Kitty tipped her head forward so a sheet of hair fell across her face. Through the strands, she took stock of her uncle unnoticed. Kevin pulled out onto the main street in front of school. He drove with the hand closest to her; the other arm rested on the door at the base of the window. The fingers of his hand stretched down and spun the little knob of the window crank ceaselessly. Two-thirds of a turn forward, two-thirds back. Kitty swung her eyes forward. Four cars ahead she saw Joe’s Escort heading up Main Street toward Danby’s Grill. If the situation headed south and she jumped out the door, Kevin wouldn’t be able to make a grab for her, and maybe Joe would check his rearview mirror and see her tumble out onto the pavement.
Or not. Between Jenna and Sam, Joe probably had his hands full getting up the hill without crashing.
Kitty eyed the gray blur speeding past the window. Jumping out at even twenty miles an hour would give her a heck of a road rash and possibly a broken arm or two. Maybe it’d be best if she sat tight long enough to see where this train wreck was going.
Main Street curved left and Joe followed the road toward the restaurant. Kitty wrinkled her nose as Kevin took a shallow right into a dead end. If a town as small as Oakmont could be said to have a wrong side of the tracks, this was it. It was also correspondingly small—a chunk of street about fifty feet long. Kitty rarely came here, not because it was so horrible, but because it offered absolutely nothing to her.
Kevin broke the silence first. “Kathleen, relax. Your twitchiness is making me itch.”
Kitty laughed, short and hard. “I’m making you nervous?”
“I didn’t plan on meeting you today.” Kevin shrugged. “I can only handle so many long-lost relatives at one time.” He cut the car toward the curb and pulled up in front of a little diner.
Kitty stared up at the dusty picture window that fronted the restaurant. Next door the pawn shop advertised a fall sale of twenty percent off guns. The writing had faded over the winter. Someone should let the owner know it was April.
“Is this okay?”
Kitty jumped a little at the sound of his voice.
“They have pretty good coffee and really good grilled cheese. I think the fact they never clean the grill gives it a little added….”
“Charcoal?” Kitty asked drily.
“I was going to say grease,” Kevin replied. “Why don’t you come on in, and we’ll have a chat?”
“You sound a lot better.”
Kevin raised his eyebrows.
She mimicked a cough. “On the phone? I thought you had TB.”
“Ahh. Spring cold, you know.” Kevin thumped a fist on his chest. “I’ve got the constitution of a horse.”
Or some other large animal. Kitty bit her lip. “I don’t think this is a very good idea.”
Her uncle tilted his head in thought then smirked. “Did you ever think about that before you climbed into my car? Your parents would be very unhappy with you if they knew. But you’re here now, and this is a public place. Don’t you think you’re safer inside than out here alone with me?”
There was logic in that. Still Kitty didn’t move.
Her uncle raised a finger. “I know you have a failsafe.” Kitty stiffened and his grin widened. “Because I would have. What time are your friends expecting you and where?”
Kitty refused to admit her fall-back plan had been by accident and only because Joe threw it at her before she could get out of the car. She made a show of checking her watch. Let him think she had her act together. “Danby’s. Thirty minutes.”
Kevin fiddled with his own watch before opening his door. “Then this reunion won’t be nearly as long as both of us would like.”
Thirty minutes was about twenty-eight minutes too long for Kitty.
She followed him up three concrete steps into the diner. A bell attached to the top of the door jangled as he opened it. The air inside chilled Kitty’s skin. She guessed it was always like that—an even chilly temperature summer and winter. Gray speckled linoleum covered the floor and immediately inside the door was a coat rack. Kevin bypassed it, taking a left and heading for the booth pressed up underneath the dusty front window. A guy who couldn’t have been more than twenty shoved his head out the window between the stainless steel counter and the kitchen. He was vaguely familiar; maybe a senior when Kitty was a freshman. She couldn’t remember his name…Tim, Todd, Ted? Something with a T. Maybe.
“The usual,” Kevin called. “And a…” He raised his eyebrows at Kitty in a question.
“I don’t know.” Kitty glanced up at the counter to check the selection. There wasn’t much to choose from. “Some sort of pop. In a can.”
Kevin slid into the bench seat on the far side, which put the wall at his back. It gave him a vantage point from which to see most of Oakmont’s main street. Kitty’s view was of the remaining twenty feet of street and a bedraggled cat digging in the flotsam humped up against a storm drain.
“This is my favorite table. From here, I can see the buses leave the garage up on the hill. That way I know it’s time to go meet Sam.”
Go meet Sam. Like it was his job or something. We’ll get to that, thought Kitty.
The guy from the kitchen brought one creamer and a cup of coffee in a thick-walled white mug. It resembled the ones Phinney had kept in the cabin. Kitty wondered if the old man had lifted a few. The counter had stools with padded seats of faded colors, and the tables were the perfect size for two or three. Phinney would have liked it here.
The server set a red can down on the table in front of Kitty with a bang. “Want a glass?” he asked. “I wiped the top off just in case you didn’t.”
“Do you serve tea?” Beads of sweat rose on the can. At least the soda was colder than the room.
“If you want. Change your mind?” He reached out to take his offering back. He looked at Kitty in a way that made it clear not many people in their age group came here. It also suggested she might have an ally if she needed one.
Kitty smiled sweetly and put a hand out to stop him. “This is fine. I just wondered.”
She could see Phinney here with his cronies or his wife. Maybe even with his son. Thirty years ago, the color of the stools would have been bright and cheery and the counter wiped to a sparkle. Now it looked like not enough people came here to make it worth cleaning.
Kitty turned her attention back to the man across the table. His eyes scanned down the street, then up the hill. After, he did a quick inventory of the diner. Over and over again. He was like some old West gunslinger, constantly checking for danger. Kitty guessed he hadn’t stayed alive as a werewolf for twenty-plus years without being on alert most of the time. Kevin slumped against the back of the seat, but the set of his shoulders and the constant motion of his eyes contradicted the relaxed pose.
His eyes drifted over her on one of his sweeps and came back to rest. His nostrils flared a little, and she watched his chest heave. Leaning forward, Kitty fanned the air with her hand. “Don’t like the way I smell?”
He swallowed hard. “No.”
“Your kind doesn’t smell so good either.” Kitty rolled her eyes a little at the understatement. Every time she smelled the noxious fumes of a werewolf, she nearly tossed her lunch.
“My kind?” Kevin grinned out of one side of his mouth. “What is my kind, Kathleen? Other than your dear uncle?” He raised the coffee cup to his lips.
Dear uncle, my ass.
The bell above the door tinkled. Kevin’s eyes jumped past her and then were back on her in an instant. He must recognize the intruder. Kitty twisted sideways in her half of the booth. The healed wounds on her leg twinged faintly—some phantom memory of pain—and she pulled her leg up on the seat and rubbed at it.
Another man stood near the door. He must have had twenty years on Kevin. His clothes had the same well-worn stains, but he looked rougher, almost gnarly. His skin reminded Kitty of tree bark, and his shaggy grey hair fell across his face. Mr. Hard Traveled took one step in their direction, and Kitty caught the slight shake of her uncle’s head from the corner of her eye. The traveler chose a seat on the other side of the diner.
Kitty swung her leg down and pressed forward into the table. Cocking her head sideways toward the newcomer, she said, “I think we both know what each other is.”
Kevin smirked in response.
“So what do I smell like?” Kitty really wanted to know. Phinney said the wolves could recognize her by elemental things—her smell, her breath, the rhythm of her heart. She wanted to hear it from the source.
He drew a deep breath through his nose, eyes half shut, tasting it. “Death,” he said finally.
Kitty cracked a smile. They carried the same odor—the hunter and the hunted. “Interesting. So do you.” The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she glanced toward the newcomer.
Mr. Hard Traveled met her gaze, lifting his hand in a wave. She guessed it was his version of a wave—he hooked his fingers into claws and made a scratching motion. Almost like….
Kitty scrubbed again at the vague ache in her leg. She shot her thumb over her shoulder toward the guy in the corner. “And him? When did he get into town?”
“He’s my advance man.” Kevin lifted his coffee cup again.
“Advance man? What does that mean?” She reached out and popped the top on the can in front of her. She didn’t want the counter guy worrying she didn’t like his choice and coming over to check on her.
“He knows what I like. I’m not going into a town without some basic amenities. For instance, that hole outside of town. I wouldn’t cower in a dump like that. Besides you left your stink all over it.”
So Joe picking the shreds of cobwebs out of her hair at the Dew Drop Inn and letting them blow in the wind had been good for more than just cleaning her up. “So you’re like the head honcho,” Kitty dropped her voice so the counter kid wouldn’t hear, “wolf guy?”
Kevin checked the view out the window again. “Yeah, I’m pretty alpha.”
Kitty burst out laughing. Who even said stuff like that? She thought of him abandoning the Dew Drop because of her smell. He couldn’t be that tough if he ran from a little stench. “Guess that makes two of us.” She checked over her shoulder. The only other inhabitant of the diner pored over the menu. “Did he come with somebody else?”
“Like who?” Her uncle took a hit of his coffee.
Like the girl who died on my lap while he dug his claws into me? “Somebody who isn’t here anymore?”
Kevin half-frowned and gave his head one shake as if he didn’t understand. As he shifted in the seat, he pulled the Army jacket closed across his chest. Kitty’s glance fell on the name on the fabric tape above the pocket, and her brief moment of bravado vaporized with the eight letters embroidered there. Not that she thought it would say Irish, but she was unprepared for what it did say. Thompson. The only Thompson she knew was the werewolf hunter before Phinney. The one who had started hunting in Oakmont, then passed the job on to Phinney before Phinney handed it off to her. Thompson had retired to Florida twenty-six years before.
“Where’d you get that jacket?” Kitty twisted the tab on the cola until it broke loose. It gave her something to do with her suddenly quivering fingers. It would be stupid to think it was the original coat. Thompson was a common name. Good grief, how many were out there? A hundred thousand? A million?
Kevin put his coffee mug down on the table. “Just picked it up. Owner didn’t need it anymore.” He wrapped a hand around the mug as if to steal its warmth. “I knew I was heading north.”
North. Kitty wrapped her own hand around her soda for the opposite reason. The cold of the can counteracted the sweat on her palm. Thompson’s jacket would have been World War II cut, his son’s from the Vietnam era. She didn’t know the ins and outs of Army uniforms well enough to know if this was a recent design or one from earlier.
She took a sip to steady herself. Kevin’s skin was darker than hers. The dim grey light filtering through the layer of grunge on the window made it hard to tell if it was the diner’s ambience or if Kevin truly had a tan.
“Can you hand me a napkin? This thing is getting the table all wet.” Kitty held out her hand. Please, don’t let it shake.
Kevin half-quirked his eyebrows and jerked his chin toward the black metal napkin dispenser. It was a good six inches closer to Kitty. When she didn’t move, he pulled out a square of folded tissue and handed it to her. His fingers contrasted against hers in a way that had nothing to do with the light.
“Been to Florida lately?” she asked, blotting at the moisture on the table. A sick feeling uncoiled in her stomach.
Kevin smiled. “Is that an obtuse way of asking where I live? Sam’s so much easier than you. He talks. All I have to do is listen.”
Sam. Kitty had almost forgotten the reason she was there—it wasn’t to make witty conversation. She raised her chin in defiance. “You don’t have to tell me how Sam is.”
“Sounds like somebody should tell daddy though. Sounds like he may have forgotten.”
What had Sam been telling him? Or maybe she should ask how much Sam had told him?
A soft beep issued from her uncle’s watch, and he silenced it with an impatient shove of a finger. “That’s your signal. I set the alarm for twenty minutes. You still have time to hike the hill to Danby’s before your friends panic and send out reinforcements.” Kevin waggled his empty coffee cup in the air and the counter man trotted right over.
Kitty had built a little fudge factor into her timing. Waiting until the new coffee had been poured and they were alone again, she said, “What are you doing in Oakmont?”
“Catching up with family. I’ve been on the road a long time.”
Not long enough. “You can’t buy Sam with a round rock and a jackknife.”
“It’s a geode. Very rare in Oakmont. In fact, so rare they are almost never found.”
He salted the quarry.
“Besides,” Kevin went on with a gentle smile. “I’m buying him with my time.”
He could only get to Sam if Sam was available. Kitty could fix that part of the problem easily enough. She stood up and her waiter friend poked his head out the kitchen window again. “You can take that pop with you.”
“Good idea,” she called, bending forward over the table and wrapping her hand around the red can. Kevin’s nostrils flared as she came close and she pressed the advantage, pushing her face close to his. “Keep away from Sam. He’s not yours.”
She spun on her heel. Mr. Hard Traveled caught her eye. “Bye, honey,” he called. “Nice to see you again.”
The skin on her shin itched in response.
She walked to the door, anxious to get away before the vague unease in her stomach amped up to panic. At her arrival in the street the skinny cat scampered away from the gutter into the narrow space between the pawn shop and the next storefront. She started the trudge toward the grill, fighting the urge to look back. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled the cricket out, squeezing it until the metal bit into her palm. Stay calm.
She’d wanted knowledge and now she had it. Kevin was here for Sam, but that wasn’t all. The name on the Army jacket scrolled through her head. Thompson.
If her dear uncle Kevin was hunting the hunters, he was also here for Kitty.