Gareth stiffened slightly beside me, and I followed his gaze, noting the video cameras.
“What are the odds they’re actually on?” He knew as well as I did that some stores used fakes to try and keep people honest—just empty shells or dead cameras no longer capable of recording anything their blind eyes were turned toward.
“I don’t like taking the chance that they are…”
Ever since Mississippi, Gareth had become cautious. A werewolf caged was no werewolf, he still occasionally mumbled. He hadn’t spent much time imprisoned—but some was much more than he ever intended to see again. So now, no matter how hungry or desperate we were, we plotted and planned. How can I protect the pack if I’m kept from them? he’d asked me once.
And so he’d become the cautious one, keeping my impulses—all of them—firmly in check. Sometimes I wanted to kill him for it.
But most of the time I just wanted to rub up against him and make him focus on nothing but me. “We have a can of spray paint,” I reminded him.
“True, true,” he agreed. “We can give it a nice ol’ black eye.…”
I shivered, the breeze turning and cutting into me suddenly.
Gareth pulled me close, slipping his arm away from mine to encircle me with it instead. And although my heart sped at the move, my mind knew it meant nothing. Gareth would have wrapped any of the pack members—male or female—into his warmth if it meant making them comfortable or happy. Besides, we were playing a part—pretending to be a couple. And as much as I wished it weren’t pretend, I knew better.
It only had to be believable as we scoped out the place.
Gareth didn’t want me. He followed me to protect the others from me.
“Let’s go that direction,” he said, pointing with his chin. “We don’t wanna hang too long in front of one store and draw attention to ourselves.”
So we strolled away, I clinging to the side of him and enjoying his strength, his warmth, and the solid power of his body, and he? Too cautious and careful to notice the way I fell into beta mode around him.
Because even if he didn’t always agree with my style of leadership, Gareth was the first to admit our group needed a firm leader. And since he didn’t want to be an alpha …
That left me.
And Gabe sniffing around the pack’s edges, hoping for a way in—a way to lead at my side. As my equal.
My mate.
Gareth led me down the sidewalk to the Blockbuster and opened the door, holding it for me like a true Southern gentleman should. It had taken me months to get used to his little courtesies—and the fact that he held on to them so tightly after so much discourtesy had been done to him.
Together we wandered down the aisles of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, my finger trailing lightly along the shelves.
He paused in the horror section.
“They always mislabel these,” I remarked, picking up a few favorites. “Ginger Snaps isn’t horror, it’s drama.” I set it down again.
“And Blood and Chocolate?”
“Romance,” I stated.
He released me and drifted farther down the row to where the foreign films began. “Brotherhood of the Wolf?”
“Tragedy.”
“The Twilight Saga?”
I shivered. “That’s horror. Stark and terrifying horror.”
His full, dark lips slid into a generous smile. “I sort of liked them,” he admitted. “Using a minority to represent the wolves. That was clever.” He winked at me, and I pursed my lips in reply.
“You’re such a dork sometimes.”
He shrugged. “A dork … a romantic…?” He shrugged again.
“What’s romantic about the girl choosing the wrong guy? Jacob should’ve totally won Bella. He deserved to get what he wanted. He was passionate, protective…”
“The boy had abs of steel,” Gareth remarked.
“Nothing wrong with that,” I agreed, reaching out to pat Gareth’s tight stomach. I fought down the tremble that launched through my bones at such simple contact.
A gentleman, he said nothing, but his eyes darkened slightly in warning, and I pulled my hand away.
“Besides, ‘truth is stranger than fiction,’” I quipped.
His smile was fleeting, but it was better than nothing. “We’d better go back out and finish watching. The pups are probably starting to miss us,” I added, leading him from the store. “You know how crazed they can get when they’re this hungry.”
He nodded, the darkness still staining his eyes. Did he remember the time they broke into a fight over the last piece of beef jerky and Tembe nearly lost an eye? I blanched at the memory of Tembe’s eye hanging from its socket. Nearly lost an eye was exactly what I meant.
We did fine if everything remained in its place—damage was often fixable by our natural means and occasionally a splint or brace. But a part gone was … a part gone. Forever.
We weren’t starfish—we couldn’t regrow parts.
I shook my head, clearing it. That had been an unpleasant night. I rolled my shoulder, feeling the pain still nestled deep in it.
Gareth caught me and looked at me, his eyes full of concern.
I ignored him. Doing our job here and returning promptly to the pups was important when hunger stalked so close behind.
“There’s still the homeless shelter,” I reminded him.
He nodded grimly. “We may have to split the pack and try it. Let’s hope we find another way, though.”
“Yeah. Homeless shelters don’t seem to suit our type.”
He blinked at me, waiting for me to continue.
“But petty theft and larceny does.” I shrugged. “It’s the system that works.”
His silence spoke volumes.
“You’re judging me again,” I hissed.
He raised his hands, palms out. “I do not judge.”
Damn him, he was right. He was the least judgmental person I knew. He made Christ look hypocritical. “It’s our system.” I sighed.
“You do not need to justify it to me. It keeps them alive and gives them a family and hope.”
“But you wish things were different, don’t you?”
“Don’t you?”
I turned back to the store we’d been watching and let him pull me against him, wrapping me in his powerful arms as he acted the part of the snuggling lover and carefully kept us just beyond the view of the camera.
A slender man followed a final customer to the entrance and waved her out before turning the sign to read CLOSED in the door and clicking a single dead bolt into place.
10:02.
“Here we go,” I whispered, leaning into Gareth so that our two hearts pounded impossibly close together.
10:03. Lights flickered off in a pattern running the length of the store, so fast there had to be a bank of switches that could be flipped quickly and leave only one set of lights glowing. Near what we knew to be the office.
And the safe.
10:04. Faint movement near the office. If Skipper’s was like most smaller businesses, now would be the time for counting out, evening out the cash register drawers and prepping the deposit for the bank.
The curious thing would be to see if the money sat in the store’s safe overnight or if the owner stepped out to his car to drive it to the nearby bank and make a late-night deposit. If it stayed in the safe, we’d need to adjust our slowly forming plan on how to get access to it. But if the owner headed to the car with it … I held my breath, noted the time, and kept watch.
At 10:12 the same man approached the door again, key in hand and something tucked up beneath his arm. Taking a long look at the parking lot, he undid the bolt, opened the door, and snapped it shut again, sliding the key in and twisting with a well-practiced move. The store locked behind him, he headed across the parking lot, clicking a button on his keys so that the lights on a nearby car flashed in response. Then he slid the hand holding the keys up to grasp the zippered cash bag—a plump one—under his arm.
I watched him climb into the little car, heard the locks activate, and the engine start as we slowly walked to the car Gabe had recently obtained for us.
Sliding into the passenger’s seat, I let Gareth drive. Stealthily, we followed the man’s car until we knew what bank he was using and what roads and hiding places there were between the store and it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jessie
We paused between classes—I’d finally succeeded in luring Pietr to a stairwell where we’d spent some time in the past. Kissing. Reaching up, I tugged his hair forward, pulling it across his right eye like he used to always wear it.
He looked at me, puzzled, and swept it back so both his eyes were clear.
I sighed and, looking up into his pale blue eyes, I said, “I love you.”
“I think you say that too lightly,” Pietr complained.
“What? What am I saying too lightly?”
“Nyet. Ugh. Don’t get me wrong. I love to hear it, but you say ‘I love you’ all the time.”
“I do not.…”
“Every time you hang up the phone with your sister or father—no matter how good or bad the call—‘I love you.’ Every time I head to a different class, or the bathroom,” he griped, “‘I love you.’”
“So?”
“At what point is it habitual and less meaningful?”
“Never,” I protested.
He looked away.
“You don’t believe me.”
“You developed quite a reputation for lying,” he pointed out.
“Yes, Captain Obvious,” I growled. “But I don’t lie when I say ‘I love you.’ Ever.”
“Do you need to say it so often? Doesn’t that—cheapen—the effect?”
“Does my love seem cheap to you?”
His eyes widened in realization. “Oh, shit. Nyet … there’s nothing cheap about you.…”
“Quit backpedaling and tell me this: How much time do we have, Pietr?”
He checked his watch. “Three minutes before the tardy bell.”
“No. I mean how much time—overall—do we have, Pietr. You and me. In our lives?”
He paused and swallowed.
“A decade? A year? A month? A day maybe?” I pushed. “Do you know what tomorrow will bring?”
“Of course not,” he snarled.
“Neither do I. I have this moment and maybe the next, if I continue to be lucky. You’ve taught me that life is short.”
“You’ve taught me that life is precious.”
“Then understand. This is my mother’s influence. She did this same thing—telling me she loved me so much, spreading it around like the words were nothing. I called her on it, too. I called her on it, Pietr. I told her that. That all her little ‘I love you’s’ were shit because she tossed them around like nothing. Do you know what she said?”
He shook his head.
“She reminded me we’re farmers and said it takes a lot of shit to make something beautiful grow. And after I’d shut my mouth, totally stunned, she explained that she always figured if she said those words often enough that when she was finally gone, although I’d doubt and I’d forget a bunch, at least I’d remember she told me ‘I love you’ a few times. And you know what, Pietr? Now she’s gone, and all I want is to hear her say those words. Again.”
“I didn’t realize,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” He gathered me to him, and we stood silently together in the hallway and just let the tardy bell ring.
Alexi
I’d taken the VW Rabbit to Johnny Bey’s to try my luck with the Tuesday night crowd. As the convertible was not quick to sell, nor was Pietr quick to find work, I reverted to what I did best: watching people, examining their strengths and weaknesses, and playing a role that’d get me an opportunity I needed to win money at pool. In short: hustling.
Although I was quite a good player, I never challenged the men I judged to be the best at the tables—they did not have egos that needed proving like their more mediocre counterparts. An ego that needed proving was often backed up by large amounts of money.
Amy would have called such action “overcompensating,” which only reinforced the fact that I liked Amy.
Men who overcompensated believed they were unbeatable. Or at least said it. Saying it with cash was good enough for me to be willing to put them to the test.
I was observing the action and trying to choose a target when the wolf walked in.
I drew back, leaning into a shadowed corner by the long, slick bar, and watched her stalk around the edge of the pool tables.
Long-legged and slender, with a tiny waist, she had a build like my sister’s if Cat had been stretched out another four inches.
She wore a short top that exposed just a hint of her stomach, and tight blue jeans that were scuffed at the knees and ended in black high-heeled suede boots. Long red hair fell loose around her shoulders, and I wondered if what I was feeling seeing her stalk the room was a modicum of what the man in Farthington felt for my mother.
Nothing in her body language hinted at insecurity: no stoop to her shoulders, no slow stride as she walked, no darting of her large and shining eyes.…
She knew she owned every room she walked into.
I was certainly not the only man to notice.
I was observing a female alpha.
A female alpha who was, as Max would say, “Off her chain.” She wore no necklace or what Cat called a “collar” to dull the intensity of her allure. That fact was nearly as frightening as the beast she could become at will.
Thankfully, being raised by wolves had granted me a soft immunity to their charms. Unfortunately the other men in the room did not have that same advantage. They were nothing more than prey animals with no idea they were the ones being hunted.
She ran her fingers lightly over the bar’s sleek wooden surface, smiling at each man as she went. Where they saw sex and flirtation, I read danger. She was as much shark as wolf, circling the smoky room slowly and drinking in the scents of alcohol and the haze that pervaded everything.
She was waiting to scent blood in the water.
The way she took in her surroundings, I had to presume if she found no blood, she would make someone bleed simply to satisfy her desires.
I was so intrigued by her I nearly missed the man who trailed her silently at a distance. If I had not known wolves, I would have thought they had come separately and arrived at the same hunting grounds as a matter of coincidence.
But there seemed no coincidence in Junction.
He moved with the same quiet animal grace that she did—a grace and power others would wrongly mistake as leonine. Those who had never seen a wolf in action, a wolf in the wild, no doubt would misjudge him as a lion among men.
Though they moved in a similar fashion, he was as unique as she. Dark, African, or Caribbean in descent, the red that lit his hair muted among the rich brown and ebony he wore in lengthy dreadlocks. He was as broad across the shoulders as Max and nearly as tall as Pietr. The men in the pool hall were smart enough to give him wide berth as he passed by.
A few men boldly stood taller or threw back their shoulders and puffed out their chests, but I could not be sure if it was in response to her or the threat of him.
Remaining in the shadows, I watched and waited for a moment to slip away unnoticed.
When she finished her round through the pool hall, her companion not far behind, and went to the bar for a drink, I headed for the door.
“Don’t I look twenty-one?” she asked the bartender, and I glanced over my shoulder in time to see her motion down the length of her body as if it were all the ID she needed.
“You look amazing, hot stuff,” the man replied, wiping at the same spot on the bar he had been rubbing with great intensity since she’d walked in, “but if I get busted for serving minors, I’m screwed. No card, no Coors.”
Her friend joined her, his hand on her shoulder. He leaned in and whispered something. She pulle
d away from him, her hands balling into fists that rested on her hips.
“I deserve a drink,” she snapped.
“Come on, George, there aren’t any cops around…,” someone called from the end of the hall.
“And it wouldn’t be your ass in a sling if there were,” the bartender replied.
“Here,” another man said, reaching across the bar, “I’ll help you myself—”
“What the—” the bartender hit him with his towel. “What are you thinking?”
“They’re thinking they want to buy me a drink.” She laughed.
“And I said no,” he shouted. “You need to leave.”
Fists started flying, and I ducked out the door. I had been in enough bar fights with Max to know how things would end—with broken chairs, tables, and maybe a broken arm or a leg for some participants. I had no interest in being a part of that.
I looked around the parking lot, wondering what car they had come in. If I knew where they were from, it might give me some clue to their destination or their goals.
If they had goals.
Finding their vehicle might also help me determine their numbers.
What if there were more than the two?
If Wanda had been along I would have asked her to run license plates, but my stomach tightened at the thought of getting more help from Wanda.
The way Mother had called her a traitor when Wanda helped us rescue her—there had been such vehemence to the word it was hard to believe it was merely the dementia of a dying wolf.… What if Wanda had betrayed Mother in the past?
I slid into the car, still contemplating the vehicles crowding the lot. A few motorcycles, some standard two-door and four-door cars, and an old box van. A lot of wolves could fit in an old box van.
Starting the Rabbit, I thought about how few of us fit in it. Amy already joked about needing a shoehorn or a better understanding of the game Tetris to get Max in and out of the vehicle.