Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

  “It’s not hard to make a car bomb. Check the internet if you don’t believe him,” Colin advised. “All we’re saying is that we need to check the car out and it’s dark and we don’t have the equipment.”

  “How about your car? You haven’t watched it every minute. While you’ve been chasing after us, who’s to say the person who shot at us didn’t rig your car too while he or she was at it?” I knew I sounded belligerent and defensive, but it was too much to think that someone in Riverglow would resort to car bombs. I was so frigging cold my bones ached. My feet were solid blocks of ice. What did frostbite feel like? Had I been exposed long enough for it to set in?

  “Stanzie, what’s the harm in playing it safe?” Murphy held out his hand and I took it, although I wanted to run away more than anything else. He put his arm around me and offered me some of his warmth. I leaned into him gratefully.

  Halfway back to the parking lot, Colin took out his cellphone and called Allerton. He explained what had happened and listened for half a minute before saying, “Right,” and hanging up. He looked back at me and Murphy. “He’s going to meet you at the Starbuck’s on Spencer Street. I’ll drop you off.”

  “Don’t you think your cover’s blown? Whoever it was who shot at us must know you’re here by now,” Murphy said with a conversational grin. It was nearly full dark now, but his teeth flashed in the dying sunlight.

  “Maybe.” Colin didn’t seem concerned. “You both take this path to the road and I’ll meet you there in five.” He kept walking straight while Murphy and I veered right.

  “God, I hate that bastard,” Murphy remarked.

  Chapter 21

  The Starbucks was small and crowded, with squashy armchairs and one long, striped sofa in the back. That’s where Murphy and I sat together clutching at double espressos. Mine was sweetened with six packets of raw sugar but it still tasted bitter. I drank it anyway because I was cold.

  Colin had retrieved our coats and my clothes and boots from the clearing and they’d been in the backseat of a beat-up Ford Focus that had clearly seen better days. I was half convinced the damn thing would break down on the highway, but it hadn’t.

  Colin had known better than to try to start conversation with Murphy so he ignored him, but he did try to talk to me. So did Murphy, and I realized belatedly they were both worried about me. I suppose I was a little bit in shock. I’d never been shot at before. It wasn’t until we pulled into the strip mall in front of the Starbucks that I realized Murphy wasn’t driving. Yeah, I’d fretted about the car breaking down but I hadn’t thought about the car crashing because Murphy wasn’t driving it. Shock was good for some things.

  Murphy saw me grimace at the taste of the coffee. He got up and went to the counter where the sugar, napkins and stirrers were arranged and brought me back several more packets of raw sugar as well as another stirrer.

  I dumped three more packets into my cup and stirred. It was better, but still too hot to gulp the way I wanted to.

  Just as I reached the bottom of the cup, which was slushy with half-dissolved sugar granules which tasted gritty and sweet on my tongue, Jason Allerton entered the shop.

  His commanding presence drew every eye in the place but he ignored everyone except us. Without bothering to get any coffee, he strode across the floor and sat on the squashy armchair to the right of the sofa.

  “Constance,” he said, his blue eyes worried. He reached out to touch my knee and I realized my jeans were covered with clinging pine needles.

  Beside me Murphy was hardly better. He had a bruise spreading beneath the skin of his left cheek and his knuckles were bloody and scraped raw. Pine needles clung to the cuffs of his jeans too.

  “I’m all right,” I said, because I was. Barely, but I was.

  “Happy now?” Murphy asked him with a particularly foul smile. “It’s pretty damned obvious the old man had an accomplice, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I never doubted it,” replied Allerton. He patted my knee again then sat back in the arm chair.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I asked him. Colin had shoved a twenty dollar bill in my hands as I’d climbed out of the Focus. My purse and Murphy’s wallet were locked in the Prelude.

  “Here, I’ll get you another one,” said Murphy, rising to his feet. He looked at Allerton, who nodded. Murphy went to the front of the shop and got in line behind two women who took one look at his face and scrunched closer together for protection. Murphy pretended not to notice, but I could tell it bothered him.

  “Who knew you were going to the state park?” Allerton questioned when Murphy returned with two more double espressos. He handed one to me and one to Allerton then went to get sugar and stirrers.

  “Nobody that I know of,” I responded after thinking for a moment. I pried the lid off my espresso and dumped seven packets of sugar in, one after the other, fascinated by the rush of the light brown crystals as they disappeared into the liquid. “Whoever it was wasn’t very good at shooting. They missed. We made pretty good targets too.”

  Murphy shifted on the sofa beside me, obviously disagreeing with my assessment.

  “We were good targets,” he said. “I think they missed on purpose.”

  “A warning?” Allerton lifted his espresso and took a tentative sip because it was so hot. “Why play their hand like that? We had no real proof, only suspicion until now.”

  “Because maybe it wasn’t one of the original members of Riverglow,” said Murphy in a hard voice. “Maybe it was somebody new who wants to be an Advisor and thought playing the hero might be his ticket.”

  I set down my cup and leaned back into the cushions of the sofa. All I wanted was to be far, far away. Without thinking about it, I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “Hunter knows how to shoot?” Allerton asked. He was very calm and thoughtful, but a pulse beat visibly in his forehead and I knew he was furious. Whether he was furious at Murphy, Colin Hunter, or just at the situation in general I didn’t know.

  “He didn’t have a gun, Murphy,” I felt compelled to point out. Murphy’s gaze flicked between me and Allerton.

  He sighed. “Easiest thing in the world to ditch it before he got to us. He wouldn’t let us come back to the car with him, made us take a different path to the road. That was such bullshit about car bombs.”

  Murphy had been the one to say ‘car bomb’ out loud, but I kept quiet. He knew Colin Hunter better than me and Colin had admitted all he’d wanted from Sorcha was a way to become Alpha of Mac Tire. He was clearly an opportunist. But a gun? Shooting at us?

  “It’s a possibility,” allowed Allerton. Murphy smiled darkly to himself and finished his espresso.

  “Who does know how to shoot in Riverglow, Constance?” Allerton leaned a bit forward in the squashy armchair and I felt like I always did when he fixed his full attention on me: nervous, awkwardly flattered, pathetic and determined not to let him down. I wondered if he’d been born with this power or had cultivated it through the years.

  I said, “Any hunting I ever saw any of them do was in wolf form. Nobody owned guns or talked about them that I can remember.”

  “You know these people.” Allerton’s voice was pitched low and his tone was persuasive. I resisted the urge to wiggle in my chair like a puppy who wanted to get down and run around like crazy. “What do you think? Which one of them would have been drawn to the underground movement within the Great Pack?”

  “It doesn’t even have a name,” I burst out. I could not believe I was sitting in a Starbucks discussing my former friends and pack mates like this—dissecting them and their personalities to pinpoint which one of them would have been monstrous enough to plot and kill Grey and Elena in the name of the Great Pack. “This conspiracy, this underground movement.”

  “Would it make it easier for you to deal with it if it did?” Allerton wondered. “We can give it a name.”

  I shot him a suspicious look.

  “Sometimes it’s easier to understand something if it h
as a name,” said Allerton.

  I thought of my wolf—how she wanted the words for things, the names for the things she’d run by and played with all her life. I was just the same, wasn’t I? Wanting to clarify and quantify and dissect and discover.

  “It was Vaughn who trashed her house,” said Murphy. He flashed me a semi-apologetic smile but he was also bound and determined to speak.

  “Because he loved Elena,” I objected. “He loved Elena. Why would he plot to kill her?”

  “You told me what he said when he got to the accident site,” said Murphy. He was sounding more and more apologetic, and he should have been. What I’d told him had been in confidence and here he was spilling it all out to Allerton. But maybe Allerton had the same effect on him as he did on me. People wanted to tell that man everything. They could barely stop themselves.

  Despite myself, I conjured up the scene in my mind.

  * * * *

  I stand in the ravine halfway between Grey’s twisted, dead body and the ruined hulk of my new gold Mustang GT. Blood drenches me, most of it Grey’s, but I do have a cut on my forehead, just beneath the hairline. I have no idea how I got it. I must have hit my head or maybe it was a piece of flying glass. The cut bleeds and sometimes the blood gets in my eye. When it does, the world shifts and turns into a bloody haze, a scarlet-drenched alien landscape as though I am a space traveler on Mars.

  A car approaches above on the road. Brightness pierces the darkness.

  The Mustang’s headlights somehow still function and they cast a murky glow over the bushes and dirt. Half a tree sticks out from beneath the crushed metal. The other half of the tree still stands, halfway up the hill toward the road.

  I smell my pack members so I know it is them and not some curious Other. Although the metal guardrail is torn away and there is a gaping hole where it used to be, nobody stops on the road above except for this car.

  Either they don’t see or they don’t care. What they can’t see is the Mustang. Or me. I have enough sense to stay below with Grey and Elena. It’s not like I can leave them anyway. How can I abandon them?

  Faces peer down at me from above. Figures stand in the broken gap where the guard rail used to be.

  “Oh. Fuck,” says one of them. It is Jonathan.

  Horror and concern fill Peter’s face. He sees me and all the blood. He thinks I’m hurt.

  “Stanzie, Jesus Christ,” he cries and bounds down the hill with his athlete’s grace. He is afraid to take me into his arms, afraid he will hurt me. I stand there like a statue. This is bizarre. This is not happening.

  Vaughn moves next, and propels himself down the hill so fast he pinwheels his arms for balance. He says a name, over and over again.

  Elena’s.

  Jonathan follows more prudently. His very caution undoes him and he falls onto his ass once, then again, and finally slides the rest of the way down.

  He wanders over to where Grey’s body is stiff and twisted, mouth and eyes open.

  His own eyes widen. He claps a hand over his mouth and staggers off into the bushes. Retching noises. I see Peter cast a disgusted, angry look in his direction before he looks back at me. Peter’s face softens. Tears gleam in his eyes. Trickle down his cheeks.

  “Stanzie,” he says again. I don’t say anything.

  “No, no, no!” A keening wail from the back of the Mustang. “No, not like this! Not like this!” Vaughn sobs the way men do when they have lost everything. It sounds like he is being torn apart from the inside out and is powerless to stop it.

  Up above on the road, Grandfather Tobias waits and watches. He is too old to come down the hill. Or so I think then.

  * * * *

  “Maybe the old man lied to him and told him it wasn’t going to be Elena. Maybe he told him it was going to be you and Grey and then he’d get Elena.”

  I stared at Murphy in absolute horror. That was diabolical.

  “Grandfather Tobias wouldn’t do that. Lie? And then when Elena died, why would Vaughn not say something?”

  “He was compromised. In too deep.”

  I shook my head stubbornly.

  “Vaughn loved Elena and if she’d died and he thought Grandfather Tobias was lying to him, he wouldn’t have cared about compromising himself. He tore my house apart. Why direct his rage at me and not Grandfather Tobias? No, Murphy, not Vaughn.”

  “Jonathan then.” Murphy switched gears faster than a race car driver. “He wants power and relevance and maybe the old man said he’d get both under the new regime.”

  “Jonathan is not sly enough to keep something like that up. He’d brag and tell at least somebody,” I protested.

  “He told Nora. Yeah, she lost her baby, but maybe that plus the weight of Jonathan’s treachery drove her to drink. She did pull away from him. I know her type. Adoring. It would take a lot for Jonathan to tumble from the pedestal she put him on.”

  I winced a little. Was I the adoring type too? Murphy spoke so scathingly.

  “You could make a case for anyone in the pack, couldn’t you?” I was both fascinated and repelled.

  “Sure,” he agreed at once. “It’s easy. And there’s one we haven’t discussed, which is maybe someone in this pack just plain out believes in the cause. Like the old man. Maybe they didn’t care about incentives. Peter, for instance. Very old-fashioned, very loyal.”

  “He puts spiders he finds in the bathtub into the back yard. He opens windows to shoo flies back out. He would never have conspired to kill Grey and Elena!”

  “Maybe Tobias didn’t tell him about that part of it—the killing part—until he was already in.”

  “And Callie?” My eyes burned but I was damned if I would cry. “She’s very traditional and loyal too. But she would never kill her own pack members. I know her. She was my best friend next to Elena. This is ridiculous, Murphy. None of them would do it. I can’t believe it of any of them.”

  “Stanzie, someone shot at us this afternoon,” Murphy reminded me. There was blood on the sleeve of his sweater. What if the bullet had gotten him in the back? In the head?

  I kept my head very still and my eyes fixed on the clock on the wall behind the barista’s head. If I blinked I’d cry.

  “We can go now.” Allerton patted me on the knee. He and Murphy looked at each other, as though silently agreeing between them I’d had enough. I felt so weak and so stupid. But I had definitely had enough.

  * * * *

  Slicked with sweat, heart pounding, I screamed myself awake, my fingers clutching at my throat.

  Murphy was lucid and sitting up beside me in less than three seconds, remarkably calm for being jerked out of a sound sleep.

  He put his arms around me and rocked me, whispering something in my ear I couldn’t understand because it was in Irish. It sounded so nice, whatever it was.

  “Our bond pendants,” I choked out, my fingers still clutching for the missing necklace around my throat. “We left them in the glove box. In the car. It’s bad luck to lose your bond pendant!”

  “We haven’t lost them, Stanzie,” he told me, his arms strong around me. “We’ll get them back tomorrow, I promise.”

  “The bullet could have killed you.” I whimpered. “You could have been killed and I sat there in that Starbucks and argued with you about how my friends wouldn’t do something like that. When it had already happened! Oh, Liam, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I would do if something bad happened to you. Please don’t let something bad happen to you!”

  “I’ll try my best,” he vowed. “I don’t want anything to happen to you either, you know.”

  “How could it with you around? You got on top of me. You got shot because you covered me, used your own body as a shield. That was stupid, you know.”

  “It’s hard to think with bullets zinging around your face,” he teased.

  “Does it still hurt? Where you got shot?”

  He switched on the bedside lamp and showed me his arm. An angry red line zig-zagged down his forearm. Abo
ve it, on his bicep, was a puckered scar in the shape of a bite. My wolf’s legacy. Now he’d have another scar because of me.

  “I didn’t get shot, Stanzie. It grazed me, that’s all. You see?”

  I nodded, but I was far from placated.

  “Drink this.” He handed me a glass of water and I gulped most of it down. My stomach gurgled and he laughed.

  “You’re hungry.” He handed me a butterscotch square. Kathy Manning had been baking again. She’d left a plate of them in the bedroom for us.

  “You eat something too,” I said and so he took one and we had a midnight picnic in bed together.

  “Jaysus, that woman can bake,” mumbled Murphy around a huge mouthful.

  I laughed and waited for Murphy to swallow before breaking off a piece of my butterscotch square so I could feed it to him with my fingers.

  He ate it then he kissed me. I tasted butterscotch and his breath—a tantalizing combination.

  Midnight picnic forgotten we collapsed together onto the mattress. Murphy filled my ears with a singsong string of Irish as he deftly removed my pajamas and I tore off his.

  I wrapped my legs tight around his waist, and closed my eyes as he thrust deep inside me. There was desperation to our passion that night we’d never experienced before. Getting shot at proved to be something of an aphrodisiac. It almost made it worth it. Almost.

  * * * *

  The car was where we’d left it in the parking lot when Murphy and I returned the next day with Kathy Manning. Instead of her sporty green Jaguar, she drove a sleek black Lincoln Town Car.

  The Jaguar was in the parking lot when we pulled in off the rutted, rural road that dead-ended at the entrance to the park. It was parked prudently far from the Prelude, although judging by the open doors, trunk and hood of the Prelude, it had been an unnecessary precaution.

  “No car bomb,” I said. The Town Car’s windows were tinted and, sitting in the back seat, I felt like a rock star being ferried from my hotel to a gig even though I supposed rock stars rode in limos.