Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Scarlett rustled through the HPA roster, looking at the names in the dim glow from the van’s reading light. She sighed heavily. “Yup, he’s on here too.”

  Jesse swore, not for the first time. There were twenty-nine names on the PAW roster, each listed along with their DOB, but so far almost all of them had also been on the HPA roster. He’d been hoping to find just one or two matches, but instead there were almost twenty. There was no way they could chase down twenty names quickly, especially not before the nova attacked the three women he’d taken.

  This stakeout was becoming more and more like a vigil.

  “Jesse,” Scarlett said patiently. “You with me?”

  “What? Oh, yeah.”

  “Next?” She was actually trying to stay positive, which was definitely a sign that everything had gone to hell.

  “Henry Remus,” Jesse said in a monotone. “Age forty-four.”

  “Hang on,” Scarlett said suddenly, staring straight ahead. Jesse peered out the windshield, both hoping and not hoping to see the nova. He wanted to catch the fucker, but he didn’t want to see any more dead bodies. But there was nothing out there.

  “What?” he asked Scarlett.

  “Henry in his forties . . . Henry in his forties . . . I’ve heard that before,” she said, snapping her fingers idly. “Do you have those notes I took from the interviews?”

  Jesse reached into his jacket pocket and dug out the little notebook, passing it over to her. Scarlett flipped to the right page and stabbed it with a forefinger. “Here,” she said. “When I was talking to Amanda Lewis. She said that Leah was dating a guy in his forties named Henry.”

  “It could be the same guy,” Jesse said. “Is the guy in HPA too?”

  Scarlett lifted the printout again, trying to get the right section of the paper into the light. “He’s here!” she crowed, before looking over at him. “What now?”

  “Now we find the guy.”

  First things first: Jesse took out his phone and googled Remus. The only things that popped up were a couple of PDFs, and when he downloaded the appropriate files he found Remus’s name mentioned in a couple of newsletters from local public schools. Huh.

  At his request, Scarlett called Leah Rhodes’s roommate, Amanda Lewis, and asked for any further details on Leah’s boyfriend. Jesse waited impatiently as Scarlett went “Uh-huh” a few times. Finally she hung up and turned to him. “She doesn’t remember much else,” Scarlett reported. “Except that he drives an old blue pickup truck, pretty small, and she thinks he still lives with his parents, because Leah almost never spent the night at his place.”

  Jesse checked the white pages on his phone and called a friend at the LAPD, ending up with an address and phone number for Ezekiel and Sharon Remus.

  “You’re smiling,” Scarlett observed from the passenger seat. “Did we get him?”

  “Maybe,” Jesse said. “Don’t get too excited, though. Let’s see if the guy’s even home. Then we can go over there and you can feel him out, so to speak.”

  He called the Remus house, where the phone was picked up by a nervous-sounding woman, maybe around his own mother’s age. Without identifying himself, Jesse asked for Henry.

  “Oh, he’s not home, dear. Are you calling about his classroom presentations?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jesse responded. “My daughter goes to”—what was the name of that school?—“Roosevelt Elementary, and she’s been raving about Henry’s performance. I just wanted to thank him.”

  “Why, that is so nice!” the woman exclaimed, sounding relieved. “Unfortunately, Henry is camping right now. But he checks in with me every week, and I’ll be sure and let him know you called.”

  “When are you expecting him back?” Jesse inquired, trying to sound polite.

  The woman’s voice changed again, picking up a stronger note of nervous energy. “Oh, we never quite know about Henry’s comings and goings,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “But—”

  “Jesse!” Scarlett yelped, and he looked up. She was pointing frantically at the windshield. “Look!”

  He hung up the phone and peered into the darkness of Will’s yard. There was a beat of stillness, and then he saw it: past Will’s house, at the edge of the woods, some of the bushes were moving. Then a man emerged, staggering, with a weight on each of his shoulders. Whatever they were kept getting caught on tree branches, and as Jesse watched, the man had to repeatedly pause to tug them free.

  Bodies. They were bodies.

  “Shit,” Jesse breathed. “That’s why nobody ever saw him. He came through the woods.” He reached for the door handle, but Scarlett grabbed his arm. “Hold on,” she hissed. “You’ll never catch him if he runs now. Let him get closer, and be ready. I’m gonna try something.”

  Jesse clenched his teeth, but he nodded, trusting her. Scarlett closed her eyes, brow furrowing. After a moment her expression smoothed out, and a look of calm replaced it. Jesse glanced back toward the trees. The nova was moving easily across the lawn now, free of the branches. They didn’t have much time. Whatever Scarlett was going to do needed to happen now.

  When the nova was halfway to the house, though, he suddenly collapsed under the weight of the bundles, and Jesse realized that Scarlett had expanded her radius. “Go now,” she whispered without opening her eyes. Jesse threw open his door and bolted.

  He was running as silently as he could, but the man clearly knew something was wrong. He frantically tried to get out from under the bodies he’d been carrying, which were pinning him to the lawn. The nova managed to push one of them off and was wiggling away from the second. Jesse was going to lose him. Hoping to distract the guy, he shouted, “Stop! LAPD!”

  For a second the nova looked like every criminal Jesse had ever encountered—he jerked upright, a look of fear and horror plastered across his face. The guy wasn’t much to look at, really—just a skinny, narrow-shouldered punk with bulging eyes, buzzed hair, and horizontal Slavic cheekbones. Then, with a burst of energy he finally wriggled free of the second body, stumbled toward his feet, and darted for the woods.

  Jesse raced after him. He ran three times a week, and boxed and lifted weights on alternate days. As a human, this guy didn’t look like he’d ever heard of exercise, and Jesse was gaining fast. The guy was almost to the trees, but Jesse was just twenty feet away—and then Scarlett’s radius ran out.

  The guy stumbled as he left it but regained his footing with unnatural grace, and Jesse knew he was about to lose him. Trying to throw him off, he screamed, “Henry Remus!”

  The guy paused, just like Jesse had hoped, but only for a moment. He shot Jesse a toothy smirk, looking feral. Then he turned back toward the woods and vanished.

  Jesse kept running, hit the trees, and immediately snagged on a branch that carved a long scratch across his left cheek. Realizing the branch could have hit his eye, he cursed in Spanish and froze, listening. He could hear movement ahead and to the left of him. Why hadn’t he grabbed a flashlight?

  Furious, Jesse knew he had to give up. He turned in a slow circle until he saw the lights from the house. Panting, he trudged back toward the bodies. A car door slammed, and he saw Scarlett hobbling toward him with her cane, a heavy-duty flashlight in her free hand.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you could extend it?” he yelled to her.

  That brought her up short for a moment. Then she started moving forward again, and Jesse waited for her, still catching his breath from the sprint.

  “It was . . . fuzzy, after the thing with Olivia,” she said, when they were close enough to hear each other without shouting. “I wasn’t sure if I could do it.”

  “You should have gotten out and walked toward us. I almost had him!” Jesse snarled, unable to stop himself.

  “I couldn’t concentrate on my radius and walk at the same time,” she explained. “I’m sorry, Jesse.”

  “Give me the flashlight,” he snapped. He knew it wasn’t her fault, but he was shaking with adrenaline and r
age. They had been so close. The guy had been right there.

  Scarlett’s eyes widened, but she obliged, handing over the light. Jesse pointed it at the bodies in front of him. Both women were obviously dead.

  “Only two,” she said quietly.

  “Maybe he didn’t have time to go back for the third,” Jesse muttered.

  The woman on his left was Hispanic, with a long tangle of hair, about twenty extra pounds around her hips, her big open eyes staring at nothing. He recognized her from the picture in the van: Ruanna Martinez. The woman on his right was Caucasian and slim, with a short brunette pixie haircut: Samantha Wheaton. Both of them were wearing tattered underclothing that was soaked in blood.

  The nova had duct-taped both women’s arms and legs—not as restraints, Jesse realized, but to keep the limbs from flopping around as he carried them. Jesse crouched with the flashlight, trying to see past the blood that stained and crusted both bodies. Ruanna Martinez had long scratches all over her body, but they weren’t shallow, like Kathryn Wong’s injuries. These were horrible, deep scores, each one more than a foot long, and they’d sliced her skin into long, thin flaps. Jesse’s stomach turned, and he looked over to Samantha Wheaton’s body. He squinted against the light, reluctant to touch her. “Oh, God,” he whispered.

  There were chunks missing from her. The nova had taken bites out of Samantha Wheaton, presumably while she was still alive.

  “He’s still experimenting,” Scarlett said softly.

  “You think?” Jesse snapped. He couldn’t meet her eyes. His gaze was glued to the women he had failed not once, but twice. First by not stopping the nova in time to save them, and second by not being able to catch the son of a bitch when he’d turned up to dump their bodies. Gritting his teeth, Jesse reached out and gently took Ruanna by the arm, shifting his weight so he could roll her over. There was a big number three scored into her back.

  Scarlett started to bend down toward Samantha, but he waved her aside. “I got it.” Samantha was light, and with her limbs taped together she flipped over easily. Jesse pointed the flashlight beam at her back, expecting to see a four.

  It was a five.

  Scarlett saw it too. “What does that mean?” she whispered.

  Jesse shined the light back and forth between the two of them for a moment, then reached down to lift up the taped bundle of first one woman’s legs, then the other, checking the degree of rigor mortis. Then he stood up. “I’m not an expert, but it looks like they were killed at the same time,” Jesse said shortly.

  “So?”

  “So, the nova’s getting impatient. He got sick of the one at a time thing and took three women at once, hoping one or more of them would change. And one of them did.”

  Scarlett nodded, understanding. “Number four.”

  “Lizzy Thompkins,” he corrected. “She’s a werewolf now. Or will be in two days, I guess.” He looked at her over the bodies. “How ironclad is the timeline? Any chance she won’t change for this moon?” They were closing in on Henry Remus, but he wasn’t sure they could find the guy by the following night. If they had even a few more days . . .

  But Scarlett shook her head. “The shift takes two days to complete, but it’s different if there’s a full moon in those two days. Easier for them, actually.” She looked down at the women, and for a moment Jesse thought he saw sorrow on her face. But all she said was, “We have to clean this up.”

  Jesse looked at her, the just-cooled rage building pressure in his chest again. “That’s what you have to say?” he demanded, not bothering to keep the fury out of his voice. “We have to clean this up? These were people!”

  “Do you get this upset about every murder you work?” Scarlett said, ice in her voice. “I’m amazed you have enough energy left to get up in the morning.”

  “This is different. You know this is different,” he spat.

  “Don’t snap at me, Jesse,” she said, eyes narrowing. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “That’s right, I forgot,” Jesse said angrily. “You’re the bad guy’s cleaning lady.”

  Tears spilled down Scarlett’s cheeks, but when she spoke her voice was steady. “I can’t do my job if I let it—”

  “Your job?” Jesse yelled. “Do you think I give a fuck about your job right now? Or my job, for that matter? Do you think I’m still in this for a promotion?”

  Scarlett flinched. “You know why we do this. You know why people can’t find out.”

  Jesse clenched his fists. He was working so hard to keep his voice below a scream. “Bullshit. We were so close. If we’d had the resources, we could have been faster, we could have warned these women. We could have prevented this.”

  Scarlett looked skeptical, and he felt a wave of irritation with her. She was keeping her eyes on him, and he suddenly wanted to grab her head and force her eyes downward, like a puppy that’s had an accident. Instead he pointed at Samantha Wheaton. “She couldn’t stand the sight of blood, Scarlett. How do you think the last day has gone for her?” Scarlett trembled, but still kept his gaze, so he pointed down at Ruanna Martinez. “And she has three kids at home, and no husband. Two boys and a girl who get to spend the rest of their lives without parents now.” Scarlett stubbornly kept her eyes on his. He could hardly make out the green through her tears, but he kept going. “How’s that working for you, Scarlett?”

  Her whole body went rigid. “Get away from me,” she whispered.

  “Happy to,” he said nastily. He stomped back toward the main road, leaving Scarlett standing over the bodies, alone.

  Chapter 32

  I kept it together for a while, I really did.

  I called Will, told him he needed to get there right away. I was calm as I lied and said Jesse had run off in pursuit of the nova, while Will helped me dispose of the bodies, and while I faked a phone call from Jesse saying he’d lost the guy in the woods. If Will had had his werewolf hearing and scent, I would have been screwed, but if he suspected me of lying, he didn’t say anything.

  Then again, maybe he was too preoccupied by the fact that the nova had made a mate. As bad as it had already been, things were going to get worse for the pack. I asked if the nova was going to come after them the next night, but he said, no, Remus would want to build up his own pack first. Which was a nice way of saying that Remus was going to try to infect as many people as possible during the full moon. Unless we found him first.

  I dropped Will back at his house, promised to call him in the morning with an update, and cried most of the way back to Molly’s house.

  By the time I got there, I felt like one of those ceramic figurines my mother had collected: fragile on the outside, hollow on the inside. I had run out of tears, thoughts, and ideas. I had nothing left but pain in my leg and ashes in my hair from Artie’s furnace.

  Molly’s car wasn’t in the driveway when I got home, which was okay by me. I wasn’t in the mood for quality time. I shucked my dirty jacket and left it near the door so I’d remember to get it washed. I wanted nothing more than to collapse in my bed, but I was filthy and sore and needed a shower. Sitting on my butt, I dragged myself up the stairs, letting my cane bump along the stairs next to me. Since I was on my butt anyway, I just kept going on it, scooting my way into the bathroom. I pulled off my boots, slid my knee brace off very carefully, and wriggled out of my clothes, leaving all of it in a messy heap on the bathroom floor.

  I showered, shampooing my hair several times, wrapped a towel around myself, and snagged my knee brace on the way out, leaving my clothes where they were and hobbling back to my bedroom. After putting on underwear, an enormous Chicago Bulls jersey from my father, and the knee brace, I stretched out across my bed. The pain in my knee roared even louder by then, so I carefully rolled sideways to the bottle of Vicodin on my bedside table. I swallowed two dry and flopped back onto my pillow, closing my eyes as I waited for them to kick in.

  Just as I started to drift, though, I heard a small crash from downstairs.

 
I opened my eyes. “Molly?” I called, but there was no answer from below. “Molls?”

  Silence. Then a soft creak, somewhere in the house.

  Panic raced to life along my body, fighting the stupefying medication and urging me to take action. I tried to focus, to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, but the pills were kicking in and that was suddenly too complicated. I realized with sickening fear that the vertigo had returned. I settled for rolling onto my stomach and sliding into a heap on the floor, on the opposite side of the bed from the door. The skin on my bare legs goose-pimpled where it touched the cool carpet. I peered over the side of the bed, staring at my open doorway. The hallway was dim, lit only by the light trickling up from the stairs to the right of my door. I could see Molly’s bedroom door and a light switch, nothing else. I squinted my eyes, focusing hard. A dark shadow passed through the light, and I ducked my head below the top of my bed. There was a long, heavy moment of silence. I shivered with fear and cold, my head clearing despite the drugs.

  I was being stalked. And my Taser was still in my coat pocket, downstairs.

  When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I slowly raised my head again. As soon as my eyes rose above the mattress, a wolf sprang at me from the hallway.

  At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Before she made it through my door, however, the werewolf hit my radius and changed instantly into a snarling, tumbling naked woman. Momentum carried her through the doorway and a few steps into the room, where only the bed stood between me and her. Anastasia stood up and squared her shoulders, unaffected by her own nudity. Her short afro was matted to her head in places, and her black eyes were reddened and furious.

  “You,” she spat at me. “You worthless cow.”

  I felt silly all of a sudden, hiding behind a bed while a crazy naked lady calls me a cow. I mean, who talks like that? But then she took a step closer to me, and I saw her eyes. There was more than just fury in them now. They were mad with rage. Emphasis on the mad.