Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels (5 page)

She guzzled the rest of the bottle of water. They said you weren’t supposed to drink it that fast for some reason or other, but she didn’t care right now. “I still do sometimes.” She wasn’t about to tell Avery that she sometimes went for a run five or six times a day. It depended on how hard it was to stop thinking about Cole. The more she ran, the more stamina she built up. The harder it was to exhaust herself. It was a vicious cycle.

Chantal said it was becoming a compulsion. She said Dana needed to confront her unwanted thoughts about Cole, not run from them.

Dana thought that was rich, since she was also not supposed to engage with them. Wasn’t confrontation engagement?

“Hope you didn’t wear yourself out too much,” he said. “We got a call.”

Dana wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been expecting that. The full moon was their busiest time. It was very rare for problems to happen at other parts of the month. Wolves couldn’t shift without the full moon. The SF spent most of the month playing catch up from the previous full moon.

She looked down at her sweaty self. “Right. Do I have time to jump in the shower?”

“You better,” said Avery, grinning. “You reek.”

She laughed.

“So, um, I’ll come back in ten minutes?”

“Oh, hang out,” she said. “You can tell me all about the case while I’m in the shower.”

Avery raised his eyebrows. “Um...”

She laughed again. “Relax, Brooks. I didn’t actually just ask you to shower with me.”

“Too bad,” he said.

It was her turn to raise her eyebrows. “You trying to flirt with me, Brooks? Maybe you like my sweat smell more that you let on, huh?” She darted into the bathroom and turned on the water.

“Trust me, you smell horrible,” called Avery.

She stuck her head out of the door. “Stand over here. Let me know what’s going on.”

Avery trundled over. “I can come back.”

“Am I making you feel uncomfortable?” She moved behind the door and began peeling off her clothes. The door was open a crack. She could see the back of Avery’s head. He was facing away from her.

“No,” he said. “Maybe a little bit like one of your slumber party girlfriends, though.”

She put a hand under the shower stream to test the temperature. “So, I’m emasculating you?”

A chuckle from Avery. “I really did miss you, Gray.”

She slipped behind the shower curtain, felt the water pelt her skin. “Me too. Now what’s this new case?”

“Supermarket,” said Avery. “It’s in upstate New York. They tried to shoot the wolf, but it just shook off the bullets like nothing. Called us right away. We’ll have to give them the final body tally.”

“Upstate? We’re going to be driving for hours.”

“Yeah,” said Avery. “I call iPod control on the way there.”

She laughed. “You know, you should start being more mature.”

“Whatever, Gray. You’re just annoyed because you didn’t call it first.”

She grabbed some shampoo and began soaping up her hair. “Man, a supermarket? Last night it’s a bar, tonight it’s the grocery store. What’s up with all these big public places? Bet there’s gonna be a high body count.”

“You know it,” said Avery. “More bad press for the SF.”

Generally speaking, rogues usually weren’t out and about when their first change hit them. There were symptoms before hand, a general feeling of unease and discomfort. Usually people thought they were coming down with a cold and stayed home. Of course, there were always those who ignored it and went about their business, which could have horrific results. For the rogue, Dana wasn’t sure which was worse. On the one hand, staying at home meant a rogue didn’t usually rip ten or twenty people to shreds. On the other hand, not being in public meant the people they did attack were usually their families and neighbors. A lower body count versus massacring a loved one. They both sucked.

She stuck her head out of the shower curtain. “Hey. Brooks. Thanks for staying with me while I shower.”

“No sweat,” he said.

“It’s hard to be alone sometimes,” she said. Especially when she was naked.

“Gray...”

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Seriously.” She didn’t want his sympathy. Before, they’d never had a friendship like that. They’d always been buddies, and they’d never taken anything too seriously.

He was quiet, and there was no noise except the water rushing over her skin, hitting the linoleum.

“I could kill him, you know.” Avery’s voice sounded different. There wasn’t any of his general joking anymore. “I could go down there at night. I have an access badge. I could squeeze the life out of him.”

She thrust her face under the water. It wasn’t as if Cole didn’t deserve it. But would he go away, leave her alone, if he were dead? Dana had a feeling he’d hang on.

CHAPTER THREE

Six months ago, Dana awoke to pain. Screaming points of it. Her neck. Her arms. Her torso. She couldn’t feel her hands, and as she stirred into wakefulness, she realized it was because they were chained above her head. She was somewhere dimly lit. Concrete slab walls, a poured-concrete floor with a drain in the middle of it. She stood upright, her arms and legs both shackled. Her clothing was drenched in blood, the collar of her shirt dried stiff with it.

She screamed.

A light came on.

Dana realized she was in a basement. There was a set of stairs on the other side of the room, leading up to a door. It opened, and Cole appeared. He started down the steps. “You’re awake.”

Dana shuddered. She’d been blind. No part of her had ever thought to suspect Cole of something like this. Cole was intelligent, gentle. Squeamish even. She remembered the way he’d reacted to the carnage of their high school gymnasium, the revulsion in his eyes. The terror. How could Cole be the killer she’d been looking for?

But she had to admit that it fit, didn’t it? She had thought that she and Cole fit the killer’s victim profile. Now, it was obvious that the victim profile was based on her and Cole. He was sick, obsessed with their past, and it had warped his brain somehow.

So why wasn’t she dead?

The killer didn’t usually take his time with his victims. He tore them to pieces in one violent episode. The trackers couldn’t be sure, of course, because the killer obscured the evidence, washing his victims down thoroughly, ridding them of his scent and anything else he might have left on them before dumping them. But examining the evidence meant they were reasonably certain.

If she was to be the next victim, she shouldn’t be alive.

Cole crossed the room to her. He clasped his hands together and made an apologetic face, as if he was expressing his regrets for leaving a dinner party too early. “I’m so sorry, Dana.”

She thought she might start crying. He was crazy. He was completely, absolutely insane.

“I’m having trouble killing you,” he said, his tone regretful. “I meant to do it. I really did. But... I couldn’t.”

Maybe there was something human in him yet. Maybe she could talk to him. Didn’t they always say that you should try to make sociopaths see you as a person, not an object? “My hands are numb. Everything hurts. I’m very scared. Please unchain me. Let me go, Cole. You know me. We’re friends.”

“I might unchain you at some point,” said Cole. “I haven’t decided yet.” He took his glasses off and cleaned them, looking flustered. “I really meant to get it over with right away. But seeing you again...” He drew in a noisy breath.

“You’re hurting me,” she tried. “People are worried about me. People—”

“Did you tell anyone you were coming to see me?”

She hadn’t. Dear God, she hadn’t told anyone. She’d called Avery and left a message on his phone, only saying she thought she’d nailed down a profile for the killer, not telling him any specifics. No one else knew. Should she lie? If he thought they were coming, what would he do? “I told everyone. They all know where I am.”

“I don’t think you did,” he said, putting his glasses back on. “You’ve been unconscious for hours now. Enough time for them to have noticed you were missing. If they knew where you were headed, they’d already have been here. I got rid of your car, just in case. But I think we’re safe.”

She strained against the chains, angry suddenly. How dare he do this to her? “You bastard. Let me go.”

The apologetic look was back on his face again. “This must really be quite awful for you. I wish I’d been more decisive. I really meant to have it over by now. I did. It’s just that I was in the middle of it, and I couldn’t.” He looked down at his feet, embarrassed. “The truth is, I used to have a crush on you when we were kids. There was a point when I thought maybe you had a crush on me too, but I couldn’t seem to work up the nerve to say anything or do anything.” He looked at her again. “I thought it was in the past. I thought I was over it. But when I saw you, I felt like a nervous teenager all over again.”

She hated him. She hated him for doing that. For echoing her own thoughts, for feeling what she had been feeling, even if it seemed like so long ago that she’d pondered her attraction for him in his living room. He was still Cole, and he
shouldn’t
still be the Cole she knew. He’d revealed himself as a killer, and she was cut up and bloody from his attempt to murder her. He should show his true colors now. “Fuck you.”

He shrugged. “Well, I’m guessing that if you did still have feelings for me, you wouldn’t admit them anymore.” He walked closer to her, took her chin in his hands, and turned her face.

She cringed. He was hurting her neck, hurting her because he’d dug sharp teeth into her.

He made a sympathetic face. “Ouch. Doesn’t look good. But you’ll heal pretty fast. You’re a wolf. It doesn’t look like it’s getting infected, although I guess maybe we should clean you up.”

She jerked her head back, away from his touch. “You need help, Cole. You’re sick.”

He only laughed, peeling her blood-crusted collar away from her skin. “I should have cleaned the wounds while you were unconscious, but I need to take off your clothes.” He looked her in the eye. “It seemed a little like a violation.”

She laughed disbelievingly.

“I know,” he said. “You’re thinking that trying to kill you and keeping you prisoner is violating you, and you’re right. But there’s something different about this. I didn’t want to do it without your permission.”

She glared at him. The absolute nonsense of what he was saying enraged her. “Let me go. I’m not giving you permission to do anything.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then I guess you’ll stay in the bloody clothes and all the bites and scratches will get infected.” He turned, crossed the room, and started walking up the stairs. After three steps, he halted and looked back at her. “Are you sure, Dana? You can’t be comfortable.”

She did start sobbing then. She felt so hopeless, so out of control, so
betrayed
.

He hurried over to her. “Oh, shh.... shh now. It’s okay.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “I promise to be professional. I’ll just clean you. I wouldn’t...”

She sobbed harder. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

“Dana,” he said. “Look at me.”

She tried, but he was blurry through her tears.

“I want to
kill
you, not rape you,” he said, as if this thought was somehow reassuring. “Let me clean you up.”

She shook her head, the sobs deepening.

* * *

It was dawn by the time they left the supermarket. Dana yawned behind the wheel of the car. The windows were down, and cold air rushed against her face. She shivered. They couldn’t roll up the windows, however, because they had to keep the scent. They’d been following it for nearly twenty minutes now.

“Almost twenty bodies,” Avery groaned from the seat next to her. “Can’t you just see the headlines?”

Dana was struggling to keep her eyes open. She needed to get back in the swing of things. Tracking meant staying up all night. She wasn’t used to it anymore. “And the commentary? They’ll all be talking about how werewolves kill people, and they don’t get punished. It’s going to be a mess.” Which was why she was going to have to call Hollis. But later. After she got home. After she took a nap.

“A complete mess.” Avery stuck his head out the window. “Jesus, Rogue, did you run to the other side of the world or what?”

“This is a long scent trail,” Dana agreed.

“She goes to the grocery store, wolfs out, mangles forty people, kills eighteen, and then runs for fifteen miles? We can’t catch a break tonight.”

“This morning,” said Dana. “That’s the sun in the sky, Brooks.”

He slumped in his seat. “Right. Morning.” Then he sat up straight. “Wait. You smell that?”

“Trail’s turning,” said Dana. She turned the car to follow the scent. They entered a planned community—crowded identical houses, gridded streets with names like Warbling Spring Avenue. She had to slow the car to be sure to get all of the turns right.

The wolf had run up the streets, turning this way and that. After about ten turns, the trail ended at a modest looking rancher. There was a basketball net in the driveway, a two-car garage, and a pool in the back yard.