(Moon 1) - Killing Moon

by Rebecca York

  Marshall was still sleeping, or perhaps he was feigning sleep to avoid interacting with her. She might have let him slumber, but she needed to assess his condition.

  Gently she touched his shoulder, and his eyes snapped open, regarding her with the intensity that had unnerved her the night before.

  "How do you feel?" she asked, hearing the husky note in her voice as she set a glass of water down on the bedside table.

  His gaze turned inward as if he were taking an inventory of muscle and sinew. "Better," he finally answered without elaborating.

  "You got out of bed last night."

  "Early in the morning."

  "You should have asked me to help you."

  "I made it down the hall and back again on my own."

  "If you'd fallen, it wouldn't have been good for the wound."

  "I didn't."

  His clipped answers told her that the conversation was an imposition, and she felt a stab of disappointment tighten her chest.

  With an inward sigh she acknowledged she'd been hoping that things would be different when he started getting better. That their communications would normalize.

  Now, as she remembered her thoughts at the grocery store, she felt her face flush. As far as he was concerned, this was simply a doctor-patient relationship—and not a very cordial one, at that.

  Cutting her losses, she changed the subject. "It's time for your medicine."

  He pushed himself up and reached for the bottle she'd set on the night table, shaking out a caplet into his hand. When he picked up the water, she saw he was able to hold the glass steady. He was definitely getting better—and asserting his independence.

  But there were still things he needed from her.

  "I should check the wound," she reminded him.

  Without commenting, he slid back to a prone position. As quickly as possible, she changed the dressing, more aware than ever of her hands on his flesh, aware that he was watching her from under his long, dark lashes.

  "How is it?" he asked.

  "Healing."

  He accepted the information without comment.

  "Do you think you could eat something?"

  He reached for the second pillow on the bed, propped it behind his back. "There's meat in the freezer."

  Her response to that suggestion was instantaneous. "You can't handle meat. You're still too sick."

  He looked like he was about to argue, then shrugged. "What do you suggest?"

  "Chicken soup is more like it."

  He sniffed the air, looked puzzled. "I don't smell any."

  His quizzical look made her laugh. "I'm not the domestic type. You have a choice of Campbell's Chicken Rice or Lipton's Chicken Noodle."

  He debated, apparently weighing the merits of each. "Lipton's, I guess," he answered, sounding less than enthusiastic. "With lots of noodles."

  She retreated to the kitchen and concentrated on fixing the soup, telling herself that investing any kind of emotional energy in the man was a mistake. When she returned to the bedroom, she saw he'd straightened the covers. His head was turned, and he was staring out the window.

  She was pretty sure he knew she was standing in the doorway, yet he kept his gaze focused on the swaying tree branches thirty feet away.

  The blur of motion brought back memories from her childhood—images that she'd thought she'd outgrown.

  "Do you see animal shapes moving in the leaves?" she asked in a low voice.

  "Do you?"

  "Yes. I'd look out my window when I was a little girl and see them. They scared me."

  "Do they still?"

  She managed a laugh. "Unfortunately, yes."

  He gave her a considering look. "It just means you're imaginative."

  "Scientists aren't imaginative."

  "Don't duck away from a compliment. Of course you are."

  Before she could think of how to answer, his gaze moved back to the window, and he looked like he wanted to climb out of bed and disappear into the foliage.

  "I'm sorry. It's going to be a few days before you can get out of the house."

  "I need…"

  "What?"

  "Fresh air. Going outside won't hurt me. It will help me get better."

  "You can barely walk."

  "I'm at home in the woods."

  She wasn't going to waste his strength arguing about it. Realizing she was still holding the mug of soup, she set it on the nightstand, along with some plain soda crackers she'd purchased at the grocery store.

  He gave the meal a wry look. "Is this what the doctor ordered?"

  "Yes."

  He thought for a moment. "My memory's a little vague about the past couple of days."

  "That's nothing to worry about. You were pretty sick."

  "Yeah, well, did you tell me you were a doctor? That you work for Bio Gen?"

  She nodded, wondering exactly how much of their previous exchanges he recalled. The words they'd spoken. And all the rest of it. Her holding him while he drank. Her looking at his naked body. His trapping her wrist in the circle of his thumb and finger. The sense of connection that defied explanation.

  She felt her face warm and was glad he had turned to reach for the soup. Picking up the mug, he blew on the hot liquid, then took a cautious sip.

  After several swallows, he raised his head, looking at her with his unnerving dark gaze. "I should thank you," he said grudgingly. "I don't mean just for the soup. If you hadn't come along when you did, I would have been in trouble."

  "Then I guess I should say you're welcome."

  "Tell me you would have done it for anyone."

  "Why?"

  "Then it's nothing personal."

  The curt observation stung. She was about to back out of the room when he asked, "Would you open a window so I can at least smell the outside?"

  That was an odd way to put it, she thought. With a tight nod, she crossed to the window wall, which featured an enormous middle glass panel that was fixed in place. There were two side units, however, that could slide open and closed. She pushed open the one on the left, then watched as he dragged in a deep lungful of air and let it out as he relaxed against the pillows.

  She stood there regarding him, her own breath quickening as she tried to understand what he was experiencing.

  "Thank you," he said, his eyes fixed on the woods. He said nothing else, ignoring her as if she were no longer in the room. The night before, he'd ordered her to leave. This morning he was using a different tactic.

  She opened her mouth to point that out, then closed it again. Wondering why she was staying to take care of a man who so obviously wished her out of his house, she exited the bedroom.

  Her car was outside. She could collect the blood sample she needed for the genetic test he'd requested and clear out, but she couldn't bring herself to abandon him. Or to go back into the bedroom and confront him again, either.

  After standing uncertainly in the hallway for several moments, she strode into the bathroom and locked the door. Again she hesitated, staring nervously at the expanse of unbroken glass and the windblown trees beyond.

  Then, telling herself that no one would dare spy on Ross Marshall's house, she ripped her gaze away, turned her back, and pulled off her clothes. After she took a quick shower, she changed into the T-shirt and underpants she'd bought, using one of the plastic grocery bags for her dirty clothes. Too bad she didn't have another pair of sweatpants, too. But she wasn't about to borrow any of his.

  In the great room she stood staring at the furniture, then the bookcases, finally focusing on the Gaelic dictionaries. With an odd sense of anticipation, she crossed the room and reached for the largest one, turning to the D's.

  The word díthreabh was there. It meant "wilderness, hermitage, isolated place of safety away from other human beings."

  So that was how he thought of this property—this house. As his refuge. And she had invaded his territory. No wonder he wanted to get rid of her.

  Yet he was att
racted to her. All the feelings experienced over the time she'd been here had not been onesided. She couldn't believe that. He might be fighting the pull, pretending it didn't exist, but he felt it, too.

  That was why he was fighting it, she thought with sudden insight. Because he sensed what was happening, and he feared the intimacy.

  Because of his illness? Not from the gunshot but the genetic problem that had caused him to call Bio Gen Labs in the first place. Despite his apparent physical health, there was something wrong with him. Some inherited defect he didn't want to discuss—and perhaps didn't plan to pass on to the next generation.

  When she considered his situation in those terms, his reserve made perfect sense. Maybe he'd gotten close to a woman before. And maybe she'd run in the other direction because she'd decided the risk of bearing his children was simply too great.

  Megan pressed her fist against her mouth, feeling a stab of anguish for him as she imagined that kind of rejection. Whatever he'd called the lab about wouldn't be something he'd want to reveal on the first date. But she was in a unique position. She already knew there was some genetic problem in his background. That was something to consider carefully before she got in any deeper.

  Good advice. But was she capable of taking it?

  After putting the dictionary back, Megan flopped onto the sofa and stared into space. Finally she pulled out her tablet and started to add to the notes she'd written the night before, intent on documenting how quickly her patient was recovering.

  But fatigue pressed against her chest, her limbs. Succumbing to an unaccustomed lethargy, she swung her legs onto the couch, propped a cushion behind her head, and let her mind drift. For months she'd been working at breakneck speed, trying to make some progress on her gene therapy treatment for Myer's disease while getting through the increasingly heavy workload that Walter was demanding. Now her routine was totally disrupted. She had nothing to do, and the feeling was unsettling.

  She intended to close her eyes for only a few moments.

  Hours later, she woke with a start, disoriented and immediately on edge. When she realized where she was, her gaze flew to the window. The sky had been gunmetal gray when she'd fallen asleep. Now the sun had set.

  Which meant that Marshall had missed a dose of medicine, unless he'd gotten it himself. A lot of good she was doing him, insisting on staying here.

  Standing too quickly, she wobbled on her feet and reached out a hand to steady herself against the sofa back. Then she made her way down the darkened hallway to the bedroom.

  The door was closed. She knocked. "Ross?"

  No answer.

  "Ross?"

  A sensation of cold scraped at the back of her neck. Clenching the doorknob, she tried to make it turn. But it was locked from the inside.

  "Ross. Are you all right in there?"

  No answer.

  "Ross, open the door."

  Flicking on the hall light switch, she bent to examine the lock. It was similar to the ones in the house where she'd grown up, and she knew that if she found something slender enough to penetrate the small hole in the center of the knob, she could spring the locking mechanism.

  An unbent hairpin was about the right size. But she didn't have a hairpin.

  Again she rattled the knob. "Ross! Let me in."

  When he failed to acknowledge her demand, she ran down the hall to the kitchen and started opening drawers. There was nothing she could use.

  God, what if he'd had a relapse? What if some problem related to his genetic makeup had kicked in?

  Frustrated and frightened, she pulled open the door to the utility room and looked wildly around. One wall housed a washer and dryer flanked by shelves of laundry supplies. The rest of the room appeared to be a well-stocked workshop. There was a large workbench, a table saw, and lumber neatly stacked in racks along the wall. Shelves held hand and power tools. On other shelves were cases of small plastic drawers containing various items such as washers, nails, and screws. All of them were too large in diameter to fit the hole in the doorknob. But she found a piece of wire that looked like it might do.

  Back at the door of the bedroom, she called to her patient one more time. "Ross, if you can hear me, open up!"

  When he still didn't answer, she unwound the coiled wire and pushed the slender tip into the hole in the knob. After wiggling it around, she finally heard a soft click.

  "I'm coming in," she informed him as she pushed the door open and charged into the room, almost tripping over something on the floor as she skidded to a stop beside the bed.

  It appeared to be empty.

  Lunging back to the door, she switched on the light so that she could see better.

  There was still no one in the room, but she discovered what she had tripped over. The shorts Ross had been wearing lay on the floor beside the bed. She also saw that the side window panel she'd pushed partway up was fully open.

  She stood there breathing hard, a combination of fear and anger making her stomach churn. Then, unable to cope with the empty room, she ran down the hall to the bathroom, hoping she'd find him there. But that room was empty, too.

  The bedroom had been locked from the inside. But her brain didn't seem capable of processing the information. In a rising state of hysteria, she ran through the rest of the house, switching on lights, calling his name, thinking she was going to discover him sprawled on the floor the way he'd been yesterday afternoon. But there was no answer. And no body.

  Nearly defeated, she made her way back to the bedroom, pulled open the closet door, and swept her hand behind the clothing hanging in a neat row. But he wasn't hiding there like a kid afraid of the dark.

  Finally, inevitably, she switched off the light and moved to the window. Because if Ross wasn't in the house, the only place he could be was outside.

  Staring into the gathering darkness, she strained her eyes for the sight of a naked man moving among the trees or spread-eagled and unconscious on the ground.

  She saw branches swaying, heard the sighing of the wind, smelled the earthy scent of trees and soil, but she saw no one. She knew he had to be out there. And she had to bring him back.

  The idea of leaving the house sent a wave of cold sweeping over her skin. But there seemed to be no other choice. Not when he had been burning up with fever the day before. Not when this stunt was going to set his recovery back days.

  God, was the man crazy?

  Her mouth compressed into a thin line, she eyed the window, picturing herself climbing out. But the opening was several feet from the floor, and her legs were not as long as her patient's. Retracing her steps down the hall, she crossed the great room, switched on the porch light, and opened the front door.

  Silently she stepped out into the night and stood with her arms wrapped around her shoulders.

  Although the sky had been overcast early in the evening, the clouds had blown away, making way for the radiance of a three-quarters-full moon. It bathed the meadow in cold light that did nothing to banish the goose bumps rising on her skin.

  "Ross?" she called, feeling the wind take the word and hurl it from her.

  She had never felt comfortable in the dark. But when Ross didn't answer, she stepped off the pad of cement at the front door and began to circle the house, keeping the solid bulk of the structure to her back and her gaze to the ground as she searched for his limp body.

  She was facing the woods when a sudden burst of wind swished through the trees. In the light filtering like ghostly ribbons through the swaying branches, she saw a gray shape prowling the forest, its head bent to something on the ground.

  For a moment she told herself it was simply her childhood fantasy of shapes moving in the trees. Then she sucked in a sharp breath as she saw it really was an animal.

  A large dog. Maybe a German shepherd—or a husky-shepherd mix. But somewhere in the deep, primitive part of her mind she knew it was a true creature of the forest. A wolf.

  As soon as the thought surfaced, she rejected
it as impossible. There were no wolves in Maryland. At least she had never heard of any.

  Yet her mind continued to shout the word wolf.

  She stared at him. Him.

  From where she was standing, she couldn't see the sex. But she had the absolute conviction he was a male from the way he held himself, his posture dangerous and aggressive. He was standing in the moonlight as if he had owned this patch of woodland since before man had tread upon the continent.

  As she watched, he raised his head, surveyed his forest.

  Details came to her with striking clarity. His pelt was silver gray. His ears alert, edged with black. His tail full and held at a downward angle, except where the black tip curved upward.

  The bottom half of the face was light gray, in sharp contrast to the shiny black nose.

  His eyes were his most striking feature. They were yellow—and glowing with an intelligence that seemed impossible for an animal to possess.

  He bent again, and she saw what she hadn't noticed before—a limp furry form on the ground in front of him.

  His teeth flashed. When she realized what he was doing, she made a small sound of protest in her throat. It looked like he had caught a small animal and was tearing at its bloody flesh with his sharp teeth.

  The wolf must have heard her. Or more likely he had known she was there all along and had finally decided to acknowledge her presence.

  Lifting his head, he pinned her with his gaze, a low warning growl drifting to her on the wind. It was a sound that gave meaning to an old cliche—the feel of icy fingers walking themselves down her spine.

  She had never known the sensation before. She felt it now, the quivers starting at the base of her spine and traveling to every nerve ending of her body. She wanted to run back the way she'd come, around the house and through the front door. But her legs refused to cooperate. Immobilized, she watched the animal abandon its prey and move toward her. His gaze burning into her, he closed the distance between them until he was standing a mere ten feet away and she could see the blood staining the fur of his muzzle.

  Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she could barely draw in a full breath as she stood there, exposed and vulnerable, sure that his brilliant yellow eyes might be the last thing she saw on earth—before he ripped her throat out.