Dead Letter Day (28 page)

THE MAN SITTING AT THE TABLE IN THE KITCHEN OF Chuck’s house eating meatloaf and mashed potatoes didn’t even look familiar. The idea that he was the same man that I’d seen hurling himself against a locked door while giving himself a straitjacket-induced hug was nearly inconceivable. Yet both he and Chuck swore that he was that Michael Hollinger.

I sat down across from him and stared.

He waved his fork at me. “Sorry,” he mumbled wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I’m starving.”

Chuck poured me a cup of coffee and set it down in front of me. Even the smell of it made me a little queasy. I shook my head and pushed it away.

“Morning sickness?” he asked.

“It would be nice if it confined itself to mornings.” The queasies seemed to attack me at all times of the day and night. Certain things I knew would set me off. The smell of coffee. The sight of raw meat. The sound of people eating crackers. Other times it sneaked up on me.

“You’re pregnant?” Hollinger asked. “Congratulations! Kids are the best. My two little ones…well, they make everything worthwhile. You’re gonna love being a mom.”

I looked at his beaming face. I wasn’t entirely sure this man understood how irrevocably his life had changed. Assuming Chuck was going to let him hold on to that life. The Pack hadn’t survived this long without a pretty ruthless policy about secrecy. “Thanks.” I smiled at him, but knew it was pretty weak. I looked back over at Chuck.

“Come on, Melina. I want to show you the new truck.” Chuck motioned toward the door with his head.

I stood up and followed him out the back door. We didn’t speak until we were a fair distance from the house. Then Chuck said, “I have never seen anything like it.”

“What did you do to him? He seems…normal.” I sat down on a stump in the clearing we’d come to. The sun was warm on my face and I took a second to drink in the clean, fresh scents of pine needles and leaves.

“I think he might be. Now.” Chuck leaned against a tree next to where I sat. “I didn’t think he was going to survive the full moon. When he couldn’t get out of that cell, I thought he might literally rip himself limb from limb. There wouldn’t have been a damn thing we could have done about it either. No one could get close to him. At least, not without fear of getting bit.”

I could understand why no one would want that. Hollinger had contracted whatever he had from a bite. Still…“You don’t think your natural protections would have warded off whatever he has?” Assuming this acted like a virus, wouldn’t being a werewolf be like an immunization against Hollinger’s strain of lycanthropy?

Chuck shrugged those massive shoulders. “I honestly don’t know and I had no intention of risking any of my Pack to find out.”

“Does he remember anything about the guy who bit him originally?” I was as interested in how this all started as in how to deal with it once it happened.

“That he remembers a little bit more about. It wasn’t one guy. It was two.”

I almost rolled my eyes. We have a standing joke in the ER. No one who comes into the ER is ever the one who started a fight. It’s always “Some Dude” or his cousin “Two
Dudes” who came out of nowhere and made all the trouble. “Two dudes, then.”

“Yeah. Two dudes. In an alley behind the grocery store.”

“What were they doing?”

“Hollinger’s not sure, but he said it looked like they had turned over a Dumpster and were trying to break into the store.”

I tried to imagine how much force it would take to tip a Dumpster and shook my head. “So what happened?”

“He shone his flashlight on them, identified himself and they rushed him. One of them bit him.”

“He didn’t fight back.”

“Oh, he fought. In fact, he’s pretty sure he hit one of them with his Taser. Didn’t even slow him down.”

“Would a Taser slow you down?”

Chuck raised a brow. “In wolf form? No. In human form? Some.”

“So were these wolves?”

“Not exactly wolves. More wolflike. Kind of like what your friend McMannis described in her garage. The red glowing eyes. The fur. The growling. But still walking upright.”

I chewed on my lip. The story was beginning to sound so familiar. “Chuck, what do you know about Inge?”

“Inge with the yarn store?”

“Yes. That Inge.”

“How could she possibly be involved?”

“I’m not sure.” I explained about the silver lace and the shrine to Frigga and the way her son’s eyes had glowed red at us this afternoon.

“You think her kids are the ones who bit Hollinger?” He looked skeptical. “Based on one sighting of a kid who’s eyes glowed at you? That could just have been a trick of the light.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve been around those boys dozens of times. There’s nothing Arcane about either of them.”

“Have you been around them recently?”

“No, but Kevin has. He’d have noticed something and he would have reported it.” Chuck was adamant.

Darn. I thought I might have started to figure this out. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m sure. Are you? Maybe your senses are off because of being pregnant. It’s got to mess with your systems.”

I glared, even though I wasn’t totally sure he was wrong. Maybe I just saw those glowing eyes because I wanted to resolve the situation. I was glad he was sure. I wasn’t sure I was. “What about Hollinger now?”

“It’s like whatever was in his bloodstream burnt itself out during the full moon. He’s back to being who he was before.”

I thought of his wife and those two little children and my heart clutched a bit, even if one of the kids was a brat. “Are you going to let him go back to being who he was before?”

Chuck blew out a long breath. “There’s been some discussion about that. Not everyone is comfortable with the idea.”

“Where do you stand?” I held my breath while I waited for his answer. Chuck might be an embattled Alpha at the moment, but he was still the Alpha. His vote would count more than anyone else’s.

“I think there are worse things than having a cop who owes us his life. He doesn’t remember much about what happened, but what he does remember isn’t pleasant. He knows without us he might not have survived. Or he might have survived, but other people might not have.” Chuck straightened up and then squatted down next to me. “Besides, I don’t think the Pack is going to stay here much longer. I’m starting to get itchy feet. It’s time to move on.”

“You said that before. Would you really leave all this?”

“I have before and quite likely I will again. It’s the way it works. I’m starting to see suspicion in a few people’s eyes. It’s best to go before that spreads.”

He would know. He’d certainly been around the block more times than I had. “And would the whole Pack go with you?”

He shrugged. “Some will. Some won’t. A couple of the members of the Pack think I’m being soft with this Hollinger fellow. It’d be easy enough to kill him and make it look like he had an accident out in the woods after escaping from the ward.”

That was certainly true. It wasn’t exactly compassionate, but it was true. “You think he’ll be able to keep his mouth shut?”

“Try to imagine what your average person would say if a police officer starting talking about his time among the werewolves.”

“He’d be right back in that locked ward.”

“I don’t think Michael likes what he remembers of that place. I think we can trust him.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m so glad. What’s his story going to be?”

“We’re sticking pretty close to the truth. He’s going to tell people that he doesn’t remember how he got out of the psych ward. We’re going to tell people we found him wandering in the woods, sick as a dog and took care of him until he could tell us who he was.” Chuck stood and extended his hand to me.

I took it and stood, too. “What about the part of the Pack who thinks this isn’t the right move?”

Chuck frowned and started walking. “I’ve dealt with dissension in the ranks before. This has a slightly different feel
to it, but I’ve weathered other storms. Worse storms, to be honest.”

“What do you mean it has a different feel?”

“There are always politics being played in the Pack. I know that. Everyone’s always jockeying for position. It’s the downside of having so many strong dominant personalities together. Something’s off about this, though. I catch these undercurrents that don’t add up.” He waved his hand in the air. “It’ll pass. It always does. And if it doesn’t, I won’t be around to worry about it.”

“Because you’d leave?”

Chuck stopped and looked at me. “No, Melina. I’d be dead. I’m not leaving this Pack voluntarily. Ever.”

That froze me. “Is this really the hill you want to die on?”

He sighed. “I’ll eventually die on one hill or another. I think protecting an innocent man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time might be an okay one with me.” He cocked his head. “Speaking of innocents, do you have a plan for…uh…you know.” He gestured at my stomach.

“Not yet.” That unfroze me. I started back toward the house. I really didn’t want to discuss this.

“What does the father say?”

I didn’t answer.

“You told him, didn’t you?”

I stopped and turned. “Yes. I told him. And he sat there gulping air like a fish on a dock.”

“What did you expect? A proposal?”

I didn’t answer, which was apparently answer enough.

Chuck took my hand and led me back toward the house, chuckling. “Give him some time. It’s a lot for a man to take in all at once.”

“And it’s not for a woman?”

“I didn’t say that. He didn’t ask if you were sure it was his, did he?” Chuck glanced over at me.

“No!” What did Chuck think I was?

“Good. That might be a deal breaker. Other than that, though, I think you should give him another chance.”

“I’ll think about it,” I grumbled.

WE GOT BACK INTO THE KITCHEN AND FOUND MICHAEL Hollinger mopping up the last of his meatloaf with a piece of bread and chatting with Meredith. I thought Chuck’s eyes were going to pop right out of his head.

He turned to me. “I thought I told you that she had to wait in the car.”

I held up my hands in front of myself. “That’s where I left her. I swear. But she does have thumbs, you know. She can open a car door by herself.”

Meredith smiled sweetly at Chuck. “Melina had been gone for so long. I was worried. What with her condition and all.”

I glared at her. She was so not worried about my “condition.” She just wanted to piss Chuck off.

Mission accomplished, as they say.

“Get out,” he growled.

Hollinger looked from Meredith to Chuck to me, clearly confused. She pushed back her chair and stood. “I’m going.”

She took her time walking to the door, though. I followed, making sure I stayed between her and Chuck. She turned as she opened the door. “We’re on the same side, you know.”

“Which side is that?”

“Paul’s side.”

12

I KNEW HE WAS THERE BEFORE I SAW HIM. IT WASN’T LIKE sensing Alex or Paul or even Meredith. It was a quickening of my heart, a leap in my stomach, a feeling of both excitement and tension. Damn him. He’d totally made me fall in love with him, and then when he found out he’d knocked me up, he disappeared on me. Although I suppose it was hard to fault a guy for disappearing when he was sitting on your doorstep, but I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t attempt the difficult.

I took my time gathering my garbage up from the inside of the Buick and locking it before I walked up to the steps to my apartment, where I knew he was waiting.

His blond hair shone in the gathering gloom and I swore I caught a whiff of his cookies-and-vanilla scent from halfway down the block. My eyes started to fill. We’d been through a lot. A couple of near-death experiences. A lot of suspensions of disbelief. Confusion. Chaos. Would this
ever-so-normal couple dilemma be the thing that killed this relationship faster than a mongoose would kill a snake?

“Melina, thank God!” He sprang to his feet as I approached. “I’ve been so worried. Where have you been?”

“Chasing Frigga-worshippers into their lairs.” I walked past him and unlocked the front door of the building.

“Here,” he said, taking a bag from me. “Let me carry something.”