Page 79 of Quest of the Wolf

It hadn’t occurred to me to look that up before. Of course, I hadn’t imagined Austin would be indangerbefore. If those bastards did something to my son and his friends because I’d had the audacity to take back artifacts they’d stolen fromme, I would kill them. I’d turn wolf, go completely savage, and kill them without a single regret.

I turned left onto the road heading toward Silver Lake.

“Nothing on Google or Facebook that I can find.” Jasmine shrugged. “But something like that might not list the address of the prize. Even if you book a vacation rental yourself, you don’t usually get that information until you’ve paid.”

“Yeah,” I said though a niggling feeling in my gut made me wonder if this had been set up as a trap from the beginning.

Radomir knew where I lived and where my mother lived. Given his fondness for spying on my family, it wasn’t hard to imagine he’d learned Austin was home for the holidays. I might have found it suspicious if my son had won a contest out of nowhere, especially if he hadn’t entered anything, but his friend, Oakley? From what I remembered of the kid, he wasn’t a genius. I was fairly certain he’d gone to college on a sports scholarship. The thought that Radomir had researched my family so thoroughly that he’d learned about Austin’s friends and arranged all this disturbed me greatly.

“Stalker creep,” I muttered.

“What?” Jasmine lowered her phone.

“Just a hunch.”

I glanced at my phone still mounted to the dash next to Bolin’s. Duncan’s dot had stopped moving near the southern bank of Silver Lake. I imagined him hoisting Austin over his shoulder and taking him to Radomir.

Frustrated, I grabbed my phone again. We hit a slick spot, and the van swerved before I could get it back under control. Something rolled out from under the passenger seat, and Jasmine looked down.

“Do you want me to try calling him again?” Bolin crept up to our seats and reached for my phone, looking like he would snatch it from my grip whether I agreed or not.

For the safety of my passengers, I put my hand back on the wheel. “Reply to his text, will you? Tell him… we slid off the road and blew a tire in the snow, but we’ll be there in an hour.”

“I hope that’s a ploy in case his captors are monitoring his phone,” Bolin said, “and not a prediction.”

“Let’s hope.” I waved at the map.

We were five minutes from the address, but, as I’d noted,Duncan had stopped to the south of it. That looked like a park, all forested with no houses nearby. If he’d dragged Austin in that direction, and Radomir was waiting there…

Should I go there first?

Jasmine patted around at her feet and lifted whatever had rolled out and bumped her. “You brought salami for the incursion?”

“I brought a couple in case I needed to bribe family members to let me in to see Mom.” I was surprised Emilio hadn’t slipped in and snatched the salamis while we’d been inside.

“I guess it’s good that we’ll have rations if we slide off the road and get stuck in a snowbank.” Jasmine lowered the meat log to her lap. “Better than having to eat each other to keep from starving.”

Bolin laughed. Nervously?

Jasmine looked back at him.

“I’d think that more of a joke if I didn’t know…” He glanced at me. “Things.”

“Are you missing the days when you didn’t believe in werewolves?” I asked.

“A little bit, yes.”

A plow passed us coming from the other direction, but it hadn’t scraped our side of the road yet. I bit my lip as we approached the turn for the park, tempted to drive in and search for Duncan, but my phone rang.

I reached back and snatched it from Bolin’s grip. Austin’s name was on it.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

Austin hesitated. I imagined someone with a gun pressed to his head.

“I’m being asked to request that you make sure to bring a magical case and medallion.” His words came out calmly, but he spoke quickly. He wasworried and in trouble.

“Your kidnappers should have made that requestbeforewe started driving to that address,” I said.

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