The message came back in three days.
Marcus found me in the kitchen — not the dramatic finding, not the Beta-on-official-business finding. Just Marcus, appearing in the doorway with his phone in his hand and the expression of a man who has received news that has reorganized something in him and has not yet decided what to do with the reorganization.
"One of them," he said.
I turned from the stove.
"Her name is Aldis," he said. "She left Silver Creek not long after you did. She's been in a small independent pack in southern Oregon for a while now — a rogue-friendly community, the kind that forms when people don't fit the traditional structure." He looked at his phone. "She responded to my inquiry within the hour. She said—" He paused. "She said she'd been hoping someone would ask."
I s
