Her headlights shined a spotlight on the barracks briefly, catching a couple of teens kissing in the shadows of the building near the road she had to take, and she held her breath. Hell... Evan and Alice?
Alice's father would kill Evan, she suspected, if he learned they were out here kissing in the dark. Worse, she was about to be caught.
The teens turned to observe the Jag, their mouths parted in surprise. The tinted windows would hide her and the blond sufficiently. She just prayed they'd think their leader was taking a spin. The teens remained frozen as she slowly made her way past them, not wanting to alert the others if all of a sudden she roared down the road.
As soon as she passed them, Evan dashed for the house. Crap. Alice didn't move. Probably didn't want her father knowing she'd been alone with Evan in the dark shadows late at night.
"Shit," the blond said. "Evan will warn Leidolf, and we'll both be in a hell of a lot of trouble."
Evan--yep, the boy Alice and Sarah had a crush on. He was a teen heartthrob already. She wondered if Leidolf had been like that or a loner early on. Probably always a loner. Or not. She frowned and then glanced at the blond. She suspected this guy would be in much more trouble than she would with Leidolf, just for being alone with her and threatening her with exposure if she didn't take him with her. Or maybe not. It depended on how attached Leidolf was to his hot rod. Probably a lot.
Her skin peppered with perspiration, Cassie sped up a little, but the road was gravel and the car slipped a couple of times. Why would Leidolf have such an impractical, low-slung vehicle for out here on gravel and dirt ranch roads? Rich-guy mentality, she guessed.
"What's your name?" she asked the blond as she headed for what she hoped would soon be a paved road, figuring he was the one the girls called Sarge but wanting to make sure.
"Sarge is what everyone calls me on account of I was a clerk in the army for a couple of years."
"Didn't like the army?"
The view of a valley, grass just beginning to green with the spring rains, appeared below the main house. She spotted several elk in the distance and, closer in, cows, yearlings, and horses on higher ground. Some of the lower-lying pasture lands under water, most likely due to recent heavy rains.
Sarge stared out the window and then glanced at her. "Got into trouble."
Figured. She had a feeling the guy was trouble in a lot more ways than just this incident, which accounted for his having had a guard detail at dinner. What had happened to the men who were supposed to be watching him? They'd surely catch hell when Leidolf discovered Sarge was missing.
"What kind of trouble?" she asked, wanting to hear the truth in his own words.
He stared at her, as if putting a hex on her, and her skin crawled. Not that she couldn't handle him, if she needed to, but she didn't like getting mixed up with a troublesome lupus garou on top of everything else.
Cassie pressed the gas pedal a little harder and crawled a little faster along the ranch road beside the river. Then she looked up at the main house and two others that overlooked the view. No one was following her, yet. As soon as the teen told Leidolf his car was going out for a drive--without him, they'd be after her. And someone was sure to alert Leidolf that his newly turned lupus garou was missing also. She figured that he really wouldn't like Sarge having come along with her. Not that she'd helped Sarge escape, but that he'd be worried about her with the unpredictable guy.
Sarge shrugged and looked back out the window. "I was kicked out of the service because of drug use. Lots of guys were doing it. No big deal. It's just that I got caught."
Which didn't explain how he came to be here. "Right. So, how did you end up in Leidolf's pack?"
"I was a werewolf hunter."
Catching her breath in her throat, Cassie didn't say anything. She felt that Sarge was watching her, waiting for her response. Everything the girls had said was true. No wonder he was being treated like an omega, someone no one wanted to be friends with. A werewolf killer? Great, just great. She glanced at his arm, but she couldn't see the scar from where the tattoo had been removed. Probably on the other arm.
"You don't kill us anymore, right?"
"I didn't kill the others."
Relieved, she let out her breath. She wasn't afraid of him. She could take care of herself. But taking someone like him away from Leidolf's pack was a real mistake when he needed heavy supervision. "Those two men who were with you, were they serving as your guards?"
"Pierce and Quincy? Hell, they've been in nearly as much trouble as me. They joined a week before I did, although they were born lupus garous. Fergus... he's like Elgin, a sub-leader... he's supposed to be watching all three of us. And then Pierce and Quincy are supposed to be keeping an eye on me. They were busy watching a game, so that was the end of guarding me.
"And Fergus was looking for his son. Evan? The kid who was kissing the girl out by the building back there? My kind of kid." Sarge gave an evil smile. "So where are we running off to?"
If they caught her before she reached her destination, she'd never manage to sneak away again, she was certain. And alpha leaders ruled their territories, so if she wanted to stay here, she had to obey Leidolf's pack rules. Or at least those were the unwritten laws of any lupus garou pack. Taking this knucklehead with her complicated everything.
"I have business to take care of in Mount Hood National Forest. So when we reach the place I need to go, you can stay in the car and wait for me."
"And give me the slip? And Leidolf, too? Not on your life, lady. How dumb do I look? If I stayed in this bucket, it'd be like having a neon sign plastered to it saying, 'Here they are. Right here.' Why didn't you take the Humvee? Less noticeable." He shook his head like she was some kind of idiot.
No other keys had been on the dresser top. Probably Leidolf didn't use the Jag as much.
She imagined Leidolf would drive it to the book-signing at Powell's on Saturday, though, to take little Miss Julia Wildthorn for a spin. Show off his hot rod and even hotter aspects that were all his.
"So, no thank you," Sarge said, jerking her from her thoughts about Leidolf and his planned romantic liaison with the romance author. "I'm sticking with you. I know I need guidance to get through this nightmare. I'd rather have yours than Leidolf's. A gentler woman's touch. Maybe we could even... you know, get to like one another." He grinned.
She refrained from rolling her eyes. If she had to confront him in her wolf form, bearing her very wicked canines, she'd have no difficulty. And he'd soon learn that she could be just as rough on him as any male.
"So... who turned you?"
"Leidolf. It was either that or kill me, he said, since I learned what he was."
She wondered if Leidolf would be rethinking having turned him instead of choosing the other option after Sarge pulled this stunt. Probably.
Then she spied what looked like the main road, and as soon as she reached it, she turned south and sped up. At least she thought that was the right direction. Hell, was it the right direction? She'd been asleep when they had taken her to the ranch house.
"Do you know which way they took me to reach the ranch house after Leidolf picked me up?"
Sarge shook his head. "They left me at home, well guarded. Pierce and Quincy got into trouble that time, looking for you in their wolf coats."
Great. This clown couldn't even help with navigation.
She continued to head south, figuring if she was going the wrong way and Leidolf thought she'd go the right way, he wouldn't find her. She could always stop somewhere and get directions. If she was going the right way, so much the better.