Promise the Moon (Lorimar Pack Book 1) Page 15

  “Moore?” I tested the mental bond in a different direction. “Have you seen Zed?”

  “Not since yesterday.” Moore came through loud and clear despite his being at the park. “He left early to meet a guy about buying a used tow truck.”

  Had he completed the purchase, he would have hauled me into the parking lot to show it off. “Did you hunt last night?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “Nathalie led the group.”

  “Think very hard,” I said slowly. “Was Zed there?”

  “I don’t remember seeing him.” A few seconds passed. “Why do you ask? Is everything okay?”

  “I was going to ask him for a favor, but he’s not responding.” Delegate, delegate, delegate, I reminded myself. I had to do this now. I didn’t know for certain that Zed was in any danger. He might have had to leave town to pick up parts for his new project. “Can you stop what you’re doing and do a quick search for him?”

  “Sure. I’m babysitting the Stoners. They can pitch in. It’s about time they earned their keep.”

  “That works.” Approaching footsteps brought me back to the task at hand. “I’ve got to run. I’m in town with Isaac, following up on a lead on the O’Malley disappearance. Let me know when you find him or if you don’t.”

  “All right.”

  “You haven’t started yet.” Isaac held a folded tarp under one arm, and long blue cords with black hooks on the end clacked when he walked. “Were you waiting for me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.” I snorted. “I was checking on Zed. He’s not answering me.” I raked a hand through my hair, wishing I had brought an elastic band. “He met a local guy about buying a tow truck yesterday. I was hoping we could ask him to haul the car to whatever shop the O’Malleys use for repair work.”

  He waited until I regained control of myself. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  “Moore is searching for him at the park.” I turned back to the car. “We might as well do this while we can. It will take time for him to organize the Stoners and for them to search the park.”

  “All right.” He held his ground and gave me room to work. “Do you smell anything?”

  “Other than Mr. O’Malley and traces of his family, no.” I stuck my head inside the car and filled my lungs with stale air. “Tobacco. Faint enough I doubt he smoked. Most likely his clothes picked it up from his patrons. The rest is spice from the restaurant and laundry detergent.”

  I checked under the seats, between the seats, the console and the dash, but the tidy vehicle provided me with no clues. We had broken a perfectly good window for nothing, endangered Enzo for nothing. I was ready to admit defeat when I stepped back and noticed a glint underneath the car. I knelt and reached behind the front wheel and pulled out a set of keys.

  “That makes no sense.” Isaac set his supplies aside and began a careful search of the surrounding area. “Why would he toss his keys under there?”

  “Maybe he didn’t.” I nudged loose rocks aside with my toe. “Maybe the blast from the spell discharging knocked them under there. Did you notice the keys before Enzo got to work?”

  “No.” His lips flattened. “I was focused on the car and not the ground. I like to think I would have seen them or stepped on them if Mr. O’Malley dropped them in plain sight.” He glanced aside. “The truth is I was…distracted. So it’s a stronger possibility than I want to admit.”

  The impulse to ask what had distracted him flickered through my mind, here and gone, banished by more pressing concerns. It was too much to ask that I had been the source of his preoccupation. God knows the shock of his sudden reappearance had left me unable to focus except on him.

  “Let’s assume the keys were dropped here.” I scuffed my foot about six inches away from the driver-side door. “That would mean that Mr. O’Malley ended his workday, headed out to his car, ready to go home and…what?” I leaned against the side of the vehicle. “Did someone call out? Distract him? He could have dropped the keys if he was startled to find himself sharing the parking lot with someone else so late at night.”

  “Or there could have been a struggle.” Isaac pointed to the spot where I stood. “That could explain how the keys ended up beneath the car. They might have been flung there during the fight.”

  “O’Malley being attacked outside would explain why the Cantina was pristine but not how the—” I grasped for the word.

  “Perpetrator? Perp for short?” Isaac suggested, smiling when I glanced his way. “I’ve lived with Cam for a long time. Cop lingo seeps into your brain when you’re not paying attention.”

  “How did the perp get back in the restaurant? Why did he go back at all? Why the note?” I angled myself to study the distance between the car and the door. “He could have used the keys, tossed them under the car and then slapped glamour over the top to mask his crime.”

  “This was a sloppy cover-up.” His gaze skated over the lot. “Either the person wasn’t concerned with being caught after the fact or they’re not very bright.”

  The feeling I was missing something niggled the back of my mind. “Or they’re not used to local customs.”

  The loose curve of his shoulders stiffened. “Are you thinking a deserter did this?”

  “Maybe. It’s a possibility.” I picked up a hunk of gravel and hurled it so hard it embedded into a nearby tree. “I don’t want to believe it’s happened, but we’re eight wolves against the first wave.”

  “You’re doing the best you can.” He crossed to his pile of supplies and removed a balled-up flannel shirt from within the tarp. Scooting me to the side, he started dusting all the glass off the driver seat. “You’re about to do even better.”

  “What are you doing?” I had a good idea, but Isaac and I so rarely seemed to be on the same page.

  “I’m going to drive this to Moore’s new shop, and he’s going to give you the security code so we can park the car in the garage. It’s about time you checked in with him anyway.” He slid behind the wheel and passed me a set of keys. “You’re going to follow me there.”

  “I am?” I stood back and let him shut the door. “Why do I get the honor of driving your truck?”

  “This seat was covered in glass.” He held out his hand until I dropped the found keys on his palm. “I created the problem, now I’m creating the solution.”

  A warm tingle threatened to spread through my chest. “You realize I heal like a hundred times faster than you, right?”

  “Would sitting on a sliver of glass hurt?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Exactly.”

  “Since when do you care about not hurting me?” The question came out softer than I meant it to.

  “I never wanted to hurt you.” He stared at the steering wheel as if it were the circle of life itself. “That doesn’t mean we both didn’t know I would in the end.”

  “You’re right.” That subtle casting of blame was enough to nip that spark of heat in the bud. “I thought you were better than you were. That’s on me. You warned me. Cam warned me. Even my own heart shot up red flags.”

  His knuckles whitened where they gripped the wheel. “Why didn’t you listen?”

  “I thought you were worth it.”

  There was nothing left to say to that, so I got in his truck, cranked it and waited to see if he wanted to lead or follow. That he knew about Moore and Zed’s business venture told me he had been talking to the pack or keeping tabs on us through other means. I was leaning toward other means. He wasn’t the social butterfly his twin was, and I could picture Isaac helping himself to public tax records easier than I could imagine him with his feet kicked up at Cord’s desk while shooting the breeze with the guys.

  About the time I decided to go ahead, he rolled past me onto the street. Halfway to the garage, I spotted a familiar vintage truck pulled off the road. The driver-side door stood open, and had I edged too close to the road, I would have ripped it from its hinges or lost a side mirror in the process.

  No phone mean
t no way to call Isaac. I didn’t dwell on how quick his number popped into my head. Instead I laid on the horn, confident he would hear through his open window and come to investigate.

  The scent of motor oil and oranges overlaid the area. Zed’s scent. Beneath that, faintly, I made out my own cut pine and night-blooming jasmine fragrance. I recognized the area, I had driven past it often enough, but I had never…

  Murky impressions of a night hunt that ended with chipmunk blood in my teeth whispered through my memory. I tried to grab hold of the thought, but it vanished half-formed. I couldn’t call it back.

  The mystery of the open door was solved when I saw someone had gotten into Zed’s ten-dollar emergency fund in the glove box. The vehicle’s registration and copies of his insurance cards were scattered across the seat and in the floorboard. Wires stuck out from the ignition, and I got the sinking feeling we may have run off someone as they attempted to hot-wire Tallulah. The looting was violation enough. Zed would be heartbroken to lose the truck too.

  “What’s wrong?” Isaac had looped around and stopped in the opposite lane. “Whose truck is that?”

  “It’s Zed’s.” I didn’t ask him to stay or to help. I let him decide on his own. “I’m going to shift and follow his trail.”

  Too bad Enzo’s magic-sniffing abilities were nulled for the time being. Backup would have been nice.

  “Hold on.” He checked both ways before pulling in behind me. “Give me a minute.”

  “I’ll do better than that.” I climbed into the bed of Zed’s truck. “I’ll give you fifteen.”

  “Damn it.” He jumped out of the car and helped spread the faded tarp over me. “I don’t like this.”

  “That makes two of us.” I shucked my clothes, uncaring if he watched or not. I didn’t have the heart to check. I wasn’t sure which would hurt worse, interest or disinterest. “Keep an eye out. One vehicle might go unnoticed. Three won’t.”

  The change swept over me in an exalted rush as the wolf scratched her way clear of my human skin in record time. Even knowing what she was going to do, I couldn’t stop her. As soon as her paws scrabbled on the slick metal of the bare truck bed, she launched herself at Isaac. Her joy at seeing him with her own eyes was untainted by my hurt. To her, he was here, and that was all that mattered.

  Her paws hit him in the chest and knocked him to the ground. Then the taste of his skin was in my mouth—salty with perspiration—as she licked him. The low whine in her throat begged for his hands in her fur, and he caved the second he recovered his lost breath.

  “Hey, girl.” He scratched behind her ears. “Long time, no see.”

  Hearing him talk to her always amused me on some level, because we were the same being and yet not. All our private conversations were eavesdropped upon by the other. Not that either of us understood all the feedback the dominant personality received at any given time due to its alienness to our own sensibilities, but the simple happiness in his voice as he baby talked my wolf into a frenzy sent a pang of regret arrowing through me. I wished it could be that easy for us. I wished we had been that simple.

  I had to exert pressure on the wolf’s mind to draw her attention from her happy reunion. The second her focus shifted, she caught a whiff of Zed’s scent and her playful moment ground to a crushing halt. A second, fainter scent intertwined with his. It reminded me of lilacs and sea foam…and petrichor.

  She barked once and took off through the grass. An old barbed-wire fence yanked fur off her back as she scrambled under the strands. She didn’t slow down for Isaac’s benefit. A good mate was a strong mate. Either he kept up or he got left behind. End of story.

  The sprint through the pasture ended when she lost her footing and slid down an incline that raised hairs down her spine. This place seemed so familiar. Why did it…?

  A faint wheezing in the tall grass drew my attention. I cocked my head, straining my ears. The faint but steady rhythm spurred me into a run. I shouldered through a dense knot of tangled stems into a clearing made by the wolf lying unconscious on the ground before me. His thrashing had flattened the surrounding area, and his labored breathing spoke to more injuries than his blood-crusted ears.

  “Zed?” I pushed the questing tendril through the pack bond as gently as I could.

  The silence that responded caused a pained whine to clog my throat.

  The wolf nosed her way around Zed to reassure herself he was alive. We were debating the virtues of a wolf versus human rescue attempt when heavy breathing snapped us to high alert. A vicious snarl rumbled through my chest seconds before the burnt-metal scent that was Isaac washed away my fear.

  “Zed?” He aimed the question at me since he still struggled to match wolf to warg with most pack members.

  I bobbed my head and gave him an opening to add his two cents.

  “He’s too heavy for me to carry that distance alone without jarring his injuries.” Isaac unbuttoned his flannel shirt and pushed it down his arms. “I hate to ask you to shift again so soon, but I need your help if we’re going to get him out of here fast enough to make a difference.” He rubbed one of Zed’s stained ears between his fingers. “There’s a lot of blood here, and it’s dried through. He’s been out here for hours already.”

  Wishing I’d had time to stop at Waffle Iron for coffee, I turned my back on Isaac and shoved through the veil of greenery to the other side. The change resisted me. Danger was near, and my wolf was the stronger of us. Instinct warred with logic while I panted and sobbed in the dirt.

  I wasn’t a light switch. I couldn’t keep flipping my wolf on and off like this or I would burn us out until one or the other took the reins. I had seen wargs who let their wolves take the upper hand. They fared better in warg society than those who strangled their inner beast. But neither was whole, and neither lived for very long before they self-destructed or made a mistake that cost them their life.

  When I was able to roll onto my back and look up at the sky, the sun had shifted in its track. Not good.

  “How about that shirt?” I rasped, half wishing he would offer to come dress me so I didn’t have to remember how my arms worked.

  It hit me in the thigh a second later followed by two socks that missed the mark entirely.

  “I considered lending you my boxers,” he yelled, “but I didn’t know how you felt about sharing underwear.”

  I laughed, and it felt good for the stolen minute I allowed myself. Then I got dressed and joined Isaac at Zed’s side. There was no point in whispering now, no point in fussing at him for calling out earlier. If my pained cries hadn’t given away our location, nothing would. If whatever hurt Zed was out here, we were sitting ducks.

  “There’s a stone cottage across the field” was how he greeted me.

  His shirt hung long enough to cover my pink parts, but bending over would flash him if he cared to look.

  “Do you think they’d have a phone?” I wondered out loud, debating the wiseness of moving Zed before Abram set eyes on him.

  “The field and the one next door are both overgrown. There’s no livestock, nothing. I don’t see power lines strung through the area or any other signs of habitation. My guess is it’s abandoned.”

  “So no use to us then.”

  “No use to us.” He left his hand resting on Zed’s flank. “Besides, I have a phone, but there’s no one to call you can’t shoot a mental memo to faster than I can dial. I mentioned it because once the dust settles, you’re going to be curious about why he was out here in the first place. It’s as good a landmark as any in case the storm washes away your scents.”

  “That was smart.” I gave him a lingering glance. “I’m glad you thought of it.”

  “Glad I thought of it?” He chuckled. “Or surprised I thought of it?”

  “Let’s get moving.” I put my fledgling diplomacy skills to use yet again and ignored him. Rather than ping Abram, I made the tough call to notify the pack first. “I’ll update Moore while we work.” I turned my thoughts
inward. “Moore?”

  “No sign of him yet. The control box he’s been fiddling with is gone, so I was going to check the shop in town before I worried you.”

  That right there cemented my resolve that I had made the smart choice by reaching out to him.

  “It’s my job to worry. Next time do as I ask.” A twinge of annoyance forced a growl out of me. “Keep everyone within the wards. No one leaves without my permission.” I spoke over his questions. “We found Zed. I’m about to touch base with Abram. Head to the office and get ready to lend a hand. We’re headed back now.”

  “Everything okay?” Isaac slid his hands under Zed’s shoulders. “You’re snarly all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah.” I scooped up Zed’s hindquarters, and we lifted him. “Moore’s just being Moore.” The furry body hung between us, limp and pitiful, and it broke my heart. “I’m going to alert Abram. Then we can talk logistics.”

  Stepping to the side, he angled Zed so we could hold him between us and both walk forward. I cast him a weak smile in thanks. All we needed was to add a broken ankle or two to the list of injuries for Abram to treat.

  “Abram?”

  “Do you think seven ninety-nine is too expensive for a used EKG machine?”

  “No idea.” Somehow I doubted he meant seven dollars and ninety-nine cents, which put the cost way out of our budget. Unless I used the card… “Listen, Zed’s been hurt. We’re bringing him in now. We need you at the office when we get there.”

  “I remember the good old days when the worst condition I had to treat was arthritis.”

  “The good old days weren’t that great,” I reminded him. “If they had been, you wouldn’t be here now.”

  His mental chuckle as much as agreed with me. “See you in a few.”

  “This is taking too long.” I signaled for Isaac to stop walking long enough to worm my hands under his, accepting the bulk of Zed’s weight. Shifting his body closer to my chest, I swung him up into a fireman’s carry and set off at a clipped pace. “Keep up or get left behind.”

  Isaac didn’t get left behind.