“Wait, it worked?” Oz asked. “Acting like you were going out resulted in—”
“No,” David snapped. “It didn’t happen, it will never happen, stop trying to make it happen, and Nadia, you’re not coming with us.”
“I’d like to bloody well see either of you stop me. How can you even consider leaving me out?”
“Oh, for all sorts of reasons,” Annette said, because there were so. Many. Reasons. “But in this case, it’s tactical, not personal. You’re not looking at the trouble David and I are.”
“Such bullshit.” Nadia sniffed. “Of course I am.”
“Annette’s right,” David said. “We didn’t tell Bob you were with us at Lund’s place. And you weren’t with us when we stomped the warwolves.”
“Exactly,” Annette added. Perhaps ganging up was the way to verbally defeat the woman. “You’re clean on this one so far, and we mean for you to stay that way. You’re not the one who hid Caro at your place, and you didn’t drop off the grid.”
“Neither did you!” the other woman pointed out. “You’re full-on trapped in the grid with the rest of us drones. Look, you’re still using your phone. Give it to me.”
Annette held it out of Nadia’s reach. “No. That’s a one-of-a-kind phone case.”
“It’s a Sonix Sushi case, and there are thousands of them. Give.”
“Ab-so-lute-ly not.”
“I will pull your eyes right out of your head, Annette!”
“Which, while upsetting, won’t stop me from tearing you in half, Nadia!”
“Ladies.”
Like boxers going to their corner to take a break, they pulled back and looked at David. “What?”
“I get all that, I get what you’re saying about Gomph, but why are you here, Nadia? Like I said, the bad guys sent by the player to be named later are no longer a threat. The—”
“Yes, about that. How many?” Nadia’s eyes brightened with interest. “And what did you do? And where are the bodies? Also, good on you.”
“Yeah, I’d like to get the deets on that, too,” Oz said. “I just saw the gory aftermath.”
Annette sniffed. “Don’t say ‘deets’ like you’re young.”
“I’m twenty-five!” Oz protested.
“Hush.” To Nadia: “Three. David shifted and got two, I grabbed the shotgun and got the other one.” And then I stuck my tongue down David’s throat. All in all, not my worst Wednesday.
Nadia cocked her head to one side. “Shot him? How restrained.”
Annette shrugged. “I thought one of us should keep our opposable thumbs, at least for the first couple of minutes. Which is all the time it took.”
“And how fares Patrick-or-Patricia?”
“It’s just Pat, and he’s fine. Couple of bites. The kids are fine, too. Like I said, it was quick.”
“Oh. Very good.”
“Why are you here, Nadia?” David asked, tenacious as a…a…something that was tenacious. A terrier? A squid? How many times is he going to ask that question? But Annette knew: as many times as it took to get an answer.
“I’m checking on my partner, you half-wit,” she snapped. “Who disappeared? With a taciturn man no one really knows? Who pulled her off the grid but not really? And then I pulled her brother-slash-nemesis into it for reasons that now escape me?”
“Archnemesis,” Oz corrected.
“And I am dismayed, dismayed, by what I’ve found so far. Except for the part where you killed the villains. And the part where Pat wasn’t terribly injured. Though I’m not happy about your leave-the-corpses-where-they-lie policy. And where are Pat and Dev now? Wait! Don’t tell me, not if the goal is keeping me ‘clean.’ Or at least granting me the power of plausible deniability.”
“They’re temporarily as safe as can be.” And wasn’t that awful? She was hiding children in her roommate’s grain-silo-turned-studio because she feared they’d come to harm in IPA custody. The thought was
(it’s not supposed to be like that)
as infuriating
(IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THAT)
as it was disorienting. It was almost enough to make her glad that Oz was with them, since she knew well his policies on authority figures covering up rampant child abuse.
“So now what?”
“You keep asking that, David,” Nadia snapped. “Are you trying to trick me up?”
“It’s ‘trip you up,’ and no.”
“However.” Nadia took a deep breath, then let it out. “Since you went to the trouble of asking ad nauseum, I think that since we’re all stupid enough to be here, we might as well meet Gomph, find out what he wants, and carry on appropriately. Though I’ll admit it’s difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt, as he’s the only one who knew Caro was staying at your house. Except for me, of course. But that’s obviously not…” Nadia’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what this is? Why we’re having this tedious conversation? You think I’ve lured you here? And this wearisome dialogue is your way of… What? Tricking me into exposing myself? And here I thought it was just useless exposition.”
“No, that’s not what this is.” I’m pretty sure, Annette thought. Ninety-five percent.
“Because if that’s what you think…” To her shock, she saw Nadia’s eyes get even brighter as they filled with…tears? She hadn’t ever known Nadia to cry. Until recently, she hadn’t known the woman had tear ducts. Maybe she was just allergic to concrete. “After what we’ve seen…”
“Annette doesn’t think that,” David said quickly. “I’m the one who was wondering.”
“Truly?”
“Yup.” David stuck his hands in his pockets, wrist deep, and rocked back and forth on his heels. “You’re volatile and shrieky and snobby and you make me nervous and nobody knows any of your backstory.”
“Everything he just said is true,” Oz added. “Sorry, Nadia.”
“But Annette thinks those things, too!”
This is no time for a heated denial to try to spare her feelings. Dammit. “Yes, but I’ve seen you in the field, Nadia. And I saw your face when we found Lund’s pictures. I couldn’t imagine you having any part of that.”
“Thank you, Annette. David, you can go straight to hell. Oz, I’m indifferent as to where you go.”
“Sounds about right,” David muttered over Oz’s laugh.
“Yes it does! Now,” Annette said briskly, “since the ‘wearisome dialogue’ is over, we need to get to the pediatric unit, but not to confront Gomph. Or confess to him. I want to check on the cubs and have a chat with the staff.”
David’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh-ho.”
“I’m lost,” Oz said, “but I assume one of you is going to write up a memo or something to bring me up to speed. Because the more I hear about what you’re in the middle of, the less I like it.” And for once, the perpetual smirk hadn’t reappeared.
“We know the abuse syndicate recruits minors from all over, right? Lund’s photos and files prove it. Drug addicts, runaways, the homeless, sick and injured Shifters… That’s their prey of choice, because they’re cowardly fuckheads who should all die screaming. Unfortunately, by its very nature the pediatric wing is stuffed with vulnerable Shifters at all times of the day and night.”
Nadia snapped her beautifully manicured fingers. “And it’s the only hospital in the area for our kind.”
“Right,” Annette replied. “So maybe a staff member there saw something. Or sees a pattern but hasn’t realized it. Or sees a pattern but doesn’t know who they can talk to about it.”
“Or is helping the syndicate,” David suggested.
“I hope not. But either way, it’s worth talking to them, at least. The more we can find out on our own, the quicker we can figure out whom to trust.”
“That is hideously careless and the smallest bit brilliant.”
<
br /> “Nadia’s half-right,” David said.
“And Nadia, you have to keep keeping clear.” Wait. What? Never mind, go with it. “You know what I’m talking about. You’re the level-headed partner trying to rein me in, you had no idea what David and I have been getting up to, you’re doing your best to help Judge Gomph and anyone else trying to track us down, and you’re appalled—”
“Appalled,” David added with a grin.
“—by all of it. This whole thing has you so frazzled, you had to stoop to getting my nemesis—”
“Archnemesis.”
“—involved. Okay?”
“What about me?” Oz asked. “What can I do? Because it sounds like you guys are tit-deep and sinking.”
“You can hover on the periphery making wisecracks while you look for an opportunity to pounce on my leftover fries.”
“I can do that.” Oz straightened out of his perpetual slouch, intent and serious. “I was born to do that.”
“Yes? All right? Anyone have a better idea?” Annette paused. “I’ll take that silence as a no, and the new terrible plan is as bad as the previous two terrible plans, but what the heck, it’ll give us something to do until lunch.”
From David: “I think you read too much into a three-second silence, Annette.”
“Also, am I the only one who can’t stop thinking about Big Bowl’s chicken pot stickers now?”
“Yes, Annette.” Nadia sighed. “The only one.”
Chapter 24
“I feel like I’m in a sitcom,” Annette fretted. “A dark one with an ever-increasing body count.”
The four of them (she couldn’t believe there were four of them) were doing their best to pull off nonchalant expressions as they crossed the street. David led them to the west entrance, where they passed any number of patients, visitors, and hospital employees.
“All right,” David announced. “Here’s where it gets tricky.”
“It wasn’t tricky before? Good God.”
“Darlings, all we need to do is decide who wants to distract the guard, and who wants to—”
“Seduce distract?” Oz asked. “Or chat distract? Or stage a fake-fight distract? Dammit, I need parameters!”
“Naw, you don’t,” David said. “You just need to follow me.”
David took a few more rights and lefts that Annette hoped weren’t random, and then they were in United’s newest wing, still under construction, with tarps and plastic and paint and Sheetrock and tools and builders everywhere, and David was introducing them to the man Annette assumed was in charge.
“Hey, Bri.”
“Hey, Dave.” Brian, if his ID was accurate, came right over to shake David’s hand. His broad brown face creased into a delighted grin. “How’s it goin’, man? Haven’t seen you since the Fourth of July.”
“Work junk. Speaking of, these are my colleagues, Annette and Nadia. We’re hoping you can get us to the other side for reasons none of us can go into.”
“Sure. Cake.”
“It’s lovely to meet you, Brian, but you mustn’t ever mention cake around Annette unless you have an actual cake.”
“Kindly go straight to hell, Nadia.” Annette took Brian’s large, callused hand. It was like shaking hands with a baseball glove. “Nice to meet you. That’s Oz. Feel free to ignore him. Or smack him.”
All this while Brian was looking them over. To his credit, the man didn’t seem especially alarmed. “Sure, c’mon. I’ll take you over. So, Dave, remember that cabin we rented up north last spring? Me and some of the guys were thinking it might be fun to rent the place for the fishing opener…” Then it was time to follow David and Brian, take an elevator down two floors, pass through several hallways, and then step into an underground tunnel which brought them to… Wait. Were they…?
They were. Somehow Brian had led them to a virtually unused section of the Shifter side of the hospital. Even more astonishing: no guard.
No doors, either. From where they were standing, the place looked abandoned, like no one had been in this hall for at least five years. I’ve been at United dozens of times—both sides!—and I’ve never been down here. What the blue hell?
Brian, helpful architect/construction foreman/tour guide/cabin renter, must have seen the confusion on her face, because he elaborated. “This used to be the main entrance to the Shifter wards, right up until they put in the new walkways with the security upgrades.”
“Ah, yes.” Nadia nodded and did a beautiful job of pretending she knew what was happening. “New walkways. Security and such-like. Indeed.”
“Nobody needed to use this part anymore—like when you build a new bridge, but you’re slow to get rid of the old bridge? So everyone’s just kind of forgotten about it.”
“Sloppy,” Nadia commented.
“Bureaucracies.” Brian shrugged, unconcerned. “Anyway, it didn’t pay to keep a guard way down here, so you only have to get past the key-card lock.”
“Fascinating. Unfortunately, we don’t have… Oh, you’ve pulled out a key card annnnnnd you’re opening the door for us.”
“Bri doesn’t throw anything away,” David confided. “You should see his basement.”
“Anyhoo…” Brian stepped back as the door rattled open. The thing certainly sounded like no one had tended to it for years. “It’ll bring you out right by the cafeteria and from there you can head up.”
So straightforward. So helpful. So Stable. Oh, and because her brain thought it bore repeating: Brian was a Stable.
“What…is…happening?” Nadia asked, sounding as bewildered as Annette felt. “How do you—” To David: “Did you… I don’t… What?”
“Eloquent and accurate, Nadia, which is why I love you.”
“Do shut up, Annette.”
“I’m confused,” Oz announced. “Very, very confused.”
“David’s dad and my dad were best friends,” Brian explained. “My family knows all about you guys.” He shrugged. “Well. I know Dave can turn into a bear. I don’t know what you guys turn into.”
“David does not turn into a bear. We don’t ‘turn into’ anything. We merely embrace our other selves,” Nadia shrilled, because the more confused or angry she got, the higher the pitch.
“He knows?” Annette asked, flabbergasted. Stupid question; he clearly did. And such things weren’t unheard of. Plenty of weres had Stable acquaintances: coworkers, bosses, friends, life coaches, dentists. Even spouses, sometimes. Shifters were vastly outnumbered; it would have been odd if they didn’t have some Stables in their lives.
But having Stables on your periphery wasn’t the same as exposing your true nature. Now here was David, completely unperturbed by the knowledge that a dangerous predator—and his entire family!—knew what David was and, thus, his weak points.
He must have scented their fear. No, wait, Stables couldn’t do that… “It’s okay, ladies. I’d never say anything.”
“And if you plan to, Bri, you’d better hurry the hell up,” David teased. “You’ve had years to get around to it. And a generation. You’re the laziest whistle-blower I ever saw.”
“Yeah, sure. My dad would come back from the grave and kick my ass. And so would yours. Okay, well. Gotta get back to it. Nice seein’ you again, Dave. Give me a buzz about the cabin. Nice meeting you guys.”
“Ah…charmed…” Nadia said faintly.
“Thank you for helping us,” Annette added.
“Very, very confused.” (Guess who. )
Brian waved away helping Shifters avoid a judge so they could sneak around playing amateur sleuth (or, in David’s case, professional sleuth), and off he went. They could hear him whistling “Mambo No. 5” all the way down the hallway.
“I don’t know why you guys are so shocked,” David said, which was annoying. “Did you really think we could build an entire secret wing
on the back and underneath a hospital without a few Stables noticing?”
Good God, he’s right. Why have I never considered this before? “When you put it that way, no,” Annette admitted. How many people knew about this? Should she tell people? Who? Her boss? His boss? Go higher up? But how high? It wasn’t like the president was a Shifter. But where did her responsibility lie?
“It could only have been a collaboration.”
“Wait. Back up. Just so I understand, David, you’re saying some Stables don’t just know about the nature of the Shifter wing—that I could understand, though it’s frightening to contemplate—but they actually assisted in the construction?”
David tapped his nose, which was also annoying, but there was no time to explore the concept further. The risk of discovery had climbed and would keep climbing until they could finish conducting their business and get the hell gone. There wasn’t time to wrap her frazzled brain around a concept she had never considered until thirty seconds ago.
“This isn’t over,” Annette warned.
“Are you trying to sound like a clichéd movie character, or is it organic?” David asked.
“It’s mostly organic. Let’s go.”
Then it was a matter of heading over to pediatrics, where Gomph was doubtless lying in wait, fretting over his abandoned salad and ready to stomp them into submission. Nadia agreed to seek out the judge and engage him while they headed to the peds wing.
“Just talk about how horrible it is to have a loose cannon like Annette for a partner, a maverick who plays by her own rules—”
“David, you want me to lie my elegant ass off to an officer of the court and use the most tired of tired clichés? Brilliant.”
“I’ll help, too. Um. Somehow.” Oz glanced around the group. “Suggestions?”
“You’re an accountant, darling. If we need you to look over someone’s tax return, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, what can you do?”
Annette brightened. “If Gomph indicates he’s about to stomp Nadia, throw your body between them.”
Bears Behaving Badly Page 16
