No, I couldn’t believe that was my only option.
I had to tell her. I had to tell her soon, too, especially with how quickly these feelings were growing inside me. I’d rather nip them in the bud before they grew too strong, if she rejected me. I didn’t think I could handle building a life, in any sense of the word, with someone, only to have it ripped away as soon as I told them my secret.
I’d do it. As soon as this was over, I’d tell her I was a shifter. I’d even show her if she asked.
Away from prying eyes, of course. And definitely not with a cell phone nearby. Having a video of me, or my transformation, floating around would be decidedly bad.
And I didn’t care what Peter Frost, or any of the pack said about my decision, either. If they rejected my telling her, then I’d do the same thing the old man had when he met my mom. I’d just leave the company—leave the pack. If that was what it came down to, I’d do it.
I realized, then, that the apple apparently didn’t fall far from the tree between father and son.
“Happy, Dad?” I asked the ceiling. “Guess your son’s willing to follow in your footsteps after all.”
Fully clothed, I lay back on the bed but didn’t crawl beneath the covers. I wanted to stay frosty, and you can’t do that with your socks or shoes off, in my experience. So I lay back on the cushion, closed my eyes against the brightness of the overhead light fixture, and thought about my dad and all the things he’d never told me.
Sometimes I pictured him up there, watching down over me. Over us. Me, Peter, the whole crew. I hoped they had elk in heaven, or wherever shifters went. If we went anywhere at all. I’d like to imagine him bringing home a big elk steak for Mom to throw on the grill, or a tenderloin for her to pop in the oven every now and then. That way she could share in the bounty and he could taste it without being in his wolf form. As much as I loved the taste of the gamy meat fresh off a kill, there was still something to be said for salt and pepper and a good sear on both sides. Also, potatoes. I couldn’t imagine living without potatoes forever. It almost made me feel sorry for the wolves that couldn’t become human.
I drifted off after a little while, my mind bobbing along in the currents of slumber, coming in and going out as the night sounds of the forest surrounded us. I heard the critters moving in the underbrush around the cabin, the deer scratching their antlers on the trunks of the pine trees.
Somewhere, in the far, far distance, I even imagined that I heard a lone wolf calling out for its pack, a tearful cry as it searched for its companions and asked them to come join his hunt. Barely conscious, I smiled.
“You’ll find them, buddy,” I whispered to no one in particular as I rolled over onto my side. “You’ll find them.”
Chapter Thirty-four – Jessica
I’d never been so over the moon in my entire life. Richard looked at me the way any woman would dream to have someone look at her. My toes curled just from the thought of having his strong arms around me again, to feel his fingers intertwined with mine, to feel those soft lips of his crushing against mine.
But, here I was, alone in a strange bed, without even my two pups to keep me company. And not him.
Protocol, he’d said. Which, on one level, I totally understood. I mean, he worked in a serious business, and he was in the middle of doing something serious: protecting me and keeping me from harm’s way. In situations like this, I figured, it was always best to follow protocol.
It didn’t mean it didn’t suck, though!
Here we were, locked away in the mountains in a cozy, warm cabin. Just the two of us. No one coming up here for days to check on us. This should be a lovebird’s nest, especially with the way we both clearly felt about one another.
Of course, sleeping in seperate rooms was the proper thing to do for more than one reason. I’d always been a good girl, not like Sheila or Karen. I’d never had a one night stand, hadn’t even thought about it. It wasn’t like I was pure as the driven snow or virginal or anything. My boyfriends and I had slept together. I wasn’t a total prude or saving myself for marriage, but I preferred to take things slow. A lot of baggage, from both parties, came along with sex. And, even at my relatively young age, I knew it wasn’t always casual.
Which made these feelings about Richard Murdoch even more maddening! I didn’t want to take it slow with him; I wanted to have him tear my clothes off, wanted to see how his muscles felt beneath the palms of my hand, the nails at the end of my fingers. There was just something animalistic in the need consuming me.
I grabbed my pillow, flipped it over to the cooler side, and plopped my head back down on it as I ran through the evening in my head, a frustrated smile playing over my lips. Had he really offered to become an investor of the Curious Turtle? Did he really understand what kind of money he was talking about or the commitment involved?
I didn’t know, but something about the idea rang true to me, rang as true as the feeling of his lips on mine for the first time. He seemed to be aware of what he was offering, of how huge it was. If he was, and if I could somehow get Wyatt to be willing to sell, my problems could be solved.
Who was I kidding? They wouldn’t be solved. Not just in one fell swoop. Richard’s investment would pull my ass completely out of the fire, though, and get me back into a position where I could think about how to build the gallery and make it more profitable.
Looking at it objectively as I lay there in bed tossing and turning, I realized the reason I’d never pushed myself was because I’d become comfortable. I knew that Blake Axelrod would bail me out if I got too deep. He’d had the money, and he’d had the desire to keep the gallery open. No matter what, even if Richard could invest in the Curious Turtle, I knew his money wasn’t infinite. I’d be forced to really buckle down, focus on making it a thriving business interest if I wanted him to get his money’s worth.
Then it hit me—the enormity of what I was considering. This was, in a weird way, a bigger concern than whether or not I liked the guy and found him attractive. I was thinking about whether or not I’d let him invest in my business. That was practically like getting married, wasn’t it? Or maybe even more serious! Look at what was happening with Wyatt Axelrod and his brood. I’d gotten into bed financially with his uncle, not him. That was like some kind of ancient biblical ruling, where a brother had to marry his sister-in-law if his brother passed away, and provide for his children.
Even with this little thought ricocheting inside my brain, somehow, none of it bothered me. I couldn’t explain why, but somehow the idea just felt right. Could it have been because of some sort of post-kiss hormonal booster shot I’d received? Was that why I was so excited about the prospect of sharing a business with Richard Murdoch?
I flipped onto my back.
Was he like this, too? Tossing and turning in the night, as frustrated as I was that we couldn’t be together? That our bodies couldn’t find one another in the darkness? I liked to imagine he was. That way he’d be sharing the same attraction as me.
Eventually, though, I did drift off, visions of Richard dancing in my head. Visions of what we could make the Curious Turtle into, given enough time and will. They were good dreams, encouraging dreams, empowering dreams. And, I won’t lie, one of them was a little naughty.
That dream, though, certainly didn’t involve an art gallery.
Chapter Thirty-five – Peter
Midnight.
A strong, hot wind blew up from the southwest and drove the clouds across the moon like he was in a 1950s creature-feature film. The only difference? Peter Frost was the creature, and he was just fine with it.
Peter called Deacon Portage when he was about an hour outside of town, and had him meet him at the hotel. After a brief handshake and a little small talk about how long the drive had been, Deacon led him out to the burnt farmhouse just outside Edmond. They pulled up in separate cars, their tires crunching to a halt on the gravel and dirt road that led up to the skeleton of a building that had been left behind.
Even in the old Bronco he could smell the char and smoke that hung over the area. He climbed out of the car and slammed the heavy door shut as Deacon climbed out of his car.
“This is it,” Deacon said. “About what you expected from the pictures?”
“Just about,” Peter said as he looked his old military buddy up and down. The years hadn’t exactly been kind to Deacon, but they hadn’t been too hard on him, either. He was a family man now, from Peter’s understanding, and he’d put on the weight of a comfortable, happy man. He wouldn’t look out place at a little league baseball or peewee football game anywhere in the country.
Peter couldn’t blame him, either. If he’d been normal, he probably would’ve done the exact same thing after the service. Found love, gotten married, had a whole litter of kids that looked just like him. Maybe even join law enforcement like Deacon, or some other job with a little risk, but not too much. Just enough to keep his heart thumping every now and then, and still give him an excuse to go for a light jog every morning.
But Peter wasn’t normal. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
“Get any weird reports in the area that night?” Peter asked as he walked up to the edge of the crime scene tape that was taped up in a cross-formation over the front entrance.
“Nope,” Deacon replied. “Just a call from a neighbor who’d been driving by on the farm road, saw the flames licking the sky.”
“That high, huh? Must be almost a mile to the road from here.”
“Just a little over,” the police officer replied. “Managed to get the volunteer fire department out here, but they couldn’t do much. Building was so far gone, and there aren’t exactly hydrants this far out.”
Peter looked it up and down. Even in the dark, he could tell the building was blackened to the beams. There was no salvaging anything from the farmhouse. It was gone. Entirely gone.
And, just at the fringes of his sense of smell, he could sense that same cloying fragrance as his parents’ farm. Barely. Just barely.
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Promise you ain’t gonna tell anyone?”
“Promise, Deacon. Want me to swear on someone’s grave?”
“Depends. Whose grave you got in mind?”
“Shut up, Deacon, and let me in.”
“You owe me one for this,” he said as they approached the burnt building. “You know that, right?”
“Thought this was you paying me back,” Peter said as they stepped up to the front entrance and Deacon began to tear down one of the strips of police tape. The smell was even stronger here, pushing its way into his nose and mouth like it was trying to waterboard him with its oily fragrance. Herbs, wolfsbane, burnt hair, and meat.
Deacon and Peter turned on the mag lights they’d each brought. Peter didn’t really need his, but his friend didn’t know anywhere close to the full truth about him, or his ilk. He didn’t want to look like some kind of biological oddity traipsing around with just the moon to see by, taking in all the details of a darkened crime scene with his sensitive eyes.
“About what time did it start?” Peter asked. “Any idea?”
“Fire investigator can’t say for certain, since the building was almost completely consumed by the time the firefighters got here.”
Peter, not for the first time since he’d gotten the call, wished he had decided to bring along Matthew Jones, their arson expert. He’d been a firefighter and done some serious arson investigation himself for a few years before Peter and Richard had found him in the news, a giant wolf saving children from a burning house, and scooped him up from his job. But Matthew was currently out on a job in Denver, and Peter couldn’t exactly scoop him up on a non-paying gig with their resources already being so thin.
Besides, Peter didn’t want to tell his pack about any of this. Not yet. Not until he knew more. And, as much as loved and trusted Matthew like a brother, he’d never ask him to the carry that burden of dishonesty. Not unless he absolutely had to.
“Round about time, then? Estimate?”
“Sometime after midnight is the best guess,” Deacon replied as they moved through the entrance of the small house, their mag lights shining on the floor as they picked their way through the blackened remains. “But, like I said, still just a guess.”
Richard nodded, sweeping his flashlight in an arc over the ruins as they turned the corner, the wind blasting against the side of the place and sending a whole creaking sensation through the foundation.
“How stable is this, you think?” Deacon asked warily, his voice suddenly just above a whisper as he looked around at the creaking timbers.
“Wouldn’t recommend trying to climb the walls or anything,” Peter replied. “Or sticking around longer than we have to.”
Deacon nodded. “Yeah.”
This whole place made Peter uneasy and sick to his stomach. Every ounce of him told him to run from this place as memories of his old homestead pushed to the forefront of his mind. He realized he’d forgotten to breathe at one point, and had to consciously remind himself to suck in air before he passed out.
“Where’d they find the bodies again?”
“Back room. Follow me.” Deacon led him through the living room with its burnt rug; blackened, teetering fireplace that was about to come crashing down; and dead husk of a couch burnt to a cinder. They passed the kitchen and went down a little hallway that led back to the bedrooms and bathroom.
Peter swallowed, his nerves frayed and on edge. Even Deacon, who wasn’t having the olfactory onslaught he was having, seemed skittish about this place. He didn’t blame Deacon, either. They were walking through a murder scene, after all, at midnight under moonlight. It was spooky as all fucking hell no matter what you were, shifter or human.
As they moved down the hall to the back of the house, the smell of the burnt herbs grew stronger, along with the smells of hair and flesh crackling on the bone.
“Up there,” Deacon said, pointing to the second-to-last door on the right. It hung shut against the frame, but had visible axe strikes against it. “The firefighters cut it down to get to them. Too late, of course.”
Peter stopped next to Deacon. “Not coming in with me?” he asked his friend.
“Fuck no. I always hated shit like this, and you know it. If it was anyone but you, I’d have told him to fuck off and go to hell before I came out here.”
Peter took a deep breath and let out a sigh. He’d always hated shit like this, too. Poking through rubble, looking for evidence of who’d been behind burnings and bombings. At least here, the corpses were already cleared. In the SEALs he’d still sometimes get asked to come in right after an incident, and the blood would be on the walls and the screams would fill the air. But when you were a SEAL you changed the way you dealt with the world, at least on the outside. It wouldn’t do to have an elite soldier freezing up while in the field or during a situation like that. Especially not when they were an example to all the other soldiers around them.
He’d been able to keep his feelings in check then. Here it was different. Here, he was facing something that wasn’t half a world away from his home, happening to people he didn’t know. Here, he was facing one of the worst memories of his life, just replicated. It was like a nightmare had leaped from his brain fully formed and taken up residence on this little farm in southern Oklahoma.
He walked up to the door and sniffed lightly at the light breeze coming through at the edges. It was just like he’d remembered. The oily smell seemed to claw its way down into his lungs and slither into his belly, coating the inside of his nose and throat. Definitely wolfsbane. Definitely.
Peter pushed the door and it easily swung open with a low creak. The room had been a bedroom before, a master bedroom, Peter figured, from the king-size bed dominating the far wall. Rather, what was left of the king-size bed. One of the load-bearing beams of the house had tumbled from the rafters and crashed into the middle of the floor. The chest of drawers to the l
eft was a burnt hulk of wood, a woman’s vanity to the right nothing more than a blackened grave marker for a woman who would never again use it.
He stepped through the doorway with a shudder, the blackened wood that had tumbled from the ceiling crunching beneath his feet with each step as he trespassed into the deceased couple’s sacred space. This had been their marital bedroom, maybe the place they’d consummated their entire relationship. Who knew?
The realization didn’t help Peter’s feelings about the situation, even if he was here to investigate their murders. He walked around the beam that had tumbled from the rafters, stopped at the foot of the bed, turned to the south wall, and began to search for something he’d noticed was missing from the crime scene photos Deacon had sent him earlier that day.
“They found them in here?” Peter asked, looking to the north wall.
“Yeah,” Deacon said from the hallway, still refusing to step foot into the room. “Laid out on the floor, next to the bed, I think. Mutilated, like they had meatball surgery performed on them.”
That sounded exactly like Peter remembered it. Bodies practically destroyed, then burned. The only saving grace of the whole matter was knowing that the victims hadn’t been burned alive. They’d just been forced to endure the pain of their initial deaths. They’d been laid out, their corpses forced to wait as the flames consumed their homes, then their motionless bodies.
“Four, right?” he asked, glancing back at his old friend through the open doorway.
Deacon Portage nodded solemnly. “Four. Husband, wife, teenage son, baby daughter. A fucking infant. A baby girl, not much younger than my youngest. Can you believe that shit, Pete? What kind of monsters do this sort of thing?”
Peter nodded as he turned around in the room, his flashlight staying just behind where his eyes were really looking. “No signs? Or symbols, though? That you found, I mean?”
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