by Aubrey Rose
"Now you," he said, waving the gun at Wren. "I want whatever's in your purse."
"Sure," Wren said. She moved to step forward, but Olivier blocked her.
"Wren, don't—"
"It's okay," she said. Dammit, can't you see what I'm trying to do?
She switched the purse from one hand to the other as she took a step sideways, to move away from Olivier. The mugger's eyes tracked the purse. Easy target.
Pulling out the cash, she took another step sideways, leaving a gap between her and Olivier. The mugger began to reach out for the cash, and she made sure to keep her arm bent. He took a step forward, his hand outstretched.
There.
With a single motion, Wren grabbed the guy's arm and kicked out with her foot at his other hand, the one that held the gun. She focused the impact of her shoe on the man's wrist, hearing the bones crack as she kicked hard.
"Ahhh!"
The mugger's gun clattered to the sidewalk, but Wren still had him by the wrist. Jerking him forward, she pulled him off balance between her and Olivier. Her purse fell to the sidewalk, tripping him and sending its contents scattering across the road.
With another kick to the back of the knee, she forced him to stumble, then fall, his arm twisted behind him. She landed neatly on top of him as he fell face-first to the sidewalk, her full weight thrown forward to knock his breath out of his body. Her knee jammed down into his kidney and she wrenched the other arm behind him before he had a chance to regain his breath.
"Wren!"
Olivier stood aghast over her. She looked down. The man under her moaned. His eyebrow was cut and bleeding from the impact on the concrete.
Good, she thought. And I didn't even have to use my gun.
"Don't move or I'll take you down again the same way," Wren said to the mugger. "You got it?"
The guy seemed to get it. She pulled her purse over and unclipped the leather armstrap to wrap it around his wrists, tying it in an expert knot. The man screamed once in pain as she tied his broken wrist to his good one with the purse strap. She'd known the unsightly strap would be useful for something someday.
"Wren, get away from him," Olivier said. Now that the man was tied up, he came forward and took her by the arm protectively, helping her to stand up.
"Sure," she said.
"How on earth did you do that?" Olivier looked dumbfounded at the trussed up man on the sidewalk.
"Uh, those self-defense classes you had me take," Wren said. "They really worked, huh?"
She prayed he wouldn't check into that; she had skipped every class after the first one, in which the instructor had told them never to try to disarm an armed man. But Olivier had worried after he was elected that someone would attack her. Wren didn't want him to know just how little he had to worry. Her job was taking care of herself.
"I guess so," he said, shaking his head.
"Help me pick up my stuff?"
Her purse contents were strewn everywhere, and Olivier began to gather up her makeup. Wren looked around for her phone, keeping one eye on the mugger on the ground. Where was the dang phone?
Olivier had it. He was looking at the screen with a funny expression on his face.
"What's up?" she said.
"You have an assignment," Olivier read off of the screen. "What is this? Are you going back to school? Or is this for your dance class thing?"
Uh oh. Wren didn’t know what the message was. She was retired, after all, and the most the CSE had asked her to do in the last year had been rewriting her case study files from when she had been in the field. Why would the CSE give her another assignment?
"I gotta go." Wren grabbed the phone from his hand and stuffed it in her purse.
"What do you mean?"
"Sorry. I don't... I can't file a police report. Tell them you did it. Knocked him down." She definitely didn't need her name popping up on a police report; the Center for Shifter Elimination would have her ass for that. It wouldn't be the first time, but she was damned if she was going through the hassle of an official justification inquiry.
"Wren, are you kidding me?"
"Look, I'm sorry. I have to deal with this—uh, this assignment. Then I'll be all yours this weekend. I promise."
"Wren." He crossed his arms.
"Olivier." She put her hands on her hips.
“Wren.”
“Olivier.”
They stood, facing each other over the disarmed mugger. The man groaned again.
"I wouldn't go if it wasn't important," Wren said. Olivier opened his mouth to speak, but she pressed one finger to his lips to silence him.
"Please, honey. I'll explain later."
"Fine," Olivier said. "But I'm not lying to the police."
"They won't care. It'll be a great story—senate official taking down crime and all. And you don't care, do you?" Wren bent down next to the man, who cringed back in fright.
"See, he doesn't care."
"But I—"
"Bye, sweetie." Wren stood up and pressed a quick kiss on Olivier's lips before he could protest again. As she walked away, she turned to see him dialing the police, and she knew he would tell them that he had taken down the mugger.
Never waste a chance for good press. Not in Washington, D.C., and certainly not if Olivier had anything to do with it. Wren just hoped that she would be able to finish whatever assignment the CSE had given her before their weekend getaway.
Chapter Five
On the main street, Wren found a taxi to take her back to her apartment.
"Wait here," she said. "I'll just be a minute."
The taxi driver eyed her elegant dress and leaned back in his seat. She took the stairs two at a time, barely managing not to fall over on her heels, and threw the door open. In her bedroom, on her half-empty suitcase, sat a large sealed manila envelope. She tucked it under her arm. At her desk, she scribbled out a note:
Jessica - Gone for a couple days, be back soon. Love, W.
The taxi honked outside.
"I knew I shouldn't have unpacked," Wren muttered to herself. She threw an armful of shirts into the suitcase, as well as a clean pair of jeans. She zipped up her suitcase, grabbed a pair of sneakers, and ran back down the stairs to the taxi.
"Airport," she said tersely, slamming the cab door behind her. The taxi driver hit the dash and pulled away from the curb.
Wren kicked off her heels, tugged her dress off over her shoulders and pulled out a change of clothes from her suitcase. A T-shirt and jeans should do it. She unstrapped her leg holster and put it into the top pocket of her suitcase, leaving her gun on the other seat. She put on her socks and had just finished tugging up her jeans over her hips when she noticed the cab driver peering at her, eyes wide, through the rearview mirror.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"Uh...yeah, uh. Just curious."
"About my bra or my gun?" She held up the unloaded weapon and flashed it in the mirror.
"Uh, no. Just...uh...which terminal?"
Wren sighed and tossed her gun back down on the seat.
"One second," she said, pushing her hair out of her face. "Let me see."
The manila envelope opened with one swipe of her fingernail, and out fell a new passport, gun registration, and cell phone, along with an airline ticket.
"American Airlines," Wren said. She glanced at the ticket – there was a five-hour stopover in Chicago on the way to California.
"He didn't have to do that," she murmured.
"Excuse me?" The cab driver looked again into the back seat, presumably to see if there was any more bare skin showing.
"Nothing," Wren said. She opened the passport. The name inside read Isabel Carson. Birth date, place of birth, citizenship, address. She memorized the new information quickly and tucked the passport into her back pocket along with the gun registration.
She was about to put away the cell phone when it rang. She picked it up and leaned back in the cab seat.
"Who is this?" the v
oice on the other end asked. The voice was hoarse, throaty.
"Isabel," she said. "I'm going on a long trip."
"Are you going to the moon?"
"On my way now," Wren said. That was it. The passcode was complete. "Marty."
"Wren."
"Marty, you fuck, it's been too long."
Wren tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and began to braid her hair back. It was time to get back to work.
"Hey, you're the one who decided to transfer to the sit-on-your-ass department."
"That wasn't my decision," Wren said. She picked up her gun and swung it lightly between her fingers.
"You didn't fight it."
"My boyfriend was going to leave me if I took off on him for another week." The hair tie snapped on her fingers as she tied off the end of her braid.
"We could run away together, Wren, you know. See Paris."
"I've seen it.” Wren smiled despite herself. She’d never met Marty in person, but she imagined that he wouldn’t be quite as flirtatious face to face with her. Especially since he knew she had a gun. "Why are you calling me? You have a lead?"
"A bear to put down." Marty coughed.
"In California?" She peered at the airplane ticket. "Where's the information file on the subject?"
"We don't have any information on file."
"Name?"
"No name."
"Why are you contacting me now, Marty, if you don't even have a name yet? The tracker—"
"The tracker was killed."
"Then send someone who can actually track," Wren said, exasperated. "Send Chief."
"It was Chief."
"Chief?" The phone sounded fuzzy in Wren's ear. "It was Chief?"
"The bastard got him," Marty said. "I'm sorry, Wren."
Wren swallowed hard.
"When?" she asked.
"Last week."
"Is there a funeral?"
"You can't go," Marty said. His voice softened. "You know that, Wren."
Wren's heart pounded hard. Instead of feeling any hint of sadness, all she had inside of her was anger. Chief was a good tracker. A great tracker. And now he was gone. She couldn't believe it. She coughed to try and get rid of the sickening lump in her throat.
"So the guy knows we're onto him? He's probably gone already."
"We don't think so," Marty said. "There's been no sign of movement for the past week through any of the genetic scanners on the major highways."
"So he took a side road up to Canada. Why am I going to the airport again? I was just getting settled down."
"That'll be the day," Marty said.
"Seriously. With no info and no name? What are you sending me into?"
"We're throwing a hail Mary on this one, Wren, because we don't have much time." She could hear the tiredness in Marty's sigh on the other end of the line.
“Tell me.”
"This guy has been killing regularly over on the East Coast, one victim every two months, like clockwork. We intercepted a letter to a PO box with ursine hairs on it, and it led us to California.”
“What’s the timeframe?”
“It's been over five weeks since the last one, and we're thinking he'll kill again soon."
"A bear..." Wren murmured. "So he's on the east coast?"
"That's where he kills. But California is the only lead we have for where he lives. And that's where Chief was killed."
There it was again. Wren had to stop and wrap her brain around it. Chief was—had been—the best tracker in the business. And a damn good friend. She couldn’t process the idea that he was gone.
"How is he getting to the east coast, then?” Wren asked, trying to keep her mind clear. “He can't fly there. He can't drive there. We would have seen it."
"This guy's invisible," Marty said. "We knew it would be hard, near the end like this. There aren't that many shifters left in America, Wren, and the ones still around are getting harder and harder to find."
"He could be anywhere along the California coast," Wren said. "He could be farther. How can you expect me to find him before..." She looked up to see the taxi driver's curious eyes peering into the back seat. He refocused on the road, and Wren shook her head. "Before anything happens again?"
"We don't. But it would be nice if you were around once he gets back from his latest kill. We have agents dispersed over a ten-mile radius of the town the P.O. box is in. That's right next to the national forest where he got Chief."
Got Chief... got Chief...
"You think he'll go back there? Now that we're on his trail?"
"I don't think he cares, even if he knows we're looking for him." Marty's voice spat angrily. "I think he's arrogant as hell, and that's what's going to take him down."
"Are the locals involved?"
"No. Everybody is plainclothes. And we recovered Chief's body without anyone finding out. This one's clean, Wren."
"I'll try not to dirty it up."
"The city you're going to is Maugham. It's a small coastal town just north of San Francisco. The PO box has been shuttered, obviously. We have the tracker's video transmission before he was killed. It will be transmitted to this cell phone tonight at midnight."
"Thanks.” Wren swallowed. “I—I’m sorry about Chief."
"Me too. This guy's dangerous, Wren. Be careful. And Wren?"
"Yeah?"
"Kick this monster's ass for me, will you?"
"Copy that," Wren said. "I'll talk to you later." She hung up just as the taxi pulled into the airport. Soon she'd be in sunny California. But first, she had a layover in Chicago.
Wren smiled weakly. It had been too long since she'd seen her dad.
Chapter Six
If Wren thought early spring in Washington was bad, she quickly forgot it as soon as she landed in Chicago. Here, the world had apparently forgotten that winter was supposed to be over, and her jacket was no match for the chilly air. Frost crunched under her feet as she stopped and looked up at the sign that read South Side General Hospital.
A chill ran through her body, but it wasn't due to the cold. She took a deep breath and stepped inside, tugging her suitcase behind her.
"Dad?"
The nurse had pointed her down the hall to the last room. Her dad lay inside on the hospital bed. Both of his thin wrists were connected to IV drips. His hair, mostly gray the last time she'd seen him, had turned almost white. Wren's heart fluttered.
"Dad?" Wren stepped into the doorway and closed the door just as her dad lifted his head from the hospital pillow. His green eyes lit up when he saw her.
"Wren! My baby girl!"
"Hey dad," Wren said, clutching her hands in front of her as she stepped forward. She didn't know how to react. "Mom said you would be awake."
"She just went out to get dinner for us. But she should be back before you have to leave. You do have to leave soon, right?"
"Yeah. Of course." Wren had spent the good majority of her life running around from one assignment to the next. There was never any time for her to settle down. Not that she wanted to, particularly. Just like her dad, she was all about the work. The CSE had sent her from one state to the next, from one assignment to the next. Every shifter to put down meant a new move. And if she never made any friends, well, that was all the better. This line of work didn’t leave too much time for friends or family.
But her dad knew all about that.
"How are you feeling?" she asked
"Eh, you know me," her dad said, waving one hand carelessly in the air. The IV tube waved with it. "All this nonsense."
"What happened?"
"Some fluid buildup again in my lower back. Damn thing got infected. They've got me all hopped up on every antibiotic under the sun trying to figure it out. If it were up to me, I'd just walk out of here. But of course..."
He slapped at his useless legs.
"Sometimes I wish the damned wolf had swiped my head off instead," he said, chuckling mirthlessly.
"Don't say
that, dad," Wren said automatically. Her eyes ran over his arms, his wrinkled face. He looked so much older than the last time she'd seen him.
"Oh, Wren. My little darling. Tell me all about what's going on with you. I thought you were done with assignments for now?"
"I was. I am. It's just this one shifter. They can't find anyone who can put him down." Wren sat down on the chair near the hospital bed.
"So it has to be you." Wren's dad crossed his arms over his chest, but she could see a glint of approval in his eyes. He was proud at how quickly she'd risen in the ranks at the CSE. And he was equally supportive when she decided to take a break from the work.
"You remember Tommy Laredo?"
"Of course. Tommy. What did he go by at the Center?"
"Chief," Wren said, her mouth suddenly dry.
"That's right." Her dad closed his eyes to remember. "Handsome fella. Strong. Common sense. I always thought you two might end up together."
"He's dead," Wren said abruptly.
Her dad's eyes flew open, searching hers. He put his hand on top of hers at the side of the hospital bed. His hand felt thin and papery, but Wren could still make out the hot pulse of his heartbeat under the skin. Ever since the conversation with Marty over the phone, Wren had been keeping her emotions in check. Now, though, they threatened to burst through.
"Baby, I'm sorry," he said. She felt her face grow hot, and she looked down at their hands. She couldn't feel his touch anymore; everything was numb. "Was it a shifter?"
"Yeah." The word came out almost silent.
"You're gonna miss him."
It was the kindness in her dad's voice that did it, the soft certainty of the words. A painful sorrow broke through her body, replacing numbness with hurt. Tears ran down her cheeks and she began to sob.
Her dad pulled her close, and she rested her head sideways on his chest.
"Let it out, baby," he murmured. "It's okay. Let it out."
She sat there crying for a minute or more, his hand stroking her hair. It was like she was a little girl again and had scraped her knee, or broken up with a boyfriend. Her body felt hollow and empty from all the sadness. All of the tension from the past week rushed out in her sobs. The tears ran until there were no more tears left.
