But even with adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream, I understood that this probably wasn’t an accident.Accidental, maybe, in the sense that Elliot probably just decided to go out shifted and happened across the ATV, but I would have staked an awful lot on the ATV being there because it was being driven by the same asshole who was leaving dead animals at the house.
Because most of the time when he went out in badger form, he stuck to his own territory—Crane land. I knew—although I didn’t much like it—that Elliot, like his parents, allowed people to use the trails on their property for both hiking and ATVs, although they did have them marked as being private property. I’d argued with him about it after the badger had been left, and he’d shrugged it off.
Or maybe he just didn’t want to let these assholes rule his life.
I drew in another long, shaky breath, forcing myself to loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Clutching it like a lifeline wasn’t going to cause the truck to go any faster or help Elliot. The best thing I could do was to get there safely. And that meant not driving like a maniac. It was dark—the kind of dark it could only be early in the morning after the moon had set but before the sun rose—and while the adrenaline, fear, and worry were definitely keeping me awake, they weren’t doing me any favors in terms of paying attention to the mostly-empty road.
My mind just kept going in circles, hearing his pained and frightened voice on my voicemail. I’d failed him. I’d wanted to protect him—promisedto protect him. And I’d failed. I’d left him alone, and he’d been attacked.
He could have been killed.
The next scene I could have been called to could literally have been him.
I sucked in a sob, a little shocked at how hard that hit me.
I reminded myself that Elliot would be okay. He wasn’t dying, and from what Judy had said, he wasn’t in danger of dying. Not from this, anyway.
I hadn’t asked Judy if they’d called the police—I hoped she had, but if not, I would have to. Elliot would probably argue with me but?—
I gulped in air, trying to get myself under enough control that I wouldn’t need to pull over. Because I wanted to get to Elliot as soon as I could.
I hadn’t felt like this—panicked, scared, angry—since Noah got sick. That had been hours of abject terror until I finally made it to the hospital, followed by days of fear and worry until he was able to tell me himself he was okay.
I’d had a full-on panic attack on the way to the hospital, lost on the side of a country road. I didn’t want to repeat that particular experience—any of it. No getting lost, no panic attacks, no walking along mostly-deserted country roads.
It got worse when I passed Elliot’s unobtrusive gravel driveway entrance. I almost stopped again, but the idea that I would get to his side any later than I had to was intolerable, and I hurriedly wiped a hand across my eyes, glad the highway was all but abandoned at this time in the morning.
I should have insisted Elliot go immediately to the Harts. I should have waited to go out to the fire—the dead weren’t going to get any deader, and I’d still have been there before Borde. I should have asked him to go to Henry’s for the day or made sure he wasn’t going to shift. He’d been restless for the past several days, and I knew he liked to shift when he was feeling restless.
There were a million different things I could have done or asked him to do or not do. And I hadn’t done any of them.
I thought about the fact that whoever had hit him almost certainly hadn’t stopped to see if he was okay—because if itwasthe same person who had left the dead animals, they knew how big a badger was, which meant they had to have realized that the badger they’d hit wasn’t an ordinary badger.
I did a lot of careful, deliberate breathing, trying to keep the panic at bay.
I mostly had myself under control by the time the highway turned into Main Street. And then I had to make a decision.
I could keep going south and go straight to the hospital, or I could trade out the truck for my car—andnottake crime scene evidence out of the chain of custody.
“Fuck,” I muttered, then threw a hard right to pull into the Sheriff’s Department parking lot. If I was going to be actually responsible, that also meant I had to at least log in the evidence, even if I didn’t do anything else with it.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to just jump out of the truck and run to my Cruiser and go straight to the hospital.
But that wasn’t the responsible, adult thing to do.
“Fuck,” I repeated, then slammed the truck into park, then jumped out. “Fuck!” I snarled, much louder, as my knee buckled and I was forced to catch myself on the side of the truck. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the fresh pain as I stepped on my leg, hobbling toward the back of the truck and the bins of evidence and used-up kit that needed to be brought inside.
The pain in my knee slowed me down, and I swore under my breath the whole time it took me to load out the evidence, put the kit bag in the office with an apology note saying I’d do it when I got in next if nobody else wanted to, and then hastily filled out the filing paperwork for both evidence bins.
I kept compulsively checking my phone, looking for any messages or calls from Judy with updates about Elliot.
Nothing.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
I sentJudy a text from the parking lot at the hospital, which was rather alarmingly full for an extremely early Tuesday morning.
She told me that she would meet me by the front doors of Emergency.
