Wolf's Lie

by Laura Taylor

  Elisa smirked. “Not the worst line I’ve ever heard. But holy hell, you could have used a lot worse on me, and that outfit would still have got me to stick around for a while.” She glanced admiringly down at the woman’s legs again, not bothering to be subtle about it. “Listen, just let me whisk these drinks back over to the table, and I’ll be back in a tick.”

  “No problem,” the woman replied, a touch of sardonic humour in her voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Half an hour later, Caroline deliberately ran both hands through her hair, fluffing the strands up. It was the signal that she was ready to leave.

  “You’re good to go,” Andre told her. “Chu’s still in his corner.”

  Perfect. Caroline checked her watch. “Listen,” she said, running her eyes suggestively over Elisa’s figure. “I have to duck outside for a minute and make a phone call. But I was wondering... I’m starting to find this place a little crowded for my taste. Maybe we could continue this conversation somewhere a little more… private.”

  Elisa got a crooked sort of smile on her face. “Private, huh? Does that mean I’ll get a ride on your motorbike?”

  Caroline smirked, her go-to expression when she needed to look like she was amused, rather than bored out of her skull. In the last half an hour, she had figured Elisa out very easily. She liked to play the tough girl, trying to impress Caroline with stories of the time she’d crashed her motorbike, and had expected her to join in when she’d bemoaned how awful men in general were, always thinking with their dicks and harassing women like Elisa. But the truth was, she was a small-town girl who hadn’t ever travelled further than London and who would be completely out of her depth dealing with the kind of shit that crossed Caroline’s path on a daily basis.

  “Absolutely. Meet me out front in five minutes?” She pulled her phone out of her pocket, preparing to make her mystery call. “I’ll let you say bye to your friends.” With a wink, she hopped off the stool and headed for the door, resisting the impulse to glance over at the corner and see if Chu was watching her.

  Out on the street, the air was chilly but she felt sweaty with nerves. Caroline put her phone to her ear and started a feigned conversation, wandering idly down the road until she reached the corner...

  “You’re clear,” Baron told her through her earpiece. “Get moving before this chick comes after you.”

  Caroline put her phone away and picked up her pace. “Heading for the bike,” she told the rest of her team. She threw on her helmet, gunned the motor and took off, heading away from the bar. “I’m out. Andre? You clear?”

  “Not yet,” came the reply. “Just a couple of loose ends to tie up...”

  After watching Caroline Saunders exit the building, Steven Chu made his way quickly towards the woman she had been speaking to. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling out his fake police badge. “Detective Lim. Might I have a word?”

  The woman turned her back on him. “No. I don’t like cops.”

  Chu wasn’t surprised by the response. He suspected that Caroline had been trying to recruit this woman, and the sort of people they would be trying to turn into shifters were not the sort of people who would have a particular fondness for police officers. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I need to warn you that the woman you were speaking to is suspected of having a number of underworld connections and is currently under investigation. If you ever hear from her again, my team – as well as the rest of our country – would be most grateful if you would let us know.” He handed her a card with his false police name on it, along with a contact number that would get her through to the Noturatii’s intelligence department. He turned to go, job done... but a niggling part of his conscience made him turn back. “Look, ma’am, I don’t know you, and I don’t know what your interest in this woman is. But if you want to do yourself a favour, I’d stay well away from her. You seem like a decent person, and you don’t need to be caught up in that sort of trouble.” Melissa would likely not be happy with that last part, if she ever found out about it. Her view of the situation was that they needed all the information they could get, and sacrificing a few civilians wasn’t too high a price to pay for winning this war. But Chu disagreed. He was still fighting for justice, for what was right, for the safety of his country, and of the entire world, and if he had the chance to stop this woman from plunging headfirst into a life of crime, violence and terrorism, then he was duty bound to take it, Melissa Hunter be damned.

  Lurking in the shadows of the bar, Andre watched Chu walk over and exchange a few words with Elisa. Caroline had done her job perfectly, attracting all the right attention while looking like she was doing the exact opposite. He needed to get out of the bar, a discreet side door his exit of choice, but at the same time, there was a certain value in seeing how both Chu and Elisa reacted to the whole situation.

  Their conversation was tense and brief, and then Chu handed Elisa a card and hastily left the bar, via the front door. Elisa slid the card into her back pocket, then glanced around, looking suddenly lost. Whatever Chu had said to her, it clearly had her second-guessing her decision to go home with her new love interest.

  Moving quietly and smoothly, a hood covering most of his face, Andre wound his way through the bar to Elisa’s side. He managed to be standing right beside her when she turned around, and with her sudden movement, he ‘accidentally’ bumped into her. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” he said, catching her elbow to steady her. “Sorry.” He moved around her, not giving her much of a chance to see his face, and headed for the front door. “Where’s Chu?” he asked softly, not having wanted to go this way, but he had little other option at this stage if he wanted to make himself look natural.

  “Came out and headed north,” Baron replied instantly. “Still in sight.”

  “Coming out the front door,” Andre told him, immediately turning right and heading south down the road. “Talk to me.”

  “You’re clear,” Baron told him. “Turn right at the first side street, and Raniesha can come pick you up. This wasn’t the exit plan, am I right?”

  “Not quite the plan, no,” Andre said, fingering the card he’d lifted from Elisa’s pocket. ‘Detective Nicholas Lim’ was written on the front in neatly embossed letters, along with a phone number. A phone number that Elisa was presumably supposed to use to contact the Noturatii; a direct link into the pulsing nerve centre of the organisation. “But there was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up...”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Perched in a newly selected tree, Li Khuli watched the two tiny puppies playing on the lawn. The male and female shifters who she assumed were their parents were there too, alternating between human and wolf form as they played with the pups. She knew the puppies were shifters as well, having seen each of them shift in the previous few days, but for the time being they were both choosing to stay in wolf form.

  Being careful not to reveal herself, Li Khuli eased her weight higher, sliding onto a branch a fraction above the one she’d been sitting on. The pups were slowly meandering further and further north, and if they kept going, she was going to lose sight of them if she didn’t move a bit.

  A fresh breeze came sweeping across the forest, swaying her tree, and Li Khuli turned her face into the wind, enjoying the cool air. Her current perch was as close to the manor as she could get without actually crossing the wall, and despite her best efforts, she still hadn’t managed to figure out how to do that without being detected. Thorough didn’t begin to cover the efforts these creatures had gone to in protecting their home.

  Over the past week, she’d seen Drew once more. He’d called the inn and left a message for her, asking her to come to dinner with him. He’d chosen a quiet restaurant in Penrith, with wholesome local food and some artisan beers that Lee had loved, and charmed her silly with witty stories of articles he’d written and unusual people he’d met over the years. But at the end of the evening, he hadn’t repeated his suggestion that she join him in bed, and Lee wasn’t quite s
ure how she felt about that.

  John, too, she’d seen again. He’d come looking for her, just as curious as ever, telling her about horrors from his childhood, while she shared stories of her own. But at the end of the visit, he’d once more left her with cryptic comments to the effect that she was never going to kill Miller, or any of the other wolves, for that matter. But he carefully avoided addressing the issue directly, so she never had the chance to outright deny his assertions.

  But Li Khuli did not care what a shifter thought, she reminded herself sternly. She would kill her targets when she found a way to complete both assignments without revealing herself, and when she had a better idea of what to expect from that annoying assassin. A Satva Khuli did not rush in unprepared. She’d watched his workouts on the lawn, watched him teaching some of the other shifters to fight, and given time, she would get a detailed enough idea of his style, his strengths and weaknesses, to be able to best him.

  A faint yip got her attention, and she turned back to look at the pups again. One of them had grabbed hold of the woman’s sleeve and was tugging as hard as he could. The woman graciously allowed herself to be pulled forward, eventually falling face first onto the grass, while the pup barked and bounced in glee.

  The first time she’d seen the two puppies playing, she’d felt a burst of rage so great it had taken all of her energy not to swing down out of her tree, march over to the two little fur balls and slit both their throats then and there. How dare they? They were soft and helpless, tiny, mewling things that had no right to exist, no place in a world as harsh and brutal as the one that Li Khuli inhabited. Even now, she felt a strong resentment towards the two little creatures. Their play was so pointless, so infantile and silly. Not like her own play as a child. Play, where Li Khuli came from, consisted of trying to walk along the stone wall that stretched around the compound and not have her feet cut by the dull knives the other children carried. Or sometimes she had been on the opposite side, trying her hardest to stab the feet of the children who were balancing on the wall. Play was trying to steal food from her neighbour’s plate at dinnertime without being seen, while inhaling her own food so fast that no one else had the chance to steal it. Play had been drawing pictures of the best way to kill a potential target, with rewards handed out for the sneakiest or the most vicious ideas.

  And yet here was this fumbling little creature on four legs, trying to bite his sister’s tail, yet so incompetent that all he succeeded in doing was tripping over his own feet.

  The most irritating part, Li Khuli thought, as she craned her neck a little higher to keep watching the pups, was that this little one would grow up to become a powerful adult wolf, one of the world’s most effective predators, and with his pack, one of the most tight-knit communities in the animal kingdom.

  This was stupid, she told herself sharply. As soon as she worked out how to get onto the estate, the pups were going to die anyway, so there was no point getting angry about them now. Even if she didn’t kill them herself, the Noturatii would, once she told them the location of this property. She just had to kill her own two marks first, unwilling to delegate that duty to mere foot soldiers.

  She looked around, seeing that the light was beginning to fade for the afternoon, and decided it was time for her to head back to her hotel. It had been nearly a week since she’d checked in with her master, sending the usual short, encrypted message that was all the information anyone cared about: Mission Incomplete. Hypothetically, if she took too long she could be called off the mission and it would be reassigned, but it had only been three or four months that she’d been tracking the elusive pack. Given that the British division of the Noturatii had been trying to do the same thing for a few hundred years, she didn’t think anyone was going to get upset about the time it was taking.

  She took one last look at the group on the lawn, checking that no one was within range to see her climb out of the tree, and noticed that another man had joined them. This one had ginger hair, his back to her for the moment, but Li Khuli paused, as there seemed to be something oddly familiar about him. She hadn’t been keeping any particular head count on the shifters she’d seen, focusing specifically on her targets and the bodyguards who were likely to get in her way, but she was fairly sure she hadn’t seen this one before. So why did he seem so -

  Li Khuli nearly fell out of her tree as the man turned around, her hand flying to her mouth, a cry of disbelief strangled in her throat before a wayward sound could escape. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t... it wasn’t possible. There was no way in the world she had... Holy mother of God, that was...

  Drew.

  And then, in case she needed any further proof, Drew shifted, right there on the lawn, bending down to greet the pups, tail wagging as they licked his muzzle.

  Drew was a shape shifter. She deliberately thought each word clearly and emphatically as she tried to get her mind around the shocking idea. Drew, her perfect, normal, not-part-of-her-crazy-violent-world, handsome, charming gentleman suitor, was a fucking wolf.

  Without another thought, Li Khuli dropped out of the tree, heedless of anyone who might be around to see her, and took off through the trees, heart pounding as she ran for her bike. Don’t think, she told herself fiercely as she dragged the thing out of hiding and back onto the road. Just get back to the hotel, don’t crash on the way, you fucking moronic girl, don’t think about it! Oh god, she was hunting Drew’s family and now she was going to have to kill him as well, don’t think about it, just ride, don’t hit the potholes. Here’s your turning coming up, go left, mind the car coming the other way and in the name of all that was holy, why was she supposed to hate the wolves so much?

  Steven Chu knocked on the door of the small, non-descript flat. When there was no reply, he checked the address he’d written down. This was the place. He knocked again, then heard a muffled reply from behind the door.

  “Coming, coming. I’m getting there. I’m not as young as I used to be.” He heard the rattle of keys in the lock, then the door swung open, slamming into the end of the safety chain with a thud. “Hello?” a wrinkled face said, peering through the gap. “Who are you?”

  “Detective Lim, ma’am,” Steven said, holding out his fake police badge. “Are you Nancy? I called earlier. You said you had some information about Jack Miller.”

  “I know what I said,” Nancy told him abruptly. “I’m old. I’m not senile. Wait a minute.” She closed the door and the chain rattled some more, then the door finally opened properly. “Come in. Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you,” Steven told her. He was champing at the bit to find out what she knew, thrilled at the prospect of finally coming up with some real information. But as he followed her slow, shuffling gait back to the living room, he was quickly realising he was going to have to be patient.

  “No tea? All right then, suit yourself. Now then, that horrible man on the news. Well, I suppose you’d better sit down.” Steven did, trying not to look too uncomfortable on the stiff lounge. Nancy did likewise, not so much sitting as falling backwards into an armchair. “I always watch the five o’clock news, right before I have my dinner,” she said, her voice thin, but her eyes clear and sharp. “And I was watching it last week and saw that man’s face, and I didn’t think much of it. But then I saw him the other night! And I wasn’t sure at first, but then I got my grandson to come over. He’s good with computers. All the kids are these days. And he looked up the photograph on the computer, and it was the man on the news. So I thought right-o, here we go, and called the phone number.”

  “Excellent, well done,” Steven said encouragingly, jotting down notes as she rambled on. “And where exactly did you see him?”

  “Well, here, of course. I don’t go very far these days.”

  “Here? In this building?”

  “What? No, no, not in the building. Don’t know what I’d have done if he was inside. I’m only an old lady, you know. I can’t defend myself. The neighbours check in on me now an
d then. You have to get to know your neighbours when you’re my age. Not like these young people who don’t care who they’re living next to. We old folks have to look after each other.”

  Steven nodded, forcing himself not to interrupt her. “So where exactly did you see him?”

  “Outside in the alley. Come over here, I’ll show you.” She got up, a slow process given the depth of her armchair, and Steven tried not to fidget while she messed about with her cane. She hobbled over to the window, turning a rusty key and thumping on the frame a couple of times until it opened with a groan. “Here, look down there.” She shuffled out of the way, and Steven craned his neck to peer out the narrow gap. Three storeys below them was an alley, dimly lit by a half-hearted street lamp.

  “Does this open any further?” he asked, wary of either breaking the window or accidentally jamming it open.

  “It does,” Nancy said, “but it’s a bit stiff. And I don’t like the cold air. Just a bit of fresh air now and then, but I don’t leave it open all night. Don’t want to get burgled.”

  “Of course not, no,” Steven agreed automatically. Not much chance she was going to get burgled via a window at this height. He shoved the window open a couple more inches, getting a better view of the alley. “So he was down in the alley?”

  “That’s right. With a couple of other men. Tattoos, leather jackets. Rough sorts. Up to no good, I’m sure. The young ones these days have no respect. Not like you,” she said, beaming at him. “You’re one of the good ones. Found a nice, respectable job. Pay the bills. Do you have a wife yet?”

  “Not yet, no,” Steven replied, forcing a smile.

  “Well, you’d better fix that up quick smart,” she told him, thumping her cane on the floor. “All the nice ones get snapped up young, and then you’re left with the ones no one else wants. Take my advice, find yourself a nice young lady, a proper one, not one of these ones who expose their buttocks to everyone all over their computers.”