Part of the problem is that Jackie would like very much to survive assassinating Mitchell. She can think of ways to do it, but they're basically suicide missions. Mitchell almost always has one or two people with him, and if Jackie just pulls out a gun and starts shooting, she's going to die.
A sniper shot would be a good method except for the fact that Jackie hasn't been trained in advanced marksmanship yet. Given her overall strengths and capabilities, poison is the obvious answer. And obtaining the poison itself won't be that difficult, because they use wolfsbane all over the complex, and aconite is almost as poisonous to humans as it is to werewolves.
The difficulty is getting Mitchell to take it, and that's where a snowstorm might come in handy. If Mitchell goes out to 'supervise,' maybe Jackie can get in position to hand him a cup of coffee or something. A delicious cup of wolfsbane coffee. Jackie has heard that the gastrointestinal symptoms it causes are truly stunning to behold.
They're about halfway through dinner when the radio crackles. As expected, it's Leo, telling Nick that Mitchell wants them for snow clearing duty. Jackie shovels the rest of her food into her mouth and changes so she's wearing a dry shirt and socks under her uniform. She bundles up and heads out into the night with her father. She hopes the Callaghans are okay, holed up somewhere safe. The last time she had seen them, they'd had to leave the water treatment plant and were in the ruins of a car dealership. It hadn't had much of a roof.
She has the little envelope of wolfsbane powder tucked away underneath her clothes, but she never gets within fifty feet of Mitchell. She and Nick are sent to keep the base's perimeter road clear along with half a dozen other men, and it's grueling work. It's the sort of wet, heavy snow that makes for back-breaking labor.
It's monotonous, and she sinks into something of a trance after a while. Shovel, breathe out, toss the snow into the ever-growing pile, breathe in, shovel, breathe out…her world narrows to a point where the snow is the only thing she sees. They break every hour for about five minutes. At least there's no shortage of water.
The snow stops sometime in the wee hours of the night, and Jackie staggers back to the house just after dawn. "Go ahead and shower first," Nick tells her, and she grunts in a combination of thanks and acceptance. She strips out of her clothes and heads into the bathroom.
The hot water feels like it's burning her skin, and she turns it back to tepid. Everything blurs and sways in her vision, and she finds herself holding onto the wall, trying to stay upright. She's just tired. She rinses quickly and forgoes soap due to a complete lack of caring. When she finally leaves the bathroom, she can barely move.
"Hey, you don't look so good." Valerie is awake and waiting to use the bathroom. "Were you out all night?"
"Yeah, I," Jackie rasps. She hadn't realized how much the work had taken its toll on her, how every muscle aches and her head throbs and her throat stings.
Valerie steps closer and presses a hand against the back of her neck. "Whoa, you're burning up," she says. "Dad?" she calls out, as Jackie attempts to shush her. Nick comes out of the master bedroom, wearing only a pair of loose pajama pants. "I think Jackie might be getting sick."
"Go wash your hands," Nick tells her immediately, while Jackie feebly protests that she feels fine. Nick feels her forehead and the back of her neck, frowning, and then shoos her into her bedroom. "How bad is it?" he asks, then immediately adds, "And don't lie."
"Head hurts. Throat hurts." Jackie lets her head thump back against her pillow. "Everything hurts."
"You should have said something," Nick says. "I'll be right back."
Jackie closes her eyes and tries to pretend that the world is in order. Nick comes back a minute later with a glass of water. He makes Jackie drink all of it, wipes her face down with a damp cloth, and tells her to get some sleep. Jackie wants to argue, but she can't bring herself to care.
Chapter Eight
Nick supposes that it's not easy for any father to see their child suffer. But Jackie's illness breeds a special kind of fear in him. He sits by her bedside and watches her lie there, struggling to breathe, wracked by coughing fits. She's lucid most of the time, though. Her fever never gets so high that she loses coherency, which is a relief.
It doesn't help that aside from Valerie, nobody else seems worried about Jackie at all. Helen clearly doesn't care, and Mitchell thinks that Nick is being a sentimental fool by wanting to stay with her. "People get sick," is Leo's opinion, with a shrug, when Nick mentions it to him. Nick pisses Mitchell off by handing his classes over to Leo for the duration.
The topic of medicine came up once. Mitchell brushed the request off, saying that Jackie was a healthy young woman and would easily recover from whatever bug she had picked up. Nick wasn't stupid enough to ask again. Instead, he sent Valerie to see Leo. Despite Leo's faults, he loves his niece and can't say no to her. Valerie comes home with a bottle of Tylenol and a pack of antibiotics.
"You know it's probably viral," Jackie rasps, when Nick gives her the medicine.
"Not with a cough like that, it isn't," Nick says. "That's going to turn into pneumonia in a real hurry if we don't treat it now."
"Whatever you say," Jackie says, rolling onto her side and hacking up some phlegm.
It's good to see that Jackie is still Jackie, even when she feels miserable. She tries to crack jokes, even if they're usually lame, and requests ridiculous meals that she knows they can't make. Despite the requests, she doesn't eat much. Mostly she just drinks tea. Nick and Valerie take turns sitting with her, propping her up while she takes slow sips.
She sleeps a lot, for obvious reasons. Reading makes her head ache, so Valerie reads to her. The second day is the worst, as the disease races through her body. When she's getting worse on the third day, that's when Nick sends Valerie to get the medicine. By the end of that day, Jackie's sleeping peacefully. She spends most of the next day in a drugged semi-stupor, calling for her mother and mumbling about werewolves and blood and cold.
"Dad?" she mumbles when she rouses enough to drink some tea and take more medicine.
Nick squeezes her hand. "It's Nick."
"S'what I said." Jackie blinks slowly. "Dad."
"Oh. Right." Nick shakes his head. "You were asking for your mother earlier, so I thought…"
"Nnf." Jackie tries to sit up, fails and sinks back against the pillows. "I only had one mom. I've got two dads, though. I guess that makes me lucky. Having an extra dad. Even if he's dead." She shakes her head. "I don't think I'm making much sense."
"It's fine. You're on some pretty heavy drugs." He puts his hand against Jackie's forehead. "Your fever's not too bad, though."
Jackie accepts the cup of tea and drinks it slowly. "Feel a bit better. Head still hurts, though." She gives a few shuddering coughs and then lays back down. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," Nick says.
"Have you ever been in love?"
Nick is quiet for a minute. He thinks about commenting that it's one hell of a thing to ask a married man, but he supposes that it's not surprising that Jackie has figured out that he's never loved Helen. "Yeah. Where did that come from?"
"I guess I was just thinking about Henry, and…"
"Ahh." Nick smiles down at his daughter. "You think you're in love with him?"
"No. I guess I'm pretty sure I'm not." Jackie rolls onto her side. "What's it like? Being in love."
"It's…hard to describe," Nick says. "You think about the person a lot. You're preoccupied with them, I guess I would say. You want to be with them all the time. And you…you want things for them as much as you want them for yourself, sometimes more."
Jackie's eyelids flutter for a minute. "Mm," is all she says in reply.
"Sound familiar at all?" Nick asks, smiling a little. He's happy for his daughter, if Jackie has found someone to love, but it hurts more than he would have expected to think of the good times with Ryan. The way they would stay out all night and drink and dance, or sometimes stay in and watch movie
s and eat too much popcorn. Ryan's smirk, and the curve of his neck that always drove Nick out of his mind. How attractive Ryan's confidence was.
"Yeah," Jackie says. "I guess a little. I don't think she really…feels the same way about me, though."
Nick is surprised at the female pronoun but doesn't know why. In fact, up until Valerie had casually mentioned Jackie's date with Henry, he's never seen Jackie interested in a boy. He thinks about what he knows about his daughter. "Let me guess," he says. "Someone older? Someone that you look up to, maybe?"
Jackie is already a little flushed from the fever, but the pinkness in her cheeks intensifies. "Yeah."
Nick thinks of all the twenty-somethings in the militia, with their biceps and abs and skill with firearms. It's a wonder that Jackie hasn't thrown herself at them. He decides to avoid the subject of the homophobia that Mitchell practically requires in the militia. This is just him and his daughter, and he wants her to know that he, at least, doesn't think there's anything wrong with her. "Well, you won't know until you ask, right? Don't take it so seriously. You're still young. Just ask her out on a date, see what happens."
"Maybe," Jackie says. She yawns and closes her eyes. "Thanks, Dad."
"You get some sleep," Nick tells her. "I'll bring you dinner in a little while."
*~*~*
"What do you mean, she's sick?" Maya asks, her voice rising slightly.
Siobhan looks at Gabby and murmurs, "Is your sister gonna be okay?"
Gabby's dramatic eye roll is answer enough. The rest of the pack is giving Maya somewhat wary looks as she demands answers from Spencer, who undoubtedly doesn't have them. The beta has his hands lifted in surrender. "I just heard one of the patrols talking about it. Bitching that he had to pull a double shift because Jackie hasn't taken patrol in a few days. And saying that whatever she's sick with, she needs to get over it already."
"Sounds like it's not too serious," Kyra says, rummaging through their meager collections of the day. She groans and says, "We sure could use some fucking supplies."
"Jackie's purpose in life isn't to supply us with things," Maya snaps. "You could try being a little concerned."
Kyra shrugs and says with her usual practicality, "It's not like there's anything we can do about it, whether it's serious or not."
"That's not the point." Maya's scowl deepens.
Dominic intervenes in an attempt to calm the waters. "We're all worried about Jackie, Maya. But from the way the patrol was talking about it, she's probably just come down with a cold or maybe a case of strep. The militia has the stuff they need to treat that sort of thing. Nick Donovan isn't going to just let his daughter die. I'm sure she'll be fine."
"It would be nice if there was something we could do, though," Jared says, and then brightens. "I know. We should get some stuff together, like a 'get well soon' basket. I mean, we won't be able to actually give it to her—"
"Then what's the point?" Kyra asks.
"– until she comes back, but we could give it to her then. Like a 'welcome back' basket."
"What could we possibly give her?" Spencer asks. "I mean, what do we have that she doesn't?"
"It's not about having things," Jared says. "It's about the fact that people are thinking about you, even when you're not around them. Trust me on this. I did my time in the hospital when I was a kid, and it was nice to get the cards and stuff, even when they were just badly drawn, handwritten crap, because it meant that people missed me."
"So we should write Jackie cards?" Kyra asks.
"Yes," Maya says firmly. "We're all going to write Jackie a note just to let her know that we were thinking of her." Her tone implies 'whether you want to or not,' and if it seems a little ridiculous that their alpha is ordering them to write get-well-soon cards, nobody bothers to question it.
Marcus is the one who dares to ask, "Write them with what?"
Gabby stands up. "Siobhan and I can go stop by Solomon's. I'm sure he has some spare paper and pencils we can have."
"Crayons," Jared says. "You know, for color."
Maya scowls again and looks outside. "It's too late to go now. You can run by tomorrow."
"It won't be dark for at least an hour," Gabby says. "C'mon, Maya. We'll be fine."
"Take Ryan with you," Maya says.
From up in the rafters where he normally keeps himself, Ryan says, "Why am I being volunteered to go out into hideous weather to get arts and craft supplies for a sick teenager who won't even get to enjoy the fruits of our labor until she's not sick anymore?"
"Because I said so," Maya replies.
"Because if you don't, you have to stay here with her," Gabby mutters underneath her breath.
Ryan drops down out of the rafters. "Excellent point, Gabby," he says. "I think a brisk walk is exactly what I need."
Maya flips him off.
"Come along, ladies," Ryan says. He pushes open the door to the old car dealership, shoving it hard to move some of the snow. The building has made a terrible shelter against the weather, and they spent most of the storm huddled up in a tent they'd rigged up with a stolen tarp. They're going to have to find somewhere new, which is another good reason to go see Solomon. He might be able to give them some advice.
"So…" Siobhan says, pulling her ragged jacket tighter around her. "Your sister. Wow."
"She's an idiot," Gabby agrees, with a fond little smile.
"Does she have even the slightest idea?"
"Of what, exactly? How stupid she is?"
Siobhan gives an elegant shrug. "How gone she is for Jackie. Or how gone Jackie is for her. Or that the entire pack is well aware of their mutual pining."
"Oh, yeah, I think she knows all those things," Gabby says. "But she's doing the 'I don't deserve to have nice things' routine. I think she's afraid that if she actually said something to Jackie, if they actually had a thing, then everything would end in disaster."
"Should we do anything about it?" Siobhan asks.
"No. She'll only get her back up if we try to push." Gabby shrugs. "If we let her deal with it, eventually she might see the light. Or Jackie might run out of patience and jump her."
"I'd pay to see that."
"I know, right?" Gabby giggles.
Ryan shakes his head a little but doesn't interrupt them. He prowls ahead, lingers, falls behind, always on watch. It's nice to hear them laughing and enjoying themselves, even if it is at Maya's expense. He keeps a keen eye out as they slog through the snow that's still piled on a lot of the streets. It takes about twenty minutes to get to Solomon's clinic. "We can't stay long," he warns them.
"We'll be quick," Siobhan says. They ease in through the back door.
Miranda Cooper is there, tending to a stray dog's wounded leg. She looks up when they come in and gives them a warm smile. "Well, hello, girls," she says, then glances over Gabby's shoulder and adds, "Ryan."
Ryan gives her a nod. Despite his dislike of Jared, he admires Miranda. Not many people would have had the courage to defect from the militia. The fact that she still works as a doctor despite the fact that militia is actively hunting for her is impressive, even though she has to do it in a limited capacity. He glances over as Solomon walks into the room, carrying a bowl giving off an astringent odor, and greets him as well.
"We need some paper and some stuff to draw with," Gabby says. "Maya's got a bee in her bonnet about sending get well soon cards to Jackie. I guess she's sick with some virus or something."
Solomon looks amused and says, "I can probably handle that. Let me finish this up, if you wouldn't mind."
"No problem," Gabby says, stepping over to pet the dog while Solomon hands the potion to Miranda.
Ryan clears his throat and says, "We can't stay long. The sun will be setting soon."
"This will only be a few minutes," Miranda says, not looking up from what she's doing. "How's Jared doing?"
"Fine," Ryan says, and resists the urge to make a snarky comment about how he's sure she's seen her son recently.
"This was actually his idea," Siobhan says. "The get well cards, I mean."
Miranda smiles. "That sounds like him."
"Well, you should tell Maya that Jackie is recovering well," Solomon says. "I actually spoke with her father this morning. He came down to the clinic to pick up some of the herbal mixtures I use. They have antibiotics, of course, but he knows that some of the natural remedies can work well."
"Really?" Siobhan sounds skeptical. "I mean, in the absence of real medicine, I'd certainly give it a whirl, but…"
Solomon looks amused. "No. It was just an excuse. He wanted to give me a message. But since he mentioned the teas, I asked how Jackie was doing. She should be back on her feet in a day or two and probably back to patrolling by next week."
"What was the message?" Gabby asks.
"Well, actually, it was for you, Ryan," Solomon says. "He asked me to tell you, should I see you, that he'd like to meet with you. At your convenience, of course."
Gabby blinks at her brother, surprised. "You still see Nick?"
"No," Ryan scoffs. "He came to see me a few weeks ago. Had a question about something. I told him to bugger off. But now he seems to have some idea about rekindling our relationship. An apt term," he adds, "given that I'd set him on fire before I spent an evening with him. I suppose this message had a time and place attached to it?"
Solomon nods. "The library, at sunset. He'll be there—"
"Every day until I am," Ryan says, and rolls his eyes. "What a melodramatic jackass."
"Are you going to go?" Siobhan asks.
"I don't see why I should," Ryan replies.
Siobhan and Gabby exchange a look. "Maybe Nick could help us," Gabby says.
"We aren't in need or want of Nick Donovan's help," Ryan says. He sees the look on Gabby's face and says, a little more quietly, "No. He can't be trusted. And I don't want you going to the library to see what he wants. Promise me."
The More Things Change Page 13
