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Chapter Eight
Quinn
Quinn couldn’t sleep.Instead, she laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering why she’d even bothered trying. Finally, after an hour, she got up and went out to the motel’s small, crummy pool.
There she sat on a half-rusted pool chair, staring at the water. The highway was right behind it, but this time of night, no one was going anywhere.
Just like home, she thought.
From the way her parents had talked about it, she’d thought that Granite Valley would have some sort of crazy red light district, and that shifter were up all night, driving around, fucking in the backs of cars, but that was totally wrong. It was just another small town, really.
How was she going to get out of her parents’ clutches tomorrow? Despite herself, she really did want to go out with Julius and Hudson. It wasn’t like anything was going to happen, and besides, she’d be getting out of Cascadia ASAP as soon as the assassination attempt was over.
Obviously, no one was going to want the daughter of the would-be assassins to stick around.
Quinn could still scarcely believe that her parents had arranged it. Sure, she knew that they were hateful in the extreme, about shifters more than anything — but having someone killed? It just seemed beyond the pale.
I wonder if I know them at all, she thought. What else are they capable of?
One more time, she went over the plan in her head. A SWAT team, made up of people not just from Granite valley but from Long Prairie and Canyon City as well, would be hiding out and watching the rooftops, ready to take down anyone who even appeared to have a gun.
Meanwhile, a huge plainclothes police force would be in the crowd before the trial, most on the protestor side. They’d gone over it from every angle, every possible place at the courthouse where someone could shoot Julius from.
Quinn still had a horrible sinking feeling about it, no matter how many times all the shifters had tried to comfort her. Julius and Ash had chosen this way over pushing the trial back further and trying to catch the shooter without putting Julius at risk, even over Hudson’s protestations.
Julius wanted the culprits arrested and the whole thing over with.
Hudson, at that point, had mostly sat in his seat and glowered.
Quinn rubbed her eyes in her hands, watching the stars reflected off the rippling surface of the pool. As guilty as she felt, she was glad they’d decided to do it this way — the sooner they got it over with, the less time her parents had to figure out that she knew their plan and she’d talked to the authorities.
She pulled her hood over her head and leaned back, staring at the stars. Also just like home: Orion’s belt, the big dipper, the little dipper, the north star...
* * *
“Quinn!”her mother shouted.
She jerked awake, realizing that she was slightly damp and freezing. Her eyes came open and she looked around, and for a few moments she was utterly lost, feeling unmoored from reality.
I’m dreaming, she thought.
“Quinn!” her mother shouted again. Then there was the sound of a metal gate rattling, and Quinn finally remembered going out to the pool the night before.
Apparently she’d finally fallen asleep out there.
“What on earth are you doing out here?” her mother scolded, finally getting the gate to the pool open.
“I couldn’t sleep inside,” Quinn said, guiltily. Her mom had probably flipped out when she hadn’t answered her motel room door.
“Anything could have happened out here, Quinn,” her mother said, hands on her hips. Her face was receding into its usual scowl, but there were still worry lines between her eyes that spoke of the panic over her daughter.
Quinn felt a pang of guilt.
They arranged for someone to die, she reminded herself.
“Sorry, mom,” she said. “I just wanted to get some air, I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“Metal fences are no barrier to these perverts,” her mother hissed.
