Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Twenty-Five

"Why dowe even think the papers will still be there?" a wolf named Remus asked with an hour's drive remaining on the run to Scranton.

Having already justified the belief that her hiding place remained safe to Denver and Oram, Iris ignored the big wolf riding shotgun next to Tanner.

Just four years older than Iris, she had known Remus since childhood. Like so many of the wolflings trying to impress their pack leaders back then, he had taken every opportunity to tell Iris she didn't belong. While his civility had improved over the last twelve years, he hadn't grown any friendlier or stopped despising her.

Not that she would have welcomed his friendship. Some bridges weren't worth mending.

"I'd like to know, too."

Iris glanced at the man sitting protectively close to Esme. The wolf, an early twenty-something male named Navarro, wasn't part of Cade's team. He served Denver, who had not yet chosen a beta to carry out his orders and lead the New York clan in his occasional absence.

Now, sent to protect Esme, his place at Denver's side was all but assured. Unless Navarro failed to bring the witch back unharmed, in which case Iris assumed the young wolf was as good as dead.

Cade glanced at his watch, then nuzzled her ear. "We've got an hour to go, baby."

She relented, for her mate and for Esme. The familiarity of the story would ease the witch's tension.

And, judging by the way the woman had her hands protectively wrapped around her stomach, Esme's anxiety bordered on unbearable.

"Before a second group of Hunters found me," Iris began. "I pawned everything from the car of the two who helped Hank—even parts of their car, like the radio, rims and tires. Then I burned what remained."

Navarro nodded, smiling at the idea that she had made good use of their enemies' property after killing two of them.

"The money didn't last long, despite my sleeping outside at night or only buying a single change of clothes and a backpack to carry them in at a Salvation Army for a grand total of six bucks and change."

She didn't explain the particulars of why the money had evaporated so quickly. With her memory a blank on those weeks for a dozen years, she hadn't known herself. She had shifted for the first time during the attack by Hank and the Hunters.

She'd almost died from the injuries.

Her body needed fuel. Lots and lots of fuel. She had consumed as much food per day as she would have eaten during an entire week before the change. And it didn't stop her from losing weight. Nothing did until she had finished healing and subconsciously suppressed her wolf and its energy.

"It was raining, coming down hard, the wind so strong I could barely walk against it," Iris recounted. "I took shelter in a museum. It had been a school when first constructed and a stop on the underground railway..."

Sensing Navarro, and especially Remus, didn't want a human history lesson, Iris shrugged. "Anyway, I spent a couple of hours walking around it, waiting for the storm to die down. The place was loaded with silver—"

She stopped as a light shudder descended the younger wolf's body from his head to the tip of his steel-toed boots. He had mentioned taking a Hunter's spelled silver blade in his right thigh less than two months before during a mission to retrieve a latent.

The memory still uncomfortably pricked his flesh and made his balls shrivel.

"Of course, it was all behind glass so no one could steal it," she continued after giving him a second to recover from the memory. "But then I came up to this old desk that was only roped off and not all the way around. There were replica blotters and inkwells, a fancy letter opener that was fake, too, and copies of Abolitionist manifestoes and stuff—none of it real. But I could feel silver, just the faintest pull."

"Witches draw power from silver and iron," Esme explained as Navarro shot her a confused look. "We're basically metal detectors for those two elements."

Iris glanced at the front of the tactical van. Remus, who had prompted the discussion, appeared to be staring out the side window, but she could see his eyes in the reflection and they were fixed on her.

She turned her attention back to Navarro. "I figured there might be a hidden compartment, and I was right. Inside, I found a silver coin, very old. From before the Civil War."

The find had been both a blessing and her near destruction. Knowing its intrinsic value was far greater than any pawn shop would give her, she checked the phone book for a local antiques dealer who traded in coins.

Walking into his store, she had almost turned around and left. But she forced legs that wanted to run hard and fast in the opposite direction to approach the counter where the man waited.

She held her breath as the same stink that had clung to the Hunters who tried to kill her clogged her nose in that little shop. She convinced herself that the owner had merely, and quite innocently, acquired objects that carried some kind of magic with them.

She held on to that belief long enough to sell the coin for over three hundred dollars.

She had been wrong about the owner, of course, and the mistake almost cost Iris her life. She had returned to the diner she had eaten at the night before. She needed more fuel for her injured body and the manager had offered her a job.

With the money in her pocket and a kitchen full of food to borrow from, she would have enough money to last her until she received her first paycheck. That and the tips would carry her to the next paycheck and the one after that while she figured out what she needed to do to expose Hank Mercer and rejoin the only people who had ever loved or cared about her.

"So, all those years sitting around that museum and no one ever found the panel or whatever?" Navarro asked.

Smiling, she nodded.

"The guy I sold it to must have been a Hunter or at least known what I was." Which was odd, Iris thought, because, at the time, she hadn't known what she was. So how could he? "Anyway, less than an hour after I sold the coin, two teams of Hunters steamrolled into town. I had the papers on me and I didn't want to get caught with them, so I made my way back to the museum and hid them."

Satisfied, Navarro grunted. Young and overly charming, he leaned forward and offered her his closed fist for a light bump in appreciation of the clever wolfling she had once been.

She returned the gesture then relaxed against Cade. She didn't mention that a bus from a Poughkeepsie high school had shown up at the diner at the same time the Hunters appeared. She hadn't told Cade or anyone else yet about how she had followed the students back onto the bus.

Some of the kids had given her funny looks, but the terror in her eyes had silenced them. The terror and Jenna Barley.

Jenna was the school's cool outsider, a girl with a haunted gaze who lived with her grandparents because her stepfather had murdered her mother before committing suicide.

With one sharp glance, Jenna eliminated any chance her classmates would rat Iris out.

"What is it, baby?" Cade asked, his thumb discreetly stroking the inside of her wrist.

"Just remembering the girl who helped me escape...who then convinced her grandparents to give me a place to stay until I could get my own."

Cade blinked and his mouth turned down at the corners, a barely noticeable quiver dancing at the edges. Leading a mission that could be a cakewalk or a death trap, he didn't have the luxury of expressing his sadness for the time his mate had been alone and hunted.

But she saw it shining in his gaze and knew she would tell him later about Jenna and how, after everything Iris had learned since rejoining the shifters, she was almost certain the girl had been a latent. But she couldn't tell him at that moment. He had to focus on the team's safety and Iris would unravel if she thought about her lost friend.

"How close are we?" she asked, hoping to divert his attention.

Taking the tablet Navarro studied, Cade pulled up the location feed. Checking his watch, he growled toward the front of the vehicle. He returned the tablet to Navarro then scooted toward the back of the driver's seat.

"I don't care if it's past midnight," he snarled. "Slow the fuck down."

Tanner glanced in the mirror, his gaze landing first on Cade before locking on Iris. Her chest tightened and she shook her head, her gesture a warning or maybe a plea. Tanner had been quiet during the briefing, but nothing had suggested he wasn't focused on the mission. He'd gone through the checks as competently as Remus and Navarro, only without Navarro's banter and Remus's dour, backhanded remarks.

She hadn't thought anything about Tanner's silence, but she hadn't looked him in the eyes until that moment, fifteen minutes out of Scranton when they should have had more than half an hour to go. So she hadn't noticed the shadows haunting his gaze.

Apparently no one else had, either.

Iris thought of the source of those shadows—Michelle. Lovely, young, fragile, broken—and genetically matched to a man old enough to be her father, a veteran who wore the scars of battle when other wolves remained whole.

Cade lowered his voice, his hand landing on Tanner's shoulder and squeezing. "I need you here, in this van, on this mission."

"I am," Tanner answered, his voice steady.

"You're not," Iris challenged, worried she was the only one who recognized exactly what was wrong. He already loved the latent, but he felt unworthy. Some ridiculous, chivalrous portion of him wanted to let her go, but he didn't know how. At least not directly, not while he was alive.

"He fucking said he's fine," Remus barked from the front passenger seat. He hadn't stopped facing the side window, but his eyes remained on Iris. "I don't care what you came back as, you're not in charge and you've got no fucking say. So let it go!"

Cade's hand closed around the big wolf's throat and applied an ever-increasing amount of pressure. Navarro jumped toward the front, his hand on Cade's arm and his lips less than an inch from the lead wolf's ear.

"Let go or we're turning around," Navarro insisted.

Cade glared at him from the side of one eye, his grip on his team member's throat tightening.

Navarro shook his head. "You may have lead on this, but I have final authority to abort. Let go or we're going home."

"It's too late," Esme whispered, hands still protectively clutching her stomach. Her skin had turned almost translucent except for two dark dots of red flushing her cheeks. She looked at Cade then Iris before explaining.

"We're not alone anymore."