by Lauren Esker
"Dad said they were kicking us out," she said as she picked at her food. "So what's the hold-up? At what point do we start thinking about a jailbreak?"
"Let's wait for dark." Noah's instant response let her know she hadn't been the only one thinking about it. "If they still haven't let us go by then, I'm fairly confident I can get us out. Better to cooperate in the short term, though."
"Hmmm." She picked bits of pickle out of her tuna fish, not out of any particular dislike of pickle—it was actually very good tuna fish salad—but to give her something to do with her hands. "What about Roy Smith, or whatever his real name is? What do you think he's doing now?"
"I expect he's holed up somewhere to heal. We've got his clothes. Your dad and friends have his car and his guns." Noah glanced out the window again, where armed men and women went back and forth in the yard, grim and purposeful. Earlier in the afternoon, Peri had spent awhile watching them move the vehicles and the livestock closer to the cabins. Now they were working on a fence behind the cabins. "If he tries to sneak in here again, I have a feeling they'll shoot first and ask questions later."
"We thought he couldn't get in before, and he did."
"They weren't taking the threat seriously before. They sure are now." Noah chewed mechanically at his sandwich for a minute or two. "After we get out of here, we head straight back to the SCB. There is one hell of a lot I need to tell them. We thought the Valeria might have shifters on their side, but now we know for sure."
"Freaking enormous bear shifters." She shivered, remembering again the bear's swipes at Noah. "I didn't know bears came that big."
"They don't. Not normal bears. Shifter animals tend to be bigger than most—my tiger is definitely on the large end, for example. But I've never seen a bear anywhere near that big."
"Do you think they've found some way to juice themselves up?"
"How so?"
"The Valeria created a custom disease in the lab, so what else can they do? Maybe they have injectable shifting. Maybe they can make shifters that are bigger, stronger, faster than normal ones."
"Speaking of comforting thoughts."
"Hey," she said, "you started it."
***
With nothing else to do, they eventually napped, spooning on the bed with their faces toward the door and Noah's arm draped over Peri's rib cage.
Noah roused instantly at a soft tap on the door. He sat up and leaned protectively over Peri as she stirred to wakefulness. The door was already opening; late afternoon sun glinted on a rifle barrel and Hank Moreland's small round glasses.
"Time for you two to go."
Noah bundled together his ruined clothes along with Smith's, in case the lab was able to do anything with them. In silence they allowed themselves to be herded downstairs, escorted by a small cadre of the community's adults, all armed. The living room was still a disaster, but the bodies were gone and plywood had been nailed over the hole in the wall. Noah wondered what they'd done with Smith's discarded guns. It was possible, given the number of firearms circulating in the community, that the guns had simply been added to the local weapon pool without anyone realizing (or caring) that they hadn't come from the community in the first place.
The air outside had a smoky taint. Most of the cars had been moved and were now parked in a haphazard cluster next to the partially burned community center, but their captors hustled Noah and Peri toward the former parking lot. Noah kept one eye on the dark wall of the forest, the other on the armed men and women surrounding them. Right now, he wasn't sure which possibility concerned him more—a renewed attack from Scar Face, or the plans that Peri's dad might have for people who were considered traitors.
But they reached the parking lot without incident. Noah's Camaro was the only vehicle left there, sitting alone in the tire-churned mud.
"Peri." Hank Moreland's grim face softened. "You understand I'm doing what I need to do to protect the community, don't you?"
Peri stopped, eyes closed and face turned away. "I do, actually. But if you expect a hug and a slot on my Christmas card list, Dad, you're going to be waiting awhile."
Noah laid a comforting hand on her arm, and she put her hand over his before looking at her father.
"You know, Dad, I really am so sorry, sorrier than you can imagine—about Liam and Eddie, about Wendy and Ramona, about all of it. I wouldn't have come here if I'd had any other place to go. But when I was desperate, when I was scared, when I needed someplace to run to, this is the place I thought of. I guess there's some part of me, on some deep level, that still thinks of it as home." She swept her gaze around at their armed entourage, meeting each of the unfriendly stares fixed on them (and on Noah in particular). "But it isn't home. It wasn't even home when I lived here. It's not home now. Home is out there. Home is ..." Her fingers tightened over Noah's, and her voice broke off, leaving the unspoken end of the sentence hanging in the air between them.
When she didn't continue, Noah told her quietly, "Let's go."
There was comfort in having the Camaro's wheel in his hands, powerful engine purring under the hood. He was confident they could outrun anything on the road. Still ... it didn't hurt to have extra insurance. They stopped at the gate, and while Peri unlocked it, Noah rummaged under the seat to see if his sidearm was where he'd left it.
It was. He strapped on the holster.
Peri didn't remark on it when she got back in. She was silent and pensive as they drove. It wasn't until they slowed to 25 mph for the town center that she finally spoke. "That was pretty stupid, huh, my little speech back there? 'Home is out there,'" she mimicked herself.
"It didn't sound stupid to me. It sounded honest."
"Yeah. Well." Peri leaned her head against the seat. "If home is out there and not here, I'm kinda looking forward to getting back to it."
Noah didn't like her thousand-yard stare. She'd been through seven kinds of hell in the last couple of days. And she was a civilian, unused to violence, having to deal with her family rejecting her on top of everything else.
She needed to talk to someone, but shifter counseling resources were scarce. The SCB didn't normally provide much help in that area, even for agents. They were limited to a handful of therapists who were either shifters or shifter-adjacent—humans who had married into a shifter family or otherwise become aware of their existence. He'd have to talk to the Evergreen Clinic and see if they could recommend someone.
He was surprised how well he was dealing with it. After his disastrous early experiences in the field, his faith in himself as an agent had hit rock bottom. He would never have given himself the push to get back in the field on his own. But Peri had needed his help. She still did. And, slowly, he found that he was getting his feet under himself as a field agent.
Which doesn't mean you're out of the woods yet. So he could handle himself in a fight. But that didn't mean a whole lot when they were up against something so much larger than themselves.
They finally got cell reception at the top of a pass. Noah pulled over on a trucker pullout, and, through bursts of static, the SCB switchboard put him through to the bullpen, where he found Avery Hollen answering the phones.
"So I hear you're cooling your heels in the middle of nowhere," Avery said. "Lucky you."
"Not anymore. I'm headed back. I know I'm supposed to be in quarantine, but I can quarantine myself closer to town. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I just had a big fight with the Valeria out at the compound in the mountains run by Peri's dad." He stopped. "Anybody told you about the Valeria yet?"
"Word's getting around," Avery said grimly.
"Yeah, well, turns out there's a lot of things nobody ever told us, because I started out fighting a Valeria assassin and ended up going toe to toe with a fucking huge bear. We're going to need a team out in the mountains looking for him."
"Wait a minute, they can shift?"
"Surprise."
Av
ery sighed. "I'll tell Stiers. I'm sure that conversation will be a laugh a minute. Where does the team need to go?"
Noah gave him directions. This time, Peri didn't stop him; she was gazing wearily out the window as dusk settled on the woods.
"Okay, my turn," Avery said. "Your quarantine order is off anyway. We were going to call you in as soon as we could get in touch with you again. Stiers has a job for you, along with Begay and Cho."
Noah rubbed his forehead, where an ache was gathering behind his eyes. He was tired, hungry from healing, and looking forward to getting back to his own place. The new pair of borrowed sweatpants were too short in the legs. All he wanted right now was a change of clothes and a night in his own bed.
—With Peri, preferably. Weird to think they'd driven out here as strangers and were going back as a couple.
"Do I have to come in, or can she debrief me at home? It's been a really rough day."
"I'll do what I can," Avery said. "Let us know when you get back to town."
Noah hung up and tossed his phone into the backseat. He took Peri's hand, and she gave him a wan smile.
"You doing okay?" he asked her.
"I don't know. I guess." She absently waved her other hand, with her phone in it. "I'm getting intermittent 3G up here. I should check Twitter and my blog. I probably have a million messages. But I just sort of ... don't even care anymore."
Noah wrapped an arm around her carefully, and when she didn't object, he drew her gently against his side. He could feel her relaxing one bit at a time, conforming to the contours of his body.
"Think it would help to talk to someone when we get back?" he asked quietly.
"Like a therapist type of someone, you mean?"
"Yeah. Like that."
"I dunno. It's all too fresh and real and ..." She pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes. "I just want to sleep for a week."
"Me too." He kissed the top of her head. "But there are miles to go before we sleep."
***
It was fully dark when they hit the outskirts of Seattle. Peri had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, her neck crooked to the side and her hair a rainbow thatch pressed against the window.
Noah parked in his building's underground lot. It was a secure building with private parking for residents, but he did a quick patrol anyway, gun in hand, before he came back to get Peri.
"Hey." He kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth. "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty."
"Ugh," she mumbled without opening her eyes. "I feel like someone replaced my brain with a pair of old gym socks." She stretched, started to open the car door, and stopped. "Hey, this isn't my apartment."
"No, we're at my place. I figured we should stay together, and you probably wouldn't want to deal with the mess tonight. If you want to run over there and pick up some clothes—"
"Not tonight. Maybe not ever. I'd rather just set the place on fire—" She broke off and shivered. "Okay, that's not funny. Forget I said it."
"I think we've both earned a little gallows humor, don't you? C'mon."
He had Peri wait in the hall while he quickly cleared his apartment. There was no sign that it had been invaded or searched, but he still put on all the locks once he and Peri were inside.
"Bathroom?" Peri asked through a yawn.
"Down the hall."
While she took care of business, he texted Stiers to let her know they were back in town. Then he looked around, taking in the state of his apartment for the first time. He kept his car spotless (well, until recently) but the cluttered state of its trunk was a more accurate indication of how his housekeeping efforts tended to go. The apartment wasn't a complete disaster—at least he'd managed not to go away for three days with dishes in the sink, though that was mainly because he tended to eat out rather than cook—but it didn't give the best impression.
When Peri came back from the bathroom, he'd watered the plants dying on the windowsill, stuffed some pizza boxes and beer bottles into the trash, and was hastily picking up scattered laundry. "Oh, knock it off," she said, laughing. "You saw my place, right?"
"Your place had just been tossed. I have no such excuse."
"I'm not so shallow I'm going to judge you for having some old gym socks around. Anyway, I really like your place. It's not so huge it costs more than major surgery, but big enough to have actual rooms, which is more than I can say for mine." She moved to the window, pulling back the blinds. "Ooh, you have a courtyard. I've never lived somewhere with a courtyard."
Noah dropped an armload of laundry into the hamper and came over to put his arms around her. "You're welcome in my courtyard anytime."
"Mmmm. Isn't that supposed to be my line?" She turned around to wrap her arms around his neck, stretching up on tiptoe. "You know ... I showed you my bedroom. You haven't showed me yours yet."
"The lady's wish, et cetera."
Noah picked her up, producing a startled giggle as he swept her, literally, off her feet, and carried her down the hall into the bedroom. Most of the apartment's space was taken up with a relatively large open-plan living room and kitchen; the bedroom, by comparison, was tiny. Still, given Seattle's sky-high housing prices, he'd been pretty happy to find this place, with its high ceilings and good light.
However, due to the small size of the bedroom, the bed wasn't much bigger than the one in Peri's childhood bedroom. He laid her on it and lowered himself carefully atop her, taking his weight on his knees and one hand.
"Someday," she said when they came up for air, "we're going to have to find a bed that's big enough for more than one person."
"There's always the floor."
She looked pointedly at the walls on either side of the bed. One side was entirely taken up with furniture; the other side had just enough space to open the closet door.
"I meant in the living room," Noah said.
"I dunno, this seems to be working fine." She arched her back and kissed him again.
It was neither urgent nor particularly heated. After the day they'd had, Noah wasn't sure if either of them had the energy for passionate lovemaking. It was simply pleasant: slow kisses, languid strokes of their hands along the other's body.
His phone vibrated suddenly in his pants pocket between them, making them both jump.
"You have a call on the vibrator," Peri said and dissolved in giggles.
"Whoever it is can go away."
The phone started vibrating again a second later, and Peri started laughing helplessly against his neck. "Your penis is ringing again."
"If they're that persistent, it's probably work, so I should probably take it." He sat up and took his phone out of his pocket. Peri curled around his hip, one arm thrown over his lap, making little snorting sounds as she giggled into the waistband of his borrowed pants. There was a hysterical edge to it, but given the choice between this or the way she'd zoned out earlier, he'd take this in a heartbeat.
Rather than a missed phone call, he found a series of texts from Cho.
U back yet? Okay to come over?
Will bring food! Any requests?
Right. Quinoa and tofu it is.
Noah typed: Add some meat to that tofu and you're on.
"I think we're about to be invaded," he told Peri, or rather, the top of Peri's head, while he waited for a reply from Cho. "Are you still giggling down there?"
"I don't know why it's so funny," she choked helplessly into his hip. "I can't stop. Help."
Noah combed his fingers through her hair. "Well, if you can sober up enough to give me your food order, Cho's buying."
"Oh, well, in that case, what's the most expensive takeout place in Seattle?"
Another text came in: Too late, in line for Thai.
"You like Thai?" he asked Peri.
"Love it. Tell her I want a yellow curry with pork, medium spicy."
He relayed this, along with his own order: Anything with beef and double the order, with extra meat & extra rice.
U hurt? Cho asked.
Be there in 20, she replied.
The mood was well and truly killed, so Peri stretched out on the bed answering emails on her phone (plugged into Noah's borrowed charger) while Noah changed out of the ill-fitting clothes from the compound into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. The fresh injuries on his abdomen and thigh had healed enough not to bleed on his new clothes, but they still hurt every time he bent or twisted.
"What's it feel like?" Peri asked, looking up from her phone.
"What's what feel like?"
"That." She waved a hand at his stomach as he pulled down the T-shirt over it.
"Being this fine? Well, it's a burden, but I soldier on as best I can—"
Peri snatched up a pillow and swiped at him with it. "Healing like that, ya dork."
"I don't know. I don't really have anything to compare it to." He sat down on the edge of the bed. "What's it feel like for humans?"
Her gaze immediately went to her legs, and Noah winced.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to bring up bad memories."
"No, you didn't, it's just that you're right. I can't really explain how it feels for us regular humans, so it's not like you can describe to me how it is for you guys."
She moved over to make room for him, as best she could in the narrow space, and pillowed her head on his shoulder when he stretched out against her. Any sort of bedroom athletics would likely have deposited one of them on the floor, but as long as they didn't move too much, the bed could accommodate two people. It helped that Peri wasn't very big.
Noah stroked a hand down her thigh, as far as he could reach without having to sit up. "You know, I never asked what happened to you. I won't, if you don't want me to."
"It's okay. I don't mind talking about it." She lay without speaking for a minute, one arm draped over his chest. "It was back on the farm ... I guess I already told you that."