Wolver's Rescue (8 page)

He was disgusted with
himself and so was his wolf. The animal snarled and snapped.
“
Leave her alone
.”

But he couldn’t. She needed him. And what the
hell was up with that? When was the last time he even thought about
someone needing him? The answer hovered over him for a second and
he shook it away, back into the shadows where it belonged.

She was a job. No, she was only a skinny
little link in the chain that led to the job and she would be gone
as soon as he got what he wanted from her. This was part of the
game plan. He’d winked, he’d nodded and now it was time to chat.
Nobody said he couldn’t enjoy the game while it was being
played.

She gave another little moan as he ran his
fingers over her scalp in a second lathering of shampoo. It was a
sweet little moan and if she was this responsive to a scalp
massage, he could only imagine what her response would be when his
fingers found their way...Damn it to hell!

“
Ow.”

“
Sh-shit, s-sorry.” He was
stuttering like an untried cub. “I got carried away getting the
last bit of crap off your scalp.”

Washing her was like scrubbing the mud and
muck from a rock in the stream and finding a sparkling treasure
beneath. He used to search for that kind of treasure when he was a
pup.

That thought, too, was cast back into the
shadows. Bull stepped away. The girl’s rounded back moved with him
as if she missed the warmth of the contact.

“
We’re done here. Can you
hang on while I get my clothes on?” He drew the curtain back and
stepped from the tub.

“
Yeah,” she said, pushing
away from the wall and turning her back to him. Her head was bowed
and her face was hidden by her hair.

Bull smiled at the show of modesty, ironic
when you considered he’d had his hands on every inch of it. He
dried his body with the smaller towels in the stack and ran the
last one over his hair, combed his fingers through it, shook his
head, and let it fall into place. Shorts and jeans were next, but
the shirt remained where he’d tossed it on the floor. The front of
it was smeared with whatever she’d rolled in while in the
dumpster.

“
Come on, spitfire, let’s
get you dried off and to bed.”

“
Just pass me a towel. I’m
all right now.”

He took one of the larger towels and held it
to her back, sliding the ends under her arms. When she tucked it
around her thin frame, he turned her and lifted her from the
tub.

“
Not taking any chances.
Messy fixtures, remember?” He sat her in the middle of the bed and
brought her the last two towels. “Now when you fall over, you won’t
make a mess.”

Her sun starved skin was glowing from the
scrub down he’d given her. The faint sheen of water left behind
from the shower made it glisten in the light cast by the room’s
only lamp. It was darker than his and he figured that when she was
healthy, it would be a deep golden brown. She looked a helluva lot
better than she did before, but no amount of scrubbing could erase
the dark circles under her eyes, or the cracked lips that had lost
all their color. A yellowing bruise stood out on her cheek. Now
that she was clean, her big brown eyes looked even larger than
before. It might have been a pretty face if it hadn’t looked so
gaunt and abused.

He found a comb in the side pocket of his
duffle and tossed it to her. Rummaging in the main section, he
found the black tee he wanted, smelled it to be sure it was clean,
and passed that to her, too.

“
Can I have my sandwich
now?” she asked as her head popped through the neck of the shirt.
“It’s in the pocket of the pants. I’ll share it with you if you
want some. You said you were hungry and at this hour, everything is
closed. I lost the fries somewhere,” she added sadly.

She was starving, yet she was offering to
share her two ounces of meat with him. Bull shook his head. She was
a strange one all right.

He picked up the formerly black trousers that
were now crusted with yellow and wrinkled his nose. Whatever had
stained his tee shirt had soaked into the pants and burger, too. He
held up the soggy mess now flattened to the size of a small pancake
and showed it to her.

“
You’re not eating this,” he
said.

Her eyes followed the arc of burger to
wastebasket, but she said nothing. It was when she closed those
eyes and ran her tongue over her cracked lips in a clear plea for
inner strength that something in Bull cracked. Even his wolf was
moved by that look and echoed Bull’s gut response.

“
Feed
,” the wolf demanded.

“
I’m on it,” Bull responded
aloud. He grabbed his keys from the desk and looked back at the
woman on the bed. “I’ll go find us something to eat.”

Her eyes lit with surprise and she nodded.
“Oh, okay. I’ll wait right here.” She plucked at the tee shirt she
wore. “Can’t run very far looking like this.”

He was at the exit of the parking lot before
it hit him. She’d run before looking a whole lot worse. That smart
assed little bitch! He didn’t bother turning the truck around.
Lights out, he backed through the parking lot and into his spot.
Key dangling from the knob, he threw open the door and almost
laughed. With those big brown eyes, she looked more like a deer
caught in the headlights than a cunning she-wolf.

She was kneeling over his duffle with a pair
of socks in one hand, a pair of undershorts in the other, and a wad
of his extra cash between her teeth.

“
Need a hand?” he asked,
holding his out under her chin.

She spit the cash out. “I would have paid it
back,” she said.

“
Yeah, because we’re such
good friends and you know my address.”

Color rose in her cheeks, “Okay, so maybe I
wouldn’t have.” She sighed. “Look, I’m grateful you helped me
escape, but you have no right to keep me here. I know you’re not a
bad man, but you’re not a good one, either. I don’t know who you
are.”

“
That works both ways. At
least you know my name.”

She opened her mouth, but shut it again,
holding back whatever she was about to say.

Bull flipped through the bills in his hand.
“How far did you think you were going to get on thirty-eight
dollars?” There was almost five hundred more in the duffle.

“
Home.”

“
Where’s home?”

She sat back on her heels and shook her bowed
head.

“
I could beat it out of you,
you know.”

The corners of her mouth tilted up and then
down. “No you couldn’t. You killed those men without batting an
eye, but not once did you hurt me, even when you tried to be mean,
you weren’t.”

“
Don’t be too sure,” he said
gruffly, but even he knew it sounded false.

The smile finally took over her mouth. “It’s
the only thing in this whole mixed up mess I am sure of. I don’t
know why I’m sure of it. It’s probably just part of the craziness
that is me. Like not ever getting lost, you know?” The smile faded.
“No, of course you don’t. You wouldn’t. You aren’t weird.”

Bull sucked in his cheeks to keep from
snorting. He’d killed two men without batting an eye, but she
considered him normal. Compared to her, he probably was. She was
weird and he was temporarily stuck with it, so he might as well
make the best of it.

“
Are you still hungry?” he
asked.

She shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t really
feel it unless I smell the food.” She eyed the waste basket and the
balled up wrapper.

“
You didn’t,” he said, but
she had.

“
It was only the top bun.
The meat and pickles were okay.”

“
I was gone for what? Ninety
seconds?”

“
I could smell it,” she
whined.

“
Get back on the bed,” he
ordered while he pulled his backpack from beneath it. “All the way
back. Up by the pillows.”

He grabbed her wrist, snapped a handcuff on
it and snapped the other end to the bed before she had the first
word of protest formed. He pointed his finger at her nose.

“
Now stay there and try not
to eat the pillow.”

~*~

Tommie flipped up the middle finger of her
free hand and showed it to the closing door. It was a stupid
gesture, but when it came to the big guy, stupid was her middle
name.

“
Want an example?” she asked
the woman on the TV screen who was hawking some kind of dust mop
that would pick up fifty times the dirt your mother’s mop could. “I
know you’re not a bad man, but you’re not a good one either,” she
mimicked herself. “How’s that for stupid?”

“
No answer, huh?” she asked
the woman, “That’s what the drugs were supposed to do, but they
only work for other people, normal people, and not for the weird
ones like me.”

At one time or another, she’d taken every
medication on the market. None of them worked. As the dosages got
larger and her body became less responsive, the voice in her head
got louder. She couldn’t put a coherent sentence together, but the
thing inside her was loud and clear.

“
Run. Find. Like
us.
”

As if she could find someone else like her.
She was stupid, weird, and nuttier than a pecan tree and just her
luck, when she’s at the lowest point in her stupid, weird and nutty
life, she runs into a guy who shakes her insides up so badly, she
didn’t know which way to turn.

He was big and strong, and when he carried
her in his arms, she’d felt more closeness and warmth than she’d
ever felt in her entire life. Even the voice inside her was quiet
and content. For the little time she’d been held in his arms, she
felt normal.

She was embarrassed to think about the
shower. Bull was completely impersonal as he soaped and scrubbed
and rinsed. Her head knew it. Her body didn’t. His hands, running
the cloth over her arms and legs, back and breasts, made her body
sing like no one else’s ever did. And when that cloth passed
between her legs, it took every ounce of her willpower not to cry
out, not to let go. One shower made her long for his touch. Two
would turn it into a craving. Three, and the addiction would be
complete. Another abnormal load to add to the ones she already
carried.

When he’d stepped from the tub, she’d had to
turn away. She was so afraid he would see in her face what she’d
felt inside.

If the hallucination of the wolf on the wall
didn’t prove she’d finally lost what little sanity she had, that
shower certainly did. She’d known him for what? Seven or eight
hours? That wasn’t long enough for Stockholm syndrome. Was it? Her
doctors would probably call it a form of transference.

Whatever it was, Tommie knew it wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be. Like the inner voice, the dreams, and the shadow on
the wall, she knew this feeling she had was just another symptom of
her growing mental illness and she had to get away before her
humiliation was complete.

The thing inside her growled. It always
objected to rational thought as if it viewed those thoughts as
dangerous. It was happiest when she was at her craziest, that time
in her younger days when she partied hardy, ran wild, and threw
caution to the wind. Now, it mostly showed anger and disappointment
as a reflection of her failure as a human being.

The woman on the TV screen was telling her
that she could clean up the messiness of her life in an instant
with the purchase of her super-duper dust mop. All she had to do
was send in nineteen –ninety-five plus shipping and handling and
her world would be a happier place.

“
Shut up!” Tommie told both
voice and TV woman. She threw herself back in
frustration.

The headboard wobbled and banged against the
wall. When Tommie pushed back a little more, the headboard bent
back with her. The headboard wasn’t secured to the wall, but to the
bed frame and not too securely at that. Tommie leaned over the bed
for a closer inspection.

Bull had fastened the handcuff to the
bedframe. With the headboard removed, she might be able to slide
the cuff off the end of the frame. Only two bolts stood in her
way.

The bed wasn’t secured to the wall, but the
nightstand was. Working in such a cramped space with her left hand
cuffed to the rail, made things difficult. Her right hand kept
cramping up from the awkward angle, and her fingers kept slipping
off the nut.

She was on her knees with her head under the
bed. It was the most comfortable position to work. Wads of dust
bunnies dangled from the ancient and exposed box spring and every
time the bed moved a sprinkling of dust would fall. It made her
sneeze, and the sneeze would make her head hit the springs, shaking
loose more dirt. Her nose was running, her eyes watering. Her
shoulders were aching. Still, she was making progress. One bolt was
removed and the second was on its way.

Headlights shined through the flimsy curtains
drawn across the front windows. The light didn’t pass like a car
turning through the parking lot and Tommie knew her plan had failed
again. But all was not lost. She left the nut and bolt where they
lay to look like they’d worked themselves loose and withdrew from
under the bed. A short hop would put her back on top where she’d
look like she spent the whole time.

It was another good plan that failed. She
couldn’t move without ripping the hair from her head. The tangles
that Bull’s flimsy comb couldn’t remove were now tangled further in
the springs of the bed.

The door to the room opened and there she
was; head down and ass up. She’d never been suicidal, but the
thought now crossed her mind.