by Aubrey Rose
"Who are these people?" Matt stepped forward into the hotel room. "You guys have government plates on your cars—"
The other agent blocked his path before he could come inside any more.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to leave," he said.
"Matt, I'll explain later," Wren said. To her relief, he nodded and left, glancing up and down suspiciously at the agent's suit as he walked out the door.
"Had you ever seen this shifter before?" the official continued.
"Before?" Wren was confused, her mind swirling. Who was the other bear? Was Dawson really the killer they were looking for?
"Before the attack. Before you saw him as a bear."
"Oh, no," Wren lied. "No, I never saw him before. I don't think."
"Do you think that there's anyone in this town who knows about this? Have you gotten to know any of the locals?"
"Not yet," Wren said. The alcohol helped her lie. "I asked about bears, but it seems like none of them knows anything out of the ordinary. Really, I was focusing on tracking. You know, for Tommy..."
Wren teared up, but not for Tommy. She'd wept for him already. Right now she was wallowing in self-pity. If only she hadn't come here. If only she had stayed out of the field. Stayed with Olivier. Or stayed in Chicago, with her parents.
That's where she should be right now. In the hospital with her dad, instead of chasing bears around the woods in California. She didn't belong here. She didn't belong anywhere. The CSE official put her pen down on the clipboard and leaned forward.
"I'm sorry. It's a shame about Chief."
Wren nodded and took the offered tissue, pressing it to the corners of her eyes.
Her emotions tore back and forth from wanting Dawson back to wanting him killed. Was this all his fault? Tommy's death, his fault? She could not imagine it. But then again, she couldn't have imagined that he was one of those monsters.
She felt shellshocked from the revelation. It was as though she'd opened up the doors in her heart a tiny bit. Not much, only a sliver of an opening. And here, pain had forced its way in, gushing and raw. Nothing good could come of opening her heart to anyone. It was stupid of her to think that she could have told Olivier the truth. Stupid of her to think that Dawson was the one for her.
Rule three. Anticipate the enemy. It was her fault for forgetting. She hadn’t seen any of this coming because she hadn’t been following the rules. Of course the shifter would want to get close to her, to make sure that he had all the information she had. Dawson had used her. She felt like a complete idiot for trusting him, for giving into him. He was the enemy.
Then why hadn’t he killed her?
She swallowed the last of her drink and could not even feel the burn in her stomach anymore. Good. She would numb it all back again.
Another agent ran into the hotel room, catching himself on the doorframe. Every head turned to look at him. He raised a walkie-talkie and spoke breathlessly.
"We got him," he said. "We got the shifter."
Chapter Twenty
Wren could barely breathe the entire way through the forest. Even though her arm was shot through with pain, she hurried forward and was the first to reach the agents in the middle of a forest clearing, near the first den she'd found.
A green tarp covered a bulky figure in the center of the clearing. Around the body stood a half-dozen CSE agents.
Wren blinked back tears as she stepped forward, steeling herself for what she would find under the tarp.
Dawson—Dawson, the man who'd pulled her into a kiss without asking any questions. The man who'd held her hand at sunset, who'd laughed at her. Who had given her the purest kind of pleasure, asking nothing in return. Dawson, his eyes crinkling in a smile.
She bent down next to the body and closed her eyes. Taking a breath, she reached up and drew down the tarp.
The man lying dead amid the pine needles was not him. The jawline looked the same—the same squared bone structure. The same nose. But his hair was dark, and his features were pinched, darker and more drawn than Dawson's. His skin was scarred in several places.
Wren stamped down the feeling of relief and locked her jaw.
"We got him cornered and shot him twice before he shifted back into human form," one of the CSE agents was saying.
"That's him," Wren said. She stayed kneeling, not trusting her legs to hold her.
The CSE official was speaking into her cell phone. She lowered the phone and spoke to Wren.
"How much do the locals know?" she asked.
"Nothing until you guys showed up," Wren said. She covered the face with the tarp and stood shakily. "Good luck cleaning up this mess."
***
The next hour was a swirl of activity, and the agents did clean it all up, or as near enough as they could. Matt stood outside of his hotel, watching the CSE agents get into their cars and drive away one by one. The body had been taken out on some side road, as far as Wren could tell. She didn't see it again.
In the parking lot, the CSE official came over and shook Wren's hand firmly. Wren noticed that the woman had perfectly clear skin and cold blue eyes.
"Excellent tracking," she said. "I'll put you in for a promotion the next round. If you decide to come back into the field, that is. After this catch, you'll have whatever assignment you want."
Wren nodded and watched as the woman slid into the passenger's side of a black sedan and pulled out of the parking spot. The sun was dipping toward the horizon, the sky growing a muted blue-gray. The car's headlights came on as it pulled out of the parking lot and drove away.
There was something sharp in her pocket, something poking her through the jeans fabric. Wren reached back into her pocket and pulled it out. The shark's tooth. Wren turned it in her fingers, watching the fading light of the sun glint against its surface.
Excellent tracking. The accomplishment felt hollow, and for the first time Wren was unsure about whether or not she was doing the right thing. The shifter that they'd killed—did it have a family? Friends? And would they ever know what happened, or would they be left waiting?
It was for Tommy. Wren cradled her broken arm in its sling and comforted herself with that thought. No matter what else, she'd gotten revenge for him, at least.
"Isabel!"
Wren turned at the name, thinking dully that she did not want to be Isabel any more, or Wren. She wanted to leave, to move somewhere she'd never been before. A big city, where she could lose herself and have no name at all.
"Isabel, it's your mom." Matt had a strange look on his face, and he pointed through the hotel door. Wren hurried inside. The phone lay on its side next to the receiver on the hotel counter. She picked it up and nodded at Matt, who left out the back door. She was alone in the lobby.
"Hello?"
On the other end of the line Wren couldn't hear anything. There was a muffled cough, and then her mom's voice.
"Wren?"
"Yes? Mom?" Wren set the shark's tooth down on the counter next to the phone.
"Oh, sweetie. Oh, darling." Her mom started to cry, and the rest of the world melted away.
Wren heard her heart beating in her ears, as though in slow motion. Her fingers found the shark's tooth, and she turned it in her hand, the edge smooth against her skin.
"Mom? What is it? Is it dad?"
"Wren, baby, I'm sorry. He didn't—he didn't make it."
Wren leaned against the counter, unable to keep her balance. The room spun around her. Her mom was still talking between sobs, saying something about the surgery. Something about complications, and a blood clot. Wren couldn't understand anything she was saying. Then her mom was crying into the phone, and Wren's fingers tightened around the receiver. It was not a sound she recognized.
"Mom? Mom?"
"Baby, we lost him. I... I can't... they're asking about a funeral and I can't..." Her mother broke down into a new round of sobbing.
"Mom? I'll take care of it. Mom?"
Wren's vision focused int
o a narrow point—the shark's tooth. She held onto it, focused onto the little white bone with all her being. The tooth's side was slightly curved, she saw now. Curved and thin, ready to slice through anything. She scraped the point along her palm, pressing it just enough that it dimpled but did not break the skin. Her mom was still talking. Wren closed her eyes and the tooth disappeared.
"I love you so much, baby. He loved you so much. You know that, right?"
"I know." Wren's hand ached from clutching the phone so tightly. She gulped and bit down on her lip, trying to keep the world from spiraling away from her. "I'll come back tonight if I can, or tomorrow. The first plane I can catch."
"I have a letter from him for you. I have... oh, baby, I'm sorry. I can't talk anymore. I can't... I can't..."
"I'll be there as soon as I can, mom," Wren said. "I love you."
"I love you too, baby. I love you so much."
The phone clicked in Wren's ear and then there was silence. Wren stood behind the hotel counter, waiting for something to happen. Surely something had to happen. She could not understand why the world still existed around her as though everything was normal, as though nothing had happened.
Her father was dead.
All at once she saw the next few days, as clear as if she was remembering the events in the past. Every step clicked into place. She would pack up, check out of the hotel. Call the airport, get the earliest flight to Chicago. At the airport she could call to make the arrangements for the funeral. Call her dad's lawyer. Figure things out. On the flight she would call her mom to make sure that she was doing alright. What was the name of her mother's best friend in Chicago? Wren couldn't remember. She would surely be taking care of her mother.
Wren felt like a string was winding around her, pulling her limbs into a cocoon. Every new thought tightened her chest, tugged the string even tighter. She had to make plans. She had to get plane tickets. She had to... she had to...
Unable to breathe inside anymore, Wren stumbled out the back of the hotel. Matt was nowhere to be seen. The trail beckoned her, and Wren moved toward it. Alone. She needed to get away from the phone, the hotel, the half-packed luggage that told her only that she would be moving again, moving soon, always moving.
One step at a time, as if in a hypnotic trance, she made her way up the trail to the fire lookout. Dawson was not in his cabin, and not at the lookout when she peered over the top of the ladder. She had half expected him to be waiting for her there, but there was nobody.
The sun was setting over the ocean, and the red-orange light made the limbs of the pines and redwoods seem afire with color.
Yes, fire. Wren wanted to burn the world down, to destroy everything. Nothing mattered. She hadn't avenged anyone. Not Tommy, not her dad. Nothing she did would ever bring them back. The shifter was dead, and it didn't matter at all.
And she couldn't feel the pain. That might be the worst. She was so strung up with all of the things that needed doing that there was no pain, none at all that she could feel.
She clenched her fist hard. A prick in her palm made her look down. She was still holding the shark's tooth, and it was cutting into her hand. The point had broken the skin, made her bleed. The red was bright even in the fading sun.
And just like that, she felt it. The grief tore through her body and stripped her of any strength she'd pretended to have. There was no Wren the assassin. No Wren the tracker, Wren the shifter hunter. Wren the killer. There was only Wren the little girl, and nobody there to protect her from the terrible truths of the world.
Falling to her knees under the fire lookout, Wren began to cry.
The forest around her absorbed her sobs, softened the cries with the whisper of lush pine branches. The birds quieted in the redwoods and the sun dropped, dropped all the while, closing the distance between itself and the horizon. The shark tooth slipped from her finger and fell between her feet, and she did not notice it fall.
***
A rustle in the brush by the trail made her head snap up. She reached for her gun but it wasn't there. Her breath tensed in her body until Dawson came out from around the trees. He was dressed in an old ranger uniform and his hair was tousled, with a pine needle still stuck behind one ear.
"Wren," he said. He came up the slope and knelt in front of her, leaving a few feet between them. Behind him wisps of clouds moved across the sky, red and gold.
"Not you." Wren's voice cracked with tears.
"I'm sorry."
“That’s it? You accuse me of lying to you, when you’ve been lying to me from the start?”
“I didn’t know who you were.”
“And I didn’t know you.” Wren glared at him. Anger and fear and sorrow whirled through her so quickly that she didn’t know which emotion would come out on top.
“You let me go.”
Wren looked down at the ground. She had, hadn’t she? She’d let him go. When it came down to it, she hadn’t been able to do her job. Hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. What was it that had seized her and made her unable to do her job?
Him.
“What do you want?” Wren asked.
“I wanted to thank you. For saving my life. And...”
Now that he was closer, Wren could see Dawson's eyes were rimmed red. His lip trembled before he spoke again. "I heard about your dad. Wren—"
Wren broke into tears, and then Dawson was there, his arms wrapping around her, curling her up against his chest, and she sobbed hard against his chest as his hand caressed her hair. He clasped her to him so tightly that she thought she would suffocate. She cried and cried, and all the time he held her.
It was only when she had stopped crying that he offered a handkerchief. She sat back and took it gratefully. When she looked up to see tears in his eyes, she realized that she was not the only one grieving. The shock of it hit her with a forcible pressure. The man in the forest. The shifter.
"Who was he?" she whispered.
"Who?"
"The other bear. The one they... the one they shot."
Dawson's throat hitched and he looked away, toward the woods.
"My brother."
There was no bitterness in his voice, only sadness. Wren took his hand and he squeezed it once before wrapping her into another hug. They rocked against each other, both letting tears fall for the family they had lost.
The sky darkened, and Wren realized that the sun had slipped under the horizon. She wondered if the sun had flashed green. She wondered if her dad had ever seen the green in the sunrise. Another tear made its way slowly down her cheek.
Dawson cleared his throat. It was strange to feel his arms around her, so strong, and to hear him speak in a voice so low and trembling.
"He wrote to me," Dawson said. "He couldn't stop himself from killing. He would bottle it up until it exploded inside of him. When he asked to come here, I thought I could teach him how to stop. I thought our community would be able to help him. I thought..."
He trailed off, shaking his head.
"You can't stop," Wren said, frowning. Everything she'd read about shifters said the same. "It's... isn't it your nature to kill?"
"To kill," Dawson said. "And I do kill. Deer. Fish. Not people."
"So that you won't be caught."
"No." He turned to face Wren, his eyes shimmering golden even in the quickly dimming light. He spat the words out. "Because I'm not a killer. He was."
"He was still your brother."
"I knew this would happen someday. He's been running for so long, it had to catch up with him. Someone was going to catch him."
"But it was me." Wren pulled back slightly. Dawson shook his head and squeezed her palm.
"You didn't kill him."
"I tracked him. I made the call. Just because I didn't pull the trigger—"
"It was the right call." Dawson's jaw was locked, and his face was steeled. Even in the dusk, she could see him grit his teeth before he spoke again.
"I understand why humans are
scared of us. The anger we carry...it's painful. Death is part of our nature. It's a disease, to be like this. I could control the anger, change it into something else."
"Your brother couldn't?"
"He was weak. He didn't try hard enough. Or maybe he did, and he just couldn't control it. I don't know anymore. It doesn't matter anymore."
"I'm sorry."
"I was supposed to protect him. But I couldn't protect him from himself. Not when he was... like that. Please, Wren. Understand. It's hard for us to be the way we are."
"You're a shifter." Wren rolled the word around on her tongue. She tried to blot out the images of Tommy tracking the bear. The image of the wolf attacking her. All of the nightmares of the past few years.
"Most of us are, in this town."
Wren's heart seized in her chest as she looked up at him.
"Matt? And his son?"
"Not Matt. Shawn, yes. And Eliza. Their mother was, too. She was killed by an assassin back in Oregon."
Wren's lips parted in surprise.
"An assassin... like me." Wren shuddered. Was there anything she hadn't ruined? Any place that hadn't been tainted? She felt again the familiar urge to bolt, to leave before she could hurt anyone else. To start over. Start clean.
"I have to go," she said, standing up quickly. "I have to get back to my mom. For the funeral." Her voice caught on the last syllable, but she pinched the word off with her tongue and looked down at the ground. The blades of grass struggled up through the pine needles on the ground.
"And after that?" Dawson stood up and took her hand, his palms enveloping hers. The moon was rising on the other side of the ridgeline, and as the sun fell into the ocean the air grew blue with the moon's light. She could see the moon reflected in his irises, white and round. "Where will you fly, Wren?"
"After that... I don't know."
"Back to Washington D.C.?"
"No." The word was final.
Dawson knelt and picked up the shark tooth, handing it back to Wren. It was so dark even in the moonlight that she didn't know how he'd seen it.
"Come back here."
