Kelley Armstrong - Frostbitten

"You're booked on a flight to Miami," Jeremy said as I got out of the cab, cell phone to my ear. "That will get you through security. But from the sounds of it, you've delivered your message. If he's refusing to listen, I'm not sure what you plan to do about that."

"I want to tell him what happened to Yuli Etxeberria. If that doesn't work, I'll hog-tie him and haul his ass someplace safe until he smartens up."

Silence as I walked through the doors. It lasted so long that with anyone else I'd have wondered if the line disconnected.

"You don't need to keep chasing him, Elena."

"Just one more day. The kids are okay, aren't they?"

"Yes, they're fine. Clay called an hour ago. His last meeting was canceled, so he can help with Reese."

"Great. He can catch up with me tomorrow, after he stops in there and sees the kids."

"While I'm sure he'd love to see them, right now he wants to get to you. As soon as you figure out where you're going, he'll meet up with you."

I didn't argue. It'd been two weeks since I'd seen Clay-longer than we'd been apart in years. I was so accustomed to having him around that for two weeks I'd been unbalanced and off-kilter. And when it came to hunting Reese without my partner, I'd definitely been off my game.

"Etxeberria wasn't your fault, Elena," Jeremy said.

Ah, right to the crux of the matter, as usual.

"One more day," I said. "Just give me-"

"I'll give you all the time you need. You know that. Then once you're done, take an extra night with Clay before you come back."

WE HADN'T INTENDED to be apart so long. For Clay, even separate day trips were too much. That's the wolf in him, wanting his mate nearby at all times. Most werewolves inherit the genes and don't transform until their late teens, but Clay was bitten as a child, and that makes him more wolf than human.

Our separation had begun with a work trip for me that lasted longer than expected. In the meantime, Clay had left for Atlanta. I was supposed to stop overnight at home, then follow. Only that night, our darling three-year-old twins thought I'd gone out back for a "walk in the forest" and decided to follow… by jumping out a second-floor window.

While adult werewolves have superhuman strength and reflexes, and could easily make that leap, we don't get those secondary powers until puberty. As for whether those rules apply to the offspring of two werewolves, let's just say we're starting to think they don't. The kids escaped with minor injuries: a twisted ankle for Logan and a sprained wrist for Kate, which meant no Atlanta trip for me.

Thus the two-week separation, now thankfully almost at an end.

SOME AIRPORTS ARE perfect for losing a tail. Take Minneapolis. With its endless corridors of shops and restaurants it rivals the nearby Mall of the Americas as a hellhole for the directionally challenged. Pittsburgh was not one of those airports.

By the time I entered the terminal, Reese had checked in and headed for his gate, but there wasn't far for him to go. I picked up my ticket and got my boarding pass. Two sets of escalators deposited travelers in a tiny presecurity square, bounded by a few shops. Reese's trail headed straight for the security checkpoint.

Once I was inside and off yet another escalator, it got trickier. I was in a rotunda of shops and restaurants with four arms leading to boarding gates. Still, the tidy layout meant there were a limited number of places for him to go. Even if I couldn't find his trail, I just needed to check all four halls and-

"Paging Chris Parker. Chris Parker, please report to gate C56."

I smiled. Parker was one of the aliases Reese was using.

When I got to the gate, though, the waiting area was empty, the plane already loaded. Reese was at the counter, showing his boarding pass and ID to the attendant. She was taking a good look at them, and he was struggling to stay calm, shifting and glancing around.

I shouldered my way through a throng checking the departure screens, then broke into a fast walk. The attendant was saying something to Reese. Questioning his fake ID? It looked a little off, didn't it? Better hold him for another minute, get someone to come and check it…

With a smile, she handed back his ID and boarding pass. Reese started down the long hall to his plane. I picked up my pace, but by the time I neared the desk, he was gone.

Gone where ?

I glanced at the screen behind the attendant. It seemed to be stuck on the flight number and departure time, so I asked where the plane was headed.

" Anchorage." She blinded me with a smile. "Anchorage, Alaska."

"SO I'VE HIT the end of the line," I said to Jeremy as I settled into a seat. "As badly as I want to warn this kid, I'm not flying to Alaska. Hope fully, Liam and Ramon feel the same way."

"I'm sure they will."

I expected to hear his usual deep timbre of reassurance. Instead, his words carried a note of hesitation.

"You think they'll track him to Alaska?" I asked.

"No, I'm quite certain they won't. However, a trip to Anchorage might not be a bad idea, if you and Clay are up to it."

"Whatever you need. What's up in Alas-?" I stopped. "Those reports of wolf kills, right?"

One of my Pack responsibilities was tracking potential werewolf activity. Jeremy monitored newspapers and I took the Internet. This case had shown up in both.

Two men had presumably been killed by wolves outside Anchor age. That was newsworthy because, despite their reputation as dangerous beasts, wolves don't kill people. In North America there have been no documented cases of healthy wild wolves killing humans in the last hundred years. So when it seemed to happen, people got nervous. And we got really nervous because the one thing far more common than wolf attacks was werewolf attacks.

Two reports weren't enough for the Pack to investigate. And there were other recent reports of equally rare wolf activity-wolves attacking dogs and people spotting wolves near the city. If the wolves near Anchorage were getting bolder, then it stood to reason they might actually be responsible for these deaths.

But if I had another reason to go to Alaska…

"I can check it out while I hunt down Reese," I said.

"I'll reroute Clay there." A pause. "There's something else, too. Dennis was supposed to call me last week. He wanted to discuss something that seemed important."

"And he didn't?"

"No, and he's not returning my calls either."

Dennis Stillwell and his son, Joey, were former Pack werewolves who'd left for western Canada when Jeremy and his father's battle for Alphahood had turned ugly. They'd later moved to Alaska. That was thirty years ago, before I joined the Pack, but Jeremy and Dennis had kept in touch, and this silence probably bothered Jeremy more than the wolf kills.

"I'm off to Alaska, then," I said. "Should I call Clay and let him know?"

"I'll do that, and I'll book you a flight. You get something to eat. Try to relax."

UNFORTUNATELY, THERE WASN'T a lot of demand for travel from Pittsburgh to Anchorage, and the flight Reese had taken was the only direct one for the next twenty-four hours. So I was transferring in Phoenix.

The flight and the brief layover gave me time to think-too much time. In the last week, I'd been hit with two things that I really wanted to talk to Clay about. Things that weren't suitable for a phone conversation. Things that preyed on my mind every time I slowed down long enough to relax, which was likely another reason I kept chasing Reese when common sense told me to give up.

The first thing… well, that worried me, but it didn't have the same effect as the second. The second was the kicker, the one that had me avoiding quiet moments like this. It happened the day before I started chasing Reese. After the kids went to bed, Jeremy and I had been in the study, relaxing in front of the fire. He'd been reading a novel; I'd been reading my mail, which tended to pile up, untouched, for days.