Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4)(13)

Kage was frowning when he called up the third message. This time his wife was whispering. “Something is wrong with me. Can you help me? Help them?”

The fourth message had them all bolting out of the house, all besides Maggie. She was left behind by an aging body that didn’t allow her to run with the rest of them. Brother Wolf grieved, but Charles was more worried about Kage’s children.

“I’ll drive,” Hosteen said shortly.

There wasn’t room for the four of them in the cab, and with a glance at Anna, Charles changed his direction and leapt into the truck bed. Anna landed gracefully beside him an instant later. Hosteen put the truck in reverse and burned rubber backing out of the parking area. He stopped and threw open the passenger door for Kage, who, human slow, was the last one to the truck.

It took them under ten minutes before Hosteen stopped in front of a pale stucco two-story house. A maroon BMW was parked in the driveway. As they all bailed out of the truck, Hosteen held one hand up. He looked at Charles and gestured toward the back of the house.

Brother Wolf hesitated but decided it was okay to take orders in this situation because it was Hosteen’s family in trouble. Hosteen would know best how to organize the hunt.

Anna, ignored by Hosteen, had chosen to come with Charles, and she had no more trouble than he did hopping to the top of the eight-foot cement wall that separated the public front yard from the private back. She waited on top of the wall with him while he took a quick but comprehensive impression of the situation.

The backyard was not extensive, consisting of a couple of small areas of arid-appropriate plants and a tile walk that surrounded a moderately large swimming pool. There was no sign, to any of his senses, that anyone was nearby. The nearest people were several kids playing in another swimming pool several yards to the west.

What he did notice was that someone was playing cartoons overly loudly in one of the upper-floor rooms in Kage’s house. He stood up and walked along the wall until he was fairly near the house. Someone had been safety conscious enough that there were no windows within easy human reach from the wall. But Charles had never been merely human.

He jumped toward the house, catching himself on the sill of the window and doing a chin-up so he could see inside the room the sound was coming from.

The bed was against the wall the window was on. He could see the backs of the heads of three people who were seated on the floor using the bed as a support. Two of them were young children cuddling as closely to the third as they could. One of the littler bodies still vibrated with the results of a bout of tears.

“Dad is coming, right?” asked one of the youngsters.

“Dad is coming,” said the one who was adult size. His voice was more hopeful than definite to Charles’s ears.

“Is she still out there?” asked the other child. “She quit knocking on the door.”

“I don’t know,” the older one told them. “It’ll be okay. You just stay in here with me, Michael. I’ll keep you safe.”

Charles dropped soundlessly to the ground and then went back up to the wall, where Anna waited. “The kids are up in that room. I don’t think any of them are hurt, but one of us needs to get in there and make sure they stay okay. You’re less scary than I am.”

He kept his voice quiet, well below the range anyone in a room with the TV blaring could hear.

“Do I go through the window, or open it?” she asked.

The window was modern. He’d have had to break the latches or go through the glass. Anna had another option.

“Why don’t you see if you can get the kids to open the window?” he said. “Save breaking the glass as a last resort. I’ll see you safely inside. Then I’ll go down and into the house from the back.”

He jumped back to the ground and stepped out of immediate view. Anna’s leap to the window was graceful, and she chinned herself up just as he had. But she kept going until her upper body was clearly visible, and then she knocked on the window.

“Excuse me?” she said.

He had to imagine the first reactions of a group of kids who had locked themselves in a bedroom to hide from … from something. He hoped that the older boy wasn’t armed. But the room was decorated for a young girl, not a teenage boy. If the boy had a gun, it was probably in another room.

“Who are you?” asked the older boy’s voice hostilely.

“I’m a werewolf like your great-grandfather,” Anna said, sounding cheerful and utterly normal, as though she hung by her arms outside windows all the time. “My husband and I were at the ranch when your father got a call that sounded … odd. He and your great-grandfather are coming in the front door. My husband is going in downstairs from the back, but he thought you might like an ally in here. I’m tougher than I look. But you’ll have to open the window first.”

There was a clicking noise as the latch released and the window opened inward. People did things for Anna. It wasn’t like when his father ordered people, and they just did what he told them before they had a chance to think about it. People wanted to do what Anna asked them to do.

“Thanks,” she said, swinging her legs up and over. “I was beginning to feel a little silly. My name is Anna, but I don’t know yours. Charles and I rode in the back of the truck on the way over here and I’d just met Kage, your dad, so there was no chance to get the details. You’ll have to introduce yourselves.”