Then he planned his approach to wherever they were meeting inside that building. He’d keep an eye out for the big military guy showing up for his meeting.
He parked a block farther away than Lupo and walked the rest of the way, his eyes roving.
Heather
She was anonymous as hell in the Hyundai and good thing, too, because she had to jam on the brakes and almost had an idiot tailgater smack her in the rear when she saw Lupo approach the guy leaning on his car.
Looked like Lupo had his gun out.
She wanted to flip off the tailgater, but instead when he swung around her she smiled sweetly and licked her lips at him, and he drove away shaking his head. But with a story to tell. At least he hadn’t honked at her.
Was Lupo going to have a gunfight on his hands?
No, they weren’t doing anything. The gun was still in Lupo’s hand, but hidden.
She pulled into the parking structure on her right and slowed down before pulling up to the automated ticket machine. She took one and zoomed up the ramp and around, to where she could park facing the street on which those two were now talking. It’d been about two minutes by the time she got there, and she hoped they hadn’t broken up yet.
She parked too damn fast and almost smacked the barrier, then jumped out to look over the ledge.
No, they were still there, but almost done.
There seemed to be tension between them. They seemed to close in and separate, as if they were about to go for each other’s throats. The gun was no longer visible though.
They were yakking at each other.
What was up with the guy?
An informant? A stalker? An ally?
An enemy?
They were breaking up down there. By the time she’d driven around to the exit, they were both gone.
Lupo
He dialed DiSanto’s phone, expecting to leave a message.
Nobody ever picks up anymore.
But DiSanto did, surprising him.
“Yeah, Nick?”
“Listen, I just had a chat with a total stranger who seems to know way too much about me and this case—and Wolfpaw. I’m meeting him at Hawk’s in a half hour, hear what he has to say. Can you do me a favor and run his name, get the whole package?”
“Yeah, but you sure you want to meet him without back-up? I can be somewhere nearby.”
“Nah, I can handle him.” He spelled out Simonson’s name. “Says he was a Ranger, did at least a tour in Iraq.”
“Will do. Call me afterwards?”
“Good to hear you care, DiSanto.”
“How else am I gonna get to ride in the Lupo-mobile?”
“Now you’re gettin’ it.”
They clicked off and Lupo climbed into his car. He had a few minutes before having to make the meet, enough time to case the block and building that housed the pub. He’d be able to spot anything out of the ordinary, unless they were spooks—which, Lupo realized, wasn’t impossible. As far as Simonson went, he could handle the big guy.
Hawk’s pub had a nice long corridor running behind it and a garage below. The place had been moved in the nineties from the basement of an old building to this new bank building on the Milwaukee River, so now it featured a long patio overlooking the sluggish water. Lupo reconned Water Street and Wisconsin Avenue, saw nothing unusual, then slid into the building’s parking garage. He made a trip through the levels, then slid back out using his badge at the booth.
He zipped back toward Wells and parked on the street almost two blocks away, checking his personal perimeter as he shuffled back toward the building. He kept the spots in front of the door in sight, but saw nothing that implied surveillance—no tinted windows, no vans or minivans with closed-up rears, no obvious heads low in their seats.
His phone buzzed.
“Yeah, DiSanto?”
“Um, this guy you gave me to run.”
“I’m listening.”
“Well, his name’s in the DoD database all right. Comes up with a sealed jacket file, though. This guy exists, but just barely.”
“Shit. Try any other DBs?”
“Every one I can think of. VICAP, Interpol, and all the other law enforcement ones, plus armed forces, and even freakin’ Google. Nada, zippo, zilch. DoD definitely says he worked for them, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“You try any of our backdoor ways into Wolfpaw?”
“Fuck, Nick, that’s your thing. I don’t have any backdoor ways into Wolfpaw. Anyway, since they’re private they’d be likely to be even more close-mouthed, wouldn’t they?”
“Probably. Shit, the guy looks legit, like he fits the story, but not being able to check on him bugs me. He says he has inside info on their crimes.”
Lupo didn’t say anything about what the guy had referred to. What was it? Moon-related. That was new. Good way to approach him, wink wink, nudge nudge.
Maybe it was time to let DiSanto in on the big secret. Shit, they’d done that with Arnow.
Yeah, look at what happened to him because of it.
There was a time he would never have considered letting anyone in on his secret condition, but it had been a long progression from Caroline Stewart to Jessie, and then the arrival of the Wolfpaw mercenaries had necessitated telling Sheriff Arnow, because how do you ask a guy to silver up his slugs without having him ignore you, or worse yet have you committed?
He thought about Simonson’s lack of paper. “Could be one other thing,” he added. “Could be he’s a spook and that’s why he’s a blank slate.”
“Thought of that and tried a couple contacts I have in the DoD, tried to go beyond the obvious, but I got nothing.”
“CIA? NSA? If so, we’ll never get any sort of conclusive answer.”
“You tell me, Nick, does he strike you that way?”
“There’s a vibe. He spent time deployed in Iraq. Sealed records could mean a hundred things.”
“Anything you want me to do?”
“Keep trying. I’m gonna meet him and hear what he has to say.”
“Want back-up?”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to spook him. Pun intended.”
“Be careful, Nick.”
“You got it.”
Lupo was early, the best way to avoid an ambush. He had a Harp in front of him, but he hadn’t touched it. Mostly as a prop.
The big guy looked sick. That was the first thing Simonson noticed when he came in. He looked like a soldier who’d seen and done too much, like someone suffering from private agony.
“So why are your files sealed, Simonson?”
The big guy chuckled. “You don’t lose any time.”
“You gave me your name. I ran it. Now answer me.”
The guy ordered a Guinness from a roving waiter.
“When I was a Ranger I was involved in enough covert ops that they took me off the radar, stuck me with an official threat, and cut me loose due to battlefield fatigue. But Wolfpaw was more than happy to make use of my talents. Problem was—”
His beer came.
“Thanks,” he said and took a long sip. “Problem was that I saw too many unbelievable things.”
“Why should I listen to anything you have to say? I don’t know you from Adam.”
Shit, I sound like DiSanto with the clichés.
“I was in the process of doing my own investigation after I left Wolfpaw. That was when you roared into my line of sight, blasting your way through an Alpha Team at the compound. And then you and your friends took care of another one. You realize what a problem you are to them?” He drank. “You realize how much they want you silenced?”
“I think they’re too busy right now to care.”
“Trust me, they’re never too busy. I know things about this company. And I know about the whole shapeshifting thing.”
“So you also know about me.”
Simonson nodded, licked brown foam off the rim of his glass.
“What do you want? Blackmail?”
“I want…an all
y. I was planning my own raid into Wolfpaw central. Now I figure you and your friends might be interested in doing what I want to do.”
“Jesus, Simonson. I can’t kill every werewolf in Wolfpaw—there could be dozens.”
“Try hundreds.”
“Fuck, that’s worse.”
Simonson looked around, but most of the tables and booths were empty. “They’re like a snake, man, so if we cut off the head the body will die.”
“I don’t even know where the head is.”
“The head is in Washington right now, wrangling congress. But soon he’s gonna be visiting the main compound a few miles out of D.C. You proved you could get into the training facility down south. I have what you need for further access. We go in, do the deed, get out. It will all collapse.”
Lupo stared at him a long time. So the Georgia facility was secondary? None of his research had indicated a Washington compound. This was good insider information. He hoped for more tidbits, but none came. Clearly, the guy’s pitch was done.
“I don’t know, Simonson. It’s tempting, but…”
“But?”
“I have to think about it. I’ve got things on my plate right now. And I’m gonna need some proof from you. Something to make me trust you.”
“Can be done.”
“Where do I find you?”
“I move around, so let me find you.”
“What’s the time line?”
“The head is going to visit the Washington D.C. compound very soon.”
“Then we’ll talk very soon.”
Lupo dropped a ten on the table and walked away, hoping to flush a tail or a possible ambush. But there was no one, and he left Simonson sipping his Guinness.
Mordred
Some of his memories came rushing back as he stalked his new prey.
His vision blurred, and instead of the city shapes around him he was in the woods again, away from the compound, his wolf’s blood singing gloriously in his veins…
He heard the rustle twenty feet away. The fur along his back tingled and the hair rose on end. He extended his snout past his paws and crept forward softly, the pine needles silent below him. His nostrils twitched, picking up the scent. His prey was standing still, but his pungent smell pointed him out as easily as a neon sign.
Mordred ordered his wolf’s body to sit still, quietly listening for what the prey was doing.
The thin, emaciated Iraqi had been allowed a combat knife. He couldn’t kill Mordred, his hunter, with it, and eventually he would be shot anyway, if he managed to give his hunter the slip. The knife, a black Ka-Bar Tanto combat model, was intended to give the prey a sense that he could defend himself and come out the winner of any confrontation. But that, like most everything else he had been told, was either illusion or an outright lie.
The prey was an Iraqi fighter, a member of the insurgency captured sometime in the seven-year history of Wolfpaw’s contractor status in the war. He had been held in one of the CIA-sanctioned black prisons run by military contractors and ungoverned by United States civilian or military law. These prisons were either built in the middle of nowhere or relegated to shady allied countries and promptly forgotten by everyone except those who made the dark side of national defense their business.
There were hundreds of such detainees, held without warrant in dungeons with little chance of escape or survival. Some, like the prey now hiding in the undergrowth not far from where Mordred crouched, had been “reverse rendered” by Wolfpaw back to the United States in defiance of law, with the express intent of using them for the Genesis Project training exercises.
Wiry, lean and muscular like mountain goats, they performed beyond expectations in the training exercises. Their bodies were accustomed to the cold desert night, so when they were released into Wolfpaw’s wilderness compound, where the overnight temperature might dip to the teens, they were predetermined for survival. For the Genesis Project, they provided information as well as training exercises. For the Genesis trainee, the Iraqis provided practice, training, and…live food.
Mordred advanced softly over the carpet of needles, his huge, muscular body hidden by the shadows of the giant pines overhead.
The prey rustled the bushes again, perhaps shivering in the cold. Or maybe he had heard the predator’s approach.
Suddenly he broke cover and ran like a rabbit.
Mordred snarled, almost taken by surprise, and hurled his body into the chase, his paws eating up the ground and his eyes focused like lasers on the zig-zagging body. At first he followed the wiry fighter step for step, quickly learning his stride and his thinking. The earthy scent was strong in his nostrils, and beneath the unwashed smell Mordred also caught the scent of the hot blood that would soon be his. The flesh, the delicious organs.
Moments after starting the chase, Mordred had learned the patterns of his prey. He predicted the direction in which the prisoner would turn…
And beat him there.
Mordred’s lunge ended on the prey’s back, his powerful forepaws breaking the man’s collarbones and more than a few ribs with his weight alone. Then he snatched at the man’s head with his jaws, but the man shook it from side to side, and Mordred couldn’t find purchase there. He snarled in frustration, masking the man’s screams as he tore an ear off and swallowed it like a snack, enjoying the bloody squirt that hit his palate.
But this particular prey was tough. He managed to squirm partly out from under Mordred’s bulk and twist himself around so he could bring his one weapon, the Ka-Bar knife, to bear.
Mordred felt the blade slip in and out of his torso.
Even knowing the wounds would start closing immediately, the painful pinpricks irritated him, and he bit off the man’s hand. The knife fell away under them, and Mordred bit off the other hand just to even things up. Then, his paws holding down the squirming, screaming human, he took his time lapping some of the fresh blood spilling from the stumps.
His eyes locked on the human’s, he leaned in and ripped off half the man’s face with one powerful bite. Then, bored by now, he tore out the man’s throat and drank greedily from the fountain that spurted up and into his waiting gullet.
Once the man squirmed no more, Mordred took his time with the remains, seeking out the choicest bits as reward for the difficulty factor of this one.
In the lab, those monitoring grinned, and money changed hands. This particular specimen had given their super-wolf a better fight than most expected. Those who had predicted it took home a bonus that week.
Now Mordred blinked rapidly and the pleasant memory faded, leaving but an echo. In its place was this new assignment, with its own delights…
He particularly enjoyed the freedom he was given to improvise.
Improvisation is divine, one of his trainers used to say. He’d taken that line to heart.
Here he was now, far away from the sands of Iraq and a fair distance from where he could run down prey for practice. So in this environment, he enjoyed whatever he could get. He made the last adjustments to his camouflage.
Prey
She opened the door just a crack to peer out at the handsome phone company man. The short chain kept the door from opening any more, but she could see his jumpsuit and tool belt just fine. She knew the rules. Old lady (well, older) living alone, she knew better than to throw open her door to strangers.
The man (tall and handsome, yes he was, but much too young for her) glanced down at his high-tech clipboard—it was some kind of flat computer, really—apologetically and then looked up at her.
“Mrs. Ellen Kraniewski?”
Amazingly, he barely struggled with her name at all.
“Yes?” She studied his AT&T insignia and ID photo badge hanging on a thin strap around his neck.
“Your phone, ma’am, is it dead?”
“Matter of fact, yes it is. I started to call the phone company, but then I realized I couldn’t very well do that with a dead phone, could I?”
“No, ma’am,” h
e said, chuckling, “though a lot of people these days have cell phones, and that would have done the trick for you.”
“Yes, well I’m sure, but I don’t have one. My daughter says I don’t need one.”
Why was she standing here talking to this stranger at her door? His eyes were mesmerizing, she noted, swirling and changing colors from blue to green to black. Very black. No, green.
“Your daughter is wrong,” the phone man said. “Everyone needs a cell phone. What you don’t need is the land line.”
“Land line?” Those eyes!
Why was he trying to talk her out of the phone she’d had for decades?
“All those unsightly wires,” he said. His eyes were soothing her and his smile was captivating. “I could show you some alternatives while I fix your old phone.”
“Uh, yes, sure,” she said, still captured by his eyes. For a second they reminded her of her grandson’s dog, big, brown orbs full of empty compassion, but why would she even think a thing like that? That wasn’t like her at all. “Please come in,” she said, throwing open the door and stepping aside. She had a vague memory of her daughter telling her never to do that, but then the phone man was stepping past her and when she turned to face him, after closing the door, he was grinning at her.
His teeth!
“Oh my God,” she said, gurgling with an excess of something in her throat.
Then she stepped back awkwardly and realized he had just swiped at her with a hand that wasn’t a hand at all.
It was a claw tipped with long, pointed nails.
And what gurgled in her throat suddenly was a flood of warmth that reminded her of bathwater, except when she swallowed it tasted completely different.
And then the pain began. She held out a hand she’d brought up to her neck, and it was coated in brilliant scarlet.
“Oh,” she whispered, but little sound made it through her fleshy lips. The warmth spread over her neck and chest, and she tottered.
She remembered to look at her visitor. Maybe he could help. But he had just stepped out of his belt and jumpsuit and stood before her, naked! He was all planes and angles, tattoos scattered here and there, and his huge…his huge thing (she couldn’t even think the right word!) stood out from between his thighs like a purple-tipped spear.
Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4) Page 15
