Raff argued that it was only polite to give him fair warning. I suspected he also wanted to give Tracy a chance to make a run for it, though a twenty-minute head start from werewolves who could track her scent wasn’t much. Then again, they didn’t seem to be able to follow the smell if she was in a vehicle, at least not with much accuracy.
But that was precisely why Rayna and Owen insisted that we couldn’t warn Rob. They wanted to catch Tracy by surprise.
They won. Owen insisted that calling Rob would be a violation of hospitality, and Raff let it drop. Rayna and Owen insisted on taking their own vehicle, a rented green SUV. I got into Raff’s sporty black sedan and buckled my seatbelt.
“What was that?” I asked Raff as he pulled the car away from the curb.
“A difference of opinion,” Raff said with a smirk that told me there was more to it than that.
“You were stalling,” I said, suddenly understanding. “You already warned Rob.”
Raff’s smirk widened. “What? I wouldn’t do that.” He sounded way too proud of himself. “But I did have to call my Alpha and let her know what was going on.”
I smiled. “And she’s probably going to warn Rob, so you’re giving him and Tracy time to figure out what to do.”
Raff shrugged as he flicked his turn signal, slowing to a stop at the corner. Owen and Rayna were following close behind, though they had the address in case we got separated.
“You realize that if she runs, they’re going to think we called them even though we agreed not to,” I said.
“I’ll explain that our Alpha misunderstood and warned him by mistake.” Raff winked at me. “Not our fault.”
I shook my head, but really, I was relieved. I didn’t really think we could protect Tracy from the her pack’s punishment forever, but I also hated to hand her over on a silver platter if she didn’t want to be found yet.
Rob lived in an apartment up in Lynnwood, slightly north of Seattle proper. The building was designed like an old motel, a U-shaped building with two stories that curved around the parking lot. Apartment doors opened onto covered walkways. Holiday lights surrounded windows and wreaths decorated some of the doors.
A few people had outdoor table sets or planters to mark their section of the outdoor space. Rob’s apartment was upstairs on a corner, and he had nothing more than a welcome mat from what I could see.
The complex was quiet. It was a little after nine in the morning, so most residents had probably gone off to work or school. After a quick argument about who got to go upstairs first, Raff and I led the way. There was one window in each apartment that overlooked the parking lot, but blinds were tightly closed over Rob’s window.
Raff knocked.
I held my breath and waited. Rayna and Owen crowded behind me, ready to rush in and grab Tracy as soon as the door opened.
Nothing happened. There were no sounds in the apartment. Raff raised his hand to knock again but stopped, sniffed the air, and glanced back at Rayna, who had straightened and was also inhaling through her nose like a bull.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Maybe you should wait in the car, Charlie,” Raff said.
Yeah, that wasn’t happening.
“Why?” I asked.
But then I caught of whiff of what they were smelling. Stale air and the slightly sweet smell of rot: the scent of death. My heart beat quickened, and my stomach sank.
Raff pulled out his lock picks, garnering no protest from Owen or Rayna, who looked ready to knock down the door if they had to. I glanced around, making sure none of Rob’s neighbors were watching. In minutes, the lock clicked, and Raff pushed the door open.
The smell of decay smacked me in the face with such force that I took a step backward and bumped into Rayna, who gave me an inscrutable look. There was something in her green eyes, hard and fierce but also a little bit sad, and I couldn’t begin to decode her thoughts.
Rob’s living room was neat and tidy. A blue leather sofa sat in the center of the living area in front of a big screen TV. There were multicolored Christmas lights strung around the room near the ceiling. It looked like a cozy place to come home to. Until you saw the bodies.
They were obscured slightly by the sofa until you got further inside. Both Rob and Tracy were in the small dining area next to the kitchen. Rob was slumped on the table, one cheek smashed against the wood. Tracy had fallen out of her chair and landed awkwardly on the floor, one leg tangled in the chair’s support rods. They’d been drinking something out of glass jars that now sat empty on the table.
Neither Rob nor Tracy looked peaceful. Sometimes you hear people describe bodies as if they look like they’re sleeping, but Rob’s eyes were wide open and bloodshot, his mouth twisted in a strange way that almost made it look like he was screaming. Tracy’s eyes were closed, but her body had tensed up, fingers curling in against her palms.
Rayna rushed to Tracy’s side. She didn’t bother to try to take a pulse, though. It was obvious that it was far, far too late for that.
Raff tried to push me back into the living room. “You don’t need to see this.”
“I already have,” I said and stood my ground.
It was a horrible scene, but at the same time, I felt like I needed to witness it. Like I had to see Holly’s body after she’d died. Like I’d demanded to see my sister Casey’s body after she’d passed. Seeing it made it real, and that made it manageable, somehow.
Still, it wasn’t easy to look at the bodies, still as statues where they’d dropped dead. I didn’t see any obvious wounds, like slashes or bullet holes, and couldn’t imagine what had killed them. I shivered and tried to look unaffected as the others poked and prodded at the scene, hoping to tease out clues.
Owen picked up one of the jars on the table and sniffed it. He wrinkled his nose.
“What is it?” Rayna asked.
She was going through Tracy’s pockets and finally produced her cellphone.
“Smells acerbic. Might have been liquor, but…” He took another deep sniff. “I think it was something worse.”
“Worse? Worse how?” I asked.
“Poison,” Owen said. “Something vile.”
I looked at Raff, who stiffened and then wrinkled his nose.
“You think they killed themselves?” His voice was strained.
“I don’t think anything yet.”
Owen set the jar down and repeated the sniff test with the second jar. Raff swallowed like he was trying not to throw up and turned slightly green.
“I’m going to check the bedroom,” he said and walked off.
I followed.
Rob’s bedroom was a nice size. His bed was a queen with a dark brown comforter and sheets. It smelled a little stale, like the sheets were overdue for a wash.
“You okay?” I asked.
Raff opened Rob’s dresser drawers and rifled through them without any real interest.
“Fine.”
He did not seem fine.
“This is pretty messed up,” I said.
It was stupid, but what else could I say? We were in a dead guy’s apartment. And Raff had known him.
Raff opened the closet. It was small and, from what I could see, a typical guy’s closet. Collared shirts hanging next to pairs of slacks folded over hangers. A pair of shoes on the floor with some random boxes of junk. Raff dug through them, apparently finding nothing of interest. He slammed the closet door. I flinched.
“Sorry. It’s just… I knew Rob wasn’t super excited about being werewolf, but I didn’t think he hated it enough to kill himself.”
Ice flooded my veins, and my hair stood on end.
“We don’t know that’s what happened,” I said, but suddenly, I was picturing Marianne, sister and daughter of the monster hunters and maybe a monster hunter herself.
She was a werewolf, too, and she’d almost starved herself to death in an attempt to kill her inner wolf. It didn’t work, of course. Now she was at Jean’s orchard, being cared for
by pack members who were trying to rehabilitate her, which meant trying to get her to accept that being a werewolf didn’t mean she deserved to die.
I, myself, had downright loathed being a werewolf at times. Sometimes, I still really hated it. But I couldn’t imagine hating it that much.
Raff was watching me like he was thinking the same thing: that I, too, resented my condition, and I was only a step away from drinking poison, myself.
“They didn’t have any other wounds,” he said. “And it doesn’t look like there was much of a struggle.”
I considered that for a moment. “It could have been a mistake. An accident.”
Raff leveled his gaze at me. Clearly, he didn’t buy that. He opened the night stand, rooted around, found nothing.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“Answers,” Raff said gruffly.
There weren’t any answers in the bedroom, of course, and eventually we had to go back out to the dining room and face the bodies once more.
Owen had found Rob’s computer in the living room and was sitting on the sofa going through it while Rayna dug through the trash. Gross.
“Okay, what can you possibly expect to find in there?” I asked her.
Rayna smirked as she dug around and finally extracted something of value, holding it up for me to see. “This.”
It was a silver lid that belonged to one of the jars on the table.
After she examined it, she passed it to Raff, who took it and then showed me the top. It was dated December in Sharpie along the letters WB written above it.
“Werewolf booze?” I guessed.
“Doubt it. What they drank was stronger than booze,” Owen said.
He closed the laptop, pulled out a thumb drive, and stood, setting the computer down on the sofa.
“Found emails between Tracy and Rob. They wanted to get together but no mention of a suicide pact. Not even hinted at, as far as I could tell.” He shoved the thumb drive into his pocket. “Doesn’t mean that wasn’t the plan, but they didn’t write emails about it.”
Rayna took the lid back from Raff and shoved it into a plastic baggie. “You should get your guy’s phone. We need to check their text messages.”
Raff had been avoiding looking at the bodies, but now he nodded and turned toward them. Rob’s cheek was still flat against the table. I swallowed back bile as I tried to picture his last moments. Had either of them known what was coming, what they were drinking? And was it better or worse if they did?
I forced myself to turn away. I wanted to go outside for fresh air, but I didn’t want to look weak, and anyhow, I didn’t want to draw any more attention to Rob’s place than necessary. A worried-looking stranger standing on his balcony would do just that.
“Got it,” Raff said, holding up the phone. “Anything else? If not, I should go report this to my Alpha.”
“We should report it, as well. Meet back at your place?”
It was a question, but Rayna said it more like a statement.
“Sure,” Raff agreed.
He nodded at me as he headed out the door, and I followed. Outside, it had started raining and the cold, wet air was a welcome relief. I breathed it in gratefully.
In Raff’s car, rain splattered against the windshield and beat on the roof. Raff started the engine and then sat in the parking lot, as if unsure where to go next.
“That’s not at all what I expected to find,” Raff finally said.
“Me neither,” I said.
Here we’d thought we were giving Tracy a chance to run, and really, she’d been dead the whole time.
He tapped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. “Being a werewolf isn’t that bad, is it?”
“No,” I said without hesitation. Raff met my eyes, still uncertain. “It can really suck sometimes. I know it doesn’t for you, that you dig it or whatever, but it can be really hard. Still…” Images of Tracy’s corpse and Rob’s twisted face bubbled up in my mind, and I tried to push them down. “It’s not that bad.”
Raff nodded. Reassured that I wasn’t about to drink a jar of poison, he put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking spot.
Chapter 6
Two hours later, Sasha, our Alpha, arrived at our house. She wanted to be briefed in person about what we’d found before taking fellow pack members to collect the bodies and examine the scene herself. Rayna and Owen greeted her with bows and treated her with the same reverence one might treat a queen. It was a little odd, but Sasha took it in stride.
And honestly, Sasha did have a regal quality about her. She wore a cream colored blouse and light blue jacket that set off her dark skin. Her hair was short, newly cut into a bob with sharp angles. She was gorgeous and exuded strength.
Raff and I relayed what happened as Rayna and Owen sat in quiet reverence on the floor, despite Sasha pulling dining chairs over for them herself.
Sasha told us that Kai, the pack’s doctor, had been sent with a small team to retrieve the bodies. She would do an autopsy on Rob and try to work out exactly what kind of poison the pair had drunk. She’d do the same on Tracy, if the Portland Pack agreed, though at the moment that was a bone of contention.
Sasha stood to leave, and Rayna and Owen flew out of their seats. I stood more slowly. Sasha nodded at us.
“Thank you for handling this difficult situation,” she said to Raff, but also nodded at the Portland wolves and me. “I’m sure your Alpha will appreciate your attending to this matter on his behalf, as well.”
Rayna remained silent, but her jaw tensed.
Owen said, “We’re doing our jobs.”
There was something curt about it, as if he resented the acknowledgment.
“You’re doing them well,” Sasha said.
Raff hurried to open the front door for her and thanked her for coming on short notice.
As soon as her back was turned, I caught Rayna and Owen rolling their eyes and shaking their heads. I cleared my throat, and they straightened, faces returning to neutral expressions. For all their reverence, they clearly didn’t respect Sasha.
After she left, several local werewolves stopped by to express disbelief, and a few even brought casseroles and cakes, as if we’d lost a dear family member. It reminded me of when my sister had died and people had crowded into our apartment with casserole dishes and plates of cookies, as if food would fill the gaping hole she left behind.
I got the impression that no one in the pack had known Rob all that well, but he was well-liked and people were mostly shocked by his sudden death, especially at the thought that he’d taken his own life.
Once the house cleared out, Rayna and Owen shut themselves in Raff’s office to conference call their Alpha and make decisions regarding Tracy’s remains.
With nothing else to do, I collapsed onto the couch, ready to watch some mindless reality competition cooking show and try to forget the scene at the apartment. My attempt to block things out with ridiculous reality shows about cake didn’t last long. Raff appeared and handed me Rob’s phone.
“Go through his texts. I’m going to go for a run.”
Raff loved weight lifting and going to the gym, but he hadn’t gone on any runs since I’d moved in. Then again, it was winter.
Though it had gotten dark, the rain had stopped, making it decent running conditions, I guessed, if you were into that sort of thing. Raff was dressed in gym pants and a long sleeve athletic shirt that looked warm and had reflective pads on the shoulders.
I took the phone, relieved he wasn’t trying to drag me along. I was willing to work out and tone up, but I was never going to be runner. Especially not outside. Well, maybe in wolf form, but I was a long way from that.
I read through Rob’s last text messages to a couple of non-werewolf friends. The conversations were banal, mostly plans to meet-up. “I’m here @ back of bar,” read one. Another said “See you at 4.” There were no goodbyes, no final messages of love or despair. In one, he was making plans for next week
, which sort of suggested he’d planned to be alive.
I got a cola from the fridge, settled on the sofa, and took a deep breath. Then I opened his message log with Tracy. In his contacts, Rob had called Tracy “Tracy- PtownW.” Didn’t take a genius to figure out he meant Portland Werewolf. However they’d met, he’d wanted to remember who she was when he entered her contact info into his phone.
I scrolled back a few weeks. Most of the texts were a back and forth about her coming to visit. She wanted to but had to work. Finally, a week before her visit, she decided to come for the full moon. She had requested it off work from her job at the grocery store, because obviously a wolf couldn’t check groceries, and decided to use the time off to visit. Rob sounded ecstatic.
Then, two days later, Rob texted her again:
Rob: I have a surprise. :)
Tracy: ??
Rob: Call me.
I groaned. Thanks for that, I thought. Since I wasn’t privy to the conversation, I didn’t know what the surprise was. The next text from Tracy came in the following night.
Tracy: So excited for the full moon. First time I’ve been excited since bitten.
Rob: I know, right?
I frowned. Surely these weren’t the words of people planning joint suicide. But then, how could I know? Short little phrases were only a tiny window into their mindset. It wasn’t enough.
The day before she left, Tracy texted that her pack wouldn’t let her come and she’d have to sneak away. Rob told her it was worth it. She agreed. And then her next text stopped my heart:
Anything is worth it if I don’t have to shift again.
I gripped the phone so hard my hand hurt. I read the text three times, thinking about how I could have written it myself.
Rob’s response was an emoji grin. The rest of their texts were just logistics: what train she was on, when he could pick her up. And that was it.
I showed the text to Rayna, who had come out of Raff’s office, their call complete. Her frown deepened as she read it and then passed the phone to Owen. He handed it back to me and we all stood there awkwardly. My stomach churned like a cement mixer. I felt nauseated. I could only hope now Tracy and Rob were at peace.
Wicked Moon (The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles Book 2) Page 4