Page 66

Is Jess okay?he typed out. He hesitated, his finger hovering over the send button. Screw it. What did he have to lose? Send.

Kade waited for a full minute to no answer and then squeezed his phone until the thing threatened to crumble. He needed to walk.

Kade jogged down the stairs and headed for the tree line. Maybe a Change would steady him out. Or perhaps a Change would destroy every tree that stood in Wreck’s Mountains, he didn’t know. He’d never felt like this.

His phone rang, and he frowned at the screen. Oh shit, it was Seth’s number.

“Hello?” he answered in a rush.

“Hey. I got your text.”

Okay. What now?

“Um, Jess isn’t okay,” Seth said somberly.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asked, jogging for his truck.

“I messed up.”

“What did you do?” Kade demanded. “What’s wrong with Jess?”

Seth was quiet.

“Seth, you dumb motherfucker, tell me what’s happening!” Kade’s voice echoed through the clearing.

“Samuel killed Tanner.”

“No shit.”

“If you didn’t do it, why the fuck did you let us do you like that!” Seth yelled through the phone.

“I don’t have time for this, Seth. Water under the bridge. I’ve moved on—”

“We were friends. You let me believe you killed him!”

“And now you’re what? Mad that I didn’t? Go take that up with Samuel. I got burned, man! The whole Crew burned me. Including you. What’s wrong with Jess? You fucking owe me!”

“She’s stuck.”

“Stuck how?”

“Stuck as the animal.”

Whatever he’d been expecting Seth to say, it hadn’t been that. “What happened to her?”

“Derek called a crew meeting and Connor slapped her for talking back. I was rushing Samuel, because she’d just told us all that you hadn’t killed Tanner, so I didn’t see the slap. I heard her face hit the table though. I did look over just in time to see him cut her hand, and he crushed her hand around the hilt of the knife and made her cut him too. Broke her fingers.”

“No,” he choked out, sagging to his knees in the grass.

“She made the room heavy, like the roof was coming down on us, and the way she looked at him…and then he went flying. She didn’t even lay a hand on him, and he went flying through the wall, and Tawk was trying to stop her, but she went tiger and followed Connor right through the hole he’d made.”

“Did she kill him?”

“No. Kade…she ripped his hand off.”

Kade froze. He just sat on his shins there in the grass, staring at the back of his cabin, with no words.

“Did you hear me?” Seth asked.