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I pulled away from Wilder and placed both hands on the steering wheel, clutching it fiercely while I decided what to do next.
“Hey.” He nudged me with his elbow. “If we’re following, we should go now.”
I watched the front of the house. The woman rubbed her belly and smiled broadly, chatting to her unborn child. She smiled up at the beautiful day, shielding her eyes from the bright gleam of sunshine, then appearing satisfied everything in her life was perfect, she went back inside.
Dammit.
“Dammit.”
Wilder started the car before I could stay his hand. “This doesn’t change anything. It can’t change anything. He’s got a wife, so what?”
“And a baby on the way.”
“Yeah?”
“Wilder…”
“We’re not going to kill him, that’s not what we’re here for.”
“But Cain—”
“What happens between Cain and Deerling isn’t our problem. You saw what he did to my brother. You saw what he allowed to happen to that woman. Just because he has a pregnant wife doesn’t make him any less of a monster. All it means is that he has a functional dick and is appealing to women. You can’t afford to be romantic about this. We can’t afford to forget what he is.”
“What if that makes us the same as him?” I stared at him, pleading without words for him to give me the push I needed. I hated Deerling, but Wilder had to hate him more. I needed to feed off his loathing, no matter how unhealthy it was for me, because Wilder was right. Deerling was out to wipe every supernatural creature off the face of the earth, and I couldn’t hesitate because he had a pretty wife and a bun in the oven.
“He tried to kill you.” He placed a hand on my cheek, and I let myself lean into it, reveling in the rough warmth of his skin against mine. This was the comfort I’d needed last night, and no one had been there to give it to me. “He will kill you if we give him half a chance.”
I smiled, liking the way it felt with his hand on my face. “You said you thought I wasn’t easy to kill.”
Wilder’s hand dropped. “Let’s try to keep it that way, okay?”
He was right.
It was painful to realize these were the kinds of decisions I’d be faced with on a regular basis if I followed in Callum’s footsteps. These were the things Secret had been faced with all the time. The seemingly impossible choice between one evil and another.
Nothing was going to come easily for me again after this.
I shifted the car into drive and followed Deerling, making sure the length of road between us was enough he wouldn’t suspect we were on his tail. We needed to know what he was doing and what his plan was now that Hank was in jail. And there was no way for us to do that if I was afraid of what it might do to his family.
He’d forfeited his right to a happy ending the moment he had someone try to drive me off the road.
If he wanted a war, he had it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I was not a born private detective.
Several times while we were tailing Deerling, Wilder had to remind me not to get too close, and whenever we got too far back, I started to worry we would lose him. Lose him where I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t a big town, and now that we knew what car he was driving, we should be able to spot him easily.
“If he goes to the church, we’re not going to be able to follow him,” I said. There was nowhere near the big building we could park inconspicuously, and considering what had happened the last time we walked on Tim’s lawn, I wasn’t too keen to repeat the performance. One arrest in a week was enough for me. If I had to tell Callum I was back in jail, he’d never trust me again.
As it was I was walking a fine line with him allowing me to spend the extra two days in Franklinton on my own. I wasn’t about to squander that opportunity by being an idiot.
We drove past the turnoff into Franklinton, bypassing the road that would have taken us directly to the church.
“Where’s he going?” Wilder asked.
Like I’d know.
