Chapter 9

POV: Nora Ash

…..Until something in my chest locked up tight, like a fist closing around my lungs. Cole already moved the phone back to his ear, two steps toward the back door with his whole body shifting into that mode I have seen once before, the night he found me bleeding in his forest. He was deliberate and every inch of him pointed at the problem.

Mae stood off her stool before I could speak.

"Black Ridge. Your pack."

He stopped,turned and looked at me over his shoulder with those pale silver eyes, and what is in them is not panic. It was one with calculation,the kind that happens fast and lands clean.

"Jared has it."

 "Six wolves, Cole…" It wasn't a question,although it sounded like one …I instead just wanted to be sure of the significance of having six wolves on the territory.

 "Jared has sixty-three wolves" he responded while moving his eyes in a calculative manner as though he was trying to prove the number with his eyes.

He stepped outside to finish the call and the back door swung shut behind him and Mae and I were alone in the kitchen under the yellow utility light, and the refrigerator is still humming its indifferent hum,I stood there with my hand flat on the counter feeling the cold metal under my palm and I thought about sixty-three wolves sleeping in Black Ridge right now who do not know yet that something is moving through their south border.

Because of me.

That thought arrived without warning and it was not small. It sat in the center of my chest and it was heavy in the specific way that guilt is heavy, not sharp, not loud, just constant. A weight that does not announce itself. It just presses.

I pressed back.

Mae put a glass of water in front of me. I did not ask for it but I drank half of it without tasting it.

 "Stop." She shouted 

I looked at her.

 "Stop whatever you are telling yourself right now."

And everywhere went silent immediately.

Cole came back in four minutes. The kitchen felt smaller with him in it and larger at the same time, that is the only way I can describe it, the way the room rearranges around him when something real is happening. His jaw was set as he looked at Mae first.

"The south border incursion pulled back before engagement. Jared thinks it was a test.

 "Response time." Mae responded in a way that deduced that she understood all that was happening.

 "Yes."

She nodded slowly, like this confirms something she has already been turning over. Like this is a language she knows.

Then he looked at me. He did not look at me the way men look at women they are trying to protect from information. He looked at me straight, the way he has always looked at me like I am someone who deserves the full weight of what is true.

"Someone ran Victor's wolves at my south border at the same time someone was standing outside this door. At the same time…twelve minutes."

The understanding landed well coordinated.

My voice came out quieter than I intended

 "They split his attention."

"They tried to.”

I set the water glass down.

I thought about the napkin. The careful handwriting. The word soon pressed into white paper like a promise someone intended to keep. I thought about the young man who came in at four o'clock and stood at the counter and tilted his head and scented the room and left without ordering anything. I thought about my father's voice on the phone three weeks ago ,relieved but strange and the way he had not asked which city, and what that means now that Mae has said what she said.

Someone was already on the call.

He did not have to give them the address.

I gave it to them myself by speaking, and the line was not private, and I did not know, and not knowing did not make the outcome different.

 "My father." I exclaimed as though a new light of wisdom shone on me.

 "We do not know the full shape of it yet."

 "Cole."

He stopped the moment I called.

"Is he safe?"

Something moved across his face. It was fast, careful, the same thing he does when he is choosing between the version that is easier and the version that is true. He always chooses true. That is one of the first things I learned about him.

 "I do not know."

Those words were honest yet insufficient but since they were the only thing he had to give me right now, I have no option than to take them.

I picked up my phone and dialled my father's number. It rang three times. Mae was still very still by the sink while Cole stood near the back door with his arms loosed at his sides, watching me the way you watch someone walk across a surface you are not sure will hold.

It rang four times 

Then Five times.

And then the voicemail. 

My father's voice, recorded and ordinary, saying his name and asking me to leave a message in the careful measured tone of a Silver Creek pack historian who has spent thirty years being exact with words.

I hang up.

I dialed again.

Voicemail.

The second time I lowered the phone I did not try a third time. I stood in Mae's kitchen at nine forty-seven at night with the taste of cold water still on my tongue and the smell of old grease in my hair and I made sure to be honest about what I feel, because I have spent twenty-two years not being honest about what I feel and it has costed me things I cannot get back.

I am afraid for him.

Even after everything. Even knowing that something is wrong with the call he took, with the number he did not ask for, with the way relieved and strange shared the same breath. He is my father and the fear for the people you love is not something you can logic yourself out of even when the logic is sitting right there, plain and correct, telling you to be careful.

 "I will have Jared run a check on Silver Creek." Cole said looking deeply into my eyes 

"Thank you."

"I am not going back to my room tonight and pretending I can sleep."

He looked at me .

 "Whatever you are deciding right now ,I want to be in the room where you decide it.” I said convincingly.

He did not argue. That is the thing about Cole Vance that I did not expect and cannot stop noticing ,he does not argue when I draw a line. He does not soften it or reroute it or find a polite way to move me to one side. He just looks at me, registers what I have said, and adjusts.

He pulled out a chair at Mae's small back room table and he sat. He puts his phone on the table. He then opened a message thread with Jared and he turned the screen so I can read it.

I sat across from him.

Mae brought two mugs of coffee and did not ask whether we wanted them.

The back room is warm and the light is low and outside Creston moves in its ordinary nighttime way, cars and wind and the distant sound of someone's music two streets over, and none of it knows what is happening in here. None of it cared. The city never does.

"The napkin number …..do not call it." It was more of a command than a request.

I had not planned to. But the fact that he said it tells me he has already thought about why someone would leave a number instead of a message, and the answer he arrived at is the same one I arrived at: it is not an offer. It is a test. A number left on a counter is an invitation to make contact, and making contact tells Victor's people that I am unsettled enough to reach out, and unsettled is useful information to someone building a plan.

 "I know." I said without looking up.

He nodded.

Jared's reply came in at ten o'clock exactly. Cole read it. He went very still , that particular stillness that is not calm, that is the thing underneath calm when the calm is working very hard.

He turned the screen to face me.

One line.

Silver Creek gate log shows an Ironwood-scented vehicle cleared visitor entry at 7pm. 

Still inside.

Seven o'clock. Two hours ago. 

While I was watching Damon's back through the front window of this diner, someone carrying Ironwood's scent was already inside Silver Creek territory.

Already close to my father.

I stood up so fast the chair scraped. My hand found the counter edge. The room was steady. I made myself be steady with it.

Cole was on his feet before I spoke. He did not touch me , he never pushed past the space between us without permission but he was close, close enough that I can feel the warmth off him, close enough that the cedar and iron steadies something in my chest the way it always does, involuntary and true.

He said my name. Just my name.

I looked at him.

"We move tonight."

And somewhere outside, in the wet dark of a Creston side street, a phone rang once and went silent and the number it rang from is the same number written on a folded white napkin still sitting in Mae's apron pocket.