“Alex…” Wade’s voice, low and close. “Stay with me.”
The room felt suddenly too small, walls pressing in from all sides. Even the air tasted wrong, stale and thick with dust and the lingering scent of death. Mold crept up one corner of the ceiling, black fingers reaching across water-stained plaster. A fly buzzed lazily near the window, the only living thing that seemed at home here.
“Focus,” Wade murmured, appearing beside him. “Where did you last have the wallet?”
Right. The wallet. The entire reason for this suicide mission.
“This was the only room I was in.” Alex swallowed hard. “Must’ve fallen out during the…during what happened.”
Liam lifted the hemorrhaging couch with one hand while Bayne systematically checked the loveseat, lifting cushions and looking under the furniture. The wolves moved like shadows, barely disturbing the air around them.
Twenty minutes of searching yielded nothing but dust, forgotten pennies, and Alex’s increasing desperation. No wallet. No ID. No credit cards or cash or any proof he existed outside this nightmare.
“Cops must have it,” Bayne finally said.
Liam nodded. “Standard procedure. They’d bag anything that might identify victims or suspects.”
The word “suspects” made Alex’s stomach twist. In his mind, his face appeared on wanted posters, police bulletins, the evening news. IDIOT MURDERS LOCAL MAN. Film at eleven.
“If they have my wallet, they have my name,” Alex whispered, panic rising like floodwater. “They’ll be looking for me.”
“We need to go,” Wade said, cutting through Alex’s spiraling thoughts.
A sound from the front porch froze all four of them mid-movement. The unmistakable creak of weathered wood under footsteps. Four heads snapped toward the noise in perfect unison, predator and prey instincts alike screaming danger.
Without a word, Wade pointed toward the bedroom they’d entered through. They moved as one unit, Alex’s heart hammering so loudly he was certain everyone in a five-mile radius could hear it.
Halfway down the hall, another sound froze them in place.
Voices. Coming from the backyard, directly below their escape route.
“Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea,” Alex muttered under his breath. “Except both are wearing badges and carrying handcuffs.”
Wade held up his hand, head tilted in that distinctive way shifters had when listening to something humans couldn’t detect. After a moment, he shook his head. “Not cops,” he mouthed.
Curiosity overcame caution. Alex edged toward the bedroom window, staying low and out of sight. Outside, two figures huddled beneath the overhang, sheltered from the rain. One tall and slim, the other shorter with a baseball cap pulled low, counting bills from a thick roll.
Their voices carried up through the partially open window.
“Fifty for the oxy, hundred for the meth.” A gravelly voice carried through the thin walls. “Price went up after what happened here.”
A drug deal. Just their luck. Alex looked to Wade, whose face had hardened into something dangerous.
“Bullshit,” Baseball Cap replied. “Same price as always or I’m finding another supplier.”
“After that murder here? Place is hot now. Cops crawling all over. Risk costs extra.”
Minutes crawled by, the transaction completed with tense nods. Both men turned away, disappearing into the curtain of rain. Inside, the front door remained mercifully closed. Whoever had been on the porch apparently decided against entering.
Only after complete silence returned did Wade signal it was time to move.
They moved quickly, Liam going first this time then Bayne. Alex followed, careful of the nail that had caught him before. The rain had picked up, fat drops pelting Alex’s face as he landed in mud that sucked at his shoes.
Wade came last, pulling the window mostly closed behind them.
Freedom lasted approximately eight seconds.
“Freeze! Hands where I can see them!”
