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Margo’s face puffed up and went bright red. If I looked at her just the right way, I could have sworn steam billowed out of her ears. She growled, “I don’t want to be safe, Birch. I want to be helpful.”
“The best way for you to be helpful would be to stop throwing a childish hissy fit in the middle of the fucking road at the ass-crack of dawn. All you’re doing is adding time to the clock. The time spent arguing with you could’ve been better used recovering them.” He pointed at her, cutting her off before she started to reply. “You’re doing more harm than good right now.”
Margo looked like he’d slapped her. Angry tears trailed down her cheeks. I wanted to go to her—I hated seeing my friend hurting—but Diana had been taken because of my actions, and that made it hard to look Margo in the eye. She would rightfully hate me if she knew the truth.
It took a bit more arguing at full volume before they exhausted themselves. The silence that followed allowed me to be heard.
“Margo,” I said, stepping forward. “We’ll do everything possible to get Diana home safely.” I needed to reassure her, or no way were we getting past her. “Ridge is with her—he’s with them all. And you know Ridge. He’ll be protecting her, Audrey—hell, he’ll even protect Zander—regardless of whether or not they want it. You know that.” Margo wasn’t a woman easily convinced.
“I have to go with you,” Margo said, shaking her head at me. “Don’t try to talk me out of it.”
“I know how this is for you, but Blackwood Creek is in more danger than anyone realizes. If the hunters discover they left shifters behind in their search, you can be sure as shit they’ll return to finish the job. The town needs to be protected, and having as many shifters here as possible is one way to keep it safe.”
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, but I could see I was winning the battle. “Margo, you’re one of only a handful of people who know the truth about what’s going on, besides the police, and they need someone to help them keep everyone level-headed. Especially if word gets out about the kidnappings.” I gripped her hands and gazed into her eyes, pleading with her to listen to me and do what was needed. “This is where you’ll be the most helpful. Clawson needs to know things are running smoothly here so we can concentrate on bringing everyone back.”
She huffed, obviously still unhappy about everything, but she finally backed down and nodded. Without another word, Margo shifted with speed and grace. I doubted I’d ever be accomplished enough to shift so seamlessly. Without so much as a backward glance at either of us, she took off into the woods surrounding Blackwood Creek.
The longing in Clawson’s eyes was plain to see as he watched her graceful form until she disappeared from view.
Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Clawson stooped and picked up the jacket Margo had discarded.
Chapter33
Tori
We got back in the car, with Clawson even more miserable than when he’d lectured me on the dangers of being a lone wolf. His eyes never left the road, and he punched the accelerator so hard that the velocity threw me back against the seat.
He gripped the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles were white, and I feared the circle of metal and leather would bend under his hands. The tension in the truck was palpable, the silence uncomfortable, but as I opened my mouth to talk about Margo, the sheriff interrupted me.
“Don’t even think about it. Don’t say a word. None of this is your business.” He never turned to look at me, glaring at the road instead. But the glare was meant for me, and I didn’t pretend it wasn’t.
I leaned back in the seat, huffing and crossing my arms. “To be clear, I’m not trying to be chummy with you or become best buds. I’d much rather mind my own business one hundred percent of the time. But I care about Margo. I consider her one of my closest friends.” And I didn’t have a lot of those. “Since Ridge cares about you and you two are the best of friends, it’ll probably become my business whether either of us likes it or not.”
I glanced over at him. His lips were pressed into a strained line, and he clearly had nothing further to say. I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t like I was rushing to tell him that my engagement to Ridge was fake, or that the hunter we were tracking was my older brother.
I could accept his silence on the matter for now because there was so much at stake, but I wouldn’t tolerate my friend being hurt. Margo had confessed some of her history with Birch Clawson to me, and she’d made it clear that she was confused about her feelings for him.
She’d been through so much, not least the hunters capturing her mother. Her sleazeball ex, Deputy Phil Hill, had cheated on her and broken her heart. Of course, the same librarian who’d stabbed me had murdered the deputy.
Ironically, it was being a suspect in Hill’s murder that’d forced my stay in Blackwood Creek and my fake engagement to Ridge. Having friends was fairly new to me since I’d attended a hunter-run high school and never quite felt like I fit in. I’d had a boyfriend, though. One night, after one of his football games, we snuck into the gym. That was where I planned to break up with him in private. It was also where I’d shifted for the first time.
Any friends I’d had back then were within the hunter faction, and living on the run was not conducive to establishing or keeping any relationship. That was why I planned on caring for the ones I had now, no matter how messy it’d get with those who orbited them.
Clawson pulled me out of my thoughts. “How are we tracking down these hunters? You said you knew where they were, so where are we going?” His voice was still quiet and gravelly, with an emotional undercurrent, but he’d shift gears once we got to the compound. He would be Birch Clawson, Badass. With or without a gun.
“Go to the nearest private airport. When the hunters were in my room before the drug took effect, I overheard them talking about getting the shifters packed up and off to the airport. A plane was ready for take-off when they got there.” The fib flowed easily from my mouth. Kyle was the only hunter I’d seen, but I didn’t need to tell the sheriff how I knew exactly where we needed to be. All he needed was directions to get us there.
As I squirmed in my seat, I played it off as needing to get more comfortable because of my wound, when in reality, it was knowing we were that much closer to getting Ridge and the others. My stomach was tied up in knots as I mentally prepared for the potential complications and who we might encounter when we entered their compound.
With all their fortune, hunters traveled in style and were outfitted as if an actual government agency employed them. Once they subdued and extracted the monsters—their words—the team had to swiftly transport the prisoners to one of their three hidden facilities across the country to prevent any disturbance from the waking beasts.
My father had once told me about a shifter who’d woken mid-flight. It hadn’t been a happy ending for anyone involved.
And what better way than to travel than by private jet? When I’d been in training, I’d been transferred to each of the three depots here in the U.S.; there were many more worldwide. Each compound had its own plane and set of pilots, so the organization was always ready to transport a new capture.
I crossed my fingers. “If I can get a look at the flight plans and fuel records, I’ll be able to determine where they were taken.”
The drive to the private airport only took twenty minutes, which surprised me. I’d figured it would be a ways out from the small town of Blackwood Creek. Or maybe Clawson had just driven fast all the way here.
