The hike down to the cars was a pretty leisurely one. They packed out a fair amount of the food and supplies that they’d been stashing in the cave, but even with the extra loads, Becca felt more relaxed than she had in weeks. “I wonder if Kari has confessed yet,” she said dreamily.
Erin made a face. “I hope so or I’m likely to be headed back to a cell. Clyde still at Shelly and Pete’s? We should make sure I’m not headed out of town on the run first, then go pick him up.”
“Sounds delightful,” Becca murmured. They reached the cars right about then and loaded up everything they had hauled down the hills into the trunks and the back of various trucks and so forth, then loaded themselves in on top of all that. Without any discussion whatsoever, they all followed Shelly’s truck back to town and down to the county jail.
“Why…” Erin had dozed off in the back of Becca’s car and had clearly just woken up.
Gladys gave her a toothy grin over her shoulder. “Gotta clear your name. We’re done with this being on the run stuff.” She and Becca exchanged a cheerful fistbump.
Erin rubbed her eyes and looked startled. Becca winked at her and got out of the car. After a minute, Erin did too. She took a quick swig of water from her water bottle and gave the building’s door an apprehensive glance.
“Lizzie says you can come inside and will get to leave of your own accord,” Shelly remarked as she walked by. “Let’s go get the rest of the story.”
They all trailed up the steps after her and walked inside. Lizzie was coming out of a room down the hall just as they all walked in. “Anyone carrying any weapons? Put them in here and get them on your way out.” She held out a plastic tub that rattled with the sound of a couple of hunting knives when she turned it over to one of the other deputies. “We’ve got her in here, but the room’s too small for everyone, so Shelly, Erin and Becca come with me. Everyone else gets to watch behind the glass.” A tilt of her head sent the rest of the Pack to trail down the hallway to a door labeled “Witnesses.”
Becca reached out and grasped Erin’s cold fingers in her own. “It’s going to be okay.”
Erin squeezed her fingers back and they followed Shelly and Lizzie into another room.
Kari lifted one lip in a snarl when she saw them, but she was handcuffed to a metal loop on the table, so she couldn’t do much more than that. Lizzie sat down across from her and gestured the others into chairs behind her. “Want to tell them what you told me?”
Kari’s shoulders tightened, then sagged. “Jim isn’t…wasn’t always like he was when you saw him,” she said softly. “He’d gotten turned before I met him, but he had a big cage in the basement of his house, and I’d just lock him up before the full moon and release him in the morning. We managed just fine. Until we lost our jobs and the house. Then we met Leroy. After that was when things started getting pretty nuts.” She rubbed her cheek on her shoulder and sighed. Lizzie slid a cup of water across the table.
She drank noisily and awkwardly for a few minutes. Becca stiffened at the mention of Leroy’s name. So they had all been working together. Having that confirmed made her wonder if Annie had been in on it too, at least at the beginning. She forced a tremor of rage from her voice as she asked, “Then what happened?”
Shelly caught her eye with a quick glance, but nodded. They all looked at Kari and she glared back at them, defiantly and silently. Lizzie looked at her watch. “Going to need this room soon, so I suggest that you tell us what you plan to tell us, Ms. Johnson. You’ve already confessed that you and your husband were responsible for Leroy Callan’s death. We just want to fill in the remaining blanks and get enough information to drop the charges against Ms. Adams.”
Kari looked from one to the other of them, blue eyes narrowed in a ferocious glare. Shelly caught her eye, and from where Becca was standing, she could see her boss’s lip curl up over one long incisor. It made her glad that she wasn’t looking at Shelly’s wolf right now.
After a long moment of dueling stares, Kari drew herself up convulsively. Then the words started to pour out of her in a flood. She and Jim had met Leroy by chance in a group for people with what she kept calling Jim’s “problem.” He told them that he had a cure, but that it needed a bit more testing.
They were desperate by then and were hoping to get Jim turned back into a full-time human so they could start over again without needing all the extra equipment that it took to keep him under control when he shifted. The more stressed he got, the more bearish he became. So Leroy’s offer sounded a lot more promising than it might have under other circumstances.
She paused and Lizzie handed her another cup of water. Kari took it and drained it in a few gulps. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and looked around at all of them. “Alright, so to make a long story short, Leroy tested his concoctions on Jim and they worked for a little while. Then they stopped and he tried new ones. There were side effects, like him turning under the new moon as well as the full moon. Once that fucker, Leroy, realized what was happening, he bailed, no address, no phone number, nothing. We tracked him here. He had already told us about this town and your setup, so we knew some of what to expect. We figured one more human changing around here wouldn’t be so noticeable so we originally just planned to fit in and lay low.”
“Sounds very cozy,” Shelly said, her voice tightly controlled. “So how does Erin figure into all this?”
“And where did you get the cash for my old house?” Becca added. She clapped her hand over her mouth when the words popped out. Finding out about Erin was much more important, but she couldn’t help but wonder how some destitute former TV personalities had come up with the kind of cash they had paid her and Ed. She wondered if it was stolen and they’d have to pay it back.
Kari sighed dramatically and Erin began to fidget. She leaned back as far from the table as the cuffs would let her. But she kept talking, which made Becca’s wolf want to eat her just a little less. “Fine, fine. We got suspicious when we couldn’t find Leroy and broke into his place to see if we could figure out where he’d gone. He had some papers about this town and a lot of cash, so we took that. We also took some other stuff, the drugs that he used to make the stuff he was giving Jim, and we sold those too. That money had been ours to begin with, after all. Wasn’t even stealing. Then we came here.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath and closed her eyes.
It felt like an hour before she started talking again, but Becca’s surreptitious glance at her watch told her it was only a minute or two. Kari’s voice trembled a little now as she said, “We found him out at the warehouse, and he said he was looking for some cave and a wolf-woman he had to find. He kept insisting that she had something he needed, didn’t say what. We argued about what was happening with Jim and what he’d been doing. Jim…got savage. By the time I got him to stop, it was too late. So we needed a new plan.”
She glanced around at all of them, her glance contemptuous and calculating now. “Between Leroy and his notes, we learned a lot more about you. What’s-her-name, Annie, told him about this place back when they first started working together, told him about everything she could remember about you and how her changing worked. So we know your dirty little secrets and I’m still going to get rich telling the world about them.” She laughed, the sound harsh and echoing against the rocks.
Becca stepped forward. Whatever happened next, she wanted to be as ready for it as she could be. Kari was breathing hard, like she was nearing a breaking point of some kind. Whatever she was seeing in their faces now was scaring her, at least a little. “How did you find Erin? And what did you do to her? Why doesn’t she remember you or Leroy?” Becca could feel her wolf flare with the words, scrambling inside her to get at this interloper, this outsider who presented a clear and present danger to her Pack. To her beloved, too, if she was being honest.
Kari shivered and the mirth drained out of her face. Erin’s expression was cold and furious. “Yes, Kari. What did you do? You nearly destroyed my life…our lives, and for what? You had money. You could have left after you killed Leroy and no one would have ever connected you to it. Why buy Becca’s old house and kidnap me? Why frame me for a murder that your husband committed?”
Shelly dropped her hand onto Erin’s shoulder lightly, anchoring her to the room and the company they were in. Becca could sense the power in that motion from two feet away; it even soothed her a bit. Not enough though. She still wanted to shake Kari until she gave up all of her secrets. And perhaps some more after that, just for the fun of it.
A furious, feral expression twisted Kari’s features. “Why should we have to settle for crumbs? We were sitting on the biggest story of the decade! We could have gotten rich showing everyone that werewolves were real! We could have gotten our old life back, gotten Jim treatment and gotten him cured. I saw you hiking in the woods and I thought you might be one of the wolves. And Jim could smell the wolf on you, so then we were sure. You put your pack down and went to go pee and I swapped out water bottles with you. Mine had something…extra in it. We thought we could frame you for the murder, but then I had a better idea and we went and got you out of the jail.”
“And the break-in?” Becca asked, keeping her hands below the table. Her fingers kept clenching into fists.
Kari laughed a little, then broke down into a little gasping sob. “Oh, that was Jim’s idea! He thought that Erin might have something that would prove that she had an alibi and if we found it, she’d be easier to control.”
Lizzie tilted her head. “Wow. Kidnapping and drugging your victim, breaking and entering, not to mention being an accessory to murder. You’ve got quite the growing rap sheet. Anything else you want to share?”
Kari blinked at her as if she didn’t understand what she had just said. Then blurted out, “I want to call a lawyer.”
“I’ll bet you do. I think we’re done here.” Her expression clear that she wasn’t going to hear any objections, she herded them out into the hall and beckoned to another deputy. The Pack gathered in the lobby while she gave him instructions, then walked over to Shelly. “I’ll get everything squared away about Erin, but she’ll have to come in and make a statement tomorrow.”
“I’m right here,” Erin murmured plaintively. “I can hear you.” Becca slipped a careful arm around her waist and gave her a tiny hug. Erin found herself being moved gently toward the door and away from the deputies, Becca on one side, Molly on the other, Carla and the others following up close behind.
“But maybe I should…” Erin began.
“Pie,” said Becca firmly. “A hot lunch and Millie’s pie and then we’re going home. In the morning, we’ll come back when Lizzie is ready and you’ll fill out whatever she wants you to fill out, unless we need to talk to the lawyer first, and then we’ll go get Clyde. After that, we have some unfinished business as soon as you’re all healed up.”
“Oh? Oh.” Erin grinned. “And pie would be nice right now too.”