Page 57 of Dark

I looked up. Dallas was chewing up the ground at the tailgate of his SUV, steam practically coming out of his ears. A pair of police officers was clustered a few yards off, giving Lacey the second degree. I flipped my brother off.

Me: Can you kill Ellie’s phone remotely and still track her?

River: I’m fine, fuck you very much.

Me: right. because this is all about you

Me: so can you do it or not?

River: it’s done

Hayden coughed again, doubling over.

“I’m gonna find you more water,” I murmured, smoothing her ponytail behind her shoulder.

One of the EMTs retrieved two bottles from a cooler, then forced me to stand there while he took my blood pressure and checked my pupils. I was about to ask if he wanted me to strip down so he could check me for track marks when I caught the look on Brody’s face, and decided against it.

Halfway back to the cruiser my phone buzzed.

Cal: We got company. Checking it out.

Briefly, I dropped my shields and reached out for him and West, trying to get some sense of how far away they were. West was running, the smell of strange wolf twisted up on the wind with all the smoke from the fire.

I pocketed my phone, nearly back to the cruiser by the time I noticed Hayden wasn’t sitting on the hood where I left her.

“Hays?” I called, breaking into a jog.

Red and blue strobes from the engines bounced eerily off every reflective surface, casting abandoned trailers, overturned lawn chairs and a rusted Ford truck in shadow. I reached for the door handle, instincts screaming.

“Hayden!” I shouted.

Heads turned. Brody started towards me. Biting down on the scar linking me to Hayden, I broke into a run. Instantly, my wolf roared to the surface.

Ethan.

Ignoring my brother’s shout through the pack bond, I kept running, reaching the back fence separating the trailer park from miles of scrub land and the local state park. Heart pounding, I squeezed through a gap in the chain link.

I was just to the far side when his scent hit me. Hayden’s stalker had been here minutes before. If that.

And he’d taken her.

West, I snarled, surging forward—

—only to nearly trip over something tangled up in the underbrush. Using my phone as a flashlight, I scanned the tall grass at my feet. My heart stopped.

There in the weeds, Hayden’s scent still clinging to it, was my leather jacket. Scattered a few yards away were her boots—

A roar ripped from my throat. The change tore me from my skin, rage and grief knifing through my skull. With a snarl, I bolted off into the trees.

Sharp cedar branches tore at my fur. I tumbled down an embankment, slicing a gash under one eye on the rough limestone basin at the bottom. Somewhere out in the night, I could feel Hayden’s heart beating, could smell her shock and terror. She was still alive.

And I was going to end the bastard who took her.

I ran for what felt like miles, the muggy night air rippling through my fur as I crossed low Texas scrubland and splashed through cold spring-fed creeks that briefly washed away Hayden’s scent. Shifting back to human, I pressed my lips to the scar at my wrist. North. Wolf again, I ran on. I was gaining on her every minute, so close that when I felt her yip of pain, I almost thought I heard its echo on the wind.

Rage blurred my vision. He’d hurt her. Hayden, who drove me insane abbreviating every order for mocha, macchiato and macchinetta when she knew she needed to take a freaking handwriting class, who stole my hoodies and made them smell like her shampoo, put her cold feet on me at night, swore with those innocent blue eyes that she wasn’t hungry when the server at Guillermo’s asked what she wanted, then proceeded to devour all my sweet potato fries, and for reasons I’d never understand, loved me. And I would maim, kill, and utterly destroy anything in my path if that was what it took to get her back.

Because I loved her, too.