Trust Page 2

  Alder looked concerned for her, and in a small, remote corner of her conscience, she felt a pang of guilt.

  “It must be difficult, being on your own out here.”

  Offhandedly, she said, “I’m okay with being alone.”

  He kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear stick. They were strong hands, calloused, with light scarring that contrasted with his bronze skin. She tried to imagine what kind of work he would do to have hands like that. Somehow, she couldn’t picture a man like Alder doing manual labor.

  “You don’t ask a lot of questions,” he remarked.

  “I don’t like to be lied to.”

  A wry smile played on his lips. “You think I would lie to you?”

  “Everyone lies. It would be a much scarier world if we couldn’t.”

  “Hn,” was all he said, and she was okay with that.

  * * *

  They were greeted with unusually heavy traffic on the highway, but Alder didn’t mind. It was more time he could spend with the human.

  Her name was Taylor. It was not a name he was familiar with, certainly not a name one would give a wolf, but it was different and he decided that he liked it.

  It was not the only thing Alder liked about her.

  He liked the color of her hair, somewhere between red and orange, and he liked the way she tucked it behind her ear when she was embarrassed. He liked her lips, smooth, pink, and slightly swollen from the way she nibbled at them when there was a lull in their conversation. He liked her nose, the way it crinkled just before she smiled and the way it flared when she took in his scent.

  More than anything, Alder liked the way she dressed. Few females wore clothing where he lived, at least not on any regular basis. Clothing was hot in the spring and summertime, and at all times of the year it was restrictive and made shifting from human to wolf a hassle.

  Most males would likely find the prospect of living among naked females to be desirable, but to Alder it was simply the natural way of things. Clothing was Alder’s favorite human convention. The less skin he saw, the more his interest was piqued, and Taylor’s outfit had his mind running rampant with speculation.

  She wore fawn boots that covered her calves, leaving only a small space of flesh between the boots and the edge of her green skirt. Her shirt was the kind that buttoned up—his favorite. He enjoyed the way many females left a triangle of cleavage showing, but Taylor’s shirt was buttoned all the way to the collar. Oddly, that was even more arousing. He could imagine himself plucking open those buttons, one by one.

  When the afternoon faded into evening, she finally pushed back her sunglasses. As they inched down the congested highway, Alder drew her into another light conversation, shamelessly using it as an excuse to examine her facial features.

  He said, “I’ve never known this road to be so busy.”

  Aside from her beguiling lips, very little stood out about her face. Oval-shaped with broad cheekbones and an understated nose. Her hazel-brown eyes were pretty, but rimmed with dark circles that spoke of more than one sleepless night. On the whole, there wasn’t much to set her apart from the countless other human females he’d seen in passing, except that for whatever reason, he had felt compelled to get closer to her.

  “Yeah, it’s weird this far out in the sticks.” She yawned, covering her mouth almost as an afterthought. “There must be an accident. Maybe someone hit a deer or something.”

  He gave her a pointed look. “You can rest if you’d like. I’ll wake you once we cross the state line.”

  “No, that’s okay,” she said, shaking her head. “I can never sleep on the road.”

  “Do you travel a lot?” he asked.

  “Not really anymore, mostly when I was a kid. My mom was a pretty popular wedding photographer. We were always going from place to place, wedding to wedding.”

  “You must have seen a lot of interesting places.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Yeah, we went all over the world together. Paris, Rome, Singapore—we even spent a week in Mauritius.”

  Alder recognized some of the names, but they were little more than abstract concepts to him. He had been born and raised in the mountains, and aside from his seasonal forays into the human territories, much of what lay beyond the Carolinian back roads and the long stretch of highway between them was a mystery to him. Still, the subject of faraway lands intrigued him, and there was the added bonus of being able to watch Taylor’s lips move.

  “What was it like?” he asked.

  “Honestly, it was pretty boring for a little kid. All I ever wanted was to settle down, put down roots, ya know?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Growing up, Alder and his brothers had lived a nomadic lifestyle as well, though not by choice. The past few decades had been a tumultuous time for his kind, primarily due to human military forces invading their territories and indiscriminately massacring shifters.

  Four years ago, the attacks came to an abrupt halt when the military’s concentration was shifted to overseas wars. Alder did not know the specifics of the situation and he didn’t trust that the peace would last. While other shifters flooded back into the lowlands, he and his brothers maintained a firm grasp on their more defensible western mountain territories.

  When he looked at Taylor again, she was staring out the passenger-side window, her eyes drooping sleepily. He inhaled deeply, taking in her scent. There was nothing flowery or overtly feminine about it. She smelled like rainwater and the musk of travel.

  He wondered again what it was about her that appealed to him so much. What had made him stop and offer her a ride, when he knew he shouldn’t involve himself with human females? What was it about her that made him want to keep driving, all the way to Dallas, or Mexico City, or wherever it was she wanted to go?

  Earlier, when she had explained why she didn’t ask questions, she had been right. If she had asked him about his family, or where he was from, or what he did, Alder would have had no choice but to lie.

  But true to her word, she hadn’t asked him any questions. He didn’t have to lie to her, to fabricate a human persona that did not exist. For a short while, Alder felt, at least to some degree, that he could simply be himself with her.

  From farther down the road, flashing lights drew his attention. Alder inclined his head out of his window, trying to ascertain why the police would be up ahead. There were no readily apparent signs of an accident. As they inched forward, he noticed that there were officers on either side of the congested road, dipping their heads into cars before signaling for the drivers to proceed.

  Uneasiness stirred in his gut. Logically, he knew that aside from his height and muscle mass, there was no way they could distinguish him from an ordinary human male. As they neared the checkpoint, he placed both hands on the steering wheel and straightened his spine.

  Many emotions—agitation, elation, arousal—had a scent. In most creatures, it was difficult for Alder to discern and he relied on subtle physical cues to determine their state of mind. But in wolves and in humans, there was nothing more telling than a scent, and Taylor’s was steeped in fear.

  He glanced over at her, giving her a questioning look. She was craning her neck out the window, gazing down the row of cars with visible apprehension. In her lap, her hands restlessly fidgeted.

  Alder reached over, placing a hand over hers. They were small and clammy. She tensed when he touched her, but he didn’t pull away.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She stared up at him, ambivalence swimming in her brown eyes. As the car in front of them began to move forward, she swallowed hard.

  In a hoarse voice, she asked, “Can I trust you?”

  Alder didn’t waste time considering the question. “Yes.”

  She looked out the window again, and then back to him.

  “I think that’s a roadblock,” she said slowly. “And I think they’re looking for me. And I think if they find me, I’m going to spend the rest of
my life in prison, or worse.”

  Chapter Four

  Alder looked remarkably calm. So calm, in fact, that Taylor was sure he was going to tell her to get out of his truck or flag down the cops. He definitely didn’t look like he was about to veer off the road, over the median, and onto the opposite side of the highway. But that was exactly what he did.

  There was little traffic on the inbound road, and Alder was able to weave in between cars at a leisurely eighty miles per hour.

  From the moment she’d seen the flashing lights of the state troopers, a terrible feeling of dread had permeated her body, cutting right to the bone. That feeling was gone now, replaced with a level of euphoria that only one who’d narrowly avoided certain doom could attain.

  “That was so awesome,” she said to him, adrenaline still rocketing through her veins.

  Alder wasn’t paying attention to her. His gaze was fixed on the rearview mirror, and after a few seconds, Taylor realized why. Sirens rang out, and in the distance, far behind them but far too close for comfort, she could see the ominous red and blue lights flashing. Alder bore down on the gas pedal and Taylor pressed her back against the seat as they flew down the highway.

  “I think you need to start explaining,” he said.

  His tone was just as calm and controlled as his face, which confused her, given the circumstances.

  “It’s kind of a long story. I dunno if now’s the time,” she said as they cut in front of a minivan.

  He turned to pin her with a hard look. The kind, friendly man she’d gotten into the car with seemed to have completely checked out, and she was sure that her future hinged on what she said next.

  The plain and simple truth was neither plain nor simple, and she didn’t know him well enough to know if he would understand why she had done what she did. Some days, she wasn’t even sure if she understood it herself. So she lied.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you, just please keep your eyes on the road,” she said. He complied, just in time to swerve out of the way of a semi truck.

  Once she’d caught her breath, Taylor said, “They think I killed a man.”

  She saw genuine surprise register on his face. “Did you?”

  “No,” she said. “Honestly, I would never do something like that. This a really high-profile case and they just want someone to pin the blame on.”

  His face had fallen back into the implacable mask he wore so well, and Taylor couldn’t tell if he believed her or not.

  She said, “I know everyone says they’re innocent, and I understand if you don’t believe me. Even my own family thinks I did it.”

  “Who do they think you killed?”

  Reluctantly, she said, “A state senator.”

  “A person in your government?”

  The question struck her as odd, but what was stranger to her was that he wasn’t familiar with the case. The grainy picture of her face had been on the cover of every newspaper in the states for the past ten days. She was all over the web and the national news as well.

  “You really haven’t heard about it?”

  Alder veered onto an exit ramp. The road curved sharply, and Taylor braced herself on the dashboard, certain that the truck would flip. By some miracle it didn’t, and in a few seconds they were cruising down a winding back road at a breakneck speed.

  “I’ve been away,” he said, and it took Taylor a moment to remember what they’d been talking about.

  “Oh,” she breathed, still gripping the dashboard. “Hey, um, not for nothing, but do you know where you’re going? I mean, do you have a plan?”

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. There was nothing but woodlands and an empty road behind them, but she didn’t trust it.

  “We’re not going to lose them,” Alder said, confirming her fears. “We have too much of a lead for them to catch us from behind, but they will eventually cut us off from the front.”

  She was surprised at how quickly he’d assessed the situation. “Okay, so what do we do?”

  “We have to ditch the truck.”

  Her eyes widened. “Then they’ll catch us for sure.”

  “Not if we go into the forest.”

  It sounded like a ridiculous proposition to Taylor, but seeing as how she didn’t have any better ideas, she decided to play ball.

  “Even if they can’t track us by foot, they’ll hunt us down with dogs.”

  “Only to a point,” he said. “They won’t follow us into the mountains.”

  For the first time, Taylor realized where they were. The Appalachian Mountains loomed in the distance, looking like dark blue hills, but Taylor knew they were anything but. The Appalachians were not only a natural barrier between the east coast and the midwest, they were also notoriously dangerous.

  In the seventies and eighties there had been several large government campaigns to encourage impoverished city dwellers to populate the foothills. Real estate was dirt cheap and oftentimes acres of land would be given away to able-bodied men willing to enter the coal mining and logging industries. Families flocked to the foothills in droves, hoping to make better lives for themselves.

  Instead, they were met with underdeveloped housing communities, inadequate medical care, deadly mudslides, seasonal flooding, and frequent animal attacks. It wasn’t until the mid-nineties that the government actually stepped in to support the fringe towns, and even that only lasted for a few years. With the growing popularities of plastics and oil, as well as several foreign wars, providing aid to the mountain communities became increasingly unpopular in the cities.

  Nowadays, the foothills were littered with abandoned homes and buildings, whole towns swallowed up by the wilderness. The towns that remained were mired in poverty and superstitions, many believing the mountains to be full of werewolves and demon animals.

  Alder turned onto a narrow dirt road that curved and twisted deeper into the forest. Tree branches scraped along the side of the truck, and at one point the road dipped into a shallow creek. The entire time, Taylor kept her eyes glued to the mirror, expecting to see the blue and red lights, but it seemed that at least for the moment, they had evaded the police.

  The truck finally came to a stop in front of a long, rusty gate. Someone had wedged a warped stop sign in between the bars. Taylor noticed that the gate was attached to a barbed wire fence that stretched into the forest, and then the car lights clicked off and she saw nothing but darkness.

  “Grab your bag and let’s go,” she heard Alder say.

  Taylor complied, grasping her backpack and throwing it over one shoulder. Opening the truck door, she stepped out and onto the wet ground. Mud clung to her boots as she followed Alder to the gate. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noted that he was carrying a backpack as well.

  There was a large open field beyond the fence, and if she squinted Taylor could make out a tree line on the edge of it, where the forest began again.

  “Do you think this is somebody’s land?” she asked as he climbed over the gate.

  “It used to be farmland, but it’s been abandoned for some time.”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  Taylor lifted her leg, trying to hook it over the fence as Alder had done, but she was too short. Either trying to help her or just being impatient, Alder grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up and over the fence in one swift movement. After he set her down, Alder took her hand and pulled her along, talking as they ran.

  “I live on the other side of Mount Ezra,” he said, as if that told her much of anything.

  “So you live in…the mountains?” Taylor asked between gulps of air.

  She was pretty good at running in heels, but the field was soft from the earlier rain and her heels dug into the earth with each step. Thankfully, Alder was crazy fast and his grip on her arm helped to keep her surging forward.

  When they finally reached the other side of the field, Taylor looked back to see the flashing lights of at least one police car. Not watching where she was going, she st
umbled over something on the ground. Alder caught her before she fell, pulling her up and dragging her forward.

  “Don’t look back,” he ordered.

  Panicking all over again, she said, “They found us!”

  She felt him squeeze her arm. “But they won’t catch us.”

  And with that, they disappeared into the wilderness.

  Chapter Five

  Growing up, Alder had frequently been compared to his twin brother Hale. Alder had never minded the comparisons, likely because they always seemed to favor him. Alder was the well-behaved one, the responsible one, and the reliable one, while Hale—who was disrespectful, irresponsible, and prone to breaking commitments and shirking his duties—was largely regarded as his antithesis in every way.

  Alder had carried his good qualities into adulthood, and he rarely deviated from them, except for a few glaring indiscretions, all of which seemed to involve human females. In fact, it seemed that every time he involved himself with a human woman, things quickly spiraled out of control.

  This particular situation was a new record for him. Taylor had scarcely been in his car for two hours before he’d found himself abruptly thrust into the role of her getaway driver. Not only was he now going to have to miss his seasonal reunion with his family, he was also going to have to travel back to his territory on foot with a human in tow.

  More than anything, Alder was pissed off about his truck. Acquiring it hadn’t been easy, and he doubted they’d be able to get another one for several months, which meant that he’d be stuck in Halcyon territory until the end of winter.

  They’d only run a few miles when Taylor abruptly dug her heels into the ground. At first, Alder assumed her boots had been caught on something, but when he stopped to look back at her, she was doubled over and panting.

  “Time out,” she wheezed. “I need to catch my breath.”

  He wanted to resent her, both for putting him in this position and for being weak, but it wasn’t in his nature. When he looked at her, he didn’t see a liar or a potential murderer, but a tired, vulnerable female who was relying on him to protect her.