Let go of my sister!
Megan used her feet to thump on the side of the van. Maybe someone would hear her.
“Be quiet back there!” Hamilton yelled from the driver’s seat.
“What are you doing? Why did you kidnap me? I said I didn’t want to go with you.”
“That psychic, that bitch, she’s going to ruin everything. Rainbow Moonbitch. That whore. She’ll tell everybody what I’ve done. She’ll tell.”
He was talking about what had happened to Portia, Megan realized. The psychic was supposed to reveal Portia’s whereabouts. Hamilton obviously had killed Portia, and he was afraid that the psychic would implicate him.
“I can’t stay here anymore, and I didn’t want to go by myself,” Hamilton said. “I don’t like to be alone. I’ve never liked to be alone. My mother used to leave me alone. For days and days. Alone, alone, alone…”
“Your mother? Betsy Hooper? No way.”
“That’s Hamilton’s mother. I’m not Hamilton. I’m a much better actor than he is.”
Megan was silent for a minute, stunned. When this man came to town and told everyone he was Hamilton, nobody had any reason to question him…but Hamilton had left town thirty years ago. Nobody knew what Hamilton would look like these days, and Hamilton’s mother’s brain was completely addled with dementia.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Stay calm, she told herself. Panicking will only make things worse. “Why did you bring Schuyler with us? I’m the one you want.”
“You’ll be much more Hooperative with your sister here. If you do what I say, she doesn’t get hurt.”
Megan’s heart swelled with dread. Hamilton was crazy. Stone cold crazy. How could she protect her sister if she was trapped in human form? “You don’t need her. She’ll just slow us down. Let her go. Just pull over and leave her by the side of the road.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. And now, you will be quiet. If you care about me you’ll be quiet. You care about me, don’t you?”
I’ll find a way to shift and I’ll rip your throat out with my teeth, Megan thought, choking with fury. Out loud, she said “Yes,” and then fell silent.
Next to her, Schuyler was starting to stir.
*
“We’ll find them,” Loch said grimly. “We’ve got choppers in the air, we’ve got highway patrol and deputies on every road.”
He sat behind his desk, frantically working the phones, the bones on his face rippling as he struggled to stay human.
Tate was pacing angrily back and forth, out of his mind with worry. He should be out searching for his sisters, but where? Hamilton, or rather, the man pretending to be him, had been spotted driving off the grounds of the mansion, but nobody knew which direction he’d gone.
Detectives were at the imposter’s rented house, pulling it apart in a desperate search for clues. They’d already radioed back to report they’d found a safe hidden under the floorboards, and they’d blasted the safe open and found piles of jewelry in there. They suspected that the man pretending to be Hamilton had been switching the real jewelry from the store with fake jewelry.
They were also in communication with police in Los Angeles, who were searching the house Hamilton had lived in out there.
“I’ve got to go,” Tate said desperately, pacing the floor of Loch’s office. His wolf was clawing inside him, and he had to force it back down. He needed to be human now, to think clearly; if he let his beast break free, furious as he was, he’d be a wild, raging monster, likely to turn on whoever was closest to him. “I can’t just sit here on my ass. I’ve got to go find them.”
“I understand, Tate, but we have no idea which direction they went,” Loch said.
The door to the office opened, and Tate jumped, swinging towards it with a growl. His family was in danger. His vision swam red and black, and he wanted to kill.
It was Lainey. He took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm.
She was talking, and he could barely hear a word, with the fear and anger roaring in his head.
“Tate, listen to me. Listen. Are you with me?” she said urgently.
“I’m—yes. What is it?” He tried not to snap at her.
“The Cypress Woods Witch. When she was talking to me in the car, she warned me about the wolf in sheep’s clothing. She said that he wanted to take the lambs deep into the earth, where the river runs red,” Lainey said. “So let’s say this guy is the black sheep, and Megan and Schulyer were the lambs–how would he take them deep into the Earth? What’s the red river?”
Loch leaped to his feet.
“The Crimson Caves!” Tate shouted. “There’s a tunnel system that leads to a river. The mineral deposits make the river look red.”
He and Loch practically made scorch marks as they raced outside to Loch’s car.