Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,29

She could say that she had lost something valuable. Something belonging to my best friend. With all the rumors going around about Cordelia and their history teacher, no one would blame Katelyn for trying to learn the truth.

She heard the classroom door open. Every muscle in her body tensed. Then there was silence. Her hearing snapped into overdrive and she heard a voice murmur, “Hello? Huh. Weird.”

Then the door closed.

Mike Wright. A wave of fury shot through her, and she was stunned by how fierce it was. It was like somehow he embodied everything that was wrong about her life, this place. She was sure all the kids at her old school that had seen therapists on a regular basis would know a name for it.

Breathe.

She shut her eyes and clamped her jaw. Her chest heaved. Very slowly, her emotions ebbed. She waited a few seconds to make sure she was in control of herself, then reached up and eased the file drawer shut. Then she snaked back through the caution tape, and tiptoed through her history classroom.

As carefully as a tightrope walker, she opened the door and peered into the hall. Seeing Mike and one of his redneck homies messing around with Trick’s locker, she almost took off along the hall after them. She looked down and away, overcome again with the desire to hurt Mike.

Permanently.

Mike and the other boy started snickering, then went trotting on down the hall. Katelyn hurried over to Trick’s locker. From what she could tell, they had used lipstick to write the F-bomb and the worst homophobic insult for “gay” Katelyn had ever heard. What a moron! In Santa Monica, Mike and his minion would have been expelled for what he’d just done. But here?

Katelyn looked around for something to clean off Trick’s locker. She finally grabbed some paper towels from the girls’ bathroom and set to work, smearing the lipstick until it was illegible. If she had her way, Trick would never see what Mike had done. Mike was a bully and a moron and the stereotype of every prejudice she had held about the south. He was mean and stupid. And he seemed to be getting away with more than his share of nasty pranks.

I could just kill him, she thought.

She finished, tossed the paper towels, then snuck back outside. She was halfway across the parking lot, which now had five cars in it, including one painted like the Confederate flag, when her phone rang. Startled, she glanced down at the number. She didn’t recognize it, but she answered anyway.

“Are you alone, cher?” said the voice on the phone, deep and masculine, touched with a lilt of Louisiana Cajun.

Katelyn was so startled she almost dropped the phone. It was Dominic Gaudin.

“Yes. Hello. Do you know what’s happened?” she said urgently, hunching over the phone as if to muffle their conversation. It dawned on her that someone might be watching — someone not connected with her high school. A pack member, reporting her every move to Lee Fenner. She pushed that to the back of her mind. So what? she thought resentfully, gazing around.

“Oui. She has called me,” he said. “I’m coming for her.”

Katelyn caught her breath. “Where is she?”

“She’s alone, and frightened,” he said. “She has no one.”

“Me,” Katelyn said firmly. She searched the lot. And then she felt a fillip of anger. She could see Mike Wright through the windshield of the Confederate flag car. He was smoking a cigarette and, from the way he was nodding his head, listening to head banger music. He hadn’t noticed her. “She has me.”

“She’s not sure of that. She knows that her father has threatened to kill anyone who helps her.”

Katelyn gave her head a shake. “I’ll help her.” She started to walk in Mike’s direction and realized that was a bad idea. So she slipped into the shadows of the trees, making her way toward her parked car.

“Or maybe you’ll tell them where she is, if I tell you. To get in good with your new family,” Dom said.

She was speechless. “They are not my family.”

“They are who you run with.”

“No way. They are who I run from.” She laughed bitterly.

“Ah,” he said. “Then you’ll come with her, when I come for her?”

Her stomach did a somersault and she caught herself giving another quick shake of her head before she remembered he couldn’t see her. Part of her raced ahead to how wonderful it would be to be free of insane Lee Fenner