Conversely, I had to hope that even though he was a loner, he knew enough about the pack to tell me what had happened to Jenny.
Back in the old days—only a year ago, I had to remind myself that I’d left the pack less than a year ago—Shaun had worked at a trendy bar and café in Lodo, near the baseball stadium, as a cook, usually during the late shift. Funny, how many lycanthropes liked working late. First, I called to ask if he was still working there. He was, and in fact had been promoted to the head of his shift. The guy had some ambition, it seemed. I showed up at the place a little after the evening rush and made my way to the back entrance. An open doorway in the back alley led to a clean, white work area and kitchen. A busboy dropped a bag of trash in a nearby dumpster, and voices, rattling dishes, and the sound of spraying water drifted out, a counterpoint to the sounds of traffic nearby. The smell of rich food and wonderful spices overpowered the city smells entirely, wafting out on the hot air spilling from the kitchen. The comforting scent made me smile.
“Hey,” I called to the kid as he turned to go back inside.
“Yeah?” He was surly, wary, bent on his task, and probably not used to seeing blond chicks wandering out back.
“Can you tell Shaun someone’s out here to talk to him?”
“He know you?”
“Tell him it’s Kitty.” I decided to be honest. If Shaun didn’t want to come talk to me, I’d march inside and talk to him instead.
The busboy nodded and went back in, leaving me to scuff my sneakers on the asphalt for several minutes. I didn’t want to go in there. I’d prefer doing this outside, in the open. Neutral territory—plenty of escape routes.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Leaving town was a perfectly viable option.
A young man of average height and solid build appeared in the doorway, leaning on the jamb, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. The watchful, defensive posture suggested he wasn’t going to start a fight—but he wasn’t going to give ground, either. He had short, dark hair, and coffee-and-cream skin, wore a chef’s white smock over his shirt and jeans, and had the wild, fur-under-the-skin scent of a lycanthrope. Someone who didn’t know what to look for would never see it in him.
“Hi, Shaun,” I said, hoping I sounded friendly and nonthreatening. “How are you?”
“What are you doing here?” he said by way of greeting. Didn’t bother trying to sound friendly, and I couldn’t blame him.
“Tell me about Jenny.”
Shaking his head, Shaun looked away. “I can’t talk to you. Carl is pissed off. I’ve never seen him as pissed off as he is at you.” And that was saying something. A lot of things pissed Carl off.
“Not as pissed off as he’s going to be,” I said, donning a terrible sweet smile.
Shaun had pulled himself from the doorway and started to walk back inside, but my words stopped him. Slowly, he looked back over his shoulder. His body was taut with fear, uncertainty—the stiff shoulders, the clenched fists. Ready to run, ready to fight if cornered. I recognized the stance because I’d felt it myself so many times. He studied me, his dark eyes shining.
“You’re going to do it,” he said. “You’re going to take him down.”
Not “you’re going to challenge him,” or “you’re going to try to take him.” He said “you are.” Like he believed I could. That sent a charge through me, a brush of static that made my hair rise. He thought I was stronger—maybe I could get him to side with me. Maybe.
“Right now, I just want to know what happened to Jenny. I put her on a plane. She was supposed to be on a plane and away from Carl. How did he get to her?”
His stance changed. Some of the caution slipped, replaced by . . . something. I couldn’t read the new tension that creased his features. Could it be grief? I waited for him to collect himself.
When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and hesitant.
“She called him from the waiting area. I think she chickened out. She talked a lot about getting away, when he wasn’t around. But it was like talking about winning the lottery. Nobody believes it, you don’t believe it yourself. Then she’d turn around in the same breath and say how much she loved him. How she wouldn’t want to hurt him. Like it didn’t matter how much he hurt her.” His expression turned bitter. “When she disappeared, I was happy. I thought she’d really done it, gotten away from him, left town. I didn’t care how, I didn’t care where, just that she was away. But she called him, and Carl talked her out of it. Pulled out all that ‘we’re a pack, we’re family, I need you’ shit. He still had a hold on her. I can’t really blame her—it’s hard walking away. You know that.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t hard. The hard part is knowing that if I’d done it sooner, T. J. might still be alive.”
“Yeah.”
“She called him. He picked her up at the airport. He took her—where? To their house?” Meg and Carl had a house west of town, against the foothills, with easy access to wilderness for running on full moon nights.
“They didn’t get that far,” Shaun said. Quickly he added, “I wasn’t there. I heard about it later. I’d have tried to stop him if I’d been there. But I’ve been staying away from him. He’s wrapped up in some of Arturo’s shit right now, and I don’t want to have anything to do with that.”
“There were some other lycanthropes in town,” I said. “Strangers. Carl sent the pack after them. He left Jenny with the rest of the bodies. He must have picked her up at the airport knowing he was going to kill her.”
“You know him as well as I do. You tell me.”
“You knew what he’d do, and you didn’t even try to stop him.”
“What did you expect me to do?” he shouted.