“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Find them.”
I load the feed sack into the truck bed like I bought fifty pounds of sweet feed. Briar watches me settle into the driver’s seat and reads my face.
“East?” she asks.
“East. A town called Cedar Falls. One of the families may already be there.”
Briar folds her knife cloth, and tucks it into her jacket. “Then that’s where we go.”
I check our route on Google Maps, then I pull out of the lot. The dog on the porch still doesn’t move.
I can’t shake my growing sense of agitation, but now that we have a destination in mind, my sense of purpose feels clearer.
We drive the last stretch in the dark. The Hill Country is different at night. The hills turn silver under a half-moon, and the trees throw shadows across the road that make my wolf twitch. The cedar is thick and pungent, and the air through the cracked window has a dry warmth that’s nothing like the Ozarks. I can smell animals, earth, something alive and old.
And wolf scent layered through the landscape so thoroughly it might as well be the soil itself. Not one or two wolves passing through. A population. A territory saturated with pack presence.
“You smell it?” I ask.
“Since the last junction.” Briar’s eyes are on the road. “This whole area is claimed.”
She’s right. The scent markers are everywhere; in the brush along the highway shoulders, on the fence posts, drifting from side roads that lead toward properties set back from the main route. Whoever lives here, they’ve marked their territory so heavily that even a human would notice the dogs aren’t quite right.
We sit in silence, processing this until the lights of a motel come up ahead of us. I glance at Maps again.
“Looks like a good place to set up base,” I tell Briar. She gives another of her silent nods, and I glide off the road and park in front of the office.
The office smells like pine cleaner and old carpet. A man behind the counter looks up from a hunting magazine, takes in my face, my out-of-state plates through the window, and asks no questions beyond the necessary ones. Cash or card. How many nights. One bed or two. I pay cash for a week, sign a name that isn’t mine, and take the key—an actual metal key on a plastic fob, Room Six, around the side.
We unload in silence. The room is clean enough; two twin beds, a bathroom with a shower that’ll run hot for about four minutes if we’re lucky, a window facing the parking lot. Briar checks the sightlines, tests the lock, and positions her bag where she can reach it from the bed closest to the door. I take the other bed and spread Margaux’s map across the mattress.
Briar looks down at it over my shoulder. “She did a good job,” she says, which is high praise coming from her. “I’ll go over it in more detail later.”
I glance at my watch. Early morning. “We should probably take a look around town.”
Briar doesn’t answer. The fact that she’s heading out the door tells me that she thinks it’s a good idea. It’s taken a few days, but I think I’m finally learning to “speak Briar.”
We get to town just after 6 a.m.
It’s not as tiny as Eldridge, but certainly no bustling metropolis. One main street with the obligatory feed store, a diner, a gas station, a hardware shop, and a bar that looks like it’s been here since someone decided Texas was a good idea. There’s a church with a white steeple at one end. A water tower at the other, painted with the town name: CEDAR FALLS. There’s a mechanic’s yard with trucks parked in rows, a post office the size of a garden shed, and a strip of storefronts that are clean and maintained in the way that means somebody takes pride.
No chain stores. No traffic lights. One blinking yellow at the only intersection I can see.
My wolf doesn’t like it. Too quiet. Too contained. The buildings are fine, and the street is fine, and the early-morning light on the limestone is fine, but underneath all of it, she senses the same thing I do: order. Control. A place where everything has a position, and everything is watched.
Briar reads me. “We eat. We listen. We don’t ask questions yet.”
She’s right. I park on the main street near the diner. The sign reads “Dutch’s” in faded letters. Through the window, I can see booths, a long counter, and a waitress filling coffee cups. It looks normal. It looks like every small-town diner in every state I’ve driven through.
We get out, and I lock the truck. Briar falls into step beside me, close enough to be together, far enough to move if she needs to.
The bell over the door chimes when we walk in.
The diner isn’t full. Maybe ten people are scattered across the booths and counter stools. Working men in denim and flannel. A woman with gray hair reading a newspaper. Two younger men at the counter, plates of eggs in front of them.
Every single one of them looks up when we enter.