Hemlock (38 page)

I froze. Everything around me dimmed until al I could see was the barrel of the gun.

Jason must have made some movement, because Derby suddenly said, “Toss it away or I shoot her.”

I tore my gaze from the gun.

Kyle was crouched a few feet away, teeth puled back in a snarl. I had the horrible, lonely thought that if Derby did shoot me, I wouldn’t get a last chance to look into Kyle’s eyes—his beautiful human eyes.

Next to me, Jason cursed and tossed his gun a few feet to the left.

Derby had a strange expression on his face, almost like a grimace. “You ruined everything,” he said, voice hoarse and eyes glinting. “Years of planning.”

Before Jason realized his mistake, Derby squeezed the trigger.

I closed my eyes and held my breath. Instead of my life flashing behind my closed lids, I saw Amy.

And then something slammed into me. Something larger than a bulet. Something that sent me flying through the air.

The breath I’d been holding was forced from my lungs as I hit the ground and roled onto my back. A heavy shape landed across my chest and I cried out as the crushing weight caused pain to explode across my torso. Something soft brushed my face. I opened my eyes. Kyle, stil in his wolf form, was on top of me.

opened my eyes. Kyle, stil in his wolf form, was on top of me.

A second gunshot echoed through the trees, and a bulet lodged itself in the dirt just inches from my face, sending up a smal spray of black earth.

Kyle roled off me as Jason and Derby struggled over the gun.

Jason’s hands locked around Derby’s wrist, trying to make him drop it.

Kyle raced for them as I scrambled to my feet and dove toward the cluster of bushes where I thought Jason’s gun had landed.

I heard a low growl and another gunshot folowed by a high-pitched, animal whimper, but I didn’t turn to look. I pawed through the bushes, cursing under my breath and ignoring the pain in my body, until my fingers skimmed something cool and hard.

I whirled, gun in hand.

Derby was lying on his back, his throat a mess of torn tissue, his eyes staring sightlessly at the sky.

Jason pushed himself to his feet, swaying like he’d taken a blow to the head.

The white werewolf had reappeared and had Kyle pinned, its jaws buried in Kyle’s side.

I swalowed. I knew how to shoot—Jason’s father had taken Amy and me to the shooting range with them a few times—but there was a world of difference between shooting a paper target and shooting a living creature. Especialy one that was inches away from Kyle.

And it was Ben
.

I blew my breath out slowly and aimed for the white wolf’s hindquarters. It wouldn’t be a kiling wound, but maybe it would hindquarters. It wouldn’t be a kiling wound, but maybe it would make it back off long enough for Kyle to get away, long enough for me to work up the nerve to take a second shot.

I squeezed the trigger and the gun recoiled in my hand.

CRACK!

The wolf let out a howl of pain and fel away from Kyle.

A dark patch of blood spread along its white fur, but I was pretty sure I had just grazed it.

I wrapped my finger around the trigger, holding my breath as I tried to squeeze down a second time. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking. I remembered Ben—standing at the stove as he made pancakes, hugging Tess and kissing her forehead, trying to teach me a Johnny Cash song on his guitar after the three of us watched a biopic on TV. The wolf watched me, but al I could see were a year’s worth of moments with Ben.

Taking advantage of my hesitation, it tossed its head and spun. It raced through the trees, a streak of white splitting the shadows. I trailed its movement with the barrel of the gun, trying to work up the courage to shoot. Suddenly, a black shape bounded past me, almost knocking me over.

Trey. There was something off about his gait, like he had been hurt, but he stil went after the white wolf.

Wolf-Kyle let out a whimper of pain as he got to his feet.

Though obviously wounded, he tried to folow the path Ben and Trey had taken. He made it only a few steps before colapsing and shifting back.

Jason tore his eyes away from the spot where the two wolves had disappeared. Looking as though something inside of him was had disappeared. Looking as though something inside of him was breaking, as he slid a backpack off his shoulders, rummaged inside, and then tossed Kyle a pair of jeans and sneakers.

Looking for injuries, I scanned Kyle’s back and chest as he hauled on the clothes. The shift seemed to have healed al of his wounds. “Better?”

He let out a shaky breath. “Much.” He walked over to Derby and stared down at the lifeless body. After a moment, he glanced up and met my eyes, the expression on his face a mixture of horror and revulsion.

Before I could assure him that he hadn’t had a choice, he stumbled away, looking like he was on the verge of throwing up.

Trey, in human form, limped back through the trees, his dark skin covered in a sheen of sweat. He didn’t say anything; he just went for the bag of clothes and quickly got dressed.

I took a step toward him. “Trey . . . ?”

“He got away.” The three words were like a dam breaking.

Trey didn’t cry, but his whole frame silently shook as he sank to his knees and laced his fingers behind his neck.

Uncertainly, I walked over and crouched at his side. I gently put my hand on his shoulder, half expecting he would brush me off. He didn’t.

Jason was the first to speak. “What do we do now?”

I didn’t have a clue.

I’d wanted so badly to find out what had happened to Amy—to find her murderer—and he had just escaped.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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EARLY-MORNING HEMLOCK WAS A GHOST TOWN. THE sky was starting to lighten, but even the die-hard, predawn joggers weren’t out yet.

“Do you think Jason’s al right?” I asked. It was almost five thirty. Almost seven hours since we had left Jason in the woods.

Almost seven hours without word.

Trey parked Henry’s Jeep in front of my apartment building and turned off the engine. “He’s fine. He has that tattoo on his neck and he’s a Sheffield.”

In the end, it had been Jason’s idea to cal the police and tel them Derby had asked him to meet in the woods. He said he’d give us two hours to get back to Henry’s, and then he would cal 911 and report finding Derby’s body.

Derby had obviously been kiled by a werewolf and no one—no one besides us, anyway—knew Kyle was infected. Jason thought one besides us, anyway—knew Kyle was infected. Jason thought caling the police was the easiest, and safest, way out of the mess Derby’s death had created.

Trey hadn’t been convinced. He claimed there was nothing to keep Jason from turning around and pinning the murder on him or Kyle, but in the end, it was three against one.

Jason had even found a clump of Ben’s fur and slipped it into Derby’s hand.

Poetic justice, he’d said.

It may have been poetic, but it didn’t feel like justice. Not with Ben stil out there.

After Henry had patched up my arm and Serena loaned me another set of clothes, Trey and I had gone to the Stray Cat to keep an eye on Tess in case Ben showed up. Kyle had gone home to check on his parents and change into something that would properly fit his tal frame.

Luckily, Kyle’s mom and dad were the world’s heaviest sleepers; otherwise, he would have had to explain why he wasn’t camping with Jason like he had told them he would be.

After Kyle had met back up with us, Trey asked him to take over watching Tess so he could go check out Ben’s apartment.

He had insisted, actualy. And I had insisted on going with him.

Trey reached for the car door handle and then paused. “Maybe you should wait here while I see if it’s safe.”

“Oh, please.” After everything that had happened, did he realy think I wasn’t up to checking out a probably empty apartment?

I stepped out of the car and tried to hide the shiver that crept down my spine as I stared up at the apartment building. Tess and I down my spine as I stared up at the apartment building. Tess and I had lived here for two years. We had agreed on the place together.

We’d cleaned and decorated and lugged dozens of cardboard boxes up three flights of stairs. It was home. It should feel safe. But looking up at the painted wooden trim and dark windows, it didn’t feel safe at al.

I slid my hand under the cuff of my borrowed shirt and touched the new stitches on my arm—Henry’s handiwork—then trailed my fingers upward until I hit the smal, invisible spot where Ben’s needle had pierced my skin.

“Let’s get this over with,” I muttered. I wasn’t going to be scared of my home. I wasn’t going to let Ben take that from me when he had already taken so much.

Despite my determination, I had to keep fighting the urge to turn and bolt.

Inside the apartment, my bedroom window was stil open and the curtains fluttered in the breeze. A bead of sweat roled down the side of my face and a knot formed in my stomach as Trey started to climb out onto the fire escape.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Last chance to stay here,” he said, voice surprisingly kind.

It was so tempting to say I’d stay upstairs while Trey climbed down in search of the big, bad wolf. But if I did that, Ben and Derby won.

Heart beating triple time, I folowed Trey. Ben hadn’t bothered closing his window, and Trey ducked right inside.

I was about to climb in after him when my sneaker caught on something. Glancing down, I saw the crowbar—right where I had something. Glancing down, I saw the crowbar—right where I had left it. I wrapped my hand around the cold steel and, gripping it tightly, slipped into Ben’s bedroom.

Trey flipped on the overhead light and I blinked.

The furniture was gone.

He walked to the closet and tugged open the door. Empty.

We checked the other rooms. Everything was gone. Right down to Ben’s toothbrush and the food in the fridge.

Someone had even cleaned. The smel of bleach and Pine-Sol hung thick in the air and clung to the insides of my nostrils and the back of my throat.

Sometime during the past seven hours, every trace of Ben had been wiped away.

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep from shaking.

Amy’s kiler had disappeared.

Trey cursed and punched the wal, hitting it with such force that bits of plaster fel to the floor and revealed the brick underneath. If the building had been newer—if the wals had been drywal—his fist probably would have gone straight through.

“He’s gone,” Trey muttered, his voice empty. Dead. “I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have been so slow.”

Ben may have outrun Trey, but I’d been the one standing there with my finger wrapped around the trigger and unable to shoot.

It was my fault Ben had gotten away. At least as much as Trey’s. Probably more.

I opened my mouth to say so just as Trey suddenly spun and stared at the door. A second later, I heard footsteps.

stared at the door. A second later, I heard footsteps.

The doorknob turned as I gripped the crowbar, raising it slightly in front of me.

The door swung open.

Kyle. Jason.

“It wasn’t locked,” said Jason with a smal, weary shrug as they crossed threshold. “I ran into Kyle out front.”

I set the crowbar on the kitchen counter and walked over to Kyle. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my forehead to his chest. “Ben’s gone. The whole place is empty.”

My stomach lurched. “Where’s Tess?” I asked, puling away.

“She’s here,” said Kyle, giving my shoulder a smal squeeze.

“She just went upstairs. She left work and came straight home.”

Trey glanced at Jason. “How’d you make out in the woods?”

Jason shrugged. “Lots of questions about what I was doing out there in the middle of the night. I just kept saying Derby wouldn’t tel me over the phone. It helps that he has—had—a reputation for being paranoid.”

He leaned against the wal, right next to the dent Trey had made.

“Honestly, I think they were less concerned with the body and more upset that it’l be harder to pin the checkpoint mess on a dead guy.”

Trey and I stared.

I cleared my throat. “Checkpoint mess?”

“They’ve been running buletins on the radio every half hour.”

Jason shook his head. “Didn’t it occur to any of you to listen for news?”

Trey scowled and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.

Trey scowled and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the team that brought down Branson Derby’s cunning plan . . .”

“Oh, shut up,” I muttered.

“A group of Trackers got overzealous at one of the checkpoints and beat a couple of reg hikers,” said Kyle, shooting me a sympathetic glance. “Someone in the car behind them caught the whole thing on their cel and posted it to YouTube. Thirty minutes later, it hit CNN. The police department is claiming the checkpoints were set up ilegaly and that they didn’t know anything about them.”

I guess Kyle had actualy been checking for news.

“The radio’s been running buletins teling people not to stop their cars for anyone other than marked police cruisers and asking them to cal in any roadblocks they see,” added Jason. “I caled a couple of guys who joined when I did, and they said the Trackers are puling out of Hemlock. They’re in ful damage-control mode, which for them means get out and lay low.”

I reached for Kyle’s hand. “At least now you don’t have to leave.”

With the Trackers gone, it would be safe for Kyle to stay in Hemlock. Everything was stil completely messed up, but that one thought was like a light in the dark. I remembered what he said before—about how the Trackers weren’t the only reason to leave

—but surely he didn’t stil feel that way. Not after everything we had been through since then.

I glanced at Jason. He was staring at my hand as it held Kyle’s.

He looked tired and sad and oddly . . . resigned.

He looked tired and sad and oddly . . . resigned.