I go sit on the wet ground beside him, putting my shoulder against his shoulder so he can feel that somebody’s there.
And I’m not the only one. Bram lowers himself down on Ash’s other side, slow, that big steady hand spreading flat between his shoulder blades. Luna folds down into the wet ash in front of him without a word, both her small hands coming up to take his face and tip it until he looks at her.
His voice comes out wrecked. “Our great-grandparents built this barn.”
And then I feel it start. Low, from Luna. A purr, soft at first and then steadier, the sound climbing up out of her chest and into the quiet. It isn’t a thing she’s deciding to do. I can feel that much through the bond, the same way I feel her grief laid right down next to ours. She isn’t telling us it’s okay. It isn’t okay, and she knows it. She’s just down here in it with us, feeling exactly what we feel and letting us feel that she feels it.
And it works. Some knot under my sternum eases off a degree. Bram’s breathing slows. Ash turns his face into her palm. The four of us sit in the wet and the ruin with the bond runningwarm and raw between us, and for a minute none of us has to be anything for anybody. We just hold on.
Then eventually Bram stands up.
“I’ve got accelerant, forced entry, a propped door,” he says, low. “And a camera near a side fence caught him walking in. He’s more finished than he already was.” He drags a hand down his face. “I’ve spent two weeks waiting on a warrant to do this the clean way. We don’t have two weeks anymore. We find him now, before he vanishes again.”
Ash looks up. “The clean way literally burned us.”
I stand up. “Let’s stop waiting.”
He nods, slow. “He’s slippery, but he can’t have gone far.”
And that’s when Bram’s phone goes off.
He frowns at the screen. “Dispatch,” he says, and answers it. “Miller.”
My alpha hearing picks up the voice a woman on the other end.
“... came in just now, off the tip line. Ray Potts. Yeah, him. Says he’s looking dead at the man off the flyer you’ve been distributing. Out at the Gas-N-Go, gassing up a silver car, out-of-county plates. Right now.”
48
Ash
Bram lowers the phone from his ear. “You got this?”
I got it. Luna can’t, not without alpha ears, so Bram gives her the gist.
Reed’s already three steps toward the truck. “That’s eight minutes away.” There’s something in his voice I haven’t heard since the doughnuts this morning, back when this was still a good day. “We can have him.”
“Keys.” Bram tosses them. Reed catches them without looking.
God, my body wants to go. The part of me that spent the last two hours watching a big chunk of a hundred years of my family go up is already in the passenger seat, both hands around Derek’s throat.
But something nags at me.
Ray Potts.
I close my eyes a second and let the name sit there.
Ray Potts, who crosses the street when he sees Bram coming, because Bram has hauled him into the back of a cruiser more times than either of them could count sober. Is that really the kind of man who picks up a phone and calls the law? I think not.
And tonight, of all nights. Two hours after Derek walks onto our land and puts a match to it, Ray Potts decides to do his civic duty.
It’s too clean. It doesn’t add up.
Reed already running toward his truck. “Clock’s ticking, guys,” he says, looking back.
“Ray Potts.” Luna’s voice, quiet. She’s got her arms wrapped around herself at the edge of the light. “Isn’t that the town drunk you told me about one night, Bram? The one who sleeps behind the gas station?”
Bram looks at her. “That’s him.”
