Chapter 8

POV: Nora Ash

Cole's message is two words and it is the most frightening thing I have read all night.Not because of what it says but because of what it means. It means he already knows someone is outside this door. It means he has been watching this street, or someone has been watching it for him, and neither of those options is the kind of thing that lets you breathe easy.

 I pressed my back against the counter in the dark and I did not move and I looked at Mae's silhouette three feet away, and she was standing the way a person stands when they have done this before , weight low, perfectly still, not a single wasted muscle.

The street light through the fogged glass throws the silhouette in orange.It still has not moved.

I typed back with one thumb, slowly, so the screen light stays low

“Who is it”

It was not a question. I did not have the patience for a question mark right now.

His reply took four seconds which was a long time when someone is standing on the other side of a locked door.

“One of Victor's. Don't let Mae open it. I am twelve minutes away.” 

Victor.

I had heard that name once before tonight, whispered by Mae when she put the napkin in her pocket.it was just the name she mentioned without any explanation. She had looked at it the way you look at a word that carries more weight than its letters should be able to hold, and she had moved on before I could ask. 

Now it is in Cole's message too and the two of them, Mae and Cole, have clearly been carrying this name between them for longer than I have been in Creston.

 Longer, maybe, than I have been anywhere.

I looked at Mae and mouthed the name “Victor”.

Something moved across her face in the orange half dark.It was not fear but something older than fear. The expression of a woman who has been expecting a particular bill to arrive and is not surprised to find it finally slipped under the door.

She nods once.

Then she crossed to the kitchen doorway, silent as a closing curtain, and beckoned me through.

The kitchen smelt like bacon grease and dish soap and underneath both was something sharp and mineral, the scent that comes off Mae when she is alert. I noticed it now the way I have been noticing things for the past month,sharpening senses without explanation, picking up details my body was never able to catch before. We moved to the far side of the kitchen, away from the single small window above the prep sink, and Mae pulled a stool from under the counter and sat on it like we were simply waiting for a bus.

I stood ….. I cannot sit right now…..my legs will not allow it.

"He will not come in. They never come in on a first visit." She said quietly.

I looked at her. "First visit?"

"This is how it starts. Someone comes to confirm a location. They stand outside. They leave. Then they know where you are and they decide what to do with that."

I thought about the young man earlier. The scenting. The two seconds before he left.

That was not the first visit tonight. That was the confirmation. The silhouette outside is something else ; the follow up. Someone had sent it to make sure the confirmation was right.

My stomach drops, slow and certain.

“They know I am here."

 "They knew before tonight." Mae affirmed.

Eight minutes passed..

I know because I am counting them not in my head ,but in my body, the way you count time when you are very still and very awake and every second has a physical weight.

 Mae sat on her stool, while he stood beside the prep counter with my phone face up in my hand and the screen dark to save the battery and also because light is something I do not want to make right now.

The diner is quiet. The street outside is quiet.

Then the silhouette moved.

I see it through the pass-through window above the prep counter , the orange lit glass of the diner front, the shape pulling back from the door, stepping away from the window. 

It was Slow and unhurried like the walk of someone who has what they came for and has no reason to rush. I watched it until it disappeared past the edge of the window frame and the street was empty again and the only sound was the refrigerator unit cycling on with a low mechanical hum.

Mae lets out one breath.

 "Gone?"I asked slowly 

"For now." She answered undoubtedly.

Cole arrived in eleven minutes, not twelve.

I heard the truck before I saw it , I have apparently memorized the low engine note without choosing to, the way you memorize things that matter to your body before they matter to your brain. Mae unlocks the back door before he knocks. He stepped into the kitchen and the room immediately changes the way rooms change when someone fills them correctly, and his eyes go to me first and not to Mae.

He checked me the way you check something you were worried about and is relieved to find it undamaged. 

Then he looked at Mae.

Mae puts the napkin on the counter between them without a word.

He picked it up and read it before he sets it back down.

"How long before the young one came in?"

"He was at the four o'clock delivery window. I did not see him arrive but I saw him leave."

Cole was quiet and I watched his jaw tighten just slightly, just once, the way it does when he is running something through his head that he does not like the answer to. He looked at the napkin, then he looked at the back door he just came through.

 "They had the address before tonight." He said slowly yet firmly.

"Yes." Mae confirmed .

There was a short but heavy pause. 

"How." Mae asked as she folrfëlds her hands on the counter.

What she says next, she says carefully , not because she is hiding it, but because she has been holding it in exactly the right shape, waiting for the moment where saying it would do something useful instead of just causing pain.

"Nora called her father three weeks ago. She told him she was safe. She told him not to give her location to the pack."

Cole looked at me..

I already know where this is going. The understanding arrives before Mae finishes, sliding in cold and clean: my father's voice on that call, relieved but strange. The way he had not asked which city. The way relief and strangeness do not belong in the same breath unless one of them is not relief at all.

"Someone was already on the call, Nora…they are listening. Your father did not give them the address."

She paused.

"He did not have to."

The refrigerator hums. The kitchen smells like old grease and coffee and the cedar and iron of Cole standing two feet away, and I press one hand flat against the prep counter because the room has gone slightly sideways and I need something solid beneath my palm.

"Who?"

Mae opened her mouth,the same moment Cole's phone rang.

He looked at the screen. Something shifted behind his eyes ,it was something fast and hard and decided. 

 "It is Jared." He picked up. He listened for five seconds. 

His face did not change but his eyes did.

He lowered the phone and looked at me,and said

"Six wolves just crossed the Black Ridge south border."

And sincerely I didn't fully know what this meant for me until…..