Dell’s gaze latched on to my hand where I clutched the cell, but I cut her a murderous glare and hoped she could keep Graeson from plucking the mental picture from her head. I wasn’t sure how deep he was dug in there, but I didn’t want to be chewed out later.

“We’ll be there in five minutes,” Dell-as-Graeson said.

“I’m going to stay with Daphne until the pack arrives,” I told them, eager to wipe my prints off the phone and return it to its rightful owner. “I don’t want the sight of wolves to spook her.” Or to give her the wrong idea about her sister’s fate.

Leaving Dell to wait for Graeson and the other wargs, I sought out Daphne. I found her sitting in the driver’s front seat of her car with the door propped open. Red-and-white tennis shoes were planted firmly on the ground. She had braced her elbows on the armrest built into her door. Her shoulders were jumping with the force of her muffled sobs.

Each of her pitiful cries drove the knife deeper into my chest. I had been here before, been the sister who survived, the one who had to face down expectant parents and explain what happened to their other daughter, their baby. I hoped Daphne’s mother and father were more understanding than mine had been, and if we failed to save Roni, I prayed they were more forgiving.

Tragedy was losing one child by chance. Travesty was losing a second by choice.

Chapter 14

Lunch at the bait shack consisted of hamburgers, wings, footlong hotdogs, fried chicken and, oddly enough, bologna. A buffet of the finest fried foods available in Abbeville. The pack wolfed down the meat and gnawed the marrow from the bones, in human form, but the extra crispy thigh I had picked apart with my fingers never made it past my lips.

Two pack members had escorted Daphne home after Graeson assessed the situation. A male had packed her things and driven her car to the address listed on her driver’s license, and the female whose name I hadn’t caught gave Daphne a ride in the van because she had no longer been speaking or doing much of anything but staring into the distance while tears rolled silently down her cheeks by that point.

The female borrowed my badge and a business card, and then memorized my cell phone number so if the Tanners had questions they would dial her—me—instead of hunting down a representative from the local marshal’s office. The quieter we kept this, the better. Even with the Tanners assured we were doing our best, we had a tiny window to produce results before Mrs. Tanner raised a ruckus over her missing daughter. A sobering thought considering how it was my name and badge number she would recite if questioned about the phony marshal visit.