That voice. I knew that voice.
The pressure on my skull fell away. I looked up just as the man turned his back on me. He was tall and lean and he held himself like someone who was used to violence. His hair, black with hints of gray, just grazed the collar of a flannel shirt.
The set of his shoulders and the way he tilted his head to the side were horribly familiar, but I couldn’t see his face.
“They’re Trackers, Curtis.” The wolf with the gray hair stepped forward. “He has the brand.”
Relief washed over me. The voice hadn’t really been familiar. Curtis. I knew how disposable names could be, but I seized it like a lifeline as I pushed myself to my feet.
“And you were what? Going to send him back in pieces? Start a war?” Each syllable was a threat.
The other wolf backed down and withdrew into the crowd.
Slowly, the wolves drifted away, returning to the pool tables and their drinks. My rescuer watched them go and then turned.
Legs threatening to buckle, I stared into my father’s eyes.
5
“HANK?” MY STOMACH DROPPED AS I TRIED TO WRAP MY mind around the man in front of me.
He grabbed my arm, and even though I had just watched him toss a werewolf across the room, I tried to twist away.
“That name died three years ago,” he said as his gaze locked on my friends.
Jason and Kyle were both on their feet. A trickle of blood ran from Jason’s mouth and he leaned against Kyle as though he couldn’t fully support his own weight. Kyle didn’t look much better. He ducked out from under Jason’s arm and Serena took his place.
Kyle stepped toward me, but at a shake of Hank’s head, three men blocked his path. “Keep an eye on them. Make sure they don’t get into any more trouble.” Hank raised his voice so that it reached every corner. “No one touches them. For now.”
He crossed the room, pulling me in his wake. I tried to dig in my heels, but I couldn’t so much as slow him down. “I’m not leaving my friends!”
“I’m not giving you a choice.”
I thought I heard Kyle—or maybe Jason—yell something, but then Hank hauled me through an entrance and a door slammed shut behind us. He forced me down a drab gray hallway and then pushed me through another door.
I stumbled forward and barely caught my balance on a leather chair.
My father glanced at his hand. “I’m used to dealing with wolves.”
I rubbed my arm. The words almost sounded like an apology, but Hank never apologized. “You’re infected.”
He nodded. “Three and a half years. Almost four.”
That meant he had been infected while I was still living with him. That meant that one more aspect of my small, crappy life had been a lie.
I studied the room because I couldn’t look at him. Not for a few seconds, at least. The space didn’t match the rest of the club or the man I remembered. It was all leather upholstery and polished wood and—I looked down—Oriental rugs. The man I had known would never have set foot in a place like this unless he was pulling some sort of con.
Hank sat on the corner of a massive wooden desk, and I finally forced myself to look at him. His clothes didn’t suit the surroundings, but he filled the room like he had every right to be here.
There was a heavy silver ring on his right hand that I didn’t recognize. It caught and reflected the light as he gestured to the chair. “Sit.” I didn’t want to do anything he said—not even something so small—but my legs were still shaking from the fight and the aftereffects of an adrenaline rush.
I sank into the leather and fought the urge to put my head between my knees. “Assume crash positions,” I whispered.
A muscle in Hank’s jaw twitched. Anger or amusement? I couldn’t tell.
“You want to explain what you’re doing in a werewolf bar in Denver? With a Tracker?” Anger, definitely anger.
My father’s voice had always been intimidating. Add the edge of a werewolf growl and it was downright scary.
“He’s not a Tracker,” I said, trying not to flinch.
I pressed a fingernail into the padded arm of the chair. This one piece of furniture was probably more expensive than anything Tess and I owned. Added together, the cost of everything in this room might be more than my cousin made in a year. “Instead of me telling you why I’m here, why don’t you explain what you’re doing in a room like this?”
Hank leaned forward. His hair was longer than he used to wear it and going gray at the temples, but his eyes were the same. Flat and blue like a winter sky and just as empty. “I am not playing games, Mackenzie. Why are you in Denver?”
“Why do you care?”
“You’re my daughter.” He shrugged like it should be obvious.
The muscles in my chest contracted. He didn’t have the right to those words. He’d lost it years before he finally left. I shook my head. “Why did that wolf call you ‘Curtis’? Why did the wolves listen to you?”
“Goddamn it, Mackenzie. Do you have any idea how many wolves the Trackers have rounded up or killed in this city? If the pack had really challenged me . . .” He took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. They still bore spiderwebs of scars, souvenirs from fights that were too old for LS to erase.
I had poured peroxide over some of those cuts when they were fresh. A wave of déjà vu rolled over me and an insistent throbbing started just above my eye socket, like someone was trying to drill through the bone.
“I want to know what you were doing with that boy.”
After a long moment, when it became clear I wasn’t going to answer, Hank said, “He called me Curtis because that’s how they know me. Hank Dobson had too long a rap sheet to be useful.”
So he had cut the name loose. Just like he had cut me loose. “And you came to Denver.”
“We lived here for a few months when you were a kid. Even then, it had more werewolves than anywhere else in the country.”
“Strength in numbers,” I muttered. It was part of the reason Jason and I had assumed Kyle had come here. I couldn’t remember ever having lived in the city—nothing over the past few days had seemed familiar—but when you never stayed in the same place for more than a couple of months, everything became a blur.
“When did it happen? Exactly?” I don’t know why it made a difference, but I suddenly needed to know.