The Wolf, page 20
“I can’t get you food quite yet. I thought I could, but it’s too dangerous. Everything’s shut down here until just after dark, so there are restricted areas I can’t get near without causing a problem.” He shrugged. “But as soon as the light is gone in the sky, I’ll take you back to Caldwell, and we can stop somewhere on the way.”
So they were out of town. “We don’t have to rush. Remember the situation you found me in? I need a little time to figure out where I can go that is safe. Who I can talk to. What… I’m going to do. How long can I stay here?”
Luke crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t stay here, but there’s another place we can go. For a limited period of time.”
Rio frowned. “Where I was when the nurse first came to me. In that basement with the fabric.”
“Yeah, you’ll be safe there. For one night. Maybe two—but it’s not a permanent solution.”
“It doesn’t have to be. And thanks… I owe you.”
There was a moment of silence—and in her head, for some insane reason, she saw herself hugging him; pictured the embrace so clearly, she could almost feel the warmth of his body against her own.
“Come on, back to bed,” he said in a low, resonant voice.
Like maybe he had gone there in his head, too.
In response, all she could do was nod—and follow him out into the corridor. As she was behind him, she felt free to look around, but she didn’t learn anything new. Still just a long, rough hallway with bulbs hanging from wires. No one around, no sounds that she could hear other than their footfalls.
When they were back inside the clinic area, she whispered, “Who is that patient?”
Her question was ignored as they passed by the hanging sheets, and then they were over to the bed she’d been in and he was offering her an arm to steady her balance as she lowered herself down. The incense had burned out, and he got some more from a drawer and lit it.
Pulling the blankets around her, she remembered back in the days when she was little and she’d had a cold. Her mother had been so good at taking care of her: Unlimited TV, bowls of ice cream to soothe a burning throat, anything she wanted to eat at any moment, cold compresses for a hot forehead. Under normal circumstances, things had been totally regimented in the household, all kinds of schedules of chores and homework, all expectations to be exceeded, or at worst merely met, failure never an option.
Her mom had been a whip-and-a-chair kind of parent, taming her two kids into virtuous human beings who went to church, did the rosary on the regular, and never talked back.
It had not been easy growing up in such an unforgiving way.
But one set of the sniffles and a slightly elevated temperature? The whole house of demanding cards went into a free fall.
Total pampering.
Sometimes, usually after grades came out and Rio got a shellacking and a half for the two Bs she always got (math and Spanish), she would deliberately go out and get a chill or head over to a friend’s house if they’d missed some school in the previous week because of a flu.
She had needed the reassurance, the comfort, even if it had been unconnected to the offense of her not being perfect.
“Are you okay?” Luke asked.
So quiet. Just her breathing and the soft crackle of the incense getting started.
“I didn’t see my life,” she whispered. “When I knew he was going to kill me. I thought… I was supposed to see my life, you know?”
Luke stood over her, looming and silent. Then he said, “That’s because you’re a survivor. Survivors like us, we stay in the present.”
“Everyone says you see your life. Right before you die.”
“And how many dead people you talk to lately?”
Rio blinked. And then smiled. “Good point. And I guess I wasn’t dying. Maybe that’s when it happens.”
Luke winced. Then looked away. Looked back. “Move over a little.”
She stared up at him in confusion. “What?”
“You need someone right now. I’m not much, but I don’t see that you have any other options.”
Actually… he was wrong. He was more than enough—and that made her nervous. “Okay,” she said.
Rio groaned as she pushed her body over, and then the mattress, such as it was, tilted to one side—and Luke had stretched out next to her.
Before she could form a coherent thought, she cleaved to his big, warm body, curling against him. With a quick shift, he settled her head on his arm.
“I can hear your heart beat,” she murmured.
“So I have one. Good to know.”
“Where do you get your cologne?”
“Cologne? I don’t wear any.”
Guess it was fabric softener, she thought as she wondered where he did his laundry.
Her eyes drifted around the room, casing the empty beds, the boxes and supplies, the draping around the other patient. From time to time, there were clunks deep in the inside of the building, the low percussive noises like the settling of cold in metal supports or air going through old pipes.
“I really am thankful you came when you did,” she whispered. “I wasn’t going to make it without you.”
There was a period of silence, and then the rumble of Luke’s voice reverberated up out of his rib cage and into her ear. Into her mind. Into her… soul.
“He deserved what he got,” he growled.
Rio propped her head up on Luke’s pec. His chin was so near and his lips were so… full. Above his cheeks, his eyes were closed, and his lashes were long and thick. He looked remarkably at peace considering how aggressive his voice was.
“Do you shave twelve times a day?” she murmured.
Those lips twitched in one corner. “Mind if I ask where that came from?”
Bringing her arm up, she touched his jaw with her forefinger, brushing it softly. “So smooth. I’ve never met a man with dark hair who didn’t have a five o’clock.”
“How many men have you met and gotten close enough to, to see their beard?”
“Five o’clock shadows are not state secrets.”
“Sorry, did that come out bad?”
“Depends on your definition of bad. You sounded jealous.”
There was another pause. And then those lashes lifted, revealing glowing golden eyes that were so brilliant and hot, they were like the sun itself.
He focused on her. “Maybe I am.”
* * *
Lucan had spent a lot of years not giving a shit about anything or anybody, including himself. Being in prison for your mere existence kind of turned you into a dissociative sonofabitch—assuming it didn’t make you a confirmed misanthrope.
Mis-lycan-thrope, in his case.
So it was kind of… surprising, in a fuck-me sort of way… that he found himself wanting to reassure this human woman.
And do other things to her.
“Is that a problem,” he asked. Even though he knew he wasn’t telling her the full truth about himself. Any truth, really.
But he was sure she had secrets of her own, and that was the nature of the drug trade. You took people at face value and protected yourself. It was a rule so fundamental, it didn’t have to be spoken.
Survivors, both of them. And as he’d said, that meant you stayed in the present. On every level.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not a problem.”
Lucan closed his eyes because he didn’t want her to see into him and find out how aroused he was. Where his thoughts had gone. Where his hands wanted to go.
She moved up higher on his torso. “You want me to prove it?”
“Prove what?”
He lifted his lids again. She was so close now, he could see the flecks in her brown eyes.
“That it’s okay if you’re jealous?” she murmured.
“Does it involve my mouth?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“The way you’re staring at my lips right now.” He reached up and brushed her damp hair back. “So do you want to do something about this? Or ignore it. It’s your choice.”
“If I understand what you’re talking about, it’s a two-sided thing. You also get to choose.”
His eyes locked on her mouth. “Oh, I’ve already made my decision.”
There was a pause. Then Rio moved up a little higher on his chest. As she lowered her head to kiss him, she closed her eyes, and he liked that. It was as if she wanted to concentrate everything she had on the contact.
Lucan did the same, his lids shutting.
He expected her to be bold. She wasn’t—but she wasn’t timid, either. Her mouth brushed over his, and he relished the sensation, the velvet, the warmth. Except he was a greedy asshole. They might be only kissing, but in his mind, they were naked and he was mounting her, finding his way in between her thighs until—
The sound was far off, a banging noise. A door slamming? Then there were footfalls coming fast.
Rio’s head lifted, and they both looked across the cluttered storage room.
“There’s a gun under the bed,” he told her. “Stay here by the incense. Do not leave this mattress.”
Lucan moved quickly, rolling her free of him and then covering her up. He took two steps forward and doubled back.
Kissing her quick, he vowed, “We’re going to pick up where we left off. Sometime before I take you back.”
She started to say something, but he took off before she could speak, pausing only by a stack of folded clothes to pull on a fresh sweatshirt. At the door into the corridor, he listened before opening things up, braced to attack. Then he swung the heavy panel open.
Out in the hall… there was a rhythmic pounding, and the shit was getting louder.
Stepping out, he closed the storage room’s door behind him—
Mayhem rounded the corner at a run. “You’ve got problems,” the prisoner said as he came to a halt.
You have no idea, Lucan thought.
“The Executioner’s been looking for you since dawn. It took me this long to break away without being trailed.”
“Why? I checked in. I returned my weapon.”
“I don’t know what the problem is, but you better show your face before the guards make a serious effort to find you.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
The two of them jogged away, heading for the corner Mayhem had bolted around.
When they’d taken the left, Lucan grabbed the other male’s arm. “You better go your separate way now.”
“Fuck that. There might be a reward. Besides, if I turn you in, I don’t look like I’m with you. It’s self-preservation—and a good decoy for you in case things get complicated with your little secret.”
“Excellent point.”
They continued on, making fast work of the ins and outs of the basement. It had taken Lucan about three weeks on-site before he knew the way around the multi-layered underground. So many wide lanes and smaller offshoots, with all kinds of rooms and larger spaces. The architect who’d designed the building had clearly known that there were things that had to be hidden, truths that compassionate healers did not want their vulnerable patients to know.
Like the fact that three morgues had been required to handle the number of dead who’d apparently needed processing.
Down at the very far end of the basement, he and Mayhem got to a fire door that was brand-new, and punching through, they went up two flights of stairs. Without saying a word, they both passed in front of another fire barrier.
There were three subterranean levels, and this middle one was where the prisoners bunked. Above that? Party time.
On Lucan’s nod, they ascended another two flights, and stopped again.
“You ready?” Lucan said.
“Born ready, wolven.”
On the far side of another fresh-as-a-daisy fire door, Lucan smelled the cocaine in the air, dry and tingling, like it was radioactive fallout in the nose and down the back of the throat.
This was the business level, where the processing happened behind doors that were locked with copper and guarded with guns. At the moment, however, there was nothing getting cut, weighed, and parceled out into packets in the workrooms, the prisoners still in their sleep cubicles, all checked in. After nightfall, they’d be woken up, fed, and forced to come up here to work the job they were being kept alive to do.
Sadly, this building really was perfect for what they needed. The Command, now dead, had had it all planned out, but had been killed just as the move from the old location was happening.
Which was how the Executioner had declared himself ruler of the prison camp.
On that note, Lucan started walking past the product rooms, toward a wall of fresh Sheetrock about twenty feet across and ten feet tall. The expanse was both new—and stained: All along its flat plane, there were pegs set at intervals, with greasy straps that hung loose and ready for further service. Behind the beating posts, that Sheetrock had soaked in the blood that had flowed—and you could smell it, too. The whole area was air-stained with both the plasma bouquet of torture and the new-built-house perfume of chalk and sweet pine.
As they closed in on the Executioner’s private quarters, the pair of guards on either side of the inset door palmed up their guns.
Unlike during the Command’s era, they were members of a private guard, hired to maintain order—as opposed to culled from the prison population.
“I’ll let him know you found him,” the one on the left said.
The steel door set into the Sheetrock opened and closed.
“You can go,” Lucan muttered to Mayhem. “I’ll make sure you get your reward—”
He caught the scent first, and it was the kind of thing that made the nape of his neck prickle.
Letting his head fall back, he breathed in deep. And then a howl started to curl in his gut and rise up out of his throat.
The sound of his people was cut off as the recessed steel door opened once again.
The black-clothed figure that emerged had a bald head and narrow, calculating eyes. And the male was carrying something in his arms, something that was large and furred—and limp as a rug rolled up in itself.
The head and forepaws dangled off to one side, the back paws and tail to the other.
The Executioner threw the dead wolf at Lucan’s feet.
“I believe this is one of yours,” he announced.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When the door to the makeshift clinic area opened, Rio sat up. “Luke—”
The man who stepped inside was not him. And the way that harsh face snapped in her direction… made her wish that she had pretended to be asleep. She didn’t need to know him for it to be clear that being alone with someone like this should come with a Surgeon General’s warning.
As his eyes narrowed, he took a step toward her and his upper lip peeled off his front teeth.
Which exposed tremendous teeth, teeth that surely had been cosmetically—
Rio scrambled to remember where Luke had told her that gun was. Under the bed. It was under the bed.
She lunged forward, diving under the mattress—
In some kind of Matrix-like time bend, the man somehow managed to cross the entire room in the blink of an eye: Just as she felt the cool barrel under her hand, a rough grip locked on the back of her head, right where she’d been hurt, the pain blinding her and rendering her limp and paralyzed.
As her vision went checkerboard, she had a split second’s clear sight of the nine millimeter.
Rio cursed as he pulled her up by the hair, grabbed her around the throat, and hauled her bodily off the bed until her feet dangled. Slamming her against the wall, he put his face directly into hers and smiled like a demon.
Fangs. He had fangs.
Or rather, they looked like fangs.
“Fucking Lucan,” he snapped while she began to choke and claw at his hold. “He’s complicating shit he needs to leave well enough alone. So I’m going to take care of you for him—”
“Stop.”
The word was spoken so softly, Rio could barely hear it above the ringing in her ears. But the man who was aggressing on her, with those canine-like teeth, whipped his head in the direction of the draped patient bed.
“Let her… go.”
The voice was so weak, yet its effect was like that of a shotgun to the man’s temple. As those hostile eyes seemed to pierce the fragile barrier strung from the ceiling, his whole body went as immobile as hers felt.
“Now.”
Her manhandler cursed. And then he—
“Gently.” There was a pause. “No matter her origins, she is a patient, as I am.”
Rio’s feet touched down toes first. Then the balls and arches made contact with the floor, and finally, her soles. After that, the man with all the teeth took her arm and settled her back down on the bed—and he didn’t let go until she could hold herself up while she gasped for air.
When she was steady, he turned away and went over to the curtains, pulling a flap aside and disappearing into the interior.
Even though she was still getting her breath back, Rio snapped into action, falling to the floor and grabbing the gun under the bed. Her hands were shaking—until she saw how much the weapon was moving back and forth.
A quick shot of self-preservation stilled things. Calmed her down. Cleared the panic from her head.
With a tingling adrenaline rush, she rose to her feet, braced and ready to bolt.
Nothing but murmuring now, from that hidden bed: Two voices, deep and low… were having an argument, like the one who’d gone Popeye on her was getting reprimanded.
“What the hell,” she muttered.
The boots she’d had on were right next to her on the floor, and she put them on one-handed, keeping the butt of the gun in her palm. As she futzed with the laces, she kept checking the curtain over and over again, bobbing her now-throbbing head up and down.
If one more fricking person hit her in the back of the skull, she was going to lose it.
Probably literally. When her brains leaked out of her goddamn ears.
Back on her feet, she focused on the makeshift clinic’s door. It didn’t matter that she had no clue where she was. A nine millimeter was a helluva map, wasn’t it—and she didn’t want to wait for Luke to come back. He was a complicating factor when he just couldn’t be.
