But I was a grown-up and didn’t bring up her decision to open Jesse’s mail again.

________

I USED THE SHOP COMPUTER AND PRINTED OUT SIGNS after Auriele observed that my handwritten signs looked like something her students would do if they were trying to flunk her class. I am not a computer whiz and wasn’t sure the ones I’d put together were any better than the handwritten ones, but I put them up anyway while Auriele played on her phone. And I hid the signs I’d previously scrawled with a marker for everyday use: Lunch break, back in five and Unexpected drama, will return eventually. On that sign I had initially spelled “eventually” with one “l.” In my defense I’d been in a panic when I’d written it. Tad later corrected it for me using a different color marker than I’d used. It probably said something about me that it didn’t bother me to display it for my clients, but I didn’t want Auriele to see it.

I called and canceled the appointments for that week that I could, and streamlined the rest. I’d come in on Monday and fix a few desperately needed vehicles. I sent some of my clients with newer cars to the dealership—and a few who couldn’t afford the dealership to another garage. Fifty-fifty chance that those clients would stay with that garage afterward, because he was good and nearly as inexpensive as I was.

“I thought you were closing the garage until further notice,” Auriele said as I locked up.

“That’s right.”

“But you are still coming back Monday,” she said.

“There are some cars I can’t trust to anyone else,” I said. “And a few customers who need special handling. I’ll get one of the wolves to come in with me. People need their cars to work.”

We got back in my Jetta.

“We could have taken my car,” she said, not for the first time.

“I don’t want to get oil stains on any car that Darryl half owns,” I told her seriously. “He might have a heart attack and we can’t afford to lose any more wolves until Adam succeeds in bringing the invaders into our fold.”

She laughed. “Ah. So it is not the gas mileage, or the need to be in the driver’s seat.” Which were the answers that I’d given her the first two times she’d complained about the Jetta. “It is out of a deep and abiding concern for my husband’s health.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I like Darryl.”

“We aren’t going back?” she asked as I turned the wrong way to head home.

“Nope,” I said. “It’s been a rough few days. I’m going for doughnuts. Spudnuts.” Spudnuts were called spudnuts because the dough was made from potato flour. Ben loved spudnuts.

“Okay,” she said. “I could do a doughnut.”

Spudnuts was in the Uptown in Richland—a fair commute from my garage in east Kennewick, but it was totally worth the trip. Except when it was closed—which apparently it was.

“Well, that’s sad,” I said. Why did I not know it was closed on Sundays? I was sure I’d come here on Sunday once or twice.

“Safeway has good doughnuts,” Auriele offered soberly.

I sighed. Grocery store doughnuts and spudnuts shouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath. With the garage closed for the foreseeable future, it looked like I was going to have some extra time on my hands. Maybe I should try making doughnuts. My homemade bread was good. I already knew how to make fry bread—and there wasn’t a whole lot of—

My brain lit up with information.

I didn’t know if the other wolves saw their connections to the pack the way I did. To me, it was like a web of Christmas garland, sparkly and metallic with unexpected lights here and there, the mating bond between Adam and me a thick, glowing rope. That one changed every time I observed. Today it was a sullen red with orange light moving within, almost like a lava lamp. The orange light, I was sure, was information the bond wanted me to have but Adam was keeping from me. Under normal circumstances that bond informed me of things like Adam’s mood, where he was, what music he was listening to, or what he was thinking about.

The pack bonds, on the other hand, very seldom told me much. Mostly I could tell when someone died. I knew that Adam got a lot more information than that. But the only time the pack bonds really gave me much was when we were on a hunt. Then it was overwhelming, as if the whole pack was one beast.

I would have thought I’d freak out when I was consumed by the pack bonds—but it was the best feeling in the world. There was no sadness, no worry, nothing except for a wild joy that seared my nerve endings. No hesitation, no questioning, just knowing that the pack is one.

Granted, if the bonds had done that all the time, turning us into a hive mind like the Borg from Star Trek, I’d be moving to Istanbul or Outer Mongolia or some other faraway place to get away. But once or twice a month in a planned and organized hunt? That was pretty cool.

Today was different.

I froze where I was, standing in the parking lot with my hand on the top of the open door of my disreputable Jetta, my head and fingertips buzzing with the urgency of the call. The power of it made the air I breathed feel electric. And as on the nights of the hunt, I knew things I had no business knowing. I knew that Kelly was down and scared and—

“Makaya,” said Auriele, putting her butt in the passenger seat of the Jetta.

I’d gotten that, too. Makaya was Kelly’s six-year-old daughter—and she was in trouble. We were less than two miles from Kelly’s house. I was peeling rubber before Auriele slammed her door shut.

On the whole, ’80s Jettas looked like pedestrian cars, something built along the lines of the Chevette or Echo. Useful, but unpretty and unremarkable. My Jetta, midway through restorations, was remarkable for all the wrong reasons. But unlike my beloved Vanagon, which was lucky to attain highway speed, the Jetta was built to move, not only quick but also maneuverable.

I was doing sixty when I took the corner from Jadwin onto Kelly’s street, and the wheels stayed on the ground when I did it. Ahead, right by Kelly’s house, I could see a large man with a small child in his hands—he was holding her above his head. Just beyond them was a large construction dumpster.

“She’s alive,” said Auriele, her voice raspy with wolf. “She’s moving her legs.”

“If I hit him with the car,” I asked her, “can you make the grab from the hood of the car to protect her?”

I braked pretty hard as I spoke, slowing the car until we were going about twenty-five miles an hour. Much faster and Auriele wouldn’t have a chance. Much slower and I risked not doing enough damage to the werewolf to get him to drop Makaya. This was an old car, well-designed, but what I was planning was going to hurt me, too, because it didn’t have airbags. That thought was a rueful one, and didn’t change my plans. Makaya was a child. And also a smart aleck. And I adored her.

Auriele didn’t bother to answer me. She just broke out the side window with one definite hit of her elbow and climbed out over the shattered glass. The Jetta’s windows rolled up and down manually—she’d still have been lowering the glass ten seconds after we passed Kelly’s house if she’d tried it that way.

Being a werewolf gave her the strength to break the window efficiently and crawl outside without risk of falling on the ground. But it was her own natural grace that let her stand on the hood of the Jetta while I drove over a pothole-pocked road, aiming my two-thousand-pound weapon at the bad guy holding the little girl.

He dropped Makaya, holding her by one leg. Apparently his intent was to scare her family, because his focus was toward Kelly’s house. I couldn’t see Kelly or his mate, Hannah, but I couldn’t imagine that they weren’t out there, just hidden from my sight by their picket fence and the neighbor’s hedge.

I started to slow. I didn’t want to risk hitting Makaya with the car. We were barely half a block away—I was going to have to abort.

And then he swung her up over his head again, dancing around in a circle. He didn’t even look at us—though he had to have heard the engine. He was having too much fun.

On the hood of my car, Auriele remained crouched, knees slightly bent. There wasn’t another wolf in the pack that I would even have thought of asking to try this in human form. I wasn’t asking Auriele just to survive the accident. I was asking her to keep six-year-old Makaya safe. But I’d seen her fight a volcano god; I was reasonably certain that if anyone outside a movie could do this, it would be Auriele.

Even so, I wouldn’t have tried it—except that even when I’d turned the corner and he’d been six blocks away, I could read madness in the enemy wolf’s body language. I’d grown up in the Marrok’s pack, where every year, people who had been newly Changed failed to control their wolf. Some of them went completely mad. I’d probably seen a dozen of them, but one would have been enough. They were scary enough to imprint on my brain the first time.

If I’d had any doubt, the expression on the face of the man holding Makaya would have cleared it right up. Whether Lincoln Stuart—I recognized him from Adam’s photo presentation—lived or died today, he was never going to have a human heart again.

I could see Hannah and Kelly now. Hannah, a scarlet streak across one shoulder, was frozen just inside the gate. Kelly was on the grass, elbow crawling toward her.

And then the time for observation was over.

Auriele launched herself, stretching out in the instant before the Jetta hit the werewolf. He was tall, so the bumper caught him just below the knee, obliterating the bone. The sound was loud, but dull as if I’d hit something soft. The velocity folded him sideways over the hood as the car crushed him into the dumpster.

The seat belt holding me in my seat gave up the ghost—I’d been worried about that; it was on my list to fix. Even so, the car crumpled, as it had been designed to do, absorbing a good bit of the power of the collision. The seat belt held on long enough that I didn’t go through the windshield.

The impact rang my bell pretty good—and maybe broke my nose on the steering wheel. There was enough blood for that, and my nose hurt sufficiently. Dazed, I backed the car up until it died—about six feet from the dumpster, which had not moved with the impact. I popped the door open and struggled out amid dripping glass. I had to spin around awkwardly once to get rid of the remains of the seat belt.