I fired again, and this time I wasn’t aiming for the driver, in spite of the new open-air concept of their windshield. My target now was one of function over fatality. The Corolla’s front wheel popped with the gusto of a giant party balloon, and the car jerked wildly.
Instead of braking, though, the driver sped up. Brigit must have been watching the action because she had started to let up on the gas when I hit the black car’s tire. Between his increase in speed and our sudden drop, the physics of what happened next was inevitable.
Which didn’t stop me from being surprised when the Corolla smashed into our bumper for the second time that night.
My foot skidded, the wheel jerking to the right, sending our car into a spin. I sat upright, trying to get my beautiful purple shoes unstuck from the steering wheel, but I was caught, and getting out without looking was a hopeless puzzle. I kicked forward, and the car continued to spin in a full 360-degree turn.
With my elbows braced on the soft top of the BMW, I emptied the remainder of my clip into the open windshield of the black car. From inside my backseat there was a faint, continuous wail. At first I thought something had been hit and the sound was my engine failing. Then I realized it was Kellen.
We kept up our dizzying rotation, propelled on our circular course by my own stupid feet. The only way I was getting unstuck was to pull.
“Brigit,” I shouted into the wind. “I need you to grab the wheel.”
Cool hands brushed against my ankles, and I knew she had heard my request.
Okay, I thought, what’s the worst that could happen?
With the gun now empty and the driver of the other car no longer returning fire, the weapon was hampering me. I dropped it through the open car window and used my good arm to hold myself steady, then yanked my feet back, freeing them from the trap of the steering wheel.
Which was the precise moment the Corolla chose to strike again.
Brigit released the gas and hit the brake, stopping the car with a hard lurch, and I slid from the window, falling fast towards the pavement. First my knees caught the edge of the window, then Brigit wrapped her hand around my ankle, keeping me from falling farther. I took a short breath and felt the blacktop under the crown of my head, so close it was a hair shy from cracking my skull.
We had stopped, but the Corolla was still veering out of control, and when it hit the front end of the BMW, it sent off an explosion of sparks and kept moving ever closer to where I was dangling. I winced, turning my face away from the burning points of light. My own car lurched, wheels spinning, and we were reversing again.
The smooth, cold driver’s side door of the Corolla skimmed by me near enough I could have tasted the metal if I stuck my tongue out. In the next moment it tipped onto two wheels and flipped onto its side before tumbling into the ditch with a scream of metal against concrete.
Brigit stopped the car, and it rolled slightly as she shifted into park. When she released my ankle, I slipped and had the foresight to brace myself for impact before I could smack my head on the road. My knees went over my head, and I did a sloppy somersault before coming to a rest next to the car.
Brigit’s head appeared through the window, excitement replaced with terror in her wide eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Kellen’s white face wedged between the driver’s headrest and the window, staring down at me in wonder. “I was sure your head was going to be smushed.”
I ran a hand through my hair, the straight strands now a tangled mess with a new chunk missing where the bullet had grazed me. The severity of what had just happened began to sink in, and I plopped onto the ground, staring at the two girls as if I’d never seen them before.
“Can someone call Lucas?” I asked, an unfamiliar tremor in my words.
Kellen nodded with too much enthusiasm and whipped out her cell phone.
If someone wanted me dead, I might not be their only target.
Dominick Alvarez wasn’t a very imposing figure. He was slight of build and barely taller than me. With his mussed blond hair and twinkling blue eyes, he usually looked more like a rebel angel than a werewolf king’s bodyguard. But watching him now, as he prowled the area around the crash site with an almost scary focus, I saw a whole new side of him.
The predatory side.
He had gone up one side of the road and down the other, sniffing the air and periodically bounding into the ditch, only to return a moment later empty-handed. I think he wanted to be the hero, coming back with a bloodied villain to lay at the feet of Lucas and myself. He looked more and more disappointed every time he came back with nothing to show for his efforts.
Lucas sat next to me on the dented, battered hood of my BMW. The yellow paint had been scraped away, the front bumper hung loose, and the whole front end up to the driver’s door was scarred and almost shredded.
That should have been my face.
Although I wasn’t cold, Lucas had insisted on draping a blanket around me, along with one of his strong arms. I’d found a comfortable spot nestled into the crook of his shoulder, and I was calming myself by breathing in his familiar musky fragrance, a smell unique to him that made me feel safe.
“Did you notice them following you past the city limits, or did they pick up your trail outside New York?” he asked. There was a fine, simmering rage in his voice he was obviously trying to keep buried but couldn’t manage to hide from me.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t see them?”
“No, I wasn’t looking for a tail. We were having a nice drive until the guy rear-ended us. He didn’t even have his lights on until then.”
“Secret, you have to be more—”
“More what?” I sat upright and met his soft blue eyes. His expression was etched with anger and worry, and I knew he only wanted to keep me safe, but sometimes he treated me more like a possession than a partner. “There was no way for me to see this guy coming, and I can’t spend my whole life living like a paranoid recluse. I can’t. It’s bad enough the Tribunal won’t let me hunt anymore, but I can’t live in fear that every shadow is hiding a potential killer.”
“Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
He smiled weakly and brushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear, pushing the whole curtain of blonde over my wounded shoulder. I flinched.
“I need you to be more careful. Please.”
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself, wincing as the rough wool grazed the bullet hole.
“I will make a focused effort to be less of a moving target.”
He smiled openly, laughing for the first time since he’d arrived at the messy scene on the highway. “Try not to be a sitting target, either.”
Jackson—a young werewolf in Lucas’s pack—was pacing the width of the road with an arm around Kellen’s shoulders, whispering something to her I couldn’t quite make out. The newest member of the pack was nice enough, but he made me uneasy. I’d first met him when he was acting as a guard for one of Lucas’s enemies, and after that he’d switched teams, so to speak, and ended up being a welcome member of Lucas’s crew.
So welcome, Lucas had once sent him to kidnap me.
I’d broken Jackson’s nose with a tire iron, and ever since then things had been a little, shall we say, tense between us. But he seemed to be taking good care of Kellen, and Lucas trusted him, otherwise he wouldn’t be here with us right now.
Morgan Scott, the third highest-ranking wolf in Lucas’s pack and the highest-ranking bitch I’d ever met, was standing next to Brigit on the shoulder of the road. I gathered Morgan was supposed to be making sure Brigit was okay, but the two women were giving each other hard looks and keeping a good three-foot distance from each other. Just as well.
We’d moved the BMW onto the shoulder in case traffic needed to pass through, but it was twenty minutes after the accident before we saw our first car. The Tacoma pickup rounded the bend and threw on its flashing four-way lights as it rolled to a stop beside us.
The passenger-side window rolled down, and I was about to tell the good Samaritan we didn’t need any help, when the curly halo of Mercedes Castilla’s hair preceded her out the window. Her hair was unruly on a good day, but she seemed to have gone for broke with her curls today and let them fly free in a frizzy brown cloud.
“I should have known better than to let you drive,” she said after a pause and a once-over to see I was still in one piece. She leaned into the cab and said something to the driver. I craned forwards to see better, and saw Owen the Bartender, a cute brunet who worked at a bar near her apartment, staring back at me. He offered me a small wave.
“You doing okay?” he asked as Mercedes opened the passenger door and climbed out.
“Oh, you know, Owen. Never better.” I shrugged, but it hurt too much so I let my arms sag.
Owen pulled the truck over and put it into park in front of the BMW.
Mercedes came to stand in front of me, and Owen got out of the truck but stood next to the door, nervously shifting from foot to foot. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to get mixed up with a situation like this either, if I could help it.
“What happened?” Mercedes was a detective in the NYPD, so of course asking questions would be her first step.
I smiled, resting my head against Lucas’s shoulder. “Well, Cedes, this might come as a shock, but it looks like someone out there wants me dead.”
She crouched down on her low heels and shook her head, smiling gently back at me before pointing to her left temple. “Secret, this is my mind. It’s blown.”
Chapter Seven
Four days after my failed engagement party, I was nursing a slow-healing shoulder and a bad attitude. I was wearing my purple Louboutins for the second time in a week, only now I had paired them with something a little more conservative. I wore a sleek calf-length black dress with a low-cut back. My tiger’s iron pendant, a gift from my grandmere, rested between my breasts, the gold streak in the middle glowing in the dim underground light.
Grandmere had told me the necklace warded against evil. Frankly, I was willing to take protection wherever I could get it.