by Jeff Strand
"I liked it better when we didn't care if he was a werewolf or not."
Truth be told, so did George. He usually didn't want to know the details. He'd committed plenty of immoral acts without understanding the true motive behind them.
But this was different. A lot different. This wasn't about stolen cash or sleeping with the wrong person's wife or making a poor business decision that needed to be rectified with knives. This was an unexplained phenomenon. Or, if it had been explained, then Ivan really was a werewolf, which was completely absurd but a matter that needed to be further investigated.
Sure, George had absolutely no intention of doing anything to put the job or his personal safety at risk, but Ivan didn't need to know that.
"Are you having trouble adjusting to your new view of the world?" Ivan asked. "It's always a little devastating when decades of preconceived notions about the way things really work are shattered all at once. But just wait until you meet the aliens."
"Let me explain something to you," said George. "Do you understand the concept of 'everybody fucks up once in a while'?"
"Yeah, I think I do."
"Good. This is how it relates to current events. When Lou and I do a job, we're expected to complete it successfully. That's what we get paid for. But no matter how good you are--and we're good, believe me--there's going to be the occasional job that goes bad. Somebody's not where they're supposed to be, somebody who's not supposed to be there shows up, your car breaks down...there are lots of reasons why a job might not work out properly. The people in charge understand this."
"Yeah, right. If you don't deliver me to Tampa, you'll be at the bottom of a lake by midnight."
"Oh, we're going to deliver you, don't get me wrong. But if we deliver you with your arms and legs broken, we'll get yelled at, and possibly forfeit our fee, but nobody's going to kill us. Now, I don't want to get yelled at, and I certainly want to get paid for all the crap I've gone through today, but I've reached a level of frustration where busting you up might be worth it."
"Cool. I'm glad I could bring you to that level."
"George, are you sure you wanna do this?" Lou asked. There was a knowing look in his eyes. He was playing along.
George nodded. "Oh yeah."
"All right. Promise me you won't do any permanent damage."
"Do you see what they're doing?" Ivan asked Michele. "They're going to break my legs. I wonder how they're going to do it? Tire iron to the kneecaps, I guess. That's what I would do if I were them, to make sure it hurts enough."
"You don't really believe that he's a werewolf, do you?" Michele asked George.
"I might."
"But that's crazy."
George pointed to her shoulder. "How do you explain that?"
"A pack of feral dogs. A chemical in the air. A ridiculously elaborate assassination attempt on you. There's a huge number of things I'd need to cross off my list before I got to 'werewolf.'"
"Well, hopefully he'll help us cross them off."
"You know, George," said Lou, "we really should get rid of the girl. The longer we keep her around, the more she's gonna see, and the worse things are gonna get."
"So you think we should just drop her off somewhere?"
"Maybe."
"What if she talks?"
"What's driving around with her gonna do to change that? Are we so charming that an hour in the van with us is gonna keep her from going to the cops?"
George sighed. "I don't know."
"I don't want you to let me go," said Michele.
"What?"
"I'm staying with you. I want in."
"What?"
"I want ten percent of what you're getting."
"You don't even know what we're getting," said George.
"Did you see the shitty car I was driving? I'll be happy with ten percent of anything. Look, I already know what's going on with you guys, so you might as well keep me around and pay me off."
George and Lou exchanged a look of disbelief. "And why wouldn't we just kill you?" George asked.
"If you wanted me dead, you could've just left me back at the gas station. Instead, you brought me with you, knowing full well that we were leaving behind my car, which has my purse in it, which means that people will know that I'm missing, which means that they'll look for other clues, which means that they'll find some blood on the pavement, which means that they've got DNA evidence on you. It'll take a while, because there's so much blood to sort through, but why would a couple of smart men like you want to link yourselves to a murder when you could just keep a cooperative girl around for a tiny payoff?"
George grimaced. He tried to think of a bigger blunder they'd ever made in their careers in crime than letting Michele into the van. None immediately came to mind. Still, bad guys or not, they couldn't have just watched her get ripped apart by dogs while she was trying to save the attendant from getting ripped apart by dogs. Obviously, they should've expelled her from the vehicle as soon as they'd driven away from the gas station, but Ivan had opened his big mouth right away, and George wasn't thinking straight, and he had a hot chick on his lap, so how could he be expected to make an intelligent decision?
That said, they were supposed to be professionals. He gave Lou a sheepish look. "When did we become such retards?"
"Don't say retards. That's offensive to developmentally disabled people. We're just the regular kind of stupid."
"Fair enough. What do you think?"
Lou shrugged. "Better than disposing of a body."
"All right," George told Michele. "You've got yourself a deal. Ten percent."
"Ten percent of your combined take, not just ten percent of what one of you is getting."
"Of course."
Michele extended her hand. George shook it. He had to admit, he now liked her on a much deeper level than just her physical attractiveness.
"You guys are going for that?" Ivan asked. "Seriously? Well, shit, if I knew it was that easy to negotiate, we could've saved ourselves a couple of hours. Let me go and I'll make it worth your while. How much do you want?"
"One hundred bazillion dollars," said Lou.
Ivan sneered. "How about twenty bucks and a gently used porno mag, you fuckin' Neanderthal?"
"Watch the potty mouth," said George. "My partner doesn't appreciate foul language around women."
"Yeah, well, your partner can go fuck a duck-fucked pony from Fucksville."
"I don't even know what that means, but I'm going to quote it every chance I get."
"Fuck you."
"What's the matter, werewolf? You don't sound quite as arrogant as you were before."
"Well, I'm either terrified, or I'm faking it because I have some sinister plan ready to go into effect. You'd better hope it's the first one, because I'm really in the mood to exsanguinate a couple of minor-league thugs and their new hooker."
"Is that another word that I'm not supposed to know what it means?"
"What word? Hooker? Surely you know that one."
"Hey, George, I think you're getting a bit worked up," said Lou. "Just ignore him."
"Oh, no, he's not getting ignored. Not at all. There's our exit."
Lou gave him the I knew that look that George had seen a hundred times. George cracked his knuckles. He encountered a lot of scumbags in his line of work, but there was something about Ivan that he truly disliked. He wasn't going to hurt him, or even touch him, but the werewolf was going to lose the attitude, no question about it.
This town seemed quite a bit larger than the last one, although there still wasn't much there. Every other establishment on Main Street seemed to be an antique shop. George hated antique shops.
"Find us someplace isolated," George said. Lou gave him another I knew that look.
It took about a mile and a couple of turns to find a dirt road with a misspelled sign in green spray paint that said "No Tresspassing." Lou turned onto the road, and after rounding a corner there was more than enough tree cover to keep
any witnesses from seeing what they were doing from the paved road.
Lou parked and shut off the engine.
"You ready to talk?" George asked.
Ivan smiled and gave him a thumbs-up sign, though now his smile seemed kind of forced.
"Please don't cause us any trouble," George told Michele.
"Please don't damage our investment," she said.
George grinned and got out of the van.
* * *
Michele's day had started with a pregnancy scare. She'd thought it would improve from there.
The stick had not turned blue, thank God. The non-father, Aaron, was the only guy to whom she'd ever provided pity sex. He'd been so distressed when his girlfriend broke up with him, and his prospects of landing another girl in a timely manner were bleak, and Michele wasn't exactly getting it on a regular basis, so she'd slept with him.
The "during" part had been pretty good, despite the fact that he kept singing during sex, but when she woke up in the morning Michele really wished she'd gone with the original plan of spending her evening with some microwave popcorn and a DVD. She'd carefully extricated herself from their spooning and hid in the bathroom for an hour, trying to will herself not to take the cowardly way out and sneak out of the apartment before Aaron woke up.
When he did wake up, beaming, she'd sat on the edge of his bed and explained that it had been a one-time "friends with benefits" thing. He'd cried. For ten minutes he'd sobbed into his pillow about how his heart had been broken a second time in twenty-four hours, and finally Michele decided that her best plan of action was to go away.
He kept calling and sending her text messages and e-mails. He changed his Facebook relationship status to "It's complicated." She kept trying to explain that she'd lost herself in the moment and wasn't looking for a boyfriend. Finally, a week after their night together, she'd gotten completely fed up with the situation and used the term "pity fuck." He quit calling, texting, and e-mailing. He changed his Facebook relationship status to "Single."
Michele felt terrible. She hated losing a friend.
This morning, after a mildly restless sleep that came from being nervous about the fact that her period hadn't started quite yet, she'd awakened feeling sick to her stomach, rushed into the bathroom, and vomited.
She couldn't be pregnant. They'd used protection and she was on the pill. One-night-stand pregnancy came from drunken flings, not pity sex.
She'd prayed to God that it was just food poisoning. She'd thawed the chicken out on the counter. You weren't supposed to do that. She knew that, and now she was suffering for her careless meal preparation.
She'd driven forty-five minutes away to ensure that she didn't run into anybody she knew while buying the pregnancy test. Then, with the bag and receipt in her hand, she'd suddenly decided that she had to know now, and so she found herself in a Walgreens restroom, peeing on a stick.
When the test showed that she wasn't pregnant, she'd cried with relief.
Then she'd cried with disappointment.
She certainly didn't want to have Aaron's kid, and the test being negative was a one-hundred-percent good thing. She was emotionally wrecked from all of the stress and that's why she was crying like this. That's all it was. She'd had a rough day.
On the way out of the store, she'd bought some flowers to make herself feel better. Carnations. Even if buying herself flowers was mildly pathetic, it did cheer her up.
And then, while fueling up, a bunch of dogs went berserk and she got stuck in a van with a couple of mobsters.
If she believed in karma, she would've thought that she was being punished for breaking Aaron's heart with their ill-advised intercourse. Or that her habit of pulling on the family dog Tin-Tin's tail when she was three had finally come back to haunt her. But she didn't believe in that stuff, so it was just bad luck. Wrong place at the wrong time.
She felt like she should be siding with the guy in the cage, but he just seemed...well, evil. Instantly unlikable. If Ivan approached her at a bar, she'd be creeped out and refuse to touch any drinks he bought her. Though he obviously wasn't a werewolf, he probably deserved to be locked up in there--she could imagine him wandering the streets, offering lollipops to little girls if they promised not to tell.
Of course, George and Lou were clearly not kind-hearted, caring people, and she genuinely believed that they might kill her if they felt backed into a corner. She could definitely see them walking her out into the woods, apologizing softly, then putting a bullet in the back of her head. They'd feel awful about it, but they'd do what needed to be done.
Swearing not to tell anybody wasn't going to work. Of course she'd tell. There was no possible way she wouldn't run to the police and describe the two thugs in their black van, and they knew it. They weren't going to simply let her go.
But if they thought that she thought they had a deal, there'd be no reason to come to their senses and kill her. They could stop constantly worrying about her. And then she could find an opportunity to escape. Now that they'd stopped the van, maybe an opportunity was approaching.
And--she couldn't deny it--this was all kind of exciting. A werewolf? Where was this going to lead?
George shut the passenger-side door of the van and walked around to the back. She could jump out right now and make a break for it.
No, too risky. She didn't want to get shot.
But with George distracted by whatever he was planning to do with Ivan, she'd definitely keep her eye on Lou.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Don't Mess With Wolves In Cages
George opened the rear doors of the van. Ivan seemed to be trying very, very hard to look amused by the whole situation.
"You know, you have to actually open up the cage if you want to beat me with a tire iron," Ivan said. "Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of you making a fatal mistake, but that seems pretty extreme."
"I'm not opening the cage," said George. He waited for a few moments, letting the tension build, then took his pistol out of the holster.
"So you're going to shoot the cargo?"
"Question for you. How long do you think it takes to bleed to death from a kneecap that was shattered by a bullet?"
"No idea."
"More than three hours. So you'll still be alive when we deliver you."
"Okay."
"How long do you think it takes to bleed to death from two kneecaps that were shattered by bullets?"
"More than three hours?"
"Exactly. And where do you think is one of the most painful places to get shot?"
"We both know that you're not going to shoot me."
"Oh, trust me, I know no such thing. I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I'll take my scolding like a man. If there was ever a time in your life when you should be cooperative, it's now."
"Do you really think that threatening me with a gun is going to get you accurate information?"
George nodded. "I'm a good judge of when somebody is telling me the truth."
"I saw how you flinched when I said I had a bomb strapped to my leg."
George chose to ignore that. "When somebody is scared, it's easy to tell if they're lying. And I don't care how cocky you are, having a gun pointed at you is a scary thing."
"And what are you going to say when they ask why you shot me?"
"I'll say that you told me you had a bomb strapped to your leg, and that you wouldn't show me, and that I felt I had no other way to keep their precious werewolf from blowing himself up."
Ivan's smile vanished.
George pointed the gun at him and gave Ivan his coldest stare. "What do you know about those dogs?"
"I didn't do anything to them."
"That's not what I asked."
"Point the gun someplace else and I'll tell you."
"Do I need to start counting?"
"Okay, fine. Fine." Ivan looked a bit flustered, though he was clearly struggling to maintain a calm demeanor. "When I get stressed out, it has a weir
d effect on dogs. I don't know why. It's been like that since I was a teenager."
"This bad?"
"No, never this bad, but I've never been this stressed before! I don't know what it is; maybe I've got some..." He trailed off. "I don't even know. That's how this whole werewolf thing started, but I swear there's nothing to it beyond that."
"That doesn't seem like enough to create a werewolf theory."
"I told people that I was a werewolf, all right? I used it to impress some chicks in a club. You know, those ones who are all wet over Team Jacob. You tell them you're a werewolf, you watch a dog flip out, and you're in their panties. I don't think any of them really believed it, it was all just role-playing, but word got back to Bateman and he sure as hell believed it."
"So you're officially saying that you're not a werewolf?"
"Why do I even need to officially deny something like that? How am I supposed to prove it? What should I do, not transform into a wolf? The full moon is two weeks away; I couldn't change if I wanted to. You've got me in a no-win situation here, George."
"If you've got dog blood in you or something, how could that work from so far away, inside a van?"
"I don't know! If I understood it, I'd be doing a lot more with the power than just trying to get laid. It's just some weird effect I have on dogs that I can't control. Nothing more."
"You're stressed now. Why aren't any dogs coming after us?"
"How the hell should I know? Maybe the residents of this town are cat people! I'm not a werewolf, for Christ's sake!" He scooted over to the end of the cage and held up his palm. "Like your partner said, no pentagram. If I was a werewolf, I wouldn't care that you've got a gun on me, because I'm sure you don't have silver bullets in there. What are the other signs?"
"I'm not sure," George admitted.
Ivan extended his arm all the way out of the cage. The barrel of George's pistol was still a couple of feet out of his grasp. "I don't have hairy palms. I don't have an unusually long middle finger. It's all a huge misunderstanding."
"Put your arm back in the cage," said George.
"I don't know what you want from me! Do you need me to break my arm to show that there aren't werewolf bones underneath? Is that what I need to do?" Ivan bashed his arm against the cage, hard enough to make George wince.