He shook his head.

Scarlet glared across the table, unable to read him. Unable to decipher if he was telling the truth. “The Wolves,” she murmured, letting the name sink into her brain. “And do they do this often? Take innocent people out of their homes for absolutely no reason?”

“They have a reason.”

Scarlet pulled the drawstring of her hood until it was almost strangling her, before tugging the material back out again. “Why? What would they want with my grandmother?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t tell me that. Is it ransom money? What?”

His fingers flexed in and out on the table. “She was in the military,” he said, gesturing toward the hallway. “In those pictures, she was in uniform.”

“She was a pilot for the EF, but that was years ago. Before I was born.”

“Then maybe she knows something. Or they think she does.”

“About what?”

“Military secrets? Top-secret weaponry?”

Scarlet scooted forward until her stomach pressed against the table’s edge. “I thought you said they were common criminals. What do they care about that?”

Wolf sighed. “Criminals who think of themselves as…”

“Harbingers of change.” Scarlet gnawed on her lip. “Right. So, what? Are they trying to take down the government or something? Start a war?”

Wolf glanced out the window as the lights of a small passenger ship skirted along the edge of the field—the first workers arriving for their shift. “I don’t know.”

“No, you do know. You’re one of them!”

Wolf smiled, humorlessly. “I was nothing to them, hardly more than an errand boy. I wasn’t let in on any executive plans.”

Scarlet folded her arms. “Then take an educated guess.”

“I know they stole a lot of weapons. They want people to be afraid of them.” He shook his head. “Maybe they want to get their hands on military weaponry.”

“My grandma wouldn’t know anything about that. And even if she did before, when she was a pilot, she wouldn’t know now.”

Wolf opened his palms wide to her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else it could be. Unless you can think of something she may have been involved with.”

“No, I’ve been racking my brain since she disappeared, but there’s nothing. She was just—she’s my grandma.” She gestured out toward the fields. “She owns a farm. She speaks her mind and she doesn’t like being told what to think, but she doesn’t have any enemies, not that I know of. Sure, people in town think she’s a little eccentric, but there’s no one who doesn’t like her. And she’s just an old woman.” She clasped both hands around the coffee mug and sighed. “You must know how to find them, at least?”

“Find them? No—it would be suicide.”

She tensed. “It’s not for you to decide.”

Wolf scratched behind his neck. “How long ago did they take her?”

“Eighteen days.” Hysteria worked its way up her throat. “They’ve had her for eighteen days.”

His attention was plastered to the table, troubled lines drawn into his brow. “It’s too dangerous.”

The chair slammed against the floor as Scarlet bolted up. “I asked for information, not a lecture. I don’t care how dangerous they are—that’s just one more reason I need to find them! Do you know what they could be doing to her right now while you’re wasting my time? What they did to my father?”

A slam echoed through the house and Scarlet jumped, barely catching herself before she tripped over the fallen chair. She glanced past Wolf, but the hall was empty. Her heart hiccupped. “Dad?” She bolted into the foyer and thrust open the front door. “Dad!”

But outside, the drive was already empty.

Thirteen

Scarlet sprinted into the drive, the gravel biting into her feet. The wind kicked at her curls, throwing them across her face.

“Where did he go?” she said, tucking her hair into her hood. The sun was fully over the horizon already, flecking the crops with gold and filling the drive with swaying shadows.

“Perhaps to feed your birds?” Wolf pointed as a rooster pecked his way back around the side of the house, meandering toward the vegetable patch.

Ignoring the biting gravel, Scarlet jogged around the corner. Oak leaves spun on the wind. The hangar and barn and chicken coop all stood silent in the buffeting dawn. There was no trace of her father.

“He must have been looking for something, or—” Scarlet’s heart skipped. “My ship!”

She ran, ignoring the rocky drive, the prickly weeds. She nearly plowed into the hangar’s door but managed to grasp the handle and yank it open just as a crash shook the building.

“Dad!”

But he was not inside the ship, preparing to fly off with it as she’d feared. Instead, he was standing on top of the cabinets that ran the length of the far wall, reaching into the overhead cupboards and tossing their contents onto the floor. Paint cans, extension cords, drill bits.

An entire standing toolbox had been tipped over, flooding the concrete with screws and bolts, and two metal cabinets on the back wall stood wide-open, showing an assortment of military pilot uniforms, coveralls, and a single straw gardening hat shoved into a corner.

“What are you doing?” Scarlet strode toward him, then ducked and froze as a wrench sailed by her head. When a crash didn’t follow, she glanced back to see Wolf gripping the wrench a foot from his face, blinking in surprise. Scarlet spun back. “Dad, what—”

“There’s something here!” he said, yanking open another cupboard. He snatched up a tin can and tipped it over, mesmerized as hundreds of rusted nails crashed and clanged on the floor.

“Dad, stop! There’s nothing here!” She picked her way through the mess, more aware of rusty sharp bits than she had been of the jagged rocks outside. “Stop it!”

“There is something here, Scar.” Tucking a metal barrel under one arm, her dad hopped off the counter and crouched, working the plug out from the hole in the top. Though he was also barefoot, the jumble of nails and screws didn’t appear to bother him. “She has something and they want it. It’s got to be here. Somewhere … but where…”

The air filled with the pungent fumes of engine lubricant as her dad tipped over the barrel, letting the yellowish grease gurgle and spill out over his mess.

“Dad, put it down!” She grabbed a hammer off the floor and held it overhead. “I will hit you, I swear it!”

He finally looked at her with that same haunted madness. This was not her father. This man was not vain and charming and self-indulgent, all the things she’d admired as a child and despised as a teenager. This man was broken.

The stream of oil became a light drizzle.

“Dad. Put down the barrel. Now.”

His lips trembled as his attention shifted away, focused on the small delivery ship not a body’s length away from him. “She loved flying,” he murmured. “She loved her ships.”

“Dad. Dad—!”

Standing, her dad heaved the barrel into the back window of the ship. A hairline fracture cobwebbed out on the glass.

“Not my ship!” Scarlet dropped the hammer and ran for him, stumbling her way over tools and debris.

The glass shattered with the second hit and her dad was already hauling himself through the shards.

“Stop it!” Scarlet grabbed him around the waist and dragged him out of the ship. “Leave it alone!”

He thrashed in her hold, his knee catching Scarlet in the side, and they both fell onto the floor. A canister bit into Scarlet’s thigh but all she could think about was tightening her hold on her dad, trying to lock his swinging arms to his sides. Blood was on his hands where he’d grabbed the broken glass, and a gash in his side was already turning crimson.

“Let me go, Scar. I’m going to find it. I’m going to—”

He cried out as he was lifted away from her. Instinctively, Scarlet clung, still trying to subdue him until she realized that Wolf was there, dragging her dad to his feet. She let go, panting. One hand went to rub her throbbing hip.