Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71314 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
I need to find her. I need to make her safe.
Where would she go? What would she do? I know I am not the only one looking for her. I think what I said to Karl will hold things off somewhat, but I am well aware that the New York wolves will want revenge. There’s a lot of stupid in the world right now, and all of it is out for blood.
In the end, or rather, the beginning, I decide to start at her house. Yes, the big fancy house that quite obviously bears her name, the place she is most likely, and therefore by some rationales, least likely to be. The ballsiest move would be to come here. Callie seems to be developing a hell of a pair of those lately.
Sure enough, the van that smashed the doors is parked in the back. It is a lot worse for wear, but it looks mostly intact.
I go up to the front door and call for her instead of knocking.
“Callie!” I shout her name, not because I don’t think she’s here, but because I don’t want her to shoot me because she thinks I am someone else. I want her to recognize my voice and let me in.
It takes a few minutes, but I hear shuffling around inside so I stay where I am, even though the porch is exposed as all hell. If someone in there decided to shoot through the door, that would be it for me.
Finally, the door flies open. A female hand comes out, grabs my lapel, and hauls me inside the foyer.
It’s Calista, and she looks… perfect. She’s showered. Her hair is wet, roughly toweled, but not styled. She’s wearing a pink tracksuit and sneakers. She looks cozy and cute and it’s hard to imagine she’s been through anything terrible lately.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her close. “I am so sorry, baby. You should never have had to go through… all of that.”
“Yeah,” she says, her voice muffled against my shoulder. “It was all of that.”
She’s talking as if it didn’t matter, but I know it was not okay. I know that doing what she did is going to leave a mark of some kind. The wolves at the warehouse were shaken, as if they’d encountered a predator even more frightening than them. That’s a matter of energy.
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“No,” she says. “I wouldn’t let them hurt me. They hurt one guy. They killed him like he wasn’t even a person. They just put a knife through his neck. And then they were going to kill the other two. So I shot someone.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You were acting in defense of others. You did a good thing.”
“It doesn’t feel like a good thing. It feels like…” She trails off and presses her face into my chest.
I wish I had stopped this from happening. I should have saved her from the necessity to look after herself that way. My whole function is to protect her now, and somehow I managed to fuck that up absolutely immediately.
“We have to get out of here,” she says. “Or maybe we don’t. I haven’t decided yet. I assume the wolves will try to come for us, but good luck breaking in here without people noticing. This place is under all kinds of surveillance. That damn van is going to be drawing attention. I need to get rid of that.”
“I don’t think it matters,” I say. “The van, I mean. We have other things to worry about.”
She pulls out her phone. “Yep. See. There you go.”
She’s opened a gossip site. There’s a picture of the van already, and her driving it.
Who wore it best? Heiress in a hurry.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I point out.
“They’ve been waiting for me to go off the rails for years. Then the office partly burned down and I took some time off, and I guess they think I’m ripe for shaving my head,” she says.
She really is watched by a lot of people, far more than the average woman. I wonder if she even understands what it means to have a stalker given how many followers of various guises she has.
“I need you to come with me,” I say. “I’m going to New Orleans, and I want you with me. I don’t want you to be out of my sight again. I can’t trust anyone.”
“Why?” She narrows her eyes suspiciously and pulls away a little.
“The alpha there wants to see me. I spent a little too long on my assignment with you. That’s why my brother was sent to find me.”
“That guy’s your brother? He seems like an asshole.”
“He is, and yes. You get that with older brothers, especially in wolf packs. They think being born first should give them some kind of seniority. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.”