Page 34 of Fire Bound

“It’s my fault he’s dead,” I admit.

A single tear just falls down my face when Pruitt comes around the corner. Her face falls when she sees me. “OhRemi…” she starts.

Clearing my throat, I swipe away the tear. In a second, I have myself pulled back together. “I’m good,” I mutter quickly. “What’s going on?” I ask Pruitt.

“Ransom’s back,” Pru explains after a brief pause. I think she was trying to decide if she should push me for more information. “He wasn’t able to track the car.”

“Shit,” I say under my breath dejectedly. “There has to be a way we can find it. Maybe we can get into the security cameras in town?”

“I don’t have that kind of authority.” Pruitt shakes her head. Doesn’t matter, she’s the alpha of the pack or the white wolf from a prophecy that dates back a thousand years, her authority means nothing in the human world. She’s just a normal twenty-something female to the humans.

Winslow’s face lights up. “I might have a way. My hacker friend who helped us before? He’ll be able to hack into the cameras in town. If there are faces shown, he can also run facial recognition software on them. Whisper is incredibly talented like that.”

“Just not talented enough to track Sterling,” I offer dryly. Whisper has hacked into every government department and is on every kind of watch list, but he can’t find jack shit on Sterling. Of course, the human computer savant doesn’t know exactly why we want Sterling, he just knows it’s dire that we find him.

“We don’t even have apictureof Sterling to offer him,” Winslow points out. “How is he supposed to track someone when we don’t even know what he looks like or what his real name is?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug dramatically. “I’m just saying I’d tattoo Whisper’s face on my ass if he could get me an address for that fucker.”

“On your ass?” Winslow throws her head back, laughing.

“Oh yeah.” I nod. “Like mywholeleft ass cheek too.” I turn my body, grabbing my butt for effect.

“That’s commitment.”

“Hey, I can be a team player when I want to be.” I find myself laughing along with her as Pruitt watches on.

“I’ll make sure to pass that long to him when I call him later,” Winnie jokes. “I’m sure he’d actually love it and have a few ideas for design.”

“If he finds information on Sterling, I’ll let him tattoo me himself.” I’m that desperate to put an end to this. Chuckling softly, I glance at Pru and find her watching me.

I manage to give her a small smile which she returns. “Ryker and I are going to go home. I told Jax he wasn’t allowed to sleep in that dingy loft of his alone anymore.” Jax has a loft? I don’t know why it never occurred to me to wonder where he’s been living. “He’s not a pack member so he just flipped me the bird but told me he’d take it under advisement.” She rolls her eyes before giving me a pointed look. “You,however, are a pack member, so you need to stay on pack territory. If anyone leaves, it’s with backup. No one goes anywhere alone anymore.”

“I’m not staying here.” I pick at the skin of the apple in my hand.

“You can come stay with me,” Winslow announces. “But I have to be up early to start decorating for the baby shower tomorrow.”

Oh shit, that’s tomorrow?“That’s fine. I can sleep through anything.”

“Umm, no.” Winslow frowns. “You’re helping me.”

“Interesting choice.”

Pru laughs lightly. “Between the two of you, I have full faith you’ll figure out how to hang a streamer.” She waves her hand at us before leaving the room. “‘Night guys,” she tells us over her shoulder.

Winslow chews on her bottom lip before declaring, “It’s decorating for a party, not rocket science. We can figure this out, right?”

My response is to give her a halfhearted thumbs up.

Turns out, Winslow and I may have had a better chance at understanding rocket science than setting up for a baby shower. By the time we are done putting the last of the pink and blue tiny cupcakes on a tray and the last balloon is inflated, we are both a sweaty, frazzled mess.

Halfway through the frilly affair, we had to call for reinforcements. Ransom and Isabeau showed up and were promptly put to work. I’ve never seen the leather-clad vampire look more out of place than she does in the middle of a bunch of pink and blue baby-themed décor.

Frowning at a table with a tray full of cans of baby food missing labels, she points at it and asks, “Are there actual babies coming?”

“No, that’s for the adults,” I explain. “We blindfold people and make them eat the baby food. They have to guess what the flavor is. It’s a game.”

“Why would anyone want to participate in such a thing?” she questions, still confused.

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