It was probably the maximum amount of progress I was going to make, so I would take it and run. “Who was right?” I asked, preening just the tiniest bit.
“You were right,” he said, standing up.
I fairly skipped to stand in front of him, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “Who is smarter than you?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. “You’re smarter than me.”
I kissed his chin, because that was as high as I could reach. “Don’t you forget it.”
“Was that last bit really necessary?” he grumbled.
“Hey, I had a whole ‘I Told You So’ dance choreographed. You’re lucky I’m sparing you that,” I told him. He harrumphed as he helped me climb up into the truck. “It was set to the tune of ‘Single Ladies.’â??”
Caleb narrowed his eyes at me. “You are evil. Pure evil wrapped up in a tiny pixie package.”
“But I was a correct evil pixie package,” I said.
8
From Some Senders, All E-mails Are Red-Flagged
I celebrated the arrival of Merl’s very large check by finding the world’s only Laundromat-slash-Internet café and checked my e-mail while our delicates spun dry. Caleb was meeting with someone about a case that was “too preliminary” to discuss with me. He’d asked me to stick close to the motel, but I needed to check my private e-mail address, and we were running low on clean socks. I was more comfortable with using the café’s computers to check the secure server I used for Red-burn’s e-mails. I hoped that she’d sent some update on my paperwork.
When I typed my information into the log-in fields, my in-box had sprouted new messages like acne on a One Direction fan. Thirty-eight new messages starting weeks before, right around the time I ran out of Emerson’s and saved a werewolf. The subject lines were all the same: “FOUND YOU, BITCH.”
I knocked my foam coffee cup from the table, splashing scalding liquid across my thighs and barely noticing the burn. My stomach pitched, and the floor seemed to tilt underneath me. Hands shaking, I clicked on the first one. It was short and to the point: “I found you, bitch. Did you really think you could run from me? Do you think living in the ass end of nowhere will keep me from finding you? Don’t you worry, I’m on my way. We’ll be seeing each other real soon.”
Glenn was smart enough not to sign it, and the e-mail address was listed as [email protected]/* */. I knew he would be smart enough not to send the message from his home computer. If by some insane chance I went to the cops, they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to his IP address.
Also, I found it a little distressing that there were so many people using gotchubitch as an e-mail user name that Glenn had to add numerals to it.
I highly doubted that this was some unfortunate cyber-coincidence, a misdirected message, or a prank. I was able to fight through the initial wave of panic, the cold flush that spread from my heart to my limbs, making it impossible to move my fingers the way I should. I knew this was coming, I reminded myself. Red-burn had warned me that he was getting closer. This e-mail campaign was most likely a bluff. He was probably thousands of miles away. Because if he’d really found me, he would be here, right now, telling me what an ungrateful cow I was as he dragged me back to Tennessee.
I took a long, lung-stretching breath and forced it out through my nostrils, then clicked on the other messages. The next few e-mails were more conciliatory. He missed me. His life just didn’t work without me. He didn’t know why I’d run away, but he would do anything he could to make our relationship work. Wouldn’t I please contact him so he would stop worrying about me? The messages ran in cycles—angry, demanding, pitiful, lonely, and then back to vicious and threatening.
He couldn’t scare me, I told myself, hoping that eventually, I would believe it. I could fight him now. I could escape before he even realized we were in the same room. I wasn’t the same naive, trusting girl he’d married. He didn’t even know me anymore. I wasn’t that same person. And there was Caleb to consider.
Oh, God, what if he hurt Caleb? I knew it wasn’t likely, what with the whole turns-into-a-giant-apex-predator issue. But even werewolves had to yield to bullets, and Glenn wasn’t above bringing a gun to a werewolf fistfight.
Still in a bit of a daze, I gathered our clean clothes together, folded them on automatic pilot, and shuffled back to the motel. In an unexpected turn of fortune, I was able to walk a city block in a rural small town without being attacked or harassed by hooligan lumberjacks. I tried to appear as calm as possible as I walked back to the motel. It wouldn’t do to let Caleb see me freaked out. He would ask all kinds of questions, and I would give him answers, because my verbal filters were shaky enough that I’d tell him everything. And then . . . I didn’t know what would happen then.
I stopped at the tiny general store and found turkey jerky and some coffee, because Caleb hated the brand that the motel kept on hand. I took several deep breaths outside of our motel-room door and pushed it open with a pleasant smile fixed on my face.
I found Caleb tossing our clothes into our bags. The laptop and the rest of the equipment were already packed and sitting by the door.
“What’s going on?” I asked, dropping the grocery bags by my laptop.
“We’re going home,” he said.
For a terrifying moment, I thought he meant the valley. How was I supposed to explain that? How was I going to casually drop, Oh, by the way, I know your family. And that you’re a supernatural creature. Surprise!
“H-home?” I asked.
“Well, home base. Suds’s bar in Fairbanks, the Suds Bucket. I’ve had a couple of urgent e-mails from him about a few cases, so I need to go check in.”
“Can’t you just call him?” I asked, thinking about this new development. Fairbanks would bring me closer to Anchorage but not close enough. It was still a six-hour drive in good weather.
“Suds is getting anxious about a couple of guys we’re looking for, big payouts and no developments. So I need to go talk shop with him for a while. We’ll leave at first light, stay there with him in a non-motel room, which will be awfully nice. It’ll only take a few days, and then we’ll be on the road to Anchorage, just like I promised.”