“I won’t,” he promised.
He meant it. He’d spent enough time being lonely.
“Luke will be counting on you now. I will be too.”
“I’ll try to be worth counting on, then,” Colby said.
Mel smiled. “I have a feeling you’ll pull it off.”
“I liked her,” Aria said once they were back in the car. She had her hands clenched together, and Colby knew that she was trying to keep herself calm.
“I liked her too. But I think you understood her better than I did. You knew just how to get her to start spilling the beans.”
Aria smiled. “Only because of what you’d said before about the way pack loyalty works.”
“Well, then you listen to me better than I do.”
“I probably find your voice a lot sexier than you do, too. Unless you’re really vain.”
“Total narcissist.”
Aria turned her head, looking out the window as they sped by pine trees and street signs. The worry on her face got too strong to hide.
“I’m scared, Colby. At least when Eli was coming after me, I knew I had you to protect me. And I knew that I knew wolves, that I was armed, that I was ready. Susan doesn’t know what’s headed her way, not really. And she’s not... she’s not tough.”
“I know. But don’t forget, we’re headed her way too, now. And we can get there fast.” He started the car. “Dig into the glove compartment and get my flasher, would you?”
“Flasher?”
“It’s a clip-on police light. It’ll tell everyone to get out of our way—and tell any local cops not to pull me over if I start breaking speed limits left and right.”
“Got it.”
She dug into the compartment and produced the small single flasher. Colby clicked it on, rolled down his window, and smacked it against the hood.
Then he got as close to flooring it as he was willing to risk.
He asked Aria to start calling in his team.
16
Colby would have preferred—by an astronomical measure—to have dropped Aria off somewhere safe, maybe back at the police station with Wilson. But he couldn’t be sure he had the time to go that far out of his way. Martin had said he shouldn’t ignore his instincts, and his instincts were all but screaming at him to get to Susan Fowler as quickly as possible. And he wasn’t willing to stop and let Aria out on the way, not when it would mean leaving her unprotected.
The only thing he could think of was taking her with him.
He didn’t like it at all.
“I hope your team gets here fast,” Aria said. “You need backup.”
He couldn’t believe she was thinking about how he needed protection. Then again, he didn’t think he’d ever shake the image of her standing in her trashed living room, cold as ice, pointing a gun at two werewolves and calmly lying to them about having silver bullets. She was a hero.
“They’ll be fast,” he assured her. “They’ll probably fly, and pegasi and dragons can outrace cars without even breaking a sweat.”
“What about Gretchen?”
“She’ll catch a ride with one of them.”
He risked turning his head slightly to catch t