Page 43 of Rescued

She gave her head a little shake, like she was trying to clear it. “Um.” She thought. “Grocery store?”

“I got you food.”

“Yes, I know, you’re totally sweet, but that’s not the food I need. We’re making cookies. For the bad wolves.”

It took a minute for that to compute. “You think you can bribe a psycho like Sanchez to like you with cookies? Why would you even want to?”

She gave a little embarrassed half-shrug. “The thing is…”

She looked away.

Now he was getting intrigued. He suddenly wanted to know how her mind worked, what made her do the things she did.

He played with one of the trailing tendrils of hair. “What? Go ahead, I’m listening.”

She shifted her hips over onto the couch, as if to put a little more distance between them. “The thing is, when Sanchez was talking last night? I kind of got it. How he feels.”

Damn. “Then you’re the first.”

Breanna told him what she’d been thinking about. “I suddenly felt like we were kind of the same, you know? We both only have one thing we’re really good at. He’s a soldier—one of the best trackers in the world. And I’m—well, I look like this.” She gestured to herself. “All my life, I knew that was what would get me out of the crappy town I lived in. Get me enough money so I didn’t have to worry all the time, like everyone I knew did. Where I come from, just about everyone is one minor disaster away from bankruptcy.”

He touched her arm in sympathy. He could see how that kind of thing could make you desperate.

“And… being pretty—pretty enough to be a model, pretty enough to be one of the few girls hot enough for the VIPs—that made me special. That’s the one thing all those girls have to hold onto—that we’re special.”

“You’re a lot more than just pretty.”

She shrugged his words away. “For Sanchez, being the best tracker not only makes him special, it’s what he uses to make a difference in the world. It’s his one thing, you know? He doesn’t think he has anything to offer a family-friendly pack. And probably that no one in it will want him, or respect him. And then what will he have?”

Huh. That was actually very insightful, and something Switch would never have thought of.

“That’s pretty smart,” he said. “Although, I’m still not clear on where cookies come in.”

She said, “Well, they won’t really fix that. But when I was in high school, some of these scary jock guys used to pick on me. And I was never really good at fighting back, so I started being nice to them. Not in a suck-up kind of way, because they don’t respect that. But just… nice. And after a while they started treating me better.”

She tugged one of her dangling hair tendrils self-consciously. “Anyway, everyone loves cookies. Sanchez and the others will see I don’t have any hard feelings from last night. And, you know, it’s kind of weird what it does to a bully when someone likes them.”

“No one likes those guys. And they don’t like anyone. They’re crazy.”

She smiled at him. “Cookies are magic. You’ll see.”

Somehow that smile propelled him off the couch and into fresh clothes, and then outside, all before eight o’clock in the fucking morning.

Bree walked beside him, still all perky and cheerful. It was good she was a morning person. Because he couldn’t stand happiness in the morning. So he’d be relieved when she was gone, right?

Lies. He was telling himself lies.

She said brightly, “Whose truck are we going to steal today?”

He gave her a sideways look. “I’m starting to think I’m a bad influence on you.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

They picked Boomer’s monster crew cab. Switch had no clue why Boomer even had a crew cab, since he hated people and the only other person he ever let in his truck was his brother.

Anyway, he wouldn’t need it at eight a.m.

Instead of hotwiring it, he used an electronic gizmo he’d designed to hack the locks and ignition. He found himself hoping Breanna was impressed.