by Holley Trent
“Tell me you’re joking with me, Marcella. Tell me you’re not getting involved in Ursu bullshit.”
“I believe I got involved in your so-called Ursu bullshit from the moment you caught a sniff of me at Eric Falk’s lodge.”
He couldn’t argue against that. He groaned. “What did my parents ask you to do?”
“Easy enough job, actually, and I didn’t leave a trace behind. That was the first time I’ve ever used a plumbing system to access a house.” Her voice held a note of tired wonderment. “A new trick for my arsenal, I suppose. I’ll have to remember that one. Anyhow, he had friends sitting around outside, and I didn’t want to risk being seen. I got in through the bathtub drain, walked straight into his bedroom, and drowned him as he slept. He never woke up. I left the same way I got in.”
Soren stared at her, not knowing what to say or even what to feel, but he knew one thing. If she’d told him what she’d planned, he wouldn’t have let her go. The mess wasn’t hers. He didn’t want her involved in Ursu shit. He didn’t want to be involved in Ursu business.
“You… Why, Marcella?” He slapped the console holding the cup holder, spilling coffee into the receptacles and not giving a single shit about the mess. “Why the hell did you do this? You don’t have anything to prove to them.”
“This has nothing to do with proving anything to anyone!” she shouted.
“Are you certain?”
“How dare you? I did your family a favor—did your Bears a favor—and you immediately assume that I only wanted to show off my magic tricks? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I honestly can’t think of another reason you’d do something so stupid.”
“I just told you. I did it to save you and Peter some hassle. I did it because I could, and easily, and no one would have been the wiser. You should be thanking me, not raging a silly defense.”
Thanking her wasn’t what his brain was telling him. His brain was telling him that she’d gone behind his back and tangled with a man known to be ruthlessly dangerous even after both he and Peter had refused the job. She’d gone a-murdering despite him.
Or perhaps, to spite him.
He loosened his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and, staring through the windshield, concentrated on grinding his teeth instead of running his mouth.
For the first time since he’d laid eyes on her, he started to wonder if perhaps they weren’t right for each other. Perhaps she was too independent, and she’d been right in trying to repel him. He didn’t know if he could manage, as a Bear or as a man, who couldn’t respect him both professionally or personally—who thought she could do his job, and better than him.
The food bag crinkled at his right. In his periphery, he watched Marcella set a coffee into the cup holder, and wedge the bag behind it after taking out what she wanted.
She’d been the one demanding space for weeks, but he was starting to see the appeal of distance, too. Not because he didn’t want her—that would probably never change. He wanted her the way he wanted to eat and breathe. He needed space because he couldn’t work through his anger at her because the overwhelming drive to nurture and coddle her got in the way.
Perhaps a football field of distance between them would be sufficient to start. If not, he could always see about renting a rocket ship. He’d heard the moon was pleasant that time of year.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Marcella hopped down from the SUV, strode across the dirt parking lot of the wildlife rehab facility, and tossed the food bag into the trash. She wasn’t feeling particularly spry, but she was upright, and that was more than she should have expected considering the way she’d spent her evening.
Unfortunately, what little energy she had was being expelled as she shook with anger at Soren. She was trying to hold herself together—both psychologically and otherwise—and couldn’t remember the last time a man had vexed her as much. She’d helped him. His lack of gratitude was flooring.
Pamela pulled up in her station wagon a moment later, waving with keen enthusiasm as she parked.
Soren joined Marcella near the driveway, perhaps wanting to pretend to put on a united front, but not as close to her as she’d become accustomed to. Someone could have driven a Buick through the gap between them.
She folded her arms over her chest and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to start with that shit. If Soren wanted to be surly, fine, as long as he didn’t get in the way of her case.
“Wes is gonna be here in probably fifteen or twenty minutes,” Pamela said.
“You spoke to him?” Peter asked.
“Naw. I didn’t want him to know I’m involved. Him and me ain’t friends, and he damn well knows. I called him way too many times to ream him out over this or that. I’m gonna move my car behind the shed so he don’t see it. My friend Barry’s gonna be here in a minute. He’s gonna do the talking. Barry’s the male Bear who called Wes. I can get you a list of everyone else involved in the mess if you think that’ll help. I done talked to ’em all. They said I could tell you their names.”
“That would help a great deal, both you and us. Once we leave, you’ll probably want to coordinate with the Bears I know. Their group is established and more structured.”
Soren cleared his throat.
Marcella ignored him. Of Pamela, she asked, “What’s Barry’s plan?”
“Well, he called Wes. I knew that bastard would pick up for either Barry or Keith. There hadn’t been nothin’ all that special about them, you know? Not tryin’ to be mean, but that’s the truth. They’re Bears, but they’re not even all that big for Bears, and they spend most of the full moon period conked out under big trees. They wanna find a way to reverse the mess more than anyone.”
“So Wes would be quite interested if the men had spontaneously developed new abilities. Strength or psychic acuity, for instance.”
“Exactly. The men haven’t, though. They’re still the same plain-old Barry and Keith. Barry told him he was feelin’ extra alpha, though, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. I guess he thought that shit sounded macho or whatever.” Pamela crossed her eyes and blew a raspberry. “Anyhow, why don’t y’all ride with me? Lock up your truck and leave it here. Barry’s gonna wait in the lot for Wes.”
She pointed up to the cameras on the poles.
“We can monitor the activity from the office. Shell’s in there waiting for us. She don’t really know a whole lot about this Bear stuff, but me and her go way back to middle school. She used to be sweet on my brother.” She giggled and plopped back into the driver’s seat. “She and her husband did us a big favor.” Her triumphant grin flagged then. “Me and Kimmy’ll never be able to repay ’em for…opening up their home like that.”
“For the baby,” Marcella murmured.
Pamela gave a brisk nod and cleared her throat. “Well, I guess you know all about what happened. We didn’t think having a baby around the mess I was in was a good idea, and Kimmy weren’t ready to be nobody’s momma, anyway. Things coulda been different if I hadn’t been…” She took a deep breath and let it out, blinking rapidly in the telltale way of not-gonna-cry. “Anyway,” she said, voice thick. “Nothin’ more to say about that, I guess.”
“You don’t have to say anything else. I understand.”
“Okay. Good.” Pamela took a deep breath and put her smile back on. “Give me a moment to get a few things out of the car.” Marcella sidled around Soren and walked to the SUV’s cargo space. She grabbed her backpack.
Soren peeled the bag off her and tossed it back in.
“Excuse you?”
“You don’t need the sack.” He lifted his shirt to reveal what was probably his standard arsenal of firepower plus one knife sheathed at his hip.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to decide how best to protect myself in a situation I can’t predict.”
He pressed his palms to the bay floor and shrugged. “I’m trying to help you travel lighter, but do feel free to suit yourself since
you know everything.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Most people who know me would say ‘many things,’ but I think my most urgent problem is a female subject of around twenty-eight years old and five feet and six inches tall who stupidly accepts assignments from my parents.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, here we go with that shit again.”
“I get a feeling we’re going to be going on about it for a very long time.”
“Drop it, Soren.”
“Hold your breath, pet.”
Her upper lip curled back, and an unholy snarling sound came out of her clenched teeth.
He gave her a gentle bop on the nose. “Poor little beast. Don’t forget to put on your shades. Maybe Pamela was too disordered to notice you have a less-than-human appearance right now, but the next person might not be so lucky.”
Damn him.
She yanked her bag back, found her mirrored sunglasses in the pouch, and also grabbed the stun gun from the side flap. She didn’t need bullets when electricity would do. There’d be something so satisfying about sending a few million volts through thick-skulled individuals in need of a mental reboot.
Soren locked up and followed her at a respectful distance to Pamela’s car.
She got into the front seat.
Soren slung his long body into the back.
Pamela got them moving.
Marcella could see the shed in the distance, although calling the structure a shed was probably an understatement. It was more like a small barn, made of metal and with several satellite dishes and antennas mounted on top.
“They like to stay connected, hmm?” Marcella asked.
“Oh, don’t mind that. My friend’s son is a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Spends all day on the Internet and listening to stuff on CV radio. I don’t know what all he does with all that mess, but the nonstop tinkering keeps him out of trouble, I guess.”
“Everyone should have a hobby,” Soren murmured.
“Hey! That’s what I keep telling Kim.”
He grunted and leaned forward to the front seats. “Speaking of Kim, we combed through her phone records last night.”
“Uh-oh. Do I want to know what you found?”
“Whether or not you want to, I’ll tell you anyway. The vast majority of her outbound calls were to places we were able to identify as her workplace or to a couple of individuals Facebook searches tells us are friends.”
“But the rest?”
“There were seventeen outbound calls to CarrHealth’s Georgia office in the past month and ten inbound calls.”
“Huh?”
“They started recently?”
“No,” Soren said. “Going back at least thirty days, so she’d certainly been in contact with them before you saw her at the office.”
“Could you tell who that number belonged to or was it simply the switchboard?”
“No, the number was direct and is advertised on the website as belonged to a department called Participant Vetting. I dug a little deeper to see what that meant. Apparently, there’s someone who does the initial intake interview—”
“Cortney,” Marcella said.
He grunted. “And there’s someone who does deeper background work to determine if volunteers meet study demands. That likely would be the gentleman in the back corner who had his headphones on.”
“That dipshit?” Pamela asked. She slung the station wagon into position parallel to the back wall of the shed and turned off the ignition. “He can barely string a sentence together.”
“If he’s only looking for certain traits, he doesn’t need to be all that intelligent. He doesn’t even need to probe all that deeply. As long as he recruits the sorts of people Wes wants, he doesn’t need to be an especially independent thinker.”
“So, does he know that Wes is rogue?” Marcella asked.
“You tell me.”
She sighed and put her head against the rest.
Here we go with that shit again.
“I don’t have enough information,” she muttered
“Tell me what you think you need to know, and I’ll let you know if I have it.”
“Why would you have it?”
“I did all sorts of digging last night when you were supposedly asleep,” he said in a neutral tone. “Perhaps I would have told you if you’d asked.”
“Perhaps you should have volunteered without me having to ask you.”
Pamela chuckled. “I wish I had a popcorn popper in here. Y’all a couple? ’Cause you act like one.”
They said, “No,” in unison.
“So, yes?”
Change the subject.
Marcella rubbed the bridge of her nose, gritted her teeth for a few beats, and then said to the petty-ass Bear, “I suppose that what I would need to know to make a determination of the man’s status is if he’s receiving money from a place beyond CarrHealth. If there have been any unusual and periodic deposits to his bank accounts, for instance.”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Cash or check?”
“Cash, of course, and always for approximately the same amount.”
“Cash deposits on their own wouldn’t be inherently suspicious. People sometimes work odd jobs for cash. Most of my pay has been through cash in whatever local currency people use, but those amounts were rarely the same amount twice. What would be suspicious would be the size of the deposits.”
“Large.”
“Okay, and can those deposits be matched up with any funds flowing out of Wes’s accounts?”
“Yes.”
Marcella whipped around and looked at him.
He shrugged. “Wes isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. He either closed a couple of his accounts after his encounter with the Shrews or the banks or government forced them closed. I found an account that wasn’t listed on any of the usual records. It was a business account attached to an LLC.” He added in a murmur, “Such a fucking idiot. As if we couldn’t look that up.”
“That’s a circumstantial connection, but convincing enough for me.”
“It’s a good thing you’re neither police or an officer of the court. You have so much more freedom to…handle people, hmm?”
“Drop it, Soren.”
“Really wantin’ that popcorn,” Pamela said.
“I’ll buy you all the premium popcorn you want as soon as we nail Wes.” Marcella unfastened her seatbelt and reached for the door handle. “I’ll probably be eating my fair share of it as you figure out what kind of sticky wicket Kim’s in.”
“Ugh.” Pamela got out and slammed the door. Though the crack in the window, she said, “I declare, that child is gonna drive me to an early grave. My momma took one look at Kim after she came out of me, and she said, ‘Pamela, that there girl is trouble. Mark my words.’ All this time, I was thinkin’ it was just because she was pretty. I sure learned my lesson.”
“Sorry.” Marcella followed Pamela.
“Yeah, yeah. Still love her to pieces, though.”
Soren walked beside Marcella, glowering down at her on occasion.
She rolled her eyes and caught up to Pamela. He needed to get over himself. Marcella wasn’t going to convince herself that she was in the wrong, so if he were waiting for her to confess some wrongdoing, he would be waiting an incredibly long time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“That’s him.” Pamela tapped the video monitor in front of Shell’s son, Bobby, and gave her head a doleful shake. “Rat bastard looks even shadier on screen than he does in real life.”
Soren leaned over the desk and squinted at the new figure in the parking lot. He scoffed. “Who the hell wears belted slacks and a white button-down to a wildlife rehabilitation center?”
“I’m sure he has an image to uphold,” Marcella said. “You know. An employed one.” She pointed to the other new figure—the short, thin one dropping down out of a pickup truck and waving was Wes. “Is that Barry?”
“Yep,” Pame
la said chuckling. “Barry the Bear. It’s okay to laugh. He thinks it’s funny, too.”
“I can see why Wes would be interested in developments coming from him. He’s quite frail, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Had leukemia as a kid and his body never really sprouted up the way it was supposed to after that.”
“I see why he entered the study, then.”
Barry extended his hand to shake Wes’s.
Wes stared at the offered hand for so long that Soren didn’t think he was going to take it, but finally, he did, barely touching the other man’s fingertips as he gripped.
“I hope he’s not getting suspicious already,” Marcella said.
“Give ol’ Barry a minute,” Pamela said. “He’s real good at talking folks into things and taking them off guard. He does standup comedy in his free time. Pretty good, too. I think he’d really go somewhere with it if he ever put himself out there like we keep telling him to. He’s never gonna get nowhere if he doesn’t check out of this place, though.”
Barry waved toward the fields in the distance, chatting animatedly. Wes crossed his arms over his chest and nodded.
He was into the conversation—truly invested in whatever Barry had to say.
“Huh,” Soren said.
“Barry’s gonna lead him back this way. He’s gotta convince him first to go in his car rather than Wes’s.”
Bobby grunted. “Yeah, you’d better. That guy looks like he’d bolt at the first provocation. Separate him from his vehicle as quickly as possible.”
Barry gesticulated toward his truck, and canted his head—obvious signaling of “Come with me,” and Wes looked toward his car. He’d left the door open.
Barry arced around him, shaking his head and holding up a finger. “It’ll only take a minute,” he was perhaps saying.
“Come on…” Marcella murmured encouragingly to the scene unfolding on screen.
She had her forearms pressed to the table and was practically thrumming with excitement—almost like she was watching a baseball game and there were two players on base and the slugger walking up to bat had a fifty-fifty shot of hitting the ball over the fence.