“Amen.”
36
Elliot Crane
I can hear ATVs.
Come home.
Now.
Please.
I ran to the car,ignoring the pain in my knee. I’d left my phone on my desk to help Roger load in some evidence from a crash on 22 south of Shawano. When I got back to it, I had two missed calls and two texts.
“Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Lacy asked.
“They’re going after Elliot,” I replied, grabbing my coat.
“I’ll call Gale!” Lacy called after me as I ran out, not bothering to put on the coat.
I shoved it into the passenger seat and tried to ignore the fact that I was shivering with cold. I didn’t want to spare even the seconds it would take for me to put it on. I chose to ignore things like stop signs and stoplights when there was no one else coming—I needed to get to Elliot. Quickly. A minute sooner. Another minute. A second. A breath. A heartbeat.
Driving through downtown Shawano in the snow was torture. I wanted to go faster, but I grew up in the South, where snow was an alien substance that I had very little understanding of how to drive in. Elliot had tried explaining several things to me the first time I’d had to drive to work in it, but I still didn’t know why he’d insisted on putting a bag of cat litter in my trunk.
Why was he home?Elliot was supposed to have been at the Harts’ today, helping Judy with baking or something. He wasn’t supposed to be alone at the house, because while Smith had arrested Buettner, yesterday the asshole had posted bail. I’d sworn a blue streak worthy of Hart when Smith had called to tell me, and while Smith had been very sympathetic, there wasn’t anything either of us could do.
So today I’d begged Elliot to go over to the Harts’, and he’d promised to do so.
It is late, almost dinnertime, I reminded myself. Elliot had probably assumed I’d be home soon—which I would have been even if it hadn’t been for his texts.
I crossed the river and opened up the engine, through the city where there were other cars and the possibility of pedestrians. Now it was just highway and then…
I whipped up the gravel of the driveway, my back tires skidding as I pulled in.
I left the car door open and ran for the front door. It was locked, and I fumbled with the keys, the scent of blood in my nostrils, panic thick on the back of my tongue.
The door flew open, and I pushed my way inside, not bothering to take off my shoes.
The smell of blood was stronger, thicker, cut by the sour tang of fear.
“Back here,” Elliot’s voice called, the words oddly thick.
It only took a few seconds, and I was in the living room, and I stopped short.
There were two other men in the room, one of them bleeding profusely from one arm, the other frozen in place with Elliot’s hand held out, pointed at his throat.
Or, more specifically, Elliot’sclaws. Wicked, six-inch long claws that could easily have ripped out that throat.
Elliot’s features were oddly shaped, his body hunched, and his mouth full of teeth that were too big and too sharp. Why he’d sounded funny.
I’d never seen a shifter do this—shift only partway and hold it there.
It was honestly terrifying.
The two would-be assailants seemed to agree, although the one on the floor seemed to be bleeding a lot more than he should have been, his skin pale and a little waxy. The bleeding man was slumped against the wall beside the broken patio door. The other held a crowbar—presumably the thing that had broken said door.
