THE SENSATION CREPT up on David slowly, closing on him like the hungry petals of a Venus fly trap. By the time he noticed it, he was already neck-deep in its leathery folds. It was a feeling unmistakable but nameless, a malformed cousin of déjà vu—a sense of past events replayed with the roles reversed. Melissa lay in the same bed he’d used to recuperate from his broken ribs. Iman sat next to her in the very same chair Melissa herself had occupied a few scant weeks before. And David stood in the doorway, intruding on a conversation neither party wanted overheard.
Melissa spotted him and waved feebly. An IV fed into her wrist, its needle held flush to her skin by a triple wrapping of medical adhesive. Her complexion was blotched and milky, her eyes ringed with purplish bags, but her smile seemed genuine. Iman’s wounds were less obvious, but they seemed to cut deeper. David could smell the anguish festering in her belly, a damp and pungent stench undiminished by the antiseptic sting of hospital air. Her face bore a blank, catatonic look. She wrapped a piece of receipt paper around one finger until it formed a tube and let it unspool. Her hands performed the task independently. The rips and wrinkles marring the paper suggested she’d been doing it for some time.
“Hey,” Melissa said. “I wasn’t sure they’d let you in. Visiting hours and all.”
“Police business. We’ve got all the time we need.” He dragged a chair from a nearby table and sat down next to Iman. Her fingers continued their ceaseless winding and unwinding of the receipt paper. “So. What does Delduca know?”
“As much truth as we needed to spill, and not a drop more. A couple guys broke into Iman’s apartment, demanding money. They looked strung out, desperate, probably tweaked out of their gourd.”
“What about you?”
“I was happening by when I heard gunshots. I attempted to apprehend the suspects but was injured in the line of duty. The thugs panicked and tried to torch the building. We believe they took Brian as a hostage to aid their escape.”
“And Motes?”
Melissa plucked at a loose thread in her bedsheets. “We left him out of it.”
“What, altogether?”
“There was no plausible way to put him in the apartment. Even my ‘happening by’ is pretty weak.”
“I guess, but every cop in the city is looking for those guys. They should know exactly who they’re after. Motes could even get mistaken for a perp.”
“Only if they find them, and I don’t think that’s too likely. We’re the only ones who know where they’re going, and it’s not the sort of place the cops are likely to stumble across.”
“So we tell them where to look.”
Melissa threw her hands in the air. “How? You think they’d believe us? ‘Oh, by the way chief, the kidnappers are a couple of werewolves, let me show you their lair on Google Maps.’”
David twiddled his silver alligator ring. “We’d leave that part out of it, obviously.”
“Then what’s left? If they bugged out for another city, that’s one thing, we could fudge a CI or anonymous tip. But to sweep the fucking Canadian Shield for a couple of hopheads? I don’t see them buying it.”
“Still, we need to try—”
No,” Iman said. Her receipt paper ripped in half. She dropped the pieces into her lap and swept them onto the floor. “Melissa’s right. We can’t spill everything.”
David took Iman’s hand in both of his. “Motes and Brian—”
“You think I don’t know?” Iman said, pulling her hand away. “You think I’m not worried about them? If I could get the best SWAT team in the world on it, I would. But we can’t. No one will believe us. If we convince the cops to check it out at all, the search’ll be half-assed. And what if Luka feels the walls closing in? He might decide it’s best to cut and run. And if they do that . . . ”
“Okay,” David said. “Okay. We leave Delduca out of it, for now. At least we aren’t entirely unprepared.”
David reached into his pocket and spilled half a dozen bits of shiny oblong metal onto the bedspread. Melissa picked one up and inspected it between thumb and forefinger. Its curves were cool and sleek, reflective as the surface of a still lake.
“Silver bullets?” she asked.
“Silver-plated,” corrected David. “Pure silver’s too soft. The ballistics on these aren’t amazing as it is, but it shouldn’t matter much under a hundred yards or so.”
“Where in God’s name did you even get these?”
“Ballaro. We came to a little arrangement yesterday.”
“And he managed to get his hands on silver bullets on short notice? The man’s connected, but I didn’t think anyone was that connected.”
“He had his hands on them already. Turns out Iman wasn’t the only one to spot the full moon connection.”
Melissa’s jaw dropped open. “So that asshole knew?”
“No. I wouldn’t even say he really suspected, not on the surface of things. But some superstitious bit of him got through enough to make the order. Just six. He told his jeweller they were for his mantelpiece. Maybe it raised an eyebrow, but any craftsman who works with criminals is gonna get no shortage of weird and tacky orders.”
Melissa danced the bullet between her fingers. “Can he get more?”
“He thinks so. But in the meantime, we’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.”
“Half a dozen bullets won’t do much good against a whole pack.”
“True. In my original plan, that wouldn’t have been an issue. We’d get Motes to call him, act contrite, say he’s sorry he ran but he’s willing to get with the program. They pick a time and place to meet, and bam! Instant ambush. But now . . . ”
“Uh-huh.”
Melissa smoothed a crease in the covers of her hospital bed. Beside her Iman clasped her hands in her lap, legs squeezed primly together.
David swallowed. “I mean, if I’d known—”
Melissa raised a hand. “Stop. No self-pity, please. We both know damn well that you would’ve helped if you were there. You weren’t. It wasn’t your shift. That’s not on you. I was there, and all I managed to do was just about get myself killed.”
“Not true,” Iman said.
Melissa silenced her with a look. “Point is, we can’t blame ourselves for what happened. This is on Luka and that blond prick with the gun.”
“Blond prick?” David asked.
“Luka had a guy with him,” Iman explained. “He’s the one who climbed up the balcony. Blond, early thirties maybe. Pale blue eyes, but with flecks of gold in them.”
The bottom dropped out of David’s stomach. He coughed, each burst cinching a band of misery tight around his ribs. McCulloch. That fucker!
And who’s the asshole that set him loose, hmm?
David grabbed his chest, hoping to pass off the anguished look on his face as lingering pain from his injury.
“Right. If we’re not going to Ballaro, let’s assess where we’re at here. Motes was our hold on the guy, and we’ve lost him. Even if we could reach out to Luka, he’s got no incentive to meet us. He’s in the wind, could be hiding out anywhere. But we know one place where he’ll eventually go.”
“Whitetooth Falls.”
“Exactly. He could be heading there now, or not. We can’t say. But we do know one time where he’s bound to show up. I checked a lunar calendar. The next full moon’s in eleven days.”
Melissa nodded. “It’ll be tight, but I should be able to get out of here by then.”
“I wouldn’t push it. Besides, even if you are out of the hospital, I think it’s probably best if you stay in Niagara.”
The bed creaked as Melissa hunched herself upright, her eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not questioning your ability. Christ knows I’d never do that. But we need to face facts. You’ve been badly hurt—”
“You’re not exactly running marathons yourself, buddy.”
“It’s not just that. Delduca may have let your story about showing up at Iman’s apartment slide, but I doubt he found it easy to swallow. The precinct’s gonna be on you, looking for something strange. If you book it for the great white north without a decent explanation, it’s only gonna draw more attention to you. It could even wind up tipping off Luka. I’m sorry to be a dick, but I think I need to do this one solo.”
“Not solo,” Iman said. “I agree about Officer Myers, but I’m going with you.”
David shook his head gently. “Again, it’s not a good idea.”
“Why not? I’m not hurt, aside from a few cuts and bruises. And the cops aren’t investigating me.”
“You’re still connected to the victim. They’re going to want to keep tabs on you.”
“Well, what they want and what they get are different things.”
“You’re not a police officer, Iman. I can’t just drag you out on some manhunt.”
“You’re on medical leave, so you’re technically not acting as a police officer either.”
“She’s got you there,” Melissa said.
Iman put her hands on her hips. “If you leave without me, I’ll call Delduca myself and spill everything. It’s you and me or no one at all.”
David rubbed his forehead. “This is ludicrous.”
“Would you think it was ludicrous if our situations were reversed, and it was your wife they had? Would you wait at home, not knowing where she is or if she’s even, you know . . . ”
A cheap shot, maybe, but it landed square. David placed a hand on Iman’s shoulder. “They bothered to take him with them; that’s a good sign. If they wanted him dead they would’ve just shot him in the apartment or on the lawn. They obviously have other plans.”
“Yeah,” agreed Melissa. “Maybe they’re using him as a hostage, or plan to try putting him up for ransom.”
Iman shook her head; her face resumed its pinched, vacant look. “They don’t care about that. Don’t you remember? Motes told us Luka brought someone with him last time, too. The girl in the trunk. And we know what happened to her.”
David looked to Melissa for something to say, and found her staring back at him. Neither spoke.
Iman put her face in her hands and cried.