured them. “For one thing, I’m not that kind of witch. For another, it wouldn’t work anyway. To have any chance of success, the other person would have to be willing. The least bit of resistance and the whole process would fail and the backlash would probably kill Kamden.”
Crap, this was sounding more impossible by the minute. But Kat finally calmed everyone down by promising she’d keep working on it and try to come up with another way.
“In the meantime, who wants coffee?” she asked.
Carter knew he could use some, and it seemed like Hadley, Lydia, and Kamden could as well. He’d barely taken a sip of his coffee when his cell phone rang. Seeing Mike’s name on the screen, he stepped to the side to take the call.
“I know the plan was to keep you out of action for a while, but two of the escaped convicts have been spotted in the woods to the east of the Hillside Village Shopping Center and I could use the help tracking them down since most of the Pack is scattered all over the county dealing with the fallout from that drug raid,” Mike said.
Carter glanced at Hadley, his pulse already racing at the thought of leaving her unprotected. He was about to tell Mike as much when Hadley caught his eye, clearly wanting to know what the problem was. Putting a hand over the phone, he quickly explained the situation.
“But I can’t leave you unguarded,” he said.
“I can keep an eye on her until you get back,” Kat offered. “A serial killer—no matter how demented—won’t be a problem for me. She’ll be safe.”
When Carter still hesitated, Hadley added, “I’ll be okay here. Go help Mike. The sooner Strickland is back in prison, the sooner we can stop worrying.”
Carter nodded. Uncovering the phone, he told Mike that he’d be there as soon as he could. “I have to stop by my place, change into my uniform, and grab my gear.”
“Copy that. I’ll text you with the address. We’re setting up a perimeter now, but if these guys realize we’re closing in, they’ll bolt for sure.”
Slipping his phone back in the pocket of his jeans, Carter turned to Hadley, who unexpectedly stepped forward to hug him, telling him to be careful. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close for one delicious moment before forcing himself to take a step back. The urge to kiss her was almost uncontrollable, but thankfully, he left before he could embarrass himself.
* * * * *
Carter found the temporary command post set up in the northeast corner of the shopping center parking lot, close to Pleasant Run Road. Everything was being kept low key, with only six vehicles pulled up bumper to bumper, lights off so they wouldn’t attract any more attention than they already were.
“We have patrol units positioned along the backside of the strip mall east of here, with more located at several places along the shopping center perimeter road,” Mike was saying as Carter eased up to the group, his squad leader pointing to a map displayed on the laptop set up in the back of one of the DPD SUVs. “We’ll move into the woods from the west and south sides, herding the escapees towards our people on the backside of the strip mall. That’s where we’ll close in to apprehend them.”
Carter looked around, realizing that Chief Leclair was on-scene, along with Hale and Trey. Fortunately, Gage wasn’t there. Considering that Carter had been unofficially suspended for more than three weeks, he had no desire to go into this situation with his boss and pack alpha figuratively looking over his shoulder. Things were tense enough already.
“You should be aware that there are usually a handful of people living in these woods,” one of the patrol officers said. “If our two convicts have found them, we could be looking at a hostage situation.”
“Any indication that these two men are armed?” Trey asked, his expression carrying the same concerned look as everyone else in the group. “There’s nothing like that in the BOLOs, but some of those men are cold-blooded killers.”
