When I walked into the kitchen, Tyler made a face and snorted like a dog trying to sneeze. “Stop being a dick,” Ethan muttered, snagging a piece of floppy bacon from the plate in the middle of the table.
“Where did the bacon come from?” I asked, trying to pretend like three weres smelling me and knowing what I’d been up to last night wasn’t weirding me out a little. “And who used my blueberries for pancakes? I was saving those.”
“Your kitchen was seriously lacking in pork products,” Tyler opined around a mouthful of meat. “I ran by Suprette to grab some bacon. And sausage.” He snorted. “Though I think you—”
“Okay,” Ethan snapped. He glanced at me, his cheeks faintly pink. I bit my lips and applied myself to the stack of pancakes Waltrip plonked down in front of me. Ethan waited until I’d managed a few bites and Tyler had brought out another plate of bacon before starting in on where things stood. “Last night, they were able to find the Lycaon and syringes at your aunt’s house.”
“Bad news is, the entire place stunk to high heaven of the rogue were,” Waltrip supplied. He had one of my plain blue mugs gripped in his enormous hands, making the sturdy ceramic look like a dainty teacup. “I don’t know your aunt’s house, but nothing seemed out of place. No evidence of anyone tipping the place.”
Tyler shrugged. “It doesn’t mean they weren’t snooping. The scent was pretty fresh. We missed them by less than an hour.”
Those pancakes were super heavy going down. “You didn’t see—”
“No,” Waltrip cut me off. “No cars coming or going. Late at night, small town? Anyone out on the road would’ve stuck out. We parked at the U-Pump and shifted, took the back way ‘round just to make sure we weren’t seen.”
I would think two large wolves running around in an area where no wild wolves lived would’ve been pretty eye-catching if anyone happened to look in the right direction, but I held my tongue.
“Without access to the clinic, we don’t know what’s in this.” Tyler jerked his head in the direction of the counter where an innocuous brown bag sat, crumpled and grease stained.
“Did y’all use a takeout bag?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“Which is more suspicious to a cop pulling us over? Two guys with an empty bag from Dairy Queen, or two guys carrying vials and syringes?”
“You could have just put it in the glove box,” I muttered, stabbing at a blueberry bubble in my pancake.
“At any rate,” Ethan interposed, “we need to access a lab and the Raymonds’ blood samples.”
Shit. All three of them were staring at me. Waiting. I could play dumb for a few minutes, I knew, but it would never work. Besides, I could tell by the twitch of Waltrip’s lips that he, at least, was expecting some push back and had something snarky lined up, ready to go. “You know I can’t get back in there,” I finally said. “They took my swipe cards, and all my access codes have been purged.”
“And you know we’re not talking about you going in,” Waltrip retorted.
“I can’t ask Reba—”
“Reba doesn’t know the first thing about blood analysis.” He sighed.
“I think you’re underestimating Reba.”
Ethan reached out and laid his hand atop mine. “Babe…”
“Babe?” Tyler threw his hands up in the face of our double-barreled glare. “I’ll just be over here, getting more coffee then, darlings.”
“I’m not asking Justin,” I said flatly. “I can’t. He’s a sweet kid, but it just won’t work. He’s always sick, for one thing, so I doubt he’d even be able to come in, and for another, he’s scared of his own shadow. He’d end up freaking himself out and running out of there before getting anything done.”
“You’re making excuses.” Tyler sat back down across from me, coffee sloshing over the rim of his mug and onto the table. I shoved a napkin at him, glancing at the spill pointedly. He rolled his eyes and mopped it up, tossing the soggy napkin into the trash behind him without looking. He flashed me a grin. “Good, right?”
“You’re a man of many talents. And none of them are convincing me to drag Justin into this.”
Ethan squeezed my fingers again. “We don’t have a lot of options right now. Not if we want to get this finished.”
“By ‘finished,’ I’m guessing you don’t mean have Garrow and everyone at the clinic arrested, the other survivors found and offered a shit load of counseling, and get me reinstated into my position with this whole thing expunged from my record?”
“Yes, but no.” Tyler smirked. “Most of that, but more like finding who our rogue wolf is, where all the Lycaon has gone, and who they decided to give it to.”
“Why not both?” Waltrip asked, his smile positively shit-eating.
“Fuck me,” I muttered, pushing my plate away and ignoring Tyler as he fell on it with gusto. “I don’t want to believe Justin is involved in this, alright? I barely know the guy but he’s… he’s fragile. He’s scared of his own shadow.”
“He’s also the most likely avenue of help right now,” Ethan murmured. “The safest route.”
I wilted. “Fine. We’ll go see him but I’m not happy about it.”
Ethan shot me a soft look. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re hoping he’s not home.”
“Oh, so you’re a psychic now, on top of being a werewolf?”
“I’m a man of many talents.”
Tyler’s groaned oh my God shut up was enough to almost make me smile.
“Be careful what you wish for,” I muttered. I’d spent the entire ride over to Justin’s apartment wishing he wasn’t at home. And it looked like my wish had been granted.
“No blood,” Waltrip announced, emerging from the back bedroom. “Some piss, though. Few hours old.”
Justin’s apartment had been well and thoroughly trashed. Even the door locks—and Lord, there were a lot of them running down his door—had been destroyed, someone ripping them by hand or claw. “It wasn’t the rogue wolf again.” I was starting to feel real stupid referring to this killer as the rogue wolf. It sounded way too cool for someone who was a murderous fuckhead.
Waltrip shook his head, shaggy curls bouncing. “No, this is definitely someone different. The entire place has the smell of them, and it’s not all fresh.”
“Justin had a were over here regularly?” I edged further into the apartment, peering past Waltrip at the wreckage of the living room. “Christ, are those restraints?”
He grimaced. “Cheap sex shop crap,” he muttered, bending to examine a length of what looked like black nylon webbing attached to a thick leather cuff. “This wouldn’t do shit against a were in human form. And when we shift…” He held up the cuff to his eye and winked at me through the opening. “Our dainty little paws would slip right out of that thing.”
“So was Justin… what? Fucking a were, and it went sour?” Goddamn, the mental images that idea created were terrifying. Justin didn’t deserve an end like that. I pressed a hand to my roiling gut. “Are you sure no one is here?” I demanded. “I mean, they didn’t do something to him and hide him in here, right?”
“No other living thing is in this apartment. Besides the spider I saw in the bathroom.”
“Spider?”
“Calm down. Just a daddy long legs. At any rate, no indications of murder.”
I felt a sharp spike of relief. Justin may have annoyed the hell out of me some days, and we weren’t really close at all, but the idea of him dying like the Raymonds had… “Could he have escaped?”
“Could you? If you were trapped in an apartment with a were determined to tear shit up, could you have escaped?” He raised a brow and smirked at me. “Hmmm?”
“I don’t think I like your tone,” I sniped.
Waltrip laughed.
“I think,” I said after a moment’s thought, “it’s possible. If I were highly motivated, I could run like hell. And Tuttle is small, but we’re still in the middle of town. Even if he bolted at the crack of dawn, it would draw notice.”
“From whom?” Waltrip asked, gesturing at the destroyed living room. “The neighbors? This place is a refurbished factory. It has thick concrete walls and floor.” He pushed past me and opened the door into the hall. “And he’s the only one on this floor. If he made it out through the building—”
“There’re no signs of a were attack in the hallway,” I pointed out. “It’s possible.”
“If he made it out through the building,” he repeated through gritted teeth, “then what? Front sidewalk, facing a dress shop that’s closed until ten a.m., a pet groomer closed until eight, and a parking lot.”
I stared at the corridor for a few moments, trying to think around my instinct to flee. “No… No. If I were in here, if I’d been in Justin’s place, I wouldn’t have gone out the front door. The hall is too long, and I’d end up trapped on the stairs or the elevator.”
Waltrip nodded, already moving toward the windows overlooking a wedge of what passed for downtown. “These are painted shut.”
“Bedroom.”
Acid burned in my stomach, my body wanted to shake apart, but I pushed through it and went into Justin’s bedroom ahead of Waltrip. The stench of animal fear and a softer, earthy smell swamped my senses. “The window’s closed. Shit.”
“It’s been opened, though,” Waltrip murmured. He pointed but didn’t touch. “The paint along the bottom’s been peeled away.”
“So, he took the time to pick off years of paint and close the window behind him when he fled?” I kicked at the pile of bedding on the floor. “Whatever happened in here, he wasn’t going to make the were wait on him while he made an escape.”
“No,” Waltrip allowed. “But what if…” He narrowed his gaze, going very still. His breaths became deep and slow, drawing in the stink of the apartment, the regular smell of the place beneath the layer of fear and were. “Hmm. Okay. He’s not here.” He opened his eyes and gave me a searching look. “He’s not dead. Or wasn’t when he left here.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think.”
“I don’t think it is at all. I think it’s a fact, though.” He dropped to one knee and took a deep whiff of the bedding, his expression becoming thoughtful. “I highly doubt he’s gone to work.”
“You think?” I rolled my eyes. “Now we have to find Justin.”
“No.” It was a sharp, short bark of a word. “No, we let him be for now. We worry about the lab work first. Is there any other way to access a lab without having an in like Justin?”
“Um. No. Not really. Not unless I can break into a pathology lab somewhere like a hospital or send the samples off, which would be the stupidest thing we could do right now.”
Waltrip grunted again. “These pathology labs, are they only at hospitals or…”
“Or? No. No, no, no. I’m already on suspension. If I do something like that, I lose my license and probably go to jail.” I didn’t know what would come next for me in terms of my teetering career, but I knew it definitely would require me to not go to jail.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said a little too patiently. “Are they at hospitals or just morgues?”
“Bigger hospitals would have what we need. But the closest one is Dallas.” Waltrip nodded, shoving to his feet and striding past me.
“Come on. We need to get moving. Tyler’s gonna be back in a few hours, and Ethan’s already on the way from Belmarais. Gonna meet at your house.”
I followed him into the corridor. He was so far ahead of me, I had to jog to catch up as he reached the door to the stairs. “No, fuck that,” I said. “I’m going in the elevator. Meet you at the bottom.”
“I’m not leaving you alone, not now.”
“And I’m not going down six flights of stairs. The elevator was good enough for the trip up; it’s good enough for the trip down.”
“I want to check the stairs for any signs Justin came this way.”
“Then do it. I’ll meet you at the bottom.” The elevator doors had swooshed open while we talked, so I stepped inside and gave him a little finger wave. “See ya.”
Waltrip made no move to get in as the doors closed, but I’m pretty sure he said a very specific word in reference to the veracity of my parentage. The elevator was slow and a little jerky, one of the joys of a building that had once been a lumber depot and converted to incongruously fancy apartments. My phone buzzed in my pocket, alerting me to an incoming text. I had a fairly good idea who it was but checked anyway.
Cleverly: Where are you? I need you.
My brain took an extra few seconds to process what I was seeing. Not Waltrip at all. “Holy shit. Holy shit!” I hit the button for the doors to open on the next floor and threw myself out into the thankfully empty hallway as soon as I could. Unlike the black-painted hallway on Justin’s floor, this one was starkly blue, a bright robin’s egg that made my eyes hurt as I staggered away from the elevator doors, thumbing open my contacts list to bring up Cleverly’s number. It rang twice before her shaking voice answered. “Landry? Landry, where are you?”
“I’m… I’m in town. Cleverly, where are you? Are you safe? Tell me where you are, and I can come get you!”
“I’m at home,” she admitted, laughing breathlessly. “I don’t know how I got here. I… I remember going to work but then that’s it.”
“You don’t remember someone breaking into the house a few days ago?” I leaned against one of the walls and slid down to a crouch, closing my eyes against the relentless pounding of the light. My body ached with the need to do. Every cell in my body was on fire with something that wasn’t fear but a close cousin.
“What? No, I just… Landry…” Her voice was plaintive. “Landry, I’m scared! I don’t know what’s happening, and I feel wrong.”
Shit. “Okay. Just stay put, right? Don’t open the door till I get there.” Waltrip would be waiting for me outside by now, impatient and annoyed. “I’ll have someone with me, and I don’t want you to freak out. He’s… he’s friendly.”
“Is it Ethan? Maybe I should call Ethan. He’s the sheriff now,” she added, sounding a bit proud.
“It’s not Ethan, Cleverly. I’ll, um. I’ll call him, too.” I pushed myself back up the wall and made my way back to the elevator, jamming on the down button. “Just stay put and lock the doors.” The elevator opened, but I hesitated a moment. “I’m going to hang up, okay? I want you to keep the phone by you and call me if something changes before I get there.”
Cleverly’s voice was clearer when she responded, the shakiness gone. “Of course, Landry. I’ll be waiting for you.”
Cleverly might have been waiting but Waltrip wasn’t. I followed the sidewalk around the entire building, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Unless he’d decided to go to the roof, there was nowhere he could be hiding from me. His bike was still out front, parked sideways across one of the parallel parking spots, so it was obvious from the street. I ducked back inside to see if he was in the lobby, but the only person there was a cleaner with a sad-looking dust mop, making a desultorily pass at the wood floors.
“God damn it,” I snarled. Waltrip’s number rang out to voicemail when I tried him, the professional sounding greeting for his investigation firm sounding nothing like his usual rough, perpetually amused tones. “Way to be a dick,” I snapped when the tone signaled me to leave my message. “If you’re dead on the stairs, I’m going to find a necromancer to raise your ghost so I can punch it.” I ended the call and looked back at the apartment building. The stair doors opened to the lobby, the only exterior doors being the ones for the entrance, a service door around back that required a PIN to open, and a metal security door on the east side of the building that had no visible means of opening from the outside. I stepped back into the lobby, where the cleaner gave me an annoyed glare before swooshing over with their dust mop to brush away the outside debris I’d tracked in, sighing audibly as I headed for the stair door.
I opened the door to a concrete landing with narrow, industrial-looking stairs rising at a sharp angle in front of me. They took a turn after about ten feet, jinking up at the same steep angle overhead. “Waltrip?” I called. “Hey, I need to go. Where are you?”
Nothing.
“Swear to God, dude, if you’re just being a dick to make me climb stairs, I’m going to kick your ass.” The door closed behind me with a thud as I took the first few steps. “Okay, I’d probably just have Ethan kick your ass because who am I kidding, but the spirit of the threat remains.”
Still nothing. Not even a derisive snicker at the idea of me threatening to hurt him in any meaningful way.
I took another step up. Then another. I reached the first landing and froze. The stench of fear and were was intense, seeping through the door a few steps above. A big black number two was painted on the door, the soft sound of something scraping carpet barely audible through the thick metal. The sound stopped, and a rattling breath sounded, long and low.
“Landry.”
I jumped at the sound of the low voice below me on the first floor landing. Waltrip, I thought, turning before I realized that the voice wasn’t quite right, lacked that hint of roughness and humor. A white blur moved, snarling as it tackled me back onto the steps. My skull bounced off one of the concrete risers, pain exploding behind my eyes as the wolf pinned me down with its massive paws on my chest.
“Good, good,” the low voice murmured. “Here we go.” A sharp prick in my neck, and everything got warm and soft. “Careful of his head. If he dies, she’ll raise hell again.”
Someone lifted me, and I didn’t care. All I could think was, I hope this many head injuries in a week don’t leave permanent damage.