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.658/839 He s out cold, I said, zipping the bag. Let sgo.But Marc only sniffed Jess s hands, thenlooked up and pointed his muzzle at mychest.I rolled my eyes, finally understanding thequestion. Yeah, the bastard groped me.ButI broke his balls.I d say we re even.Marc shook his head and continued to sniffthe tom s hands, then whined at me somemore.I exhaled slowly, dread sinking through meat his insistence.He wouldn t leave until I dsaid it. Right thumb to left nipple.But he s paidfor 659/839Marc shook his head again, then bent withhis mouth open.An instant later, somethingsnapped, and the scent of fresh bloodflooded the clearing.Jess s body shudderedand his eyes flew open, then he began tothrash and moan behind the duct tape gag.Marc backed away and something small andcrimson fell from his mouth onto a bed ofpine needles, now stained with blood.He ranhis barbed tongue over first one side of hismuzzle then the other to clean it, lookingperversely satisfied.I glanced at Jess shands, and nausea rolled over me.His right hand was pouring blood from thegory stump that had once been his thumb.Twenty-Seven660/839Before we left the clearing, I bandaged Jess sthumb with a torn strip of his shirt and someduct tape and patted down both toms foranything useful.I took a folding knife fromGary, then pulled both toms cell phonesfrom their respective pockets and checkedtheir text messages.Gary had none.If he d ever sent a text, Ifound no sign of it.I dropped his phone onthe ground and stomped it to pieces, so itcouldn t be used against us when he wokeup.Jess, on the other hand, obviously had anunlimited texting plan.Kind of funny, con-sidering he d now be texting one-handed.Marc whined in question as I typed, ignoringthe residual pain in my right wrist.At least Istill had both thumbs. He has a bunch oftexts from Lance.I m asking if they ve takencare of Jace yet.661/839The reply came an instant later.Not yet.Soon.I read it to Marc, then typed some more.Stilldigging.Wait for us.Lance s second response came just asquickly.No promises& He s still alive, but not for long.Come on. Islid Jess s phone into my left hip pocket andstarted off through the woods with Marc atmy back.We moved as quietly as possible,but neither heard nor smelled any other Ap-palachian Pride members.A mile and a halffrom Jace s premature grave, the sound of acar engine warned us that we were gettingclose to the house.We slowed and veered toward the growl ofthe engine as it first idled, then died.Minutes later, the evergreen foliage began to662/839thin, and a simple, black-shingled rooflinecame into view. There it is, I whispered, dropping into acrouch as Marc came to a silent stop besideme.A few shuffled steps later, the compoundcame into view.And compound was reallythe only word to describe Malone s property.I knew from what little Jace had said abouthis childhood that when his father was alive,his Pride s enforcers had lived in a convertedbarn behind the main house.But afterMalone s ascension to Alpha status, the barnhad fallen into shameless disrepair and hadto be torn down eight years later.Sincemoney was tight in the territory, to replacethe barn Malone had brought in two useddoublewide mobile homes and had them setpermanently into the ground and bricked upto the bottom of the windows.663/839The result was definitely nontraditional, andI d heard people openly question the longev-ity of the housing arrangement.But the ad-vantage to us was obvious.The back out-building was almost completely shieldedfrom the main house by the middle one.IfJace was in the last one, we might just beable to get to him without alerting the rest ofthe Pride.From where we stood near the tree line, wecould see all three buildings from the side. We should approach from directly behindthe back building, I whispered, then glancedup to find that Marc was already on themove.I rushed after him, careful to avoidanything that could crunch beneath myboots, and we hiked a quarter of the wayaround the property.The middle building had almost disappearedbehind the rear trailer when hinges squealed664/839suddenly, then a door slammed shut.I froze,Marc at my side. & just thought you might want to makesomething special tonight.You know, sinceJace is home. Well, I hadn t really thought about it, but healways did like homemade stew.And maybeI could make some potato bread to go withit.My heart ached at the familiar voice.PatriciaMalone.A moment later, she appearedbetween the last two buildings, heading to-ward the side yard of the main house.Shewas facing away from us, but even from be-hind I could see that she was thinner than Iremembered, her brown hair now streakedwith gray.665/839Alex Malone guided her gently but firmly byone arm, encouraging her and making sug-gestions for Jace s homecoming dinner. Shit.They got rid of Patti, I whispered, andMarc whined.We watched as the Malonescircled the middle building and disappearedfrom sight, veering toward the back door ofthe main house. Let s go.From the edge of the woods at the back ofthe property, we could see through the win-dows of the last building.Unfortunately, twoof them were covered by threadbare butmostly opaque curtains, and a third was atotal blind spot, thanks to a set of plain whitemini-blinds.But two others were uncovered,and by some stroke of luck, one looked intothe kitchen, the other into the living room.I was starting to wish we d brought binocu-lars when a blur of movement drew my focusto the larger of the two windows, and I saw666/839Jace sink onto the couch in the living room.He looked exhausted, and tense, andnervous.I pulled my own phone from my right hippocket and started typing again.Marcglanced over my shoulder, reading along.They think U R a spy.We re out back.Can CU thru window.I sent the message, and an instant later, Jacesat straighter on the couch and leaned for-ward to pull his phone from his back pocket [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]