Pack Dynamics

by Julie Frost

  With as much energy as Alex had, keeping her inner wolf at bay was difficult at the best of times, and tonight he was emitting pheromones like crazy. The full moon would rise in a couple of nights, and the timing made her itchy, which she covered by swatting his hand when he reached for the scotch again. He must have worked out a knotty problem in his basement lab earlier, she thought; he was practically bouncing. She only had to Change during the moon, but sometimes she did it under undue stress.

  Working for Alex Jarrett put her in many, many stressful situations.

  She was almost surprised he hadn’t twigged to the wolf, but he could be remarkably oblivious at times for someone who was supposed to be a genius. She guessed people saw what they expected to see … and, much like the Spanish Inquisition, no one expected lycanthropy. Werewolves and vampires were only “out” to each other and people who needed to know, because the days of torches and pitchforks weren’t too far out of memory. As the CEO of a big pharma company, Alex knew about it in general, but he didn’t know about her in particular, and that’s how she liked it.

  Megan put a hand on her hip, shook a finger under his nose, and continued. “I swear, if you call me at midnight to bail you out of whatever trouble you get into, I’ll take a month-long vacation to Hawaii. And leave my cell phone at home.”

  He lifted his eyebrows in mock alarm. “You wouldn’t. Who’d dress me and tie my tie?”

  “What are you, three? You’re perfectly capable of getting yourself dressed, and Chambliss can tie your tie.” She gave him a subtle sniff. At least he’d showered and didn’t actually reek of scotch. Maybe he’d only had the one.

  “He’s not my type.” Alex twitched his lips. “Also, last time he did my tie, he nearly strangled me. I think he was mad.”

  “No! Shocked, shocked, I am, that you’d manage to tick your butler off with some form of outrageous behavior.” She turned him around and shoved him toward the entry and his waiting red stretch Bentley. “Go to the fundraiser and try not to embarrass me. Here, take your coat, it’s pouring out.”

  “You’re awfully eager to get rid of me tonight. Big plans?” He shrugged the overcoat on as they stepped into the elaborately marbled foyer.

  “My plans include a glass of wine, a bowl of microwave popcorn, and an MST3K marathon.” A corner of her mouth turned up. “You don’t have to worry about any other men in my life. No one’s going to replace you.” This was sadly true. She hadn’t found a guy yet who would understand her getting up and leaving in the middle of a date when Alex was having some sort of crisis and needed her immediately. Which invariably happened, because Alex’s date-radar was unerring. She suspected it was intentional.

  He rubbed his goatee and stopped at the front door. “Watching Joel and the ’bots make fun of bad movies sounds a lot more fun than the damned fundraiser. Which ones do you have queued up? Can I come over?”

  “Alex …”

  “Okay, fine.” He pouted. “I’ll try to be good.”

  “See that you do. Hawaii’s nice this time of year.” She smiled as she said it, and he grinned back at her.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  O O O

  Hans Ostheim circulated around the fundraiser in the swank hotel’s ballroom, barely keeping his frayed temper in check and fangs and fur from erupting. His wife Idna had practically pushed him out the door, when he’d initially resisted leaving her home alone, as sick as she was.

  “Are you sure, darling?” he’d asked, running his hand through her formerly-lustrous black hair, now brittle and faded. She lay propped on pillows under a heavy forest green and burgundy comforter in their enormous walnut canopy bed. The blackout curtains were closed tightly against any encroachment of daylight, even though clouds obscured the sun. The dark wood paneling and low ceiling might have been oppressive to someone unused to close quarters, but to Hans and Idna, this was simply their home den, and they were comfortable in it.

  Their romance, seemingly ill-fated from the start, had survived decades, and the thought of losing her drove him to the depths of mad despair. “Forever” had a whole new meaning when the individuals involved were a vampire and a werewolf who had met and married during the Second World War, cutting a swathe through Nazis together.

  “I’m sure. Alex Jarrett will be there, will he not?” Idna gave him a small, pained smile. “Perhaps a personal appeal will soften his heart.”

  “Bah. I’ve tried calling him dozens of times. The fact that I’m able to poach two of his best employees will have to do.” Mike Reed and his assistant Brandon Kincaid had already pioneered a few breakthroughs, and Reed had called him earlier with cautiously optimistic news. Something about rabbits.

  But still … “Reed and Kincaid are good, but they’re not Jarrett.” She caressed the fur sprouted on his arms. “Go, dear, and speak with him. The worst that can happen is he’ll say no.”

  “Worst for him,” Hans had rumbled. He kissed her, finished dressing, and left, and here he was. He’d seen Jarrett across the room a few times, always in the company of either a business rival or some vapid female. Opportunities for getting him alone seemed nonexistent.

  At last, Hans buttonholed Jarrett as he turned away from the bar with his fifth scotch. Hans wondered, not for the first time, at the man’s prodigious capacity for alcohol. “Jarrett? A private word in your ear?”

  “Ostheim.” Jarrett looked slightly chagrined at being cornered but allowed himself to be steered to an alcove hidden by a potted plant. “Where’s your lovely wife?”

  “Resting at home. She is—” Hans swallowed. “Unwell, still.”

  “Really? I thought—huh.” The fact that Idna was a vampire was an open secret among the circles they both walked in. “I’m sorry.”

  “You can help.” Hans looked Jarrett in the eye.

  Jarrett didn’t avoid his gaze, but he shook his head. “No. No, I can’t, Ostheim. My company’s never done stuff in the supernatural realm, and I’m uncomfortable with starting. It would take years to spool up to where we could find anything useful anyway.”

  “You’ve had many innovations in pharmaceutical nanotech just this year. One more, to the benefit of both of our companies—”

  “Seriously, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And how do you run experiments? And get FDA approval?” He raised his hand. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. I found out way more than I ever figured on during those Senate hearings that made you hate me.”

  “Jarrett, please—”

  “I’m sorry, okay? I really am. But we don’t have a paranormal division, and I never plan to have one. I hope you find what you need.” Jarrett’s mouth turned down at one corner.

  Ostheim’s phone interrupted their conversation, and Jarrett used that as an excuse to make a less-than-graceful exit. Hans was tempted, just for a moment, to turn his wolf loose on the man’s retreating back, but the display on his screen told him that his nephew and chief of security was on the line. “What, Deiter?” he barked, pushing the wolf aside, although his claws were still extended.

  “The assistant of the private detective Jarrett hired? He knows nothing of importance.”

  Deiter’s methods weren’t always … gentle. Hans turned away from the room for more privacy. “Have you left him alive?”

  “For now, unless you require his death.”

  “Not at the moment. Cut him loose and tell his people where to find him. With, of course, the proper incentives to not get the authorities involved.”

  “As you wish.” Deiter ended the call, and Hans went back to the excruciating chore of pretending to have a good time at this party while being worried sick about Idna.

  O O O

  Alex breathed a sigh of relief at having extricated himself from Ostheim’s clutches. The man gave him the creeps, so he went back to the bar to replenish his scotch and get the crawly feeling off his shoulders. Megan had actually sounded somewhat serious about Hawaii, and he ruefully decided that this would be his last drink, with a min
imum of outward sulking. However, the forty percent of his brain not working on the latest problem in gene splicing was bored, again, and Alex knew he was bad news when he was bored.

  “So, idiot,” he said to himself, “you’d better find someone to talk to, or Megan will go to Hawaii for a month and you’ll have to learn how to knot your own tie.”

  He recognized a tiny African-American woman in a tinier black dress, sitting at one of the tables by herself and scribbling on a phone pad she’d apparently snagged from the front desk of the hotel. Her long black hair was styled in a loose mass of ringlets falling to below her shoulders, and Alex’s hands flexed with the desire to run his fingers through it. She was clearly uninterested in the party, but the short, unpainted nails of her free hand tapped a staccato rhythm on the table, and she gnawed on her lip in a distracted manner. He decided to ask her about it because personal boundaries just didn’t mean as much to him as they did to other people, and he pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

  “Miss Miller, what’s a nice private detective like you doing at a fundraiser like this?” he said, crossing his ankle over his leg. “You look like you’re having about as much fun as I am.”

  She didn’t look up, and her miniature mechanical pencil continued moving across the page. She was sketching some of the partygoers, giving them speech bubbles. Sheets from the phone pad lay scattered in front of her. “I’m working your case, Mr. Jarrett.”

  “Oh, call me Alex.” Alex poked through the pictures she’d drawn, sipping his drink. “Hey, is this me? Can’t be, I’d never use such a lame pick-up line. And I don’t waggle my eyebrows like that.”

  “Yes, you do.” Another drawing joined the others—Ostheim. She’d captured his pissed-off expression, salt-and pepper hair, and solid build with just a few lines.

  “I thought your mom was working my case.” Janni’s mom Pamela owned the PI firm he’d hired. It was a small operation and not on the radars of the circles he traveled in, which meant (he hoped) that no one would find out he had suspicions about industrial espionage—including his own board of directors.

  She gave him a Look from deep brown eyes. “My mom is taking a long-deserved vacation in the Australian outback. She left me holding the reins of the firm. Therefore, I’m working your case, Mr. Jarrett.” She lifted a cool eyebrow as she emphasized the “Mister” part. “She wouldn’t have put me in charge if she didn’t think I could handle it.”

  Ooh, a challenge. This was instant reason to like her—as if he needed another besides the fact that she was damned cute and exuded competence. Here was a woman he might actually have to pursue, which made a nice change from the norm. “So, are you making headway? Is there someone here acting suspicious?”

  “Everyone in this place wears a mask. It’s a matter of peeling away layers until you get to the crunchy center of who they really are.”

  “Does this help?” He took a closer look at the pictures. She’d drawn her figures within square frames. “Are you storyboarding?”

  She gathered them up, embarrassed, and stuffed them in her little clutch bag. “Observing.”

  “That’s so cool; I never would have thought of drawing to—”

  Her phone rang, and she scrabbled it out of her purse and looked at the screen. “Excuse me. Oh, thank god. Sorry, I have to take this.”

  He nodded, and she got up and stepped away. He decided to eavesdrop anyway. “Ben, where the hell—” she started.

  Alex watched her pull the phone away from her ear and stare at the display in wide-eyed horror before slamming it back to her head.

  “Where is he?” she asked through gritted teeth, practically sprinting for the exit without even pretending to say goodbye, or stopping at the coat-check for the wrap she’d surely brought to keep the downpour off.

  This alone made Alex decide that whatever was bothering her must be more exciting than anything happening at this shindig, so he got his own phone out and called Phelps, his driver.

  Less than a minute later, he climbed into the front seat of his reddest and shiniest stretch limo, shaking the rain out of his hair, loosening his tie, and undoing the top button of his shirt. “Follow that blue Hyundai. Discreet distance.” Not that the Bentley was “discreet,” but he had to work with what he had.

  Janni wasn’t exactly being careful, Alex noted. She drove way too fast for the wet conditions, weaving in and out of traffic without signaling, and they trailed her into a warehouse district in a dodgy part of town with broken streetlights and smashed windows and deserted buildings. She screeched to a stop next to a man lying on his stomach, sprawled half in the street and half on the sidewalk.

  In one motion, she leaped from her car and splashed to her knees into the gutter beside him. She tore away the bindings holding his wrists behind his back, flinging them into the darkness with more force than seemed strictly necessary.

  Phelps, a former Army drill sergeant who looked the part, had parked a half a block away and unbuttoned his jacket for easier access to his handgun, just in case. Alex started to get out, but Phelps put a hand on his arm and shook his head.

  “Phelps—” Alex started.

  “We don’t know what’s going on yet, sir. Try to rein in your impulse control problem and hold off for a few seconds, at least.” Sometimes, Alex thought he had a too free-and-easy relationship with his employees, but they frequently stopped him from doing things that were monumentally stupid, so it paid off in the long run.

  But even as he spoke, Phelps was already moving the car. When they pulled up beside Janni, Alex jumped out into the pouring rain, and Phelps popped the trunk so they could get a blanket. Alex stuck his head back in the car and hit a button on the dash that would call his stereotypically English butler. “Chambliss, do me a favor, have Doc Allen come over, tell him to be ready for just about anything.”

  Chambliss sounded resigned. “Are you injured again, Master Alex?”

  “Not me, this time.” Alex frowned; he couldn’t get a good look at the guy from here, so he stepped back out into the street.

  Janni had put herself protectively between them and the unconscious guy, but she took her hand out of her purse, empty, when she saw who they were. “You followed me?”

  “Well, yes, you looked like—” Alex stared at the still form on the sidewalk and stopped. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  The man’s back was a mass of bleeding welts showing through a shredded T-shirt, the rain hadn’t managed to wash the blood from his face, and livid cuts ringed his wrists over old scars. Alex had a sinking feeling that this was his fault somehow.

  “Ben’s been missing since yesterday morning,” Janni said, hiccupping through tears. “He went to the store to get milk.”

  “Should we move him, boss?” Phelps asked worriedly.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Alex pointed out.

  “They said if I called an ambulance they’d kill him in front of me,” Janni said. Ben’s body had dammed the torrent of rain running through the gutter, and the water overflowing up onto the sidewalk threatened to drown him.

  “That settles it. Get in the limo, Janni. I’ve got medical facilities at my place as good as any hospital.” Alex gripped her arm. “We’ll take care of him, okay?”

  Janni nodded tightly, and Alex helped her roll Ben onto the blanket while Phelps kept watch. Alex noticed that Ben’s chest and abdomen were pretty welted up too, although not as badly as his back. Phelps met Alex’s eyes; he’d noticed as well, which was good because Alex paid him to be observant.

  O O O

  Unfortunately, Phelps’s eyes couldn’t be everywhere, especially in the middle of a thunderstorm in the dark. He hadn’t seen Deiter Ostheim on the roof across the street, looking through the scope of a rifle and talking to his uncle Hans via his Bluetooth. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “but Alex Jarrett is right in my sights.”

  “What’s he doing there? Never mind. You get a clear shot, take him out. Then the private eyes won
’t have a client anymore, and I won’t have a business rival who won’t help me even if I practically get down on my knees and beg.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Deiter breathed. “I know his assistant has been deflecting your calls, but you actually asked him outright and he said no?”

  “At the fundraiser tonight.”

  “Well then.” Deiter’s jaw tightened, but he knew his uncle had someone in his pocket high up in the board of Jarrett’s company. Perhaps with Jarrett out of the picture, they would be more amenable to a change in direction for the company, and turn their researchers loose on paranormal problems. With smug satisfaction, Deiter tightened his finger on the trigger.

  Chapter Two

  A close-by flash of lightning lit up the night, with a deafening crack of thunder coming almost instantly after, causing Alex to twitch sideways away from it.

  What felt like a red-hot poker punched him in the right side of his back above his shoulder blade and exited through his lower ribcage on the same side. He grunted and staggered and dropped to his knees, attempting unsuccessfully to suck air into the lung he realized had either collapsed or shattered or maybe both.

  Swearing, Phelps picked Alex up bodily and threw him into the limo. He followed a few seconds later with Ben, whom he tossed onto the back seat beside Janni.

  Alex hauled himself onto the bench seat across from Janni, easing himself down onto the injured side—he knew first aid for injuries like this because Megan had told him that if he was going to Pamplona to get gored by a bull again he’d damn well better.

  “Towel, and ice,” he rasped, pointing at the well-stocked wet bar on Janni’s side of the car, coughing blood. “In there.” Next time Megan chided him about his drinking, he’d be able to tell her it came in handy sometimes.

  Janni wrapped a double handful of ice in a towel and handed it across to him, and he pressed it to the wound in his chest, gulping in not enough air, wondering if he was going to drown in his own blood. His first thought, that he’d been hit by the lightning bolt, was obviously incorrect. He’d been shot, and wasn’t that interesting? Who’d want to shoot him? Shock was making him almost too detached.