"Huh?" Rhys asked, looking impressively innocent.
I began backing away without consciously deciding to. This was not good — not good at all. From what scant knowledge I had of the law, police didn't make arrests unless they had evidence. And I didn't have a clue as to which of my many crimes they might have discovered.
"Oh, please, run," the other invited me. His sneer grated on my temper. "Give us an excuse."
For the first time, I noticed the guns holstered on their belts, probably because they had been hidden by the tailored blazers. What the hell? Police didn't carry guns unless they were a firearms unit, and firearms units were only dispatched to deal with dangerous — Oh shit. This wasn't about the phone, was it?
But I had a gun too. The difference was, mine was nestled in my rucksack, back with the others. Not that I would have used it anyway. I wouldn't shoot men for doing their jobs, even if they didn't have the same qualms about me.
Rhys's eyes met mine. We were cornered animals, looking for any way out. But beyond that – I noticed a question in that glance. So maybe he still had his own gun. I shook my head almost imperceptibly.
"Hands on your heads, knees on the ground." The snapped order didn't come as a surprise, but I didn't move a muscle. I had an aversion to kneeling — it was such a human thing to do. And it didn't make a damned bit of sense. Lying on your back with your throat exposed made you vulnerable. Kneeling just made you shorter.
The man's hand went to his gun, but there was a hesitance there which told me that he wasn't used to carrying one. Maybe this wasn't the firearms unit after all. I considered making a break for it. But I couldn't outrun a bullet. And these men seemed to have gone to such trouble to find us... It would be a shame to let that go to waste.
"Last warning."
"Alright, alright. Mind your blood pressure." I made myself smile as I put my hands on the back of my head. Beside me, Rhys sighed heavily but still followed my example.
It was close enough. They barely glanced at each other before taking the opportunity to seize us. One by one, my hands were twisted behind my back and cinched with cold metal. Handcuffs. Well, that was a sure way to stop me shifting. I could already feel them brushing against the rings of scars on my wrists, which were souvenirs from previous spells as a prisoner.
It was obviously basic procedure to recite our rights, so it didn't come as a surprise when I was told, "You have the right to remain silent. However, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say can and will be held against you."
"Leo Morgan," I blurted; the opportunity had been too tempting to pass by.
Rhys couldn't decide for the life of him whether to snarl or laugh. He settled eventually on a grudging smile.
"Very original," the other officer muttered. "As I was saying, you have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand?"
When I wanted — and I had to want it an awful lot — I could play nice. I could behave like a normal, undisturbed member of society. Until I got bored, anyway. Now seemed like the time to apply that skill.
"Yes. Thank you."
He proceeded to frisk me through my coat, finding my lighter and Leo's knife, both of which were confiscated. The phone in my pocket too, although he didn't give it a second look — so I doubted he knew it was stolen.
The second officer wasn't as enthusiastic to mess with Rhys, who towered over him and wore a dangerous grin. So my brother's search was conducted a gun pointed at his chest. One thing was clear — they weren't taking risks. They obviously knew something. The question was ... how much?
He found Rhys's gun in seconds, and he raised his eyebrows. "Well, well, well. Don't suppose you have a permit for this?"
Rhys opened his mouth to make some smartass comment, but I shook my head, worried he would condemn himself — a single word could confirm it belonged to him — and he closed it again. The officer's smugness radiated like an aura. "There's a surprise."
Inspiration struck. There was an innocent explanation for the gun, at least. "I know what this must look like, but it's not ours, jackass. We were walking in the woods" —here, I emphasized my mud splattered boots— "and it was just lying on the snow. We're on our way to the station to hand it in. Well, we were."
"Before we so rudely interrupted you?" He scoffed. I nodded morosely, the picture of innocence. "Okay. Don't worry — we're going to the station all right. Just don't count on leaving any time soon."
"Is this the part where you tell me what I'm being arrested for?"
His mouth stretched thin with amusement. "Think real hard. It'll come to you."
Not a good sign. My supposed crime must be memorable, at the very least. A rough hand guided me into the road where an ominous, sleek car was waiting. Rhys slunk along despite the second officer's best efforts. It was all the man could do to keep up with his prisoner, let alone hold him still. Shifter strength could be a blessing.
But I scolded him aloud, "Behave, can't you? Let these men do their jobs."
His disgusted expression was an answer all by itself. "Me? I'm not doing anything."
"No talking," insisted the raven-haired officer. So once we were in the cars, the journey was undertaken in total silence, and more's the pity, because it created the perfect environment to strum the mind-link. I no longer had an excuse to delay asking for a rescue. Leo was the chosen one — he communicated with a bare minimum of gloating and teasing. I managed to steer the subject towards plotting within a minute, and then it was just details.
I had ten werewolves at my disposal, all of whom were capable of wrangling a dozen cops. Pulling off a jail break would be laughable. Or so I thought.
My wolf's sharper senses processed a metallic smell. Blood? I looked sideways at my brother, and saw the trickle of crimson on his wrist, despite his hurried attempt to conceal it. An old anger awoke within me, hot and insatiable. New Dawn had kept him chained for days, and the pressure sores were too recent to have scarred properly. This was just a legacy of Jace's hospitality.
So much for the polite civilian act. Now it would be all I could do to keep my temper in check.
As it turned out, our destination was in the same town, tucked away into a side street. It wasn't large for a station because there weren't many people in rural Snowdonia, and I didn't think the police budget stretched far. The building was made from the same ashy-grey stones as the rest of the town, with a disproportionate number of windows. Every pane of glass was a weakness to be exploited, so I allowed myself to relax a bit.
"Move," the officer grunted at me, accompanied by a generous nudge. Okay, maybe I had been dawdling, but it still ticked me off — a frustration born of allowing myself to be bullied by someone whom I could knock on their ass in a heartbeat.
The entranceway was bright and welcoming, a cheerful display for the poor victims, but the next room was for criminals — and grim as a funeral director. Grey walls, hard floors and harder faces. A uniformed female officer had the pleasure of searching me properly, and the way she stared made me ever more uncertain. The things I had done were normal for werewolves but horrific by human standards, I knew. So what did she know?
"I'll recommend a shower when you get into holding," she said just before leaving. "You smell like a wet dog."
That was almost too accurate to be funny. Still, I laughed aloud, which seemed to offend her. Her face hardened and closed. And wait, what was that about holding? 'When,' not 'if'? Why was everyone so sure that I would spend the night in a cell?
With my mood almost as grey as my surroundings, I submitted to being led into an interview room and even to being cuffed to the table. There was a single window, too tiny and high up to merit bars, and it was the smallest room I had even been in ... not that I had been in many rooms in my life. My wolf hated the confinement even more than I did, and she started pacing in my skull. Well. This would be entertaining, at least. I'd have to find a way to keep my temper in check with a caged animal's mentality.
I settled down to wait. Surely they would bring Rhys in any minute. But the minutes ticked by, and the door remained firmly closed. Too late, it occurred to me that I had been separated from my brother — and not temporarily. This thought was the hardest to bear of all. I was more alone than I had been in eleven years. Isolated and surrounded by human beings.
I decided that leaving me to wait must have been an interrogation tactic, so I rested my arms on the table and used them as a pillow, then settled down to sleep. There. We'd see how quickly they got bored of watching me doze.
Ten minutes was the answer. I heard the door squeak open but didn't bother looking up. Scuffling sounds ensued as one — no, two people took their seats. A short sniff told me that there was one male, one female, and there was even a food tang here, too. The scent hung in the air, although not sharp enough to be recent.
"Who was eating burritos?" I asked lazily, just to throw them off their game, and finally propped my chin on my forearm so I could look at them. There was the dark-haired guy who'd arrested me, along with a middle-aged woman with an unusually thin, pinched face. My reward had been a creasing of the man's forehead.
"That's the least of your problems," he told me sharply. "You remember your rights?"
"Vaguely."
"Want to invoke any of them?"
"Nah, I'm alright."
He stared at me (I think my grin was irritating him) and then just shrugged. "Good. We can get started. My name," he said, speaking slowly as if I were odd in the head, "is Deputy Chief Miller. My friend here is Mrs Ketch from Military Intelligence."
"Okay. Miller — got it. Care to tell me why I'm here?" I asked.
"Read her the charges," the woman sighed. Her voice grated on me in ways I couldn't explain. It was like nails being dragged along concrete. It did suit her, though — an accurate reflection of her tight blonde bun and sour eyes.
Deputy Chief Miller produced a file overflowing with documents, cleared his throat, and started reading from the first one. "Possession of unauthorised firearms, possession of a banned weapon — that beautiful switchblade of yours, a dozen counts of vandalism, almost as many of trespass, petty larceny, shoplifting, anti-social behaviour, assault, underage drinking and general misconduct. The list goes on, but I think you get the idea."
I scowled at him. "If the idea is 'bullshit,' then yes. I do."
"Yeah, you just keep that act going," he advised. "See how far it gets you."
Miller lounged in his chair, visibly smug. Him, I could deal with. There were countless raiders at Last Haven with a similar attitude and ego-complex. But Mrs Ketch ... the rigid way she sat there was foreign to me. She was straight-backed and far too still.
"I would have thought those things were below a Deputy Chief's paygrade," I muttered. "Let alone Military Intelligence."
He beamed. He'd been hoping I would point that out. "They are! Your little rap sheet — impressive as it is — failed to catch my attention. But the seven mutilated bodies we found in the woods ... now, that's a very different story. I don't normally make arrests, you see, but I made an exception for you. Special circumstances, for a very special kind of criminal."
I went as still as the woman. Only my thoughts moved, flying faster than I myself could keep up with. The ferals? Remnants of Brandon's takeover? My father's work? Someone had talked. If they were pinning it on me, when I always covered up my kills, someone must have opened their mouth. But who? And why?
Miller's fingers drummed against the file erratically. He was upset. People had died on his watch, on his turf. I could understand that kind of pain.
"The men are as yet unidentified," Mrs Ketch continued, seeming to disregard Miller. "The causes of death vary from dismemberment to overdose. And we have a witness who puts you at the scene with blood on your hands."
"Oh," I said.
"Oh," she agreed icily.
"So..." I knew I wasn't pulling off innocence. I found it hard to care. "Did the witness convey a poor-victimised-teenager or trigger-happy-psycho kind of image?"
Miller snapped out of his delightful brooding to snap, "Sure, because we arrest all the poor victimised teenagers. What do you think?"
"I know what I think. It's what you think that's the problem." The cuffs rattled against the table as I picked at my nails. It was an effort not to stare at the file. I was beginning to suspect that it was solely about me. It was the size of a textbook, and naturally, I was flattered. "Because the idea that I could murder seven fully-grown men — not to mention find the time and energy to mutilate their corpses — is cute. Adorable, even."
"We know you didn't kill them," he admitted. It was about damn time. But ... I couldn't help feeling a little offended. Didn't they think I was capable of it? "I'm willing to bet you know who did, though. So here's the deal. Inform on your little separatist friends, and you'll walk on the accessory to murder charges. Otherwise... You're looking at a lengthy prison sentence."
I cocked my head to the side for maybe a second, considering it. "I'll pass, thanks."
Although it would be laughably easy to throw Rhys under the bus, I didn't think our sibling rivalry was quite that serious. Yet. Then there was the tempting option of informing on an Alpha, but that would threaten my fragile alliance with the other Alphas.
"Well, that's a shame," he sighed, as if he was actually disappointed. While I didn't doubt I was making his life more complicated by refusing to cooperate, it would take a far more gullible person to believe that he gave two shits about me as a person. "I'll have to make the offer to the boy, too. You sure you want to stake the rest of your freedom on the hope that he won't talk?"
"All this 'freedom' drama," I mused, "when you clearly can't charge me. You don't even know my name, do you?"
A smile snaked across Miller's mouth. Once again, his posture went slack with the taste of victory. "No, not really. You don't legally exist — no birth certificate, hospital records or living family. The fingerprints we pulled from your knife didn't match anything in the system. I'll admit I don't have any idea where you've been for the last eighteen years. That's unusual — impressive, even. But I could take a wild guess, Lauren."
I stopped moving and looked directly at him, at those smug, satisfied eyes, without a care that I'd just given all the confirmation he needed. That name, the name my birth parents had given me, never failed to chill my heart. And being blindsided in that manner was worse than being caught in a blizzard. He even knew my age. Whoever had talked ... they knew an awful lot.
"Ah, so it is right," he said.
I didn't respond. I was too busy thinking furiously about the list of people who knew that name, because Miller couldn't possibly have unearthed it alone. Leo, Fion, Rhodric. Hell, I didn't even think Rhys knew, so this asshole cop certainly shouldn't.
"I suggest you think long and hard about your options, Lauren. How do you know your friend isn't chirping away as we speak?"
Carter, I remembered abruptly. I had last heard the name Lauren from his mouth, days ago. He was languishing in Lle o Dristwch's cellar at the moment, but he must have learnt it somewhere. Maybe the informer was another hunter ... although I couldn't think what I'd done to deserve it. Just being a werewolf could easily be enough.
"Rhys." I plucked the mind-link. "What're you up to?"
His reply came in a heartbeat, but dripping with laziness. That meant he was bored, not in any danger. "Playing I-Spy with my guard."
Of-fricking-course. It was only natural that my brother would get along with someone who thought he was a serial killer at best, terrorist at worst. "So you're not spilling any secrets?"
"Nah," Rhys said, amusement in the word. "Don't tempt me."
I broke off the link with a rebuking shove and became aware that Miller and Mrs Ketch were staring at me oddly. Oh, right — that must be the linking trance. It was easy to forget that humans weren't used to the vacant-eyed, motionless spells.
"That's a shitty bluff. He's not even being interviewed," I said, hoping to make them forget what they'd seen.
"What makes you think that?" the woman asked sceptically. She was a good actor — I might have doubted myself if it weren't for the link.
"We're telepathically connected, and he learnt not to lie to me the hard way."
Miller stood up suddenly, his chair scraping against the floor. He scooped up the file, tucked it under an arm and threw me a dismissive look. "We're done here. It's obvious she's got nothing sensible to say."
Perfect. They were going to play right into my hands, rendering the less appealing task of steering the subject unnecessary.
"Trying my brother instead?" I chirped. "Sucks."
"And why's that?" Mrs Ketch asked. She and swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker. Miller, too — he started riffling through his file furiously at the word 'brother,' stopped to read, then scowled at me in puzzlement. Apparently Lauren didn't have a brother. But Skye did, and they were both about to get the hell out of this town.
The corners of my lips twitched. "Because he's under eighteen. Juveniles are allowed an older relative present during questioning, as I'm sure you're aware. Isn't it lucky that I'm older, a relative, and happen to be right here?"
I may as well have kicked a puppy. Their dismay was written all over their faces. Ketch crossed her arms briskly across her chest, while Miller began rooting through the paper stack all over again. What he found couldn't have been helpful, because his shoulders didn't lose their tension.
"You can't prove that."
"Neither can you," I pointed out slyly. "I could've lied about my age. I didn't — I'm eighteen."
His arms twisted on his chest. Not impressed.
"Put us together, and the difficult part will be getting us to shut up." My last and best argument. But I had my own motives, and they consisted mostly of escape. As that thought crossed my mind, my fingers started drumming faster, more erratically. I needed open sky and space to move, anything other than this concrete box.
Miller and Ketch shared a discursive glance. She dipped her head ever so slightly, and he signalled someone behind the glass. I wriggled in my chair while we waited. It only took a minute for the door to open. A young officer led my brother into the room.
He saw me in a heartbeat and started grinning. "How'd you swing this, Skye?"
Miller waved a hand dismissively. "You can forget the fake names, boy. We already know she's called Lauren."
"Really. Huh. That is ... so correct." Rhys raised his eyebrows at me, full of idle curiosity. I shook my head very slightly. Don't question it. He — of course — had never heard the name before. Which reminded me — shit, I still needed to tell him about my birth parents.
"This is against protocol, sir," the officer said warily. I guessed that they didn't make a habit of letting suspects confer — understandable. But without any sight of another 'relative' of Rhys's, or any way to find one, I was the only viable way for them to talk to him. How convenient.
"All the more reason to keep your mouth shut," Miller retorted. "Put him here — we'll move."
He carefully stood, vacating his chair and gesturing to it. Mrs Ketch moved her own chair to the side of the room. She picked a spot from which she could easily watch both of us. So Rhys and I would be on opposite sides of the table, easy to monitor and too far apart to try anything. I had to admit, I hadn't expected this level of intelligence from the police. Their precaution would be annoying but not devastating.
The real fun started once Rhys was seated, slouched and grinning, and the young officer tried to fasten his cuffs to the table. He fumbled with my brother's sleeves for a good minute before realising what was wrong.
"Sir, I —"
"Where are his restraints?" Miller demanded, having observed the delay irritably.
"I don't know, sir."
Both of them turned to Rhys with twin frowns. He propped his elbow on the arm of the chair, his hand hiding a smirk. "Don't look at me. Must've misplaced them."
I rolled my eyes skywards in search of patience and loosed a breath. It wasn't part of the plan. It wouldn't help us escape. No, this was just my brother's idea of fun. And he was certainly enjoying himself, more and more by the instant. The woman was pretending not to notice that anything was wrong, but Miller was frozen in place with anger and the young officer was practically shaking in his shoes, having screwing up so badly in front of a superior.
"Right then," Miller snarled. "Go find them. And now we'll have to search him again. Once you're done, volunteer for an overnight shift. Traffic control, ideally."
The guy flinched, then left the room with his head low and his eyes glued to the floor. I didn't envy him a night directing short-tempered drivers, but ... well, there wasn't much I could do. Rhys seemed to disagree. "It weren't his fault — don't punish him for it."
Miller made a disgusted, derisive sound in the back of his throat. "You have one chance to do this nicely. Up. Hands on the wall."
My brother obeyed, albeit slowly, and made a show of stretching rigorously before putting his palms on the bricks.
"Stop showing off," I growled through the link.
He winked at me — a lazy reply. Then my wolf's sharp eyes caught at tiny hitching of his chest after a breath. That tell, I knew only too well. Rhys did it when he was hiding something, usually pain, but in this case I had my doubts. The sores on his wrists wouldn't hurt enough to warrant irregular breathing. But the angle of his hand, a few degrees from normal, might have some relevance.
Neither of the cops noticed a damn thing. They hadn't known him for nine years. But I had. And I'd learned the sleight of hand from Rhodric right alongside him. Rhys was up to something, which was fortunate because I hadn't bothered working on the escape plan much at all.
Miller patted him down briskly ... and found nothing. Until he reached the jean pocket, when the corners of his lips twitched. "Oh dear."
He produced a shard of plastic. It looked like a pen split lengthways. What? That couldn't be used to pick locks. It was too big for a start, not to mention useless on its own. Miller pocketed it and slapped on a new pair of handcuffs, grinning all the while.
Was that it? The end? And here I was, waiting for the building to implode or worse. How anticlimactic.
"If I slip these, will you be the one on the nightshift?" Rhys asked sourly as he was chained to the table opposite me. The answer was no, of course. Superiors didn't get the menial jobs. I couldn't help noticing, after that thought, that Mrs Ketch remained where she sat, hands neatly folded, though the whole thing. Someone who didn't deign to get their hands dirty.
"If you slip those, I'll resign," Miller shot back. "Now, I'll tell you what I know. Feel free to jump in at any time," Miller invited us. "You must have been born into ... whatever this is. No birth certificate, see. But here's the part I can't understand. How could any parents raise their child to kill? Don't reckon they can love you much."
A muscle ticked in Rhys's jaw, a sure sign of violence to come. Miller should've taken more care about picking his topics. It may have been an interrogation tactic, and it may have been working, but that didn't make it worth the trouble. I'd watched my brother throw punches for far less than a direct insult to either of his parents.
"The alternative is raising their child to die," he snapped.
"In this country," Miller began contemplatively, "we have social security, healthcare, civil rights... We're lucky. Personally, I feel quite safe. Can you explain why you think your life is at risk?"
"No. I'd love to, don't get me wrong, but I can't."
The Deputy Chief didn't know quite what to make of that. He must have believed we were delusional to some degree. The only question was how far? He let the silence settle and gather dust before musing, "Who knocked you around?"
"Why'd you think anyone knocked us around?" Rhys asked sceptically.
"It's written all over your skin." He readjusted his weight, his gaze scraping over every faded scar. "So who was it? Your dad?"
I started laughing. I couldn't help it. Because Rhodric had given me some of these scars, but only in training — never in anger. We all nipped and scrammed and got rough in wolf form.
Then I thought of Fion, and the smile fell from my lips. Her parents hadn't just knocked her around, they'd thrashed her. We'd all seen the ropey scars across her back, a token of the night her father had taken a belt to her, the night which had finally sent her running to a certain cave in the woods.
"I'll take that as a no," Miller muttered. "You know what? It doesn't matter who hurt you. And everything you've done because of it — that doesn't matter either. This, right here, matters. You can keep your mouths shut and defend murderers, or you can help me catch them."
Rhys joined in the laughter this time. Such a pretty speech, so sincere. I was almost tempted to swap sides, all because of forty words and a dollop of cheesiness. Did this actually work on humans? I found it hard to believe.
So did someone else, apparently. The door opened yet again, this time revealing the second of the men who'd arrested us, stocky and ruddy-haired. He leered at Rhys and me in a way I recognised all too well — a predator considering the fate of some lesser being.
"Why're you bothering with the friendly chat, Miller? There are other ways to get a confession..."
"You want an empty room and a camera glitch?"
"Yes."
"And what's to stop him telling?"
'Him,' I thought ironically. Not me, no, because I was female. And maybe, if I was feeling really pessimistic, because I was white, and Rhys was not. I'd heard a lot of stories about the human police, and some of them had been very convincing.
"Oh, he won't," the man said firmly. His eyes didn't leave Rhys, who stared straight back, unflinching. I realised with no small amount of frustration that the officer was right — and Rhys had even kept his mouth shut about a beating before. Oh, I had suspected, when he came home from New Dawn looking like a punching bag, but I had never quite believed it.
"Rhys, you lying shit," I snarled through the link, impressing memories of the cuts and bruises.
He offered a tiny shrug. Not quite an apology ... but close. I wasn't pissed that he had lied, not really. It was more that Rhys didn't consider himself worth kicking up a fuss over. That was why he never complained or held grudges against the people who hurt him. Brandon was a prime example. Rhys had forgiven his brother for nearly killing him in a heartbeat, only to turn against him when he'd marked Fion. This was a pattern of behaviour I should have noticed a long time ago.
"If we do that," Miller said quietly, "what makes us any better than them? We're the good guys — don't ever forget that."
"I don't pay you to be righteous, Miller. I pay for results. You have five minutes before I reassign the case." And with that the man left, slamming the door behind him. Miller sat up straight all of a sudden.
"You heard him. If you give a damn about your brother, I strongly suggest you stop playing and start confessing," he growled.
"But I'm innocent," I declared dramatically.
"Girl, you're cut and dry guilty. We have an overflowing evidence locker downstairs. In fact, I don't reckon a confession is even worth my time at this point. Names and testimony is all we're interested in — if you want any chance of a deal, that is."
"What names?"
Smoothly, he slid a pile of photographs towards us and arranged them side by side. I avoided looking down at first, instead holding Rhys's gaze far above. Any hint of recognition here would be a dangerous mistake.
Some of them, I genuinely didn't know. But more of them, I did. There was a CCTV image from the café in that human town, and blurry as it was, Zach Lloyd was unmistakable. I could even identify Tally behind him and the twins behind me. Our little standoff must have attracted more attention than I'd assumed.
Beside it was the supermarket from that same outing — a beautifully captured image of our shopping running away from us. Then a scene which chilled my heart. It had been taken from a distance and through trees, but the church pictured was unmistakeable. The home of the packmeet, with seven Alphas standing outside, presumably before the meeting.
Still, I didn't let myself flinch or stare. Each photo was given a two-second evaluation before I moved on. The next few were strangers standing in hunched groups in various outdoor settings. As if some camera-enthusiast had been taking a hike through werewolf territory.
But the last image was one I recognised, because Rhodric owned its twin. It was half a photograph of the Llewellyn family. The half missing was the one with a pregnant Jessie in it, as if someone had very carefully cut around her mate and son before handing it over to the police.
The hell? She was dead and cold. This can't have been out of practicality or even to protect her. It must have been ... well, love. To keep half a photo of a girl who'd been gone for seventeen years, while throwing her family under the bus. There was something I didn't know, clearly.
Rhys tapped his fingers against the table, effectively reminding me not to stare. He met my eyes very carefully and shrugged. "Wish we could help you, but I haven't seen any of these ugly bastards in my life."
Miller's patience must have been hanging by its last thread. He slapped a palm against the wall beside him and snapped, "Stop playing games, for Christ's sake! Lauren is in two of them, that kid looks a lot like you — and you're trying to tell me you don't know these people?"
And right then, when all eyes were on my brother, something small and sharp landed in my lap. Then another something. I reached down, taking care not to let my handcuffs rattle, and touched metal. It was the clip of a pen, snapped clean off and the perfect shape to be a tension wrench. The second item was far smaller and thinner — the pick itself.
"How?" I asked through the link, curious rather than impressed.
"Where's the best place to hide something, Skye?" he shot back.
That was an easy recital. The words came automatically, effortlessly. "In plain sight."
The corners of his mouth twitched. And then I knew. Miller had searched him, and found exactly what he was supposed to find. Rhys had kept the lock picks in his hands the whole time, probably between his fingers. Because no one would think to look somewhere so obvious.
And now I understood the purpose of all of Rhys's bullshit. He was drawing attention, following the first rule of delinquency. Make them look the wrong way. Miller —and even Mrs Ketch — was watching the swaggering, bluffing young man, leaving me all the leeway I could ask for.
"She can speak for herself. I'm telling you I don't know these people," he said nonchalantly, hogging the limelight even more.
I span the pick in my fingers idly. Any moment now, he'd do something truly radical and I'd have all the privacy I needed. Preferably before Miller's five minutes were up. I didn't fancy our chances if we were separated again.
"Just how stupid do you think I am?" Miller ranted. Rhys would've had no shortage of sarcastic replies to that, but the cop didn't even pause for breath. "Loyalty, I understand. But these aren't good people. They're killers. Why are you protecting them?"
The silence turned into a genuine yawn.
He tapped the Llewellyn family photo. "Here. The resemblance is uncanny, I must admit. Is this your father? Uncle? All you have to do is nod."
Rhys shook his head.
My patience began to fray. It would be any minute now, because he was just waiting for Miller to push a little too far. Waiting for an excuse.
Miller glanced at his watch. He knew as well as I did that he was running out of time. "All this trouble, for the sake of an abusive son of a bitch... Were the beatings so bad that you're still afraid of him?"
And that, at last, provoked a real response.
"One more word about my father," Rhys said lazily, "and you'll be choking on your own blood."
The Deputy Chief, very helpfully, felt obliged to rise to the threat. His lip curled as he taunted, "Oh yeah?"
It wasn't hard to feign a flinch when Rhys wrenched at his cuffs. The table rattled violently. I didn't see Miller's reaction, but I could guess from the intensity of the smugness oozing from my brother that it had been satisfying.
Now. Now was time, when all the eyes were elsewhere. Manoeuvring the picks one-handed was a feat in itself, but I managed to hold the wrench with two fingers and tickle the cylinders with the others. There was no definite click when the wrench finally turned, just a release of pressure. It took three tries to unlock my left hand, but the right was quicker. I tossed both picks back onto Rhys's lap.
But he ignored them and wrenched again. This time I heard a wet snap. He'd broken his own arm — didn't even appear to notice, let alone care. Bloody hell. I knew only too well how badly it must hurt, but clearly not enough to override my brother's ingrained stubbornness.
Miller started forwards, whether to take advantage or call for first-aid, I would never know, because as soon as he got close enough I kicked his legs out from under him. He fell against me, heavily, and it was all I could do to squirm free and slap the free cuff onto his wrist.
Then, I wrapped my arm around his throat from behind to discourage wriggling while I searched his pockets. He hadn't been stupid enough to wear his gun into an interrogation, but I found the keys in his pockets and tossed them to my brother, who caught them left-handed and set to work on his own restraints.
"What are you —"
A firm squeeze of his windpipe cut off the question, even though I had to release him a second later to hold the door. Whoever had been perving through the one-way glass didn't waste any time throwing their full weight against it. Several cops, I guessed, and groaned with the effort of digging in my heels.
This wouldn't work.
"Hi there," I called through the door. Every muffled sound from the other side ceased. "Your boss is kinda a jerk, isn't he? I don't blame you guys if you don't want him back, but on the off chance that you do, back the hell up. The next time I hear any of you breathe, Miller gets his pretty neck snapped."
It went eerily quiet, and I dared to leave the door long enough to grab a chair to wedge under the handle. It wouldn't stand up to any serious force, but I only needed to buy Rhys a few minutes. Already, he was loose and working on the window latch, while intermittent scratching told me that someone was on the outside — helping, hopefully.
So. A minute to kill. I found myself inexplicably drawn to Miller, wanting my own sort of revenge for the garbage he'd been spewing. It had been bait, yes, and I knew that. But it still got my blood up.
I sat down opposite him and spoke too quietly, "You think you know jack shit about us, do you? You think we're psychopaths and murderers? 'Cause I've got a question. If two psychopaths had a cop at their mercy, what sort of unspeakable things would they do to him?"
I was bluffing, of course. We wouldn't have time to torture him even if we wanted to. But my words had the intended effect. Miller went pale as the blood drained from his cheeks. He could hide the way his hands were shaking and suppress his urge to flinch, but there was no way to disguise the stench of fear. The closer I got, the more I was certain that he had never been vulnerable before.
"Do what you like," he said. Trying to be brave. "You'll only be proving me right."
Now, that was true. It was also tempting to be the bad guy when that was what everyone thought of me. And maybe they were right. There were lines I would never cross, but it was obvious that those lines were further apart than most.
Someone started battering at the door again. I ignored it and leaned in very close, until Miller fixed his eyes on the floor rather than look at me. "You are right," I told him softly. "I've killed people — and I'm not even sorry. They were asking for it."
His throat bobbed. But I reckoned he was only scared because he thought I was crazy. Old Jeff level of crazy. And somehow that took all the fun out of it, so I kicked my chair back and stretched, arching my back. Nothing to do until the boys cracked the reinforced window.
It was only then, during my pause, that I remembered the woman in the corner. Mrs Ketch had remained perfectly still and composed. She huffed a tiny, delicate breath, like this turn of events was inconveniencing her and nothing more.
On impulse, I poked the mind-link. She was human, but I could still find the hazy edges of her mind and—
It was closed. Formidable mental barriers, which Fion could have traversed in a heartbeat, but I was stopped dead in my tracks. That told me a few things, and none of them were good. She knew about werewolves. Someone had trained her to resist our talents. And she wasn't as ignorant as she'd been acting.
Alarmingly, she lowered the wall as if she'd been waiting for my intrusion and welcomed me into her mind. I could hear her thoughts, but only when she allowed it.
"I wanted a proper word with you, but this will have to do." The words rang eerily through my head. "Humans are getting hurt in your war, and we won't tolerate it. Contain the rabid wolves ... or we will be forced to contain your entire species. Consider yourself warned, Miss Llewellyn."
She must have meant the ferals, little knowing we were already in the process of destroying them. Well, if I hadn't been motivated before... The royal 'we.' Either she was bluffing, or some segment of the government knew about werewolves. If that was true, we weren't nearly as sneaky as we'd imagined.
I didn't have time to consider the full implications, though. The floor was now littered with broken glass. It was past time to leave.
I looked around for something to push against the wall. The table was fixed in place so it couldn't be used as a weapon. The chairs would have worked if they weren't so short and flimsy. Old-fashioned shimmying it was, then. Being shorter, I was given a leg up and emerged from the building, blinking at the light, onto an industrial dustbin where Leo waited. The bin wasn't directly below the window, but they'd got it as close as they could.
"You okay?" he greeted me.
"Okay is a relative term."
"I'll take that as a no."
I thumped him good-naturedly, then jumped down from the bin and found myself face-to-face with Tally. Her dark hair was windswept and tangled, but she was wearing a rogue's smirk, far more cheerful than she had any right to be. "Extraction team, reporting for duty."
"You're late," was all I said.
Rhys was framed in the window when I heard the first shot. He shuddered in place as the bullet tore through his exposed shoulder, but kept his balance. It was the second shot which dislodged him, and I could only flinch as he fell a storey onto solid tarmac.
There was nothing worse than watching someone get hurt. It surpassed any injury to yourself, any number of tears. Helplessness could paralyse a person, but knowing you had failed to act was shattering. In fact, there was only one thing worse than watching someone get hurt, and that was watching someone die.
That day, we were lucky. Rhys hissed out a breath and rolled over, and I remembered how to breathe. He had landed awkwardly — on his broken arm, I reckoned. He wrapped it in his shirt straight away, a makeshift sling. Blood was also dripping onto his shirt from a head wound, but at first glance the damage was minimal. Leo offered him a hand and got shoved for his trouble. Rhys stood up by himself.
The gunman had reached the window. We hunkered down behind the bin, but he didn't shoot. No point — not when the distance exceeded his range. Accuracy with a handgun plummeted after a few dozen metres. I even felt safe enough to poke my head out and hissed under my breath when I recognised the violent cop from earlier. If only he had been the one at our mercy instead of Miller. I could have taught him a thing or two about beatings.
"Heads up," someone shouted from above us. Something large and dark was thrown from an open window, and Tally caught it easily. I caught the briefest glimpse of Aaron's solemn face before the window closed again.
The bundle — a heap of fabric — was thrust at me. It took a moment to recognise my winter coat, crumpled and tangled with two others.
I pulled mine on hurriedly. Freezing to death was a distinct possibility. It was December, after all. The boys weren't so quick on the uptake. Leo accepted his when it was draped over his shoulders. Rhys, though... He was slumped against the wall, not remotely interested in anything as trivial as coats. Getting shot sucked, sure, but I'd seen him walk off worse wounds.
So what was wrong? Worriedly, I looked him over.
My brother felt my scrutiny and tried to hide his wrist, but I caught a glimpse and tasted bile. The bone was shattered and poking through the skin, a shard of white amongst so much red. It wouldn't be fatal or debilitating, but it must have hurt like a bitch. His eyes worried me even more — unseeing and vacant and probably a side effect of the gash on his forehead.
"Concussion?" Tally guessed.
I considered him through narrowed eyes. "Yeah. Sometimes I wonder how he has any brain cells left."
"I'm fine," Rhys grumbled.
"I've seen corpses who look more fine than you do," I retorted. Just to prove me wrong, he pushed off the wall and took a few shaky steps towards the forest. Then he passed out — from a combination of blood loss, pain and the concussion. It was inevitable, unsurprising, and yet it still managed to piss me off.
"Where the hell are the others?" I demanded.
"Making a diversion," Tally explained. "They'll catch us up."
Somehow, I doubted it. Nothing seemed to be going our way today.
Leo and I tried to pick him up between us. But even with Tally's tentative help, the weight was too much, too awkwardly distributed. We managed a few slow steps before I told them to lower him down again. We'd need a new idea if we wanted to outrun the long arm of the law.
"We can't leave him here," I said, more for my benefit than Leo and Tally's. They hadn't considered that possibility —it wasn't their job to— but I had. While leaving Rhys to face the music alone might be our only way to escape, there would be no point continuing without him. I kinda needed him to free Ember Pack. There was nothing emotional about the decision. It was simple logistics.
"More's the pity," a new voice complained, loud but far off. I whirled, expecting a cop or a gun barrel to greet me. There was nothing, though. No people, no movement, no scents, nothing. Just an eyeful of bare trees.
Leo made an odd gulping-cough noise. Cautiously and slowly this time, I turned back around.
Because — of course — the newcomer had managed to sneak up on me — something I had thought impossible. He was standing an arm's length away, right beside Rhys. Yet neither my mate nor Tally had moved to attack. A single glance at the man told me why. Tousled tawny hair, a pair of hazel eyes and a broad, careless grin.
"Hello, Skye."