Grimacing, Scheme stood at the narrow entrance to the cave she had entered from the cover stone and stared out at the misty, wet-looking land beyond.
This wasn’t smog; she could have handled that. She was used to that. This was a wet mist hanging in the air and dampening everything it touched.
And there were birds. No pigeons. She wondered if birds really did crap on your head just for the hell of it. She had heard that—somewhere. At the moment she couldn’t remember exactly where.
The minute she stepped out of the caves’ narrow opening she was going to get her socks irreparably messy. They would never come clean. The damp would ruin her beautiful velvet lounging pajamas, and they really were her favorite pair. Unfortunately, there was nothing more durable in her luggage.
She was in a bona fide freaking forest. It took a few minutes, but she knew the general area she was in, several miles from Tanner’s cabin. Far enough away that the Coyotes there would never know she was in the vicinity. They weren’t in the area of the caves, according to Tanner, just the cabin. And the wind direction was with her. It was flowing from the cabin and back down the valley. And she was headed up.
She knew the direction to take to get to the main road. There were several houses on that road. At the most, she was a half hour’s walk from one of those houses.
There was just no help for it. She was going to have to make herself walk through the forest. Damn, it was a good thing she hadn’t known where she was before she attempted escape. She might well have stayed in Tanner’s comfortable, warm bed.
At that, her lips tilted mockingly. She knew better, escape was too important, but it was really nice to tell herself otherwise. It made taking that first step not so hard. Maybe.
Who was she lying to? She didn’t get along with nature. She liked her cement jungle. D.C. and New York were the perfect habitats for her. Cyrus preferred the Pennsylvania estate, but even it was nicely landscaped, with all the modern conveniences, and set just outside the limits of a very nicely populated city.
She doubted there was a Starbucks within a hundred-mile radius of this place, let alone an actual city. But all she needed was a phone. A half hour at the most and she would have that taken care of.
Okay, she didn’t have a choice. Tanner rarely stayed gone more than a few hours; he would be returning soon. She had to find a phone before he did that.
She peeked out again.
She put her best foot forward and stepped outside the cave, immediately grimacing in distaste as her foot came into contact with the loosely packed leaves, grass and soil layering the ground.
Her sock immediately dampened.
This was not going to be pleasant.
Breathing in deeply, she forced herself out of the protective stone shelter and began to make her way along a faint path leading up.
The caverns were down. No one would surely live in the bottom of this mess, and she couldn’t see a single house. So they had to be up. Simple. She could do this. All she had to do was go up.
Way up, it appeared.
Too bad there wasn’t an elevator.
“Son of a bitch. She found her way out.” Tanner scanned the entrance cave, drawing in Scheme’s scent, her determination, her hesitance, her sorrow. The scents lingered, fresh, strong. “She won’t be far.”
“Yeah, and she’s cutting a path like a sumo wrestler,” Jackal growled. “Get out there and find her while I clear out her tracks. I’m betting every Breed, Council soldier and enforcer has caught her scent by now.”
“Who needs her scent? You can hear the disturbance in the air,” Cabal snapped, fast on Tanner’s heels.
And Jackal was right; she had made a damned mess heading up the mountain. Leaves torn from the ground, grass smeared from where she had slipped, broken branches, leaves and bramble. Cleaning this up and keeping the damned entrance safe from detection was going to be a pain in the f**king ass.
He was going to paddle her ass.
“Get back with Jackal.” He turned on Cabal, snarling as the other man drew up short. “I want you two to draw the Council and enforcers off her scent. I don’t care how you do it.”
He couldn’t bring Cabal and Scheme face-to-face yet. Not yet, not until he could get a handle on the animal screaming inside him.
As Cabal turned back, Tanner lifted his head, scented the air and headed up. A hard smile slashed across his mouth. It would be harder for the Council Breeds or Jonas’s enforcers to catch her scent this way. Once he got her back into the caverns, the entrance cave would be sanitized and her scent dispersed. Even Cabal would be unable to tell where she was if he didn’t know. The cover stone fit the entrance into the caverns perfectly; no scent, no sound, nothing to indicate what lay below the rock would be detected.
He just had to get her back to the caverns.
Traipsing along the faint path up the mountain, Scheme kept her head down and fought to keep her eyes clear. This was a mistake. Everything inside her was screaming that one glaring piece of information back at her.
Leaving Tanner wasn’t the answer. Trusting him. That was the answer. As illogical as it seemed, as suspicious as she had been of him, every particle of her being was crying out for him.