Free Wolf Hiding (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book 2) by Toni Boughton Page A

Nowen, not meeting her eyes. “Ready to go?” he asked.
    “Yes. Suzannah?”
    Anton looked resolutely at everything except Nowen. “Another couple of minutes. She had trouble falling asleep after the...excitement of last night.”
    Nowen laid a hand on Anton’s muscled arm. She could feel his skin twitching under her touch. “I’ll go help Suzannah. Would you mind checking the office? They have some souvenirs, and maybe Sage would like something to take her mind off everything.”
    The white-blonde head dipped slightly. “Good idea.” He headed toward the office, calling the girl over to him. Nowen waited until the two of them were well away, and then she slipped into the room.
    The room looked much like the one she and Sage had shared, except only one of the beds was disturbed. A noise came from the bathroom. Nowen closed the door gently behind her and followed the noise. At the bathroom entrance she paused.
    Suzannah stood in front of the small mirror, brushing her hair. She seemed lost in thought. Nowen took advantage of her distraction and stepped behind her. Suzannah saw the movement and, gasping, whirled around, the hairbrush raised like a weapon.
    “Oh, it’s just you.” The redhead relaxed. “You startled me! I thought-” Whatever she was going to say was cut off by Nowen’s hand clamping around her throat.
    Nowen moved in close. She lowered her voice to just a few shades above the wolf’s growl as she said “Who were those men?”
    Suzannah’s already milk-white face drained completely of color. She wrapped her hands around the wiry arm that held her, tugging ineffectually as she choked out a denial.
    Nowen shook her head slowly. “Don’t lie to me. I don’t like it. You knew those men; I saw someone from this room signal them last night, and I’m very confident it wasn’t Anton.”
    The woman’s pale green eyes swam with tears. “I didn’t have a choice! They made me!”
    “Explain.”
    “I-I-I met them, about a month ago. The soldier was dead and I thought I was next, the CZs were everywhere. And then, then Willie and Mac found me. They rescued me!” Her eyes pleaded for understanding. “We’d heard about the New Heaven place and we talked about going there. But they didn’t want to join any group and end up as the shit-hole diggers.” Suzannah paused and swallowed; Nowen could feel the muscles of her throat work.
    “So they started picking off people going up I-25. They were going to start their own place, but they needed food, guns, drugs, shit like that to get other people to join them.”
    Nowen frowned. “All of that is available in any town.”
    Suzannah still had her hands on Nowen’s arm but everything else about her had relaxed as she told her story. “Yeah, but the fucking CZs are everywhere! It was just easier to sit here and let people bring the stuff to us. The roads are so empty now you can see anything coming for miles. We’d sit up on the roof of this old garage with some binoculars and just wait. If it was people on foot, they would stop them right then and there. If it was people in cars, they’d scope them out, see how dangerous they were.”
    “What part did you play?”
    “Almost everybody stops for a pretty girl. I’d get a ride, and the guys would follow. Then, when we’d stop for the night or a break the guys would just take whatever we needed.”
    “So we weren’t the first.”
    Suzannah shook her head silently.
    Anger strummed Nowen’s nerves. She tightened her grip, her fingernails lengthening and sharpening as they began to change into claws. The redhead’s eyes widened until they seemed to take up half of her face. The flesh of her neck dimpled around the points of the claws as Nowen dragged her up the bathroom wall. “Your friends were going to kill Anton last night. So why shouldn’t I just kill you right now?” Nowen snarled.
    Suzannah’s limp arms fell to her sides but her heels drummed the wall. Like a rabbit in the shadow of a