They hopped in the truck and headed for Tennessee, quickly leaving Portsmouth behind after getting on the highway. Dylan stared out the window and wondered how it had come to this, that he should be spending so much time on the road when he was never much of a traveler to begin with. Being in the car wasn’t exactly the most fun thing for a person with a mind like his. He needed things to do, puzzles to solve, activities to complete. His spare time was always of the most fulfilling sort exactly because he used it to accomplish something.

Now, not only were his nerves shot, leaving him incapable of focusing, he was in a car with nothing to do but count the seconds that were ticking down. The radio was annoying. Stopping for gas was annoying. Ryan’s breathing was annoying. The fact that Arden didn’t bother to call him back once during the entire journey was more than annoying. It left him feeling isolated. He had no clue what was happening outside of the truck.

The entire journey took a little over eight hours from beginning to end. It might have been less, except they ran into construction a grand total of three times.

The first two-thirds of the journey was uneventful, with the highway looking like any other ordinary highway in the world. There was nothing special about it, no defining features.

Then, suddenly, about an hour before they crossed the Tennessee border, mountains sprouted in the distance. They could only be glimpsed through the gaps in the trees on the side of the highway, as they were still driving on land that was pretty low. They seemed insignificant, little more than smears of gray that could have just been clouds if a person just glanced at them.

However, the mountains closed in around them as they continued driving and the trees fell away beneath them as the land beneath the highway grew in elevation. No longer gray, the mountains were at first solid green and then they were finally close enough to see them in full detail. Snow-capped, they were huge monoliths composed of untamed forest striated with glimpses of the jagged stone beneath. Occasionally, power lines cut swathes through the forest, disappearing up a curve and then down the other side.

As they reached the last leg of their journey, only an hour northeast of Baneberry, the mountains began to recede once more until they were back to being hazy splashes of cloud on the horizon.

Dylan sat up straight when he realized just how close they were to their destination. This entire trip had been a true test of patience, and he had been slipping away into a dull fog, but now he rose out of that fog as a nervous bundle of energy.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ryan said. “Stop wiggling.”

And Dylan tried, but his efforts were quickly overpowered by the anxiety roaring to life in his very soul.

At long last, just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, they passed the sign announcing the Baneberry town limits.

And Dylan thought, What town?

He hadn’t even seen it coming, but they were here now, though he would have hesitated to call this a town even when held at gunpoint. He could hardly see any houses at all, and they all seemed to be of a very polite and economical size, easily hidden by a tree positioned at just the right angle in the foreground. These houses had large yards, putting plenty of space between each dwelling. This didn’t help the illusion that this wasn’t a town, but rather a place where a handful of houses had randomly cropped up like weeds.

The main street, if it could be called that, offered a glimpse of the mountains in the distance.

“Wow,” Dylan said.

“Wow is right,” Ryan growled. “I was expecting a small town but this is...”

There was no other word for this place except for “disappointing.”

For Dylan, this was the worst possible scenario. It would be so damn easy for the cops to watch this place. Any and every bit of activity was visible from across town. What could they hope to find that the police hadn’t already?

As if to confirm his suspicions, a police car suddenly pulled out onto the road behind him with its lights flashing.

Ryan glanced around and then pulled over on the side of the road. “I don’t think I was speeding,” he said.

“You don’t think?”

“You see a sign anywhere?” the alpha growled. He was nervous and Dylan didn’t like that. Ryan wasn’t prone to bouts of nervousness. Hell, Ryan tried not to be prone to bouts of anything. He was a strong, steady man. If something got to him, it was bound to be bad news. “This seems like the kind of place where the limit’s just implied and everyone automatically knows except for us dumb tourists.”

“Is that what we are? Tourists?”

Ryan seemed to ponder over this question. The police officer in the car behind them had turned off their lights. Whatever they were doing in there, they were quite busy.

Finally, Ryan sighed and shook his head. “No. We are who we are. No need to lie. They’d find out eventually anyway.”

From behind them came the sound of a door opening and then closing. The cop was a heavyset woman in her 40s, with graying hair and a grandmotherly face that reflected back at them in the rearview mirror without losing any of its kindness.

Ryan rolled down the window for her and leaned out. The woman was taller than she had appeared because of her girth making her seem rounded—though Dylan suspected her width maybe had more to do with muscle than fat.

“Good afternoon, boys. You two from out of town?”

The license plate was a dead giveaway for that, and she had probably watched them enter the town from her little perch off the side of the road. Ryan somehow managed to reign in his smartass nature and didn’t bring up either of these facts. All he said was, “Yes, ma’am.”

“May I see your license, son? And your vehicle registration?”

Ryan fished out his wallet for the license. “Registration is in the glove compartment,” he told Dylan.

Dylan obediently opened the glove compartment, which was shoved full of the same sort of pointless shit that always seemed to find its way into that most convenient of places. Napkins galore, both used and clean—but crumpled. Old maps and brochures, and empty CD cases—or cases which held a different CD from the one it was intended to hold—and ketchup packets, straw wrappers, receipts, loose change, a handful of the terrible free candy that banks always had in a bowl on the counter. And finally, shoved way in the back behind all this mess, was the vehicle registration.

He handed it over, and Ryan passed it to the cop, who had just finished looking at his license. She only glanced at the registration before handing it back, seemingly satisfied.

“Everything checks out. Sorry about stopping you boys, but we’re having a bit of trouble in these parts lately. Gotta be careful with newcomers.”

Why would a police officer give us that kind of information? She doesn’t know who we are. She doesn’t know if she can trust us.

Then again, maybe she was just incredibly bored. Dylan figured he would be if he was her.

“No problem,” Ryan said. “As long as you’re not feeling too ticket-happy today.”

“Give a ticket to such cooperative, handsome young men? I really don’t think so.” The cop leaned against the side of Ryan’s truck, looking as if she was settling in for a long talk with good friends. Dylan couldn’t have been more horrified than if he’d discovered a booger in his salad. He wanted nothing more than to just get going and this was a very unwelcome delay. “Where are you two headed? Not my business, but most people don’t come through this way unless they’re visiting relatives. Or are you up for a bit of golfing? Fishing? Cherokee Lake is only 15 miles north of here. But maybe you already knew that.”

“You could say we’re tourists,” Ryan said. “Do you recognize the man sitting beside me?”

Dylan tried to hold the cop’s gaze as she looked at him but he couldn’t quite manage it. This woman had clearly seen some things in her lifetime and had come out on top of it in style, giving her eyes that were uniquely clear and sweet. He knew if he looked at those eyes for too long, all his secrets would be put out on display and he wouldn’t be able to keep himself together anymore.

No wonder she was a cop.

“Can’t say I do. Should I?”

“Maybe not but you’d probably recognize his son.”

“His...Wait. No. You’re telling me that you’re Dylan Johnson? The father of that little boy who went missing?”

Dylan swallowed hard. “That’s right. I am.”

“Goodness!” She looked around, seeming not to know what to do, then turned back to stare at him through Ryan’s window once more. Her expression was severe, but unreadable. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

He expected that reaction, but out of all the possibilities, it didn’t exactly please him. “I don’t understand.”

She planted her hands on her hips, straightening up. He could see her badge now, could read her name. Georgina Yarrow. A fine, old-fashioned name if he’d ever heard one. “You’re a damn fool to come here, sir. I understand you lost your little boy and that must be mighty hard for you, but coming here isn’t the solution. It’s just going to make it worse. This is a very serious matter.”

My son could be dead in six days and you think I don’t know that?

“This entire county is under surveillance. I’m sure everyone else knew you were here before I even saw you. And damn, is that not good. At best, you look like a fool who’s going to interrupt our investigation. At worst, you’ve made yourself look incredibly suspicious.” She shook her head. “You’re either here to interfere, or you’re here because you’re involved.”

Dylan looked skyward, asking whatever deity was up there to lend him some strength. This would have been more dramatic if he wasn’t inside a truck. As it was, he just looked on the verge of falling asleep. “That might be what it looks like, but that’s not why I’m here. I couldn’t just stay home and pretend that we were actually going to be able to get the money on time.”

“To a person in a line of work where they have to make quick judgments...” The cop snapped her fingers. “...appearances are everything. You want my advice, I’d tell you to just turn this car back around, get on the highway, and go on home. You’ll only waste your time here.”

Be that as it may, an even bigger waste of time would be driving all the way back to Portsmouth after only just arriving here. He’d done that once already. He wasn’t going to do it again.

“Thanks for the advice,” Ryan said, answering for him. “But we’re pretty set on this.”

“And how are you involved, Mr. Castle?”

“I’m his keeper,” Ryan replied. The cop looked as if she might be on the verge of smiling. Shaking her head, she sighed.

“Fine, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if this comes back to bite you.”

She turned away and went back to her car.

Ryan pulled away carefully from the curb and started driving again, much slower this time. “Where do you want to start looking?”

Dylan hesitated. “She said there was a lake north of here?”

“Cherokee Lake. If I had known you’d want to go to the lake, I’d have dragged along my boat.”

“I was just thinking...if I was a bad guy, I wouldn’t want to hang around directly in the place where I was going to get my ransom money. I’d want to be near it. And...” A thought suddenly struck him out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning.

Ryan wiggled the steering wheel a bit, trying to jostle the words out of him. That would have been funny at any other time.

“I just realized. Dylan, Hunter’s a wolf.”

“Um, yeah? So are you. And?” Ryan waited for the answer. Then, he said, “Oh.”

They had no idea as to the circumstances of the kidnapping. Hunter might have been lured away with a promise of candy, but he also might have been taken by force. Either way, it was likely he’d put up a fight or that he would eventually put up a fight once he realized that the situation he’d found himself in wasn’t exactly as good as it seemed. If indeed he did have that realization, as the minds of children often ran counterclockwise to that of adults.

Shapeshifting was a difficult business. Even fully-grown adults had trouble staying human sometimes, especially when they were in situations of great stress. Children were capable of shapeshifting from a very young age, sometimes even from birth, but control over their shifting took time and practice.

Hunter had probably been taken by other shapeshifters, who could handle him in a way that humans wouldn’t be able to. If he’d been up against humans, he would have escaped and been found already. The reason for that was because the age of a person’s animal counterpart tended to correlate with their life stage, not their actual age. Wolves in the wild grew from infancy to young adulthood very quickly. A “pup” could technically be any young wolf from a squirming bundle of fluff with its eyes hardly open, to a large, dog-sized predator.

Hunter was more in the dog-sized range now, with the joint cunning of child and animal, and lupine strength. Humans couldn’t take him. They’d be terrified.

Shapeshifters could.

A shapeshifter who had just stolen a child was going to want privacy and isolation, to be able to afford some wiggle room if things went awry.

A lake was then preferable to a town, though the town would be needed for communication with the police.

Though at first Baneberry had seemed to be of a disappointing nature, now it seemed exactly perfect in all the wrong ways.

Dylan had these thoughts in an instant, and he could feel Ryan echoing him, their ideas bouncing rapidly back and forth between the two of them. It was an odd feeling, one that he wasn’t very used to because Arden hadn’t been the most emotional of wolves and was guarded anyway with what she decided to share. It was also very comforting, to finally be close enough to a person to share such things with them.

“To the lake, then,” Ryan growled.

Soon enough, the lake appeared on the horizon. It was a long, meandering thing, blue-green with a hint of gray as American waters tended to be. The surface was incredibly placid, seeming not to move at all despite the fact that it must have been. There were more mountains in the distance, too far away to be reflected.

Surrounding the lake were hills and trees, and there were a few tiny islands scattered close to the shore. A highway swept out over the water across a bridge, though not very many cars appeared to be using it.

Then again, Dylan thought, this wasn’t exactly an optimum time of year for tourists. All the summer businesses, like boat rentals and golf courses and gift shops, would be shut down. The resorts, of which he could see exactly three from here, would be running at the bare minimum. No one would dare camp out in such cold temperatures, either. Therefore, the lake was all but abandoned except for a few people who had come exactly to get away from the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. Well, that and any park rangers or caretakers who happened to be out and about.

I don’t really think Smokey the Bear should be concerned right now. Unless our kidnapper is a smoker.

“You okay?”

Dylan looked over at Ryan, who was watching him strangely. “Yeah? Why?”

“You laughed. Would’ve been nice if I’d made a joke. The only other conclusion I can draw is that you’re going insane.”

“What if we aren’t going to find anything? How could we even hope to find anything? Where do we even start? And what would we even do if we found Hunter? We’re just two men. We’re not...not police.”

“Do you see any police out here? Do you see anyone out here?”

No, he really didn’t. A few cars at the resort but no people. No one at all. And they hadn’t passed any police cars, or ranger vehicles.

“Doesn’t that mean we should tell them?”

“Did that woman make it sound like she would listen to any of your suggestions? She told us to just turn right back around and leave.”

“But...”

“We’ll look around. If you want to. It’s up to you. What do you want to do, Dylan?”

He knew what he wanted to do. He didn’t know if it was the right thing, but that wasn’t the question being asked.

They had come this far. One thing at a time.

Dylan reached out and set his hand on Ryan’s thigh. Ryan flinched a little and then settled down, looking over at him while idling at a stop sign even though there were no other cars on the road in sight. “Yes?”

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Anything for you. Anything at all.”

The trees swallowed them up before too much longer and then they were driving along winding trails hardly wide enough for even one car. Many of the trees had dropped their leaves, which now blanketed the forest floor with a layer of brown, but there were some stands of pines to add a splash of green life to the place. They reminded Dylan of the last time he’d seen pine trees.

He pushed those thoughts away and focused on trying to catch a glimpse of the lake through the gaps in the trees. Ryan took them to a small ridge overlooking the water, just a hill’s distance away, where there was a parking lot badly in need of maintenance.

Both of them got out, and Ryan dropped his keys into his pocket. He stretched, groaning hugely. The sound disturbed an entire flock of birds which had been roosting nearby, sending them squawking and wheeling away across the sky in search of a quieter home.

Dylan looked around. Most of the scents he could have picked up on were blocked out by a combination of cold and old car exhaust, which had seeped into the very concrete of the parking lot. He smelled pines and water, heard the constant call of the wind and the rustling of bare tree branches. Other than that, there was nothing.

Having finished stretching, Ryan looked over at him. “I say we look around for some cabins. Follow the trails. See what we can hear and smell. I really doubt they’d be right on the water if they’re here. Be more private deeper back.”

Dylan agreed. He didn’t need to say his agreement aloud. Ryan shapeshifted, becoming his pristine white wolf. He looked like a runaway drift of snow that had escaped from the mountains.

After also transforming, Dylan padded up to Ryan and stood at his side. Though their senses retained their strength in human form, their wolf abilities were superior by far. Even if they closed their eyes to walk blind, they would still have been able to navigate just from feeling the shape of the world, from tasting its essence.

Ryan scanned the world with his sharp green eyes, growling contemplatively as he decided where to go. Eventually he started to move, and Dylan hurried to keep pace with him. Though his legs were shorter, his trot was faster and they stayed about even at the shoulder as they walked.

They were in their element here. The world was theirs for the claiming. They were the top, in command, sending other animals scurrying away so as not to cross their path. Scents divided themselves cleanly in their presence, leaving no doubt as to what was what and where it had come from.

There were no scents of recent humans, though surely hikers had walked these paths in the summer months, heading around the lake and up deeper into the hills nearest the mountains. Others too had come this way, though they would have only gone as far as the cabin or trail branches before switching direction.

Dylan and Ryan followed these branches, the first of which meandered around to a series of six cabins along a ridge. The trees had been cleared from the ridge by way of tools, to give a beautiful view. The stumps had been outfitted with plaques, listing the names of people who had donated to the construction of the cabins.

The cabins themselves really didn’t seem to be anything extraordinary. They weren’t luxury cabins found in a resort, after all. Rustic to the core, they had been built with logs and unique pieces of wood so that they almost seemed to have been carved straight from a giant tree. The modern world had no place up here. There were no electric lights, and there were a few outhouses just around the bend. They couldn’t be seen from this angle, but there were signs pointing in that direction. Dylan would trust the signs. He didn’t want to get near those.

They split up and sniffed around, but there were no recent signs of habitation, no human scents, though Dylan did manage to sniff out a bobcat.

Ryan watched this affair with no comment, though his eyes showed his amusement. They wrinkled up at the edges in the way a real wolf’s never would, showing his internal smile.

“Nothing here,” Ryan growled.

Dylan nodded. He, too, could talk in his wolf form, but the effort wore him out and he knew he was going to need to reserve what little strength he had.

Ryan waved his tail for attention and then used his snout to gesture into the trees behind the cabins. Dylan looked too, uncertain of what he was supposed to be seeing. Sparse, dead branches formed a wall behind the six cabins, though there also seemed to be a suggestion of a hill back there, too.

And then he saw it. A hard, straight line which nature had no business with. Looking closer, he made out more details. Another line there, connecting to a slant. A shade of brown the same color as the trees, but patterned differently than the rest of the forest around it.

Another ridge of cabins stood up there, though he couldn’t see how many there were.

They went back to the path and climbed up to them, only to find more of the same primitive emptiness.

We’ve only just started, Dylan told himself. Don’t get discouraged.

There were no more cabins to be found in the immediate area, though there was a campground immediately nearby. Nose to the ground, sniffing hard, Dylan decided in the back of his mind that he preferred the camp to the cabins. This clearing was a natural one, with the forest meandering back and forth against the meadow boundaries just as they always had. Nothing had been cleared. Nothing needed to be cleared. There were a few bare patches in the dead grass where he guessed tents were pitched most frequently, and there were a few fire pits, which had been cleaned out, ready for the first wave of campers to arrive come spring.

Maybe when all this was over, he would take a real vacation. Get out of the city to a place like this where he could connect with nature. Maybe Hunter would come with him. Sure, there was no electricity to charge his game systems, but there was all this open space to just be a wolf in. No boundaries. No expectations. No fear of breaking anything.

He was so caught up in his hopeful daydreams that he nearly stepped on the very thing he was looking for. Only a flash of too-bright color caught his attention before his paw came down.

Yelping out with surprise, he jerked and sprang away with his heart pounding. Instinct demanded he be cautious. The wolf part of him associated such bright colors with poison and venom, howling at him to be wary.

But what he was looking at right now was not a snake, nor a frog. It was a scrap of neon yellow cloth, so painfully familiar that he very nearly collapsed.

In an instant, Ryan was at his side, nudging at his face, licking his snout. His fierce green eyes were soft and tender, begging to know what was wrong.

Dylan didn’t look at him. He was too busy looking at the cloth. He saw it every weekend. At least, he saw the jacket this had come from. It was a gaudy yellow jacket that Hunter was fiercely proud of because it was designed to look like one of those cuddly little monsters from his video games. He never went anywhere without it, and he’d had to be wrestled out of it more than a few times in the middle of summer.

“It’s not too hot,” the child would declare, while practically steaming himself alive.

“Hunter,” Dylan whispered.

He shifted back to human form and reached for the shred of cloth. Powerful hands caught his and held them, preventing him from holding this precious thing. “Don’t get your scent on it,” Ryan said. He sounded as if he was speaking around a lump in his throat. “Or your fingerprints. Leave it.”

“But...he was here...Ryan...”

He was shaking, on the verge of falling apart, when a pair of strong arms wrapped around him and held him close. Ryan’s bulk was like a wall, blocking out the wind. He was warm, canceling out the cold, but there was still nothing he could do for the chill that had just formed inside Dylan’s heart.

“I know,” Ryan whispered. His breath was hot, brushing Dylan’s ear. Only a few weeks ago, this very thing would probably have made him horny as hell, but now it served as comfort. He was tucked up against the other man, receiving every aspect of his being. He wasn’t alone.

Ryan repeated, “I know. But look. What could this have possibly snagged on? Why is it just lying here out in the open?”

Dylan blinked away tears and then looked around. Ryan was right. There was only soft, dead grass here, nothing to have ripped off a scrap of Hunter’s jacket. “Then, what’s it doing here?” he murmured.

“Maybe he dropped it here,” Ryan said. “Tore it off and dropped it to leave us a sign. There might have been others but we just missed them. Point is, he was here!”

Yes, he had been there, but he wasn’t any longer. There was no telling how old this trail was, except that it was so old there was only a bit of scent lingering. They couldn’t follow the trail anywhere because there was no trail at all. The frost which formed overnight and melted again in the soft warmth of the day had thoroughly obliterated it.

“Then, what do we do? Ryan?”

“We scout,” Ryan said firmly. His eyes were harder than Dylan had ever seen them, with no trace of softness left in them at all. “In a widening circle. We look for other signs that someone’s been this way. Once we find one, we’ll be able to figure out what direction they were headed in. Come on, Dilly! Let’s find the bastards who stole Hunter! You get first bite!”

They took off, heading to opposite sides of the camp perimeter. Wolves once more, they moved out in a widening circle to find some other sign that people had been by.

Not five minutes later, Ryan threw back his head and howled with triumph. Heart jammed up in his throat, Dylan raced across the grass and skidded to a stop at his side. A whirlwind of dead leaves tore up in his wake.

“What?” he barked.

Ryan whined and pointed with his snout at something half-hidden beneath a drift of leaves. As Dylan looked at what was there, a sharp gust of wind blew past and removed some of the leaves covering it. “It” was revealed to be another scrap of yellow jacket.

“Went this way,” Ryan growled.

Dylan’s heart pounded. Just as with the last piece of jacket, there was no scent trail but he was over the moon at its discovery all the same. They were getting somewhere!

“Go,” he urged, and they both took off deeper into the forest. The climb was difficult now that they had left the human paths behind, and his legs soon started to burn from the effort, but he hardly cared about the pain.

Before long, they found another yellow scrap. This one was off sharply to the right, caught between two tree trunks. At that point, it occurred to Dylan that these pieces of his son’s presence might have just blown here from somewhere else. They might not be following a trail at all.

But all his doubts were proven wrong when the trees suddenly parted around them and another row of cabins was revealed. They were at the very uppermost point of some diminutive mountain peak, and apparently no tourists had ever wanted to come here for some reason. The view of the lake below was beautiful, which should have attracted its fair share of attention, but the three cabins up here were clearly being left to fall into a slow state of disrepair. All three were large and impressive, but the roofs were collapsing, and the windows were all broken. Two out of three doors hung crooked on their hinges, while the third door wasn’t even present. Everything looked broken and splintery, and there were massive swathes of cobwebs all over.

At least, I hope they’re cobwebs. Because that’s a whole hell of a lot of spiders otherwise.

Something moved in one of the windows. A spindly shape, coming into view and then retreating out of sight once more.

Dylan strangled a sound of surprise as a huge pair of paws shoved him backwards into the undergrowth. He found himself staring up at Ryan, who flicked his ears and crouched down on his stomach to remain unseen by whoever—or whatever—was inside the cabin.

Dylan followed his lead, becoming Ryan’s shadow. His heart pounded in his chest as he stared at the window, waiting for the figure to reappear. This was what wolves were made for, moments like this. They were hunters, the world’s most feared predator because of their unending patience and perseverance. A wolf could chase a single piece of prey for days to tire it out until it could move no more, and then it would go in for the kill.

He would do whatever it took to make sure his son came home safely.

After a few minutes of watching, the shape reappeared in the window. It came more into view this time, revealing itself to be the silhouette of a very tall, thin man who moved with an odd sort of grace that was almost painful to watch. It was like seeing someone perform very badly at an audition they’d practiced for nearly their entire lives, yet believing all the while that they were being impressive.

The thin man receded from sight again.

Ryan glanced at Dylan and the message in his eyes was clear. He didn’t like this one damn bit.

Dylan flicked his ears and parted his jaws, panting softly to keep his nerves from overheating him. Should we go closer?

Ryan must have seen the message in his eyes because he nodded. As one, they rose to their paws and crept through the trees, circling around to the back of the cabin where they had seen the man. The closer they came, the more obvious the signs of habitation became. A man’s scent was strewn all over the clearing, meandering through the trees and back again. He was some sort of shapeshifter, but Dylan couldn’t tell what kind because the frost had done its damage to the trails up here as well.

He didn’t care. He would take on an elephant if push came to shove. He would do whatever it took.

Reaching the rear wall of the cabin, Dylan stopped in his tracks and listened intently. Plain wood wasn’t exactly the most sound-absorbent material on the planet and he expected to pick up on the distant echo of footsteps, or something, but there was only silence.

Silence until a twig snapped behind him.

He wrenched around, knowing in an instant that they were being ambushed, but the attacker was blindingly fast. A flash of ginger fur streaked through the air and slammed against his side. The weight behind the attack was nothing impressive, but the force of it caught him off-guard and sent him reeling back against the cabin wall.

As he fell, he was aware that his attacker had very small paws and a whole lot of fur. Ginger fur blocked out his view of the entire world, became the world. A flash of wickedly pointed white teeth broke through the vivid coloring, and pain stabbed against Dylan’s shoulder.

“Fuck!” he barked, and pushed his back against the wall to try and loosen the assailant.

The attacker held on, snarling in a weird, high-pitched way that should have told Dylan exactly what kind of animal he was up against. Should have, though it didn’t. His brain was fogged with pain and fear and fury.

He whipped his head around, catching the attacker’s face with the thick ridge of bone that ran across the top of his skull. The attacker yelped, weakening, and then suddenly Ryan was there, dragging it away and tossing it to the grass.

Ryan planted himself between Dylan and the attacker but there was no point to it now because just like that, the fight was over.

Crouched in a pile of dead leaves, red against dull brown, was a fox. It was a much larger fox than it should have been but it wasn’t as large as it could have been, therefore it was a beta shapeshifter. There was a bloody laceration under its eye where Dylan had headbutted it, and its teeth were stained with more blood where it had landed a bite.

It whimpered, pawing at its injuries with dark, dainty paws. “Ow,” it said.

Ryan let a growl rip from his throat, deafening in the confined area between the trees and the cabin. “What are you doing here?”

The fox stared at him and then transformed. In an instant, he was an animal no longer but was instead the skinny man they’d glimpsed through the window. “What kind of attack was that?” he whined, rubbing his head with one hand. Already the wound was beginning to fade, but he still didn’t look too pleased about it.

Ryan glanced at Dylan. A message passed between them, one which was full of understanding. Dylan transformed to be able to have this conversation, while Ryan stayed in wolf form to provide brute force if necessary.

“Maybe I didn’t want to hurt you like you hurt me,” Dylan snapped. His voice was edged with all the anger he felt, making no attempt to disguise any of it. He was pissed. Already the bite wound on his shoulder was fading too, blood ceasing to dribble and the edges of his skin drawing together, but he was still mad. “What did you attack us for?”

“What were you two wolves doing sulking around my cabin?” the fox replied.

“As far as I know, these cabins aren’t open during the winter.”

The fox shrugged. “Does that mean a man in need can’t make use of one if he feels like it?”

I guess not.

Dylan wasn’t the sort of person to hold a grudge against others for their station in life. After all, he’d spent most of his life pining after the man who’d clearly been waiting for him to make a move. He didn’t much care if a homeless man took shelter in an unoccupied house, but he didn’t exactly think that was the case here. The fox didn’t look homeless. He had a lingering scent of soap, he was clean-shaven but for a bit of stubble cropping up along his cheeks, and his clothes were only slightly rumpled and that had probably happened during their fight.

Something was amiss here.

“Notice anything weird going on around here?” Dylan asked.

The fox shrugged his shoulders. “Define weird. Lots of stuff is weird. I could keep you standing here all day, telling you all the stuff I’ve seen.”

Dylan thought that was probably true, especially since he’d figured out that this fox was meant to distract them from finding Hunter. Which meant they were on the right trail.

Well, he wasn’t going to let that happen.

He took a threatening step forward and heard Ryan shift with him.

The fox on the ground scooted hastily backwards and then held his hands up in the air. “Whoa. Okay. Okay, you’ve got me. All right? Just be more specific. What weird shit are you looking for?”

“A kid. About five years old. Probably upset. Hear or see anything strange?”

“Can’t say I have,” the fox replied. “I like to keep to myself.”

Dylan didn’t believe that for an instant. He didn’t know why but some instinct told him not to trust anything this other person was trying to tell him. None of this added up.

He looked at Ryan, who looked back at him. He could tell that the alpha thought the same thing.

“Why you looking for the kid? You guys special investigators or something?”

“Or something.”

He said “the kid.” Not “a kid.” He knows. This bastard knows.

But instead of confronting him again, Dylan nodded. “Okay. Sorry for attacking you, although you kind of jumped us first. I guess we’ll just keep looking. Here.”

He held out his hand for the fox, being very careful to look relaxed. The fox eyed him suspiciously, then took his hand. His fingers were very long and slender, easily matching the rest of his body.

Dylan helped the fox stand up. Then, keeping his grip on the fox’s hand, he wrenched around and tossed the fox against the wall.

The fox hit the cabin with an explosive grunt, all the breath driven from his lungs. Dylan grabbed his shoulders, looked into those sneaky little fox eyes, and struck out for all he was worth. He put every ounce of what he felt into that strike, knowing just how devastating a shapeshifter’s strength could be even if they were an omega.

His knuckles cracked against the fox’s jaw, sending his head whipping around to smack against the wall. The fox cried out in pain, a bruise instantly darkening on his cheek. Dylan’s hand was starting to swell up and his knuckles were blood-red from the force of contact, but he ignored the pain and grabbed the fox by the shoulders and slammed him back against the wall.

“Where is he?” he snarled. “Where’s Hunter?”

The fox opened his mouth, but instead of a confession, he yelled out. “Cecil!”

What the fuck is a Cecil?

A powerful roar burst up through the trees and a massive shape leaped forward, crashing through bushes as if they weren’t there at all. Golden-brown from one end to the other, the creature was an immense cougar with fiery eyes.

Ryan launched himself and collided with the cougar in the air, crashing down to the ground in a heaving tangle of muscle. They grappled as only two evenly-matched animals could, jaws locked together, paws on the other’s shoulders, pushing and shoving, striving to knock the other back.

Dylan wanted to leap into the fray, but he knew that Ryan was buying him time. He turned back to the fox. “A fox and a cougar. Two of the trickiest animals. You think you’re so clever. Don’t you?”

The fox spat in his face, the spit red and gummy with congealing blood. Dylan hit him again, aiming for the same exact spot he’d hit before.

“Augh!” the fox said. It was a comical sound, almost surprised. Dylan suspected that he was surprised. After all, it was a very special thing to discover just how bad pain could get. He’d been through it himself.

“Where is my son?” he said. His voice quivered. “We found pieces of his jacket here. Where is he? Where are you hiding him?”

“Pieces of his jacket? Dammit. Smart little fucker.”

Dylan hit him a third time. The fox spit out a tooth, which plunked to the ground and lay there like some weird sort of snowflake.

“You’re going to break my jaw! Cecil!”

The cougar snarled, but nothing else happened and the sounds of scuffling only continued. Cecil the cougar couldn’t answer his friend’s demands for aid.

“I’ll break more than just that,” Dylan whispered. He couldn’t see through a cloud of red. “I’ll start with your fingers. I’ll destroy you. You don’t know pain until you’ve crossed me. So, tell me. Where. Is. My. Son?”

“Not here!” the fox spat. “Not anymore. Since you’re here, you figured it out. The whole Baneberry shit was a ruse.”

They hadn’t exactly figured that out, but there was no way he was going to tell this bastard that.

“Never had any intention of staying in the area! Yeah, you saw the jacket. Should’ve been more careful. But he’s not here. Not anymore. Except there won’t be another letter.”

Which meant even if he’d somehow managed to round up the money, there wouldn’t be anyone here to take it. And so the week would pass and the unthinkable would happen to Hunter.

“Who were they? Where did they go?”

“I’ve told you enough.”

“I disagree,” Ryan said, breaking into the conversation. “Hate to interrupt but I got bored.”

Dylan turned his head just enough to be able to see Ryan. He hadn’t realized that the commotion behind him had died out, though there was a damn good reason for it. Ryan was a human again, holding an unconscious person out at arm’s length.

“Cecil!” the fox gasped. “You killed him!”

“No,” Ryan replied. He unceremoniously dropped the shapeshifter, who crumpled to the ground in a heap. “Just kicked his ass. We’ll do the same damn thing to you unless you spill right now.”

“Fuck you,” the fox spat.

Ryan cracked his knuckles and moved in closer.

The tall fox’s expression blanched and he held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, fine! Fine! All right? Cecil and I are the ones who grabbed the kid. We brought him here. Exchanged him, got paid. They left with him. I think he was being taken down to Sylacauga.”

Where the hell is that?

“In Alabama,” the fox clarified.

“Why?” Ryan demanded. “Where are they taking him?”

“They’re going to dump him in Mexico, hand him off to an orphanage. They can do that down there. No questions asked.”

“Thanks.” Ryan spoke almost pleasantly now. “I think that’s all the information we need. Dylan?”

On his cue, Dylan swung his fist out again. This time, he caught the fox right on the temple. The fox dropped like a rock, landing awkwardly in the leaves.

The pain in Dylan’s hand was nothing short of profound by this point and his fingers were so swollen he wondered if they might not just continue to grow until they all fused together. Cradling his injury, he looked at Ryan. “What do we do now? Get the police?”

“I don’t think I want to wait for the police. Do you?”

Dylan shook his head. They had come so close to success, only to have it robbed from them again. The last thing he wanted to do was wait around when they had another path to follow.

“Then I say we tie these bastards up and put in a tip to the cops. And then we get the hell out of here.”

And that was what they did.

They searched the cabins, finding rope and wire and anything else they could use to truss up the two shapeshifters like Christmas turkeys. While it was possible that the shifters might manage to worm their way out, Dylan doubted it.

His cell phone didn’t work up here in the mountains, so they dragged the fox and Cecil the cougar into one of the cabins where they would be sheltered from the elements. Then, they left and headed back to the truck as fast as their legs could take them. Once there, Dylan looked up the number for the local police station and placed a call while Ryan drove back from the lake to Baneberry. Once they realized who he was, their confused questions changed to a focused examination of all that he had to say. However, he quickly brought the conversation to an end and hung up so as not to have to answer any of the more difficult questions.

There would be time for that later.

He half-expected that they would be stopped on their way back through the little town, but that didn’t happen. Soon they were beyond the town limits and joining up with the southbound highway.

They didn’t talk about what had just happened. What could either of them even hope to say in a situation such as this? There were no answers, even though Dylan had even more questions than before.

Why had all this happened in the first place?

This was no longer a random kidnapping, not in his eyes. This had been planned, with several stages to it, but for exactly what reason? Why kidnap a kid, then take him north, request ransom money, then move south before the money could ever be delivered? Why kidnap a child just to take him to an orphanage and dump him?

He couldn’t figure out where the motivation was in all of this. Not a damn bit of it made sense.

He just had to hope and pray that they would get to that weird Alabama town in time.