In the Company of Wolves_Thinning The Herd

by James Michael Larranaga

  “Yeah, it’s cold,” he said. “A guy could freeze to death on a night like—”

  “Thanks for the call. Nice talking.”

  “You, too,” he said, before setting his phone on the dashboard. The clock read 6:15 p.m. He just had time to execute their plan.

  Helping somebody escape from prison was a serious crime. The offense hadn’t been mentioned in any of his prelaw classes at school, but he knew he’d go to prison if he were caught. And if he were caught, he would certainly never work as an attorney. But it was worth the risk. People always thought of Jimmy as lazy and uncaring. Now tribal members would see that he really did care about his family, especially the family’s fortune. He had every right to get it back.

  Rebecca stepped into the bathtub and soaked her aching muscles. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d run so many errands. Her illness had changed her life that dramatically.

  Quin had seemed uneasy today, constantly looking over his shoulder. He really believed she was in danger. She wondered if Hawk knew of his problems and about his true identity.

  She poured the hot water over her face and neck, sinking deeper into the tub. She thought she heard a sound downstairs and sat up. What was it? Maybe the wind, blowing the gate in the backyard. Again, she heard a banging sound, twice this time.

  “Mike, is that you?” Why would he stop by after ten o’clock? “Mike?”

  Two more loud crashes, as if somebody were pushing down the front door. She jumped out of the tub and wrapped herself in her bathrobe, still dripping.

  Somebody was definitely breaking into her house. Was Quin right? Was Ben Moretti pushing down her door to collect on her life insurance?

  She reached into the linen chest at the foot of her bed for the small gun she bought when she and Mike had separated. She’d never practiced with it. How good a shot was she? Or how bad?

  She descended the staircase holding the gun in front of her. She was cold, shivering, and dripping underneath her robe. She could hear an upset man outside, stomping his feet, still kicking the door.

  Two more steps and he’d be able to see her. She set her index finger on the trigger.

  She heard another rap against the door and then a series of fists pounding away. “Rebecca! Open the door!”

  Not Ben Moretti.

  She took two more steps with the gun still leveled in front of her and entered the shadows of the foyer. The frost on the windows made it hard for the man beyond the door to see inside. He kept shoving his face and hands against the window, breathing hard to melt the frost.

  She turned on the outside lights, blinding the man briefly. He stepped back. Christopher Gartner.

  “Oh God, did I wake you?” he asked apologetically as she opened the door.

  Embarrassed, she tightened her robe and set the gun on the coffee table before letting him in.

  “You frightened me!” she said. “I was in the tub.”

  He closed the door and stomped the snow off his feet, looking around wild and excited. “I’m sorry. I saw your lights on upstairs. I tried to call you. Have you checked your voicemail?”

  “No, I was out this afternoon with Quin.”

  “I just flew in from Chicago,” he said. “Because of the weather, my flight was delayed all afternoon. I got here as soon as I could.”

  She brought him into the kitchen to make two cups of hot tea.

  “What’s so important that you had to come back and see me?” she asked.

  He sat at the table, rubbing his cold fingers, as if he were warming them by a fire. “Has Quin mentioned anything to you about your safety?”

  She nearly dropped the cups in surprise. “Yes, he said Ben Moretti was out to get me. But you know Quin is–“

  “Quin is telling you the truth!”

  She left the cups and sat with Christopher at the kitchen table.

  “Quin takes drugs because he hallucinates,” she said.

  “I know,” Christopher said. “I’ve seen him take the pills, but you know what? He’s not hallucinating about this.”

  “You actually believe Ben Moretti wants to kill me?”

  “I have company files that prove he’s been killing clients off to collect the life insurance proceeds early,” Christopher said. “This is why Quin and I originally made you the offer. We had concerns about your safety. Then Ben lied to me and told me Quin was a murderer. Ben’s the murderer.”

  “And Ben now holds my policy in his hands.”

  “Right! Did Quin tell you how much Ben paid for it?”

  “No.”

  “He stole the policy by blackmailing Quin. Quin was forced to make Ben’s company the beneficiary.”

  “Quin gave it away?” she asked in surprise.

  “He gave the policy away so he could spend time with you, to protect you.”

  She had mixed feelings about this. “Quin and I spent the afternoon giving that money away to charities. He could’ve stopped me.”

  “He cares about you, Rebecca,” Christopher said. “He wants you to be happy.”

  She rested her face in her hands, thinking about how Quin had driven her through a winter storm, patiently watching her give away every cent of Hawk’s money. Quin never said a word.

  “We need to call the police and get protection until this whole thing is sorted out.”

  She was about to agree when she heard the sound of breaking glass and a loud thud upstairs.

  Christopher looked up at the ceiling. “You’re here alone, right?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I think we have a visitor.”

  Breaking in through the skylight was Jimmy’s stupid idea. Helene had followed him up the branches of a pine tree and scaled the roof. Her nephew had been walking across the skylight windows when the glass burst beneath him and he fell to the floor. What an idiot, she thought. He was still lying there out of breath looking up at her when she jumped down and landed flat on her sneakers, like a cat.

  She waited for a moment for her eyes to adjust. They were in an artist’s loft. Helene walked over to one of the easels and shook her head. “Look at this. I don’t believe it. This is a painting of Quin,” she whispered.

  Jimmy stood, shaking bits of glass off his coat as he studied the art. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Together they made their way through the maze of paintings toward a lighted hallway.

  “Wait here.” She motioned as she tiptoed into the master bedroom.

  Nobody was in the room. She noticed Hawk’s wolf bundle in the corner. Helene knelt on the plush carpet and opened the old pelt bag. Empty. Where was her money?

  She returned to the studio. “She must be on the first floor.”

  Helene walked down the stairs without touching the railing. Railings always creaked. She’d done this before and knew how to make her way around a stranger’s house.

  On the main level, she turned to Jimmy and whispered, “In the kitchen.”

  Her nephew nodded nervously, as if he couldn’t take the tension much longer. She noticed an object on the coffee table that looked like a gun. Could it be? Maybe a cigarette lighter, the kind of knick-knack rich people buy from catalogs.

  She held it in her hand—a heavy little thing with a live chamber and ammunition. What luck! She and Jimmy wanted to frighten the woman. A weapon would certainly help.

  Jimmy grabbed her shoulder. “Where did you get that?”

  “Here on the table,” she whispered.

  “Put it down.”

  She held it tighter. “We’ll scare her, that’s all.”

  Jimmy mumbled something about being in deep shit, but Helene walked forward toward the lighted kitchen. When she entered, she saw a man and woman standing together, holding large carving knives. How cute, she thought.

  “Well, what do we have here?” Helene said. “Little pig, little pig, let me in!”

  “Who are you?” the man said.

  “I’m here to collect the money that bitch took from my fa
ther,” she said, stepping into the kitchen with her nephew right behind her. “You’re Rebecca Baron, right?”

  The woman shook with fear. “I didn’t take the money.”

  The woman was a bad actress. She’d seen Hawk’s empty wolf bundle upstairs.

  “Your father invested his money with me and Quin,” the man said, moving forward slowly.

  “Drop the knives,” Jimmy demanded.

  They each set a knife on the floor.

  “Who are you?” Helene asked.

  “Christopher Gartner,” he said. “Quin and I invested Hawk’s money to purchase Rebecca’s life insurance policy. It’s a perfectly legal and legitimate investment.”

  He went on talking about investment options in life insurance brokering and how they’d set up a deal that would make Hawk money soon. He called it an investment. She still thought it was theft.

  “I want the money back,” she said. “Now!”

  “It’s too late,” Christopher said. “Rebecca signed the papers. We’ve paid her the money. We’ve transferred the policy to another broker.”

  Helene was never very good with math and didn’t care about the complicated details. She was growing angrier. “I walked off prison grounds to meet you, Rebecca. Not because you’re an interesting person, but because you stole my inheritance and I want it back.”

  “I don’t have the money anymore,” Rebecca said in a trembling voice.

  Helene stepped forward for a closer look at this woman. She was in nothing but a white monogrammed bathrobe, her hair pinned in the back. “Have you spent it already?” Helene asked, waving the gun for emphasis.

  “Go easy,” Jimmy said.

  “I’m not going easy on her! How could she have spent all our money?”

  Helene was still arguing with Jimmy when the words came out of Rebecca’s mouth.

  “I gave the money away,” Rebecca said.

  “You did what?” Helene asked, waving the gun.

  “I gave the money to charity.”

  “She’s Robin Hood! No way!” Helene said.

  “I have the receipts,” she said.

  Those were the last words Helene heard Rebecca say. After that she waved the gun with more of her own shouts, and Rebecca doubled over, as if somebody had thrown a bowling ball at her stomach.

  Helene noticed that the metallic gun in her hand was hot. Both Jimmy and Christopher ran to Rebecca, who lay on the floor clutching a widening red stain on her white robe.

  Had the gun gone off?

  “What’s wrong with you, Helene!” Jimmy screamed. “You weren’t supposed to shoot her!”

  She looked at the small gun in her hand. Definitely not a cigarette lighter. What could she say? “I didn’t shoot.”

  “Yes you did! You shot her!” Jimmy shouted, cradling Rebecca’s head.

  “I couldn’t have,” she said. “The gun went off?!” It was the gun’s fault. When she’d shot her boyfriend a couple of years back, that was definitely intentional, but this was different.

  She watched Rebecca wincing and looking around the room. She hadn’t gone into shock yet. She was like the deer Helene had shot when she was a teenager: wounded, alert, and breathing heavily.

  Christopher was on the phone when she stopped him. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Nine one one.” He started giving directions to the house.

  “Hang it up.”

  “She needs medical attention!” Christopher shouted back defiantly.

  “No cops! No doctors. I could go to jail for this,” Helene said.

  “You’re already in jail!” Jimmy said, siding with the enemy.

  And she wasn’t going back either. An escaped convict who breaks into a woman’s home and shoots her in the belly isn’t the kind of case that causes hung juries. She had a choice to make: finish Rebecca off and shoot the witnesses, even stupid Jimmy, or kidnap them all.

  “Pick her up and put her in the truck.”

  “Why? Where are we going?” Jimmy asked.

  “To the reservation.”

  In their hurry to flee, they hadn’t wasted time dressing Rebecca. They kept her in her blood-soaked robe and wrapped her in the floral comforter from her bed. When they set her onto the cold backseat of the Bronco, she shivered.

  She had her head in Christopher’s lap, watching the yellow and white streetlights blur past the windows—the ambulance and squad car that had come to her rescue.

  As painful as the burning sensation was in her stomach, it blocked the throbbing pain she’d felt earlier from the tumor in her head.

  “You’ll be all right,” Christopher said, stroking her hair.

  Helene looked back. “Is she breathing? Can she make it to the reservation?”

  “A hospital is a better idea,” Christopher said.

  “Better for you, but not for me,” Helene said.

  “Oh God,” Jimmy said. “We got a cop behind us!”

  Helene looked back again. “Outrun him!”

  Rebecca heard the sirens and knew a police car was closing in. When Jimmy accelerated, she felt herself getting weaker.

  “Pull over,” Christopher said. “Give up!”

  “No stopping until we get to the reservation,” she insisted. “We’ll be protected there.”

  Rebecca felt herself slipping away. She doubted if even a medical team could repair the wound now. She was losing too much blood. She wasn’t afraid to die; she’d prepared herself for death a long time ago but regretted that she’d never see Quin again. She wanted to thank him for taking the risks to save her life, for generously letting her give away all that money to charity. She also wanted to say good-bye to her ex-husband.

  “Christopher, would you to write a note to Mike for me, in case I don’t make it?”

  “You’ll make it.”

  Her shallow breathing was more painful, hardly worth the effort. “Please write this down.”

  “I need paper and a pen,” he said to Jimmy.

  “In my book bag behind your seat.”

  Christopher fumbled with the bag. “Ready when you are.”

  She took a deep, painful breath, closed her eyes. “Dear Mike. I have one favor I’d like to ask of you…”

  Quin closed the door of his truck and walked along the icy path to his apartment building. All he could think about was how Big Ben planned to frame him for everything. How could he protect himself?

  Once inside the building, he bounded up the stairs to the second floor and walked quickly to his apartment. He had to clear out of here and move back to the reservation. He slid his key in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. He tried it again, but nothing happened.

  “Zoe?” he said, tapping on the door.

  He sent Zoe a text. Hey where are you?

  She responded immediately. Spyhouse. I couldn’t get into the apartment.

  Be right there.

  Lunde had changed the lock on the apartment. Now that Quin didn’t work for him, Lunde had locked him out of the apartment.

  Quin spun through the contacts on his phone, found Lunde’s number, and called it.

  “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

  Shit! Seriously? He called it again.

  “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”

  Quin hadn’t brought much with him when he moved in—just his Armani suits, the old laptop, and a duffel bag of jeans and sweatshirts. All of his important belongings were at Hawk’s house. But he kicked in the door anyway and stepped inside.

  He flipped the light on and saw that Lunde had emptied the place of everything except for the old furniture.

  Quin noticed one of his Vince Flynn paperbacks on the floor by the couch. He picked it up and shoved into his back pocket. He closed the broken door of the apartment and jogged to the staircase, where he bounded down two stairs at time. He walked to his truck and checked to see if anybody had parked nearby who might be following him. Nothing looked suspicious.

  When he climbed
inside the truck, he started the engine and reached down under his seat to make sure his $25,000 was still there. He drove around the block, parked in front of Spyhouse Coffee, and went inside, where he saw Zoe seated in the back.

  One lone female barista worked the counter and chatted with a tall blonde who had ordered a cappuccino to go. Quin was debating whether to order a hot water for his tea or to get a latte when the blonde turned to him.

  “Hey, Quin!”

  He stared at her. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t remember her name.

  “It’s me, Candy!”

  “Candy, how are you? Sorry, it’s late, I’m tired—“

  “I’m great. I thought I might run into you here,” she said. “You never sent me a text. We had fun last week, right?”

  He glanced at Zoe. Ordinarily he’d enjoy small talk and flirting, but he was tired and had too much on his mind. And what if Candy was a spy for Big Ben?

  “I’m busy,” Quin said. “Ben has me working long hours.”

  “But it’s just an internship.”

  “Yeah, but you know Ben.”

  “He’s needy and very impatient—that’s what Gwen says about him,” Candy said. “For people like Ben, you have to tell them no once in a while. Make him wait.”

  Good advice if all Quin had to deal with was a micromanaging boss instead of a killer, but it did spark an idea Quin hadn’t considered before.

  Make him wait. Make him wait a long time.

  “Hey, you want to go out again sometime?” Candy asked as the barista handed her a cup.

  “I’m seeing someone right now,” Quin said, knowing Zoe was watching the entire conversation from across the café.

  “Oh, Zoe. I asked around on campus, and nobody seems to know of her.”

  “The U is pretty big.”

  “Yeah, but some of the people knew you but had never seen you with anybody named Zoe.”

  “She’s not a full-time student,” Quin said. He thought about pointing to her across the room, but the two of them would never get along. They were complete opposites; Zoe was more like a petite sirah with her small frame, raven-black hair, and serious demeanor. Candy was a full-bodied chardonnay, curvy with platinum blonde locks. It would be safer not to mix drinks.