Free Sadie Hart by Cry Sanctuary Page A

a
freaking clue. Caine whipped his head around, pinning his second
with a glare, a growl still riding low in his voice. “I want
scouts, patrols. You got me?”
    Trey jerked his head in a nod. “Already have
Mark and Cisc out. They’re doing loops. We’ll trade up every hour.
But it’s a lot of land to cover.”
    And not all of Sanctuary Falls lived on pack
land. He wondered if the Hunter knew that. Like an infection
spreading in his gut, he felt the queasy rise of bile, vomit a
bitter taste at the back of his tongue. Then again, the killer
seemed to know everything.
    The dead bird lay at the edge of his drive, a
stake through the animal piercing it to a tree. A blood-spattered
note was above it, impaled on a small twig. The wind could have
easily whipped it away. A frown edged over Caine’s face as he
reached for it, catching the flutter of paper in his hands, but
leaving it in place. He straightened it out and froze.
    Give our Hound a gift. Tell her I said
hi.
    Caine went very still, the pale piece of
paper light against the dark bark of the tree. He let his gaze fall
to the dead duck; the mallard’s head hung limp against its breast.
Shot. The feathers were still rank with pond water, and he knew the
bird would still be wet, that the kill was very recent. “I didn’t
hear a gun shot.”
    Trey shook his head. “He drove here. Scent
ends ten feet up, disappeared into a car. Has a dog.”
    Caine heard the skepticism in his second’s
voice. Dog. Hound? And after that case in Colorado, where a Hound
had gone rogue and tried to make it look like the lion-shifters had
all gone insane, he could see where Trey was going with that train
of thought. But no. At least not the Hound he was working with.
    “It’s a normal dog, smell again.”
    Trey’s shoulders lifted in a slight shrug.
“Could be.”
    Caine shook his head. He’d let his second
believe what he wanted. Caine smelled a wolf-shifter and an
ordinary dog. Caine stared at the dead duck, its beak still open.
There was blood in its feathers from the shot. Trey shuffled his
feet beside him, just a slight movement, but Caine turned. The
other man watched him a second longer, bushy eyebrows drawn down
over his eyes. Cautious. “Our Hound?”
    He didn’t say the rest of the question. Like
why Caine had come back smelling like her earlier. He glanced back
at the paper. Did the Hunter know, then? Had he been there too?
Another growl built low in his gut and Caine tamped it down.
Getting pissed over that wouldn’t help a damn thing. But he didn’t
like being stalked.
    Instead of answering Trey, he ripped the
paper off the tree, yanked the stake out of the duck and caught the
bird before it fell. “Looks like I have a message to deliver.”
    “You want me to talk to the Rawsons?”
    “No. This won’t take long.” Caine took a deep
breath and looked back at his partner, friend. But for as much as
Trey could handle the pack when he was away, some things just
weren’t anyone’s job but Caine’s. “It should be me.”
    The Rawsons deserved to hear it from him.
    Caine headed back towards his car, the duck
hanging limp in one hand, paper fluttering in the other. He tossed
the bird on the floor in the back, dug his keys out of his pocket,
and drove away, leaving Trey to stand watch again. Suddenly, the
pack seemed too big, too spread out to protect effectively. It was
something he’d have to fix when he got back.
    Once on the road, he dug his phone out of his
back pocket and dialed the number she’d scrawled on her card that
first day. Breath held, he waited until she picked up. “Hello?”
    “Holly?”
    “Caine?”
    “I need to show you something. I’m already on
my way. Just give me your address.” She seemed to hesitate a
moment, silence stretching between them. He thought back to the
morgue, her firm refusal of a kiss. “It’s from the Hunter. A gift
as he called it.”
    “Shit.” She relayed him her address. Another
twenty minutes out.
    “I’ll be