“No.”
“What about Marini? Does he know it was you who got her out?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
He shook his head. “It’s not the right time.”
So now we had dirt on each other. It wasn’t quite the stuff alliances were made of, but when Sloane’s life was at stake, neither of us could take any chances.
“If you care for her like you say, then you’ll keep your mouth shut,” I said, knowing the game was well and truly up. With Gasket, anyway. “If I need to get her out, I won’t be kind to anyone who gets in my way. Not even her surrogate daddy.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” the old wolf said with a smirk. “I convinced Marini to let her work with me in the garage. Since she can’t leave the compound, I’ll be able to watch her there.”
“She won’t be happy if she finds out.”
“I expect she’ll be livid.” Gasket smiled, showing me a side I hadn’t seen before. He cared. He actually, genuinely cared for Sloane. He wasn’t messing around, at least not about this.
I knew Sloane was more than capable of looking after herself. After seeing how she handled things on the road, I believed in her, but the more people we had on our side, the better. Gasket was a good start. He was the beta of the pack, second only to the alpha.
“If Marini does anything to hurt a single hair on her head, I’ll kill him myself,” I murmured, the threat rolling off my tongue like silk. “I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me and anyone who dares come after us.”
“Those are bold words for a vampire bound to the alpha by magic.”
“They’re true.”
“And you’d give up your revenge for her? You’d forget about your wife?”
The photo of Loretta burned a hole in my pocket. I would never stop loving her, but she was dead and buried. There was a point where I’d have to let go and move on. I’d thought I’d done that on the train when I was lying on the floor of that luggage compartment, but here I was, still staring at a creased photograph in the dark.
“Sloane—”
“Wanted a better life,” Gasket interrupted. “She obviously saw something in you out on the road. Something you’ve forgotten. She’s a stubborn little upstart, but she doesn’t trust just anyone. Look at how she grew up.” He gestured at the yard below where the barbecue was still happening. “But you’re bound, Chaser. You can’t give her what she needs.”
“I was supposed to be one of the good guys,” I said.
“No one’s supposed to be anything,” Gasket said. “The world is grey. There isn’t any black or white. The only thing that’s certain is death…everything else is just a bonus.”
I grunted. He was preaching to the choir.
“Be careful what you do next, Chaser,” he added, pushing to his feet. “I’ll kill you before you hurt a hair on her head.”
“What about Marini?” I threw at his back.
“Oh, I’ll kill him, too.”
Chapter 11
Sloane
Staring up at the popcorn ceiling, I sighed.
Morning light was inching its way through the cracks in the venetian blinds, and the sounds of the city waking up were amplified through the open window. Man, it was hot in here. Hot, sticky, and uncomfortable.
Last night had been awkward as hell. I didn’t know who Marini was anymore. I didn’t know much about him in the first place, but he’d seemed to have gotten more violent and erratic than ever. I was living easy right now—he’d made that clear and reinforced the fact that I had no power here.
That was where he was wrong. He’d underestimated the Hollow Men, and he’d underestimated me.
I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he realised he’d lost his life’s work to his daughter. The daughter he was going to sell off for scrap.
Rolling out of bed, I dragged myself into the shower, scrubbing the sleep from my body. I pressed my forehead against the tile and thought about Chaser. If I closed my eyes and thought about it hard enough, I could feel his cold gaze on me.
It was easier to handle being apart from him during the day. Other people were around. But when darkness fell, and I was alone in bed with my own thoughts…that was when I missed him the most.
Today was yet another day we had to spend apart, but it was also a day closer to getting what we wanted.
After I dressed and succeeded in avoiding Sam—I seriously didn’t know who was avoiding who after our post-Harley bashing conversation—and scrounged up some cereal in the kitchen, I went out to the garage.
I was on the outs with the other women after the pool cue incident, though I knew it was more to do with their relationships with the pack than it was to do with right and wrong. They gave me the cold shoulder out of loyalty to their alpha, and I couldn’t blame them. Survival came at a premium around here.
Standing in the middle of the empty garage, I wiped the back of my hand over my sweaty forehead and breathed in the smell of grease, rubber, and oil. Doing a lap, I examined the car Spike had been working on the other day, had a look over the motorcycles in various stages of their builds, and peered into the room where someone had been spraying metallic red paint onto a pair of motorcycle fenders.
Being a mechanic wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind when I enrolled in university, but it was something. A life skill, you could call it. Everyone should know how to change a flat tire and make sure enough oil was in the engine. And something about radiator fluid. The most I’d ever known was how to fill up the little bottle of water that cleaned the windshield. Besides, who knew how long I’d be here? This seemed to be a great way to integrate into the pack, for better or worse.
“Well, here’s a sight for sore eyes.”
I turned as Gasket emerged from the office, his muscles accentuated by the loose tank top he was wearing. He’d become ripped in his old age, even more than I remembered. Gasket had always been tough, but he was levelling up to Yoda as more grey appeared in his hair. Why wasn’t he alpha?
“What brings you out here at this hour?”
“Marini said I could hang out here,” I replied. “I know you talked to him about me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You call him by his last name now?”
“It doesn’t seem right to call him Dad.” I shrugged and glanced around the garage. Chaser’s bike was gone.
“Marini sent him on a job last night,” the old wolf said, following my gaze.
He sent the vampire away for the full moon, a voice taunted in the back of my mind.
I snorted and turned my attention back to Gasket. “So, what do you want me to do around here? Is this an apprenticeship?”
“You want to be a mechanic now?”
“Life skills.” I made the peace sign with my fingers.
“What were you doing before?”
“Working at a pub and going to university on the internet.”
Gasket scowled, looking rather disappointed at how average my life had become.
“Gasket, what did you think I went and did? Become an investment banker?” I rolled my eyes.
“What did you do?”
“If you really want to know, I bounced around various shitty foster homes until I turned eighteen. Then I had to live on the street for a year before I got enough cash together to get fake IDs. The last thing I wanted was my father finding me. Then it was another couple of months before I got a job and enough cash to rent my own place.”
“I didn’t know,” Gasket said. “Sloane, if I’d known…”
I narrowed my eyes in warning as the door to the compound opened and one of the wolves walked in.
“Hey, Sloane,” Spike said, raising his hand.
I nodded his way and glanced back at Gasket. “So, where do I start…boss.”
“The office.”
“I’m not going to be a pencil pusher,” I said with a pout.
“Let her get her hands dirty,” Spike sa
id. “That’ll be something to see.”
“If you want to work in here, you start at the bottom like everyone else,” Gasket said like he was delivering a philosophical lesson. Like wax on, wax off from The Karate Kid. Striding over to the shelf, he took down a black plastic bottle, a pair of rubber gloves, and a scrubbing brush. Pushing the load against my chest, he smirked.
“What’s this?” I scowled at Spike, who stifled a laugh.
“Stuff in here goes on there.” Gasket tapped the black bottle, then pointed to an oil stain on the concrete.
The men—who’d multiplied to six by then—laughed as I let out a wail. Knowing this was a test—like when poor kids got sent to the hardware store for left-handed hammers and striped paint—I got to work, dumping some of the solution from the black bottle onto a nasty grease stain. When scrubbing actually worked, I knew there was no such thing as a fake scrubbing brush trick. Not in this garage, anyway.
Losing myself in the task, I thought about Chaser. Where had he gone? What was he doing for Marini? He hadn’t actually gone into any specifics about what he did around here. I’d assumed he roughed up people who’d crossed the pack, but the farther we’d gone on our road trip, the more I suspected it was something more sinister. He was a vampire on a magical leash, after all.
Chaser was a mystery I wasn’t sure I would ever completely unravel, but at least I knew where his loyalties sat. Though knowing he was out potentially murdering someone for my father didn’t feel nice. It made me positively sick, and it had nothing to do with the chemical fumes, either.
I made it halfway across the garage floor before Gasket relieved me of my duties.
“Go and have some lunch with the boys.” Pointing to the sparkling concrete, he added, “You’ve done a good job.”
I sighed and pulled off the gloves. “This apprentice thing is hard work. I can’t feel my knees.”
“Outside,” he said, pointing to the roller door. “And don’t try anything, either.”
I smiled sweetly and fluttered my eyelashes. “Who, me?”
“Yes, you.”
Wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans, I wished I had some shorts. The weather seemed to have worsened since yesterday, and the compound was one big, sweltering cesspool of eternal stench. Picking myself up from the ground, I screwed up my face as my joints ached…then eased completely. There were my secret wolf powers again.
Glancing at Gasket in the office, I turned towards the outside world where I could hear the wolves talking and laughing among themselves. Were these guys any different from vampire Bailey, the fake conductor, or any of the vampires who’d hunted Chaser and I on the road? What was I doing?
I closed my eyes and said a prayer, but I couldn’t help the image of blood and broken skulls that invaded my mind’s eye, and the sensation of every bone in my body breaking…and the freedom I’d felt running across the Nullarbor. The full moon was almost here, and I didn’t have to look at the sky to know it.
Outside, a slight breeze had picked up.
“Hey, Sloane,” Spike called out. “Wanna beer?”
“Yeah.” I walked over to the group of wolves and took the bottle Rhodes offered me.
Rhodes, Watts, and Ram were three guys I’d seen around, but hadn’t had the chance to get to know. Not like the others who worked in the garage. Though they’d gotten to see a great deal of my backside today, so there was that.
I sat on a free chair and put on my aviator sunglasses—the ones with the blue lenses I made Chaser buy me way back when all this first began. How long was it now? A month? Time flew and all that.
Watts raised his eyebrows, his gaze going to my thumb. He was a quiet kind of guy, thoughtful and sharp by the look in his eyes.
Grabbing the bottle opener off Spike, I popped the lid off my beer and took a mouthful. It wasn’t that cold, but several degrees south of boiling was better than nothing in this heat.
“Ugh, I forgot how hot it gets here in summer,” I said, attempting to get the conversation going again.
“I thought living out west would’ve hardened you up,” Rhodes said, looking me over.
“Who said I was out west?” I made a face and leaned back in the chair, the plastic creaking.
“It’s the farthest point away from here,” Ram shot at me.
“Whatever.” I kicked my feet up on the overturned crate they’d set up as a coffee table. I wanted to ask them questions about the upcoming full moon, but I knew I couldn’t, so I complained instead. “I just scrubbed half the garage floor.”
“Want a medal?”
“Yeah. A real big one.” I smirked and threw my head back with a laugh, causing the other guys to chuckle.
The air was clearer after that.
Ratchet and Butcher appeared, joining the little group, and for the first time, I didn’t feel like a prisoner locked away in a hornet’s nest. It was a moment of bliss that was short-lived when Butcher levelled his gaze at me and asked about the one thing I didn’t want to talk about. Chaser.
“What happened out there?” the big beefcake asked.
I tilted my head to the side. “Out where?”
“Chaser got himself all shrivelled up,” he said. “Lost a lot of blood. You knew what you were coming back to. Had a chance to ditch the guy, but you scraped his arse off the floor and brought him back here. Why?”
“It’s like you said. He got himself killed.” I stared right back at him, my hand tightening around my beer.
“So?” Ram asked, tossing in his own line of questioning. “Everyone knows you didn’t want to come back.”
“Everyone knows shit,” I snapped. “You know a rumour, Ram.”
Butcher nodded in my direction. “Then explain it, Sloane.”
“Leave it,” Ratchet said with a groan. “What’s it matter? She’s Marini’s kid. Orders are orders. What the alpha says, goes.”
“Says the guy who tattooed her and got his face beat in,” Spike said with a snort.
“It’s no secret my father and I aren’t close,” I said, picking at the label on the bottle in my hand. “But I am his daughter. Your alpha’s flesh and blood…for better or worse.”
“You are your father’s daughter,” Ratchet said, scowling. The bruise on his eye had faded, his werewolf genes taking care of it.
“I’m also my mother’s daughter.” I raised my bottle, held it high, and waited.
Ratchet nodded and bumped his bottle against mine. His boldness gave the others courage, and one by one, every bottle clinked against my own. Butcher, Spike, Ram, Watts, and Rhodes.
“Sloane.”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw Gasket linger at the garage door. He crooked his finger, calling me inside.
“Boss is callin’,” Rhodes drawled.
“I’ve got another fifty square feet of concrete to scrub,” I said with a groan. He was so not calling me inside for scrubber duty, but I thought it best to play coy.
Leaving my empty beer bottle with the wolves, I went inside. The moment we were out of eyesight and earshot, Gasket grabbed my arm and shoved me against the wall.
“Hey!” I exclaimed.
“What are you playing at?” he asked, hissing at me.
“I’m playing at keeping myself alive,” I retorted.
“You’re fishing.”
I made a face. Is that what they called it around here? Fishing for allies in the sewage pipe of life.
“I don’t know what Marini’s go going on with the Hollow Men, not all of it, but the pack can’t help you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, old man,” I said, my anger rising. “Fortitude can help me by me helping Fortitude.”
“By taking it over, you mean.”
I stared blankly at him but he was far too smart to be fooled by an emotionless stare. He’d been playing this game for his entire life. Playing people, exploiting their weaknesses, beating them, killing when ‘reason’ didn’t get through. Gasket wasn’t innocent.
“Stop looki
ng at me like that,” he muttered. “I know, Sloane. I know.”
Yeah, but how much?
“Marini brought this on me,” I murmured, the chill in my voice alarming even me. “The Hollow Men, the abuse, the manipulation…my mother’s murder.”
“Sloane—”
“Don’t you Sloane me.”
Gasket let go of my arm and ran his hand over his face. Cursing under his breath, he turned away.
“What are you going to do?” I asked his back. “Tell on me?”
He cursed again and faced me, his eyes full of something as far from anger as he could get. Was it regret? Resignation? What did he know?
“Even if your father is out of the picture, they’ll still come after you,” he said. “You know that. It won’t end with his death or dethroning.”
“Believe me, I know how this works.” They all had to go, lest the one left alive out of mercy came back to avenge what they’d lost. I was going for complete and utter annihilation.
“Be careful, girl,” the big wolf said. “Be very careful.”
I nodded, those three words echoing the same sentiments I’d been having since I arrived.
“Sloane…” he trailed off, his expression softening.
“What?”
“Full moon’s tomorrow night. Best you stay in your room.”
My heart leapt. “What happens? Do you remember when you turn?” I rattled off. “Where does everyone go?”
The old wolf’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not for you to know.”
It was, but I wasn’t sure I could trust him with that secret, and if I pressed harder, he’d figure it out…if he hadn’t already.
“Chaser warned me about wolves, but—”
“Best you keep your mouth shut, too,” Gasket interrupted. “And get back to work. That ought to keep you out of trouble long enough to make it to tomorrow.”
As he walked away, and the garage fell into silence, I knew I could trust him with my life. Gasket’s loyalties would always be with the pack, but that didn’t mean they would always be with Marini.
Fortitude was more than just one wolf. One man.
It was time for a woman to remind them of that.
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