The weight bearing Tean down shifted.He could feel the tension in the other body: frustration, indecision, rage.
And then the weight was gone.
Sputtering and wiping his face, Tean sat up.He started to try to get to his feet.Then Jem was there, grabbing his shoulder, hauling him up.Tean was trying to speak, but his lips were frozen, and he could only get out a single, stammering attempt at the first syllable of Jem’s name.
“That’s right, motherfuckers!”Jem screamed.He waved the gun in the air as he turned.“You’d better run!”
He hugged Tean to his side, and Tean slumped against him.He scanned the snow-covered slope, followed it down to the darkened pool, past the boundaries of the lodge out into the dark wild.
Nothing.
The wolves were gone.
41
The roads were clear the next morning, and the sheriff came, along with what Jem guessed was every deputy he had.
They asked questions.A lot of questions.
Jem didn’t care.He answered the ones he thought he could answer.The others, he shrugged or said he didn’t know.
River was dead.
The men who had killed her were gone.
Gerald was dead.
Tafton was dead.
Mckell was refusing to talk to anyone except a lawyer.
The conversation started at the lodge, but before long, Jem and Tean found themselves being taken back to the sheriff’s station.They spent a long day answering the same questions over and over again, waiting for the sheriff to confirm as much of their story as he could.
When the sheriff finally let them go, a deputy walked Jem out of the interview room and down a hall with scuffed laminate flooring.He was so tired that he almost missed Quinn, who was bent over a drinking fountain.Quinn’s eyes widened with recognition, and he straightened, wiping his mouth.
“What are you doing here?”Jem asked.
“They’ve been shuttling us back and forth all day,” Quinn said with an attempt at a smile.“They want to talk to all of us, but they don’t want us talking to each other.The only problem is they don’t have anywhere to put us, so they keep shuffling us around.”He smoothed a hand over his dark hair, but his eyes never left Jem.“You okay?”
Jem shook his head, but it was more weariness than anything else.“Yeah.Fine.”
“Things last night got seriously messed up.I wanted to say I’m sorry about, you know.”
For a moment, Jem couldn’t follow the apology.But then it came back to him: Stephen—Jacob, whatever his name was—telling everyone to go into one of the bedrooms.“Shit.You couldn’t have done anything.”
“Doesn’t make it feel any better.”
“You’re good.Like you said, things were messed up.”
Quinn nodded, but he said, “It’s just—you guys helped us.A lot.So, I wanted to say thanks.We all did.”
“You all did?”Jem asked.
“Becks and I did.”
“Becks?”
Quinn grinned, blushed, and shrugged.
