Silver Moon, I Wait No More novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Luna's Silver

Delaney tries to take the pendant, burns her hand on it and promises to be named Luna at the full moon, and the man who stops for Jolene on the highway has a silver trap in his truck.

The pawnbroker didn't put it down.

He looked at Delaney, then at me.

"Ma'am, the lady already sold it."

"She had no right to sell it." Delaney came to the counter. "It was never hers."

"He gave it to me," I said.

"He gave it to you to hold." She didn't look at me when she said it. "Like a coat check."

I zipped my wallet shut.

"Then he can come buy it back. He's got thirty days."

Delaney laughed.

It was a pretty laugh. It always had been. Bodie used to try to copy it.

"Do you know what that is, Jolene? Did he ever tell you?"

"His mother's."

"His mother was the Luna of Silver Moon. That pendant is the Luna's. Whoever wears it stands on the moon stone next to the Alpha."

She leaned on the glass.

"He gave it to a waitress to keep in a sock drawer because he didn't know what it was. Now he does."

I thought of Nash wrapping it in velvet with his fingers jumping back from the chain.

I thought of how carefully he'd put it in my hand.

"He didn't know," I said.

"Of course he didn't. He was raised in a trailer by a woman who ran away from us." She smiled. "We're fixing that."

She turned to the pawnbroker.

"I'll give you two thousand for it."

"It's in pawn. Thirty days. That's the law."

"Five thousand."

"Lady, that's still the law."

Delaney's jaw went tight.

Her hand shot out across the counter and closed around the pendant in his palm.

Her leather glove came down on the chain.

The silver moon itself touched the bare skin of her wrist, just above the glove.

There was a hiss, like water on a grill.

Delaney jerked back and the pendant hit the glass and slid.

She held her arm against her chest.

A red line was rising on the inside of her wrist, already blistering, in the shape of a crescent.

The pawnbroker stared at her wrist.

Then he stared at the pendant.

Then he slowly reached under the counter, where I knew there was a baseball bat, because everybody in Cold Creek knew there was a baseball bat.

"Out," he said.

"You don't understand who you're talking to."

"I don't care. Out."

Delaney looked at me.

Her eyes weren't brown anymore. They were yellow.

"You think you're free of him," she said. "You're not. You're a stain we haven't finished cleaning."

"Get out of my shop," the pawnbroker said.

She went to the door.

She stopped with her hand on it.

"He's naming me Luna at the full moon. November fifth. Bodie's going to hold my hand on the stone."

The bell rang behind her.

Through the front window I watched her get into a black SUV and press her burned wrist to her mouth.

The pawnbroker put the pendant back in its velvet and set it in the drawer.

He didn't say anything about the hiss.

People in Cold Creek had been not saying things about those men for as long as I'd lived here.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine."

"You want some advice?"

"No."

"Get out of this town," he said anyway.

"I'm going."

I walked to the edge of town where Main Street turned into the state highway.

There was a gas station there with one pump and a sign that said NO RESTROOM.

I stood on the gravel shoulder with my thumb out.

I had never hitchhiked in my life.

In my last life, I had never left Cold Creek again after this day.

Four trucks went by.

A logging truck went by and blew my ponytail across my face.

The fifth truck slowed.

It was an old white pickup with a state seal on the door and a light bar on the roof.

It pulled onto the shoulder ahead of me and stopped.

A man leaned across and pushed the passenger door open.

He was big. He took up most of the cab.

He had a short sandy beard and a green uniform jacket with a patch that said FISH AND WILDLIFE.

"You know hitchhiking's illegal on this stretch?" he said.

"Are you going to arrest me?"

"I'm going to give you a ride. Where to?"

"Spokane."

"That's where I'm headed." He moved a thermos off the seat. "Ross Danner."

"Jolene."

I climbed in and put my backpack between my feet.

The cab smelled like coffee and wet dog, though there wasn't a dog.

He pulled back onto the highway.

I watched Cold Creek go small in the side mirror.

The water tower. The steeple. The trees on Pike Ridge, black against the sky.

"Leaving for good?" Ross asked.

"Yes."

He nodded and didn't ask anything else.

I liked him for that right away.

We hit a pothole.

Something heavy clanked in the truck bed behind us.

I turned and looked through the back window.

There was a blue tarp back there, and it had slid half off whatever it covered.

Steel jaws.

A chain.

The jaws were coated in something bright that caught the sun, too bright for steel.

I had seen that exact shine once before.

On a trap clamped around Nash's ankle, a year ago, the night Delaney carried him home.

"What is that?" I said.

Ross glanced in the mirror.

"Evidence," he said. "Somebody's been setting silver traps on Pike Ridge. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

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