by Geonn Cannon
She watched him go and then looked around to see where they’d ended up. She wasn’t far from Denny Park, so that’s where she went at a more leisurely trot.
Eva and the rest of her pack were waiting for her there, in one of the more tree-obscured areas. Eva was the only one in human form, arms crossed over her chest in a half-hearted attempt at modesty. The rest of the pack gathered around her in a protective circle, every eye locked on Ari as she joined them and changed into her human form.
“What just happened?” Eva asked.
Ari sighed. “I’m sorry. I used you because I thought your pack might be drawn to wherever Marin is being held. I should have told you, or asked you for permission to follow you, but I honestly thought it might not work if you tried to force it.”
Eva tightened her jaw and looked away. Ari gave her all the time she needed.
“We probably would have gone out tonight no matter what you said to me,” Eva finally said. “And if you hadn’t been following us, those jerks might have actually gotten the drop on us. So rather than accept your apology, I extend our thanks.” She furrowed her brow and shook her head. “Even after we knew they were there, we couldn’t smell them.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. I’m looking into it.”
Eva pressed her lips together and nodded. “Did you learn anything, at least?”
“Confirmed, more than learned,” Ari said. “I think I have a general idea where they’re located. You were heading there, and the goons went in the same direction when they drove off. So I’m going to assume that Marin’s being held somewhere down by the waterfront. That’s where I’m going to focus my search.”
“Keep us updated, please?”
Ari nodded. “Again, sorry for the manipulation.”
“If it leads you to my sister, manipulate me any way you want.”
Ari cleared her throat. It was an odd thing to hear while standing naked in a public park, but she chose not to be embarrassed by it.
Eva transformed first, and the rest of her pack filed out of the clearing. Eva was the last to go, looking over her shoulder at Ari. She gave a nod, and Ari saluted back. A moment later, Eva and the pack were gone, lost in the darkness.
Ari stretched her arms out to either side, then worked her shoulders. It was still early, and she was pretty wide awake after the fight and her nap earlier. She could let the wolf get a bit of running-around time down by the water, and it could double as reconnaissance. She might not be able to smell the hunters, but her mother, Milo, Val, Marin, they would all leave some kind of trace that she might be able to pick up if she was in the general vicinity.
She crouched and put her hands flat on the ground. She slipped back into the wolf, thanking it for letting her work for a little while.
Now she was going to let it play for a few hours.
***
Dale reached for the phone before she realized the sound that woke her up was the front door opening. She rolled onto her back and watched as Ari slipped into the bedroom, still naked, shoulders hunched as she tiptoed like a cartoon character trying to sneak past a prison guard. The moonlight caught her outline, shining off the sweat that coated her like a second skin. She didn’t look at the bed as she crept by, closing the bathroom door before she turned on the light. A few seconds later, Dale heard the squeak of the faucet and the powerful spray of the shower.
She pushed back the blankets, checked the time, and undressed as she crossed to the bathroom. She could see Ari’s outline through the curtain and smiled, biting her lip. It was her turn to creep as she crossed the cold tile and eased the curtain back.
Ari was already looking at her, hair plastered to her skull. “At least I can still smell you.”
“Again, that’s not quite the compliment you think it is.” Dale got into the shower and pulled the curtain shut behind her. “Although I do take it in the spirit you intended. Turn around.”
Ari faced the wall. Dale retrieved the soap and the loofah that Ari insisted on calling the “shower flower” and began to wash her shoulders. Ari put one hand on the wall and explained what had happened during her run. After the encounter with the goons, she’d spent another few hours letting the wolf run around the area between Pioneer Square and the stadium.
“I even sniffed around a few of the homeless encampments in the area, but I didn’t pick up anything. I might head back down there when I can actually talk to people. See if they’ve noticed any suspicious activity. Abandoned buildings that are suddenly occupied again, you know, that sort of thing.”
“Detective shit,” Dale said.
“Detective shit,” Ari confirmed. She rubbed Dale’s arms. “Turn around. I’ll do your back.”
Dale did as she was told. Ari stepped closer and ran the shower flower down the curve of her shoulder, back up to her neck, and then slowly dragged it down her spine. Her other arm went around Dale’s waist and pulled her closer. Ari’s hand pressed flat against Dale’s stomach and she gently stroked with her fingertips. Dale chuckled and arched an eyebrow.
“Is this sharing a shower, or is the wolf feeling a little frisky? Not that I’m complaining, but if you--”
Ari pressed her lips against Dale’s ear and started to whisper.
Dale’s smile slowly faded as she listened. Soon it was a frown, and she twisted her head to see Ari’s face. Ari returned the stare. Dale started to ask a question, but Ari shushed her. She repositioned her head so her lips were against Dale’s ear again. More whispering. Dale’s frown deepened. She put her hands on top of Ari’s and stared at the far wall of the shower.
“Okay?” Ari asked. “Can you do that?”
Dale’s jaw was tight.
“Dale.”
“Yeah,” Dale said, “okay.”
Ari stroked Dale’s hair. “Are you ready?”
Dale nods. She will be. She has to be.
For Gwen. For Val. For Marin. She’ll be ready.
No matter how much it will hurt.
Chapter Eleven
Dale tried to dress like it was any other day, even though her mind was swimming with the details of what had to be done. Ari had already left, out the door while her hair was still wet so she could go check on Milo before she found Diana to ask about sightings of the hunters’ black van. Dale appreciated having the time to prepare for what she had to do. But if the plan worked, there were good odds that she might not see Ari for a while.
She finally chose a concert tee under an unbuttoned shirt and jeans. It wasn’t the sort of thing that she would wear to work, but it felt appropriate for the task ahead. She took a look around the apartment, trying to believe she would be back there soon, but memorizing everything just in case something went wrong. Finally, unable to delay any further, she braced herself and left.
The address of Donald Keech’s office hadn’t inspired confidence and, when she arrived, she discovered that it shared a parking lot with a liquor store and a cigarette shop, both of which had bars on their windows. She parked next to a station wagon with the entire back end crammed full of plastic bags, clothes, and various trash. Its entire backend was covered with stickers for conservative political campaigns going back thirty years.
The front windows of the shop looked like they hadn’t been washed in Dale’s lifetime. A bell over the door chimed when she opened it. The waiting room was poorly-lit and smelled like mold, cheap carpeting, and cigarette smoke, all of which was joined together by a flowery fug of room freshener. She wrinkled her nose and tried to imagine a canidae trying to come into this place. Maybe that was the point of the stench. Posters with cliché law advice were sloppily framed on the walls: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!, THE LAW IS HERE TO HELP YOU, and DEFENDANT’S BILL OF RIGHTS.
“Be with you in a second!” someone called from the back office.
Dale stepped around the counter where a receptionist would have been seated in a more reputable establishment. The desktop was stacked tall with towers of files and loose paperwork that indicated no one had ass
umed that station in years. She continued back through a door marked PRIVATE and found herself in a store room with a desk crammed in among the filing cabinets. Donald Keech, looking far worse than his internet photos, jerked upright and blinked in surprise at her.
“You can’t be in here, go!”
Dale examined one of the chairs in front of his desk and, deciding she could just throw out her jeans later, dropped down into it. She crossed one leg over the other and folded her hands in her lap.
“I want to speak with Isaac Hayden.”
Keech blinked at her. “You can’t be in here,” he enunciated this time. “Go!”
“You want to call the police?” Dale asked, summoning every ounce of calm coolness she’d picked up from Ari over the years. “Bring them in here, give them a chance to look around? Because I’m pretty sure they could find a few interesting things laying out in the open. So I think you’d be more likely to call an unofficial security team. And to do that, you’d have to go through Isaac Hayden. Which, coincidentally, is exactly who I want to see anyway. So...” She held out her hands. “I don’t see what the problem is.”
Keech pressed his lips together like he was working a straw. It was an extraordinarily unappealing look for someone who was already on the very low end of the appealing scale. Dale had to fight the urge to look away and held his gaze.
Finally he reached for the phone and started dialing with one stumpy finger.
“Tell him it’s Dale Frye,” she said. “He’ll know who I am.”
Keech glared at her as he put the receiver to his ear. The phone seemed to ring for a long time before there was an answer.
“Hayden. I... no, look, I know.” He wrinkled his nose and drummed the fingers of his free hand on the desk. Dale could hear the quiet buzz of Hayden’s voice on the other end. “Hayden!” Keech finally snapped. “Listen to me. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.” Keech looked at her. “Dale Frye. Yeah. I know. Yeah, she doesn’t look like she’s planning to leave. Right.”
He hung up and leaned back in his chair.
“We know who you are,” he said.
Dale widened her eyes. “Uh-oh. I’m in trouble, then. And all that trouble I went through putting together this cunning disguise.”
“Hayden will be here in twenty minutes.”
She checked her watch, nodded, and settled in to wait.
Keech stared at her for another minute and then sighed heavily and shoved himself up. “Would you like something to drink?” he said with false hospitality.
“Oh, sure,” Dale said, chuckling under her breath. “Like there’s any chance I would drink something a hunter’s lawyer made for me.” She looked around the office and curled her lip. “Actually, I wouldn’t drink anything that came from this office even if you weren’t related to the hunters. God knows what kind of diseases are brewing here.”
Keech shifted his weight around the corner of the desk and went past her into the front room again. Dale waited until she heard him at the coffee station before she let out a long, slow breath and relaxed her spine. She didn’t know how Ari pulled off this sort of thing on a daily basis. She seemed to have no fear, no trepidation. Maybe the wolf helped her hide the nerves.
She spent the time waiting for Hayden examining Keech’s office. Diplomas were hung next to photos of Keech with famous clients, or maybe they were just hunters who kept him on retainer. Either way, Dale took note of their faces for any she recognized, or in case any of them showed up.
It only took twelve minutes before Hayden arrived. “Where?” he asked Keech, who had remained in the waiting room. Keech mumbled something and Dale heard Hayden’s heavy footsteps on the carpet. She twisted to look up at him with a wide, friendly smile.
“Hello again, Mr. Hayden. You’re looking well.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Miss Frye. I must admit to being surprised to find you here.”
“Really?” She stood up to face him. “You haven’t been watching me and Ariadne since you got back to town?”
Hayden tilted his head to the side. “Know thy enemy, right?”
Dale laughed. “Right. Well, I’m here because I know more than enough about Ariadne Willow and those m-mutts.” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head.
“I thought you made your decision on the plane.”
“Why, because I didn’t murder someone in cold blood? I’m not a monster. No book could make me that kind of psychopath. I went with Ari because it seemed like the easiest course of action. It was very clear by that point she wasn’t going to give up, so I surrendered. I thought maybe I could learn to love her, or at least tolerate her, but now that I know the hunters are making a comeback...” She shrugged. “Maybe that’s where I belong.”
“As much as I would love to believe you, Miss Frye, there’s--”
“Ari told me to come here.”
He blinked in surprise.
“I’m supposed to pretend the essays still have a hold on me so I can operate as a mole in your group. Maybe lead her to Gwen and Milo, help her save the day. I’m offering to give her to you on a silver platter. Your friends get a new prisoner, you get an annoying bitch out of your hair, and I finally get away from her.”
She took off her bracelet and tossed it into the overstuffed trash bin next to Keech’s desk without hesitation.
“If your offer is still good, I’m ready to be done with Ariadne Willow once and for all.”
***
A cot had appeared in Marin’s room overnight. There was a privacy screen in one corner, blocking off a bedside commode that looked like a spider with a toilet seat on its back. Marin had been removed from the chains and was sitting up on the cot, back against the wall, dressed in what appeared to be cleaner clothes than what Val currently had on. The renovation was the second bit of good news Val had gotten since waking up. The other news was that sometime overnight, Goon Two and the Geek had gone out ‘wolf hunting.’ They came back without any new prisoners, and the Geek’s arm was in a pretty serious looking cast. She’d asked if he needed a professional to look it over and was given a string of extremely inventive curse words in response. No one seemed willing to explain what had happened, but Val could guess a certain private investigator had a hand in it.
Marin looked up when Val came into the cell, offering a weak smile when she saw who it was. “I hear I have you to thank for the upgrade to the Presidential Suite,” she said.
Val said, “They better not have forgotten the mint on your pillow. I was very firm on that.”
Marin didn’t laugh, but she did breathe out through her nose. Val assumed that was as much as she could hope for in the current situation. She sat on the edge of the cot and noted that Marin’s left wrist was shackled to a pipe running along the wall.
“Any physical complaints?” Val asked. “They kept you in that crucifix position for a really long time. Your arms and shoulders must be killing you.”
“No, it’s good. It’s a distraction. I like having something to focus on.” She rested her head against the wall. “Can I ask you a question?”
Val glanced toward the camera. She opened the medical bag she’d brought in with her, prepared to administer some aspirin at the very least. “Sure.”
Marin wet her lips. “This would all end if you killed me. Right?”
Val’s hands went still.
“They want a spectacle. Let’s give them one. Snuff film. You can probably figure out a way to do it slow, poison me or something, so you’re not in the room when it happens. I’m being self-destructive, I don’t want you to go to prison. You’ve been kind to me, and I think--”
“I think you’re panicking,” Val interrupted. “No one is going to kill anyone. Just take a few deep breaths. Try to remain calm. Right now all you have to focus on is not transforming.”
Marin closed her eyes. “Yeah, try not to think of an elephant.”
“I know.” Val rested her hand on top of Marin’s. “I’m going to keep doing eve
rything I can do ensure they treat you humanely. I’ve already managed to get you a toilet and a bed. Who knows what’s next? Maybe a TV. A laptop.”
“I’d settle for a yoyo.”
Val smiled. “I’ll see what I can do. This isn’t just about making you comfortable, although that would definitely be enough. The more they do for you, the more likely they are to see you as a real person instead of just some tool they want to use for their endgame. We might be able to turn some of these hunters around.”
“You really think they can be reasoned with?”
Val shrugged. “I could’ve been like them, until I came to my senses. People can change.”
“Well, hopefully they can change in a matter of weeks, or else I’m going to be the one changing.” She looked at the camera. “Followed by the rest of the world, I guess.”
“We’re going to figure it out. There are people outside who are working to help us.”
Marin sighed. “I kind of hope my pack is hunkered down and hiding. I don’t want them getting anywhere near these bastards.” She held out her uncuffed hand, and Val took it. “I’m glad you’re here, though. No offense. I mean, don’t stay on my account...”
Val laughed and squeezed Marin’s fingers. “It’s nice to be appreciated. I’ll be back as soon as I can with something to eat.”
“Okay.”
Val got up to leave. At the door, she turned and looked back. “There’s a wolf named Ariadne Willow. I met her when she was in an impossible situation like this. She got out. I know she’s working on getting you home.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because she cares about canidae. And if this video has gone out online, she knows about it, and she won’t be able to ignore it.”
Marin raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a good person to have on my side. But will she fight for me? She doesn’t even know me.”
“No. But the other prisoner here is Ari’s mother.” Val winked. “Sit tight. Hold out as long as you can. Ariadne is coming. We just need to give her time.”
Marin said, “Okay. If you vouch for her, I’ll take your word for it. Oh, and Val?”