He read faster. The girl had been care-flighted to Anchorage. The doctors were hopeful for her to survive, but as of last week, she was still in the ICU, listed in critical condition. When the hell had Clayton dropped this packet off? Ian searched for a date, but all of the printed numbers in the top left corner of each page were a week old. Cole was probably in the wind by now and would be harder to track.
Ian huffed an angry sigh and relaxed into the seat cushion as he stared out the window, his thoughts racing. A little girl. The food in his stomach turned to a block of cement. A little innocent girl, and Cole went after her. Why? Because that was what McCalls did. They should’ve done the world a favor and let their line die off generations ago, but no, they just kept procreating with unknowing humans. All the pups were males because female offspring didn’t live past childbirth, and all male McCalls grew up just as crazy as their ancestors. There was poison in their bloodline, and now the present-day pack was apparently old enough to start letting the madness in.
A week. What if Cole had gone after Elyse while Clayton was waiting for Ian to wake up? He swallowed hard. Elyse Abram. Best to keep her name formal in his mind since his heart started pounding every time he thought of her. It was dangerous to imagine himself attached to anyone. He had a better moral compass than to pass his bear shifter shit onto an innocent.
He needed to get it together. Eat, find a hotel, and scrub himself clean until he felt like a human again, charge his long-dead cell phone, check and prep his plane, and head to Galena to track down that psycho sonofabitch that would split a woman’s lip and harm a little girl just as easily as armed trappers.
Cole McCall had hell coming for him, and the damning fire that was about to engulf him had a name.
Ian Silver’s hunt started now.
Chapter Two
Elyse wiped sweat from her brow and pulled another bunch of rotten potatoes from the wooden box in the root cellar. She was so desperately low on food that each one felt like a slash to her stomach. Each represented another meal she wouldn’t eat because stupid Cole had stolen half her danged vegetables and most of their meat as well, just to pilfer off to his no-account brothers. She wasn’t totally off the grid, but there was no money for red meat. Red meat was hunted during the warm season and rationed, and if someone in the community needed help, people helped, knowing they would do the same for them if they could. But the way the McCalls did things was stealing. They never repaid anyone, and when she and Cole had started dating, the mooching had begun early. And the last couple months, when Cole was out drinking and kicking up some awful rumors with a couple of townie girls, his two brothers, Miller and Lincoln, had become aggressive with their freeloading.
She’d fought it, but Cole never defended her from their treatment and yelled at her for resisting his brothers. “They’re family,” he said, as if that gave them an excuse to abuse her hard work. Well, they were no relation to her. She’d worked her ass off to gather enough food to last the winter for her and Cole, and he’d just thrown it away, as if his no-good brothers were more important than her. So many red flags she’d ignored because she’d loved him. Or thought she did, but thinking back, perhaps she was just so desperate not to be alone through the long winters that she mistook companionship for love. Being with someone and still feeling completely alone was the worst feeling in the world.
She would never, ever make that mistake again. Love, or whatever amounted to love, was off the table from here on. Love had starved her and hurt her heart, and he’d been able to walk away so easily. From day one, she’d told him what she was and wasn’t willing to put up with, but he’d broken every rule, one by one, as if he was testing her to see how long until she cracked. Fucker. Elyse sniffled and wiped her eyes. She’d let a man ruin her. Uncle Jim would be rolling over in his grave if he saw how weak she’d been with Cole. He would’ve never given her this place in his will if he’d known how pathetic she would turn out. Well, no more!