Page 92 of The Tracker's Secret
I ran outside, bursting through the door, pain rippling across my wounded back. I glanced left and right but there was no sign of Blake. How?! There was no way he could have left on his own. Someone had to have helped him escape. There had to have been another person in the warehouse, and they had cowardly hidden until the end.
Police cars came tearing down the road. I threw the gun away as they skidded to a stop, their tires screeching, sending the smell of burnt rubber into the air.
Cops threw doors open, jumped out, and aimed their guns at the disheveled, crazy-looking woman wearing nothing but torn strips of clothes. With a sigh, I put my hands up, then had to lower them a little as the motion exposed my left boob and one of the cops nearly spilled his eyeballs onto the parking lot.
Yep, I definitely needed to get one of those rings.
***
IWAS WRAPPED IN Ablanket, huddled tightly against the corner in Tom’s office. To my surprise, the wounds on my back had healed before anyone had time to notice I needed medical attention. I’d told everyone that the blood had been Blake’s, not mine. They seemed to have bought it, though explaining the state of my clothes was a little harder. The way they had ripped and torn wasn’t exactly consistent with a werewolf attack, but they were too occupied by the huge stash of rhabo to worry about anything else.
Tom stomped into the office and closed the door behind him. He lowered the blinds on the large windows that fronted his desk, then collapsed in his chair with a heavy sigh.
“I’m too old for this,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Two AM, Toni? And on a Saturday? Couldn’t you have picked a better time?”
I gave him a smile that felt like a grimace.
He leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk. “You feeling all right, kiddo?”
I nodded. “I just can’t figure out how Blake got away.”
Tom made a sound in the back of his throat and regarded me with a frown. I had a feeling he was doubtful about my story. It sounded far fetched, for sure.
“Blakeisalive,” I said for thenthtime.
“I want to believe you, but...”
“He almost killed Jake, Tom. Ask him.”
“We’ll get a statement as soon as he’s able to talk.”
I straightened my seat. “You have to believe me.”
“Well, I’m trying. I really am. But you gotta put yourself in my place. First, it was Damien Ward and now it’s Blake, the walking dead.”
“You’re forgetting tons of crates full of rhabo.” I gave him a raised eyebrow. He couldn’t deny that. Jake and Ihadjust handed his department a huge win.
“Can’t argue with that,” he said. “But maybe if you hadn’t killed the witnesses...”
I swallowed, thinking of the ease with which I’d killed them, fearing my wolf’s ruthlessness. But this wasn’t the time to think about that.
“There were two guards on the roof. They’re not dead.” They hadn’t found their bodies, which meant they had probably awakened and run off. They might even have been the ones who helped Blake escape.
“Maybe,” Tom said, “but they’re nowhere to be found.”
A light bulb came on inside my head. “There were cameras. Maybe there are recordings that show people going in and out of the warehouse.”
“Yeah, we checked those but there were no recordings. Digital forensics is checking the hard drive to see if they can recover something.”
Had the cameras only been for show? Or maybe whoever had helped Blake had enough time to also delete the surveillance files.
“You should go home, kid. Get some rest.”
I nodded, feeling like all our efforts had been for nothing. “Rosalina will be here soon.”
After giving a statement, I’d called her to let her know I was all right, and she had insisted on coming here to make sure.
I met Tom’s dark eyes over the desk. “Are you sure Jake is all right?”
