“That was delicious,” Senora said, licking the end of an ice cream cone as they walked the short distance back to the hotel. “I’m glad you knew that place was there.”
“I thought you might like it,” he said with a sheepish grin.
He reached out suddenly, but Senora didn’t shy away. His finger touched her lip, then gently swiped the errant drop of ice cream onto her tongue. The gesture was so familiar that it surprised her.
“Sorry,” he laughed. “I didn’t think you wanted it to drip onto your shirt.”
“It’s alright. I just wasn’t expecting that.”
“I can tell. Your face was priceless. I wish I had it on video.”
“Charming,” she said, rolling her eyes.
She looked ahead at the parking lot, then stopped mid-stride, leaning forward as if that would help her see better from so many yards away from the thing that had caught her attention.
“Is that Kaden’s truck parked around the side of the hotel over there?” she asked quietly. “Right by the side exit.”
“It sure does look like it,” Ty said.
Before she thought better of it, Senora sped up and headed straight for the truck. The vehicle matched the description perfectly, but that wasn’t what clinched it for her. The front of the truck, though barely damaged since it was so heavily armored, had scrapes of the same color as the paint that covered the front of the hotel back in Texas. Senora leaned down as Ty kept watch, taking a closer look at the front of the truck and reaching out to grab something shiny that caught her eye.
“Glass,” she said, handing it to Ty. “See the bluish color on one side and not the other? This is definitely bulletproof glass. I’m sure this is Kaden’s car.”
She looked up at Ty, who was grinning from ear to ear.
“What?” she asked.
“You didn’t have to go to all that trouble to figure out whose truck this is.”
“I wanted to make sure.”
“Me too,” he said, still looking at the truck and grinning.
Senora stepped back and looked at where he was looking, then threw her hands up in exasperation.
“That could be anyone,” she said, but she knew that he was right.
The vanity plate on the truck was clear, and she knew that “DRGNHNTR” meant “Dragon Hunter,” and this was most definitely Kaden’s truck.
“What do we do now?” she asked him, still a little huffy over the license plate.
“I guess we could ask what room he’s in and see when he checked in. He drove all the way here, so I would lay money that he has only been asleep an hour.”
“Good call,” she said, making her way to the front entrance ahead of him. “I’ll do the talking. You may have the powers of persuasion, but I have the badge.”
“I’m not enchanting anyone,” he said.
“If you say so.”
He rushed to open the door for her, and she walked straight to the desk and flashed Joy a bright smile.
“You’re looking well-rested,” Joy said.
“I feel better, and it’s all thanks to your wonderful service,” Senora said, almost gagging on the pep that was spewing from her mouth.
How did this woman live like this all the time? Senora wanted to slap herself.
“Oh, I’m so very delighted to hear that,” Joy gushed and even clapped her hands together for effect.
A strange grunt came from behind her, but she ignored Ty. She was going to get through this without enchanting anyone and without using her badge unless she had to.
Ty wasn’t the only one who could charm information out of people.
“Well, I for one appreciate your awesome service. I was hoping you could help us out again. I saw a truck I recognize, and I wonder if a man named Kaden checked in recently?”
“He did. He’s in room two sixteen. Wait, no. His television didn’t work, and I had to move him. I moved him to one eighteen.”
“Thank you, Joy. I can’t wait to surprise him. What are the odds of our good friend even being here at the same place?”
“I know,” Joy laughed. “It’s really crazy. I hope he’s super surprised.” She gasped suddenly. “Ooh, do you want me to make sure he’s in the room? I could call him and just check and-”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Senora said quickly. “We’ll just knock like civilized people.”
Joy nodded.
“You’re right. That was too much. It was too much, right?”
“Thank you, Joy. You’re such a wonderful help.”
“Aw,” Joy said in a nasally, high-pitched whine. “You’re so sweet. No one has ever said that about me. They just usually say that I’m so annoying and I really can’t figure out why, right?”
“I have no idea,” Senora said. “Bye now. You have a great day.”
Senora started walking and didn’t stop when Joy continued talking to them until they were well out of eyesight and earshot. Ty looked pained from his effort not to laugh, but Senora was wallowing in her win.
“I should have bet money,” she said as they slowed down and made their way to Kaden’s room.
“That would have been smart, but it’s too late now.”
“Next time,” she whispered, then stopped in front of the door to Kaden’s room and looked at it for a second.
“Well?”
Shrugging, she wrapped lightly on the door, then again, a little louder.
“Who the hell is it?” an angry grumble came through the door.
“Housekeeping,” Ty’s said in a high-pitched voice.
Senora’s hands shot up and clamped down on her mouth to keep from laughing. She glared at him, but he didn’t seem to care.
“What?” Kaden said as he yanked open the door then looked at the two of them. “What is this?”
He blinked, looking at the pair of them through eyes that were heavy with exhaustion. The television blared behind him, the news playing on an endless loop of twenty-minute segments to drown out the regular daytime noise of a typical hotel.
“I’m Senora Edwards with the FBI. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“No,” Kaden said, closing the door forcefully.
It bounced back and whacked him in the face, though not hard enough to injure him.
“What the hell?”
Senora looked down to see Ty’s steel-toed cowboy boot in the door.
“Like I said, we want to ask you a few questions.”
“I said no.”
“I didn’t ask permission.”
“Are you deaf, woman? No. I need sleep, and there’s nothing that you need to know about what I do. If you have to ask, then you don’t have the security clearance.”
“That may be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Senora said.
“I’m not answering questions. I don’t have to release privileged information, and there’s nothing-”
“This just in, panic in Denver this afternoon had people pulling over on the side of the highway and blocking traffic,” the newscaster said, his voice excited.
Kaden turned around, leaving enough room for Senora and Ty to see the television from where they stood as the newscast continued.
“A loyal viewer has sent us a video, and folks, I’m going to warn you; this is disturbing and confusing footage.”
The screen changed, and Senora’s eyes widened as a grainy cellphone picture zoomed in and an arrow pointed at a small object in the distance.
“What looks to be a dragon, if you can believe that, can be seen flying in the top, right-hand corner of your screen. The authorities are telling us that this is some kind of personal flying machine and that there are no such things as dragons, which this reporter agrees with. But eyewitnesses on sight say that it was definitely a dragon, and many citizens are preparing themselves for the end of times. This video was shot just a little over thirty minutes ago, and the dragon disappears over the hill. There is no word on which direction he could be heading.”
Kaden looked at Senora and Ty, and all at once, the three of them sprang into action. Kaden grabbed his keys off the table, but before he made it to the door, Ty had it pulled shut and was holding it. Senora looked at him, shocked, but then he handed her a knife with one hand.
“Tires,” he said through gritted teeth.
Senora nodded and ran out the side door, which was only steps away from Kaden’s room. She buried the knife in two places on each tire, then gave Ty a thumbs up through the window at the end of the hallway. She ran around to the front of the building where the rental car was parked, and Ty came out the front door after letting go of the door and running in the direction opposite of Kaden’s truck. Ty and Senora reached the rental at almost the same time, and Senora was relieved when Ty hit the button to disarm it and they hopped in.
Ty peeled out of the parking lot before Senora had her seatbelt on, and they could hear Kaden yelling through the closed window.
“How much time will that buy us?”
“Not much. I broke the handle off on my side, but it’s not going to take much for him to get out. We need to get to Ethan before he does.”
“Why was Ethan flying in daylight? And over the big city like that. I thought you said that he would have to rest after five hundred miles or so.”
“He should have had to,” Ty said, weaving in and out of traffic.
He was driving fast, but not enough to bring attention to them. His brow was furrowed, and for the first time since they’d met, he looked very concerned.
“Do you have any ideas why he would fly out in broad daylight?”
“No. But I know that it has to be something major. I can’t imagine what, but it’s something bigger than the law. He could be completely shunned by his own kind for flying during the day without good cause. So, there’s something.”
“Shouldn’t they shun him for being a murderer?”
Ty took a deep breath, still guiding the car effortlessly down the highway as the road climbed higher.
“This is why I didn’t tell you that I knew Ethan. I didn’t want you to think that I was biased.”
“But you are,” she said.
“We all carry bias. What makes you think that I’m not biased in favor of shifters?”
“Are you?”
“Of course, I am. I know more about what makes them tick, and shifters are hard-wired to protect man. Every once in a while, we have one that goes completely rogue, and even shifters aren’t safe from those rogue shifters.”
“Maybe Ethan went rogue.”
“Or maybe he was framed.”
His words cut off her protest, and she found herself just staring at him in shock. Framed? Could it be?
“Do you honestly think that?” she asked in shock.
“Look. I’ve known Ethan for a long time. He is the nicest man and would never hurt a fly. I don’t see how he could be a murderer.”
“Even if it turns out that it was self-defense?”
“Why would he have to kill someone? He’s a dragon. Even on two legs, he’s stronger than a human. He could easily subdue someone and get away. There’s no way he killed the man he’s accused of killing.”
“Ty, people change.”
Ty shook his head.
“Not Ethan. Ethan is loyal and reliable to a fault. He doesn’t change. He didn’t kill anyone, and if he did, then he had no other choice. I trust his judgement.”
“And taking the clerk?”
“Whatever his reasons for taking that clerk, she’s not in danger.”
“Unless Kaden gets to Ethan first.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Slashing his tires bought us an hour at most. I have no doubt that he has four spare tires or can get them pretty fast. He’s resourceful. We have to get to the stronghold before he does and warn them.”
“Does he know where it is? Won’t he just show up there?”
“He doesn’t. This one is a carefully guarded secret.”
“Why?”
He took his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her.
“This has to stay between us. I know you don’t believe in ‘this stuff,’ but there are lives that depend on your silence.”
“I promise,” she said. “Just because I’m a skeptic at heart doesn’t mean I’m going to go blabbing everything. I wouldn’t even have anyone to tell, and who would believe me?”
He looked at her again, then back at the road.
“This place is special. This stronghold was one of the reasons Roosevelt started using preservation as an excuse to protect so much land and make certain places off-limits to the general population. The Roosevelt National Forest is located here, and inside that forest is where the dragons raise their young from when they start to learn how to shift, which is between eight and ten. They stay until they can control their bodies, which takes anywhere from two to five years.” Only certain dragons know this place exists, and even then, it’s very secretive. Only Guardians know the location of the stronghold.”
“Guardians?”
“Dragons like Ethan. He’s one of the few that were chosen to protect the children. He’ll spend his life protecting the weakest of their kind, and if he has to die to do it, he will.”
“And what about the parents? How do their children get here without them knowing where they are?”
“When a child is ready, a Guardian appears in the night to take the child. When the child is ready to leave the dragon’s nest, they leave on their own and return home or with the help of a Guardian if they are especially far away. There are other strongholds that they can stop at on their journey to the nest, but those Guardians don’t know the location of the dragon’s nest in order to protect the children in case anyone followed them. There’s even a stronghold in another forest a few hours from here to keep anyone from deducing that the nest is in Colorado.”
“That’s a lot of trouble to go through just in case someone might follow. Carla is well beyond puberty. I don’t understand why Ethan would bring her here.”
“That’s a question he will have to answer. I don’t know. What I do know is that this place has been here for generations, and no matter what, we can’t risk revealing the location to anyone.”
“So there are some children in the mountains, and that’s why Ethan felt that he couldn’t stop and let Kaden get ahead of him and risk being found?”
“Not some children. Senora, it’s all their children. If anyone finds out that they’re here, the entire dragon population would be wiped out in one generation.”
“Why only dragons? They don’t have places for other shifters?”
“Other shifters don’t randomly sprout wings and breathe fire when they’re angry,” Ty said wryly, still guiding the car effortlessly over the winding, dipping road. “Werewolves, bears, and lions and such can contain their children in their homes or hide the occasional spontaneous sprouting of a tail nub under carefully constructed clothing. But dragons are larger than the rest of us, and then they have those wings. There’s really nothing else they can do with the kids while they go through adolescence. They can’t risk the next generation. I know this seems a little grandiose, but if the dragons lose the next generation, it throws the entire system out of whack.”
“You act like man depends on shifters to survive. We have our own best and brightest that keep things moving in this country. I’m not saying we don’t need you, but you make the situation sound so dire.”
“Do you have the best and the brightest? Or do those extraordinary humans seem so extraordinary because they aren’t human at all?”
His question hung heavy in the air. She pondered it for a while, but then he pulled off the road and tucked the rental car between two large vans right in the middle of a parking lot that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
“What is this place?”
“One of the most popular lookouts on the mountain.”
“We’re going here?”
“No,” he said, getting out and going around to the trunk.
She scurried around the car in time to catch him opening it and was shocked when he handed her a fully loaded hiking backpack, complete with an ultrathin sleeping bag that was rolled so tightly that it didn’t look big enough to accommodate an adult.
“When did you get this stuff?” she asked.
“I called ahead from the airport in Silver City, and the supplies were packed in the car for us.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that there are shifters everywhere, just waiting to make each other’s lives easier like that? That’s insane.”
Ty was putting on his own backpack and stopped, arching a single eyebrow at her.
“No,” he laughed. “Are you sure you’re a skeptic? It’s Denver. I called ahead and paid an Uber driver to deliver hiking supplies to the car rental kiosk in the airport, then I carried them to the trunk with your bags and mine.”
“How did I miss that?”
“You were dead on your feet, and you let me carry everything?” He put the backpack on, locked the doors to the little four-door sedan and looked around the lot with a big smile on his face. “Lots of cars that look the same as ours. If Kaden happens to find this outlook, he’s not going to spot the car right away even if he has the plates. That should buy us some more time to get ahead of him.”
“And then what?”
“By then, we should be on the mountain and out of his reach.”
“Should?”
But Ty was already walking ahead of her, and she had to jog to catch up.
“Should be out of reach?” she repeated.
He shrugged.
“It’s not a perfect system, Senora,” he said. “Sometimes the bad guys win.”
“There’s no way we’re going to let that happen,” Senora said.
“That’s good to hear, because if we’re going to get through this, you’re going to have to bring that feisty woman I met in Glen Rose.”
“Does that mean I’ll get to ride for most of this journey?”
His rugged laughed echoed off the vertical walls, though she could tell he was holding back in case anyone out on the trails was within earshot. Even when he felt free, he was always careful. Senora felt a twinge of sadness for the younger version of Ty, growing up knowing that the entirety of who and what he was had to be hidden at all times.
It seemed like such a stifling way to grow up.
“It’s broad daylight, and many of the trails are much too narrow for that. There aren’t many humans venturing too far in here, but we will see people, and the last thing they need to see is a woman astride a wolf.”
She chuckled at the image his words conjured up.
“Then, let’s do this. I have a feeling this is going to be a long day, and I want to get there as quickly as we can.”
“That’s my girl,” Ty said.
“I’m not your girl,” Senora laughed, but deep down, the words made her heart flutter.