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Rory stayed in the wooded area paralleling Highway 1 as it ran up the coast from Portland.
The scent he followed became more distinct out here without so many human smells to sort through. Breathing in a lung full of pine scent beat the city any day.
When he realized he had one chance of catching up with Siofra, he’d made the gamble to shift and give Ferrell his head. His jaguar had been behaving better lately and had a single-minded focus when it came to Siofra.
Ferrell’s ability to scent and move at hyperspeed made it worth the risk of being spotted.
Someone would have to catch Rory’s jaguar to figure out if he really was a jaguar. With Ferrell clocking over seventy miles an hour even with leaping obstacles, the odds were in his favor right now.
If he’d had the time, he’d have gotten another phone and tried to call Scarlett, but time was the one thing he couldn’t spare. He’d made the decision to not waste any of it when he’d reached the grocery store so close behind Siofra that her scent felt warm.
Besides, she’d made a conscious decision to help Siofra get away from him. That hurt.
He’d actually thought Scarlett was someone who could become a trusted friend of his people and the boss would eventually tell her the truth about Gallize shifters.
Not now. The Guardian would never trust her again.
Rory sure as hell wouldn’t.
After finding the slit tires on his ride in the garage, he’d raced in human form to the grocery store, probably looking like a crazy jogger wearing jeans and no shoes.
Siofra and Scarlett had already been there.
But he picked up another scent as soon as he entered, of someone who had been at the bulletin board. A nonhuman scent, but not a shifter. He’d bet it belonged to Baatar.
That person had been here many hours ago, maybe last night.
He’d caught one more scent, which disturbed him the most.
A wolf shifter.
Rory had spun around and rushed out of the store, following all four scents across the parking lot. Scarlett and Siofra’s had ended at a parking space, but the one he had tagged as Baatar’s continued into the woods, turning north up the coast.
Just as the wolf shifter had right behind him.
Even with Ferrell’s speed and agility, Rory’s jaguar had to stop a couple of times to cross the road to follow the scent. That had meant pausing to wait for an opening where cars were far away and would mistake him for some local wild animal.
In a little over two hours, Ferrell ran through woods where Baatar’s scent zigzagged back and forth until a large open space with an old fort came into view.
Rory told Ferrell to not leave the woods, but finish tracking the scent.
His jaguar reached a place where Siofra’s scent entered the woods ... then four other shifter scents converged on Siofra and Baatar.
If not for being shifters, Rory might have thought the others had been there to help.
Ferrell roared and snarled. Kill wolves!
Yep. Two of those scents matched the wolf shifters who had escaped the Black River Pack compound that he and his team raided. The same pack that had captured Siofra.
But the other shifter scents were new.
He had no phone, no vehicle and no idea where they’d taken them.
But he knew who might.
