Hunting Human by Amanda E. Alvarez

called Dad.” Braden’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel.
    “I was tracking. You’ll have to forgive me if I forgot my curfew, Mom.” Chase pressed his mouth into a firm line, expressions of exhaustion, pain and annoyance warring for dominance.
    “Did you at least locate the asshole?” Braden merged onto the highway, wincing in tandem with his brother when the car ran through a series of potholes obscured by the rain.
    “Would I have called you if I hadn’t?” Chase rasped through clenched teeth. When nothing but Braden’s stony silence filled the car he elaborated. “Yes, okay. He’s staying at a motel a few blocks over from where you picked me up. I called Jason—he’s tailing him for now. And before you ask, we still don’t know what he’s doing here.”
    “Where does the Cutlass fit in?”
    “Markko left the motel a little after eleven last night; I tailed him. I can tell you he’s been here a few days, he was moving pretty quickly, seemed to know where he was going. I was focused on staying out of his range. I didn’t see the Cutlass tearing out of the alley until it was too late.” Chase shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I’m lucky it only clipped me.”
    “That car’s built like a tank. I don’t know how you missed it in the first place.” Braden muttered under his breath. Chase unclenched his fist long enough to flip him off.
    “Did anyone see you?” Braden signaled and merged off the highway.
    “Nah.”
    “You sure? We don’t need that kind of complication.”
    “You picked me up, you tell me. Do you really think anyone in that neighborhood gives a rat’s ass if they hit something with their car? Trust me, even if someone saw me, no one gives a shit.”
    Probably a fair assessment .
    In a neighborhood like that, people were used to looking the other way.
    “Fine. Want to explain why it took you more than twelve hours to call me?” After a lengthy pause, Braden cast his brother a sideways glance. “The next words out of your mouth had better be I was unconscious .”
    “You’re hoping I had a concussion?” Chase braced himself against the door as the car sped through the intersection. “Ow! Shit, do you mind?”
    “I didn’t do anything!” Braden scowled at the hunched form in his passenger seat. “Don’t change the subject. If you weren’t lying unconscious somewhere, then explain what was going through that thick skull of yours when you decided to wander around with broken ribs and a six-inch gash!”
    “We both know they aren’t broken! And I did my job! I needed to wait until Jason got here to take over the tail. The minute he showed, I called.”
    It was always the damn job with Chase. There had to be a special level of hell reserved for annoying younger siblings. “Your health comes first, dammit.” Anticipating the response, Braden cut him off, “Yes, even over the job.”
    “Would you stop hitting the fucking potholes already!”
    Braden pulled to a stop at a light and turned to his brother, anger vibrating through every muscle. But the words poised on the tip of his tongue slid back, thick and choking, to lodge in his throat. Chase sat hunched over on himself in the passenger seat, what little color he’d gained in the warmth of the car draining from his face. Braden sighed. The only thing worse than arguing with Chase, was arguing with him when he was tired or hurt. And right now he’s both.
    “Is it so much to ask that you take care of yourself? Do you have any idea what it would do to Mom and Dad if you had died out here?” It was a low blow, but this was an old argument he was determined to win, no matter what it took.
    “I know what I’m doing.” The protest came out tired and halfhearted.
    “I know. And I’m not asking you to go back to school if that’s not what you want.” Braden wished with every fiber of his being that Chase would go back to school. His life could be so much more. “I’m just asking you to take