“One of the ones who got away has crawled out of the woodwork,” Isaac said. “Dustin. Got word that he was spotted near the Redwood Pack. You settled in Silverrose, right? That’s not too far away.”
“It’s not.” In fact, it was only a couple of hours from here. Cillian began to think. He vaguely remembered what Dustin looked like. It wouldn’t be too hard to go over there and see if Dustin knew anything about where the other Night Pack members might be. And, after Cillian got some answers, he’d make sure that Dustin could never hurt anyone ever again.
A grin flicked across his face. After all these years, he might actually be able to finish off the Night Pack, to make them pay for everything they had done.
“I’m worried about what it might mean,” Isaac said, drawing Cillian back to the conversation.
“How so?” Cillian asked.
“I want to know why now,” Isaac explained after a moment. “I’ve been getting rumblings, and not just about Dustin. This is just the first time I’ve heard of something one of us can do something about. From my sources, Dustin is askingaround and trying to recruit for ‘something big.’ I don’t think he picked now to show his face by coincidence. My guess is he might be planning something.”
I have a funny feeling I can make him give some answers, Cillian thought. Already, he was plotting the fastest way to Redwood. Would it be easier to shift and run there? Or take a car? Would he need to get a hotel room? Maybe. How long would he be gone? That depended on how many names he wrung out of Dustin. If the Night Pack was trying to make a move, he was going to stop them before they could cause any damage. He was going to get a savage satisfaction out of tearing Dustin and any other Night Pack member he came across limb from limb.
“Thanks for the heads up,” Cillian grunted.
“You want some backup?” Isaac asked, and Cillian couldn’t miss the eagerness in his old colleague’s voice. “I’ve been itching to settle the score with those assholes.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to do anything yet,” Cillian said.
Isaac laughed. “Liar. I know you. You’re already plotting the fastest way to get to Redwood, aren’t you?”
“I’m neither confirming nor denying that,” Cillian said.
Another laugh, but Isaac didn’t press. “Let me know if you want help, Cil,” Isaac said after a long moment. “But either way, I hope you teach those fuckers a lesson.”
“I plan on it.”
Cillian hung up. He stared down at his phone for a long minute, considering. After all this time, he had never expected to have the opportunity to finish off the Night Pack. It had haunted him for years that some of them had gotten away. He had researched the names of the ones they knew had escaped,but had always come up blank. For the first time, he might have a way forward. There was a chance he could put something that had always eaten at him to bed.
Was it too risky, though? There were any number of ways this could go wrong. He’d always been a bit on the impulsive side, and this felt like another time when he was jumping head-first into a problem he should deliberate further on.
Those thoughts were barely out of his head when he realized with a jolt that he was already running through a mental checklist of what he’d need for his self-assigned mission.
“Everything all right?”
Cillian turned to see Franco and Camden walking up to him.
“It’s fine,” Cillian said, tucking his phone into his pocket. He glanced outside, trying to figure out his next words carefully, still reeling from the phone call. For a moment, he debated telling his friends the truth. They would understand. They would also insist on helping. Something about this mission, though, made him want to keep it private. This didn’t have anything to do with them. It was something he wanted to take care of on his own.
“Look, there’s something I need to take care of,” Cillian said. “I’m going to need to take a few days off.”
Franco and Camden looked at one another, eyebrows raised in silent bemusement.
“All right,” Camden said, drawing out the two words, making them almost a question, inviting Cillian to step in and elaborate.
He didn’t.
“Thanks,” Cillian said. “Tell Jasper I’m not going to be able to help with training tonight after all. I’m heading out of town.”
“And I’m guessing you aren’t going to tell us why or where you’re going?” Franco asked.
Cillian flashed him a grin. “See? I knew there were some brains somewhere in there.” He clapped Franco on the back, winking and strutting past them out of the pack house.
As he walked away from the pack house and toward his home to shove clothes into a suitcase, his smile began to fade, that jovial demeanor he tried to maintain around others beginning to slip away, replaced by a cold rage as he began to plot out his next move.
The first step was finding Dustin and seeing if he had any information on the other members of the Night Pack. He also needed to find out why he had shown up now after years of silence. After which, he’d make sure that Dustin wouldn’t hurt anyone ever again. Then he’d hunt down any names that he scrounged from Dustin. Rinse and repeat.
They had gotten away from him once already. He wasn’t going to let it happen again. He wasn’t going to let them restart their old tricks. Not when there was something he could do about it.
