Chapter Seventeen

 

Celeste stood in line at the coffee counter in downtown Somerville, feeling the familiar twist of tension in her gut. They were due in the courthouse for their final meeting with CPS in an hour.

She didn’t have any reason to be afraid. Reynaldo, Pete, Austin, Grant, Truman and Mandy were sitting at a table with Jeffrey. There were wolf shifters sitting outside in cars – there were fifteen vehicles in total accompanying them to and from the courthouse.

They were as well protected as a visiting statesman, but she couldn’t help but worry. The last time they’d headed home from the courthouse, they’d come close to losing Jeffrey.

“Excuse me.” An angry voice behind her made her turn around and frown. It was one of the coffee shop employees, a tall, lean, middle-aged woman with dirty blonde hair scraped back into a bun. A small plaque on her shirt read “manager”.

“Yes?” Celeste said, puzzled. Why was this woman angry? Celeste had never met her before.

“We told you if you came back again, we’d call the police.” The woman pointed at the door. “Get out.”

“I’ve never been here before,” Celeste said with annoyance.

“You were here yesterday.” The woman waved over a burly-looking barista. “She’s back. Call the cops. We’re pressing charges.”

“I didn’t even leave my house yesterday,” Celeste said, glaring at her. “But I’ll be happy to take my business elsewhere.”

“Wait,” the barista said to the manager. “You’ve got the wrong person. The lady who was in here yesterday? She didn’t have a scar.”

Celeste felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of freezing water on her. “The woman who was here yesterday…she…she stole something?”

Now the manager was staring at her. “You’re right,” she said to the barista. “I’m sorry,” she added to Celeste. “Do you have a sister? Because a woman who looks almost exactly like you was in here yesterday, and she tried to steal a twenty-dollar bill off a table. I mean, she had the same coloring, same eyebrows, eyes, facial features… Her hair was longer than yours, now that I look at you, and she didn’t have that scar.”

Jennifer. She was alive.

“Excuse me,” she said faintly. She hurried over to Grant.

“We need to talk,” she told him. “Now.”

Jeffrey was sitting next to Grant, sullenly pushing his cookie around the plate with a spoon. He was still being quiet and moody.

She and Grant stepped outside the shop, and she told him what the manager had just told her.

“She’s alive,” she said to him. “There’s no other explanation.”

“There was a dead person with her ID, found burned to death in a car,” Grant protested. “How could that be?”

Celeste hugged herself as conflicting emotions warred inside her. Her sister wasn’t dead. She didn’t want Jennifer to be dead, but she didn’t want anything to do with her, either. Jennifer was poison. She ruined everything she touched.

“All right, I’m thinking out loud here,” she said. “Let me go over everything I know about the accident. The car was found on the outskirts of Somerville. It went around a curve and hit a tree, exploded and burned, around two a.m. The body in it was burned beyond recognition – they couldn’t even tell what sex it was. The only way they traced it was they found a wallet lying in the road outside the car with several fake IDs and also Jennifer’s real ID. The cops told me that when they called me. I was still listed as her emergency contact.” She frowned. “It’s a small town. Jennifer was a nobody. It looked like a one-car accident. I imagine they rushed the police report and didn’t do much of an autopsy, probably just wanted to wrap everything up quickly.”

“Does it strike you as suspicious that the body and the car were destroyed, but a perfectly intact wallet with her ID was found outside the car?” Grant asked.

“Well, it does now that you mention it. That’s a great way to fake your own death.” She grimaced. “I haven’t seen Jennifer in ages, but would she actually kill a person? Because she would have to have put a person, probably female, in that car and set up the accident. As awful as she is, I’d hate to believe that about her.”

“Another question. Why did Jennifer need to disappear? And why leave Jeffrey behind? Granted, she was the worst mother in the history of mothers, but... What?” he asked, looking at Celeste.

“I just remembered something. When I first met Jeffrey, he was talking about a time when he and Jennifer were living somewhere under fake names, hiding from the bad man. In fact, I got the impression that he and his mother always lived under fake names. Seven years ago, she told me that she’d broken up with you, and then there was some weird thing with Boone… She didn’t specifically say why, but she told me that if he contacted her, I had to pretend I hadn’t heard from her. He called me a few times and he was really threatening, demanding to know where she was. I changed my number because of that.”

“Hmm. You think Boone might be the one who was after Jeffrey?” He scowled. “I’ll call Cliff and put the word out, but that makes it tough. Lone wolves are hard to catch. They live off the grid – they can hunt their own food and survive in the woods in extreme temperatures.” At the look of dismay on her face, he hugged her. “It’ll be okay. Once we get back to our pack property, I promise you, he’s not coming anywhere near us. And now that we’re close to having the database up and running, it’ll be easier to find these guys. I’m going to stop traveling and stay home with you and Jeffrey. We just have to make it past the full moon, and we’ll be fine.”

* * * * *

Celeste looked at her reflection in the mirror of the courthouse bathroom and grimaced. Even with makeup on, she had circles under her eyes. She hadn’t been sleeping well. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Somerville and never come back.

The door to one of the stalls banged open, and Rhona Millhouse walked out. She came over to use the sink next to Celeste, avoiding her gaze. Weird. There were two other empty sinks that she could have used.

Rhona had been a little more subdued in court today. She had stopped demanding that Jeffrey be handed over to her; it was obvious the judge wasn’t going to do that.

“So, how’s Jeffrey doing?” she asked Celeste, pasting a big, fake smile on her face.

“Talk to my attorney,” Celeste snapped.

“My goodness, there’s no need to have an attitude.” The smile never wavered as Rhona pulled out a little canister of breath spray from her purse. “I’m just doing what’s best for Jeffrey. If you cared anything about him, you’d have let me help him. You’re really not a fit mother. You’re no better than your sister was.”

“What did you just say to me?” Celeste turned to stare at her in alarm.

“You heard me…Celeste.” Rhona squirted the breath spray in Celeste’s face, and Celeste felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her.

When she woke up again, she was lying face down on something fuzzy, and her hands were tied behind her. She kept her eyes closed as she waited for dizziness to subside. The floor bumped underneath her, and she heard music. She was in a car, and somebody was playing the radio. Country music.

“Turn that shit off,” a male voice growled from somewhere above Celeste’s head. She was pretty sure it was Boone, sitting in the back seat of the car.

The music stopped. “My goodness,” Rhona chirped in her annoying, syrupy voice. “You people use the most foul language.” So she was driving.

“We’re fucking paying you well enough, so do what I fucking say.”

“Remember, I get to see that woman punished,” Rhona said. “I get to watch. She was very disrespectful to me. She threatened to hit me.” Her tone was deeply aggrieved.

Fear and rage mingled in Celeste’s gut. What were they going to do to her? Why did they even want her? At least they didn’t have Jeffrey. Thank God for that.

Jeffrey would be devastated without her. Would Grant find her and save her in time? How could he? He couldn’t search every car in town, simultaneously.

“Yeah, yeah.” Boone sounded bored and disgusted. He kicked Celeste in the side, hard, and she stifled a cry. “Quit faking, bitch, I know you’re awake.”

She rolled over onto her back. Fine. Now he couldn’t see what she was about to do with her hands.

She’d learned a few tricks when she was working for the security company. One of them was to always carry a handcuff key concealed in her bracelet.

She wouldn’t be able to escape, but she wouldn’t let them take her alive. She’d fight until they had to kill her.

She stared up at him. She’d met him a few times, eight years ago, when Jennifer had first started dating him. The years had not been kind to him. He had been handsome in a lean, hawkish way, but now he’d lost teeth and the lines and hollows in his face had deepened.

“What do you want with me?” she demanded.

He snorted in contempt. “I don’t want shit with you. We want Jeffrey. Grant can trade him for you, or we can send him pieces of you.”

She went cold and blinked back tears. Yes. She would have to make them kill her. She couldn’t let these monsters use her to get to Jeffrey.

She’d been so close to happiness. She’d had love, and family, and friends.

“Grant will never give Jeffrey to you,” she said, squirming on the floor of the car as she worked her hands behind her. There. The cuffs were off. She’d just have to wait for an opportunity.

“His loss. There are other things we can use you for. The boss said you’d be good for breeding.” His gaze roved over her in a way that made her want to vomit.

Boss? Breeding? What the hell was he talking about?

“I’m not one of you,” she protested. “I’m not a werewolf. And Jeffrey’s only half wolf.”

“Yeah. That’s what makes him special.”

Had years of drugs and booze fried his brains? What was he talking about?

“Who’s the boss?”

He shuddered, and a fearful look crossed his face. “You’ll find out soon. Then you’ll wish you didn’t. You made lots of trouble for him. Should of just gave up the kid when you had the chance.”

“Told you so,” Rhona sang from the front seat. “If you had just let me have him when I first came to your house, none of this would have happened. He wasn’t yours. You had no business keeping him.”

Celeste ignored her. “Where’s Jennifer?” she asked Boone bitterly. “She didn’t want to come to the party?”

“Bitch is dead. I killed her weeks ago,” Boone snarled. “Shot out her tire. She hit a tree, and now she’s barbecue.” He sniggered at that.

Celeste froze. Boone had caused the accident – and he thought he’d killed Jennifer. But he was wrong, she was sure of it.

“Is that so,” she said flatly. “Why would you have done that?”

He snorted. “She was supposed to meet me and give me that brat of hers. She came to the meeting spot, but then she took one look at me and kept driving.” Then a pouty look crossed his face. “Wasn’t my fault. I was supposed to come alone. My boys was hiding in the woods, but they didn’t hide good enough, and she saw them. I kilt them after I shot her tire out. Ripped their throats out.”

Now the car was going up an even bumpier road.

“She was just going to give you her son?” Celeste snorted. “No. Jennifer never does anything for free.”

“I told her I’d give her a million bucks for him.” His expression went sly and greedy. “I got a real interested buyer. The boss man. I was supposed to hand that brat over six years ago, but she found out about it and took the kid and ran. Guess she needed money real bad now. So she came back and told me she knew I had a rich guy who wanted the kid, so she’d sell him to me.”

Jennifer, you bitch.

“Who’s the rich guy? The boss man?”

Boone punched her in the side of the head, and she saw stars.

“I told you don’t fuckin’ ask that!”

The car rolled to a stop.

“Remember. I get to watch,” Rhona sang out. “Maybe I’ll even help.”

Boone kicked the back of the driver’s seat. “Shut the hell up, you old cow, or I’ll take care of her and you at the same time.”

Rhona spun around to glare at him. “I already told you, I took precautions. If I don’t return safely, everyone will know about you and Talbot.”

“Don’t say his fuckin’ name!” Boone screamed with rage and kicked the driver’s seat even harder. Rhona threw the door open and jumped out of the car.

Wait, Talbot? Talbot the rich werewolf? Talbot who was working with Grant on the database?

She had to tell Grant. She had to warn him. But she’d never be able to warn Grant, because she was going to die here.

Why did Talbot want Jeffrey? What would he do to him? What would he do to her, if she didn’t fight to the death right now? Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

Boone opened the car door and stepped out. Then he grabbed her and hauled her out, punching her in the head several times as he did so. She kept her hands together behind her back, wincing in pain each time he hit her.

She rolled away from him and leaped to her feet, her hands still crossed together – for now.

They were at the end of a long dirt road, in a thickly forested area. She suspected that Talbot or his men would be coming any minute, to fetch her.

“You never were going to give Jennifer that million, were you?” she demanded.

“Hell, no. Why split the reward?” he sneered.

“She knew that. She sent someone else to the meetup to see what you’d do.” Someone else just as disposable as Jennifer, Celeste imagined. Someone who would never be missed. “You didn’t get a good look at her when she drove past, did you? It was the middle of the night. And then the car blew up. You killed the wrong person.”

At that, he froze, staring at her wide-eyed. “Why would she do that?”

He really was that dumb. He really had to ask. “Because you’re a slimy, lying little toad, and she knew better than to trust you.”

He swore a blue streak.

“That fucking whore!” he screamed, his face red with rage.

She started backing away from him. “That means she’s out there somewhere, Boone. I’d watch your back.”

“She’s getting away!” Rhona wailed.

Boone hurried towards her. When he got close to her, she lunged forward violently, head-butted him and broke his nose. He staggered back, screaming and wailing.

Then she turned and ran for her life. She raced into the woods. She could hear Rhona thudding after her, big and awkward.

“Stop! I’ve got a gun!” Rhona screamed. A shot whizzed past her ear.

She dodged behind a massive oak tree.

“Don’t make me shoot you!” Rhona whined. “I don’t get paid if you’re dead!”

Frantically, Celeste looked around for anything that she could use as a weapon. There was nothing. No big sticks.

“I’ll kill you!” Boone screamed, his voice high and shrill, and she heard his footsteps slamming into the ground.

This was it, then. She’d make her last stand here, make them chase her down and kill her so they couldn’t use her as bait. She’d do it for Jeffrey.

She turned and ran, and behind her she heard screams. Horrible, gurgling screams.

She swung around wildly. Wolves were attacking Rhona and Boone. Boone had struggled free and was lashing out with wild, haymaker punches. With a shout of fear and anger, he pushed Rhona to the ground between the wolves and himself. He turned and broke into a shambling run, but the wolves fell on him too, and he went down under the weight of their bodies.

Moments later, the wolves shifted into human form. Mandy, Grant and Austin ran over to her.

“You found me,” she sobbed, falling into Grant’s arms. “Oh, God. I thought I was going to die out here. How did you find me?”

“It was Austin,” Grant said, hugging her and stroking her hair. “He slipped a tracking device into your pocket this morning. I didn’t even know until you went missing. Then he told me.”

Austin walked up to her, covered with gore. “I track for a living,” he said. “I knew you and Jeffrey would be targets, so I put trackers on both of you.”

Celeste stiffened and looked at Grant. “Talbot,” she said. “Rhona said that Talbot was behind all of this. They want Jeffrey for something, and Boone – that’s the guy who was chasing me – he said something about how they could use me to breed. I don’t know what it all means, but…”

She started crying, hard, and found she couldn’t stop.