Page 2 of Grave Danger

“Are you injured, sir?”

“Me? No, I’m not injured.”

The truck door wrenched open wide, startling a shout out of him. Cody dropped the phone and heard it hit the floor mat on the passenger side. Fingers gripped his thigh and a terrible odor washed over him as the man—it’s the mayor, it’s the goddamn mayor!—let out a deep and creepy moan.

“What the fuck?” Cody shouted, realizing in the back of his mind that it had become a kind of mantra for his evening.

He jerked his leg free, but the mayor leaned around the frame and into the cab. His eyes were pale and lifeless, mouth stretched open wide to reveal teeth crusted with something thick and dark. The tie hung down, and in the glow of the interior lights, Cody recognized it as the red power tie the mayor had been wearing at the viewing.

“Fuck!”

Cody pushed himself over the center console into the passenger seat. George Clarke put one hand on the driver’s seat cushion and stretched the other out toward him. Dirt lined his chipped and broken fingernails, something the mayor would have never allowed while he’d been living. The man had a regularly scheduled manicure while he’d been alive.

And what the fuck was actually happening right now?

Unable to tear his eyes from the mayor, Cody ran a hand back and forth across the interior of the passenger door behind him, desperately searching for the handle. George Clarke tried to get a foot up into the truck but missed, and he made a low, guttural sound of impatience that sent a cloud of noxious air over Cody. He coughed and turned away long enough to locate the door handle and yank on it. The door swung open, and he stumbled out onto the shoulder of the road. Standing on the gravel, Cody gripped the outer edge of the door tight and looked through the truck at the mayor.

“What the fuck?” Cody repeated, but softer this time.

The siren was closer, and he looked away a moment, squinting to see beyond the apron of light thrown out by the headlights. No sign of any emergency vehicle yet, but they couldn’t arrive fast enough. He looked through the truck’s cab again, and his breath caught in his chest.

It was empty.

“Shit.”

Still holding tight to the edge of the passenger door, Cody looked toward the front of the truck but saw no one in the glow of the headlights. He turned to the back in time to see the mayor lurch toward him, the intermittent red glow of the emergency flashers casting deep shadows across his expression of murderous rage.

“What the fuck?”

Cody backpedaled, finally releasing the passenger door. The mayor moved fast, however, and snagged the sleeve of Cody’s shirt, twisting his fingers into the material. With an adrenaline-fueled yank of his arm, Cody pulled free of the mayor’s grasp. But he was too close to the edge of the drainage ditch, and his foot slid down the grassy side. He stumbled into the ankle-deep standing water at the bottom and walked backward as the mayor staggered down the embankment after him.

“What the fuck?”

He’d shouted it this time, and was about to say it again when the backs of his legs hit something, and he sat down hard in the stinky water. The shock of his fall rattled up his spine and his teeth clicked together. His truck’s headlights provided enough light for him to see a large tree branch lying across the ditch, as well as the mayor stomping over it toward him.

Cody crabwalked back a few feet, then scrambled up the embankment onto the gravel shoulder. A sheriff’s car pulled up, lights flashing and siren abruptly cutting off. Cody was on all fours looking up at the cruiser when the driver door opened and Deputy Ryan Zellmer stepped out.

“Son of a…” Cody grumbled.

Zellmer was the newest member of the Parson’s Hollow sheriff’s department. He was young, brash, and carried a hell of a grudge against Cody and Demmy. Two years ago, Zellmer’s father, Wayne, had been a sheriff’s deputy during the werewolf invasion of Parsons’s Hollow. Unfortunately, Wayne Zellmer didn’t survive the night. Ryan Zellmer, nineteen at the time, had joined the department shortly afterward to honor his father.

And make life hard for the Critter Catchers he held responsible for his father’s death.

“Stay where you are, sir,” Zellmer said, one hand on the butt of his service weapon.

“Ryan, hi, it’s Cody Bower,” Cody said, starting to get to his feet.

“It’s Deputy Zellmer, and I said stay down!”

“Okay, okay.” Cody dropped to his hands and knees once again. He looked over his shoulder but didn’t see the mayor. Well, that was good at least. Wasn’t it? Probably was. He didn’t think Deputy Zellmer would intervene if the mayor started eating Cody alive. Hell, he’d probably cut chunks off of him and hand them over.

“What’s going on here?” Zellmer slowly approached Cody’s truck, ducking this way and that as he looked it over. “We received a report of a pedestrian accident.”

“Yeah, that was me. I mean, I called it in. I was driving home and the may—” He stopped and cleared his throat, nervously looking over his shoulder but still finding no threat. “And a man stepped right out in front of my truck. I didn’t have time to stop, and I hit him.”

“And where is this man now?” Zellmer moved out into the road, keeping Cody in his sightline, hand still on his weapon as he checked the area behind the truck. “I don’t see anyone.”

“I know. He got up and, well, he came after me.” Another look back, but still no sign of the mayor. Once again, what the fuck?