I shook my head. Rollerblades? Who was this woman?
“Okay, I’ll go after her. You swing by the Taphouse. See if anyone shows up.” I hung up and summoned Regina. “We need to go. Now.”
She locked the door behind us. “What’s up?”
I pulled my keys from my pocket as we walked to the truck. “Caine seems to be going for her car. We need to make sure it’s not fixed for a while, not until the she-wolf shows up again.”
“Can’t you send someone else? That was an important meeting you just shut down.”
The Upper Peninsula assholes were the least of my worries, and I growled as I unlocked the F-250. “This is important. Stopping the abductions is important. Caine’s attackers probably know that you and I are in town. Word travels fast in places like this. I don’t want anyone else on our team breaking cover.”
We loaded up and rumbled out of the parking lot. My palms itched. Something told me the woman was going to be a problem.
Once we turned onto the county road, we overtook her quickly. Between our truck and her bright blue rollerblades, it was no contest. Still, I stared in fascination as we approached. She bent low and thrust her long, lean legs side to side as she glided down the road with a pair of white sneakers slung over her shoulder. Her motions were so fluid and elegant, it was like a dance, and the way her ass flexed beneath those cut-off shorts stoked a heat deep within me.
I slowed as we drove around her. For safety.
Regina glared at the woman as we passed. “That wolf killer should be standing trial before pack law, not skating around town.”
Disgust tinged her words, but I understood. Savannah had killed a pack member. I’d kicked Dane out, but once pack, always pack. Self-defense or not, there needed to be some sort of justice for his family.
Regina’s eyes seemed to say, Your sister wouldn’t have hesitated to drag Savannah in by her long red hair. Stephanie had believed in the Old Ways, just as plenty of the pack did.
She would have been the alpha one day.
I tightened my grip on the wheel. “The seer told me the woman will lead us to answers. We need her for now, and we’ll protect her until we don’t.”
Regina stiffened. “You shouldn’t have gone to that fortune teller. Divination is one of the dark arts.”
I said nothing.
“Only the moon-mother knows the future,” Regina pressed. “You should have at least warned me.”
Our pack forbid the perverse practices of the occult. My sister would never have gone to a seer. But Stephanie was dead, I was in charge, and we were desperate.
Fuck the old rules.
“The seer got us this far,” I muttered.
She snorted. “And what, are you going to start breaking all our taboos? Will you try scrying next?”
It was impossible for our kind to use that kind of magic, but I gave her a warning growl. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect the pack.”
Regret tinged her eyes. “Which is why I worry, Jaxson. There will be a hidden cost. The fates take as much as they give.”
“I know.”
While I hadn’t told Regina, the seer had already warned me. If you find the woman, you will find the answers you seek. But those answers will destroy you.
That didn’t matter—the pack did, and I’d deal with my own destruction when the time came. For now, I needed to end this madness.
Regina checked her side mirror and crossed her arms. “So, what are we going to do with the woman, then? Just sit around and watch her skate?”
That would be a good view.
Regina would smell my arousal at that thought, so I growled and took control of the conversation. “If you want to string her up for what she did to Dane, you can bet that his she-wolf partner will want to rip Caine to shreds.”
“It’s a good thing those two abductors weren’t a mated pair.”