HAPTER 15
They were silent as Ty took the keys he’d found in the chopper and used them to open the truck Kaden had left in the parking lot of the ranger’s station. It was dark now, the only light cast by the rental car’s headlights. The rangers were gone, scouring the mountain for their missing comrade, but Senora had a feeling that something awful had happened to him. He’d been in the chopper with Kaden, but a large smear of blood on the pilot’s side of the chopper suggested that something large that was bleeding profusely had been pushed out the open door. Since the ranger’s body wasn’t within sight of the chopper, the only plausible explanation was that the ranger had been pushed out miles from the nest, and likely hadn’t survived the fall even if his wound was not a mortal one. Ty assured her that shifters healed faster than humans and could withstand much graver injuries without dying, but even Ty hadn’t appeared hopeful that the ranger had a chance.
Ty turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life. The computer that took up most of the passenger’s area came to life and immediately requested a password.
“It’s Lilith,” Senora said.
“He told you?”
“He did.”
He typed it in, and the map filled the screen.
“Wow,” Ty said. “This is amazing.”
“I wonder why he didn’t use it to look for the nest.”
Ty ran his finger along the map until he found the general area of the nest.
“The nest is too far away, and there are too many trees. It also doesn’t appear to show shifters unless they’re substantially sized. I think the smaller ones could be easily missed.”
“But he was mostly hunting dragons, right?”
“That’s right, so this worked for what he was doing. I wonder who created this software for him.”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s good for shifters.”
“Not at all. It’s setting a dangerous precedent. And I think that, pretty soon, it will be able to detect shifters like me further away. Right now, it will be interesting to see how far away from me you’ll have to be before you don’t see my bio marker on the screen.”
“What are we going to do with this truck?”
“We’ll have to take it with us. We’ll drive it back to Silver City where my truck is, and then you can follow me to a buddy’s house where I can store this.”
“Why are you taking possession of it? What if I planned on taking it in as evidence?”
Ty chuckled softly and brushed the hair out of her face. Her skin tingled where he’d touched her, but she fought the urge to kiss him. She couldn’t let herself fall into bed with him again. She just couldn’t.
“If you took it in as evidence, what in the world would you tell your coworkers? How would you explain the shifter hunting software? I was under the impression that admitting that you believe in shifters would be career ending.”
She took a deep breath, tamping down her anger and the obvious teasing. He had her, and he knew it. She couldn’t show up with this truck and just explain away the equipment. The computer didn’t say “Shifter Hunter 3000,” but the name on the screen and the tags on each bio signature were enough to pique the interest of most people. It wouldn’t take much to make the leap from “Shifter: 150-300 pounds” to what the software was actually doing. And then, she’d be stuck. She could either claim that she’d found the truck in connection to a missing person’s case and act like Kaden was a whack job, or she could admit that shifters were real. It was one thing to accept what was right in front of your face, but it was quite another to tell people that she respected and who respected her that she believed, even for a moment, that these mythical creatures were real and living among humans.
And what if one of the other agents was a shifter?
“Wow,” Ty said, yanking her out of her musings.
“What?”
“I was teasing you, but it looks like I hit the nail on the head. You can’t admit to the other agents that you’ve been working with a shifter. And from the look on your face when you were considering it, I guess there’s more that I didn’t consider. It was like you went down the rabbit hole there for a minute.”
“Can we take the truck back to the hotel?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.
“We can. Do you want to stay in his room and look around, and I’ll stay in ours?”
“No,” she said, then blushed at how quickly she’d said it. “No. I don’t mind sharing a room with you. I think it will be easier since we have a lot to go over. Carla gave me a list of missing WereDragons, and I haven’t had a chance to go over them. I thought since Emma had ended up in the mix that there was a possibility that some of the people on this list would show up as cold cases.”
“Have you looked at them yet?”
“No, I left them in my pocket. I have a few Jane Doe’s that were never claimed, and I’m exhausted. I don’t think that I’ll be able to match them to just the names on the list, but just the thought of finding out that some of the deceased could be WereDragons that were kidnapped by whoever is behind this is too much right now. I need to sleep and look at this with fresh eyes.”
“Are you okay to drive this truck back to the hotel?”
“It’s not far; I think I’ll manage.”
“How is your ankle?”
“It hurts, but it’s the left ankle so it won’t affect my driving.” She shuddered, looking around the empty parking lot then back at Ty. “Let’s get out of here. This place is creepy in the dark.”
She expected him to laugh at her, but he didn’t. Sliding out of the driver’s seat where he’d been looking at the equipment in the truck, he grabbed her by her waist and swung her up into the truck in one smooth motion, then closed the door and walked quickly to the rental car before she could thank him.
Sighing and wishing things didn’t have to be so complicated, she put the truck in gear and headed for the hotel. She kept her eye on the computer screen, and when Ty was a good mile behind her, he disappeared from the screen. There were still others on the screen, and in some places, there were so many that there had to be at least three generations in a single house. The more shifters there were in one place, the stronger the signal on the computer screen. Senora wondered how many hybrids would have to be in one building for them to show up, but as new as the technology was, she doubted that it would pick them up. Even when Ty had been in the truck, the computer had been vague on whether it was a wolf, large cat or other. She had a feeling that the computer in front of her was the prototype and that Kaden had been testing it for the software’s creator.
She wished he’d told her who that was before he died, but at least he’d given her the password. Hopefully, that would work for his laptop and anything else they needed to get into for information. Senora might not be able to bring Kaden back, but the instant he’d breathed his child’s name, she had vowed to find Ava and return her to her people. She hadn’t said the words out loud, but once it had crossed her mind, there was no stopping her.
The lights of the hotel greeted her in the distance, and some of the tension left her body. She loved the outdoors, and the hike earlier in the day had been perfect. But the stress of the circumstances and being dragged around like a ragdoll by an angry dragon had sucked all the energy out of her. She was ready to crash.
Ty pulled into the parking lot right behind her and parked in the back by the exit door near their room. He’d caught up quickly, but Senora had been lost in thought, and she tended to slow down when she drove while thinking about cases. She followed his lead and parked in the back, ensuring the truck was out of view of the road.
Before she could get out, Ty was there, helping her out of the truck and putting her arm over his shoulder.
“I can walk,” she said.
“You can hobble,” he corrected. “You’ll need to soak that and re-bandage it tomorrow, and it should heal quickly.”
“You’d better be right about the dragon thing. If I turn into a dragon, I’m holding you responsible.”
“If you turn into a WereDragon, trust me, I’ll be more shocked than you will. It’s not possible.”
He was all but carrying her as she hobbled through the outer door, and Ty paused to open their room. This time, he did carry her, setting her down on the couch and pulling the standard hotel office chair forward to prop her leg up.
“I’m going to go pay for another night so we can leave when we want to tomorrow, even if it’s super late in the evening. I’m sure they’ve figured out by now that we’re not leaving. I’ll pay for Kaden’s, too. In the morning, you can use your FBI credentials to get a key so we can go through any stuff he had there.”
She shook her head.
“You grabbed the laptop off the passenger seat, right?”
“I did,” he said, showing the laptop bag on his shoulder. “The computer screen with all the shifters’ locations is bolted into the dashboard, so I turned it off and left it in there. But the laptop bag was on the passenger seat which means it was important enough for him to grab when he was running after us this morning.”
Senora’s heart sank.
“It’s hard to believe how much things have changed since this morning. Here we thought he was this horrible person, killing shifters for sport and profit. But it turned out that he was just a father searching for his child. I wish we would have asked him while we had him pinned in the room.”
“What would we have asked him? ‘Hey, we see you’re angry and dead set on killing as many WereDragons as possible. Is there an understandable reason why or are you just crazy with bloodlust?’ Really. I don’t know what else we could have said with the information that we had. It was up to him to ask for help, and not once did he ask any of us, including Ethan, where Ava was. There’s no way you could have known, Senora. So don’t beat yourself up.”
“You’re right. I just wish things had gone differently.”
“We all do. But he also killed a ranger to steal a chopper to come after us. I feel for the man, too. But he left bodies in his wake, and it makes it easier for me to feel like his death was justified, no matter how sad his story was. He had a choice on how he searched for her. He chose poorly, and he paid for that choice with his life.”
His hands were on her face again, tilting her head so that she had to look at him.
“I almost lost you because of that man. I don’t know why you’ve pulled away from me these past few days, but that doesn’t change my feelings. I could have lost you today. And I have no pity for someone who leaves a path of destruction in their wake because something bad happened to them. We’ve all had our struggles, and that doesn’t mean that he gets a free pass.”
“You’re right,” Senora said, looking away and trying not to focus on his lips while he talked. “He made his choice, and I feel badly for him, but he almost killed me, and I guess I let it go because he died and I lived.”
Ty’s thumb was on her cheek now, stroking gently.
“It’s because you have a kind heart, Senora. He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness, but you give it freely anyway. That just makes you a better person than some of us.”
He kissed her lips, gently and quickly, then stood and left her sitting there. She was glad he’d put some distance between them. She wasn’t sure she could resist temptation with his lips on hers like that, and he’d saved her from having to try.
“I’ll be back, but I’m going to be gone a little while. I’ll bring you back some salts to soak in, and I’ll grab dinner. Is there anything you need?”
She shook her head.
“I just need to rest.”
He nodded, then disappeared into the room and came back with a blanket. He tucked it around her, careful to wrap it under her legs so she didn’t get cold.
“Thank you,” she said, and he nodded.
He left the room then, walking out so quickly that the instant the door closed, it almost felt as if he’d never been there. Snuggling down into the blanket, she got comfortable and let her head fall back onto the couch. The weight of the past two days hit her like a crashing wave, and pretty soon, she could feel herself drifting off. Her last thought was that she hoped he would wake her up for dinner when he returned. She was starving, and she didn’t want to wake up in the morning without having had dinner. She needed her strength to heal her leg and to get herself together before she reported in to J. He would expect an update in the morning, and she hated to disappoint.
Plans made and emails already half-composed in her head, she gave into the darkness and let herself fall asleep right there on the couch.
She knew immediately that she was dreaming, but she couldn’t stop the panic that welled inside her, or quiet her heart, which beat against her ribs in an almost violent fashion.
She was back in the woods again on a four-wheeler with the same angry woman from before. She was freezing this time, her thin arms covered in goose flesh as she struggled to hold on with tremoring hands to the woman in front of her.
“Keep it down,” the woman hissed angrily. “Stop crying. No one is hurting you.”
“I want to go home,” she cried, her voice high-pitched and miserable.
“We’re going home,” the woman retorted, her voice still barely louder than the machine that she drove through the woods in the late night drizzle. “You’ll stop your blubbering, or I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Senora bit her lip and tried her best to force herself to be silent. Hot tears streamed down her face, clearing away the dirt that clung to her soft skin, but she didn’t make a noise. She wanted to snuggle against the woman, to absorb some of her body heat, but she didn’t want to touch her more than she had to. She was terrified, and all she could think about was getting away. But the forest was dark, and before she knew it, they were pulling up to the dank, dark cabin where Senora knew she would be locked in a room until the next place she lived. And if she escaped from the next place, she would come right back here. If they caught her.
The scene changed suddenly. Senora was older, and the darkness faded into a lighter, happier time. But the fear still clung to her, even though she couldn’t figure out what she was afraid of.
“Do you have your high school transcripts?” the woman behind the desk asked.
“There were sent last week,” she lied, hoping the woman wouldn’t know it.
“We haven’t received them yet.” The woman looked from the screen to Senora, smiling as she tilted her glasses to see better. “The only thing stopping you from enrolling in classes are those transcripts.”
“What if they don’t come?”
“Then, you can’t start.”
Senora fought back the urge to cry. She was so close and had even gotten a scholarship. At sixteen, she was the youngest enrollee at Murray State University in Kentucky, a college small enough that she was sure they would overlook something as simple as high school transcripts. She didn’t have any, and there was no chance they would materialize anytime soon. She couldn’t keep this charade up much longer, and she was desperate to go to college and make something of herself. She only needed a four-year degree, and then she could apply to the Academy. She might not make it the first time, but she would keep trying until she did. She was determined, and she wasn’t going to let anything get in her way.
“Is there a test I can take?” she asked suddenly.
“A test?”
“A placement test of some sort to prove that I’m smart enough to go here.”
“Oh, you’re smart enough,” the woman chuckled. “Your ACT scores were phenomenal enough for a full-ride scholarship, dear. Don’t you ever doubt that you’re smart enough.”
“Then, what can I do?” she asked, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt.
The woman sighed and looked at the computer screen, then over Senora’s shoulder to the office beyond. She stood.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and she walked briskly to the office of the University President and knocked quietly.
Senora watched as the woman disappeared into the office with the frosted glass door. She could see the woman’s outline, but she couldn’t tell what was going on. When the woman appeared a few minutes later with her lips pressed together, Senora was sure that her dreams were about to be crushed.
The woman sat down at her desk and started typing, completely ignoring Senora. Senora was about to get up and walk away when the woman stopped.
“Did you have straight A’s?” the woman asked.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Senora said.
“Good. That makes this easy,” she hit a button, then retrieved the single sheet of paper and handed it to Senora. “Here you go. You can go online and pick out your classes from the student computer lab; just make sure to type in your student ID number so that the system recognizes your scholarships and doesn’t try to charge you. If you have any issues, just come by and see me.”
The woman beamed at Senora. Senora smiled back, trying hard not to cry out of sheer happiness. It had worked, and she’d gotten in! Today was the beginning of the rest of her life, and no one was going to stop her now.