by Mark Henwick
Focus.
“Was Silas there?” I said.
Alex looked at me, sensing the emotions without realizing their cause. “Yes, from the start. Still is. They’re still there.”
Silas wasn’t the rogue.
And how come Alex and Olivia weren’t there? This was meant to be for the whole pack. They’d come away for me?
Focus.
“Who was missing?”
“Noble.” Alex’s tone told me he’d made his decision, but I waited. “Ursula,” he said. “Neither of them are answering their cells.”
Ursula.
She was big enough to be the wolf that made those bites. And on the other evidence, she knew the women from Melissa’s list of potential victims.
Or Noble. He wasn’t big enough as a wolf, but he’d probably came into contact with all the known victims. And he might have tried to mislead me about knowing Barbara Green.
Could Ursula masquerade as Noble? As a veterinarian, she had some medical knowledge. But she was so much bigger than Nobel. Had he looked taller than normal in the center? I hadn’t been able to see properly, trussed up on the gurney.
Or was it both of them? Some kind of sick sadistic relationship?
If it was more than one, why not suspect Silas again? But that path spiraled down to suspecting all of them.
Something taunted me from the edge of my memory. I’d heard or seen something important and I’d ignored it.
“Where do they live?”
“Noble’s got a townhouse down in Parker and Ursula has an apartment in Arvada.”
Opposite ends of Denver. Which first?
Alex interrupted my chain of thought. “Bian will have tried calling Jen as well. You’d better call both of them.”
“In a minute.”
My hand was still on his arm. We weren’t linked through eukori, but I still sensed a turmoil in him and I sensed it wasn’t about what had happened to me. There was something he was hiding from me about us, the pack and Larsen’s trial, something deep.
“Pull over and tell me what else is going on.”
We eased off the cleared street and stopped in front of a closed coffee shop.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with the rest of the pack?” I asked.
“When Bian called, I couldn’t ignore it. I had to come looking for you.” He looked aside, studying the front of the coffee shop. “I had to leave Kyle.”
There were echoes of his grief over Hope in there as well. I bit my lip, glad he’d come for me and sorry for the pain it’d caused him.
“That must have gone down well with Felix.” I said, feeling clumsy.
Alex didn’t answer.
Crap.
Felix and Alex must have argued over this.
I knelt on the seat, grabbed his jacket and twisted him around to look at me.
“Alex, you can’t do this. You’ll be thrown out.”
“Too late. I already have been.” He shook his head.
“What? Alex, this is crazy,” I yelled. “They’re your pack. You love being in the pack. You’ve earned your position, you can be excused for one slip. Both of you. You have to go back to Felix.”
“It’s not about a rule. It’s not even about not being there for Kyle. It’s about wanting, no, it’s needing to be with you more than I need the pack, more than I’ve ever needed anything else. It’s about choosing. It’s about a commitment.” He stopped for a moment, his eyes staring, seeming lost, looking anywhere but at me. “An absolute commitment.”
“Olivia?” I wanted her to talk some sense into him.
Olivia was almost whining. She leaned forward to touch my arm carefully.
What the hell was happening?
“I can’t go back,” Alex said.
“Why?” I shook him and for a second I thought I’d shaken sense into him. But his eyes flared gold and anger fired up through him.
“Because you’re my alpha!” he shouted.
Utter silence. My mouth moved wordlessly.
There was a wrench inside me, as if a dislocation that I hadn’t been aware of had been suddenly reset. All the talk before of being a pack had felt good. It’d just been talk. My House was not my pack. It was nothing like it.
Naming me as his alpha made us a pack.
I felt like I’d been gut-punched.
I’d come to love the Athanate and I loved being Athanate, belonging to that vast structure with it’s the huge arrays of loyalties and obligations. I was a little scared of it as well, feeling the complexity of the structure respond to me. I loved being House Farrell and sensing my House around me.
But that wasn’t pack.
Pack was a big old V8 spinning up inside me. It was a sense of power building, a bonfire catching. It was liquid fire in my limbs and the roar of the crowd shaking the stands.
I wanted to scream and shout.
I hugged Alex to me. Olivia reached from the back seat, ran her face along my arm. Her eyes were down and her breath keened in her throat. I pulled her roughly into the hug.
Emotions churned through us. Kyle. Melissa. Being strapped down on the gurney. Being unable to change. But also Jen and Alex, joy and making love, pride and elation.
Like a river after the rapids, the seethe of emotions calmed slowly into a gentle euphoria. We floated. We’d just officially formed a pack. And as I thought that, I felt our Call; smaller, sweeter, more intense, more focused than the Denver pack. Our Call.
Reality came crashing back.
“We are so screwed.”
Alex snorted. “You think?” But the crazy jubilation leaked between us and it bubbled out in nervous laughter. We were behaving like a group of teens, completely caught in the moment and ignoring the consequences of our actions.
We couldn’t take the time this deserved. Even Felix and the huge problems this caused with him would have to wait.
I kissed them and let them go. I’d probably half-throttled Olivia, reaching over the backrests. No wonder the Were went for bigger cars. We needed the extra room.
Then I sat back down and pointed at the road. Time to be back on track.
My pack.
I preened.
I turned my cell back on. Jen was first of course.
But I didn’t get a chance to dial before the cell beeped. José. He’d have been able to put a monitor on my cell. That he was still sitting there waiting in the early hours of the morning made me feel a little better.
“Amber?” he said.
“I’m fine now, José.” That didn’t satisfy him and I had to recount what had happened again. I didn’t reveal Noble’s part yet and I had to call him off from arresting my sister. Not that she’d done anything actually illegal, but I appreciated his support.
He told me that as soon as the snow allowed it, there would be a team down at the Aurora Center trying to find out how on earth they’d accepted someone under a false name. By the time they got that far, they’d be hearing Noble’s name. I had however much time that was, to come up with a story that would hide the paranormal aspects of the case.
I’d finished as we entered the stadium parking lot. It was a field of white with no more than a few bumps down at the end, where the cars were parked.
“José, I gotta go. One quick question, if you’re getting info on the search from the FBI.”
“Oh, we got it, Amber. Seems like there’s been a sudden change over there. We have a feed to at least some of their notes, courtesy of Agent Ingram, and a request for information sharing. What’re you looking for?”
I was staring at the Hill Bitch as she emerged from the snow. Alex had left me inside his SUV and dug into the mounds until he found her.
“The house at Glenmore Hills. What do they say about vehicles in the garage?”
“Garage was empty,” José said after a moment.
That was what I was afraid of.
“Okay. You have some information to feed back to them. The killer is mobile and driving a field-green Ford F-250
with huge tires.” I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the license from the depths of my brain.
“You sure?”
“The truck was in the garage, and now it isn’t.”
We left it there and I called Jen, feeling guilty as I watched Alex and Olivia trying to unfreeze the manual locks to get in my truck.
Jen answered immediately. She hadn’t slept and once she heard the even shorter version of the story, she was all for suing Kath, Taylor, the Aurora Center, the FBI and probably the city of Denver before I calmed her down.
She’d be back that evening. I promised I would be fine and we’d talk through everything before we ended the call.
I needed to talk to Bian as well, but that would wait a few minutes. Alex had gotten the Hill Bitch open and I went over there.
I’d gotten a ticket, naturally. Only the snow had saved me from being towed.
“It might need a jump start,” Alex said.
I sneered theatrically and twisted the key in the ignition. The Hill Bitch coughed and shook like a wet dog before settling down to her customary snarl. It was going to take more than being buried in snow to faze her.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t treated her like I treated my car, as an extension of my personal space with spare shoes and clothes in the trunk.
“Okay, I guess back to Manassah,” I said. “I need to change.”
As I spoke, I turned the TacNet headset back on.
The emergency communication alert squealed.
“Farrell, where the hell have you been? I need you here urgently.”
“Gray, the hunt is supposed to be stood down.”
“It’s not that.”
He gave me an address uptown and killed the connection without answering any more of my questions.
Chapter 65
“The problem is that fucking cowboy.” The guy screaming at me was one of Verano’s pack, and he’d pissed me off before he’d even finished the sentence. The irony of calling Gray a cowboy just spiced it up. The man was pointing up at the second floor of the building from where we stood at the base, next to a door that Gray had apparently been able to open and close behind him. Also apparently without setting the alarm off. I needed to talk to this guy.
Alex growled softly behind me, unhappy at the shouting.
“Where’s Verano?” I said, quietly, forcing them to lower their voices.
The man himself emerged around the side of the building. He’s ditched the fashion designer outfit. He and his pack were wearing everyday work clothes with bulky parkas and snow boots. I wondered what weapons they had beneath those parkas.
“I wondered if you’d show up,” he said.
“You just wondered rather than calling me?”
He shrugged casually. “It would have been premature until we caught him.”
“Caught him at what?”
“While we were out searching, Gray’s been talking to the Matlal Athanate.”
“Is that so?” I’d had a feeling that was what this was about. “And you know this how?”
“We spotted him with her. One of the Matlal Athanate.”
“You just happened to spot him,” I said. “Hell, that’s lucky.” I had no idea where this was going but I trusted Gray much more than I trusted Verano. And Gray had called me here.
“So? We were following him,” Verano said. “It didn’t impact on our job.”
Verano’s pack was milling around behind him. The man himself maintained a calm face, but I could feel the Verano Call, seething like marsh gas.
His animosity was feeding into the Call and affecting the whole pack. Couldn’t he sense what he was doing? How had he gotten such a recommendation from the Athanate on the Eastern Seaboard?
“And talking to one is talking to them all?”
He ignored my jibe. “Why are you on his side?”
“I’m not, but I’d like to hear what he has to say first, not judge him guilty immediately.”
“You’re claiming we’re lying?”
A ripple passed through his pack, and I felt their Call. It was angry. It felt unbalanced, as if it was the sort of anger that was just looking for an excuse, any excuse, to blow.
“No. But I’m sure you don’t know the whole truth. That’s what I intend to find. In the meantime, I’m pissed you’ve been acting on your own without informing me.”
Verano grunted. “Well, you can ask them yourself now. She’s in there with him.”
I looked up at the building and its neighbors. Standard office blocks, packed in too close together. I thought about what I would do.
“She may have gone in, but I doubt she stayed long,” I said to Verano. “I think you’ve been suckered.”
That was stupid of me, given how worked up the whole Verano pack was about this, but I’d had enough of talking to him.
I flicked the TacNet. “Gray, let me in.”
“Just you,” he said.
“Just me.” I held the door and turned to Verano. “Back off.”
He walked back to join his pack. They fell into a hushed conversation and my trust of them found a new low.
The electronic lock on the door clicked open.
“Alex, watch them, please. Call me on the TacNet if there’s a problem.”
“Will do.” His voice got quieter. “I don’t trust Verano either.”
“Yeah, but how much of that is because of my attitude? Are you picking that up from me? Like his pack is wired into his attitude toward Gray?”
He shook his head. “Packs shouldn’t react like that unless he encourages them. I’m not just channeling everything you think.”
“Good.” I caught myself brushing against him unconsciously, and tried to focus. “What are you carrying?” I’d seen him load up from his SUV before Olivia took it. I’d arranged for her to stay with Tullah and her family for safety at the moment.
He held his jacket half open, letting me see one of the ugly P90s he must have borrowed from David or Pia.
“Be careful.” Alex let the door close behind me and leaned against it, somehow managing to look both tense and relaxed.
I was standing in a lobby. The streetlights outside barely shone through the smoked glass windows, but I could see the location of the stairwell from the illuminated exit signs. I made my way up mostly by feel to the second floor. I was aware that Gray was watching me when I started on the stairs, just as I was aware when he left me to it. Presumably to check that no one was creeping up another way.
The second floor was spookily lit by computer screens, all displaying the company’s pale green log-in screen and making the room seem like it was underwater. Movable chest-high partitions created dozens of Dilbert cubicles on my left, leaving a corridor ahead down to a set of double doors.
Gray was a shadow standing against the doors.
I felt the sigh of air currents as he let them close and turned toward me. There was no sign of anyone else, as I suspected. A lingering marque teased my memory. Matlal, yes, but not only that. Still, the Matlal woman had been here and she was now long gone. But he’d waited for me. Interesting.
“Consorting with the enemy, Gray?” I said. “Didn’t think to keep me posted?”
“She’s not the enemy. I think you understand.”
“Why?”
“Because of Larry Dixon.”
Larry’s name still hurt, but I kept my face blank.
“He wasn’t Basilikos,” I said. “He wasn’t even really House Matlal. He was House Romero, acting under compulsion.”
“I know.”
So, we’d both met someone from House Matlal, and I’d been slower to report Larry to Bian than he’d been to report this to me. But that wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.
“If she knows about Larry because she was one of those that tortured and killed him, then I’m not dealing, Gray.”
“I didn’t think you would.” He opened the doors a crack and listened again. “She wasn’t involved. You know her, by the way.”
; “Huh?”
“You met her at Cheesman Park.”
“The platinum blonde. Kick-ass martial arts.”
“The same. She wants out, like Larry did.”
I huffed. “She’s been compelled? She’s House Romero?” He could push that Larry button once too often.
“No.” He was quiet for a moment. “I won’t argue her case for her, Farrell, but I’m asking you to talk to her.”
Okay. She was here to trade. What would she want, other than not to be killed? Could I promise even that? Clearly, she was Basilikos and all that went with that. Blood slaves. Feeding on fear.
I would have been happier if I could have simply said no, to have said that Basilikos were beyond the pale. But who was I to point fingers?
I tried to think like Bian would.
“What’s she got to trade?” I asked.
“Locations of others, including the toru.”
It was a good gambit. Toru were an emotional issue all right, and the option of clearing the rest out quickly would go down well with Bian.
“And her own toru?”
“Basilikos don’t own toru privately, toru are owned by the House. She isn’t using toru. More than that, you’ll have to discuss with her.”
“Why did she come to you?”
“She didn’t. I found her.”
Interesting. We had a long talk coming up, Gray and me.
“Okay. It’s enough to talk to her, but I can’t promise that Altau will accept her.”
He shook his head in the darkness. “She’s not appealing to House Altau. She wants to join House Farrell.”
Crap.
“Freaking hell, Gray. I’m not the person she wants to ask for asylum.” The thought of what Naryn would make of this sent shudders through me.
Gray opened his mouth to answer and Alex’s voice came through the TacNet.
“Amber! I think they’ve split up. Some of them drove away, but I think four have gone around the side. Do you want me to come up with you?”
“No. Make sure the others don’t come back.”
“I got it.”
I turned to Gray, but he was already responding. He was listening again through the double doors.