Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  “One day, we’ll get assigned a nice, sunny beach murder,” Cooper said. “And it will be wonderful.”

  “What nice, normal goals you have,” Park murmured, slowing as they approached a subtle wooden sign to the side that simply read Maudit Falls. “Is this it?”

  “Um...” The deeper into the mountains they’d gotten, the more inconsistent the phone service had become. For the last fifteen minutes or so Cooper had been navigating them based on a printed-out sheet of instructions the retreat had provided online. He held up the rudimentary map so Park could see the primitive black lines with a couple of triangles drawn in the upper right corner he imagined must be mountains. It looked more like something a child had scrawled in the sand with their toe than a guide. Unhelpfully, the words Mill, Lodge, Falls and A New Beginning were handwritten in various places but didn’t seem attached to any roads or structures.

  “Let’s see, triangles in the distance? Check. Coffee stain on the left... Yeah, this is definitely it,” he said.

  Park shot Cooper a look but took the turn anyway. Immediately the road turned to dirt and the atmosphere got even darker. According to the car clock, it was just after one, though from deep within the shadows of forest it could have been dawn, dusk or a particularly eerie midnight under a full harvest moon. The ambiguity of the light only heightened the sense that they had been en route forever, trapped in some never-ending time loop that Cooper always felt when travelling.

  Their flight had been painfully early though short, and Cooper and Park had spent most of it reviewing the details of their undercover identities. As Cooper had predicted, only the most basic and vague information was given. What they could tell the truth about, they would. An elaborate lie was a short-lived one.

  Kyle Davis and Andrew Preston had also met at work and started dating over a year ago, same as Cooper and Oliver. Though instead of working for a top-secret agency investigating crimes against werewolves, Kyle was an administrative assistant at a small college where Andrew was a professor in the English Department (a job Park had actually held before the Trust). Cooper thought their pretend relationship sounded quite sexy and amused Park during the drive with imaginings of their courtship where they had “most definitely fucked on a desk.”

  Sadly for Kyle and Andrew, it wasn’t all grade-A sex these days. They got into a lot of arguments. Small stuff mostly. But the small stuff got blown out of proportion because Kyle was too quick to snap something hurtful and Andrew too likely to shut him out, become uncommunicative. They weren’t looking for a way to stop fighting, per se, but rather a way to fight more productively with less hurt feelings and things said that couldn’t be unsaid. It was, as Park pointed out, almost too close to home. But that was the danger of undercover work: the blurring of identities. The things you learned about yourself when you were...not yourself.

  After a couple minutes, the pitted, dirt road spilled into a grassy clearing of sorts where a cabin sat, built into a hill and cradled by trees. To the left, the road narrowed even further and continued down another hill, disappearing into more forest. To the right was a large barn, its doors closed and—to Cooper’s alarm—padlocked with a heavy chain. Somewhere nearby came the constant roar of a lawnmower.

  They both surveyed the area skeptically. The cabin was rundown from the outside and small. Far too small to be a business. “What kind of therapy do they employ here, again, exactly?” Cooper asked. “Aversion?”

  “We might have taken the wrong turn.” Park checked his phone map. “Still no service. What do you think? Would Kyle and Andrew venture out and ask directions?”

  “I don’t know, are Kyle and Andrew auditioning for victims one and two in a horror movie?”

  Park stifled a smile. “Kyle would.” He patted the steering wheel. “Andrew needs to keep the car running and getaway ready. For reasons.”

  “I hate Andrew.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Park said mournfully.

  The sound of the mower abruptly shut off and the clearing buzzed with the resulting silence. From behind the barn a man appeared. He was white and appeared to be close to Cooper’s age—around mid-to-late thirties. His hair was too close cut to tell the color, and he was wiping his sweaty face with a piece of gray fabric. Because Cooper was an excellent detective, he deduced the fabric was a shirt based on the fact that the man was dressed only in a pair of worn-out, low-slung jeans that hugged his thighs. His bare upper body was tanned, muscular and...unusually attractive in its proportions.

  “Huh,” Park said, and even he sounded startled. Cooper silently agreed.

  The man had obviously caught sight of them and was staring at the car. Without the shirt covering it, his face was just as lovely as the rest of him, prominent features making him look almost sculpted. The man waved and smiled lazily before leaning against the wall of the barn with an inviting tilt of his head.

  “Well, keep the car running, Andrew my lad,” Cooper said cheerfully, and hopped out of the car. “Be back in a bit.” He just heard Park’s sputtering before he slammed the door shut and approached the stranger.

  “Hi! Excuse me! So sorry to bother you, but I think we’re a little lost,” Cooper called out as he approached. He felt himself already slipping into a more outgoing, friendly version of himself he’d taken on for other undercover assignments where it was a charming guileless nature that got you information a badge no longer could. It was like putting on an old pair of favorite jeans. He’d forgotten how good it felt to pretend to be someone else. For a little while, anyway.

  The man didn’t move from the barn wall or respond, but he smiled again, a slightly off-putting eagerness in his expression.

  “Um, we’re looking for, uh, Maudit Falls Retreat,” Cooper said, stumbling a little, intentionally, as he figured Kyle Davis would when revealing he and his partner were in search of couples counseling.

  “You found it.” The man’s voice was smooth, almost melodic, and Cooper registered the pleasantness of it before the meaning.

  “Oh,” he said, unable to hide his surprise and looked over at the cabin to their left. He couldn’t hear or see a trace of any other people on site. “Um.”

  The man laughed. “This is the staff quarters. You’ll be wanting the main lodge. There was a turn a little ways down the main road, but you can get to it from the back.” He gestured toward the narrowing road, little more than a wide dirt path, that disappeared down the hill and into the woods.

  “Oh,” Cooper said again with some relief. “Do you work here?”

  The man straightened up unhurriedly and held out his hand, which Cooper took. “I’m the retreat cook,” he said. “Jack Nielsen. But you can call me Jackie.”

  Cooper purposefully let his gaze flicker down Nielsen’s shirtless and dirt-smudged skin, then dart back up, acting embarrassed. Flattering, to put him at ease. “Don’t tell me they have you foraging for ingredients. Jackie,” he added, noticing that Nielsen hadn’t let go of his hand.

  Nielsen laughed. “We lost our grounds guy last week. I’m just filling in temporarily ’til they find a replacement.”

  “Lost?” Cooper asked, all alarm. “Is he okay?”

  Nielsen’s grip on Cooper’s hand tightened momentarily before he released it completely. “Nothing like that. He just took off.” He squinted at Cooper. “You’re a dramatic little thing.”

  “Oh,” Cooper laughed. “Sorry. Guess I’ve been living in the city too long.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m a little nervous about this whole deep-in-the-mountains, cut-off-from-the-world thing. But it’s still a retreat. I mean, they won’t make us do anything dangerous.” He laughed again. “No one’s ever gotten hurt, right?”

  Nielsen shrugged. “The couple that survives together, thrives together,” he said smiling, though it wasn’t really friendly so much as privately amused. Like something about Cooper was funny to him. “You look like
a survivor to me.”

  Cooper felt an uncomfortable prickle up his spine. He tried to joke it off. “I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.”

  Nielsen looked away and didn’t answer. “If you follow this road here down the hill, it will lead you straight to the lodge. Can’t miss it. They’ll check you in and take you to your cabin.”

  “Thank you so much,” Cooper said. “I guess I’ll see you around then!” He started to turn away.

  “Dramatic little thing,” Nielsen called. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “Oh sorry! Kyle Davis. I’m here with my partner, Andrew.” Cooper glanced back at the waiting car but couldn’t see more than an impression of Park through the window.

  Nielsen followed his gaze. “He must be the wolf then.”

  Cooper stiffened, a slick knot of anxiety appearing in the base of this throat. “Excuse me?” he said coolly.

  Nielsen didn’t seem bothered by his tone in the least. “No offense meant. At least one of you must be to come to the retreat and it’s obviously not you.” He took a step closer. “It can get kind of overwhelming at the lodge, for our human guests. If you’re looking for a little break sometime, a little chat, come find me. I’m not one of them, either, see.”

  Cooper searched Nielsen’s face for some kind of clue as to what he was saying. “Okay. Thanks,” he said slowly. “I kind of expected all the staff to be wolves.”

  Nielsen shrugged. “Vanessa likes to keep all sorts here. Besides, a pack’s success depends on each member bringing their special and unique strength,” he seemed to quote. “If you’re not unique, you’re superfluous. And that’s a very bad thing to be.” His eyes glinted. “A little preview of your welcoming speech.”

  “Right,” Cooper said, when it became clear that Nielsen was done talking. “I should—” He took a step back and then paused. “Out of curiosity, if you’re human, how did you know that I am, too? How could you tell?”

  Nielsen blinked slowly at him. He had such light blue eyes and long blond lashes that it gave him a sort of Nordic serial killer vibe. Or maybe Cooper was just projecting based on this conversation. “The way you looked at me,” Nielsen said.

  Cooper wasn’t faking the heat in his cheeks now. “Ah. Well. You’re telling me wolves don’t look at you?”

  Nielsen smiled. “Not with their eyes.” He slung his sweaty shirt over his shoulder and backed toward the cabin. “Don’t forget. If you need a friendly face, or an afterhours snack, come find me.” He added, almost mockingly, “We’re all happy to help you have your best possible stay at Maudit.”

  Cooper watched him disappear inside, the flimsy screen door banging loudly and bouncing in and out of the frame. He returned to the car.

  “Those must have been some directions,” Park said, nodding at the car clock.

  Cooper was quiet as he buckled himself in, considering. “The good news is this isn’t where we’re sleeping. The bad news is I didn’t pack any safely sealed and non-poisoned food, and the retreat cook is creepy as hell.”

  Park’s expression turned startled and he looked hastily at the cabin. “That’s the cook? What’s he cooking out here wearing that?”

  “Drive this way,” Cooper said, and updated him on the relevant bits of his and Nielsen’s conversation as they followed the road down the hill. The car quickly fell into shadow once again when the trees closed in around them.

  “Whether he walked off this mountain or is buried under the pines, I do believe Kreuger uncovered something weird here. Something weird enough to make him contact an ex he no longer spoke to,” Cooper said. “I doubt he’s the only one who knew about it. The cook, Nielsen, he was...odd.” He subtly studied Park in the driver’s seat. Watched him focus on driving slowly over enormous potholes. Whatever land Kreuger had been taking care of, it wasn’t the roads. “Oliver, look at me a sec.”

  Park glanced at him, inhaling sharply. “What? What’s wrong?”

  Cooper hesitated, embarrassed, worried about offending him. “If I were to say you don’t look at me with your eyes, what would that mean to you?”

  Park’s face shifted to surprise and then, to Cooper’s relief, amusement. “Where’d you hear that?” Cooper told him what Nielsen had said, and again Park seemed to find it funny, if a bit perplexing. “And here I thought I had an old-fashioned upbringing,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  Park considered his words carefully. “There’s this idea that we, wolves, primarily interpret the world through scent. Nose first, then ears, lastly eyes. Humans work the opposite.”

  “I don’t get it,” Cooper said.

  “Your average human sees a mouse and it makes a sound like a lion and smells like a snake, you’d say that mouse made a weird sound. A wolf would say there’s a snake in this room and it sounds like a lion and looks like a mouse.”

  “And that’s not true?”

  Park shrugged. “Do scents pay a much bigger role in my life than yours? Of course. But I don’t just go around totally ignoring visual cues. That’s a super outdated misconception even my grandparents didn’t raise us on. You mostly just hear about it in old-timey fables—crows who bathe themselves with rainwater become invisible and steal food. You know, your usual shenanigans.”

  “Where do you think Nielsen picked it up from?

  Park shook his head. “Whoever made him aware must have had some super traditional beliefs. Or he heard it referred to out of context and took it for absolute truth. Made it weird himself.”

  “That guy? Make it weird? Nah.” Cooper tapped his fingers against the door, thoughtfully. “So do you ever look at me with your, you know, nose?”

  Park frowned. “Ye-es,” he said slowly, paused, then added a little slyly under his breath, “Sometimes it’s the only chance I have of understanding what the hell you’re thinking.”

  Cooper’s lips quirked and he shuffled a bit in his seat, leaning over to inhale deeply right under Park’s jawline. Of course he couldn’t pick up any more nuance than the usual, like crisp linen and leaves. But to his delight, something about the action caused Park to flush, faintly.

  “What do I smell like to you right now, then?” Cooper murmured. “Nice?”

  “A nice pain in the ass,” Park said dryly.

  Cooper laughed low, kissed his temple and leaned back in his seat. “Careful there, Mr. Preston. Them’s flirtin’ words.”

  When the road finally pulled back into a clearing, Cooper blinked and mouthed wow. A huge building of wood, stone and glass dominated the space. The lodge was two stories, had a large wraparound porch and most of the front was windows. There was a clear little parking lot discreetly to the side with some cars, an extra-large golf cart and, interestingly, a ranger’s vehicle. Cooper exchanged a look with Park.

  “Santiago didn’t say anything about the local law being involved,” Cooper said.

  “Maybe it’s not about Kreuger.”

  The retreat may have been down a groundskeeper, but the landscape was immaculately kept. Nothing about this place looked rundown or uncared for as the staff building had. Park pulled into the lot and they got out of the car. Cooper took a deep breath surveying the area. The air was blessedly much cooler here in the mountains than DC and felt wet and heavy on his tongue. Somewhere nearby he could hear the constant white noise of a waterfall.

  Park appeared at his side with their bags. To the average viewer he seemed perfectly relaxed and happy, but Cooper felt the slight hum of tension as if it was his own. They couldn’t predict who was in there. How quickly Park’s cover would be blown.

  Cooper ran his hand over Park’s back, rubbing slightly, and felt Park shudder and press into the touch. “Ready?”

  “Of course,” Park said quickly, then shot Cooper a contrite look. “Ready enough,” he added with more honesty. “You?”

  Cooper too
k his bag from Park. “When am I not eager and grateful for the counsel of others?” He pointedly ignored Park’s snort.

  In truth, he was nervous but unexpectedly curious about the therapeutic aspects of the retreat. Not that they were here for that, of course. But Cooper’s only previous experience with therapy was a few mandated sessions after being attacked and nearly killed a couple of years ago. Head swirling with the shocking discovery of werewolves, body struggling to adjust to a list of brand-new cans and cannots, he’d found the sessions boring, trite and utterly useless. They were a chore to sit through on a good day. On a bad day they were...distressing in a way Cooper didn’t feel up to understanding. Not then.

  But he had come a long way—these last few months especially—and now found himself wondering if the “uselessness” of the sessions had more to do with it not being the right time or person and less with his own inability to just feel better. If the retreat gave him the chance to suss out not only a possible criminal but a bit of advice for managing his temper and anxiety, so much the better.

  Of course, it wasn’t a great sign that the first thing Cooper saw as they walked into the beautiful, spacious lobby of the lodge was a heated argument.

  Two women and a man stood in the middle of the room. The man was white, in his twenties, had that permanently red-faced look to him and a blunt, square head made more blunt and square by his military-style haircut. He was also dressed in a ranger officer uniform, though the only policing he seemed to be doing at the moment was standing condescendingly with his hands on his hips observing the two women fight. Or rather, observing one tall redhead wag her finger in the face of the other, shorter woman, who just stood there passively, her own hands folded neatly in front of her.

  “I’ve given you more than enough opportunities to cooperate,” the red-haired woman was saying. “But you refused to do a goddamn thing and now Lee is gone.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Llcaj is fine,” the other said. She was white, in her forties, had prematurely silver hair that curled wildly to her chin, and wore bright purple glasses. She also seemed capable of a lot more calm than Cooper could manage if someone was practically tapping on his nose with a complete disregard for personal space or, you know, not acting like an asshole.