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“You and Felicity? Back to Evergreen with your son.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’ve got a pack to manage and some missing time to catch up on. I’ll take care of the rest. You hired me to find your kids, Miller. Both of ’em. I won’t stop until that job’s done.”
* * *
We booked our return tickets from the hotel room, donned our disguises, and made it down to the lobby just in time for a late check-out. Denny planned to rent a room at a motel in Sharpe City for himself and his team to use as a headquarters while they waited to see if Melony would turn up.
As for Felicity and me, we’d finally be taking Rylan home.
“Hope you folks have a good time on your vacation.” Renee from the front desk waved goodbye to us, saving a special flirtatious grin for Denny. She leaned over the front desk to smile down at Rylan in his carrier as well. “You are so cute, little man! If there were only two of you, I’d snatch one right up.”
Through our sunglasses, Felicity and I shared a look. Her fingers sought out mine as we turned to follow Denny toward the doors.
“Wait, ma’am!” Renee called out to Felicity. “You left your purse!”
Before I could stop her, Felicity lowered her sunglasses and whipped around. The action shook her scarf loose from her hair, sending it fluttering to the floor.
Renee stared at her like a deer caught in Jesus’s own headlights.
“Oh my God,” she breathed. “You… You’re that shifter couple from the news, aren’t you? The ones with the missing…” I could see her playing back the words she’d just spoken to us. Horror and embarrassment quickly bled into her face. “Oh, no. And I told you—Oh, honey, I am so sorry. I never meant—”
“It’s fine. You didn’t know.” Felicity went to grab her purse. She moved to push her glasses back up but paused as Renee continued to stare. “Maybe you could keep quiet about us being here, though? We’re trying to keep a low profile.”
“Of course,” Renee said eagerly. Her eyes wandered to the carrier again. “That baby you’ve got there—that’s one of the missing ones?”
“He is.” I bent and picked up Felicity’s hair scarf. “We’re hoping to find the other one soon, but there are some bad shifters at work here. We’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone. If word got back to them…”
“I won’t say a word,” Renee breathed, shaking her head quickly. She mimed zipping her lips, locking them shut, and throwing away the key. “I wish you folks the best of luck. Your secret is safe with me.”
* * *
We saw no news vans following us as we burned down the interstate toward the airport. It was a good sign. So far, Renee had been true to her word.
“It’ll be good to introduce him to the pack, won’t it? To be home for a little while. To show them that all of this has been worth it.” Felicity and I sat in the backseat, Rylan between us, gurgling softly as Felicity bounced his fist in time to the song on the radio. Denny liked his classic country. The station on the radio he’d chosen was playing “Folsom Prison Blues”.
“Yeah,” I agreed, wondering if such an early introduction to Johnny Cash was good or bad for a baby’s development. On one hand, good taste. On the other, shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die was hardly the stuff of nursery rhymes. “’Course it will.”
The unspoken thing still lingered between us, a black cloud that marred every conversation, every moment, every joy.
Ryder was still out there somewhere. If we were lucky, he was being cared for as well as Rylan had been. If not…
I turned toward the window, staring out across the endless stretch of land between us and the horizon. We passed a cop car pulled over near an underpass. A speed trap, it looked like.
I frowned and turned in my seat to watch the car through the back window as we left it behind.
“Hey, Denny?” I asked.
“Yeah?”
“You speeding?”
He glanced down at his speedometer. “Not more than anyone else in Texas. I’m staying with the flow of traffic. Why?”
“I think that cop car we just passed is turning around.”
Denny’s eyes darted up the rear-view mirror just as the cherries and berries lit up behind us.
“Shit,” Denny swore. He clicked his turn signal on, then his hazard lights.
As the cop car’s siren blipped, he pulled over to the side of the road.
