This was a mess even the pack elders—what was left of them—couldn’t sweep under the rug. Whole damn police department had died, apart from Tom. The president of the city council had been found hanging upside down on the staircase in his home, his foot caught in the railing. The blood from his neck had trailed down the steps drip by drip, soaking the hair of his equally dead second-in-command, who had collapsed face first as if he’d tripped as he ascended the stairs and stayed there to die. Bits of the president had been found in his mouth. Westley had come to naked and wrapped up in the Wards’ tennis net, suspended over the court in a way that rendered the net part hammock, part bondage device. He’d lain there, dangling, listening to the ambulance sirens that had woken him. God knew who’d called them—seemed the whole town was inside the Wards’ house, dead or half-dead. A week had passed since he’d scraped his knees on the green asphalt after he managed to twist free.
