Wilder Animals

by Geonn Cannon

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gwen tried to disguise her shock at seeing who was on her doorstep, but she wasn’t a very good actress. “Oh. Miss Frye. Dale. I-I didn’t expect you…”

  “It was a bit of a surprise to me, too. May I come in?”

  “Yes, of course.” She stepped aside and ushered Dale into the house. “Ariadne isn’t with you?”

  Dale said, “She’s on her way. We’re in the middle of a case, and Ari thought that I’d be safer here.” Gwen closed the door and followed Dale into the living room. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” She stood in the doorway, rubbing her arm. “Um, please, have a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Dale went to the couch. “I wanted to stop by on Thanksgiving, but Ari said it wasn’t necessary. She said you two were pretty much sick of each other after the cabin.”

  “Right. Right.” She joined Dale in the living room and sat across from her in a wingback chair. She crossed one leg over the other and smoothed down the material. “Has she mentioned much about what happened up in the woods?”

  “Not really. She said it was a great experience and the two of you are closer than ever.”

  “Hum.” Gwen looked away, the expression on her face guarded.

  There was a knock on the door and Ari entered before Gwen could even start to get up. She looked between the two of them and lingered a moment on Dale’s expression.

  “You didn’t tell her.”

  “Tell me what?”

  Ari said, “Nothing. Never mind. Do you have the iPad?” Dale held it up. Ari went to the couch and sat next to Dale, taking the tablet and turning it on. As it booted up, she explained everything about the case to her mother and then filled in Dale on what she’d learned from Pearl. “So there’s another player, one who is willing to use people like the Creep Cousins to do his dirty work. Whatever he’s trying to hide is on this iPad.”

  She opened the notes folder and then went to the videos. She scrolled through until she found one that matched, and she clicked play. She recognized Tommy Carrow and Mike Murphy standing in an empty gym. The footage was shaky and often lost track of the principle characters, but it always managed to focus back on them eventually. They were talking but their voices were too low for the microphone to pick up individual words. Eventually Mike tapped Tommy on the arm and gestured with his chin. A third man entered, they chatted, and even though they were alone in a dark gym, they did their best to conceal what was changing hands.

  “Steroids,” Dale said.

  Ari nodded. “This is what Wilcox was using the blackmail Murphy and the others.” She closed the video and went back to the other options. “The guy giving them the drugs was too shadowed to see very well. He’s going to be on one of these other videos. He did something that made him worthy of blackmail. Now I just have to dig through and find it.”

  “Maybe he’s on one of the other Creep Cousin videos in better light. It could make it easier to figure out who is involved.”

  Ari nodded. “But until then, he knows we’re involved. I don’t want you to go back to the office until we know it’s safe.”

  Gwen said, “She can stay here as long as necessary.”

  Ari looked at Gwen as if she’d forgotten she was in the room. “That—”

  “That would be great,” Dale interrupted. “I’d love to stay here. Maybe Neka and Simon should be warned, too. The last time someone was pissed at you and couldn’t find you, they burned down the apartment.”

  “Right,” Ari said. “I’ll go call them right now.”

  She stood and left the room, pausing by her mother without saying anything before she continued on. Gwen watched her go and then sank back into her chair. Dale observed the women with concern, speaking only once she heard Ari on the phone in the other room.

  “Can I ask what the hell is going on? Ari says you two are closer than ever after the getaway, but she’s acting as skittish around you as ever. Worse, even. She’s acting the way she did during wolf manoth.”

  Gwen sighed and nodded. “Yes. I suppose the whole story about what happened in the woods isn’t as cut-and-dry as we were hoping to be. Ariadne and I are closer than we ever have been. For a while it was like her leaving never happened. We were truly a mother and pup.” She smiled wistfully. “Then I had to go and ruin it all.”

  “How?”

  Gwen sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I was stupid, Dale. I was very stupid. I let the wolf take over a bit too much and I spoke without thinking about the repercussions. With my bite, I basically made Ariadne a puppy again. The wolf she became was a newborn. We would roughhouse, fight, kill prey and then carry the bones around like trophies.” Dale wrinkled her nose and Gwen chuckled. “It’s not as disgusting as it sounds. It’s all very circle of life.”

  “I know. And I know Ari sometimes makes fresh kills when she goes on a run. But that doesn’t mean I want to picture her with some… animal in her mouth.”

  “I understand. And you have to understand what it’s like for a canidae mother and pup. We transform in front of one another. We’re frequently naked. In fact, most of our time spent in the woods, we didn’t bother to wear clothes.”

  Dale said, “Oh. Okay. So what happened, did you… I mean, was there a boy wolf up there?”

  “No,” Gwen said, “nothing like that. I’m only telling you this so you understand how things were. Ari and I were stripped bare in front of each other. The line between us and the wolf was very, very thin even when we were in human form. You might not have recognized either of us if you happened upon the scene. And when you’re in that element, sometimes things get said that you can’t take back.”

  Gwen said, “Sitting by the stream post-run.”

  Ari tossed her phone onto the couch. “We were naked, sweaty, and sitting next to each other on the rocks. It was the best day we’d ever had together. I remember looking at her, and her eyes were still gold. Like the wolf’s. That’s why I’m not letting it get to me, Mom. Because I know it wasn’t speaking for you. It was just being a stupid animal.”

  “Right,” Gwen said softly.

  “What did she say?” Dale asked.

  “‘You still smell like your human,’” Ari said. “‘You reek of it. You’re going to have to scrub long and hard to get that off if you want to be worthy of another wolf mounting you.’”

  Dale said, “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gwen looked at Dale. “You have to understand…”

  “I understand, Miss Willow.”

  Gwen said, “Dale… please. I asked…”

  “I know what you asked.” She shut off the iPad and held it to her chest. “I think we should go. We’ll find somewhere else to hide out.”

  She hooked her arm around Ari’s and let herself be led out of the house, not looking back. She was grateful she’d never called Gwen ‘mom.’ She would hate to have sullied the word with someone who would say something like that.

  #

  They drove back home in their separate vehicles to pack a bag, still undecided where they would run to. There was always Dale’s family cabin, although the last time they’d gone there hadn’t exactly been calming. Neka said she would stay with Simon for a few days, and Ari apologized for bringing potential danger into their lives. “Don’t even worry about it,” Neka assured her. “It’s kind of exciting. Besides, part of me doesn’t really believe anything bad will happen, so it’s kind of like a game.” She paused. “Don’t insist on making me see the reality of the situation, okay?” Ari promised, and insisted on thinking of a way to make it up to her.

  Dale was unusually silent while they packed. Ari kept looking over at her, hoping Dale would be prompted to say something, but finally Ari was the one forced to speak.

  “I know you probably feel betrayed by what she said…”

  “I don’t,” Dale said quietly. “I thought I was, back at the house, but driving over here, I realized she’s not the problem
. She’s old-school. She can be expected to have those kinds of thoughts.” She dropped a blouse into the suitcase and stared at it. “I thought about it while I was driving over here. Why you kept me away from her, why you wouldn’t tell me what happened or what she said until you absolutely had to. If it was just because of what she said, you would’ve been upfront about it. Instead you made sure to prove the wolf loved me. You set out to prove that nothing had changed after you were bitten. You wanted me to be absolutely sure you were the same Ariadne that left.”

  “I am,” Ari said softly.

  “I know. But I also know how you react to things, Ari.” She finally met Ari’s gaze. “You’re not mad at your mother for saying it. You’re mad because a part of you believed it. That’s what the whole ‘the wolf loves you’ thing was on Thanksgiving. And jumping me the moment we got back home. You were trying to prove to yourself that what she said didn’t matter.”

  Ari said, “And I did.”

  Dale crossed the room and ran her hands through Ari’s hair. “I don’t care if you have doubts about us. I’ve had my own doubts. I’m a human dating outside her species. There have been times when I’ve wondered what the hell we’re doing. But then I look at you, and I know. Do you know? When you look at me, do you know that you don’t need another wolf?”

  “Absolutely.” Ari put her arms around Dale. “I don’t want someone like Milo. I don’t want someone I can run with and hunt with. I want someone who will be there to hold me when I get home. I want someone who can take care of me, and who I can protect in return.” She looked around the apartment. “Not that I’m doing a very good job of that right now.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  Ari sighed. “We’re running away again. Hiding.”

  Dale said, “That’s the appropriate response when someone is hunting you.”

  “But is it the right response?” She sat on the edge of the bed. “If someone does come here looking for us, they’ll see we’re gone. And they… trash the place? Burn it to the ground like the hunters did with my apartment? How many homes are we going to lose because we’re hiding? This is our first home together. When we leave, I want it to be because we’re moving into the home you deserve, not because we were forced out.” She looked at the suitcase and stood up. “We’re not leaving.”

  “Ari…”

  “If they come for us, at least we’ll know who we’re dealing with. Neka is safe, and I’ll keep you safe from whatever happens.” She stood in front of Dale. “We’re not running. Not this time.”

  Dale took Ari’s hand, then nodded. She went to the suitcase and took out the clothes she had just packed. Ari breathed a sigh of relief and went to the small sliver of a window next to their bed. It looked out across the lawn at ankle height. Whoever was coming after Wilcox’s blackmail folder might know her name and what she looked like, he might know the name of her business and where she lived, but she was absolutely certain he didn’t know what the hell he was up against.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ari got the whiteboard from the kitchen, erased the grocery list, and propped it up on the coffee table. She hooked up the iPad to their printer and went to work grabbing images from the videos Wilcox had made that were labeled with the Creep Cousins’ initials, and printing out pictures of each one. She placed these on the boards and identified every video the men appeared in. Their dealer was unidentified, but she had a shadowy image of him taped to the top edge of the board as well.

  “Wilcox was so lazy with the rest of his life,” she said, “why does his blackmail scheme have to look like something out of The Da Vinci Code?”

  “Screwing you one last time,” Dale suggested.

  Ari snorted and went back to arranging the information. She didn’t want to change any of Wilcox’s labels, in case there was a system she hadn’t discovered yet, but she needed a way to keep track of everything. She copied the Cousins’ videos into a new folder where she could arrange them as she pleased. She arranged them by name, and then by date. She watched each one and took screen grabs of the dealer in each one. Wilcox had used a small, cheap camera which was hidden somewhere near one corner of the Flex gym. People were often decapitated by the shot, or represented solely by a hand or shadow that made it into frame. Their voices echoed off the bare walls and weight machines so much that it was often difficult to make out what was being said, but there was enough to convince a ruling committee that they should be disqualified from a competition.

  One of the videos had been made three days before Wilcox died. Ari clicked on it and put in her earbud. Someone moved in front of the camera as soon as the video began, a pair of legs crossing from left to right. The focus of the shot was on a corner of a boxing ring. The shadowy steroid dealer moved into frame followed by another muscular shadow.

  “This stuff is guaranteed to ‘pomp… you op’,” one of the Murphy brothers said, mimicking the Dana Carvey character from the eighties.

  “Just give me the cash. You’re not as entertaining as you think you are.”

  The Murphy brother grunted. The dealer was looking down at his hands, counting off money Ari assumed. He looked up and waved a handful of folded bills.

  “You’re short.”

  “You know I’m good for it next time.”

  Dealer: “Short means there’s not going to be a next time.”

  The other Murphy. “We had an emergency expense this week. It’s fine.”

  Dealer: “That private eye? I thought you bully boys were going to take care of him.”

  “We are.”

  “By paying him?”

  “It’s keeping the videos from ever seeing the light of day.”

  The dealer sighed. “This is the last delivery until you’re out of the crosshairs.”

  “You can’t do that!” That from a voice Ari didn’t recognize; she assumed Forrester or Carrow.

  “You’re putting me at risk here. The guy has pictures of you, then he has pictures of me.”

  Forrester again: “It’s not pictures. It’s video.”

  Murphy One: “How does that make it better?”

  The dealer said, “Just everyone shut up. Deal with the private eye or this is the last you’ll see of me. Understood?”

  “Right,” Murphy One said. “We’ll handle it.”

  Ari sighed and took out the earbud. Dale, who had been reading in the armchair, looked up. “Problem?”

  “No. Well. Maybe. I have to go talk to the guys I just sent to prison for attempted kidnapping.”

  Dale marked her place in the book. “Do you think they were involved?”

  Ari said, “I actually don’t. From what I’ve learned, they’re all bark and no bite. I think Wilcox would have pegged them the same way. He would have fought back even if all five came after him at once. The stun baton made Pearl back off immediately when I waved it at him. I think the others would be the same way. But according to this, the Cousins might have been watching Wilcox the last few days of his life. They might have seen something that can help.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Dale said.

  Ari nodded. “I’ll call Diana and see if she can set it up for tomorrow.” She rubbed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ve spent too long staring at the computer screen. I think I’m going to go out for a run.”

  “It’s a little early. Do you think it’s safe?”

  Ari went to the window and peered out, gauging the light left in the sky. “Yeah, I might be risking the dogcatcher if I go out now.”

  Dale looked at her watch. “Well, it’ll be full dark in about half an hour. What if I drove you out somewhere and dropped you off? The travel time would get you past sunset. Then you could run back and cover new ground.”

  “Sort of like a reverse of what we usually do.” She smiled. “I like it. It’ll give me a chance to see what the city’s traffic is like before I let the wolf free. We could go all the way up to Woodland Park.”

  “Are you sure you could get b
ack over the bridges?”

  Ari said, “Yeah, after dark it won’t be much of a problem.”

  Dale put down her book and sat up to put on her shoes. “We could do this more often, you know. I could dump you wherever you want and let the wolf find her way home. Since you don’t necessarily need me to come pick you up every time. The wolf might like the chance to run toward a destination instead of just traveling in a circle.”

  “She does like to track. And I think we have the neighborhood pretty well-covered.”

  The lights in Neka’s part of the house were dark when they left. Dale drove her north toward the bridge, then cut west along the shore of Lake Union to take Aurora into Fremont so Ari could see which route was busier and more likely to result in reports of a wolf wandering toward downtown. Her biggest fear was that some motorist would have a gun in their car and try to do the “heroic” thing. A wild animal loose in the city was a real threat, and the average citizen would have no way of knowing Ariadne from a threatening predator.

  When they reached the park, Dale found a secluded area to park near the tennis courts. There were rolling hills and tall trees, spacious enough for a good sprint but with just enough coverage to keep out of sight if someone happened by. It was as good a place as any for the wolf to run around before heading home. The sun had indeed gone down, and now the shadows had grown to cover most of the area around the car. Soon the overhead security lights would snap on. She scanned for any homeless or joggers or cyclists who might wander past as Ari climbed into the backseat. When she was certain the coast was clear, she twisted and looked back as Ari began to undress.

  “You sure you want to watch?”

  “It doesn’t hurt you anymore. Well, not as much. It’s part of who you are. I want to witness it as much as I can. Unless you don’t—”

  Ari said, “No. It’s fine with me.” She took Dale’s hand and squeezed. They both checked once more for witnesses as Ari pulled her feet up onto the seat. Dale wished she could turn on the overhead light, but she didn’t want to draw undue attention to what was happening. Ari pulled her arms in tight against her chest and rolled her head back, looking like a magician trying to escape a straitjacket. She pointed her chin toward the roof and thrust her chest forward before collapsing back. Her legs straightened out and then bent again.