Page 37 of Wretched Thorns

Dex didn’t curse. Didn’t shout. His hand came down on the e-brake handle in one motion. The truck shuddered. He shifted down. The engine howled. He pulled the wheel right, then left, then right, threading a curve that came at them with the speed bleeding out of the truck one fucking degree at a time.

A shoulder appeared on the right.

He took it.

Gravel slid under the tires. The shoulder dropped mildly into a ditch. The truck fishtailed once, came back, and Dex held the wheel like a man holding a wolf by the scruff.

The truck stopped.

Three feet from a culvert that would have taken the front axle clean off.

Nobody spoke for a long beat.

Tara’s hands were flat on the dash. Her pulse was in her ears. Half the steaming coffee in the cup holder had ended up on her wrist, and she hadn’t noticed.

Dex’s hands stayed on the wheel.

His jaw was tight. His eyes were full on gold. Not flecked. Not flashing. Gold.

“Everybody all right back there.”

“All good here.” Grandmère’s voice. “Brakes?”

“Brakes.”

“Hmm…Sigil work. Maybe.”

“Yeah.”

“But when?” Tara turned to him. “How did you know?”

“My foot caught the line going before the pedal reported it. Heard the pressure drop.”

“You heard it?”

“Big bad wolf, chère. Se rappeler?”

He got out.

She got out behind him. He went down on one knee at the front bumper, then flat on his back, then under the chassis. His boots and the cuff of his jeans were all she could see. A half-second of silence, then a low word she didn’t catch, and he slid back out, grease across one cheekbone, holding what looked like a length of rubber tubing in his hand.

“Sigil-burn,” he said. “Whoever wrote it on the line knew what they were doing. The cut took its time. It could’ve happened any time in the next twenty miles. They wouldn’t have had to be anywhere near us when it did.”

Grandmère was out of the truck now too, leaning on the hood, eyes open at last.

“Seems sloppy for a Beaumont,” she said.

“They must have followed you.” Tara turned to Dex.

“Do no matter now, baby.” Her grandmother had a point. Tara wanted to scream.

Dex was already on his phone.

“Bodie.”

A pause.

“Roads are watched. Tagged us at the bayou and tracked north. Sigil-burn on the brake line. Nobody’s hurt, but the truck’s dead.”