On Fire (4 page)

“It appears so. But I’ve called his phone and he’s not picking up. And I called the motel and they haven’t seen anyone named Jackson, or who even looks like Jackson. And there’s no Hunter Gramm registered.”

She peered through her lashes at Allison, who opened her locker and put her lab notebook into her leather messenger bag. Allison smiled uncertainly back, not sure what Lydia was driving at.

“Color me unsurprised,” Lydia said. At Allison’s confused expression, she explained, “Unsurprised that there’s no one there by the name of Hunter Gramm. At this kind of motel, people go by John Smith and Jane Doe. Or possibly Bambi von Boob Job.”

Allison blinked at her in horror.

“And pay by the hour,” Lydia added.

“No way.” She closed her locker door and leaned against it. “Why would a detective arrange to meet Jackson there? And would Jackson even go into a place like that? Wait. Don’t answer that.”

“Well, apparently his phone did,” Lydia said, dropping her facade that the conversation they were having was anywhere close to normal. “I need to check it out.” She looked less than thrilled. “Come with me?”

Allison blanched. “I’m grounded,” she said quickly. And gratefully. “I can’t go anywhere.”

“Except maybe my house?” Lydia asked, smiling hopefully. “To work on our English project?”

That we don’t have,
Allison translated. She licked her lips. “I guess it’s worth a shot to at least ask my folks if I can.” She’d never been grounded before. She didn’t know how it worked. Scott, no, but a girlfriend, yes?

“Thank you,” Lydia said.

Just as Allison pulled out her phone, she caught sight of Scott. He was talking to Stiles, his quirky best friend, but he was staring at her. Her insides went all warm and tingly and she gave him a little smile. He grinned and started walking over. Stiles came, too. That was okay with her. She liked Stiles.

“What’s up?” Scott asked. “Did you find Jackson?”

“Possibly,” Lydia replied, raising her chin. She gave Allison a look. “And about that? We could use some backup,” she declared.

“Yeah, um,” Allison said anxiously, smiling uncertainly up at him. “Do you want to go to a motel with me?”

•  •  •

Scott gaped at Allison.
Did she really just ask me to go to a motel?

He looked over at Stiles for confirmation. Yes, there it was: his best friend’s jaw practically dragging on the floor. Stiles looked from Scott to Allison to Lydia and back to Scott, as if asking someone, anyone, in turn to validate this man-dream come true.

“Are you seriously asking me that question?” Scott asked Allison, and she playfully batted his arm.

“Not to do . . .
that
,” she said. “We’re looking for—”

“We’re going on an errand,” Lydia cut in, then licked her lips and cleared her throat, as if she had just realized how that might sound.

“I could totally help with that,” Stiles said quickly. “Errands are my middle name. Actually, my middle name is almost as difficult to pronounce as my first name, but hey, I could do it.”

Lydia slid Stiles a glance that hovered somewhere between incredulous and impatient, and he went silent. Which, Scott knew, could be very challenging for his hyperactive best friend. But it had been achieved before, and could be again if the stakes were high enough. And for Stiles, who had been crushing on Lydia Martin since kindergarten, pleasing her was sky-high stakes.

“Stiles is quite the hacker,” Allison said, and Lydia’s disdainful gaze grew thoughtful.

“And I’m sure you’re very good at tracing people via their phones,” Lydia said.

“They have an app for that,” Stiles said. “Several, actually.” Lydia smiled. “Which, I’m guessing by your expression, you already knew.” Scott could see the lightbulb go on. “And this
someone
might be at a motel,” Stiles continued. “And I am guessing that this someone might be Jackson.”

Lydia shrugged. Then she turned to Allison. “Tell you what. If the boys are willing to go to the motel for us—”

“To a motel. To look for a guy,” Stiles said. “Maybe you should ask Danny.” Danny, their lacrosse team goalie, was gay, out, and proud. “He could act, you know, more casual about it.”

Then Scott shut his eyes against the pain as reality came crashing down on him. “We can’t go. We have lacrosse practice.”

Stiles stared at him, looking even more dumbfounded than when Allison had asked Scott to go to the motel with her. He gave his head a little shake, then gestured for Scott to move out of earshot of the girls.

As soon as they were a few feet away, he punched Scott in the arm. “Are you
insane
?” he said. “Let’s think this through. Getting smacked around by sweaty guys with sticks. Going to a
motel
with a girl.”

Scott grinned. “When you put it that way . . .”

“I’ll tell the coach you’ve got food poisoning.” Stiles held up his hand as if solemnly swearing to tell the full truth, nothing but the truth, and utter BS. “I’ll tell him you’re dying.”

“If her father finds out, he’ll kill me,” Scott said.

“He’s already trying to kill you. So no worries,” Stiles replied cheerfully.

Scott’s grin widened. Then it shrank a little. “Yeah, okay, but it looks like it’s not just me and Allison going. It’s me, Allison, and Lydia.”

“And is there any justice in that?” Stiles said with a sigh. He clapped Scott on the shoulder. “Go, my friend, go be a man. I’ll take one for the team.” Then he glanced longingly in Lydia’s direction, sighed again, and took off toward the boys’ locker room.

When Scott returned to the girls, Lydia was reapplying her lip gloss and Allison was looking kind of guilty and a little nervous as she held her phone to her ear. Seeing Scott in her makeup mirror, Lydia said to his reflection, “So it occurs to me that I have tons of math homework, and I was wondering if you two could handle the trip to the motel on your own.”

She popped the cap back onto her lip gloss and turned around to allow Scott to admire her. Her lips were very shiny. “I’ll go camp out at Jackson’s, in case he shows.”

“Okay, sure. Thanks, Mom,” Allison said into the phone. She disconnected. “They said okay.” Her forehead was furrowed, as if okay was a bad thing. Scott remembered that she’d been grounded. He had, too, but he was on the honor system. He had lacrosse practice, and his mom had the night shift. They wouldn’t be home at the same time until tomorrow morning. Which meant that he could sneak around if he needed to.

“So you can go,” Lydia translated, and Allison nodded. Lydia mimicked putting a phone to her ear. “You let me know what you and Scott find out the minute you get there,” she ordered Allison.

“I’ll call you. Promise,” Allison said.

Lydia took off, and Allison and Scott walked to the parking lot. By the time they’d reached her car, she was still looking weirded out, and Scott paused beside the door.

“Is this okay with you?” he asked her.

“Yeah,” she said, relaxing a little as she slid her arms around his waist. “It’s just . . . I didn’t expect my parents to say I could go to Lydia’s. Last night my father said I would be grounded until the end of time, and today he seemed almost
glad
that I wasn’t coming home.”

“Oh.” Scott didn’t know what to make of that, and it worried him a little. Maybe the Argents were going out werewolf hunting. “But he thinks you’re going to Lydia’s, right?”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, lowered her head, and nodded. She didn’t like lying to her parents. He knew how that felt. He hated lying to her.

“Yeah,” she said. “He thinks that first we’re going to study in the library, where we’re not allowed to have cell phones on. And then, he, um, thinks I’m spending the night at her house.” She gazed up at him mischievously with those huge dark brown eyes of hers, and he thought he would explode. He still couldn’t quite believe that of all the guys in school, Allison Argent had picked him to be her boyfriend.

“So aren’t you?” he asked her. “Spending the night at her house?”

She wrinkled her nose, half shy, half flirty. “Maybe not,” she replied.

S
tiles suited up and hit the field. Coach Finstock’s black hair was wild and free, his gray eyes blazing, and he was taking roll while bellowing out warm-ups. He saw Stiles and said, “Where’s McCall?”

“He had to go home, Coach,” Stiles said, eyes wide and innocent. “Food poisoning.”

The coach did a double take. “What? He makes first line and then he takes a day off on account of a little food poisoning? Where’s the team spirit in
that
?”

“He’s really sick,” Stiles replied, keeping the innocence vibe flowing. He was the king of the “who-me?” fake out, after having trailed after his father on so many of his calls, then pretending not to know any of the gory details. Before the return of Derek Hale to Beacon Hills, local crimes hadn’t actually been all that gory. But now that Derek was in town, the ick-o-meter was at full tilt. Coincidence? Stiles thought not.

“Sick,” Coach echoed, sounding disgusted.

“Barfing, totally barfing. Everywhere,” Stiles confirmed. “Hurling chunks the size of ice cu—”

The coach made a sour face. “Okay, all right, Stilinski. I don’t need a picture.” He grunted. “Even though I’ve got one now, thank you very much. Hey.” He looked around. “Where’s my captain?”

He meant Jackson, of course, and right on cue, Danny, Jackson’s best friend, jogged on over.

“He went out of town with his parents, Coach. They cleared it with the office.”

“Right, right,” Coach Finstock said, nodding. “I remember now. Excused absence. No problem.”

Stiles was disgusted. He knew that was a total lie, one planned well in advance. Danny might have not known where Jackson was this morning, but he was playing his part now. Jackson’s parents were already out of town, and Lydia had asked Jackson to get out of lacrosse practice so they could get a jump—so to speak—on their weekend alone.

Jackson was the most committed lacrosse player Stiles had ever seen—what players called a “lax-head,” but hey, if Lydia crooked her finger Stiles’s way, he’d drop out of school if she wanted him to.

Except that Jackson was missing from the party.

And Scott went sleepwalking last night,
Stiles thought nervously.

No, no way. Scott had not killed Jackson. There’d be a body.

Unless he ate him all up or something.

“Stilinski, are you going to puke, too?” Coach Finstock asked, peering at him. “Cuz if you think you’re going to
hurl, you can hit the showers, buddy. We’ll do fine without you.”

Jackson’s little posse of minions snickered and Stiles felt his cheeks go red. Guys like Jackson—rich, athletic—they always got the breaks.

“I’m fine,” Stiles insisted.

“Okay, then let’s get it moving. And tell McCall one more missed practice and he’s benched.”

Guys like him and Scott, not so much.

Yet despite my class envy, I hope Scott didn’t eat him. Talk about your food poisoning.

“I’ll tell him,” Stiles said.
And hopefully, he won’t be behind bars when I do.

•  •  •

Hundreds, if not thousands, of fresh bullet holes dotted the charred walls of Derek Hale’s family home. Amazingly, it was still standing after Kate Argent had let loose inside with a submachine gun the day before. She’d sauntered into his house with two of her goons and taunted him about Laura’s death. Enraged, Derek had attacked them. But Kate had laid him low with a cattle prod. She reminded him that there were bite marks on Laura’s body. The Alpha had killed her, Kate insisted. So why didn’t she and Derek help each other out? If Derek told her who the Alpha was, Kate could get rid of him for both Derek and the hunters.

But once she’d realized that Derek didn’t know who the Alpha was, she’d decided he was expendable. That was why she’d tried to machine-gun him to death—and nearly
brought down the house. His house and he were the last of the Hales—except for his uncle Peter Hale, a scarred vegetable wasting away at Beacons Crossing Home, a long-term-care facility. Derek could still remember Uncle Peter before the fire—a prankster with a wicked sense of humor.

Before the fire that the Argents set. I know they did it.

Derek did another set of push-ups. His back and chest were glistening with sweat and his arm muscles were aching. He ignored the pain and did another set of reps. He was driven. He needed endurance, and strength.

It was only a matter of time before Kate came back, and he had to be ready.

To tear her apart.

Meanwhile, he had other things on his mind. He’d had a dream, and he never dreamed. It hadn’t been so much a dream as a nightmare, and it had awakened him at 3 a.m.—the hour of the wolf—when he bolted upright, sweating and panting, as if he’d been running for hours.