Page 35 of Hunted

The impact from the crash slammed into my sternum with the force of a concussion grenade. Screams tore through the picnic area. I tried to disentangle my legs from the metal table, to crawl beneath it, only to find my foot caught. Panicking, I twisted my ankle, trying to dislodge my shoe from the metal chain connecting the tables. And then a sleek black wolf was vaulting over the top of the table. One second, I was caught. In the next, Hayden had seized my shoulder in her powerful wolf jaws and was wrenching me free. Snarling, she stood over me, teeth bared, daring anyone to touch me.

Gunshots exploded overhead. I reached for my sister, curling my fingers in her black fur, trying to flatten her as close to me as I could, away from the line of fire. The screaming seemed to go on forever. And then just for a second, the world stilled. I blinked, counting dust motes as they swirled across the dry asphalt, a fallen plastic spoon lying discarded by Hayden’s furry black paw. Suddenly a man appeared over us.

I started to scream, and then I recognized the vampire Xander had been arguing with over by the trailers. He shouted something to me, words I couldn’t make out over the ringing in my ears. And then his hand closed over my wrist and the world splintered around us in dizzying fractals of light.

* * *

“WHAT THE HELL WAS QUINN THINKING letting them sit so close to the street?” River snapped over a teleconference call two hours later.

Off camera, Brody’s wife London rolled her eyes. She flipped her long blond hair over one shoulder before sinking into a sleek leather chair behind a fine oak desk in the Alpha’s office at the North Austin pack house.

“For the third time, I wasn’t there. Rowan is the acting head of Ellie’s protection detail. She’s debriefing Quinn and Xander now. From what we’ve gathered so far, one of Cris’s vampire trainees suggested they move back farther from the street and Quinn told him where he could stick that suggestion.”

“Why was Cris’s guy even there? They’re supposed to be wide perimeter protection on campus only.”

London made a noise under her breath. “Yeah. Real wonder your team is having issues working together.”

“Jori wasn’t feeling well,” I said. “She texted me and said she had to pull out at the last second. Someone traded with her.”

In the chair beside me, Hayden tensed, her violet eyes flashing shapeshifter gold, and I could almost feel her claws coming out, her wolf dangerously close to the surface. If River had tried to use that tone with me, she would have jumped down his throat, her protective instinct still primed after the incident at the ice cream truck.

River hesitated, and to his credit, his voice was softer when he spoke. “Is it the sun exposure? If we’re asking too much of the vampires on the team—”

I bit my lip, hating to do this. It wasn’t my secret to tell, but at this point he needed to know. “She has mild ALDD symptoms. Most of the time she’s able to mask it and it’s no more than tremors, but she has flare-ups similar to what August deals with. Today was a bad day.”

There was a long pause. “Did Rowan know about this too?”

“Yeah, you’re going to want to think twice before you start interrogating my little sister,” Hayden snapped. “Because I don’t care what kind of badass you think you are or what kind of training you have. I will eff you up.”

London took a sip of the ginger ale on her desk and grimaced. I noted how pale she looked and wondered if she was coming down with something.

“Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get back to today’s incident. We’re all making a lot of snap judgements and applying the benefit of hindsight. They could have just as easily materialized vampires in behind the food trucks.”

River growled. “Her detail wasn’t thinking tactically.”

“By not having them eat ice cream in a bunker?” London countered dryly. “That seems like a stretch. And even if we assume a mistake was made, the only way people grow is by being allowed to make mistakes in an environment where it’s safe to learn from their errors.”

“You do realize this one could have gotten people killed?”

London just shook her head calmly. “I get that you’re pissed. I am, too. But if Brody and I applied that rule, we wouldn’t have anyone left doing security for us, or anyone left in the pack for that matter. The seating next to the street turned out to be an error. To Quinn’s credit, when he and Xander realized they’d fucked up, Quinn neutralized the target within seven point five seconds with zero civilian casualties. Xander cleared the area in case the vehicle was rigged with explosives, shifted to wolf form to sniff for accelerants, and once they determined the truck wasn’t rigged to blow, did a search to remove any evidence we would need before the police showed up and confiscated it. And for the record, they both have already apologized to the vampire from Cris’s team for being total dicks to him when he showed up and introduced himself as part of the protection detail. I don’t say this to excuse his behavior, but Xander’s mate was killed by vampires and it caused him to go feral.”

River sighed. “What do we know about the shooter?”

“White male, aged nineteen. He was a Bitten wolf from a remote pack in Tennessee who was changed at the age of fifteen. From the preliminary information August has gathered, he left his pack two months ago. His Alpha reported concerns that he was becoming increasingly radicalized this past year.”

“Wow, okay.” I rubbed my temples. “How did he know where we would be?”

“Yeah.” Hayden bared her teeth. “Seems like a pretty big coincidence.”

London nodded. “And I don’t like coincidences. We have a rat, someone who has access to the protection detail files through the pack databases.”

River added, “Or one of the vampires on the team.”

“Rowan is going through all the data now to see who had access.”

I frowned. “Is it possible Rossi or another neural manipulator could be listening in somewhere, reading the information from someone without them being aware?”

“For him to do that, he’d have to be so close he could already get to you,” River said. “There would be no point.”