Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Ugh. “Who do I say I am?”

  He considered that for a moment. “Do the missing persons consultant story. You’re specifically looking into Leah Rhodes’s disappearance. Talking to people about her boyfriend would be a logical move for the police to make.”

  “Got it.”

  Jesse took the cordless handset into the living room so we wouldn’t be heard in the background of each other’s calls. When I was sure he couldn’t hear me, I dialed Eli’s number. It rang five times and then went to voicemail. Crap. I hung up without leaving a message. There was nothing to do but get to work.

  Chapter 37

  I’ve never actually wanted to be a cop. Any kind of cop. Up until this point, helping Jesse with Old World investigations had been alternately terrifying, frustrating, and exhilarating, but because of my unique circumstances, it had never really been dull until I started calling the PAW members. Because as it turns out, real police work is boring as hell.

  At least, that was my conclusion by our second hour of calling strangers and trying to keep them from hanging up in the first two seconds. Most of the people on the PAW list were women, and those who were able to answer the phone in the middle of the day were not really interested in anything a stranger had to say. A bunch of them snapped at me for calling in the middle of their small children’s nap times. Because I was supposed to just know when that was, apparently.

  I did find one interesting new fact, though. When we’d worked on the PAW list the night before, I hadn’t gotten all the way to the bottom—we’d found Remus and gotten distracted. But now I saw that two of the names near the very bottom of the roster looked familiar. I went and borrowed Jesse’s list of the LA werewolves. Sure enough, two of the wolves were on the PAW list: Esmé Welch and Corbin Hurd.

  It actually made sense, I realized. Why wouldn’t the werewolves want wild wolves to be protected? If no one was allowed to kill wolves, that made it all the safer for the pack to run around the woods during the full moon. When I looked at it in that light, I was actually surprised that there weren’t more of the pack members on the list. And it wasn’t like either Esmé or Corbin could be the nova—they’d both been werewolves in the pack for years. I shrugged and resolved to call Esmé and Corbin just like they were anyone else on the list. Well, maybe I’d have Jesse call them instead.

  I went back to work. Two hours later, I had made actual contact with a total of twenty people. I thought that was a pretty high percentage of the list, all things considered, but the holidays were probably working to our advantage. At any rate, of the twenty people I’d talked to, almost all of them remembered Henry Remus as the “guy with the crazy eyes and the do-it-yourself haircut,” as one chatty lady put it. Her name was Heaven Centuri (for real), and she told me that at their last meeting in October, our boy Henry had given a speech about some alleged wolf sightings in Northern California, suggesting that PAW should send a group up there to stake out “these magnificent creatures.”

  “He said ‘magnificent creatures’, like, six times,” Heaven snorted. “I mean, we were at a noodle place in Brentwood, and this guy’s talking about building tree stands out in the woods so we can what? Take pictures? Get a head count? More likely we’d end up getting stuck out there waiting for the wolves to go away again so we could come down. If we even saw them.”

  “I take it he wasn’t getting a lot of support,” I said neutrally.

  “Ha. No. Everybody thought he was crazy.” After a moment of hesitation, she added, “I mean, the guy’s heart was in the right place, you know. But it was like the more he talked, the more people’s chairs just scooted slooooowly away from him. By the end he was just shouting, and someone from the restaurant came and escorted him out.” There was a bit of awe in her voice, like she couldn’t imagine being so invested in something.

  “What about Leah, his girlfriend? Was she there too?”

  “I think so,” Heaven said dismissively. “There was a girl with him, anyway. I didn’t get much of a read on her; she was real quiet. Kind of mousy. When Henry got thrown out she just followed behind him silently, like she knew when she got up that morning that she’d be getting thrown out of a restaurant.”

  “Did it seem like either of them had any other friends there?”

  There was a brief pause while she considered the question. “You know, I think there was another woman who got up and left when they did,” Heaven said finally. “But she may have just been leaving at the same time.”

  “What did she look like?” I said eagerly.

  “Short, brunette, pretty in a bland soccer mom kind of way. Maybe thirty, but not, like, a well-maintained thirty. I only remember because she looked really edgy, like she was strapped to a bomb or something.”

  That was kind of a general description, but it did match Esmé Welch, one of the werewolves on the PAW roster. I thanked Heaven and hung up.

  Most of the calls were like that one. Everyone who had attended that meeting remembered Henry getting thrown out and Leah following him, but no one besides Heaven remembered the brunette woman who’d left at the same time. I made a note of it and kept going.

  I was done with my list—minus the people who hadn’t answered—by four, so after checking to make sure Jesse was still talking in the living room, I tried calling Eli again. I’d checked upstairs when changing clothes that morning, but there had been no further note or message. It wasn’t like him to just disappear. Had I done something wrong?

  You mean besides slaughtering one of his fellow pack members? I thought sourly.

  The phone rang five times, and then his voicemail picked up. “Eli, where are you?” I said quietly. I struggled for a way to tell him that I was worried, that it scared me that he hadn’t called. Instead what came out was, “And where the hell’s my breakfast?”

  As I hung up, Jesse came yawning into the kitchen. “Need a coffee break,” he mumbled. “You find anything?”

  I told him about the October PAW meeting, and the two werewolves I had skipped. “I’ll give them a call,” he said, nodding. “Are you thinking that they told Remus about being werewolves?”

  I paused. “You know, that hadn’t even occurred to me. I’m so used to the Old World being so insular . . .” I considered it for a second, then shook my head. “I just can’t see it. But they might have insight into Henry, like anyone else. How did you do?”

  Jesse went past me to circle the counter, heading for the coffeemaker. “Well, first I called the two Remus brothers. Supposedly neither of them knows a thing about Henry’s activities. They only see him at holidays.”

  I leaned back in my chair, flexing my knee just a little, half expecting a creaking sound. The swelling had gone down some, but the pain was still there. Shouldn’t have sat so long without moving or elevating it. “That’s not very helpful,” I said absently.

  His face darkened. “Yeah. I’m not finding out much from the HPA, either. I can’t ask about all the girls without giving them the chance to connect the dots, and we don’t want that. When the LAPD figures out the five missing women are connected, it won’t take them long to find Henry Remus’s name. Then again . . . maybe we want them to.” He shrugged. “Maybe we want to set up Henry as the fall guy now. And by ‘fall guy,’ I mean ‘guy who actually did it.’” He pulled a bag of coffee grounds out of the fridge and held them up. “You mind if I make some coffee?”

  “No, go ahead,” I said cautiously. Things had been tense between the two of us all day. And now I had to make it worse. “Look, Jesse, we can’t tell anyone about Henry Remus until after we’ve . . . found him.” If the cops arrested Henry the night before the full moon, Dashiell would have to get involved. I didn’t know much about how he pulled strings in the police department or the city government, but I was betting it wasn’t easy to have someone killed or released from prison on twelve hours’ notice. “Which brings me to the subject of what we’re going to do when we catch up with the guy.”

  “Go stop him,” Jesse said
promptly. He switched the pot and turned the coffee machine on, then turned around to lean onto the counter island so he was bent at a near-ninety-degree angle. “But that wasn’t what you meant, was it?”

  “No.” I watched him carefully for signs of tension. We’d been down this road before, when we were going after Olivia. Jesse believed in the justice system; it was as much a part of his identity as his face or family. He’d wanted to arrest Olivia, despite orders from Dashiell that she was to be killed. We had managed to avoid the problem when I shot Olivia so Jesse wouldn’t have to be responsible for her death. But now we were up against a similar situation, and while I didn’t have a problem with killing an insane werewolf who’d murdered four women, there was no guarantee that I would be the one to confront him.

  “I know I can’t keep riding the fine lines on this,” Jesse said quietly, echoing my thoughts. “But if we do what I think you’re suggesting, if we just put him down like a rabid dog . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “You’re scared you can’t be a cop anymore,” I finished for him. Looking a little surprised, he nodded. “Even though you more or less agree that the Old World has to stay hidden.” Another nod.

  The coffee was done, so Jesse straightened up and started looking for cups. Maybe there was an alternative, I thought. The Luparii wanted the nova too, and they certainly had no qualms about killing. What if we just let them kill Henry? I turned that idea over for a moment while Jesse rummaged for milk and sugar. I doubted Will or Dashiell would go for it. Aside from their personal hatreds, they wouldn’t want the Luparii to gain any footing in America. Besides, Jesse probably wouldn’t feel like handing Henry Remus over to be killed did much to solve the problem of him not wanting to kill anyone.

  Jesse circled back around the counter and plopped himself in a chair across from me. I envied his easy movements. My leg was feeling more and more ungainly, like I was dragging around one of those old-fashioned ball-and-chain things. “Could you change Remus into a human again?” he asked me, unable to hide the hope in his voice.

  That shocked me. I had been so busy trying to hide the fact that I could change someone permanently that I hadn’t realized it could be a viable option to save Henry Remus from death. As I looked at Jesse, I remembered the moment in my bedroom when he’d asked me if I could do it again. This was what he’d meant all along: he wanted to use what I could do to get justice in the Old World, without having to just kill. Of course he did. I felt like an idiot.

  If it had been Dashiell or Will asking, I would have felt used, but I couldn’t even blame Jesse. He wanted so badly to keep his integrity, and what I could do might actually make that possible. I opened my mouth to say I would try—but I closed it again. I thought about my knee, and the vertigo that had returned the night before. Then I remembered what Noring had said about taking care of myself.

  “Not yet,” I whispered. Clearing my throat, I added in a clearer voice, “I have to get better first, Jesse. I have to finish healing before I can try something like that again. I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded, unsurprised. “If it’s a choice between you and Remus, there’s no choice at all,” he said earnestly. “But if we could figure out a way to contain Remus until you got better . . . would you be willing to try?”

  I found myself nodding. “And listen, Jesse,” I continued, “about last night . . .” Crap. Why on earth had I brought that up? Stupid mouth.

  He raised his eyebrows over the rim of the coffee cup. “What about it?”

  I struggled for words and finally ended up with, “Just because you don’t see something that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

  His gaze softened and he put his cup down. “What are you saying, Scarlett?”

  My eyes unfocused as I felt something stir on the edge of my radius. “Molly’s coming downstairs.”

  “Huh?” He blanched, and then the stairs behind him creaked as Molly came into the room.

  “Is this all you guys do, sit and drink coffee?” she asked cheerfully.

  Jesse and I exchanged a glance. “Pretty much,” I said, shrugging.

  The smile faded from her face. “Scarlett, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  My eyebrows lifted. “Uh, sure . . .”

  Jesse rose. “I’ll go back to the living room and make some more calls,” he said. Nodding a farewell, he vanished through the doorway, taking his coffee with him. Molly sat down in his chair.

  “What’s up?” I said nervously. It’s rare for Molly to actually be serious about something. No good ever comes of it, in my experience.

  She held up a finger, leaning back to check on Jesse in the other room. I heard his voice start up on a phone call, and she leaned forward again. “I take it you haven’t told him about last night?”

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she meant sleeping with Eli or killing Anastasia. Then I realized the answer was the same either way. “No, I didn’t . . .” I trailed off and then repeated, “No.”

  Molly nodded. “Listen—”

  “I’m really sorry about your carpet,” I interrupted. “I’ll pay to have it fixed, of course.”

  She gave me a thin smile. “I don’t care about the money, Scarlett. Money I have. But last night was the second time in two weeks that someone broke into my house looking for you.” Molly paused and took a deep breath. “Whenever vampires put down roots, there’s a time limit on how long it lasts. I want to enjoy the time I have in this house before I need to move on. Meanwhile, your whole situation keeps escalating, and . . . I don’t think I can continue on this journey with you.”

  I tried to swallow, but the inside of my mouth was suddenly dry enough to be a fire hazard. “You—you want me to move out,” I managed to say.

  She nodded reluctantly. “Not, like, today or anything. But as soon as you catch this guy, I’d like you to start looking for another place to live.”

  I nodded, unable to stop the rush of tears that spilled down onto my cheeks. I couldn’t even blame her. I had put her life in danger; kicking me out was completely fair. If anything, it was surprising that she hadn’t done it the first time, when Olivia had broken in.

  But in that moment I realized that as much as I had tried to hold myself back, to keep a distance, I thought of Molly as my friend. Vampire or not, spy or not, justified or not . . . it hurts when your friend doesn’t want you around.

  Molly, unaccustomed to genuine emotion, looked distressed by my tears. She stood up and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Uh . . . I’m gonna go out for a while. We can talk more later.”

  She speed-walked out the back door. A moment later, Jesse finished his call and came into the room.

  “What was that about—” he began, then saw my face. I was trying to get my tears under control but not having a whole bunch of success. “Oh, hey . . . what happened?”

  “Can you—” I pointed at the roll of paper towels on the counter, and he went to retrieve it for me.

  “She wants me to move out,” I said shakily, blowing my nose on a paper towel. I have never pretended to be a pretty crier.

  “What? Why?”

  Oops. I still didn’t want to tell him about Anastasia. Things were delicate enough between us. So I just said, “Too dangerous.”

  Jesse ripped another paper towel off the roll and handed it to me. I nodded in thanks. “Well, I can’t really blame her,” he said frankly. I looked up from the paper towel to gape at him. “Come on, Scarlett. You know as well as I do that all this wasn’t what she signed on for.”

  I flinched. With an effort, I met his eyes, my voice hardening. “Are we still talking about Molly?”

  He looked away. A minute of awkward silence ticked by, and then Jesse stood up. “I can finish these calls by myself,” he announced.

  Something had shifted between us. I could actually see his body language changing to professional detachment. “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off, get some rest,” he added. “We’ll start early tomorrow.”

&nb
sp; “Good idea,” I said flatly.

  Chapter 38

  After Jesse left, I got my cane, swung my leg down carefully, and made my way toward the living room, collecting my cell phone as I passed the counter.

  I got myself settled on the couch. Screw going back up those stairs, I was too tired. I held up my phone and realized that I’d missed a text from Dashiell. He had found the Luparii in France, but they weren’t responding to his requests for negotiation, and there wasn’t time for him to push it any farther. It was a dead end. And Will and Kirsten hadn’t contacted me, so I was assuming they were coming up dry too. There was no way to call off the scout.

  Not knowing what else to do, I tried calling Eli again. This time the phone went straight to voicemail, so either his battery had died or he’d switched his phone off. Frustrated, I ended the call and dialed Hair of the Dog. The bartender transferred me to Will.

  “Have you heard from Eli?” I said loudly. The back room was a lot quieter than the main bar area, but it still wasn’t actually quiet.

  “Huh?” Will said distractedly. “Sorry, what?”

  I repeated the question. “Oh.” Now Will sounded . . . reluctant. “Um, I’m sorry, Scarlett, but he checked out of the motel, and I don’t think he’s been back to his place. I think he left town.”

  Oh.

  I fought back tears. I did not want to cry again, goddammit. I had already cried too much this week. This year. And it wasn’t like Eli and I had been going steady. I’d saved him after he killed someone; he’d saved me after I killed someone. Maybe he just figured we were even now. And the night we’d spent together . . . that must have been good-bye.

  Could I really blame him?

  I leaned back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Sometimes you are just so completely screwed that you almost have to admire it. Eli had left town right after sleeping with me which, aside from being humiliating and sad, also meant that Lydia was demanding something I couldn’t produce. The nova was going to attack a bunch of people tomorrow night, and the Luparii scout was going to go after the werewolf pack if he couldn’t find the nova, which we hadn’t been able to do even with knowledge of the city and a week’s lead time. Jesse and I were . . . complicated. Molly was evicting me on justifiable grounds.