barn. She slowed her pace sensing the air for any clue.
She walked around the building without seeing anything. The area throbbed with insect noises, but she didn’t find Holly. Elise halted by the sliding door. Where could Holly be hiding? Then she remembered.
She slid the door back and stepped into the dim barn. It smelled of hay and manure. Johnny’s rusty old truck sat parked in front of the door. One glance showed her Holly sitting in the cab.
Holly sat behind the steering wheel, staring through the windshield. Her eyes searched the night beyond the open door. She didn’t change her position to acknowledge Elise’s presence or even to indicate she realized that the door was open.
Elise measured her friend with unerring accuracy. The friends always left the truck keys in the ignition. If Holly wanted to drive away, all she had to do was turn the motor.
She wouldn’t do that, though. She must have been sitting here for hours—probably ever since she left the house. Those idiots never once thought to come and look for her.
She wouldn’t leave. If she was going to leave, she would have done it long ago. She could have been halfway to Newfoundland by now if she really wanted to getaway.
Elise sauntered around the truck, cracked the passenger door, and slid into the seat. She automatically pulled out the seatbelt and snapped it into the clip. “Where are we going? You might want to fill ‘er up on your way through Silver Spruce. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have more than a quarter tank of gas left after that trip to Crooked Creek.”
Holly lowered her eyes to the dashboard. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Why not—so you can go alone? I don’t believe that for a second, Holly. You don’t want to leave. You would be consigning Wyatt and Garret to a lifetime of enslavement by the Fair Dryad if you did that. You don’t want that.”
“She won’t bother them,” Holly murmured. “You heard what Edwina said. It’s the child she wants. She’ll leave them alone and come after me. I can lead her away from them.”
“What makes you so sure?” Elise countered. “She doesn’t think like a person, and we’ve seen that she goes after the fathers first. Your only chance is to find her and deal with her head-on.”
Holly shook her hair out of her eyes and returned to staring through the windshield. “I don’t think so. They’ll be better off without me.”
Elise gasped at her last straw. “Will Loch and Johnny and Trevor and Keller be better off without you, too? Let’s say you’re right, and you could lead the Dryad away from Garret and Wyatt. What about the rest of them? Are you just gonna let them rot under the water while you go on the run? They don’t deserve that.”
“Neither do I,” Holly breathed. “I never signed up for this.”
Elise whipped around and gaped at her friend. A silver lining of starlight streamed through the barn door. It lit up the faintest outline of Holly’s profile. Elise heard in those few words all the unspoken angst Holly was too strong to say out loud.
Elise faced the front and smashed her hands between her knees. “No, you didn’t. You don’t deserve this, either, and neither does your baby.”
“Isn’t it bad enough,” Holly blurted out, “that I have to deal with all this maiden bullshit? Isn’t it bad enough I have to be this fucking savior to all shifter kind and bring peace to all these warring clans? That on its own is hardly tolerable. Now I’m a fucking bear shifter who’s impervious to bullets. What the fuck next?”
Before she could think to stop herself, Elise thrust out her hand and squeezed Holly’s knee. “At least you don’t have to worry about some wack-job like Audrey coming after you and trying to shoot you. You really showed her today.”
“I wish she had killed me,” Holly muttered. “I really wish she had. Then maybe…”
Elise’s heart wrenched. She heard all the misery and anguish in those words. What could she say to her friend to reach her in her darkest hour?
Elise took a deep breath. Without removing her hand from Holly’s leg, she gazed into the night and called up the one memory she never let herself remember. “When my dad took my shifter power, I wanted to die. I thought about killing myself hundreds of times.”
Now it was Holly’s turn to swivel around. She stared at Elise in the dark. “You did? For real?”