Wolver's Rescue (10 page)

Bull crossed his arms over his chest and
looked down at her. “In case you haven’t noticed, spitfire, this is
my room, paid for with my money. I’m not going anywhere.”

“
Then I’ll leave.” she
snapped. She took a step toward the door.

Bull shrugged. “Okay, but leave the shirt. I
can’t afford to feed and house you and then watch you walk away
with my last clean shirt.” He crossed his arms over his chest and
stood like a tower in front of the door.

“
Feed? House?” Her whole
head rolled with her eyes. “It was for a day. And I didn’t touch
the roast beef,” she added indignantly. She looked back over her
shoulder. “Fine. Where are my clothes?”

“
You mean the dead guy’s
clothes? Hopefully on their way to wherever the city garbage truck
takes them. I dumped them in a bin on my way to buy your food.
Evidence, you know? Not wise to keep it around.”

Hands on hips, she glared at him. “Then what
exactly do you expect me to wear?”

Another shrug. “That’s your look out, honey.
You’re calling the shots.” He readjusted his stance and smiled.
“Or, we can strike a bargain. You sit back down, listen to what I
have to say, answer a few questions, and I’ll let you keep the
shirt.”

Tommie pretended to think about it, but she
really had no choice. Even if he’d let her keep the tee, she would
still be barefoot and her house was still a long walk. The sun
would be rising soon and on a cool autumn morning, a barefoot,
scantily clad woman was bound to be noticed. The only thing left
was to make the best of a bad situation.

“
I listen, answer, keep the
shirt, and you drive me home. And...” She looked back at the boxes
on the bed. “I get the roast beef.”

“
Fair enough, but if you
touch the turkey and Swiss that’s in there with it, that skinny ass
of yours is mine.”

The thing inside of her
began to chortle at the threat. “
Mine
,” it whispered as if it liked the
idea of being his and completely ignored the context in which the
word was used.

Tommie wondered if the therapist she’d seen
years ago was right.

“
What you call that ‘thing’
is really a manifestation of your suppressed emotions and needs,”
that doctor had said. “Freud called it the id. Until you recognize
it for what it is and deal with it, Tommie, you’ll never be
content. It’s a matter of finding a balance.”

After all this time, was she finding a
balance? Because at the moment, she and the thing inside felt
exactly the same way about that word. Mine.

Nevertheless, Tommie sat primly on the corner
of the bed, making it clear this was no picnic.

“
Who is it you think I work
for?” Bull asked as he wrapped half her sandwich in a paper
napkin.

The girl’s eyes tracked the sandwich. In
another minute, she’d begin to salivate. She’d already eaten the
equivalent of three full meals. She was no longer hungry. She
couldn’t be, but her wolf didn’t understand that. When a starving
wolf found the opportunity to eat, instinct declared it might not
get another chance and so it gorged. A wolf’s body was built to
take it. A human’s wasn’t.

It was proof that her wolf was more in
control than it should be and that wasn’t good. But that didn’t
mean he couldn’t use it to his advantage. He held the sandwich
up.

“
Questions, answers,
sandwich,” he reminded.

Her whole body huffed along with her mouth.
“Dr. Gantnor, but you already know that, so why ask?”

Bull ignored the question. “What was Plan
A?”

When she didn’t answer, he waved the sandwich
in front of her nose. Her face became hard. “You should have paid
more attention to my file,” she sneered. “I can’t be coerced with
food. I won’t be coerced,” she corrected. “I’d rather starve.”

She’d chosen to starve? Maybe her wolf wasn’t
as much in control as he thought. Bull handed her the sandwich. She
didn’t stuff it in her mouth, but bit it daintily and chewed.

“
Is that why you’re in the
shape you’re in?”

She nodded, took another small bite and
handed what was left back to him. “I’m not hungry. I don’t know
what made me think I was.”

“
We’ll save it for later.”
Bull set it aside. “Plan A, the one you agreed to?”

Pain filled the eyes that only a moment
before looked stonily cold. She dropped her gaze to the floor and
her voice to barely above a whisper. “I didn’t agree to it and it’s
in the file. Why are you doing this to me?”

For a moment, Bull forgot why. Primal Law and
instinct screamed at him to care for and protect this female. He
shook the feeling off. There was something going on here that he
needed to understand and he was sure it was connected to Thomas
Bane.

This wasn’t the first time what he wanted to
do conflicted with what he had to do. It was, however, the first
time his wolf was unhappy with it.

He pulled the chair over and sat across from
her, knees to knees and spoke softly with only an edge of demand in
his voice. “I need to hear your version and I need to hear it from
the beginning. It’s important to an investigation I’m
conducting.”

She looked up at him. “Are you investigating
Dr. Gantnor? The clinic? Is that why you’re looking for Thomas
Bane?”

“
Yes.” He hadn’t been, but
he was now, so it wasn’t really a lie. And why complicate the
issue? Keep things simple.

Simple flew out the window when the woman
opened her mouth.

“
Then you can stop looking.
You’ve found him.” she said with a ghost of a smile. “I’m Thomas
Bane.”

“
You can’t be,” he said
without thinking. He was looking for a male and she definitely
wasn’t one. He’d seen that for himself. He’d scented her, touched
her.

Her smile blossomed. “Looks can be deceiving
and you have to admit,” she looked down at her small breasts,
“modern medicine can work miracles.”

His wolf rolled over and whined. Bull
couldn’t understand it. The animal had been acting strangely since
he met the girl, and now reacted as if its world had come to an
end.

“
No pups
,” it wailed.

“
If you could see the look
on your face.” Thomas, who was definitely a female, laughed and
pumped a delicate fist in the air. “Finally. My turn to say
gotcha.”

“
You’re not Thomas Bane.” He
tried to disguise the relief in his voice. He failed.

“
Oh no, I’m Thomas all
right. I was supposed to be Thomasina, but somebody screwed up on
the birth certificate. Nobody noticed until I started school. Hey!
Are you okay? You look kind of pale.”

If he only looked pale, he must look okay for
a guy whose blood was running cold and whose heart had stopped.

She was Thomas Bane. His mission was to
eliminate Thomas Bane by removing Bane’s humanity or ending Bane’s
life. Either choice would be a death sentence for the delicate
young woman sitting on the edge of the bed. He’d never condemned a
woman before and he wasn’t sure he could do it now.

For the first time in the almost twenty years
he’d been doing this job, Bull didn’t know what he was supposed to
do. He needed the reassurance and direction only his Alpha could
supply.

“
I just remembered I have to
make a phone call,” he said tersely.

He opened the drapes to the bright light of
day and pointed back at her. “Don’t move. I’ll be watching.”

His thumb was on speed dial before the door
was closed. “Come on, Begley, answer the god damned phone.”

The damned woman confused him. The skinny
little bitch had already proven herself to be a pain in the ass.
Even his wolf was acting strangely, but there was something about
her that pushed every protective button in his wolver genetic code.
His wolf felt the same confusion his human did.

“
Hey, y’all. Since things
are a might slow around here, I’ve a notion to do a little fishin’
and huntin’. Don’t leave no message, ‘cause I ain’t listenin’.
Y’all are big boys and don’t need me holdin’ your hands every
minute of the day.” Eugene Begley’s disembodied voice chuckled over
the phone. “Just stay out of trouble ‘till I get back.”

Bull had the urge to hurl the damn phone
across the parking lot. Stay out of trouble? Bull had a feeling he
was already in it up to his neck. He stared at the woman through
the dirty window. She’d already disobeyed him and moved to search
through the bag he’d left on the desk. It was filled with items
he’d bought at the truck stop while he waited for the food. She
looked like a pup emptying a Christmas stocking and he found
himself smiling at the delighted grin on her face.

“
Is this all for me?” she
asked when he opened the door and when he nodded, her grin widened.
“I take back every mean thing I thought about you.” She tore the
hairbrush from the plastic packaging and began working it through
the knots in her hair.

Grooming was a good sign she wasn’t feral
yet, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t damn close. Her wolf was too
near the surface and exhibiting more and more control. She was
already exhibiting other symptoms. She’d forgotten basic wolver
rituals and sayings. She growled while she ate; low sounds, deep in
her throat. She bared her teeth when he tried to stop her from
eating. Worse, he didn’t think she was aware of the behavior which
was another sure sign her human control was slipping. It wouldn’t
take much to push her over the edge.

“
You have no idea how long
I’ve waited for this,” she told him as she closed her eyes in bliss
and ran the brush through the first untangled lock.

“
Suppose you tell me,” he
said as he took her place on the corner of the bed. “How long were
you in there?”

The hand wielding the brush stopped
mid-stroke. “I don’t know. What’s the date?”

Not recognizing the passage of time was
another wolf trait. A wolver’s human half kept track of it. Bull
gave her the date and watched her face as she calculated the
days.

“
Almost three months.” She
sounded surprised. “I thought it was longer.”

Her answer made sense. Wolves thought in
terms of long time or short, not in days, weeks, or months.

“
How much does he
know?”

“
Once upon a time, I thought
he knew everything. That’s why I trusted him,” she said quietly.
She began to brush her hair again, each stroke more angry and
forceful than the last until she was yanking it through the snarls,
seemingly unaware of the pain it must be causing. “Turns out he’s a
sociopathic sadist who ought to be locked up in his own
clinic.”

“
I don’t get it,” Bull said,
because he didn’t. “Why would you let him lock you in the
cage?”

“
I didn’t ‘let’ him lock me
in,” she shouted and threw the brush aside. “He said he wanted to
show me the results of an experimental program. He said he’d found
a cure.”

A thin curl of smoky dread circled Bull’s
spine. “A cure for what?” he asked cautiously.

“
For the voice in my head!
For the thing inside me!” She turned her back on him and leaned her
hands against the cigarette scarred desktop for support. “All my
life, I’ve felt like something else was living inside my body. I
always heard it. I always felt it. And then one day, it began to
speak in a language only I could understand. It had feelings that
were separate from mine, like it had a mind of its own.” She turned
to him, her eyes filled with misery. “I’ve been fighting it for
almost fifteen years. I was desperate. You don’t know what it’s
like, to constantly fight for control of your life and your body
against something you can feel, but no one else can
find.”

But he did know, only too well. The
difference was that he knew what he was fighting and she apparently
didn’t. Thomas Bane had just signed her death warrant. She was too
old to learn what she should have learned as a cub. Without human
control, her wolf was already feral and screaming to be free. It
was a wonder she’d held it together this long.

“
I can see the horror on
your face,” she went on, “Now try to imagine living that horror.
Drugs that are supposed to help only make it worse. Therapy was
useless. They all said that this thing,” she pounded the place
between her breasts with her fist, “was the suppression of some
childhood trauma, or a reaction to my father’s coldness, or my
mother’s overprotectiveness. They said I was in denial, but none of
it was true. My parents loved me and at my angriest and most
rebellious times, I still loved them. They would have died for
me.”

Bull didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want
to know. That was why he never read beyond the first page of
Begley’s extensive dossiers. Keep it clean and impersonal. It was a
job that needed doing and it was his job to do it. No need to
complicate things.

Yeah, like that was going to work. This woman
had already complicated things. Her ridiculous escape attempts
pissed him off, but he admired the pluck behind them. What little
he’d heard of her story made him admire her even more. It took
courage to keep on fighting when you knew the battle was lost.

“
Tough
,” his wolf agreed. “
Fight
beside.”

His wolf, damn the beast, had gone completely
over to her side, probably because it sensed the wildness in her
wolf and found that hot in a canine sort of way. Aw, hell, he found
her kind of hot, too, but he could only deal with one weirdness at
a time.