Chapter Nine
Krista
Mal, Dexter, and Stef sat on one side of the table in the cabin’s living room. Blake sat next to Krista on the other side, his chair scooched up close as if they were together for real. Part of Krista wanted to rip into him, tell him that he didn’t have to pretend, but she didn’t say it because she could feel her fox’s restlessness, and her fox craved Blake’s warmth and his calming presence.
“Krista!” Stef’s voice cracked like a whip, making Krista start. Blake reached out reassuringly and put his hand on her knee, and her anxiety started to fade just a little. “I saw your hesitation earlier. We need to know what you’re not telling us. What is Dawnie up to that she doesn’t want people to know about?”
All eyes turned to Krista, and she sucked in a breath, steeling herself. She’d been raised to believe that family business was sacred. Sure, gossip was currency in the holler, but scuttlebutt about who was diddling who and was so-and-so knocked up or just getting fat was one thing—this rumor was something much darker. If it wasn’t true—and it couldn’t be—she’d be doing something really wicked by sharing it with outsiders.
And worse, she might be steering them in the wrong direction.
“As you know, my mother kicked me out when I was fourteen.” She couldn’t keep a hint of bitterness out of her voice as she thought about how Blake and his friends had prowled around her life, sniffing and snooping. “I was taken in by Dawnie Reed and her clan. They’re the local ‘Powers That Be’, and they run a lot of the extracurricular activities in this holler. Or Dawnie and her daughter Eva-Jo do. Her boys are loyal, but they aren’t very bright. Let’s just say that somewhere back in their family tree, there are a few branches missing. But what you need to know is that nothing much happens in the holler without Dawnie knowing about it. And Dawnie’s a mama bear—she takes in waifs and strays, gives them a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, and all she asks for in return is their loyalty.”
“And her main business is running moonshine,” Stef put in.
“Right,” Krista agreed, “but if normal moonshine is regular gas, this stuff is rocket fuel. Over the years, the Reeds have developed half a dozen different herbal and mineral additives and refined their still processes to produce shifter drugs that make your run-of-the-mill meth lab look like a lollipop factory.”
That had Stef’s full attention. “What do you mean? None of this came up in my intel.”
“And it wouldn’t have,” Krista said. “Country shifters are very different from city shifters. We stay offline. We keep everything tight within our community. I mean, they do,” she corrected herself hastily. She wasn’t one of “them” anymore.
“That’s why we’ve got you here. You’re our offline expert. So, are you saying one of these drugs could have been what set the Brothers Dim off fighting instead of watching Ethan?” Stef said.
The old mistrust of outsiders reared up, but Krista nodded resignedly. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”
She trailed off and looked down at her hands where they rested on the tabletop. Had she started biting her nails again? Damn it, she had without even noticing it.
“But anyone could have been behind this,” she added. “Not necessarily Dawnie. And I’m not saying that to stick up for her, I’m saying it because I don’t want us to focus just on her when it really could be anyone. Rich kid? Opportunity for ransom? I know that nobody’s sent a ransom demand yet, but they could be just letting the dad sweat for a few days. Dawnie sometimes gets orders for specific recipes that have a particular effect on people—like, say, turning them into rage-monsters. So someone could have purchased the bad moonshine from her at any time.”
“We could get a list of those people…” Dexter suggested, but Krista cut him off with a quick shake of her head.
“She’d die before she gave up her customers. And she might not even know. That moonshine passes through a lot of hands.” She hugged herself, frustration welling in her throat. “Damn it. I feel totally useless here.”
She could feel Blake’s eyes on her, and she didn’t dare look up to meet them. What would she see there if she did? Judgment? Contempt? But when he spoke, his voice was soft and understanding.
“That’s not the big secret you’re keeping, Krista. Okay, Dawnie makes some kind of super moonshine and Dawnie knows everything that goes on in the holler. But there’s something else. You need to tell us… please.”
It was the “please” that did it. Even though she knew she had no choice, even though he’d blackmailed her into coming back here, the fact that he was asking her to tell them what she knew made all the difference.
She straightened up and looked at them. She hated giving up holler secrets, especially the kind that would make outsiders look down on the residents even more, but it had to be done. “I don’t necessarily think that this is relevant, but you want my insider knowledge, so here it is. The roots of the Reed family go back a long, long way in these parts. And they’ve always been outlaws. There are all sorts of strange fruit back on their family tree, and legend has it that they used to bring strangers into the valley so they could train their bears to hunt humans. And it was kind of whispered that if anyone who made an enemy of the Reeds—shifter or human—they’d set you running as prey for the Hunt.”
The looks of disgust and anger that flashed across the faces of the shifters looking at her were brief but impossible to miss. The only person who didn’t look at her that way was Blake. He looked at her with pity, which was almost worse.
She knew what people thought about deep-woods shifters like her and the folk she’d grown up with.Country shifters, one step up from animals…
But they were all staring at her expectantly. Waiting for answers—answers she didn’t have. “The hunt, if it had ever happened, was supposed to have ended with Dawnie’s grandparents. But I’ve been hearing… well… It’s hard to get a clear picture of what’s actually going on these days because Aunt Hattie sugar-coats things—to hear her talk, you’d think Flowering Dogwood was all Sadie Hawkins dances, home-made potato salad and neighborhood welcome wagons—but sometimes she lets things slip. There have been more disappearances over the last couple of years. A lot more. At least seven that I know of. One of them was a DEA agent, so maybe he just got too close for comfort to Dawnie’s business, but… that’s not what the grapevine says.”
She looked around the table, at the circle of blank faces, and a surge of defensiveness swept over her. “I know that’s going to make you think that Dawnie took Ethan. There have been some whisperings around Flowering Dogwood that the Reed Hunt has started up again, and that’s the reason for the recent disappearances.” She winced as their eyes widened. They glanced at each other with looks of dismay. “Listen. You guys dragged me out here because I know these people and their ways. I haven’t lived here in a long time, but some things don’t change. Dawnie would never hurt a cub, you guys. I would stake my life on that.”
