Chapter Ten

It was dark out, the only illumination on the road coming from their headlights and the cold white light of the nearly full moon. The trees closed in overhead, thick branches from both sides of the road rubbing together. Driving on this road was like winding through a lightless tunnel.

Austin glared at his prisoner, who was slumped over in the seat next to him. He’d just been forced to use two more tranqs on him. Roy seemed to be waking up every two to three hours. He wasn’t just deadly and psychotic, he was also the most annoying son of a bitch Austin had ever met. He seemed to enjoy aggravating them just for the fun of it. Fun for him, anyway.

Austin would never have thought he’d want to see Jason’s face again, but now he absolutely could not wait to get rid of this passenger from hell.

Savannah spoke up from the front seat. “Based on the rate he’s burning through our supplies, we don’t have enough tranqs to keep him out until we get there.”

Austin nodded. His voice was strung tight with tension. “Just drive as fast as you safely can. How you holding up? Do you need a break?”

“Nah, I’m good, thanks,” she said cheerfully. “The adrenaline and sheer terror are doing wonders for keeping me awake.”

“Fun times, eh?” Austin sighed.

“The funnest.”

He had to hand it to her. She was being absolutely amazing about this. She wasn’t whining or complaining, just doing the job that needed to be done. It was a miserable job, driving slow, endless miles on this hell-road with a living bomb in the back seat that could go off at any moment. But she was a trooper.

And he would have to leave her.

Gloom settled over him.

What if they made it to Jason’s and somehow managed to walk away from the whole encounter alive? Then what would he do? He’d been ordered to leave Washington State, forever, and if he didn’t, Tully’s pack would pay the price. He’d have a huge stash of money, but what good was that to him if he was all alone?

The thought of never seeing Savannah again made him ill. Waking up in an empty bed… Never hearing her voice again… Nausea rolled in his stomach, and sweat beaded on his temples and trickled down the sides of his face.

He pushed it to the back of his mind.

Focus on the job.

They lasted about another two hours before Roy woke up again.

This time, instead of struggling against the chains, he started talking.

Or rather threatening.

“Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you when I get out of these chains, girl?” he rasped.

Anthony yawned and opened his eyes, looking around to get his bearings.

“You talking to me?” Savannah asked, glancing in the rearview mirror.

“No, I’m talking to the little bitch sitting next to me,” he snarled. “Yes, I’m talking to you.”

“Um, let’s see. You’ll ravage my fair young flesh?” she guessed.

“No, that’s not really my thing. I’m going to slow cook you alive over an open fire.”

“Sounds fun,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve always liked it hot.”

Roy continued describing all the horrible things he was going to do to her, her pack, everyone she’d ever loved, everyone she’d ever known, even people she didn’t particularly like very much.

It involved a lot of talk of evisceration, stabbing out eyeballs, skinning alive, and general torture and mayhem.

Austin just sat there in stony silence, letting Roy ramble on.

“So, I’m just trying to figure you out,” Savannah said. “You’ve spent the last few hours reminding us that you’re a total freaking psychopath. A threat to shifters and humans and anything with a pulse. We know this. That’s why you’re in chains and we’re not. What is your point, exactly? We’d better let you go or you’ll kill us all?”

“Fuck, no.” Roy barked out a strange, harsh laugh. “Too late for that. Let me go, and I’ll still kill you.”

Anthony sat very still while Roy talked. His face went paler and paler. Savannah was afraid he was going to puke.

Still, she didn’t try to shut him up. Roy occasionally hurled himself against his chains, at random moments, but he wasn’t struggling hard. He was spending too much time threatening them. That was good. They’d bought themselves some time.

Finally they pulled over at a little rest stop gas station.

The sun was rising now, glowing like an ember through the crags of distant mountain peaks.

“Out,” Austin said to Anthony. “You’ll get your share; you’ve done your part. This is too much for you. You are going to call back to Foxhaven and get someone to pick you up.” He pulled out his wallet and grabbed a handful of twenties, which he shoved into Anthony’s fist. “They have a little motel here. This will cover it if you need to spend the night.”

Anthony didn’t even try to argue. He grabbed the money, glanced back at Savannah regretfully, and then hurried over to the little rest stop store.

“Thank you, Austin,” Savannah murmured, with an appreciative smile. “That was decent of you.”

A rush of happiness warmed him. He loved it when he and Savannah bantered, but when he’d done something to earn her respect…that felt like everything to him. “I have my moments.”

Savannah climbed out and filled up the gas tank while Austin stood there and listened to Roy rambling on with his favorite “filet of shifter” recipes. Then Austin hurried off to make a quick phone call while she took a turn holding the rifle on Roy.

When they got in the car, Roy started in on Austin. He described the things he would do to Austin, and then his packmates.

Then he started detailing how he’d dismember and skin Austin’s mother. At that, Austin threw his head back and laughed. “You’re too late. She’s dead now, thank God, but frankly, if she wasn’t, I would hand her ass over to you and I would stand back and watch while you dismembered her.”

“Do you want to know what I’m going to do to the cubs in your pack?” Roy sneered.

At that, Savannah shifted angrily in the driver’s seat. “Sort of like what you did to those humans?” she snapped. “You killed an innocent family. You killed a teenager, you slimeball.”

There was a long pause. “He was tasty,” Roy said coldly.

“What are you even talking about? You didn’t eat them, you freak.” Disgust dripped from Savannah’s voice. “Just ripped their throats out and left them for the vultures.”

Another pause. A long one. “Well, when you’ve killed as many as I have, you forget little details like that.”

But he hadn’t killed anyone else. That would have been in Harris’ report.

“Did you actually kill them?” Doubt crept into Savannah’s voice.

“Dumbass, why would I confess to a death penalty crime if I didn’t do it?” Roy sneered.

“Hey, nobody ever accused you of being sane. Or rational. Or hygienic,” Savannah said nastily.

“What do you think your mother’s intestines are going to look like when I’m playing jump rope with them?” Roy snarled at her.

Thunk, thunk.

A groan, a yelp, and then blessed silence.

“Did you just shoot him?” Savannah demanded.

Austin looked down at the limp, unconscious shifter with satisfaction. “Sure did.”

“But why?” she said with exasperation. “You know that those tranqs are as precious as gold right now, and we really need to save them for when he’s fighting the chains. What difference does it make what he says? He can rant all the way there for all I care.”

“I know, I’m sorry.” Frustration chewed at him. “I wasted the tranqs. I’m sorry. It was stupid of me. I just didn’t like it when he was threatening your mother.”

“You would defend my mother like that, but not your mother?” she asked.

Austin’s voice turned tight and angry, with a hurt lacing it that had been there his entire life. “Clearly you never met my mother. Or rather Jessica Bronson. You never met Jessica.”

“I’m sorry.” They rolled down the road in silence for a few minutes before she spoke up again. “Want to talk about it?”

“Not really. My mother married my father even though she used to tell everyone that someone else was her True Mate and she wished she’d married him instead. My father treated her like crap and cheated on her all the time, so she cheated on him once, and he killed the guy and then beat her until she nearly died. They hated each other.” The memories crawled through his mind like a dark, suffocating cloud, and he tasted bile. “My father used to beat the hell out of me and my two older brothers, but especially me. He used to break my bones on a regular basis, and my mother would just sit there drinking, and watch while I crawled off into the bushes to heal.”

“Good God,” Savannah said with horror. He saw her hands tightening on the wheel.

“You have no idea how much I envy you your family. I know they’re nuts, I know they annoy you, but they genuinely love you. And so much for my not talking about it.” He laughed ruefully.

It was awkward and strange, spilling his guts like this. He was opening himself up and showing her his raw, wounded parts, when his relationship with her had been all about the verbal sparring and mockery.

“No, no, it’s totally fine. I asked. I wanted to know. I’m sorry you had to grow up like that, Austin.”

He gave a bitter chuckle. “Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” There was her opening. Her chance to laugh it up at her expense. Give it your best shot, foxy lady.

“It does. It explains that you’re even stronger than I knew, to survive a cubhood like that and still grow up to be a decent man.”

He paused. “I’m waiting for the punchline.” He felt himself instinctively tensing, his muscles drawing tight. A nasty comment from Savannah at that moment, when he’d opened himself up to her, would hurt more than his father’s worst tortures.

“There is none. You’re a good guy. You drive me crazy when we’re both going after the same marks, sure, but I have to admit, it’s fair enough. Harris puts out the call to everyone. Sometimes you win, sometimes – more often than you – I do. But you’re decent where it counts, Austin. You spend your spare time hunting meat for the food pantry. You came to my house and paid us a bunch of money that you weren’t obligated to, and in all honesty you didn’t really owe us. And you paid for the Haymarches, and Anthony. Anthony’s an annoying little twerp, but you still protected him by sending him home when we could have used him to take over driving when we got too tired.”

Austin was liking this. He was liking it a lot.

“Go on.”

“A lot of wolves would have turned feral, living through what you did, but you were stronger than that. And you don’t even have to work, from what I’ve heard – you could just live off your family’s money, but instead you took a job that’s hard and dangerous and that ends up making everyone safer.”

With every word, a warm glow spread inside him, thawing parts of him that he hadn’t even realized were frozen. Brushing away the darkness.

“Do you talk to your brothers at all?” she asked, her voice soft with sympathy.

“Not much.” He shrugged casually to hide the sting that he always felt when he thought about how cut off he was from his birth pack. “I never fit in with my family. I was shipped off to military school in my teens. I ran away from the school and didn’t talk to my pack again until I was in my early twenties. By then, I had already joined Tully’s pack and there just wasn’t much reason for me to go back to Hidden Hills to visit. I’m fond of my niece and nephews, but they’ve got their own lives – they don’t need me.”

Thinking about that made him gloomy again. He wanted that feeling of light back, the feeling of easiness that only she could give him. “Tell me something happy, Savannah.”

“Um, if we survive this, and we make it back alive, after my mother makes my life a living hell for God knows how long, we will all celebrate with a huge, delicious home-cooked feast. You’re invited. To dinner with my family. Is that happy or horrifying?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Happy, Savannah. Very happy.”

* * *

He hadn’t said no to dinner. He hadn’t said yes, either, but at least he wanted to come.

Savannah was absolutely, totally dying to ask him about his future plans. He’d said he would never come back to Washington after delivering Roy. Did he mean it? And if so, why? If he managed to deliver Roy and collect the bounty, he could live anywhere he wanted, do anything he wanted, even with just his share of it.

His feelings for her seemed to go beyond sexual attraction. He actually liked her family, too, which meant that he was clinically insane but also meant that wasn’t the reason he was running for the hills. So why was he leaving? Why wouldn’t he want to live near her? Was he running from something?

Now isn’t the time to ask, she told herself firmly. They didn’t have the luxury of doing the relationship talk. First they had to survive another couple of days with Nightmare on Wolf Street there in the back seat.

“Oh, that call I made earlier?” Austin’s voice jerked her from her reverie. “I called up the Deep River Pack and told them we’d be bunking down with them tomorrow, for the full moon.”

“I was going to ask you about that,” she said. “I figured you had a plan.”

Shifters could normally control their shifts, once they were past cubhood. During the full moon, however, all shifters compulsively changed to their animal form – and stayed that way throughout the night. They wouldn’t be able to guard Roy, and the idea of him in his shifted form, on a full moon, was a horrifying one.

“So they were all right with it?” she said.

“Not at all,” he scoffed. “They bitched, they moaned, they cried, they tried to say that they had nowhere they could safely hold him. I asked them if that meant I need to report them, and they whined and cried some more, and then they said that they would come up with something.”

Annoyance roiled in Savannah’s gut. She’d never met this pack, but she disliked them already.

There were few universal rules among shifters, but the requirement to offer a safe place to travelers on a full moon was one of them. Otherwise, a shifter on a full moon might be forced shift too close to human territory and expose their existence.

The requirement to have a place to restrain feral shifters was another.

There was no central shifter authority, but every territory in the country had one large pack that oversaw matters that affected all shifters. They usually had smaller packs reporting to them. If a pack refused to take in travelers, or if they had nowhere to restrain a dangerous shifter, they’d find themselves quickly disbanded, and their Alpha would find himself…well, he wouldn’t find himself, because he’d be dead.

Savannah and Austin fell silent again.

The drive through the night was long and torturous. Roy did everything he could to make their trip hell.

He’d learned to fake being unconscious, for one thing. Apparently he had admirable control over his heartbeat and breathing, and now that he’d figured out how quickly he could burn through their tranquilizers, he was doing his best to get them to use as many as possible.

So he would be lying there perfectly still, giving no sign that he’d woken up again, whatsoever, and then he would suddenly leap up with a terrifying roar and start tearing at his chains.

Austin had gotten so pissed off that he’d repeatedly punched Roy in the head, then beaten him with a wrench. It had just made Roy laugh.