“Burned?”
“No.” Truman hesitated before whispering, “I think the Elders killed her husband. Please come.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Jana hung up and rushed to the office door. If she was going to have to holler every time she needed Virgil, she was going to find a megaphone. Then she spotted something better—a Hawk perched on the hitching post across the street from the office.
She ran across the street and said, “There’s trouble at the Skye Ranch. I need Virgil right now.” She stared at the Hawk. She had no idea where Virgil was patrolling since he was trying to cover the whole town on his own. Kane was still watching Maddie, partly to keep the blood prophet safe from questionable humans and also because he was still healing and didn’t have the speed or stamina yet to be out patrolling. And she was in the office and patrolling the town square so that one of them would be near the hotel and bank and the other businesses that might be vulnerable to this swarm of strangers who had been arriving over the past couple of days.
Realizing they both couldn’t leave, she said, “Never mind. I’ll call in when I can.”
She ran inside, closed Rusty in the crate, and called one of the doctors. “Someone at the Skye Ranch needs immediate attention. I’m heading there now. You might need the ambulance for this one.”
She grabbed her gear, jumped in her vehicle—and almost screamed when she saw the Hawk settled in the cargo area.
“By all the gods, what are you doing back there?” And how had he gotten inside when the windows were closed?
Being in Hawk form, he didn’t bother to reply. He also made no effort to leave.
“I don’t have time to argue.” She headed south, pushing for as much speed as she could get as soon as she was away from the town square—and almost drove off the road when smoke suddenly flowed up from beneath the passenger seat and shifted into Yuri Sanguinati.
“Gods!” Jana screamed. “Are you trying to scare me into heart failure?”
“You didn’t wait for Virgil,” Yuri replied. “I—” He looked back at the Hawk. “We were available to assist you.” He paused before adding, “You are not the kind of hunter who should go out alone.”
Because she was human? Because she was female? Because cops in human cities usually had a partner when they responded to a call?
She slowed to a sensibly fast speed while she fumbled to get the mobile phone out of its holder on her belt. She handed it to Yuri. “I didn’t lock the office. Someone should be there. We still have a storeroom full of uncataloged weapons, and we have some newcomers in town who would love to help themselves to that kind of loot, if we believe everything I was told about them.”
She drove while Yuri made the call. Based on his side of the conversation, she guessed he was talking to Tolya.
“I’ll tell her,” Yuri said just before he ended the call.
“Tell me what?”
“Virgil is … upset … with you for running off without him.”
“Virgil can kiss my furless ass,” Jana snapped. “The information I was given indicated we needed to respond ASAP. He wasn’t available, so I used my initiative.”
When Yuri said nothing, she took her eyes off the road for just a second. “What?”
“I don’t think kissing is what he has in mind. And I don’t think you want his teeth anywhere near your furless ass.”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Yes.” Yuri nodded. “Yes, we are.”
Darn it! She’d forgotten about the Hawk riding in the back, listening to everything.
Silence filled the vehicle for the rest of the trip, giving her time to gather herself for whatever she would find at the Skye Ranch.
When she and Yuri walked into the ranch house’s kitchen, leaving the Hawk to find the location of the fire, Jana knew something more—and worse—had happened since Truman Skye made the call asking for help.
“The doctor and ambulance will be along soon,” she said.
“Don’t need them anymore,” Truman replied. “Not for her.” He stood up and swayed as if drunk. Then he found his balance. “This way. She left a note.”
Oh gods.
“I never thought.” The Simple Life woman Jana figured to be the cook and housekeeper looked devastated. “She was grieving, yes, and what happened was terrible, but I never thought …”
“We’ll get to that.” Jana focused on Truman. “Show me.”
Two open bottles of pills on the bedside table. Apparently more than enough to do the job.
“We brought her in here to rest until you arrived,” Truman said. “She …”
Jana picked up the note that was on the floor beside the bed. Simple. Cryptic. Chilling.
I saw what killed my husband. It’s out there, watching us. Always watching us.
She looked at Truman. “Did she say anything to you? Anything about what happened?”
“Can we … ?” He walked out of the room. Jana and Yuri followed him back to the kitchen.
The Simple Life woman wasn’t there, but there was a plate of biscuits on the table, along with butter and a berry jam, all under mesh covers to keep away the flies. Jana wasn’t interested in food, but she recognized the custom of providing sustenance so that survivors could continue.
“She and her husband were trying to find a way to reach their daughter, who lives in a small town in the Southwest Region,” Truman began. “I don’t know how long they’d been traveling or where they started from, but they were at a crossroads—the one that would head up to Bennett or down to Prairie Gold—when they were forced to stop by a car blocking the road. Two men with guns. They stole the couple’s car and left them with the other car. The car had gasoline and it started, so they decided to head north to Bennett to report the incident and turn the car over to the police.
“The attack was so sudden, the woman didn’t know what was happening. One moment they were driving along, with nothing of their own except her big purse, which the gunmen had tossed out of her car, and the next thing they knew, something knocked them off the road and they were pulled from the car. Her husband tried to tell the Others that it wasn’t their car, that they hadn’t been involved in whatever had happened, but …” Truman swallowed hard. “They ripped her husband apart right in front of her. Then a red-haired man riding a brown horse appeared out of nowhere. The moment he touched the car it started to burn. Once the car started burning, they let the woman go and just … disappeared.
“We saw the smoke. When we drove out to investigate, we found her staggering down the middle of the road. We brought her back here, and I called you.”
“Did she have the pills on her?” Jana asked.
“Don’t know. She wasn’t carrying anything when we found her, so she might have found the pills in the drawer. We’re still getting everything sorted and settled. We didn’t check the drawers, didn’t think she’d …” Truman rubbed his face with his hands. “That woman. Her husband. They didn’t hurt anyone.”
“You think her mate was killed by mistake,” Yuri said.
Truman gave Jana and Yuri a bleak look and nodded. “Do you think that will be a comfort to their daughter if you can find her?”
* * *
* * *
“It is regrettable, but mistakes happen,” Tolya said. Who had called Jesse to tell her about these humans, and why?
“Mistakes happen?” Jesse’s voice held cold condemnation. “Two innocent people died, and that’s all you can say?”
“Isn’t that what humans say when they do something similar?” Tolya snapped. “Namid’s teeth and claws have had little exposure to humans except when killing is required. The vehicle that was spotted was the same vehicle being driven by the humans who you sensed were a danger, who you hid from, who tried to burn down your store.”
“The vehicle was the same; the people were not. They were victims, Tolya, more so than me. The Elders killed that man right in front of his wife.”
“And humans have never done such a thing.”
He was angry—with her, with the Elders, and especially with the men who had caused this sudden schism between human allies and the terra indigene.
“You’re not going to see anyone’s side but your own, are you?” Jesse said.
“I could say the same about you.” He hung up on her, partly because her naïveté annoyed him. Having lived in an isolated town her whole life, she should have a better understanding of what lived just out of sight—except for those last moments when it appeared right in front of you. But the other reason for ending the call was Jana and Virgil walking into his office, both looking grim.
“They were innocent people,” Jana said. “Victims.”
“An ally had been threatened,” Tolya countered. “The Elders and Elementals responded to eliminate the threat.”
“Nobody was threatened by that man and his wife! They didn’t do anything wrong, and now they’re dead.”
“Look around you, Deputy,” Tolya said coldly. “You live in a town that was full of people who ‘didn’t do anything wrong’ and still ended up dead.” Having used up his patience talking to Jesse, he turned on Jana. “What should the terra indigene have done? Decline to track the vehicle that held humans who posed a threat? Should Fire have stood back and watched Jesse’s store burn?”
“No, but they didn’t have to kill those people! They could have apprehended them and waited for us to arrive.”
“They killed an Eagle,” Virgil snarled. “They had guns.”
“They, they, they!” Jana snarled back. “The they who killed the Eagle and tried to burn Jesse’s store were armed robbers, not two middle-aged people who were trying to find their daughter. I would think even the Elders could tell the difference.”
“Be careful, human,” Virgil said.
“Yes! I’m human. Sorry I don’t have fangs and fur.”
“Not half as sorry as we are.”
She took a step back and looked at the Wolf as if he’d just delivered a wound that would prove fatal.
And Tolya, too angry at her species to deny his predatory instinct, went in for the verbal kill. “Do you know why the Sanguinati don’t mind living around humans? Because you’re our preferred prey. But the Elders look at you and see a blight, a disease that spoils the world. They consider proximity to humans as a contamination, but some of them have to be contaminated now because too many of the shifters that used to watch your kind were killed by the Humans First and Last movement, so the choice, as the Elders see it, is to be close enough for some forced interaction or to eliminate all of you.”
“The only good human is a dead human,” Virgil growled.