She opened her eyes. “But the hollowness isn’t the worst part. The worst part is knowing they took something from me and not being able to remember them doing it. If I could remember, I’d at least know what they did. Instead, I keep imagining all of the things that might have happened.” Without makeup and her old clothes, Serena looked young—way younger than seventeen—but her gaze held a weight that was ancient and tired.
As much as I hated asking her to think about the detention block, it was hard to imagine there would be a better opening. “I remembered something from Thornhill,” I said slowly, “part of a symbol I saw the night we tried to break you out. It was on a spreadsheet one of the program coordinators had. I think it could be a logo—maybe something or someone Sinclair was working with.”
I pulled out my cell and brought up the picture I had snapped in the tent. “I thought . . . if I showed it to you . . .”
“I could tell you if I had seen it, too?” Serena reached for the phone. “Most of what happened really is a blank,” she warned. “I mean, if I don’t remember finally trying to strangle Jason Sheffield . . .” Her eyes grew wide as she stared down at the picture. She gripped my cell so tightly her hand shook.
She glanced up and her gaze locked on the wall behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. Whatever Serena was seeing, it wasn’t in the room with us now.
“Serena?” I turned back to her and reached for her shoulder. She flinched, but showed no other signs of response. I wasn’t even sure she knew I was there.
The pulse in her neck beat like an animal throwing itself against a cage.
“Serena?” I said her name again, louder, as I shook her, gently at first and then harder.
Still, nothing.
“Trey!”
“Dobs?” I heard Trey’s voice a second before his heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs.
Her brother’s voice seemed to break through to Serena and pull her back. Awareness of where she was slipped through her eyes as her startled gaze darted to mine.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “There was something, but I couldn’t hold it.” She pressed the phone into my hand as Trey appeared in the doorway.
Trey took one look at Serena’s face and crossed the room in three long strides. “What happened? Are you all right?” He crouched next to her chair and glanced back at me. His gaze narrowed as though he knew, without being told, that I was responsible.
“I’m fine.” Serena tried to brush his concern away. “I just tried to shift again.”
“We agreed you’d give it a few days.”
“No,” corrected Serena, “you said you didn’t want me trying. That doesn’t mean I agreed.”
Across the room, someone cleared their throat.
I turned toward the sound. Jason stood in the doorway, a tense, wary look in his eyes. “Did you tell them?” he asked Trey.
“Not yet.”
“Tell us what?” I glanced from one boy to the other.
“There was an explosion at a transition house in D.C.,” said Trey. “Fire gutted the parts of the building that were still standing—including the cells. They’re estimating at least fifty people were killed.” He shook his head. “Those places are locked down almost as tightly as the camps. If no one let the inmates out . . .”
“Jesus.” The word was a whisper. I thought of all of those people—trapped inside, unable to breathe as the flames closed in—and shuddered. None of them would have been past the LS incubation period. None of them would have had the strength or healing abilities that came with being a full-fledged werewolf.
“That’s not all.” Jason pulled in a deep breath as his eyes locked on Serena. “So far, it’s just rumors, but they’re saying it was the transition house where they were holding Sinclair. They’re saying the warden’s dead.”
4
TREY LOOKED UP AS I WALKED INTO THE KITCHEN. “ANYTHING?”
“Kyle’s at the garage with his car. He’ll be over soon.” I sank into the chair next to Serena. “I couldn’t reach anyone in Colorado, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything with the reception problems they have.”
There was no reason to think Sinclair’s death had anything to do with the pack or my father. Early reports were speculating that a gas leak had caused the explosion. Maybe, as unlikely as it seemed, it had just been a tragic accident.
The fact that Hank had called me twice on the same day the warden died was probably a coincidence. According to one of Jason’s Tracker sources, Sinclair’s death hadn’t even been confirmed yet.
So why did the fact that I couldn’t reach my father make me nervous?
Trey pushed a cardboard container of pad thai across the table. “Thanks,” I mumbled, picking up a fork even though I wasn’t hungry. “Jason’s not back?”
Trey snorted. “He and his Tracker buddies are probably busy high-fiving one another over taking out a transition house.”
I wanted to defend Jason, to tell Trey that he had changed, but the history the two of them shared was stronger than anything I could say.
“It wasn’t the Trackers,” I said instead, spearing a piece of shrimp on my fork as I glanced out the window. It had snowed in earnest an hour ago—a brief storm that had whited out everything for twenty minutes before suddenly stopping—and small mounds of flakes had gathered on the sill.
“Who else could have done it?” snapped Trey, pulling my gaze back. I guess none of us were buying the gas leak theory. “The Trackers have whole chapters that train guys to clear out packs and dens.”
“There’s a big difference between a den and a transition house,” I pointed out, setting down my fork. “Trackers want wolves to be locked up. They aren’t going to hit anyplace where that’s happening. And they wouldn’t risk pissing off the LSRB.”
No. Assuming the destruction of the transition house hadn’t been an accident, someone other than the Trackers had to have been behind it.
I sighed and leaned back in my chair as the scar on my shoulder blazed with a flash of phantom pain. I remembered the way Sinclair had looked at me—like I had taken everything from her and would suffer for it—as she raised her gun the night of the breakout.
With her dead, I didn’t have to worry about her ever hurting me or the people I cared about again.