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while had been spent at the estate with the rest of the pack.
It was hard to get much safer than that.
    "How long
has she been dropping off instantly like that?"
    "A week or
two maybe. I first noticed when I stayed late in her room to watch a
movie with her. She fell asleep before the opening credits had even
finished rolling."
    He wasn't
telling me everything, that went without saying, but this was
potentially even more serious than I'd realized. Now that she was
asleep, Kristin smelled wrong somehow.
    I didn't figure
it out until Ash exited the interstate and pulled up to the
drive-through window. Kristin had been stressed out while we'd been
running from the cops, but she'd kept it under control. If I hadn't
been able to smell the adrenaline coming out of her pores I probably
wouldn't have been able to tell that she was rattled at all.
    She was more
freaked out now than she'd been then. I'd never seen anything like
that; I would have said that it wasn't possible for someone to remain
asleep with that much adrenaline in their system. She'd fallen asleep
without ever calming down.
    My suspicions
were confirmed when she started thrashing around and screaming as we
pulled back onto the main road.
    "She's
being attacked by Dream Stealer."
    For a second I
thought Ash was going to pretend that he hadn't heard me.
    "Yeah.
He's got his hooks pretty deep into her. She's not getting any real
sleep most nights. She tried to go without sleep, but eventually she
got to the point where the exhaustion was stronger than even the
terror of what he'd do next."
    "She needs
to be locked up! It's only a matter of time before he breaks her, and
when that happens there isn't anything that she won't do."
    "No. We
aren't locking her up. We'll keep her in the dark so she can't pass
anything important on; she's already started cutting herself out of
the loop when it comes to operational stuff."
    "That
isn't good enough, Ash, and you know it. Even if we can keep her in
the dark when it comes to Alec and the others, that won't protect the
three of us. It's for her safety as much as it is for ours. For all
you know she was the reason that we got jumped earlier today."
    "She
wasn't. I've been careful not to tell her where we are headed on any
given day."
    "That
explains why you've been so evasive lately, but you did tell me and I
might have told her."
    "When? The
three of us have hardly been out of sight of each other since we left
Nevada."
    My beast should
have been ready to rip Ash's head off, but I couldn't seem to muster
the energy for real anger. Maybe it was all of the blood that I'd
lost, that or maybe I was just tired.
    I wasn't mad, I
just wanted to go somewhere I wouldn't have to deal with the inherent
messiness of pack life. My life had turned into some kind of federal
disaster area and I was ready to be done with it.
    "I don't
know, Ash. Maybe you're right and I never had a chance to tell her
where we were headed, but I can't guarantee that, which means that we
may have just broken radio silence for no reason. I can't believe
that you've kept this to yourself. You're not usually this reckless."
    "I didn't
keep it to myself, at least not completely. Alec knows. That's why he
wanted you to come along with Kristin and me. My plan was to just
take her away somewhere safe, somewhere she couldn't do any harm if
he manages to break her, but Alec ordered me to bring you along."
    "I wish he
would have told me the score for a change, but it makes sense. By
yourself it would just be a matter of time before you ended up dead.
Once Dream Stealer turned her, she'd just have to wait until you fell
asleep and then you'd be a sitting duck. This way we can watch each
other's backs at least."
    I would have
been happy to just leave things there, but Ash was apparently made of
sterner stuff even than I'd realized.
    "That
isn't the only reason Alec wanted you to come with us."
    "I know,
Ash. He's hoping that I'll be able to put her down if she becomes too
dangerous