Chapter 872 Chapter 872
After dropping off Kevan, Foster drove around. He didn’t want to check out of the motel room until Zain had another place. If he wasn’t going to be sitting in the diner, he would at least have the room to wait in.
He wasn’t surveillance or a mastermind at planning the ops, but that didn’t stop him from driving back toward Waylon’s to see what was on the road behind the farm. Maybe having that information would be helpful to Cy when he got here.
Of course, he’d thought that before doing it and all he had to report was fields. There were some trees, but it would be a long hike from the back through the wet and possibly still frozen fields.
“This is why you’re a driver.” He shook his head. Soon the team will fill a vehicle with people and he’d have somewhere to take them.
He reached behind his seat for a snack. He was going to miss eating at the diner.
His coyote was annoyed they hadn’t gone for a run this morning. “Later, when some of the team shows up.” Zain usually found houses that had a bit of property to them, so a run wasn’t out of the question. It was bad business to house up so many different clans, in high-tension situations and not have anywhere for them to run off tension.
He glanced at his phone and then dropped his snack and gripped the steering wheel as he stomped on the brakes. A coyote – with a grey-tipped tail ran across in front of him. His stirred. Foster exhaled all at once and turned to watch it hightail it across the field. Something was hanging out of its mouth, making him wonder if that female had some pups somewhere. It was a bit early in the season for them, but it happened.
He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then picked up his snack before starting to drive again. He glanced into the field and concluded that it was one fast coyote. He drove for a few seconds more. She was pretty big, too, for a wild one. He shrugged, maybe they were bigger here. “See, it’s good we don’t pause to frolic with wild things,” he told his animal.
At the next corner, he was to turn at, he slowed right down and looked in the ditches on all the corners, just to be sure. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the coyote run across the road that he was going to be turning onto. Good thing he looked.
Stopping, he leaned closer to the windshield. That wasn’t an animal in its mouth. It looked like a pair of boots. Either this wild thing had a foot fetish, or that large female wasn’t wild at all.
Turning onto the road, he kept it slow, so he could watch her progress without her knowing he was. He was either following her back to a den or wherever their clothes were. Odd they only had their boots, though.
Was it a coincidence that a female had called in with the information about Waylon, and he just happened to come across one on the same morning? His coyote stirred again which made Foster think it wasn’t such a big reach after all.
Did he call Kevan and tell him? No one had specified what he was to do if he found other shifters. Maybe he should call and ask him what the plan was after he found some.
His phone ringing startled him. He stabbed it with his finger harder than needed and made it turn lopsided in the holder. “Yeah.”
“Hello to you, too.” It was Gia.
“Sorry. The phone startled me.”
“I understand sudden things spooking you.”
He heard a male laugh in the background and knew it had to be Deacon.
“We’re heading that way. Zain gave us your location. He also said to tell you he doesn’t have a house yet.”
Foster nodded and drove faster when the coyote cut across a field that would take her out of his sight. “I expect he’ll find us something. How long until you’re here?”
“Home isn’t terribly far from the border to Minnesota. Deacon says we’ll be crossing in an hour.”
Foster grinned. Backup was good. “Cy is supposed to be here soon too.”
“What are we looking at, Foster?”
“Hey, Deacon. Uh, a farm. Hard to access without being seen. Three buildings plus a barn.”
“Any confirmation of how many are inside them?”
Foster shook his head. “I guess that’s what Cy will be working on.”
“Who else is coming?”
Foster sighed. “Raymond was working on the rest, but so far, there’s Kevan and me, Leyton, Luka, and Kash…”
Deacon chuckled. He wasn’t usually a jolly type of man. “Good so far.”
“There’s your two, and Raymond said something about getting some fliers in the air.”
“We can get Gia on a rifle, and most of the clean-up team are good on the other end of a scope.”
“I don’t want to shoot anyone.”
“Warning shots work better than kill shots.” He answered in a tone like they were discussing the weather.
“Until Zain gives me an address, I have a motel room. It’s the only one on the way in from your direction. Room nine.”
“Sounds good. We’re going to stop and grab some food for the road, and we’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Okay, Gia. See you soon.”
She hung up before he did. Foster slowed and watched the coyote cross into another field. The only thing in the direction she was going was the same location he’d been hanging out for the last several days. There wasn’t much there other than the diner, grocery store, gas station, and a few other little shops. Unless this coyote was going to exchange their boots at the feed store, they had to be going to one of those places to shift back to two-legged form.
He looked around. If he took the next road, he could get there before she did and watch where she goes.
This was not how he’d thought this morning was going to go, but if he could find the woman who had called in, then maybe they could find the clan she and Orson belonged to. Rescuing those from Waylon and finding a lost clan would make this trip a huge success.