Prey Drive by Jen Stevens
Chapter 6
the wolf
to be making the drive into Styx for the second weekend in a row without a good excuse, but I need to get my affairs back in order. Luckily, I can hack the GPS in my car and erase the trip from its history. I left my personal phone at my penthouse and picked up a burner with cash, spoofed it, then forwarded all my work calls to it. I’ve gone through this routine so many times, it hardly takes a second thought.
I’m just usually traveling with a person tied up in my trunk when I do it.
I drive straight to the cottage, not bothering with parking down the street and walking there on foot, the way I usually would to keep my identity concealed from any nosey neighbors. It seems pointless when I'm buying the place next week. If anyone questions me, I've got the alibi of checking out my newest investment. I do, however, make sure to park across the street instead of pulling into the long driveway, just in case the tenant is home. I don't want to scare her just yet.
The neighbors can ask questions, but they don't need to know that my visit has nothing to do with the house and everything to do with the person inside of it.
I want to see her. Study her. Determine if she's a real threat and how much she potentially knows.
I'm the hostile wolf with an insatiable prey drive, and she's the little lamb that's accidentally wandered into my path.
I’ve caught her scent and now I can't stop until I take her down.
First, I check the workshop. The door is still securely locked, and nothing appears to be out of place. All traces of the dickhead I tortured in here last weekend are completely gone, and aside from the slight metallic smell that lingers in the air from the sheer amount of blood he lost, there's no sign that anyone has even been in this room recently.
Good.
I was unstable when I packed up the body and scrubbed the place down. With no access to my usual tools or the freedom to come and go as I needed, I couldn't destroy the body as methodically as I should have. Instead, I had to wrap it in plastic and dump it into one of the barren fields just outside the city.
It's the same place The Order uses when they're through with their victims—not far from where my own sister was found. I hated giving them the chance to find him and draw their conclusions. I enjoy the mystery of plucking them off one by one, leaving them wondering where their sons and brothers are being taken and why they aren’t popping back up. That was all ripped away, thanks to her.
Every time I had a second to think this week, my mind strayed to any potential mistakes I may have made. I'm glad to see that my insecurities were misplaced.
It gives me just enough of a confidence boost to close the door and head for the house.
“What are you doing?” Sienna’s sharp, haunting voice stops me just as I pull the door to the hunting room shut.
My shoulders instantly tense. “Go away.”
I can't deal with her pestering me right now. If it weren't for her incessant need to micromanage everything I do, I might have been able to catch my father's new tenant before I brought my victim here.
She almost cost me everything.
“You can't go in there. She's home.” Sienna points toward the door I'm facing. The one that leads right into the kitchen, where she could be standing right now.
“Oh, now you can warn me?” I bite back sarcastically.
Forcing her lips into a grim line, Sienna stares at me for a moment before insisting, “She can't see you here.”
I sigh, scowling at my dead sister because she's probably fucking right. What am I going to do? Waltz right in there and tie her up? I have no real reason to kill her. Yet.
“I'll go around back,” I mumble, mostly to myself. Sienna attempts to object, but I walk through her and out the door leading to the backyard.
The girl is lying on the couch again. The artificial light from the TV flashes across her skin and illuminates her face every few seconds before dying back down again. I'm only watching for a few moments before she stands from the couch, grabs a bowl from the coffee table, and then drags her feet toward the kitchen. I stand still in the middle of the lawn, adrenaline pumping through my veins like pistons in an engine at the way the moonlight exposes me here, out in the open for her to see at any moment. Still, I can't bring myself to move into the shadows.
Then, to my complete horror, she abruptly stops in the middle of the dining room and swivels her head directly toward me, as if someone had called her name. As if something inside of me silently called to something inside of her.
And her eyes land right on my dark figure.
I can see the wave of fear crash down on her all at once. The way her expression crumples in wonder and disbelief that I'm actually here, watching her. I want to move, but my feet feel rooted to the earth. I'm too enthralled with her to be the first to break eye contact.
Why is she just staring like that? Shouldn't she be calling the police? Running away? Grabbing a gun, for God's sake?
Do something to defend yourself, little lamb.
But she doesn't do any of that. She just stares.
Finally, when her head turns back toward something in the house, I'm released from her invisible grip and logic creeps its way inside my head. I quickly walk over to one of the trees off to the side, leaning against it so I can observe her without being detected again. At least if she tries to look out the window, I’ll be able to slip into the shadows before she sees me.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Sienna hisses from my side.
“I need to make sure she doesn’t know anything.”
“She clearly doesn’t. She would have gone to the police by now if she saw anything. You’re risking too much. What if someone sees you lurking out here? You've already been caught once before,” she fires off, holding her arm out toward the window I was just staring into.
My gaze cuts over to her. “Why didn’t you tell me she was living here last weekend?”
The words come across as an accusation more than a question.
Crossing her arms over her chest in the same stubborn way she would do when we bickered before, her bottom lip juts out in a pout. “I didn’t know,” she says defensively.
I consider her ghostly form for a moment. We’ve never talked about what it’s like for her—what sort of things she can or cannot do. I haven’t even asked about where she goes when she isn’t with me. But I assumed, at the bare minimum, she’d be able to tell me if someone else was around. That she could sense them or something.
That was a foolish assumption. She doesn’t seem to know anything more than I do.
I don’t mention any of that to her, though. Instead, I look back toward the door and release a sigh.
“I need to cover my ass.”
“You’re making a mistake. At least wait until you have ownership of the place before you go scaring the girl.”
“Why don’t you leave the worrying up to me? Go do whatever the hell it is that dead people do with their time, and leave me alone,” I snap, not bothering to turn back toward her.
I don’t have to look to know she’s glaring at me and, within seconds, I can feel the weight of her presence disappear from beside me.
She can be such a fucking pest sometimes.
At some point during our argument, the light from the TV went out in the house and the girl is nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, Sienna is right. She could already have the police racing to catch me peeping into her windows for all I know. It would be unwise to let myself into the house before I even have ownership over it, especially when I’m not sure what she has against me.
After a few weighted moments of debate, I jog through the woods along the driveway and get back into my car instead of walking through the garage and slinking in through the side door, the way I want to.
Another day, little lamb. I’ll be back to finish this another day.