by Anne Bishop
He laughed at her—she could tell he was laughing—and eyed the woven hat Merri Lee had brought for her to wear so her head wouldn’t get sunburned.
Meg clamped a hand on the hat, which seemed to amuse him.
Wolves could make a game out of almost anything, and playing snatch the hat could go on for weeks before they became sufficiently bored to look for something else.
Having achieved whatever he came to do, Simon turned and loped in the direction of the Market Square.
He would have stayed if she’d been walking alone.
“You could call him back, walk on ahead of us,” Merri Lee said.
Meg shook her head. “We’re doing an experiment.”
But she wished she could have run a hand through his fur, just for that moment of connection. Just to say I am here.
* * *
Simon pulled on the clothes he’d left at HGR: jeans, canvas shoes, and a dark green polo shirt. Not the kind of outfit he used to wear during bookstore work hours, but he didn’t have to worry about making the correct impression on human customers anymore. Besides, now that it was warmer, these were the same kinds of clothes Kowalski, Debany, and MacDonald wore when they weren’t on duty. For the terra indigene who kept watch on the humans, blending in on a city street was just as important as moving unseen in the wild country.
Meg looked fine. He’d caught the scent of fear when he’d caught up with the girls, but it hadn’t come from her. Someone else in the gaggle had feared the Wolf because he looked like a Wolf.
He grinned. Gaggle of girls. Female pack had a sound of teeth and power. But gaggle? Easier to deal with a gaggle as long as he remembered a gaggle could change into a pack pretty damn fast.
As he reached the archway between HGR and A Little Bite, he noticed the lattice door was still closed. When he tried to open it, he discovered it was locked.
Simon stepped away from the lattice door. The voice sounded like Tess, but not the Tess he knew.
Plague Rider.
Harvesters were a rare form of terra indigene, loners who could kill with a look when their true nature was revealed. He’d invited Tess to live in the Lakeside Courtyard when he’d taken over as the leader. He’d known she was a dangerous predator, but he hadn’t known what she was until recently. And he’d never felt that he’d put the rest of the terra indigene in Lakeside at risk by letting her live here—until now.
Hurrying to the stock room, he found the cloth they sometimes used to cover a table for an extra display. He tucked it over the lattice door. He suspected that Tess was somewhere in the back of her shop, out of sight of anyone looking in the windows, but if that wasn’t the case, he didn’t want any of his own being struck down by catching sight of her.
“Simon? Something you should know before you meet with the police.” Vlad approached him and eyed the covering. “What’s that?”
“Something’s wrong with Tess. Lieutenant Montgomery and the Lizzy will be coming down from the apartment anytime now. I think Tess locked all the doors into A Little Bite, but wait by our back door and make sure everyone comes into HGR.”
“You going to call Henry?”
Simon nodded. Not that a Grizzly could do any more than a Wolf against a Harvester, but Henry had been the first to recognize Tess’s form of terra indigene by the way she’d killed Asia Crane during the attack on the Courtyard. And Henry could help him keep everyone else away from the coffee shop.
While Vlad went out back to keep watch, Simon called Henry, Blair, and Nathan.
Lieutenant Montgomery walked in first, followed by Kowalski. Blair and Nathan arrived moments later.
“Where is the Lizzy?” Simon asked sharply.
Montgomery hesitated. “I needed a minute to talk to you, and Mr. Beargard kindly invited her to see his garden totems.”
The girl hadn’t slipped past Vlad and stumbled into Tess. Good.
Montgomery and Kowalski looked at the cloth covering the lattice door.
“Is there a problem?” Montgomery asked.
“Tess needs some quiet time,” Simon replied. And as soon as it was safe to approach her, he’d find out what had angered her so much.
“I need a favor,” Montgomery said, looking uncomfortable. “Lizzy has to make a formal statement this morning, and she’d like the Wolf police to go with her.”
“Wolf police?” Blair said.
Nathan huffed. “I didn’t think she’d know what an enforcer was.”
“Why does she want Nathan?” Simon asked.
“Lizzy believes that Boo Bear protects her from bad things, and now he’s not with her when she has to talk about what happened to her mother. That’s why she’d like Nathan to come with us. She says he has big teeth, even bigger than Boo Bear’s.”
They stared at Montgomery. Finally Simon said, “Boo Bear doesn’t have any teeth, so everyone has bigger teeth.”
“I know that.” Monty hesitated. “Lizzy’s mother was stabbed at the train station yesterday morning. She’s dead.”
Had I looked that tired and confused the night Daphne was shot? The night Sam watched his mother die? Simon glanced at Vlad.
“I’ll go with the puppy,” Nathan said.
“A lone Wolf in a building full of humans with guns?” Blair growled.
“Not alone,” Kowalski said. “Nathan won’t be alone.”
Simon nodded to acknowledge that promise.
“I’ll go with her,” Nathan said. “But the Lizzy is a squeezer, so I won’t shift to Wolf form.”
“It’s a sign of fear,” Simon said, pleased to share a nugget of information about human females—and relieved to think of something besides a death that stirred up too many memories. “When Meg watches a Wolf Team movie with Sam, I end up being squeezed.”
Should he mention the nervous fur plucking? Nah. That might just be Meg. Besides, Nathan wasn’t going as Wolf, so it shouldn’t matter.
“I’ve got the car,” Kowalski said. “We can go whenever you’re ready, Lieutenant.”
Montgomery looked at the covered door. “Anything I can do to help with that?”
Simon shrugged. “When I find out what upset her, I’ll let you know.”
Montgomery, Kowalski, and Nathan left the store to fetch Lizzy and drive over to the station.
Simon studied the doorway, then went to the counter to work on whatever orders he could fill.
When Tess was ready to talk, she’d let him know. He just hoped she didn’t kill anyone before then.
CHAPTER 21
Watersday, Maius 12
Nathan didn’t like the police station. Too many walls, too many people, too much noise. He didn’t like the way some of the men watched him as he walked by with the Lizzy and Lieutenant Montgomery. Hard not to snarl a warning for them to keep their distance.
Hard not to notice the way some of the men looked at Kowalski—as if he no longer belonged to the same pack.
Then he caught the scent of Captain Burke before the men realized the captain was there. And he wondered how Burke would settle this potential conflict within the police pack.
“Mr. Wolfgard,” Captain Burke said. “Thank you for coming in with Lizzy and Lieutenant Montgomery. If you would follow me?”
Burke led them to a small room.
Someone had been sick in here
not that long ago. Should he tell Captain Burke that the humans hadn’t cleaned up all the sick? The room held the stinging scent of cleansers, so maybe humans thought the room was clean and couldn’t smell what was still there.
He hoped the Lizzy didn’t take a long time to tell her story. He did not want to stay in that room.
He tried to look as if he wasn’t paying much attention. After all, his job was to guard the Lakeside Courtyard, not fuss about something that had happened in Toland, so why would he be interested in such things?
Easier to pretend he wasn’t interested when he was in Wolf form. The deliverymen who came to the Liaison’s Office talked to Meg. It didn’t occur to them that the Wolf who looked like he’d lost interest as soon as he recognized them still listened to everything they said.
He had a feeling police weren’t as easy to fool as deliverymen. Especially someone like Burke.
After assuring Lizzy that Boo Bear was getting the best care and still needed to stay at the station and help the police, Captain Burke turned on a tape recorder. Then he just wiggled his pen and stared at the paper in front of him.
What was Burke waiting for? How long was he going to wait? They didn’t need to sneak up on the answers like some kind of skittish prey. The Lizzy had the answers. They just needed to ask the damn questions so they could all get out of this room!
“Why now?” Nathan asked. He ignored the sharp looks from Burke and Montgomery and focused on the Lizzy. “Why did your mother want you to come to Lakeside now?”
Lizzy fiddled with a button on her shirt. “Mommy and Mr. Scratch had a fight because Mr. Scratch went to a sleepover at a lady’s house, and Mommy didn’t like that. She yelled at him, and he slapped her face. Then he packed his suitcase and left. Then Mommy called Grandma Borden and cried, and when she hung up, she cried some more. Then Boo Bear’s stitches broke because Uncle Leo didn’t do it right the last time we played doctor, and I tried to fix Boo Bear with the sticky bandages, and then Mommy looked at Boo Bear and found the secret.”
Nathan studied the two men. At the word doctor, they had stiffened as if they’d scented danger, which made no sense since a word didn’t have a smell.
“Did your mommy call anyone?” Captain Burke asked.
Lizzy shook her head. “She said we had to keep the secret until we could talk to Daddy.”
“Do you remember what day that was? Did you go for the train ride the next day?”
“No. We went to the bank and got money. And Mommy packed a suitcase for each of us. And when Uncle Leo came over, she told me to stay in my room because our trip to see Daddy was a big secret, and Boo Bear might blab.”
Nathan considered this additional information. He didn’t understand why play would be bad. Play was how the young learned skills. Maybe playing with the Uncle Leo was the bad part, that the male was a danger? Since the mother was so concerned about the Lizzy talking to the Uncle Leo, it sounded like human young didn’t know enough to stay quiet and hidden when a predator came sniffing around the den. Didn’t seem fair to blame Boo Bear, though, since he wouldn’t have blabbed to anyone.
“Then what happened?” Captain Burke asked.
“As soon as it was dark, Mommy and I went to a hotel for a girls’ night out. We painted our toenails and watched TV and ate dinner in our room. And she didn’t make her mad face when I didn’t eat all my vegetables.” Lizzy kept fiddling with the button.
“Lizzy?” Montgomery said quietly.
“Mommy kept saying that the train ride had to be a secret from everyone, even Grandma Borden and Uncle Leo.” The look she gave Nathan made him want to whine in sympathy. “I didn’t tell the secret when Uncle Leo called. But . . . maybe I said I knew a secret.”
“When was this?” Captain Burke asked. “Do you remember?”
“In the morning,” Lizzy replied. “Mommy was in the bathroom. That’s why I answered the phone.”
“Did Mommy tell you not to answer it?” Montgomery asked.
She turned to him. “But it was the phone, Daddy. And it kept ringing and ringing.”
Montgomery nodded. “What did Uncle Leo say?”
“He asked what we were doing at a hotel, and I told him we were having a girls’ night out, and he said we’d packed a lot of stuff for one night and were we going somewhere? And I said I couldn’t tell him because it was a secret. Then Mommy came running out of the bathroom and hung up the phone and said we had to leave right now. I told her I didn’t brush my teeth yet and Boo Bear needed to make poop, but she said right now meant right now and Boo Bear would have to wait until we got to the train station because I had blabbed to Uncle Leo after she’d told me not to answer the phone.” Tears filled Lizzy’s eyes. She sniffled.
“You made a mistake, Lizzy girl,” Montgomery said. “But the man at the desk would have told Uncle Leo that you and Mommy were staying at the hotel. That’s why he called your room. So the man at the desk made a mistake too.”
Burke quietly cleared his throat. “Then you went to the train station?”
Lizzy nodded. “Mommy bought two tickets. Then we went to another window, and she said I could be a big girl and buy the tickets for Lakeside. She stood right behind me, and the man smiled and winked at her, and then I gave him the money and he gave me tickets, and Mommy told me to put the tickets and the extra money in the special zip pocket inside my summer coat. Then she said we were going to pretend we were being chased, like in a movie. Boo Bear and I had the secret that we had to bring to Daddy, and she would be the decoy. If she could, she would get on the train with me. If the bad men were already looking for us, she would lead them away and catch the train to Hubb’s Knees, and then call Daddy.”
“Your mommy put you on the train?” Burke asked.
“She showed me where I was supposed to stand when it was time; then we went to a restroom so Boo Bear could make poop before getting on the train. And I had to . . .” Lizzy stopped, her cheeks flushing red. “Mommy got mad because Boo Bear didn’t keep his mind on his business and took a long time and we were going to miss the train. But when we left the restroom, she looked around and made a sound, like she was going to be sick. She told me to get on the train, to find a family with children and act like I belonged with them, like a girl would do in the movies. She told me to go now, and she pushed me. Then she went back into the restroom.”
“Did you get on the train?”
“I didn’t want Mommy to be a decoy! I did what she told me, sort of, but then I went back to the restroom because I didn’t want to go without her. But she was on the floor, holding her tummy. I shook her arm, and she looked at me and told me to run. She told me she would be all right in a minute, but I had to run before the bad man hurt me too.”
The button Lizzy had been fiddling with the whole time came off the shirt. She looked at it for a long moment, then set it on the table.
“There was a boy and girl with their mommy and daddy getting on the train. The boy was crying and stamping his feet and all the people were looking at him. While the daddy was scolding him and picking him up, I got on the train with the mommy and then found a seat by myself.”
Silence. Then Burke said, “Thank you, Lizzy. That was a very good report. Why don’t you and your father get something to drink and wait for me in my office? I’d like to get Mr. Wolfgard’s statement about the train ride.”
Nathan would have preferred getting a drink with the Lizzy, but he remained seated and watched Montgomery and the Lizzy leave the room.
“What happened on the train?” Burke asked.
“I had spent some time in the Addirondak Mountains and was on my way home,” Nathan replied, shrugging. “Took a seat. Noticed the Lizzy and Boo Bear by themselves. A human male kept walking through the car and looking at her. She’s just a pup, and Boo Bear doesn’t have teeth, and no adult members of her pack had shown up, so . . .” Another shrug.
“So you stepped in,” Burke finished. “Lizzy might not have reached Lakeside if you hadn’t.”
Nathan shifted in his chair. “This room stinks. Can we leave now?”
“Stinks because you don’t like being here?”
“It smells of sick and cleansers.”
“Ah. I’ll let maintenance know.”
The moment Burke stood up, Nathan was on his feet too.
“Officer Kowalski will drive you back to the Courtyard. Would you mind taking Lizzy with you, just for an hour or two? Lieutenant Montgomery and I have some work to do.”
Nathan studied the human. The voice. Too casual. Like when a Wolf trotted past a herd of deer pretending not to notice them.
“Why do you want her there?” Nathan asked. “This building is protected. You have many humans with guns.”
“I’ve been told that Celia Borden wants custody of Lizzy,” Burke said quietly. “Leo Borden knew where Lizzy and Elayne were staying. Not a big leap to think Leo told someone, and that person wanted to make sure Elayne Borden didn’t leave Toland while her daughter’s toy held a fortune in gems.”
“What does that have to do with the Lizzy staying in the Courtyard?”
“Human law doesn’t apply in the Courtyard. I want to make sure our laws can’t be used against Lizzy and put her in danger. I don’t want to be compelled to hand her over to the enemy.”
Nathan thought trying to force Burke to do something that made him angry would be like trying to force Henry Beargard, with pretty much the same result. “That’s Simon’s decision, not mine.”
Burke didn’t mention that he and his police had helped Simon protect Meg, had done more to be helpful than humans had done before. Smart of Burke not to mention it and to keep the choice with the terra indigene.
“Tess is angry, so I’m not sure the Courtyard is the safest place, but the Lizzy can come back with me,” Nathan said. And he’d just hope some of the human pack were around and knew what to do with a human pup.
