Cool Hand (5 page)

“I understand things happen to women in the military.” She hurried on as I started to frown. “Also that combat experiences affect women badly. And how some unscrupulous groups recreate the sense of regulation to take advantage of the institutionalization of some veterans.”

“Whoa, Mom. Hold it. Please.” I reached across and took her hands. “Listen. I wasn’t raped in the army. I loved my life in the unit. Yes, there was something that happened in combat, but like all the operational stuff in my unit, I can’t tell you anything about it. I wish I could, but I can’t.” I felt a prickle of sweat on my brow. This was getting close. “I can’t say it hasn’t permanently affected me, and it’s part of the reason I’m living an…unconventional lifestyle. But I’m okay with that. And I’m not in the clutches of some weird cult. Honestly.”

She squeezed my hands, tears glistening in her eyes. I felt them too. I wanted so much to tell her everything, knowing she’d find a way to reassure me it would all end up well.

“I know how hard this is for you,” I said. “Believe me, it’s hard for me, too. I know I don’t say it often enough, but thanks for just being you. Thanks for going and reading up and finding ways to fix your crazy daughter.”

She managed a smile at that. “You’re so strong,” she said. “I’m worried I’m no use to you any more.”

“Mom, if I’m strong, it’s because you always were.”

“I wasn’t strong. When Blane died, you were always the one—”

“No. All I did was work hard. I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t known there was something there to work for. Us. I knew you were there, all the time, holding us together.”

It hurt that she was so upset, and it hurt even worse that I couldn’t do anything about it, and the feeling that the distance would grow between us, unless I could tell her.

I couldn’t tell her, and I wasn’t going to outright lie either. The best I could do at the moment was to control the flow of bad news.

I took our cups for a refill while she sat there. I glanced across and saw sympathy in Pia’s watchful eyes.

The whole situation made me angry, and even more in favor of Emergence. If I could explain to Mom about being Athanate and the changes I’d gone through, at least she’d know the reasons why I was acting the way I was.

“That wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about,” she said when I returned.

I suspected that there was only one other topic that would be on her mind, and I was right.

“What’s happened between you and Kathleen?”

“We had a discussion about her recent behavior. It’s best if we don’t talk to each other. Same goes for talking about each other.”

“It’s not just that. She’s stopped talking to me as well.”

I shrugged and avoided her eye.

As far as I was concerned, that was an improvement on spreading lies about me, but it would be upsetting for Mom. I knew I should be more upset, that I should do something, but Kath had gone too far.

“I think she’s drinking again.”

She never stopped
, I thought.
Just drinks less sometimes
.

It’d never gotten to be a problem at her work, but I’d been aware for a long time that she drank too much.

Despite my silence, Mom knew what I was thinking. “No, Amber, listen to me. She went through this once before. It was just after you left to go into the army. She was so upset about that and she fell in with the wrong crowd.”

“She snapped out of it,” I said. However badly she’d fallen behind in her schoolwork that year after I’d joined the army, her final results were excellent.

Despite my outward indifference, this conversation was upsetting me, and I could see Pia was picking up on that, shifting nervously in her seat. This wasn’t at all what Bian had suggested I should be doing.

Why was it so annoying? Because I didn’t want to be concerned. I didn’t want to care about whatever mess my sister was making of her life. And it wasn’t quite that easy.

“Or maybe you talked her out of it, last time,” I added as an afterthought.

“I had the chance then, because she lived at home. I never got to the bottom of it all, but I know it was something that was set off by your leaving.”

“All my fault, then?” the demon in my throat said childishly.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Pia take a call.

“No!” Mom said. “Stop that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it.”

Mom took a deep breath. “It wasn’t your fault, but she missed her big sister so much she made some bad decisions.”

And when her big sister came back, what did she do? Made even worse decisions.

“Mom, she’s a grown woman now. I’m not my sister’s keeper.” I felt awful for saying it. Not for Kath, but for Mom. “I’m not responsible for her. She’s done everything she could to drive me away.”

“But can’t you see? She was so worried, she got that nice psychiatrist you’re seeing—”

“No!” I snapped. “She had me abducted off the street—”

“Amber!” Mom’s face stopped me from blurting out everything that had happened. Waking up strapped down to a gurney with that ‘nice psychiatrist,’ Dr. Noble, leering at me.

“It was just a deprogramming treatment he recommended. They didn’t abduct you really. You’re upset and you’re exaggerating. Kath was only doing what she thought was best for you.”

I was upset, but I wasn’t exaggerating, and I couldn’t talk about this anymore.

“I wasn’t seeing Dr. Noble about psychiatric issues. And he wasn’t nice in any sense of the word.”

Pia had finished her call. She stood and tapped her watch.

“Mom, I’ve got to go,” I said. There were tears in her eyes again, and that hurt. It hurt even more that she was trying to hide how upset she was from me.

However upset I’d been today, I loved her and my heart ached. I needed to fix this, but I couldn’t until I got out from under everything else, and maybe not even then.

“I’ll talk to Kath when I can, but that’s not going to be soon.”

I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Or maybe I did. I didn’t want to talk to Kath, and I wanted soon to mean any time up to the slow, cold death of the sun. I’d made it worse by saying that; it would have been better to say nothing. I was losing the art of talking to my own mother. Did all Athanate go through this?

Right now, I had Naryn to worry about.

“I’m sorry,” I said, which felt completely inadequate. “Love you.” I gave her a kiss. It made me even more miserable.

I had to turn my back on her tears.

We met Jen and Julie coming back, turned them around and trotted to the car.

I turned my cell back on. Missed calls, one of them from Agent Ingram.

I grimaced. He’d want some payback for releasing Keith and talking to Mom. I was okay with that.

It had become clear to me that Ingram was considerably more senior in the FBI than he let on. Diana had identified him as a possible ally in the plans for Emergence—someone who could get us meetings with senior levels of law enforcement, and ultimately to a meeting with the president. I needed to keep him happy, but there wasn’t much more I could do without Diana.

A couple of calls from Olivia about an hour ago.

The other call was from Ricky, Olivia’s lover, and it was followed by a text message.

URGENT! CALL ME!

As well as being Alex’s friend, Ricky was one of Felix Larimer’s lieutenants, and an urgent message from him was something I needed to respond to. Beyond that, I also felt I owed him. I’d encouraged Alex’s secretary, Olivia, to act on her feelings for Ricky, and then Alex and I had recruited Olivia into our pack, which had to have put Ricky in an awkward position with Felix. It hadn’t been intentional; Olivia was one of those werewolves who were unable to change and I’d promised to help her. That, and her being present when Alex and I formed a pack, had sealed the deal for her.

Pia was driving, so I had time to call Ricky. Whatever was urgent wouldn’t trump explaining myself to Naryn, would it?

“It’s Olivia,” he said immediately when I called. “She’s in danger.”

Pia had just taken the car up the ramp onto the interstate. I signed her to keep it slow; we might be coming right back off.

“Tell me,” I said to Ricky.

“She got into an argument with some of the pack.”

“They wouldn’t hurt her, would they?”

Pack on pack? They were rough with each other, but not dangerously so. And which idiot in the pack would antagonize Ricky?

“They wouldn’t have, but she panicked. She couldn’t get hold of you or Alex, I’m out of town, and Felix and Silas are busy.”

“Where did she go, Ricky?”

“Nick Gray.”

I laughed. “Good call. She’ll be fine. Nick won’t let anyone hurt her.” It’d take a lot of pack members to threaten the skinwalker. His Kodiak bear form must have weighed in at half a ton.

“No, it’s not good.”

I knew this was only going to get me into more trouble, but Olivia was part of my Were pack and my Athanate House. I couldn’t ignore this.

“Tell me where to go,” I said, “then explain why it’s a problem while we get there.”

Talking pack issues made me open my Were senses. I’d kept them suppressed, afraid that it’d trigger something in me. Opening up, I got an immediate touch on my pack’s Call.

The Call was a communication that a pack shared. It had a vague sense of direction, and emotions leaked through it. Emotions like the fear that Olivia was feeling at this moment. And Nick was there too; more a presence than an emotion, but touching me through the Call.

Ricky’s voice distracted me. He gave me the address of an apartment building next to the railroad tracks in Arvada, not half a mile from where Detective Clayton had been killed in his single-wide last week. Luckily, we were already heading in the right direction. It felt right in the Call as well.

Pia fed the address into the GPS, while Jen called Bian to tell her what was happening. I winced as I imagined Naryn’s reaction.

“Okay, we’re on our way,” I said to Ricky. “Now, what’s this all about?”

“It started out with her old boyfriend and a couple of his friends wanting to persuade her to come back into the pack.”

“What right do they have?”

“None. They’re boneheads.”

But it did show that the pack wasn’t completely happy with the arrangement that Felix, Alex and I had managed.

I understood the old boyfriend complication. Alex had explained it to me. Guys that brought their girlfriends into the pack felt a sense of ownership. Given the ratio of male to female werewolves, some female wolves had a couple of partners. But Olivia hadn’t made that choice. She’d decided Ricky was plenty for her. The old boyfriend would have been pissed to lose Olivia, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Ricky was senior.

But losing Olivia from the pack—it might have made some twisted sense to him that he could be the one to try and get her back.

“Nick picked her up and took her to his apartment, thinking that would defuse it. It didn’t. The other guys followed. That’s when Olivia called me.” I heard Ricky take some deep breaths. “Here’s the situation, from my point of view. Getting Felix or Alex involved as pack alphas would make it official, and then everyone will want to have their say, and everything will be talked about. That brings the focus back on having two packs sharing territory. Now, I’m talking out of turn here, but my advice is that the longer you let it go, the more used to it people get and the easier it’ll be to keep it going.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“You’re not your pack alpha. You’re an alpha pair, but Alex is dominant in wolf form. You deal with these boneheads, and it remains unofficial. Kick their asses and those guys won’t want everyone to know what they did. I’m on my way back now, and when I get there, believe me, they’ll be sorry they started this. It won’t happen again. But none of that applies if someone gets killed, or Nick gets any more involved. Or anyone from outside the pack. Better if there’s no one else, in fact—that’ll give no reason for Felix to be involved.”

“I can understand killing would make this official. What’s that about Nick? He’s not an alpha.”

“He’s a skinwalker. Were don’t trust skinwalkers, and why should we? Noble was a skinwalker and he tricked us for years. The pack’s all about belonging, and skinwalkers don’t. If the boneheads make it about Nick, and he’s part of your pack, we’re back to square one.”

“Okay.” I sighed. I just had to work with it. “Got it. What’s the situation now?”

“Nick and Olivia are in the apartment. The boneheads are outside, working themselves up or waiting for reinforcements. We don’t know. They aren’t answering calls from me, not surprisingly. Nick understands, and he’s trying not to respond, but he’ll have no choice if they break in.”

Pia turned off toward Arvada.

“We’re there in five,” I said.

I was about to end the call when Ricky cleared his throat. “Look, there’s something else you should know,” he said. “Olivia doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“What?” It came out sharper than I intended. I had enough on my plate.

“She’s next up.”

I had to strain to hear him. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“Kyle, last week. He was the longest surviving of the halfies.”

Halfy was the ugly name they had for Were who couldn’t manage the change. And a Were that couldn’t change died from it, in appalling pain.

Kyle Larsen had been a halfy. He had died last week. He’d tried; almost the whole pack had been with him up at Bitter Hooks for his final desperate attempt, but their support hadn’t helped. In the end, they’d had to kill him, as a mercy.

My breath caught in my throat.

“She’s the longest surviving now?”

“Yeah. And this kind of thing doesn’t help.”

The cell went quiet.

I’d made a commitment to Olivia to help her. It wasn’t anything to do with being Were or Athanate. My great-grandmother had been an Arapaho shaman called Speaks-to-Wolves, and I believed she’d helped Were who had trouble changing. Felix didn’t believe it, but he’d given me a clue to chase: a necklace handed down through the family that was involved in the ritual. Unfortunately, I had found out a couple of days ago that my sister had thrown it away.

Had that ruined my chances of helping Olivia? Was it too late to find an alternative?

Pia turned into the road leading to Nick’s apartment.

I needed to say something. “I’ll do everything I can, Ricky.”

“I know,” he said, and his voice lowered. “She believes in you. Really does.”

I ended the call and bit my lip.

No one had ever told me life had to be fair, or promised that problems would come at me one at a time. I just had to do what I could. And pray it was enough.