I bit my lip.
“This can work, Piper,” said Kale. “You’re not giving it a chance.”
“You want to have children,” I said, looking at Kale.
He looked away. “You really don’t want to at all?”
I thought about Calla, desperate for a child. I thought about my own mother, who’d loved me so much. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have a child someday, it was only… “Well, even if I do want kids, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” Kale turned back to me, hope in his eyes.
“Because what if there was confusion about who was the father of the baby?”
“Well, there would be,” said Hudson. “That would probably be unavoidable. But I don’t know… I mean, would that really mean that the baby was any less ours? Couldn’t it still belong to all three of us?”
“No,” I said. “You can’t do that. You guys are going to want to figure out for sure whether or not the baby has your genes, and whoever isn’t the real dad isn’t going to be connected.”
“Piper,” said Kale, “you were adopted. Did your father still love you?”
I rolled my eyes.
“That’s a good point,” Hudson chimed in. “You don’t need to be biologically related to a child to love him.”
“Besides, if either Hudson or I had children independently, I’d love the shit out of his kids.”
“Definitely.”
I shook my head at them. “You guys are living in a dream world.”
“Maybe you’re just afraid,” said Kale. “Maybe you’re looking for reasons that it won’t work because of that.”
I took a deep breath, summoning my response.
And my phone rang.
Who could be calling me? Was it Sal again?
But when I got over to my phone, I saw that the number belonged to the Belmann Museum. Man, I hadn’t even thought about calling them. I answered right away.
“Hope I’m not intruding,” said the voice of Madeleine Parker. “I do want to give you all the time you need. I just wanted to check in with you and make sure the necklace was still available.”
“Still available,” I said. “And I think we’re ready to set up a date and time for the transaction.”
“Excellent.” She was smiling. I could hear it in her voice.
* * *
With details in place with the museum, we didn’t return to our conversation from before. I was still convinced that the issues that existed would make it too tough for us to be in a relationship, but I didn’t particularly want to argue with them about it. Besides, it was time to sell this necklace and get our money. That way, this nightmare would be over. I didn’t know what would become of the three of us afterward, but I’d be glad not to be putting the two of them in danger anymore.
We were leaving just in time, because the carnival was tearing down and getting ready to head off to the next city.
As we pulled away, I looked through the back window and watched pieces of the Tilt-A-Whirl be loaded onto a truck. The people in the carnival lived a transitory life, building things up only to tear them down again right away. I knew what that was like, because being a thief meant that I moved from one thing to another, always on the move. But the difference was that the people at the carnival took their family with them everywhere, and I was always alone.
I turned back around in my seat, gazing first at Hudson and then at Kale. I had never felt as strong of a bond to two people before—not even my parents. Some deep animal part of me understood that we all belonged together. But… well, that was crazy. There was no point in even considering it.
We drove straight through to the Belmann Museum, where we’d be meeting with Madeleine to do our final negotiations. They’d also want to examine the necklace to make sure that it was genuine. If everything went okay, we’d all leave there significantly richer.
The museum was a sleek, modern building. It consisted of several rings of cylinders, all rising four or five stories into the air. The effect was something like a group of interlocking towers from the future. Leading up to the door, it was beautifully landscaped. There were several square lakes, all flanked by shrubs and benches.
But Madeleine had instructed us to use the back entrance, where the employees came in. It was only accessible through the parking garage. We were to park and then call her. She’d come and meet us at the employee elevator.
We pulled in to the garage, stopping to take a ticket like we were patrons of the museum. The garage tunneled under the ground three layers deep. We had to go down almost that far to find a parking space. But we managed to find someplace to park. We all got out of the truck. The air smelled musty, like it does in a cellar.
I stretched, reaching for my phone to call Madeleine.
But I never made it.
They came from the shadows, as if they’d been waiting for us. Swarms of men came out, brandishing tasers and guns. They were too quick for us to react in any way.
They jumped on us, shocking us, sending painful jolts through each of our bodies. And while we writhed and grimaced, they knocked us out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When we woke up, we were in a small, dark room somewhere. The air still smelled musty, so it seemed like we might still be underground, but the smell was different. It didn’t seem as if we were still close to the museum.
After a bit of frantic searching, we discovered that the necklace was gone. They’d searched us and taken it away while we were knocked out.
“Sal’s people,” I said. “Had to be. But how did they find us?”
Hudson groaned from the other side of the room. “That might be my fault. I think I might have told them we were going to sell it to the Belmann Museum.”
“So, they’ve been staking this place out, waiting for us,” said Kale.
We explored our surroundings, not that there was much to see. The room was made of concrete and there was only one tiny, wavering light in the ceiling. There was a drain in the middle of the floor—nothing on the walls, not even paint. We tried the door. It was heavy and metal. And locked. From the way it felt, padlocked from the outside.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would they want to keep us now? They’ve got the necklace. That’s what they wanted. Why take us prisoner?”
The answer to that question became clear after a few hours of waiting.
At that point, someone began sliding pictures underneath the door of our cell. (It was practically a cell, after all.) I went to pick them up and saw that they were all pictures of the same man. He looked young and attractive, but I’d never seen him before.
“Recognize him?” came a voice from outside.
I didn’t say anything, and I shook my head at the guys. I didn’t think it was wise to engage with this person, whoever he might be.
“You should,” said the voice. “You killed him.”
What?
The guys both gave me confused looks.
I just shrugged.
“A few days ago, at the warehouse. You ripped him to shreds.”
Oh. Well, I had killed people there. But I supposed it was a blessing that I didn’t remember their faces. Honestly, I didn’t want to start now. I turned all the pictures face down on the floor in a stack. I wasn’t going to look at them again.
“I don’t usually get involved in Sal’s little side projects,” continued the voice. “I have too much to handle already. But I do like to keep an eye on Sal, since he works for me. Hell, they all work for me. I’m the boss of this operation. Something like this, well, I usually wouldn’t get involved. So I had my son keeping an eye on things for me. My son.”
I flinched.
“You killed him,” continued the voice. “You treated him like meat. So, you can starve to death down here for all I care. I hope you suffer.”
* * *
Even after he left, I couldn’t stop shaking. It was like everything that I’d ever done was converging on me, leaving me confused and frigh
tened. Now, my actions had caught up with me, and I was going to pay for the people I’d killed. Finally, I was going to pay. I deserved it.
But when it came down to it, it wasn’t the men in that warehouse that I felt guilty about. No, it was my friends in college, those innocent kids all trapped in a dorm room with no way out. They hadn’t deserved what happened to them.
And while I might deserve to pay for killing them, Hudson and Kale didn’t deserve it. I never wanted either of them to be hurt.
They were so good to me, too. When they saw how upset I was, they both curled around me, one on either side, their strength and warmth pouring into me.
They made soothing noises, stroking my hair and kissing the top of my head.
“This is my fault,” I said in a tiny voice.
“No, Piper,” said Kale. “I would have killed those bastards too. I was only holding back because I thought it would bother you.”
“It should have bothered me,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
“You freed me, Piper,” said Hudson. “I can’t have you regretting that.”
“Did you know that Calla told me about my biological father?” I said.
“How did Calla know?” said Kale.
“She knew about the displaced wolf children from the SF after the attacks on their headquarters twenty-six years ago.”
“You’re one of those babies?” said Hudson. “I heard that a lot of wolf kids got adopted after that.”
“Yeah, Gail was one of those babies. Calla’s daughter,” said Kale. “I knew her when I worked at the carnival.
“Well, anyway, there was a Piper my age,” I said. “And my biological parents weren’t dead. They were looking for me. But my father was…” I took a deep breath. “Cole Randall.”
“Who’s that?” said Hudson.
“Wait, I know that name,” said Kale. “Wasn’t he that wolf serial killer?”
“Yes,” I said. “So now I know why I’m so ruthless. It’s in my blood.”
“No way, Piper,” said Kale. “That’s not how it works.”
“You’re not ruthless, you’re tough,” said Hudson. “You do what it takes, and that’s not always easy, but you’re a good person.”
“You guys didn’t think so, not when you found out that I was trying to steal from you when I met you.”
“You’ve made up for that,” said Hudson. “You saved both of us.”
“And after what the conclave put you through, I guess we’re kind of even,” said Kale.
I’d had that thought before, but I was frightened. “You really don’t think I’m horrible?”
“Would we be close to you like this if we thought that?” Hudson kissed my temple. “I love you, Piper. I love you both.”
“Yeah,” said Kale quietly. “I love you both, too.”
“Well, we’re all going to die here, so what does it matter?” I squeezed my eyes shut tightly. When my voice came out again, it was unsteady. “Of course I love both of you. I think I have from the very moment that I saw each of you. I just never thought I’d be able to have you both.”
“You have us,” said Hudson.
“But it doesn’t matter,” I said. “Not if this is the end.”
“We’ll figure out a way out of this,” said Kale. “This won’t be the end.”
I didn’t know if he was right, but I clung to both of them, wanting to believe it with every fiber in my being. Suddenly, it was dawning on me exactly what I’d be losing if I died. If it had only been my old life of stealing, living from job to job—weekends with different, anonymous men in my bed—well, then, maybe I wouldn’t have so much cared. Maybe I would have just taken my punishment.
But I realized that I really had a chance with Kale and Hudson. A chance for love and togetherness, and—suddenly—I didn’t want to give that up. I didn’t want to lose them.
It had taken the knowledge that I could lose it all for me to understand. What I had was special. It wasn’t something that happened every day, and that made it powerful. I wanted to protect it. I wanted to protect both of them. And I never wanted to lose them.
* * *
“Boss won’t care,” a voice was saying.
I awoke with a start, sitting up straight and extricating myself from Hudson and Kale.
“He hates them. If we spend a little time messing around with them, roughing ‘em up a bit, he’ll probably congratulate us,” the voice said.
“I don’t know,” said another voice. They were coming from outside the door. “He said not to disturb them. Something about starving to death or something.”
“I’m just going to have a bit of fun.” I heard the latches on the door come undone. The door started to open.
I didn’t hesitate. I yanked my shirt over my head, shimmied out of my pants, and shifted.
By the time the door was completely open, I was a wolf.
I sprang forward, knocking the man who entered on his back. I snarled, smelling his fear and relishing it.
Then I tore his throat out with my teeth.
Outside the cell, I heard screams. I went after those screams, went after the scent of the fear.
There were two more. They were dead in minutes.
I left their bodies and went back inside the cell, where Hudson and Kale were both on their feet, surveying the dead body.
I shifted back to human form, tugging on my clothes. “Get their guns,” I said to the guys. “We might need them.”
Kale started to obey right away, but Hudson narrowed his eyes at me.
“Piper?” said Hudson. “You okay?”
I nodded, buttoning my jeans. “Sometimes, you have to do things you don’t like doing to protect your family.”
He looked from the corpse to me and back again.
“You guys are my family,” I said. And then I reached down and got the guy’s gun.
* * *
Outside our cell, we emerged into a narrow, concrete hallway. There were tiny lights in the ceiling like the one that had been in our small room, and they cast a ghastly pall over everything. The smell of the blood of the dead men was still bright and tangy and distracting. I forced the wolf to focus. We weren’t going to eat right now, we were going to escape.
“We need to find the necklace,” I said.
“How are we going to do that?” Kale was fumbling around with the gun he’d taken from one of the dead men.
I grabbed the barrel and pushed it down. “Don’t point that at yourself.”
Hudson laughed. “Dude, you’re so fucking clueless.”
“Shut up,” said Kale. “Like you know what to do with a gun.”
When it came down to it, I wasn’t exactly great with guns either. I didn’t know anything about the ones we’d picked up—not what kind they were, not how to load them, nothing. But I could see where the trigger was. And I was good at bluffing. If it came down to it, I’d shift. Nothing was going to stop us.
“Come on,” I said to the guys, and we trooped through the hallway until we got to the end.
There was a door there, very similar to the one that had been on our cell.
But this one was unlocked. When I pushed on it, it creaked open.
Carefully, slowly, I pushed the door open and peered around at the other side.
“Where have you been?” said a voice. There was another guy, but he wasn’t looking at the door. He was standing at the bottom of a stairwell.
Alarm jumped into my throat.
And then it was replaced with determination. I was Piper Wainwright, and I wasn’t about to give up this easily. These people had stolen from us, and I wasn’t going to let that stand.
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Guns up,” I told the guys.
And then I pushed through the door, advancing on the man in the stairwell. I approached him, jamming the gun into the back of his neck. “Don’t move.”
The man stiffened.
“Where’s our necklace?” I said.
“Hey, look, I don’t have anything to do with this,” said the man. “Don’t shoot me, okay?”
“Where’s the necklace?” I repeated.
“I don’t know.” The man sounded panicked.
I cocked the gun. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. Sal took it.”
“And where’s Sal?”
“In his office upstairs maybe? Maybe at home.”
“Where’s his office?” I said.
“It’s on the second floor. It’s…”
“Think, come on.”
“First door on the right! First door on the right!”
“Good,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t shoot me,” he said. “Don’t shoot me, please.”
“How many other men between here and there?” I said. “Anyone else on the stairwell?”
“No one on the stairs,” he said. “Just a guard at the door to each floor.”
“Thanks again.”
“Oh, man, are you gonna shoot me?”
Um… I turned around and looked at Kale and Hudson, miming hitting the man over the head.
Hudson stepped forward, brought the butt of his gun up, and slammed it into the man’s head.
The man slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Thanks,” I said.
Hudson just grinned. “Anytime.” He moved closer to me. “You’re such a badass. It’s really sexy.”
I shoved him. “Not now.”
But Kale was smiling too.
I rolled my eyes and started up the steps. “Come on.”
The guys followed me. We went up the steps to the second level, just like the man had told us. At the door, we paused.
“There’s a guy on the door,” I whispered. “What should we do?”
“I think we mob him,” said Hudson. “Come up from behind and knock him out like the other guy.”
“Okay,” I said.
Hudson raised his eyebrows. “Ready?”
We burst out of the door.
But the man there was facing the door, and the minute we came through, he raised his gun at us.
We all had our guns trained on him.
All of us froze, just taking each other in.
Now what? This was a draw. His gun against ours. What should we do? I didn’t want to chance any sudden movements. If he shot either Hudson or Kale, I would never forgive myself. But we couldn’t lay down our weapons either. They were our only advantage.
Under a Raging Moon: Part Three Page 11