Mary spun to look at him. Her head was lowered slightly in deference, but her expression was furious. “You’re going to let Maven’s lackeys mess with Matt and Cammie’s stuff?” she growled. “What’s to stop them from destroying any information they find?”
Okay, that was enough. I stood up and stepped toward her—not quite in her face, but getting close. “Mary,” I said tightly, “I appreciate that you’ve lost someone today. But I haven’t slept, and I just spent half a day hiking through my least favorite terrain on the planet. I look and feel like a walking bag of dirt. And yet here I am, offering to help you.” Fuck werewolf politics. I met her eyes and didn’t look away. “I came here in good faith to repay a debt, not as anyone’s lackey. Do you want to get your head out of your ass and accept my help, or do you really think I suddenly developed a taste for mind games?”
Mary put her hands on her hips, glaring at me. “I can go to the hotel room,” she snapped.
“I need you to drive the truck, and help me talk to the rest of the pack,” Dunn said. “And we can’t linger in this state; you know that. We’re already pushing it by going home during the day, when Maven’s not able to vouch for us.”
“But—”
Dunn looked like he was about to lay down the law as alpha, but to my surprise, Simon spoke first. “Mary,” he said quietly. Her eyes flicked down to him. “You saved my life two years ago. I haven’t forgotten.”
It was true; Mary had cut Simon out of the sandworm’s throat while I was incapacitated. I had almost forgotten.
Her eyes softened just a little. Simon continued, “I know Lex has to represent Maven, but she’s being straight with you. And I don’t work for Maven. I don’t really have a horse in this race, so to speak, but I do feel I owe you, personally. Please let us help.”
Mary made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat and practically stomped over to him, tossing the hotel room key in his lap. Then she went to sit in the pickup truck, slamming the door behind her.
Dunn watched her go, then turned to look at us. “She was very close to Cammie,” he said quietly. “They were roommates before she married Matt.”
I winced. Dunn added, to me, “Thank you for your offer. I trust you’ll call after you check the hotel room?”
I nodded. “Even if we find nothing, we’ll pack up their stuff and get it back to you.”
“Appreciate it.” His eyes hardened. “I want a face-to-face meeting with Maven. Tonight.”
I raised my eyebrows. Dunn was still a werewolf, and Maven rarely left the coffee shop, let alone Boulder. Getting the two of them face-to-face was a pretty huge demand. “You know what you’re asking?” I said, keeping my voice even.
He nodded, his jaw set.
“Call Quinn after sunset,” I told him. “He’ll talk to Maven about setting it up. I don’t know what she’ll say, but . . . just call Quinn. We might not be back yet.”
Simon and I turned to go, but Dunn called me back. “Lex . . . I do appreciate what you did today,” he said quietly. “You and I are square,” he said.
“Okay.” Reflexively, I stretched out my hand and he shook it.
The flinty look hadn’t left his eyes, though, and just for a moment he gripped my hand hard. “But I swear to you, when I find out who killed my wolves, whoever it is . . . there will be hell to pay.”
Chapter 8
After the werewolves left, Simon went to dismantle his humans-go-away spell. I brushed off my clothes as much as I could and got inside the Jeep, getting the heater going. I made a quick call to Quinn’s voice mail, explaining that we had found the bodies and were headed to Alamosa to rest for a few hours. Then I looked up the Ventimiglias’ hotel on my phone, groaning as the trip estimate popped up. It was nearly another hour away, in the opposite direction from Boulder. I checked my watch. To my surprise, it was only a little before noon. I felt like we’d been out on the dunes for days, but just under four hours had passed. It didn’t seem possible that I was this tired.
On a hunch, I called the hotel, identified myself as Cammie Ventimiglia, and asked if I had a reservation for one night or two. I didn’t want anyone thinking the Ventimiglias were late to check out and messing with their stuff. But the clerk assured me the reservation was for two nights. Matt and Cammie must have decided to spend a second day in the area.
Before I hung up, I asked him when the hotel had been built. I’d learned the hard way that the older the hotel, the more ghosts inhabited it, and I didn’t want to have to deal with hauntings under the current circumstances. To my relief, it was fairly new construction. I thanked him and hung up, yawning.
I wasn’t the only one. Simon fell asleep before we went back through the National Park entrance, leaning against the window with his head propped on his messenger bag. I glanced over at him and had to smile. There were streaks of dirt on his face where sand had gotten trapped between his goggles and his skin, giving him a sort of raccoon/bandit look. Then I glanced in the visor mirror and saw that I had the exact same streaks, and directed my attention back to the road.
By the time we reached Alamosa I was starving, so I stopped at a sandwich shop, poking Simon’s arm until he woke up to give me his order. I ran in to use the bathroom and get the food, and we cruised through town munching on our subs.
Like many small towns in Colorado, Alamosa wasn’t particularly memorable on its own, but it did a brisk tourism trade because of its proximity to natural wonders. The town’s main drag was a winding collection of strip malls, fast-food restaurants, and a handful of chain hotels. The Holiday Inn was nearly at the end of them, and it was exactly what you’d expect—generic, anonymous, and nonthreatening, with an overabundance of Christmas lights and tinny Christmas music playing in the lobby. The desk clerk, a pimply, slightly timid young man who looked about sixteen but was probably in his early twenties, didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow when Simon and I walked in. “The Dunes?” he said, glancing at our filthy clothes and the light dusting of sand trailing behind us. He was clearly trying to suppress a smile.
Simon still looked too exhausted to speak, so I answered. “Yes. Our friends are staying here, and we were hoping to get a room as well. With two beds,” I added quickly.
Unfortunately, the clerk informed me, they did not have a room available for us at the moment, as check-in didn’t start until three. I glanced over my shoulder at Simon, who was swaying a little on his feet. Crap. I really didn’t want to use the Ventimiglias’ room because of the ick factor, but I was also too tired to go find another hotel. Stepping away from the desk, I pulled the hotel room key out of my pocket. It was in one of those little cardboard folders, and the room number was written on the inside: 126. “We’ll just go visit with our friends,” I told the clerk, trying not to sound resigned.
I led the way down the hall, with Simon trudging after me, until we reached the right door. I opened it cautiously, expecting . . . I don’t know. A booby trap? Gunshots? It seemed unlikely that whoever had killed the Ventimiglias would stick around to ambush their hotel maid, but I still made Simon stay in the hall while I checked the room, my hand on the revolver in my pocket.
There was nothing. It was a perfectly average hotel room: shoebox-sized bathroom, sink and minifridge, king-sized bed, desk with a single chair, and TV sitting on a generic bureau. There were some toiletries in the bathroom and an extra-large, unzipped duffel bag on the wooden desk, and that was it.
I went back out and got Simon, who gave me a weak smile. “Why don’t you shower first?” I suggested, taking pity on him. “I’ll take a quick look at their things.”
Simon nodded and shuffled into the bathroom while I went back to the duffel bag. It was a little dusty and worn, as though it got a lot of use. I perched on the edge of the desk chair, trying not to sand any more of the room than I needed to, and opened the bag’s main compartment. I pulled out all the contents: a few changes of clothing, a Kindle, a couple of outdoor lifestyle magazines, and a large jar of peanut butter. There was no bread or anything, but I guessed the peanut butter was for Matt, who would be hungry after changing back into a human. Peanut butter was a good way to get a lot of protein, fat, and calories very quickly, if you could deal with it being stuck to the roof of your mouth.
I checked carefully, but there were no secret compartments, nothing hidden in the seams. I did find Matt’s cell phone in one of the duffel bag’s side pockets, which made sense: Why bring a new-model iPhone to the dunes, especially when you were planning to be a wolf the whole time? The phone was locked with a password, so I zipped it back in the duffel bag and turned to search the rest of the room—which took about thirty seconds. The fridge held only a six-pack of Snake River Pale Ale, and the drawers and closet were empty. If the Ventimiglias’ murderer had even come to the hotel room, he or she hadn’t left anything behind. Then again, what had I expected? Bloody handprints, or signed hate mail?
A moment later Simon came out of the bathroom wearing athletic pants and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. Like everyone else I’d met in the Old World, he always kept extra clothes with him. He mumbled something like, “Your turn,” and went to collapse on one side of the king bed.
I stayed under the hot water for a long time, scrubbing the sand off my skin and shampooing my hair several times. There wasn’t even much sand in my hair, thanks to the hat and scarf, but it was a psychological thing. I felt like the desert had spread through all my clothes and permeated my skin.
When I finally came out of the bathroom, wearing old jeans and a lightweight Luther Shoes sweatshirt, Simon was lying on the very edge of the bed. I had to laugh. He had built a fence of pillows going all the way down the bed’s center.
Simon’s eyelids cracked open and he smiled. “It’s a little weird, right?”
“That you’re a grown man building a pillow fort?”
He rolled his eyes. “Sharing a bed.”
“Maybe a little,” I admitted, circling the bed to climb under the covers on the other side. By unspoken agreement, Simon and I avoided intimacy, and now we were going to sleep together. Literally speaking, of course.
“You setting your alarm?” he asked, clearly trying to change the subject.
“Yeah.” I fiddled with my phone, trying to decide how many hours we could afford to sleep. Ideally, I would have liked to be home before dark so I could go see Maven right away, but that was impossible: it was not quite two, and it would take at least four and a half hours to get back to Boulder. The sun would be down around 4:30. I texted Quinn again, telling him we were going to crash for a few hours and I would call him from the road, hopefully by 6:30. I figured he could handle whatever came up between sunset and then. Simon’s car was already at Magic Beans, so I could go straight there to talk to Maven.