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daughter.” He shrugged like it should be obvious.
    The muscles in my chest contracted. He didn’t have the right to those words. He’d lost it years before he finally left. I shook my head. “Why did that wolf call you ‘Curtis’? Why did the wolves listen to you?”
    “Goddamn it, Mackenzie. Do you have any idea how many wolves the Trackers have rounded up or killed in this city? If the pack had really challenged me . . .” He took a deep breath and cracked his knuckles. They still bore spiderwebs of scars, souvenirs from fights that were too old for LS to erase.
    I had poured peroxide over some of those cuts when they were fresh. A wave of déjà vu rolled over me and an insistent throbbing started just above my eye socket, like someone was trying to drill through the bone.
    “I want to know what you were doing with that boy.”
    After a long moment, when it became clear I wasn’t going to answer, Hank said, “He called me Curtis because that’s how they know me. Hank Dobson had too long a rap sheet to be useful.”
    So he had cut the name loose. Just like he had cut me loose. “And you came to Denver.”
    “We lived here for a few months when you were a kid. Even then, it had more werewolves than anywhere else in the country.”
    “Strength in numbers,” I muttered. It was part of the reason Jason and I had assumed Kyle had come here. I couldn’t remember ever having lived in the city—nothing over the past few days had seemed familiar—but when you never stayed in the same place for more than a couple of months, everything became a blur.
    “When did it happen? Exactly?” I don’t know why it made a difference, but I suddenly needed to know.
    “The day I wouldn’t let you go back for your bag.”
    Sometime around age eight, I’d started keeping a backpack of anything that really mattered. A teddy bear. A picture of some woman Hank claimed was my mom. A plastic figure of a knight on a white horse and a handful of small bills pilfered from Hank’s wallet. As I got older, the cash increased and the contents of the bag changed, but it was always packed and ready. No matter what Hank was running from, there was always time to at least grab the backpack.
    Until one day there wasn’t.
    That had been at least six months before he ditched me in Hemlock. Six months when he had hidden the fact that he was infected. “You always were good at lying,” I said softly.
    The office door creaked open and Eve walked in without knocking. She didn’t hover on the threshold, she just crossed the room, her heavy boots muffled by the thick rugs on the floor. Like Hank, she didn’t match the surroundings but looked completely at home.
    “I told you to wait in the bar.”
    The glare Hank leveled at her would have made hardened criminals crumble, but she just shrugged. “Figured you’d want to know they put the Tracker and the two wolves in the storeroom.” A strand of scarlet hair fell over her face and she absently pushed it aside. “Heath was worried some of the wolves might challenge your orders.”
    “Orders I wouldn’t have had to give if you hadn’t let them inside.”
    A blush darkened Eve’s cheeks. “Sorry. I thought you’d want to see her.” But she didn’t sound sorry, and the look Hank shot her made it clear he thought she should be.
    Sorry. Sorry for letting us inside. Sorry for making me his problem.
    My eyes burned. I wasn’t his problem. I wasn’t anyone’s problem. All I needed was for Hank to hand over my friends and show us the door. After that, he’d never have to see me again.
    “Do something useful and take her back to the house. The wolves can stay with the Tracker until I figure out what to do with them.”
    I was on my feet in an instant. “You’re not doing anything with them. Jason and Serena were with me. All we wanted was to find Kyle and get out.”
    “You expect me to believe a Tracker is friends with two werewolves?”
    “I told you: he’s not a Tracker. He left