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“This isn’t a bad TV cop drama, Princess. He’s not going to tell you about his nefarious scheme while you broadcast it to the world.”
“He was already dumb enough to send his video to Callum.” If this plan of mine failed, I’d get Callum to release that video once Deerling was in Cain’s hands. But I wanted Tim to confess to trying to kill me. I wanted him to admit he was responsible for the woman’s death. The more I could get him to cop to, the worse it would look for the church.
“This might be the worst idea you’ve had yet. The church will have a security system in place.”
“Good. I want him to come.”
“You know it likely won’t be him that comes, right? It’ll probably be the cops. And then we’re back to square one. Which is sharing a shitty jail cell with my brother.”
“It will be him.” I felt certain of this. I couldn’t imagine, given how much Deerling had to hide, that he’d let just any cop show up at his doorstep where they might trip over his dirty little secrets.
Who had been there when we were arrested? Anderson, the sheriff and another handfu
l of men, some of whom I’d seen during my time at the station. Josie, the female deputy, hadn’t been among them. I had a good feeling about her, especially after our chat in the diner. There had to be other cops around like her who weren’t corrupt.
Deerling couldn’t take the chance one of those good cops might stumble onto what he was most likely hiding in the church.
“How can you be sure? You exist in this insane little bubble of absolute certainty. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you.”
“You would think that was a compliment, wouldn’t you?”
We parked in the lot of the closed drive-thru. The street was as abandoned as it had been the first night we drove into town, but still we cut the lights and sat quietly for a moment.
Wilder turned in his seat, his arm slipping behind my headrest. I was suddenly all too aware of how close he was and how little space there was between us. My breath came out in a stuttering exhalation. This sort of feeling should be illegal. People wrote poems about the quiver in my belly right now. Wars were started because of the way I felt sitting next to him in a car, his thumb pressing against the back of my neck.
I wanted to devour him.
I wanted to run away from him and never look back.
This man was so, so dangerous for me.
Instead I avoided his penetrating stare, knowing the combination of his eyes and lips and smell might be the last nudge I needed to do something I hadn’t thought myself capable of doing.
The air all around us felt hot and damp.
He’d been gearing up to speak, I could tell by the way he positioned himself, but he was hesitating for some reason. Heat rose, flushing my cheeks. If he didn’t say anything soon, I was going to get out and walk to the damned church.
“Why risk it?” His voice came out hoarse, hushed. He cleared his throat.
Why? Because it would be so deliciously bad for me. Like eating a whole cheesecake in one sitting.
Right, yeah, he wasn’t talking about what I thought he was talking about. Apparently not everyone’s mind went straight to the gutter at the drop of a hat.
“All we have is the video he sent us,” I began. “It’s proof of assault. It strongly suggests an intent to kill, but it’s not enough. Conspiracy of a plan, but nothing concrete. I need to hear him admit it. If we give him to Cain and he vanishes, he’ll be a martyr. People will assume it was us—”
“It will be us.”
“You know what I mean. Us with a capital U. Werewolves en masse are going to be held accountable for him disappearing. They’ll assume Hank killed that woman and that the pack held Deerling responsible for threatening us. Instead of seeing him as a monster, it will prove his point in the public’s eyes. It will erase any progress we’ve made, all the goodwill.”
“Why should we care what the normies think, huh? We did fine without their stamp of approval for decades. They can’t dictate what we do.” He shifted back in his seat and stared out the window. I could tell he didn’t believe his own words. It did matter.
“If they think we’re senseless killers, they’ll kill us. Not the way Deerling has been. Mass exterminations. I’m not just talking about us being downgraded as citizens, losing the right to vote, to own homes, all that. I’m talking about a world where people can hunt us without retribution. You want to be part of a society where people can buy licenses to go werewolf shooting on a full moon? I don’t.”
“This guy doesn’t have that kind of power.” The ideas were starting to sink in, though. I saw how people were reacting to vampires, and how the debate raged about whether or not they deserved human rights since they were dead. It was a big, messy situation. And no one was arguing that vamps had once been human. What about shifters? Our DNA was fundamentally different. We carried a specific gene that allowed us to shift if we were bitten by another werewolf. Only those who carried the gene could become wolves.
It should have made us less scary, but I saw things going the other way.
