Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,77
room to try it on and attempted to listen in on more conversation, but the bell on the shop door tinkled. She assumed the two shoppers had left.
The dress fit and she hurried to the register to pay for it. As Babette rang it up, she told herself to ask questions. That was why she had come.
“So, um,” she said, and she smelled Babette’s fear again. It was contagious. Katelyn didn’t want to do or say the wrong thing around this woman. So much for bold. “Thanks,” she said. She told herself she could come back another time, when she wasn’t so rattled.
“Of course, honey,” Babette said, without looking at her.
Katelyn’s cell rang. She fished it out of her pocket and realized when she saw that the number was blocked that it must be Cordelia or Dom. She grabbed her purchase.
“Thanks,” she said again as she struggled to get out the door.
“We have better reception inside the shop than out there,” Babette said.
“Thanks, it’s okay,” Katelyn replied, practically tripping over a mannequin in her effort to get somewhere private in time to answer the phone.
Once on the street she had to risk it. “Hello?” she answered, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“Kat.” It was Cordelia, sounding tired and upset, nothing like the girl Katelyn had first met. Being away from her family — from all she had ever known — was changing Cordelia. Turning her into someone far weaker. Or is it from being around the Gaudins?
Katelyn wrestled her Subaru’s door open and threw the bag inside, following it quickly. She slammed the door closed.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Have you found the mine yet?”
“No,” she said, hating to admit it. “But I have that sketch of the heart-shaped rock and the waterfall that shows the entrance to the mine. Now I just have to figure out where they are.”
She had only spent a couple of minutes staring at the sketch, just enough to realize they were identical to the elements of the painting that had been stolen from the cabin. She was fairly certain that that, and not the silver or other valuables, had been what the thief had really been after. But who else knew that her grandfather had owned the painting all this time?
“Kat, you have to find it. You have to help me.”
It was too much. Katelyn was sick of other people telling her what she had to do. Everyone was threatening her, telling her the way she had to act, the things she had to say. And all the while something was stalking her and she still had no idea who it was that had shot at her.
“You know, I’m doing my best, but I don’t understand what exactly the urgency is. I mean, you like Dom. You told me so. Do you hate him now? Has he hurt you?”
Cordelia sighed. “You don’t understand. How could you? This world is so new to you. Of course I still like Dom — I wouldn’t have called him if I didn’t. Even if it meant dying on my own. But this is so messed up. I don’t want to be cut off from my family, from my father and everyone I’ve ever known. Every minute I’m here I feel like a traitor. And that’s how everyone thinks of me. I’m going to have to declare loyalty, and I — I don’t know if I can do that.” She said the last words in a whisper.
“Didn’t you tell me your dad used to be into you marrying him?”
“If we formally allied the packs,” Cordelia said. “If I was alpha of our pack, like Dom is the alpha of his. Then it would have been sort of like one pack. But obviously, that’s not the case.”
“I’m doing everything I can,” Katelyn said, hearing her own misery.
“You need to do more and you need to do it soon. So, um, Dom . . . Dom wants you to spy on my family for him.”
Katelyn’s stomach did a flip. “No way,” she said.
“I know you want to be loyal—”
“This has nothing to do with loyalty. This is purely about self-preservation. They don’t trust me and they threaten to kill me every other day. Really don’t need to give them a reason.”
“You need to do this for me,” Cordelia said. “That’s reason enough.” Suddenly she sounded more like the old Cordelia — surer of herself, clear about what she wanted. My — our — pack is in trouble. Our family.”