Page 53 of Cold Foot Revenge
“Gar—”
“I know you told Tawk not to tell me what you were doing. I asked him, and he told me he can’t talk to me about you, and that’s a secret, right? You’re going through something, and you can’t lean on me? You can lean on Tawk though?”
“Garret,” Dylan gritted out.
“It’s me! It’s me, Dylan. I’m here, and I know I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t figure out what it is.”
“I found your Maker.”
Silence filled the line.
Dylan hooked his hand on his hip and turned just in time to see Roxy disappearing into the bathroom to give him space.
“What did you say?” Garret whispered.
Dylan inhaled deeply and stared up at the ceiling, praying that he could find the right words to make Garret understand he hadn’t done a single thing wrong. “I found your Maker.”
Chapter Thirteen
The soft click of the door sounded so loud in the quiet of the room.
Dylan had just uttered the words to his brother Garret. “I found your Maker.”
She’d always wished for a sibling. She’d always wished for the closeness that could come with growing up with someone who completely understood how she’d been built.
Her shifter hearing was something else. She was a coyote. She could hear a pin drop across the street if she focused. At first, the oversensitive hearing had been overwhelming, and she hadn’t been able to focus on anything. It was just chaos to her senses, and no control, but now? She’d learned how to tune most things out. But here in this small motel room, she could hear the frustration in his brother’s voice on the other line. She’d been able to hear the hesitation in Dylan’s. She’d heard the somberness when he’d uttered those words, “I found your Maker.”
She’d been through her own saga figuring out what had happened to her, and how her coyote had come to be, but she’d figured it all out in the first year. Garret was years into this and had been forced to move forward with no answers. And while she understood Dylan’s need to hunt down what had really happened, she felt sad for Garret because right now, his world would be turning on its axis.
She pressed her palm on the door and did something she hadn’t done since she was a kid, and her grandma had taken her to Sunday school, so that perhaps she wouldn’t turn out like her drug addict mother. She closed her eyes and prayed.Please let Dylan find the right way to tell him. Let him settle his brother’sheart. Let him open a window for Garret to really move on. Let Dylan find the perfect words so he can move on too. Let them both be okay after the dust settles.
Here in the silence of the bathroom, she could still hear both sides of the conversation.
Dylan repeated, “I found your Maker.”
“I told you I didn’t want to know.”
“I have to know. I had to know who did this to you. I had to know for me.”
Silence filled the room, and she turned and pressed her back against the door as she slid down and sat on the cold tile. She didn’t know Garret, but a strange little part of her wished she could give him a hug and tell him it was going to be okay.
“What’s he like?” Garret asked.
She could hear Dylan swallow audibly. “He’s probably a guy in a lab. Or hell, maybe he was one of the experiments they were doing in some place like Cold Foot Prison. He’s just a number on a vial. One-zero-one-zero. He won’t even know you exist. He is the Maker of many.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand,” Garret said, and she could hear the heartache and confusion in his voice. “He didn’t leave me on purpose?”
Dylan murmured a curse word, and she could hear the bed squeak under his weight. She imagined him running his hand down his beard, like he did when he was deep in thought. “There is a Crew here, and they wanted me in that Crew. I don’t know why. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to find that part out, but they injected you with a Turn dose instead of me that night. Gar, I wish it had happened to me instead. I wish they hadn’t fucked it up.”
“I was a mistake?”
Roxy drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them tightly. God, she knew this feeling.
“Never a mistake. They just gave the wrong brother the dose. They did evil, and you paid for it.”
“So did you,” Garret said, and his voice cracked with emotion. “We both paid for what they did. Who was it?”
“The Alpha is named Grave. He gave the order. His brother gave the dose to you. His name is Leech.”
