Burn Bright (Alpha & Omega #5)(72)

“Black witches have to start out somewhere, don’t they?” she asked.

The next mile or so was traveled in thoughtful silence.

“Not a lot of information left on Rhea Springs, I imagine,” Charles said. “And any human still alive who once lived in that place would have been a young child.”

“Still,” Anna said, “maybe one of the wolves from that neck of the woods will remember something.”

“Maybe,” he said. And from Charles that was as good as a declaration that he’d pursue the matter. He sounded as though the thought made him feel better.

She only hoped that he didn’t find out that there had been a witch and that she had killed fifteen children. Witches had the same life span as any other human, though—with very few exceptions. The witch who cursed Wellesley, no matter what she’d done, was beyond justice now.





CHAPTER





10


Leah’s SUV was parked at the trailhead of the path to Jericho’s. Asil’s Mercedes was parked beside it.

“Ha,” said Charles, as they got out of the car. “I talked too much. Slowed me down.”

Anna laughed as he meant her to. Charles didn’t really care who got here first, and Anna knew it. Brother Wolf was grumpy about losing, though. He thought it would have been better to have been first.

Anna hopped out of the car and waited while he looked around the interior of Sage’s SUV until he found the key fob so he could lock it. Maybe he was taking unnecessary precautions, but he wasn’t going to leave Jericho an easy way out. He also grabbed the axe. He left the witch gun, though. Jericho was crazy—but he would listen to an axe better than a gun.

He checked the other two vehicles; they were both locked. Anna turned to start up the trail.

“Hold up,” he said. “We have a missing werewolf. He could have come this way as easily as any other.”

She stood quietly and waited while he examined their surroundings. She took in deep breaths herself but didn’t offer any opinions, so he could safely assume she didn’t detect anyone, either. If Jericho was hiding around here, he was doing a good job of it.

A better job than Charles thought the wolf was capable of.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go—but keep an eye out.”

Anna nodded. She’d been quiet the last part of the trip here, a thoughtful quiet that meant she was thinking. As they started up the trail, she linked her hand on his elbow—that was okay, he trusted her to drop her grip if they met danger. And he liked her hand on him.

“Charles,” she said, “if our traitor isn’t one of the wildlings, who do you think it is?”

“What has convinced you that it isn’t one of the wildlings?” Charles asked.

She made a hmm sound, tightening her arm. “I don’t know. Wellesley, maybe. Unless you think there are more wildlings who are capable—like Hester.”

Charles shook his head. “No. Hester—there were reasons for Hester.”

“Jonesy,” said Anna.

“Jonesy,” agreed Charles. “And Da certainly knew about her—he would. He probably knew about the flyovers, too. I just wonder …” He stopped talking, as a few thoughts crystallized into a whole.

Anna started to say something, but Charles held up his hand, because … he didn’t want to be right.

“There is none so blind,” he murmured, as all of the oddities of the last few days fell into place. The enormity of it all brought him to a stop as he broke out in a cold sweat.

“Charles?” Anna asked.

Brother Wolf saw it as Charles had, understanding what it meant. He went wild with denial—and for a moment, it was all Charles could do to restrain the wolf.

Not now. It’s not now, he told his brother. We will do what we have to do, but not yet.

“Charles, what’s wrong?” Anna asked, beginning to sound worried.

“I know why Da isn’t here,” he told her. Sick horror gripped him.

“Charles?” Anna asked again. She leaned against him, and Brother Wolf quit fighting and simply braced himself.

He breathed in her scent, and told her, simply, “He thinks Leah is our traitor.”

She stilled against him. “Why do you think that?”

He laid it out for her as he saw it. “If Hester was as normal as we all think, she’d have called Da as soon as she started to get flyovers. That would have alerted him of trouble. A month ago, Da asked Boyd for the files the Chicago pack has been putting together in their search for what Leo had been up to.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “We knew all of this.”

“I don’t know that he knew we had a traitor at that point, just that our enemy was active again,” he told her. “I think that Da was looking for that enemy with the threads we’ve been able to collect.”

“Thus the files from Boyd,” Anna said.

Charles nodded. “Then Mercy got into trouble—and he took those files with him. He might have other sources of information, but the files make the most sense.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “But why Leah?”

“Because he was headed home—and out of the blue he called up and told me he was taking a vacation in Africa with Samuel,” Charles said.