Page 44 of Fortune's Ashes
‘I think so.’ I stepped back, moving out of the path of a trundling lorry, then I spotted tracks along the grassy verge at the bottom of the hill we were standing on. I pointed down. ‘There’s something there.’
We nipped across the road and walked downhill. I saw one short skid mark beside a longer, deeper scratch on the surface of the road. I couldn’t work out what had caused that mark.
I narrowed my eyes and glanced towards the verge. Although most of the debris had been cleared away, there were a few remnants of the crash in the grass by the side of the road. I noted some shards of smashed glass and a broken wing mirror that had fallen into a clump of bushes and been missed by the police. I swivelled around, gazing at the slope we’d just jogged down.
‘They would have been driving towards this spot,’ I said, as much to myself as to Lukas. ‘Down the hill so they could join the main road that leads into the city centre.’ My gaze followed the flattened grass. ‘Another vehicle could have nudged them onto the verge so that they crashed.’ I looked more closely. ‘But Grace would have taken an evasive manoeuvre. The road is reasonably quiet now, and it would have been even quieter earlier. There are plenty of lampposts around so it wouldn’t have been pitch black.’
‘Were there any witnesses?’
‘No. Apparently someone in one of the houses nearby heard the crash and looked out of their window. They called 999.’
‘So there wasn’t much of a delay before the emergency services arrived,’ Lukas said. ‘There wouldn’t have been much time for another vehicle to leave the scene.’
‘No.’ I knelt down and examined the marks in the scrub-like vegetation. I was certainly no crash-scene expert, but it looked as if the car had flipped. Grace and Fred would have had to be moving at an incredible speed in a residential zone for that to happen.
It was possible that somebody had phoned one of them and told them about the fire. Grace could have panicked, put his foot down then lost control, but it seemed unlikely. I was all but certain that he would have been driving.
I pulled a face. It didn’t make sense. There wasn’t any evidence that anyone else had been involved. Maybe it was merely human error.
‘What about the car?’ Lukas asked. ‘Can we see it? Check the damage for ourselves?’
I nodded. ‘That’s our next stop.’ I gave him a wan smile. ‘You might not like the police, Lukas, but you would have made a great detective.’
‘I’ve learned from the best, D’Artagnan.’ His tone was light but his expression was sombre. I recognised the emotion because I felt the same way – tenfold.
* * *
At Lukas’s insistence,we stopped at a shop to pick up some breakfast on our way to the car pound. I was still slowly chewing the last of a banana when we parked outside and telling myself that, even if the fruit tasted like ash in my mouth, I had to eat and keep my strength up for all our sakes.
As soon as I turned the key and Tallulah’s engine fell silent, Lukas tilted his head and his brow furrowed. ‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Something’s wrong,’ he muttered.
I stiffened. Before I could speak, he had opened the passenger door and was loping towards the entrance of the pound. My hearing wasn’t as good as Lukas’s, but when I got out to follow him I heard what had raised his hackles. Beyond the high walls of the police pound, there was the definite sound of growling. Werewolf growling.
Hissing under my breath, I ran after Lukas. The gates were firmly closed and the barbed wire strung across the top of them wouldn’t make them an easy climb. It was too early for the entrance to be manned, so there was no chance of persuading someone to let us in.
I cursed and ran for the concrete wall, throwing myself upward until my fingertips curled around the top edge. There was no barbed wire there; the police probably assumed that the walls were too high for anyone to try and climb over them. They would be too high for anyone human, but it wasn’t difficult for a supe.
I hauled myself up and glanced at the CCTV camera that most definitely had me in view. There was nothing I could do about it now. I turned my head away before dropping down to the ground on the other side. Seconds later, Lukas joined me. ‘If you’re going to say that I shouldn’t be doing things like this when I’m pregnant,’ I began.
He held up his hands. ‘I wouldn’t dare. I trust you, remember? You know your limits.’
I sniffed, slightly mollified. Then there was another long growl. It didn’t sound as menacing as before but it was still worrying – and there was no doubt now that it came from a wolf.
Lukas and I exchanged looks then ran towards the noise.
Buffy had semi-transformed; only her head and her hands were in werewolf form. Her pointed, furry ears were flat against her skull, her sharp teeth were bared and her quivering lips were pulled back to display their full fangy glory. Her claws were outstretched as if she were prepared to pounce and rip out a throat at a moment’s notice.
I relaxed slightly. Despite her terrifying appearance, she was still in control of herself. This was a show of intimidation rather than a genuine threat to maim or kill. At that moment, I’d have taken any silver linings I could find. But I still shouted; of course I shouted. ‘Buffy!’
Her jaws snapped and the fur around her face melted away. Her muzzle disappeared so she could answer me with decipherable speech. ‘Hi, Emma!’ she replied cheerfully. She grinned. ‘You didn’t think you could abandon me that easily, did you?’
I hadn’t given it much thought. Buffy was low on my list of important shit to think about.Verylow. ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded through gritted teeth.
Her cheeriness didn’t subside. ‘Enough people arrived to guard my Fred and the other one, Owen Whatsisface, so I left them to it and came here.’ She nodded at the remains of Grace’s car. ‘Alfie is the only one in the building, so it’s just as well that I did. He required a little persuasion to do what we need.’
We?I grimaced as I spotted the pair of feet beneath the mangled vehicle in front of us that was barely recognisable as Grace’s car. Pain seared through me once again at what had happened to both of my colleagues.
