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Day 161 of the re-emerged Hat Island pack, Friday, Nov. 15, Penticton, B.C.
Benny was cooking bacon in Ryder and Jessie’s cabin. He’d been there all night, watching them sleep. Michel had been there for most of the night, until Benny chased him out to get some sleep. “I can watch,” Benny said. “And I’ll fetch you — or the guard outside the door will — if something changes. But you need to be able to think, and that requires sleep.”
Michel hadn’t argued. It had been a long day for him, Benny thought compassionately.
Dennis had checked in during the early morning hours after they returned from the funeral for John McKenzie. Benny sent him off to bed as well. “You only get Michel for one more day,” he observed. “You need sleep so that the two of you can get the rest of the serum center set up.”
Dennis hadn’t argued either.
And then Benny had a few hours to himself, but rather than think, he just watched the two of them sleep. The metronome kept ticking. He’d have to remember that trick — if he ever saw a metronome again.
But around 6 a.m. he’d had enough of watching them sleep. And if the smell of bacon cooking didn’t wake them up, he’d try coffee next. They had things to do. Benny rolled his eyes. Who was he kidding? He wanted to make sure they were OK.
And sure enough bacon did the trick. “Hungry?” he asked when Jessie opened her eyes. “Want some breakfast?”
She nodded. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at Ryder. “Is he OK?” she asked huskily.
Benny brought her a glass of water and made her drink it. “You tell me?” he said.
She glanced at him, and then looked inward. Finally she nodded. “He’s just asleep,” she said with a soft smile. “But I want up.”
Jessie crawled out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. “And don’t you two dare eat all the bacon before I get back.”
Benny closed his eyes in relief. He picked up a piece of bacon and ate it. Maybe he’d cook some eggs too.
“And toast,” Jessie called from the bathroom.
Benny paused. OK, they might be getting a bit too close for comfort. “Come on, bro,” he said. “Time to get up. Coffee’s on.”
“Not until I can get into the bathroom,” Ryder groused, not opening his eyes.
Benny let the relief he felt course through his body. He’d been sure they were OK, he reassured himself. He poured coffee, set a cup of it by the bed for Ryder, and added cream to his. “Coffee, Jessie,” he called.
She came out wearing a T-shirt, Ryder’s by the size of it, and sweatpants. “Gimme,” she demanded. Ryder made a beeline for the bathroom. Benny solemnly handed Jessie a cup, and then he gave her a hug.
“You worried me,” he admitted.
“That poison is bad news,” she said. “We need to find his lab and destroy it.”
Benny smiled at her. “Your job,” he said. “Me? I’m going to round up Titus and go down and kick some butt in the Okanogan. You two can follow down Monday when you’ve had a chance to recuperate.”
She nodded, then her eyes narrowed at him suspiciously. “You just don’t want to have to help with the pack barbeque tonight,” she accused.
“Busted,” Ryder said, coming out wearing sweatpants. His tattoos showed on his arm, and he had a nasty scar on the left pectoral muscle — a scar that looked like it had been made weeks ago, not yesterday. He grabbed the cup of coffee Benny had left for him.
Benny stared at him. “Turn around,” he commanded.
Ryder did. Benny stared at his brother’s back, then looked at Jessie, with a growing smile. “Guess he’s healed in more than one way,” he said softly. “Go look at your back in the mirror, Ryder.”
Ryder ducked back into the bathroom, then came back out again, his eyes wide. “Where did they go?”
Benny shrugged. “I guess you don’t need the reminder to not trust those who watch your back,” Benny said. He grinned at both of them. “I’ll tell the people at the house not to expect you until lunch. Have fun, kids.”
Benny set down his coffee mug, snagged some more bacon and walked out. He smiled. He did like a happy ending — of all kinds. Even temporary happy endings.
He went into Wolf’s Head. Most everyone was asleep, but he found Titus drinking coffee in the kitchen with Jason and Duncan. “They’re fine,” he said briefly. “I told them to hide out until at least lunch — new mates and all.”
Titus smiled briefly at that. The other two men looked too tired to even manage a smile.
“Have you had any sleep?” Benny demanded.
“Some,” Jason said. “But we’ve got a lot of ticking time bombs out there. I kept waking up thinking one of them had exploded. I’d do a walk through, then go back to sleep. I need more men.”
“We can pull in men from the pack now,” Duncan said. “I’ll start making some calls. We’ve got the men — but most of them had the good sense to hide and wait to see how things worked out.”
“Smart,” Benny agreed. “And you? You get any sleep?”
Duncan shrugged. “Some,” he said. “I stayed up there late. Marta needed the support. She’s been his wife for nearly 200 years. Even if he was a bastard, that’s a long time to be with someone and then to be alone.”
Might be the same for Duncan — only longer, Benny thought. What, 400 years, 500? Hard to fathom that. “So, I want Titus to head to the Okanogan with me. Settle people down. Do some clean up,” Benny said. “Give us the weekend. Then, Ryder and Jessie can come down and be welcomed to the pack.”
“And how are you planning to make Ryder the pack Alpha down there?” Duncan asked.
Benny looked at Titus. “Something Dad cooked up, of course,” he said, trying for levity even though he didn’t really feel it. His father had a lot to answer for. “Anything you need me for before we leave?”
They really didn’t need him at all, Benny thought with amusement. Oh they had some questions, but his answers tended to be, ‘ask Ryder when he shows up.’
“Fine,” Jason said with disgust. “Get out of here. We’ll ask Ryder when he shows up.”
Benny laughed. “We’re gone.”
“I’m taking Bjorn Hansen’s pickup,” Titus said over his shoulder, following him out of the kitchen. “Someone want to do the paperwork for me?”
Benny was still chuckling about that when they got outside. “You going to ride that bike down? Or do you want to load it in the back and ride?” Titus asked, looking around at the hills. “Looks like it snowed.”
Benny decided to load it in the back of the pickup. He was going to have to ride it back to Seattle as it was. He had nothing to prove — not even to Ken and Mucho who came out to jeer at him for being a warm-weather biker.
By the time they were ready to go, Ryder and Jessie came around the house to say goodbye. “We’ll be down Monday morning,” Ryder promised.
“Good,” Benny said. “I want to get back to Seattle before I get snowed in and have to spend the winter in Okanogan.”
“It’s not that bad,” Titus protested. Benny just raised an eyebrow. “OK, maybe it is.”
The banter felt good, but once Titus was out of town, exhaustion hit him. “Wake me up when we get there,” he muttered. Not that it was a long drive — two hours max. But damn, when the adrenaline left, it was gone.
The pickup slowed, and Benny woke up, alert. “Easy,” Titus said. “We’re in Oroville. And I thought we’d get coffee and decide what you think we need to accomplish between the two of us before the boy gets down here.”
Benny smiled appreciatively. “Spotted that, did you?”
“Might need to stock up on some groceries too,” Titus said. “Doubtful anything I left behind is good, and ditto for your father’s place. Is that where you’re going to stay?”
Benny nodded. He didn’t really plan to eat there, however. He’d drive into town for meals. “Coffee and cream would be good.”
“Bacon and eggs never hurt a man,” Titus pointed out.
So they stopped at a grocery store, and then pulled through a drive through and got coffee. “OK, lay it on me,” Titus said.
“We need to clean up the mess about Oscar,” Benny said. “You and I both know that if Oscar harmed Naomi, someone directed it. Someone broke that man’s hold on reality and sent him after her. And it pisses me off. Oscar didn’t deserve that.”
“No, he didn’t,” Titus agreed. “I suspect they were trying to get your Dad’s attention, and they couldn’t do it themselves. Or figured they would avoid paying the price and lay the blame at Oscar’s doorstep. And that’s almost worse than the attack.”
“He had to go down for the attack,” Benny said. “But so do they. You got an idea who?”
Titus nodded. “Might as well get that over with,” he said. “It’s also come to my attention that none of them bothered to backtrack me to Penticton when I didn’t come home. And you can’t tell me, they couldn’t have done it.”
“Fine friends you have,” Benny muttered, looking out the window as Titus put the pickup in gear and headed back out onto the highway.
“You know as well as I do, they aren’t friends,” Titus said, although he sounded matter-of-fact about it. “They’re outlaws, really. And Tom kept them in line — more for the sake of the townspeople than anything else. But they were crazy motherfuckers before Tom called the pack, and they haven’t improved with age.”
“How many are left in the pack?” Benny asked, considering that.
“Probably 100 or so,” he said. “I could give you an exact count, if you need it. And after we clean out a few of the vipers, I’ll call them in for a meet with Ryder. But we get new people, Benny. The Iraq war left its walking wounded on our doorstep. And Afghanistan. And the next war will too. There’s something about these hills that offer peace to men like me.”
Benny nodded. He got that, but the Okanogan didn’t speak to him like it did to the others. But he’d seen it. He’d seen his Dad’s peace here. “Dad felt it,” he said out loud. “Do you think he’ll come back here?”
“Maybe a visit,” Titus said, but he sounded doubtful. “I got the impression he thought his time here was over. But he’s too responsible to just bust the ties and walk away. Someone had to take the pack. He thought it would be you.”
“Not me,” Benny said. “And I told him that, a long time ago — and repeatedly since then. Ryder’s the right man.”
“I agree,” Titus said. “And that little gal is perfect to steady him.”
Benny nodded. Titus turned off the highway and paused to put the pickup in 4-wheel drive. He pushed on. This wasn’t the road Titus and his father shared, so he guessed they were going to see someone about Oscar.
Titus parked the pickup. “I’ll call him out,” Titus said. “But it wouldn’t break my heart if you wanted to be the one who takes him down. I’m still a couple of meals shy of fighting strength.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Benny said. “Naomi is important to me — as she is to Ryder and Dad. But I liked Oscar. And I want someone to pay.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m right,” Titus said. “But I’ll ask to make sure. And then be my guest.”
It would be Nick, Benny thought sourly when the man came out of his house. Well, the world would be a better place without him.
“Titus,” Nick said. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Didn’t bother to come after me, did you?” Titus said levelly. “Sat up here and plotted instead. Did you think you could step up and take the pack?”
“No, Titus,” Nick protested. “You know I wouldn’t do that. Last thing I want is that headache.”
Benny thought that was true.
“So what then?” Titus persisted. “What the hell did you think you were doing to torment poor Oscar like that?”
Nick charged, turning wolf as he came. Benny stepped up and shifted. His wolf snarled with pleasure. And five minutes later, Nick was bleeding out. Benny shifted back and pulled on clothes. And damn if it didn’t work to pull off the sweatshirt first. Hadn’t slowed him down much at all, and now he wasn’t standing out here freezing without a shirt. “Ask him who else,” Benny said. “He wasn’t alone.”
Titus ordered the wolf to shift, and then grabbed the man by the hair and forced him to cough up a couple of other names. Titus dropped Nick’s head. “We might as well bury him while we’re up here.”
“He got any descendants? Anyone who needs to be notified?” Benny asked as he went in search of a shovel.
“If he’s got a will, it will be with Meacham’s office in town,” Titus said, referring to a shifter with a law office in Omak. Benny didn’t know how valid the man’s law degree was, but he mostly handled pack business — been in the family for generations, he thought with a roll of his eyes.
They dug two more graves out in the national forest before calling it a day. “Doesn’t bother you, does it,” Titus observed.
“What? Killing these bastards? No, and I’ll sleep just fine tonight,” Benny said. He glanced at Titus. “Do you think it should?”
Titus shook his head. “I dunno,” he said frankly. “Doesn’t bother me that they’re dead. But we both know I’m not all right. I couldn’t function in normal town life any better than they could.”
Benny frowned, puzzled by where Titus was going with this. “Titus I killed my first man before I was 10,” he said slowly. “I’d like to think no one I killed didn’t deserve it, but let’s face it, the reason you and I are doing this instead of leaving it to Ryder is because it doesn’t bother me. And it would him, even if he didn’t admit it. Oscar bothered him. It had to be done, and he knew it. But Oscar all but had to force him to do it.”
“And you’re not like that,” Titus said. He sounded a bit sad about it.
“No,” Benny said. “There are things I regret. But these deaths? Nah. I did the world a favor today.”
“And who judges that? You?”
Benny considered that. “No, you did,” he said slowly. “You’re the pack Second, and you judged them. If you’d asked me as the Council intelligencer to weigh their guilt, I would have found them equally guilty, and exacted the same punishment. But I don’t just kill because someone cut me off in the HOV lane.”
Titus snorted at that. “Good,” he said. “A man should know why he’s killing.”
Benny reached over and patted his arm. “Thanks for the talk, Dad,” he said teasing him. But he was touched by the old man’s concern. Titus rolled his eyes. He parked in front of the cabin Benny had once called home.
“I have a question for you,” Benny said, changing the subject.
“Shoot,” Titus said. “After my little lecture, there, I guess I owe you a question or two.”
“You knew what to do to help mates heal each other,” Benny said, looking out the window, to give Titus privacy. “Not many do.”
Titus was silent. “Long time ago, now,” he said. “But yeah, I had a mate. She died while I was overseas fighting a godforsaken war. Ironically it probably would have taken me if I’d been there. But I’d raised barriers around our bond when I went to war — to protect her. It protected me instead. I cursed that for a very long time.”
“Thank you for sharing a part of your story with me,” Benny said formally. He got out of the pickup. “And it reassures me to know that there will be someone to help the two of them navigate this — a mate bond coupled with the Alpha-Second bond. They both told me they can see the two bonds — not just one.”
“Weird shit,” Titus said. He got out to help Benny unload the motorcycle out of the back. A second trip got the groceries into the cabin. “And a female pack Second. Might be interesting enough that I’ll stick around for a while longer.”
Benny snickered. “May you live in interesting times,” he intoned mockingly.
“You know that’s not a real Chinese curse, don’t you?” Titus said as he got into the pickup.
“So I’ve heard,” Benny said, grinning. “So I’ve heard.”
Benny spent the evening happily puttering around the old cabin. His father had put it to bed tidily before leaving. And the more he puttered, the more he became convinced his father hadn’t intended to return. Where was he? What was he doing? Benny wondered with exasperation.
Bacon and eggs made a fine supper too.
Run? His wolf suggested. Benny hesitated and then agreed. He stripped and shifted and ran. It was a crisp, clear night — cold too, but his wolf didn’t mind that — and he howled at the moon. Then he panicked, but no one howled back. Relieved, he yipped a couple of more times before trotting back to the cabin.
That would have been hard to explain if he’d called the pack to him after going to great lengths to avoid that, he thought with amusement. He stoked up the fire in the pot-bellied stove, and then shrugged. He shifted back to wolf and slept on the floor in front of it.
Saturday morning, he did a few more chores, and finally braved his father’s study to check it out. And sitting on the blotter on the big craftsman’s desk were two envelopes addressed to him and Ryder. He left Ryder’s sitting there and took his out to the front steps to read.
It didn’t answer any of the questions Benny wanted answers to. It was basically a father’s letter to his son when he wasn’t sure he was coming back. But Benny had never been in doubt that his father loved him. Of all the things he had questions about, that wasn’t one of them. He smiled at that, and carefully folded the letter back into the envelope and tucked it into his backpack.
And then he went for a ride into Okanogan.
The town hadn’t changed all that much from his memories. Oh, some buildings had new coats of paint, and there were more coffee shops advertising trendy drinks instead of all you could eat breakfast. He wandered around, found the high school, and Naomi’s old house. She hadn’t lived there in decades — she’d moved out to a small community on the reservation after she retired from teaching. He wished he could see her.
He stopped and thought about that. Well, he could, if he really wanted to. He reminded himself that she wouldn’t match his memories — she was 70, now, and she would look it. After the Wolf Harbor resort, though, that didn’t appall him as it might have once. Did he want to see her? Talk to her?
He did, he acknowledged. This trip with Ryder had made him realize just how important she had been to his life. Without her, he doubted he would have gone to college. He would have gone back to Chang Mai first chance — even if he had to enlist to do it. He’d be dead by now, he thought soberly. Sucked back into the tongs that ran Thailand’s underground? When he’d been a child, it had been focused on resisting Pol Pot. But it was a criminal underground, and drugs and guns were sold to the highest buyer. Street soldiers like him died young.
And he wouldn’t have lasted any longer if he’d enlisted. With his gift for languages, he would have been snapped up by the CIA and sent into hellhole after hellhole, until one day he didn’t come back. Probably end up in his Dad’s old job in Siem Reap.
No, he owed Naomi George Garrison a lot.
They’d had great telephone conversations throughout the years. She was clear-eyed, good humored, and a sharp observer of current events — especially as it applied to the clash of cultures in her own backyard.
Yes, he decided. He wanted to see her. Ironically, it wasn’t hard — he’d do just what his Dad had done after he’d ‘died’ and wanted to stay a part of Ryder’s life. A young relative checking up....
He called her, and she was delighted to hear from him as she always was. “Naomi, I’ve got a young relative — the grandson of a cousin, I don’t even know what that is called — who’s in your neck of the woods,” he began. “He reminds me so much of myself, it’s scary. But I thought you might welcome a visit — give the kid a homecooked meal. No telling what he’s been eating.”
She laughed. “A young Benny Garrison? I’d be delighted. Have him come out for Sunday dinner. Unless you think he’d like to go church with me,” she teased, knowing just how unlikely that was.
“Probably not church,” he conceded. “But dinner? Still at 2 p.m.?”
“As always,” she said. “You remember how to get out here? Or have him call me, and I’ll give him directions.”
“I remember,” he assured her. “And get this? His name is Ben. A lot of Bennys, Bens, Benjamins in our family. He’s one of them.”
“I’ll see him then,” she said. They talked a bit longer before Benny hung up. This was a mistake, he told himself. But he was going to dinner anyway.
He and his wolf went for another night run — but he was careful not to howl at the moon. He wasn’t taking any chances.