“Katie, we can talk about this later. For now, I want you somewhere safe.” She paused, obviously thinking. “I have a friend. He’s in private security, ex-military, and he happens to owe me a particularly huge favor. He has access to a property in your area he uses for client relocations. It’s secure, it’s clean, and it doesn’t have your name on any paperwork.” There was another pause. “Can you get to the corner of Guadalupe and Cordova?”
“I’m on foot, but yeah. Give me twenty minutes.”
“I’ll call ahead. There’ll be a key in the lockbox by the gate. Code is four-seven-two-one. I’m two hours out.” She stopped. “And Katie. Don’t call anyone else.”
“Understood,” I said.
* * *
The property was a small adobe compound set back from the road behind a stucco wall with a low wrought-iron gate. The lockbox was exactly where Yazzie had indicated. The key inside it opened the side door, which brought me into a clean, sparsely furnished two-room space that smelled of dust and cedar and disuse. There was a couch, a bed in the back room, a bathroom with a functioning shower, and a kitchen with the basics in the cabinet. I noticed the deadbolt on the front door and one on the side. The windows were narrow and sat high on the walls.
I put my luggage/grocery bags on the kitchen counter, then sat down on the couch and stared at the floor for a while before finally gathering the energy to get up, find a first aid kit under the bathroom sink, and unwrap my forearm.
The scratches were the kind that look worse than they are, long and dramatic, but the bleeding had stopped and the edges were already doing the thing my wounds always did, pulling together faster than they should. I cleaned them with the antiseptic I found in the kit, which hurt like fuck, then taped gauze over them and sat on the edge of the tub until my eyes stopped watering.
By the time I heard the gate, I’d eaten crackers standing over the counter and changed the gauze once and done a thorough, unproductive review of every possible terrible fate I might face.
The knock at the side door was three short raps.
“It’s Yazzie.”
I let her in.
She looked different out of uniform, wearing dark jeans and a canvas jacket. Her hair was in a low knot at the back of her neck. She carried a canvas bag over one shoulder and a paper bag from somewhere that smelled like green chili and chicken. She stepped inside and did a quick visual circuit of the room, then looked at me directly.
“You look better than I expected,” she said, “considering the shit you’ve been through.”
“Thanks.”
I pulled the door closed behind her and she set the food on the counter and unzipped the canvas bag, extracting a proper first aid kit, a pair of latex gloves, and a bottle that looked like it held something medical if not pharmaceutical.
Pulling out a chair from the small table by the window, she gestured at it and I sat. She sat across from me, extending her hand for my arm without asking, and I gave it to her.
“These are pretty deep scratches,” she said, unwrapping my gauze and examining them under the pendant light above the table before glancing back up. “They’re already closing.”
“I heal fast.”
She didn’t look surprised, just gave a little nod. “Yes. I’d imagine you do.”
She cleaned the wounds again with something from the unlabeled bottle that smelled herbal but still managed to stingjust as bad as what I’d used. “The man who brought you to the hospital,” she said, wrapping fresh gauze around my arm. “He’s a shifter.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” I watched her face. “You know about them?”
“I know a number of things that don’t get written in official reports.” She secured the gauze with medical tape, smoothed it down, and sat back. Her dark eyes were direct and calm. “I knew at the hospital that you were telling the truth. Not because your story was coherent. It wasn’t, not to Cole, not officially. But I’ve been in this region my entire career, and I’ve been hearing versions of what you described the whole time. Tourists who came back from the Jemez or the Sandias talking about things that didn’t belong to any species in the field guides. Hikers who said they were followed by something that changed shape.” She folded the packaging from the gauze with neat movements. “Every single report got filed in the category of misidentification or psychological distress, because that’s the only category where we could make them fit.”
“But you kept the sketch.”
“I kept the sketch.” She held my gaze. “Because I recognized it.”
The pendant light hummed. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked.
“Tell me what you know,” I said.
She was quiet for a moment, looking at the table between us. Then she got up and opened the paper bag, set the food out between us, and sat back down.
“Eat something first. You’re pale.”
