On Fire Read online

  Maybe if I call for help, he thought, but he shook his head. With his luck, some loser from school would hear him whining like a baby. He was resourceful. If he could just get his bearings, he’d be fine.

  However . . .

  He texted Lydia and hoped it went through. Time to mend some fences, or he’d be spending night number two alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Standing beside Allison, Scott smelled smoke. His mind rocketed back to his dream, and his wariness made him edgy. But he tried to remind himself that Beacon Hills Preserve allowed campfires. For all he knew, Jackson had built one to keep warm.

  He looked down at his phone. The Where’s My Phone app appeared to have failed. The map had disappeared.

  “Look,” he said, showing it to Allison.

  “Mine’s gone, too.” She frowned.

  It was complicated looking for someone he couldn’t stand. He knew Allison wasn’t all that fond of Jackson, either. She had really stood up to him at the bowling alley when he kept dissing Scott’s lack of skills.

  Then she’d told me to picture her naked. Like I’m doing right now.

  “Let’s call Lydia and ask her if she’s seeing anything,” Allison said.

  “We’ll have to use my phone,” Scott said. He handed his phone to Allison. Their fingers brushed and tingles shot through his body. They’d been kissing for hours but each time he touched her it was like the first time ever.

  “Yeah, hi, it’s me,” she said, nodding at Scott to let him know she’d made the connection.

  Scott wandered a bit away to give her privacy, or the semblance of it. In reality, he could hear every word of both sides of the conversation. Lydia couldn’t see Jackson on the WMP map anymore, either.

  Then Lydia said, “Allison, hold on. He just texted me!”

  Allison gestured to Scott. “Jackson’s texting her right now.”

  Scott smiled and nodded. Sometimes you could get a text through even if you couldn’t get enough bars for a call.

  “I’m going to kill him,” Lydia said, her voice a mixture of relief and supreme irritation.

  “What did he say?” Allison asked.

  “‘I’m ok. I just needed some space. Home soon.’”

  Scott was suspicious. That sounded too nice to be Jackson. At least the Jackson he knew. But sometimes guys acted different with their girlfriends.

  “What, Lydia?” Allison said. “I didn’t catch all that.”

  Scott heard static. Either his phone or Lydia’s was losing reception. He didn’t suppose it really mattered. Jackson was accounted for, if not exactly found.

  Allison shrugged. “Lydia said he’s in the preserve,” she said. “But the call went fuzzy after that. I can try calling her back.”

  “How’s my battery power?” he asked.

  “Good question.” She looked down at the phone. “Uh-oh. You’re at twenty percent.”

  “No big,” he said. “I can always charge it later. If he’s going home, I guess we might as well, too.” He held his breath waiting for her answer.

  Her eyes sparkled as she pretended to ponder his suggestion, tapping her chin with her fingertips.

  “Well, we can leave the preserve, but if Lydia’s covering for me . . .”

  She trailed off, leaving the rest to his imagination. She smiled up at him, and he grinned back, using that imagination to picture her naked some more. They kissed again. But then his conscience got the better of him.

  “I’d feel better if we left, with that wolf around,” Scott said.

  “I think that wolf liked us,” Allison countered. “But you’re right. We shouldn’t push our luck.” She dimpled. “I’m going to think of this as one of our special spots.”

  Wow, Scott thought. Awesome.

  Then she rose up and kissed him again. She curled her fingers in his hair and he did the same. Her hair was so silky. He didn’t want the kiss to ever end, but he ended it first, and took her hand.

  He smelled the smoke again, a little stronger, and another little fillip of anxiety tapped at him. Not fear per se, just a reminder to be careful.

  They started heading back out of the dense woods in the direction of Allison’s car. He held back a branch for her and she ducked beneath it. Moonlight shimmered on her face.

  And something changed.

  Something in him.

  He felt it, almost like the skin on his face was too tight. His nails were pushing against his fingers.

  I’m changing, he thought. No!

  After she passed, he let go of the branch and dropped to one knee, pretending to tie his shoe. In reality, he was examining his nails. Yes, he’d been right. They were growing, the ends savagely pointed. He pressed the pad of his thumb against his canine tooth. It was definitely longer.

  No. No, stop, he ordered himself. This can’t be happening.

  He peered up through his lashes at Allison’s back. She had just realized he wasn’t right behind her and she was going to turn around. He pulled his head down lower, and forced himself to breathe slowly. His heart was pounding. What the hell was he going to do?

  “Scott?” Allison said.

  “Tying my shoe,” he managed to say. He clenched his jaw, feeling the jut of his wolf teeth against his lips. Get it together.

  “Are you okay?” she asked him.

  His sight went red. He kept his gaze downward; in his line of vision, he saw her boots, glowing scarlet, walking toward him. I didn’t kill with the Alpha, he reminded himself. Even if I change, I won’t hurt her. I swear I won’t.

  But if she saw him . . .

  “Hey?” she said. Her soft voice was like a clanging bell ringing against his eardrums.

  He balled his fists. She was close, so close. Could she see his wolf ears? No. She’d have been screaming by then.

  “Scott?” she said, with a bit more concern, and he watched her start to dip down toward him, bathed in red, so she could look him in the face.

  And his nails retracted. He checked his teeth with his tongue. Normal human teeth. He touched his right ear. Fine.

  He was no longer seeing everything in red. He rose, hoping to God that his eyes weren’t glowing, nearly knocking heads with her. She laughed and brushed his cheek with her lips. He kissed her back, trying to act normal.

  Which I’m not, he thought fiercely. I’m so not normal.

  They laced fingers and walked on. The sun was nearly down. It wasn’t a full moon tonight; at least he had that on his side.

  “I wondered what happened with the detective,” she said. “Poor Lydia. She was so worried about Jackson. He could have at least checked in earlier.”

  “Yeah.” Scott couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t convinced Jackson was okay. The fact that Jackson had texted Lydia but she hadn’t actually heard his voice was still preying on his mind. Besides, he didn’t want to suggest that they keep looking for Jackson. All he wanted to do was get her back to her car and keep her safe.

  From the wild wolf, and the darkness, and himself.

  • • •

  I shouldn’t have texted Lydia that I’m okay, Jackson thought, catching his breath, because I’m not.

  Sure, he’d left Gramm standing in the shadows. He had just turned and split without saying a word, because Jackson Whittemore didn’t explain himself to anyone. Well, except to Lydia, to keep her happy. It was so much easier to deal with Lydia when she was happy. Plus . . . benefits.

  But now he was lost.

  And things still felt wrong.

  He’d thought maybe the detective (if he really was a detective) had brought someone along and he was so mad at himself for taking such a huge risk. It was just . . . the picture of that guy looked so much like him. And not Photoshopped, unless the detective had bothered to make it look like an old picture.

  That’s not so hard, Jackson thought. Any dork in Graphic Design 1A can do it.

  He took the picture out of his pocket and aimed his flashlight at it. His eyes, his jawline. Was it his real
dad?

  Biological father, he corrected himself, but something deep down still said “real.”

  His parents had made him see a therapist a couple of times during the summer before ninth grade. He had been spending every waking hour at lacrosse practice, and had just gotten back from a private camp, in fact, when one evening, just out of the blue, they informed him that the next day he was going to see Dr. Taggert.

  “Just for a checkup,” his dad had said. And his mom had smiled her tight little smile that meant things were not totally okay with her, and given Jackson a reassuring nod. Like he was some kind of moron who wouldn’t notice that they were trying to pass off this “checkup” as something normal.

  He spent the entire night tossing and turning, wondering if he had said or done something that had thrown down a red flag. He went back over every single moment he could remember at camp. He’d hung with a tight bunch of guys he’d known from other camps, and yeah, okay, there were a couple of boys who tried to mix it up with him and he’d set them straight. But that was normal stuff, guy stuff. Guys who played lacrosse were tough—they had to be. Lacrosse was a very aggressive sport. Some people didn’t know that, and sometimes, watching their first lacrosse practice, they got freaked out.

  It had to be something like that.

  But he didn’t say anything about going to see the therapist because part of him didn’t want to hear that they were somehow disappointed in him. He wondered about it all night—he wouldn’t say that he worried; it was just on his mind—and he was feeling draggy when his mom drove him to the office.

  They went into together, everyone sitting in big comfy chairs. There was a wall of framed college degrees and a mountain landscape like you’d see in a hotel room. Jackson’s mom kept saying over and over that everything was fine; they just wanted to make sure that Jackson was ready for high school. It felt like the two adults were speaking in some kind of code that Jackson didn’t know. And that they knew he didn’t know it, and were talking right in front of him about him and weren’t telling him.

  That was the first visit. It turned out they had to go again, so Jackson could talk to Dr. Taggert alone. At first Jackson thought that was a dirty trick, but then he wondered if he’d said or done something wrong during the session with his mom present that had triggered the request for a private chat. It pissed him off because the appointment was scheduled during a scrimmage he and his best friend, Danny, had set up.

  His mom drove him again but this time she stayed in the waiting room, head bowed over her e-reader. Dr. Taggert just chitchatted with him forever, about his hobbies, his interests, his life, which made him even more freaked out, and then the dude started talking about being adopted.

  He told Jackson that different adopted kids felt differently about being adopted. For some, it was a heart-wrenching loss, a wound that never healed. For others, it was no big deal. They were philosophical about it and just moved on with their lives.

  Jackson figured that philosophical was the way to go. Only wimps sat around and cried about their lot in life.

  Others kicked ass on the field.

  “So how do you feel about being adopted, Jackson?” Dr. Taggert had asked him.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Jackson had replied. “I don’t think about it.”

  Dr. Taggert unwrapped a peppermint and popped it into his mouth. He had an amazing amount of candy in his office. Not an apple or a banana in sight.

  “Everybody thinks about it at least a little bit. How about you, Jackson? What are you thinking right now?”

  Jackson had looked blankly at Dr. Taggert, then glanced at his wall of diplomas.

  I’m thinking that I’m not telling some guy who went to a bunch of state schools anything, Jackson had silently replied. Even though it completely weirded him out that his parents had decided to send him to a psychologist, he was insulted that they’d gone so low rent. That was not the Whittemore way. It was the best for the best.

  “I’m fine. I’m good,” Jackson had said aloud.

  “That’s really great,” Dr. Taggert had replied. “That’s great to hear, Jackson. Because . . . sometimes little questions or small concerns that we have about issues in our lives can start to grow. Like weeds. They can manifest in different ways, affecting our grades, athletic performance . . .” He’d looked at Jackson. “You’re on your way to high school, and we want to start out on a level playing field, yes?”

  And in that moment, Jackson realized the reason he was there. His parents wanted to make sure he did well in high school. “Excellence” was the Whittemore family motto, and this was their insurance policy to keep things excellent. What, hadn’t he been performing at capacity? Was there something he’d messed up on? He tried to think through everything he’d done in the last year. Middle school was history, and he’d gotten straight A’s. Captained his youth division summer lacrosse team, hung out, read To Kill a Mockingbird for freshman English, stuff like that.

  He felt a tightening in his stomach, the same way he felt when someone scored a point off him. Or he missed some really obvious answers on a test.

  He was here because his parents didn’t want him to screw up. Which meant that they thought he might screw up. He stared at Dr. Taggert’s big glass bowl of peppermints like it was a crystal ball and he could see his future. There was no way he was going to screw up anything. He had everything under total control.

  He grabbed a peppermint to have something to do. Fill the silence. But he didn’t unwrap it. He just held it in his palm.

  “Jackson?” Dr. Taggert had queried. “Is there something you’d like to say?”

  Why don’t my parents just set three hundred dollars on fire and be done with it? Jackson had thought. If that’s what this is about, it’s a total waste.

  “It’s all good,” he’d told the shrink.

  • • •

  But now, in the woods, he was turned around. The marks on the back of his neck were bugging him and he put his hand over them as he stopped and looked up at the treetops. Who could tell one tree from another?

  Where the hell am I? he thought. He looked down at his superexpensive smartphone and swore at it. All that money and he still had crappy reception. They really needed to get more cell towers in Beacon Hills. Maybe his text hadn’t gone through. If she’d texted back, he hadn’t gotten it.

  Maybe she’s punishing me for not showing last night, he thought. It wasn’t as if it was their first night alone in his house or anything. His parents traveled a lot. And she had done the same thing more than once—found something to pout about and stayed home. It wasn’t as if they had to seize the moment on those few and far occasions when there were moments to be had. They had lots of moments. Great ones, if he did say so himself.

  And I could be home right now having another one, if I hadn’t fallen for this total scam.

  Still, the guy in the picture looked like they could be related. Maybe like father and son.

  Maybe Gramm had had something to sell. Maybe Jackson’s alarm bells had gone off because there was some predator in the forest. Where there was one mountain lion, there could be two.

  Or something else altogether.

  “Hey?” Jackson called. “Gramm?”

  He ran his flashlight over the trees as he waited for an answer. He didn’t know how far he’d run. It felt as if he’d been going in a circle.

  The beam of his light landed on something poking out of a tree trunk. It looked too straight to be a branch.

  He walked up and squinted at it. Long, straight, wood. It was an arrow. Curious, he tried to pull it out. By the looks of the wood around the hole it had made, it was fresh.

  Is someone doing archery around here? he wondered. Then a feeling of icy dread squeezed his heart. Are they shooting at me?

  He heard a funny little screech, like something that should be scary, only wasn’t because it was too soft and high pitched. It was definitely an animal, and it sounded like it was on the ground.

 
Giving the arrow another anxious glance, he ran his flashlight beam over the ground. There was still a little daylight out, but the trees grew so closely together that they blocked out the setting sun. He kept thinking about Gramm, wondering if he’d made a mistake to walk away.

  Yeah, right. First he makes me spend the night in a trashy motel and then he meets me in the middle of a forest. If he’s really got something for me, he knows how to find me. And I’m setting the terms of when and where we meet.

  Gramm had caught Jackson in a weak moment. He hadn’t thought about being adopted in, like, forever. Until Scott McCall started showing some skills on the field and Jackson got to wondering about his own physicality. Did he run as fast as he did because of his father? Was there anything he should know about himself, like did people in his family have trick ankles, or—

  This is a bunch of crap, he thought. Things like that would never have occurred to him, except that his parents took him to see that fraud, Dr. Taggert, back when he was younger and more impressionable.

  He heard the screech again and looked back down at the ground. Bushes ahead and to the right shifted and jittered, and Jackson slowly crept up on them. The screech sounded again.

  “It’s just some stupid animal,” he said aloud, but when he reached the bushes, he cautiously pushed them this way and that, inspecting them.

  Two black eyes peered up at him. Startled, he jumped back slightly, then crept back toward it to have another look. It was a baby bird, a hawk, by its look. It gazed directly up at him and screeched again.

  Jackson studied it. Maybe it had hurt itself and couldn’t fly away. Or it had fallen out of its nest and was too young to fly. Had the mama bird abandoned it?

  Then it opened its wings as far as it could, hemmed in as it was by the bushes. Jackson reached in and broke off some of the branches on the right. The bird made a terrible racket and fluttered its wings.