Page 45

CHAPTER 45

WOLF

“How the hell did she get into the house?” my father seethes as the night passes us by. Spit literally flies from his mouth as he breathes, and I stare out the window for signs of her as he drives.

She clipped him with buckshot, so he’s hurting, but sadly for her, not dead. His lip shakes, and he bares his teeth, doing his best to pretend this isn’t agonizing. Real men handle their pain, and men who kill for fun certainly can’t expect sympathy for theirs.

“I don’t know,” I lie for the hundredth time tonight, and I imagine I’ll have to do it a million more times before he starts to believe me. I can still smell Red on me, and I can only hope he’s beyond noticing.

His trust in me is clearly strained, and his paranoia is on overdrive. A lot of people who have been perfectly loyal to us are going to wind up dead over this stunt tonight if he doesn’t get himself under control. He’s already run through ten people he’ll kill just for this happening, and I can confirm that not one of them is guilty. I still can’t believe she robbed the electrical company. A smile very nearly breaks free, but I stuff it down before he seriously loses his mind.

“How the hell did she find us?”

“I don’t know,” I lie again.

“Do you know anything, Wolf?” He slaps the steering wheel. “Are you good for anything but disappointing me and fucking hillbilly whores?”

His words are enough that I want to wring his neck myself, but at the same time, I am so angry with her. She tried to kill him, in the house, after I warned her to stay away from him. I didn’t want to see her hurt, but I can’t let her kill my father either. I may have this strange obsession with her that feels like it’s growing, but what would that say about my family loyalty? Am I really a traitor after a lifetime of kept secrets and killing?

All my training says that’s an unforgivable betrayal, and she’s the enemy now. My father expects nothing less of me. His anger and our racing to find her are proof of that as well, but I don’t know if that’s how I feel. In fact, I don’t think I do at all. Am I a traitor? An odd sensation sits in my chest, and I’m too unfamiliar with it to give it a name.

One thing I can say is that I’m afraid, and I don’t know that I’ve ever felt an emotion so acutely. I wasn’t afraid when she took that shot at my father. I was just angry, feeling that she had no right, but as we race toward her cabin, the idea of her being there terrifies me.

“This is her last fucking night on earth. I’m killing her,” he says.

I don’t argue. I just pray to a god I don’t believe in that she isn’t stupid enough to go home. I don’t think I can turn on my own father. Of all the people I’ve killed and all the disgusting things I’ve done, I never intended to harm my own blood. Even monsters have a line. But would she go home and just wait to face him?

No, fuck that. She’s not stupid. Red knows that she and I have been playing a flirtatious game since that night in her cabin and that I never wanted to hurt her back. It’s one thing to play chase in the woods when the Wolf refuses to bite you. She knows she doesn’t have the same liberty with my father. She won’t be there. I’m worried about nothing.

But fuck, I am worried.

When I don’t answer him, he only grows angrier.

“I’m not just going to choke her to death while you watch, Wolf. I’m going to break her neck with my bare hands.”

That’s simply not true. Don’t react.

“We’re finding those deeds tonight. We’re killing that bitch. They have to be in that damn cabin. I’ll rip up the floorboards. I’m going to find them. I’m going to end this.”

I’ve worried about his sanity for a long time, but as he continues ranting and raving, it grows to a certainty that he is no longer all there. He grits his teeth but seems to take my silence as acceptance of his plans. Blood pools slowly through the fabric of his shirt. He won’t wrap it. Wrapping it would be admitting weakness, and I can practically see the vision in his head where he shows her that even her best efforts aren’t enough against him. It’s so much scarier to die when the monster killing you is already soaked in blood from your failed attempt to end them.

He drives a hell of a lot faster than he should in the dark with the many cliffs and possible pitfalls, but that’s my father in a nutshell. He’s willing to take unnecessary risks. The normal drive up the mountain is about forty-five minutes. It takes Red forever because she drives that old beat-up junker that wheezes as it struggles to carry its ass down the road, let alone hers.

We make it in thirty.

The house and yard are dark as he slams the brakes and rough-cut gravel dings up his car. He’ll be angry about that too when this is over. Chickens scurry out of the way, and I hope they’re all smart enough to stay far back. The brown one looks at the truck for a moment before waddling off.

Thankfully, her truck isn’t here, and I can’t find any sign she made it back before us, but with how he was driving, that doesn’t mean she’s not coming. He seems to have the same idea and pulls around to the back of her cabin, where she won’t see the car if she does pull up, and he turns it off.

“Let’s go,” he whisper-shouts for me to get out of the car.

My eyes slide over to the cop car. That will have to go. We reach the back door, and my father doesn’t even check if it’s locked; he just kicks it off the hinges. We step inside, and my guilt chokes me as we invade what’s hers again.

“Fucking disgusting,” he comments as he looks at everything she owns in the world. Big talk, considering everything he owns is stolen from her and this family. My chest clenches in the strangest way as he pushes over her things and intentionally disrespects everything she cares about.

“She might still be coming back. We got here quick. Start looking for the deeds, but do it in the dark,” he says.

The stars are bright tonight up here in Red’s cabin, and while I can’t see great, I can see well enough. The problem is I searched her entire cabin just a week ago, and there are no deeds here. However, the ring I gave her is still sitting on her granny’s desk, and I worry she’ll never accept my proposal now that I’ve made my allegiance to my father clear.

Worry, what a stupid term. I know she’ll never choose me now.

I’m more or less pretending to look for the deeds. I know every damn inch of this cabin just for the sake of wanting to know how Red ticks. Long ago, I got over the idea that they were hidden here, but I never got over the idea of being close to her. My father, however, searches in a frantic frenzy, ripping everything apart and tossing it. We’ll have a lot of advanced warning if Red pulls in, but he’s worked himself into such a state. I wouldn’t be surprised if she got the jump on him.

“GODDAMMIT, WHERE IS SHE!?” he screams, and I can only be glad that the answer isn’t here.

* * *

Close to two hours pass with him destroying and breaking, and Red never arrives. That’s when the gloves truly come off. He turns on the one light reminding me of the accusation that led her to my house to begin with. Does he know something about the electricity up here?

“Dad, do you know which electric company supplies the lines?” I ask, speaking to him for the first time in a long while.

“No, and why the fuck would I care?”

Huh , and now we’ve got a mystery that has me just as curious as Red because who the hell else would have run power to the mountain? And why would they send the bill to our address? Better yet, if our address is on the bill, why have we never gotten it in the mail? I don’t ask him any more questions, but I ask myself a lot of them as he tears apart the rooms. When he’s done, there is no interior finishing left to the cabin, and he’s even pried up what he can of the floorboards like he promised.

“There’s nothing, goddamn nothing!” he shouts, and while I know that’s true, it’s still relatively dark in here, and he’s made far too much of a mess to be sure of anything himself.

While he was tearing everything apart, he uncovered the jugs of moonshine Red’s uncle distilled before we killed him. It takes me a second to realize what he’s doing when he picks up a wrench and starts smashing them open. Glass flies, liquor pours. He grabs a box of matches and strikes off four of them, letting them fall to the ground one after another.

The first and second go out, and the third and fourth catch on the fumes starting to billow off the surface of the liquor. The flame makes a hungry noise as it floats across the floor, then picks up its consumption in the nearest pile of her belongings.

“What the fuck are you doing, Dad?”

He turns to me as the flames grow higher and hungrier. His gold eyes shine, and I see a strange future where I’m alone and as angry as him.

“Burning this place to the ground, obviously. Maybe they’re buried in the foundation. Either way, she’ll pay for coming into my house and making a move against me.”

“What if the deeds are in here, and you burn them too?” I shout, wondering why he isn’t leaving and standing among the flames and wreckage like the fire is feeding him.

“So you fucking lied, then?” he shouts. “I thought you searched this place a thousand times. You couldn’t have missed it!”

“This is stupid,” I shout, trying to get his attention over his own fixation, but it’s not worth getting burned to stand beside him. I rush over to the desk and grab the ring box off it before it can go up too.

“No, Son, stupid is the series of mistakes and poor choices you’ve made. You led me here, so don’t blame me for what happens now.”

There’s nothing left for me to say, and I leave the cabin through the front door. The path to the back is already too choked with flames. The top of the mountain has a small plateau that drops off with a steep, sharp cliff. I stand at the edge and stare down at the dark expanse as the flames and smoke pile out behind me. It feels incredibly wrong that I don’t know where Red is right now, and that I’m not keeping her safe.

I walk over to the cop car and find that Red left the keys inside.

“We’ll need to get rid of this, just in case,” I tell him as he walks out behind me.

He looks at me like the world's greatest disappointment for a long moment before he finally nods. “But you better be back at the house soon, or I’ll find you.”

As he drives away, he tears through the fence that keeps the chickens loosely surrounding her cabin. I don’t bother to hope they stay put because they’re already marching down the hill within seconds.

Muffin is actually going to kill me this time.