Chapter Seven
Austin yawned as he downed another cup of coffee. He’d been driving all night. It was bright and early, and he was almost in Montana.
He was taking the main roads, the same ones that humans used, to get into Montana, because they were much faster. Unfortunately, when he went back, he would have a shifter prisoner in his truck. That meant he would have to take the shifter-only Rural Route 7, which was narrow and rutted and would take at least twice as long for the return journey.
He probably should have left yesterday morning as soon as Jason gave him his marching orders, and skipped the barbecue, but he’d wanted that time with Savannah. It had been worth it, every minute of it. And he still had nine days left – even if he got stuck travelling during the full moon in a couple of days – and he should have plenty of time. He hoped.
He’d checked his truck before he left in the morning, and found a GPS tracker stuck to the under-carriage. It had smelled like Niall.
It had been far too easy to find, so he’d assumed it was put there deliberately to make him stop searching. But he’d kept searching, and found the second, hidden inside the brake light. He’d removed that too.
And then he’d scented around and found the one hidden behind the front bumper. Damn, she was good.
He wondered if Savannah had only lured him into the woods to distract him. He hoped not. He would like to think that there had been something between them, that he had finally, if only ever so briefly, truly connected with a woman.
He’d known that she would have heard about the million-dollar mark, and he suspected that she’d want to go after it herself.
He couldn’t let her do that.
It was way too dangerous, for one thing. And he had made the agreement with Jason. He had to be the one to deliver Roy. Alone.
If he survived, he’d help her out with the payment, of course. But that was a very big if. As it was, all he’d been able to do for her was call up Tully and leave a message asking them to protect Savannah’s family from Algernon if they needed it.
Just in case Savannah was somehow on his tail, he’d glanced repeatedly in his rearview mirror, constantly monitoring to make sure that neither she nor anyone else was following him.
He had a pretty good idea of where Roy was hiding. Roy wasn’t making it a particularly big secret. He seemed to be just waiting for someone to come kill him.
Austin knew the feeling.
As he drove, he had a nagging feeling of worry. As if he’d left things undone.
His visions weren’t real, right?
For some reason, he couldn’t stop thinking about Barry, back at the Watering Hole. He’d seen Barry a couple of days ago. Nobody had shot Barry in the head.
But just in case…
He grabbed his cell phone and dialed. It was way too early to be calling Barry, he knew, but he did it anyway.
Barry answered with a whole lot of swearing and mumbling.
“Barry, you still keep a shotgun behind the counter, the one with the silver bullets, right?”
More cursing, and colorful suggestions of where Barry was going to shove the shotgun next time Austin dared show his ugly face in Barry’s bar, then something about five fucking a.m., then some more swearing.
“I’m serious, man.”
Barry groaned. “Damn it, you moron! Why? It’s back at my house. Needed cleaning.”
“Just…trust me on this. Bring it back to the bar. And maybe beef up your security. Just a feeling I have. I can’t explain it, but I’m a Dominus – sometimes we’re a little bit psychic.”
He hung up.
He knew that he was being ridiculous, that his visions were madness. They made no sense; they were all jumbled up and couldn’t possibly be predicting anything. Still, just on the one-in-a-million chance that there had been even a grain of truth to his vision, he’d had to warn him.
He settled back in his seat. Weariness was fogging his brain, and he needed to get a decent amount of sleep on this trip. When he went after Roy, he needed to be absolutely on top of his game. Fortunately, he only needed a few hours of sleep to wake up refreshed. He could just pull into a truck stop somewhere and park for a few hours.
Yawning, he shifted in his seat again, shaking his head heard to stay awake.
