Dead Letter Day (23 page)

Or maybe it was me he didn’t like. That was unfortunately a distinct possibility. He wouldn’t be the first person and I’d be stunned if he was the last.

I slid down in the seat of the Buick. It wasn’t as good as being in the back of a van, but I figured I wasn’t too noticeable. Plus I was super-comfy. The seats in this thing were like a couch. Better than some couches, especially futon couches. My stomach rumbled. Hungry again. This kid was definitely demanding. I reached in the back and grabbed the bag of food I’d packed this morning.

I unwrapped my turkey sandwich and opened a bag of chips. After carefully inserting several potato chips into the sandwich, I took a big bite and sighed with contentment. I could spend an afternoon like this, having quality time with myself and a turkey sandwich. All that camaraderie and sharing stuff was overrated.

It hadn’t been that long ago when none of these people were in my life. Well, they were in my life, but not with the kind of presence they had now. I walked alone then and things were a lot less complicated.

I had also been a lot lonelier. I’m not sure I would have couched it that way at the time. I probably would have talked about being frustrated or angry or irritated. Loneliness was the root of it, though. Perhaps complication was the price one had to pay for that.

I sunk even lower in the Buick, took another bite of sandwich and nearly jumped out of my skin when the pickup
truck from behind the hardware store rattled past me. I tossed my sandwich back in the bag with regret. We’d have to get someplace damn fast to have the chips stay crunchy in there with the turkey and the cheese and the tomato, and it wouldn’t be the same with soggy chips. Then I started the Buick and headed down the street after the truck.

Truth be told, I couldn’t be sure Kevin was driving. I hadn’t seen the driver’s face and it could easily be Sam or one of the other younger members of the Pack who worked at the hardware store when they weren’t working on one of Chuck’s construction sites. So far I’d been lucky. I’d guessed right on where the truck would come out and which way it would go. I needed a trifecta, though.

The truck went a few more blocks up Main Street, then made a left onto Bennett. I hit the accelerator. This was where things got tricky. It would be all too easy to lose him on the bigger busier street, but I hadn’t dared to be too close behind him on the little side street for fear of being noticed.

I made the left turn on Bennett just in time to see the pickup go through a light at Richardson. There was no way I’d make it, so there was no point in pushing the pedal to the metal. I glided up to the light and idled there, trying to crane my neck to see the pickup ahead of me around the conversion van that had pulled onto Bennett from another side street.

I shut my eyes and tried to pick out the truck’s particular engine noise from the others. It wasn’t going to work. There was too much other noise. Than a horn honked behind me and I realized I was sitting at a green light with my eyes shut. Whoever said I wasn’t a total ace at surveillance?

The Buick leapt forward and squealed a bit. Yeah. I was slick. No doubt about it.

Still, I managed to catch up to the truck at the next light, which was a damn good thing because Kevin—or whoever
was driving, I still wasn’t sure—turned onto Highway 49. If I hadn’t been one car behind him, there would have been no way to catch him without risking life and limb, which these days, I wasn’t that interested in doing.

Kevin turned out to be one of those guys who used cruise control. We hit the highway, he started going seventy-two miles per hour—a socially acceptable seven miles over the speed limit—and kept it there. My attitude toward him softened a little. If he’d been one of those guys who switch lanes every ten seconds, racing up people’s backsides and then slamming on his brakes, he would have seen me for sure. This way, I could hang back a bit. There was something to be said for a predictable man.

Kevin pulled off at Brunswick Road and I pulled off a few seconds after him with a little green Camry between us. I hoped that was enough cover for the Buick. We all turned right at the stoplight, crested up over a rise and went about a mile. Kevin and the Camry turned right into the entrance of Sierra College. What the hell? Kevin’s nefarious and mysterious disappearances were in the service of higher education?

I went down a different aisle in the lot and parked near the end. I could see Kevin walking toward the campus. I waited a few minutes and then walked in after him, knowing I’d be able to track him by his magical signature. For the record, community colleges are not hotbeds of paranormal activity. I was getting one very wolfy tingle and that was it.

I wound up in building N7 205, lurking outside of room 207B, home of Advanced Calculus. I thought about poking my head in, but nothing clouds my brain faster than advanced mathematics. Everything made sense to me up until Algebra II, then someone started talking trigonometry and it was as if the mental rug was pulled out from underneath me. I went
back to my car figuring I could keep an eye on Kevin’s truck and pick him up from there. Maybe he’d go someplace more interesting after class.

I got back to the Buick, finished my sandwich, soggy potato chips and all, and slid down in the seat. The afternoon sunlight slanted into the car and within a few minutes I was toasty warm. The combination of toasty warm and full stomach was more than I could fight off and I felt myself dozing. I glanced at my watch. Surely I could close my eyes for a few minutes? Those classes were long, weren’t they? Fifteen minutes was all I needed. Then I’d be ready to face the rest of the day. I shut my eyes.

I WOKE TO SHARP RAPPING ON MY WINDOW AND performed a complicated maneuver that had me both choking on my own spit and cracking my head against the window.

Kevin was staring in. He made a rolling motion with his hands.

I rolled the window down.

“I’m leaving now. I didn’t want you to miss your chance to follow me.” He leaned his elbows against the Buick’s door.

I rolled my eyes and fell back in my seat. “How long have you known I was there?”

He shrugged. “Before I got on the highway. Not until after I was on Bennett, though, if that makes you feel any better.”

It didn’t. “So what’s up with the self-improvement?”

“The drive for learning is part of the human spirit,” he said, straightening up.

“You’re not human,” I reminded him.

That earned me quite the nasty look. “You’re following
me because you think I have something to do with Paul not being around, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go have coffee. I’ll explain a few things to you.”

It was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick so I agreed. He gave me directions to a coffeehouse a few blocks away and I met him there. I sat down at a table with him with my cup of tea. This baby better appreciate what I was giving up for it.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Kevin asked as I sat down.

His instant and constant antipathy to me was starting to grate. What had I ever done to him? “Back atcha, big guy. What’s your problem?”

“My problem? My problem is that I’ve got a meddling Messenger hanging around my pack at a time that’s very delicate.”

“Delicate because a Pack member is missing and no one’s doing a damn thing about it? Which leads me to believe that someone in the Pack wants it that way?” I countered as I sat down.

He crossed his arms across his chest. “You really think I’d do that? That I’d do something like that to Paul?”

“Yeah. I do. You’re confrontational. You’re aggressive. You’re strong and smart, but your chances of becoming the Alpha of this pack are diminishing every year. You’re not getting any younger, Kevin. Neither is Chuck, but he’s not getting old that fast either.”

“Exactly. I see I don’t have to explain my position to you. Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look.” He snorted.

I just love it when people say things that are both insults and compliments at the same time. It makes me want to smack them right across their kissers. That did not seem
like the right course of action at the moment. I decided to keep my eyes on the prize instead. “What do you mean?”

“My position in the Pack. That’s why I’m taking classes. I’m going to get my engineering degree so I can get out from under Chuck financially and start up someplace on my own. Be my own boss. Start my own pack.”

I wasn’t buying it. “Why start a new one when you could take over this one? And what better way to do it than get rid of your competition and throw suspicion on your Alpha all at the same time. I have to admit. It’s a hell of a plan. If someone from the outside wasn’t looking at it, you’d probably get away with it, too.”

Kevin’s hands tightened so hard on the edge of the table, his knuckles went white. “How dare you,” he growled at me.

“I dare because someone has to.” I leaned forward and looked directly into his eyes. “Paul has been there for me in so many ways, so many times. I am not backing down until I find him, and if that means going through you, then you’d better put on a cup, mister.”

For a second, I thought he was going to reach across the table and grab me by the throat despite all the witnesses that were around. I think he thought he was going to do that, too. Instead, he stared at me long and hard and then he started to laugh. “I’m beginning to see what Paul saw in you. You’ve got potential to do more than tote and carry, don’t you?”

Frankly, I didn’t even think I was all that good at the toting and carrying, so suggesting that I had potential for more sort of surprised me. It surprised me even more that the suggestion had come from Paul. He’d always had my back, but I thought it was kind of the way a big brother had the back of his idiot baby sister. Damn it. Had he been manipulating me even more than I’d thought he was? I was totally going to twist his ear once I found him. “I don’t know
about that,” I said. “I do know that something’s not right here and I want to know how you’re involved in it.”

“I’m not,” he said, flatly. “I see how I could have tripped your suspicions, but let me be clear. I wouldn’t sabotage Paul, or Chuck for that matter. What kind of wolf sneaks around behind his Alpha’s back like that?”

“One that might not be able to seize power any other way,” I suggested.

“Okay. You’ve got a point. In a head-to-head challenge against Chuck, I’d lose. I don’t have enough backing in the Pack or the physical strength to take him down and keep him down.” He looked down into his coffee. “I don’t have the heart to tear his throat out either, if the truth be known. If that makes me weak, well, so be it.”

Oh, crap. I was starting to like Kevin. “So why do you have to do anything?”

“I’m stagnating. I have nowhere to go in the Pack. I’ve risen as high as there is to rise. It’s time to start out on my own.” He leaned back in his chair.

“And what about Paul?” That was my real concern, whether or not I liked Kevin.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you understand the role that Paul plays in this pack. I would never leave Chuck without someone like Paul in place. He’s a leader, but not by brute strength, although he’s got plenty of it.”

“I thought that was what Pack politics were all about. Who could dominate whom.” At least, that’s how it always seemed to me.

“You should know better. We’re not that simple. If we were, we’d just rip each apart and live by ourselves. There’s a drive within us to be part of a community. It’s how we survive. More than that, it’s how we thrived. We need wolves like Paul that can lead and assert a calming influence.”

That was for sure. They were all a bunch of hotheads. “So why were you so eager to get rid of me? All I’m doing is trying to make sure Paul’s okay. It sounds like you want the same thing.”

“Because you don’t belong. It’s Pack business and the Pack will take care of it.” Again with the crossed arms. It was a little intimidating. It made his biceps pop.

“But the Pack isn’t!” I practically shouted. “The Pack is sitting around with its thumb up its collective ass.”

Kevin bared his teeth at me. “Settle.”

“Like a good dog,” I shot back, although I did lower my voice.

“Don’t get your hackles up. The two of us getting in a shouting match about werewolves in public isn’t going to help anyone. What I’m trying to tell you is that there is no one in the Pack who has any reason to get rid of Paul. Certainly not me. If anything, his not being around is slowing my personal plans down. So you can stop following me around, okay?”

I sat back in my chair, deflated. I could see Kevin’s point. Damn. I’d thought I had something. “Fine. Go sharpen up your math skills. But help me, too. Where do you think Paul could be?”

Kevin’s grip on the table loosened and he leaned back in his chair, too, although there was still plenty of starch in his spine. “Wherever he wants to be. Why can’t you accept that his Alpha told him to get his head on straight and he went somewhere to do just that?”

“Why can’t you accept that he would not do that without letting…someone know?”

“You mean the witch, don’t you?” He made it sound like he was calling Meredith a totally different word, although it did rhyme.