“I’m sure. Well, what about that intro?”
She’d approached on his blind side, all legs and breasts and newly dark hair. Her leather Harley jacket heightened the shape of her body. Simonson smiled appreciatively.
“Geoff Simonson, this here’s Heather Wilson, investigative journalist and sometime news anchor.”
And werewolf, and fulltime royal pain in the ass.
They shook hands as both said “Pleased to meet you” at the same time and laughed.
“Investigative journalist, huh?” added Simonson. “I saw you behind the barricade at a crime scene, didn’t I? No inside access?”
“Yeah, well, some people are always putting rods through your spokes, you know?” Heather smiled widely and tilted her head at Lupo. “He’s tough to get through to.”
“So that was the boyfriend ploy?”
“Um,” she started, and faltered.
“What boyfriend ploy?” Lupo said. He looked from one to the other until the two of them broke into laughter.
“Had to be there,” Simonson said.
“Yeah,” Heather agreed. They eyed each other.
Is this lust? Seriously?
Lupo frowned, disgusted. “Look, I got things to do. You want to carry on, go ahead without me. Simonson, I’ll get back to you.” He nodded and stalked away, feeling their eyes on his back.
Wilcox
He’d lost her in the casino, its barn-like structure and rows and rows of slot machines stretching in every direction the eye could see perfect for losing a tail.
Not that she could know.
She might have recognized Wilcox, once. But the scars had changed his looks enough that he was just another accident survivor looking to parlay a settlement into a fortune. He fit right in.
Unfortunately, he just couldn’t pick up her trail. He might have tried sniffing her scent—she had a nice one, very tender—but there were too many conflicting smells inside the giant building.
Shit.
His instructions were to stick with Jessie, the woman doctor, and to snatch her if the word came down that Mordred wanted a lever to use against Lupo.
He wasn’t sure he understood his role in the plan, but it was not his to wonder why, as the man had said. His was but to do and die. Except the dying part.
If he could find a way to get some payback against that bastard Lupo, though, it would be sweet.
Eating his lovely fucking girlfriend would sure be perfect payback, Wilcox figured.
Killian
He scarfed down another convenience store burrito, felt the bloating in his gut and belched aromatically in the car.
Fuck, at least it helped cover up the smell coming from Marcowicz.
The psychologist was stashed in the trunk.
What the fuck else could he have done, Killian thought, mentally berating himself for allowing himself to play Lupo’s obscene game.
He’d watched enough bad movies to have an idea what he could do. He’d known enough about cleaning up crime scenes to know that if he avoided getting his own DNA on the body, it might still have Lupo’s, and he could plant the body outside Lupo’s place and call in the cavalry. He’d used an old carpet he’d seen in the basement of his building. It had been there for months, and who knew what weird cocktail of DNA it would have—but not his. He was very careful.
Sure, it was unorthodox.
Hell, it was madness!
But Lupo had changed the rules when he’d shot that cop and implicated Killian. His life had swirled down the toilet after that point, his reputation on the line, his sanity taking a hit, and his memory playing tricks on him. The nightmares, the sweats, the trembling hands. The already poor digestion going to hell whether or not he indulged his obsession for the mushy packaged burritos.
Carrying poor old Marcowicz down the stairs and tossing him into the car had almost been too much. The only good thing about the little guy was that he hadn’t been as heavy as he looked.
Turning the tables on Lupo had become so much a part of his daily life that he’d been neglecting other IA business. Now finally was his chance to fuck Lupo over. The bastard had hoped to fluster him with his handiwork, but it was Killian who’d get the last laugh.
The pressure and burning built up in his chest.
As he drove toward Lupo’s, Killian wondered whether perhaps he hadn’t lost his mind.
DiSanto
He hung up the landline and stared off into space for a long minute. Now, what was the deal? He was technically off the clock, because this had come out of nowhere and wasn’t related to the task force.
Or was it?
At the very least, it was of interest to Lupo due to the name Wolfpaw entering into it. What to do? Tell Lupo and risk him wasting his time on this? Not telling him would probably piss him off.
DiSanto’d reached out over the state PDs for any weird crimes that had anything to do with wolves. Given Lupo’s facial expressions, he’d connected the Lenny Wolf murder to the Wolf Liquor massacre to the “wolf lady” slaughter through the word “wolf.” Shit, DiSanto wasn’t the best cop ever, he knew that, but he didn’t have to be told the connection was there, however weird.
So he’d put out the word, and now he was getting something back.
Minocqua PD had just gotten off the phone with news of a recent fire that had burned down a fancy house on the lake. Now, Minocqua wasn’t so far from Eagle River, so the location set DiSanto’s alarm bells ringing right there. Eagle River was where half the weird stuff Lupo’d been involved in had gone down.
So, strike one.
The fire had been set to cover up evidence in a bunch of killings. Maybe murders, maybe murders and a suicide. Maybe the fire was related to the murderer or maybe not. The cops had gotten lucky, though, because the house had been built out of cinderblock, as many all-season homes in that North Woods area had been in the past, and the fire had missed some secret improvements built into the house’s tough core. Several secret compartments had yielded intriguing finds—weapons and relics melted into slag but still identifiable. And a small laboratory beneath the house, with a fair amount of notes seemingly pointing to the study of wolves.
Strike two.
The family who’d lived in the house, husband and wife and three kids, had all been dead. Looked like the husband had done the rest of the family, then posted a sort of suicide note on a blog they’d found coincidentally.
Shit, took some fucking balls to slit your kids’ throats.
Anyway, Minocqua cops had done some digging and found the husband was a scientist—a fancy-ass biologist or whatever—and he worked at a mysterious laboratory facility near Eagle River. A facility owned by a shell corporation and then apparently traced to Wolfpaw Security Services.
Strike three.
DiSanto tapped a pen against his teeth. Checked his watch. Tapped some more.
What to do?
Tell Lupo and he’d go off half-cocked.
Not tell him and there’d be hell to pay, especially if this did wrap around to link with their murder spree. The connections to Wolfpaw had to mean something. DiSanto had left his name with the Minocqua cop, assuring him they’d be in touch.
No percentage in keeping it quiet. He called Lupo. He got voicemail, left a cryptic message. Lupo’d tried to see Marcowicz and then had taken off. Maybe Lupo would want to drive up there. The house and laboratory were both still crime scenes, and the cop had whispered something about them being “weird as fuck-all,” a phrase DiSanto fully committed to swiping.
He itched to get hold of Lupo and decide whether they’d drive up or commandeer the MPD’s chopper. He’d always wanted to do that.
He left Lupo a Post-it in case he showed up, then headed down for a fresh Starbucks and a cookie.
Mordred
Good surveillance software was part of the package, and Mordred had the best. Way back when that bitch Falken had hacked into Lupo’s email, they’d been able to stay ahead of the unpredictable cop. But
Mordred had gone a step farther. Wolfpaw’s connections as a government contractor included feelers into the nation’s cell phone providers, and that included one of the easiest to intimidate, AT&T. Mordred had been able to call in and listen to recordings of Lupo’s ingoing and outgoing calls and voicemail.
This partner of Lupo’s had made a jump Mordred couldn’t have predicted. The Minocqua mess was hanging out there. They hadn’t even been able to send out a wipe team—not once the cops were involved. The jackass white-coat who’d cracked—what was his name?—had left a fucking blog entry behind, and maybe had started the fire, but he’d fucked it up, and now there were clues out there that hadn’t been expected.
DiSanto’s message to Lupo had been detailed but only to a point. He’d left the best for a face-to-face.
Mordred was in the van, idling, when he spotted the young buck leaving the precinct.
Mordred had been bred for instinct. He remembered his lessons well. All too well.
He drove the van to within ten feet of the oblivious cop, pacing him from behind. Clearly, it would have been better if he could Change and lunge from the van, tearing the fucker apart. But this was a fairly busy downtown area, and not the woods. Better to strike out in a more urban way. The cop turned the corner and seemed to be heading for the coffee shop a ways down, past the alley.
Mordred made the turn, then gunned the engine and jumped the sidewalk, trying to pin the bastard against the wall.
At the last second, DiSanto must have come out of his daydream, heard the engine. He turned and saw the van coming. And leaped out of the way, the bumper hooking his jacket and nearly flipping him.
Fuck!
The van’s nose was now edging into the alley, and the cop was still within his crosshairs. The window was down, and the silenced HK 9mm was in his hand.
He started to bring up the bulky muzzle to end it right there. His finger was bringing pressure on the very light trigger.
But he stopped and lowered the pistol.
A small crowd had just exited the coffee shop, and one of them pointed at the van-and-pedestrian tableau.
Mordred was already risking the operation, trying to take out the cop on the street. Taking out a group of witnesses would only complicate things.
Swearing, he dropped the pistol, hauled on the wheel and swerved back onto the street, jamming the accelerator and making the van smoke as it burned rubber.
Behind him, a stunned DiSanto stood on the street, checking his torn coat and shaking his head.
Bad move, thought Mordred. Sigfried wouldn’t be pleased at his ineffectiveness this time.
His head started to throb.
Heather
After meeting, they’d exchanged cell numbers. Heather called him, and he’d said he was busy right then, but free later.
So later they’d gone for drinks at one of the Water Street watering holes—which one? Heather had forgotten, they were all similar—and she’d bought him a beer because he seemed a beer type.
He’d bought her a gimlet, and she’d laughed at him and gotten herself an extra dry martini.
Simonson seemed haunted by what he had seen. His eyes were like deep-water pools, like cenote, the sacrificial wells of Central America. Deeper than they looked, possibly full of treasure—and skeletons.
He told her some of what he had seen, both in and out of Wolfpaw uniform. He’d seen things done by his own friends and colleagues, and he’d seen things done by the military—most of it done to innocents, and he swore it had changed him.
He suggested he was suffering from a form of PTSD. She couldn’t contradict, for she wasn’t at all sure. But he seemed to get more and more tense the longer he talked about it, and his eyes suddenly seemed to have glazed over. His voice faltered.
“Simonson,” she said again.
He was somewhere else. One of his hands trembled. His muscles stiffened under his clothing. His breathing turned rapidly ragged until she thought he would hyperventilate.
“Simonson, are you all right?”
He looked at her as if they’d not met.
Shit, how do you use a source who’s going wobbly on you? Was this guy in need of a hospital?
“Simonson!” She grabbed his trembling hand and felt the muscles and nerves under his skin rippling like writhing snakes.
Jesus.
She looked around for inspiration. The place was half empty, a barn-like room kept under capacity by the late hour and a shaky economy. Not much help to count on. She gave him her water glass.
“Here Simonson, drink.”
He took the glass as if it were an explosive device.
Maybe in his mind, it was.
Veins stood out under his neck tattoo, in his arms, and the backs of his hands. He put the glass down.
There went any help she could get from this guy. If he was so unreliable, how much could Lupo count on him? Of course, Nick Lupo was annoyingly naïve, so he probably didn’t see a problem. But as far as she could tell, Simonson was a basket case ready to spill its goods.
Suddenly his breathing slowed and his large body seemed to relax, his muscles slackening. He seemed to be coming back, wherever he’d been. Maybe there was something to the post-traumatic stress thing.
“You all right?”
He blinked and glanced around as if he’d been asleep and unaware of where he was waking up. “Yeah,” he said. “Where were we?”
They spent a few minutes going over what he had seen in Iraq and elsewhere, and he assured her he was committed to bringing them down. “They did something to me, and I want them to pay for it.”
She couldn’t help admiring his ripped physique. His muscles rippled when he moved. When he smiled, which was rare, the dark and scary eyes lit up for a moment. His hair would have been a lustrous color, if not cut military length. His jaw was strong, his neck below corded with muscle. He could have passed for a linebacker. She’d had a few.
“Have to make a visit,” she said, smiling into his eyes and patting his hand. “Be right back.”
He nodded absently, as if he were about to take that other road again.
The bathroom was large and surprisingly clean. She stared at herself in the mirror and liked the new look. It was too bad she’d have to shed it soon. She fixed her dark make-up and wondered about Simonson. Almost made her wet, right there, thinking of that strong body all over hers.
He was playing some sort of game with Lupo. She sensed it. Was he using Lupo? Maybe Lupo thought he was using him. Either way, the distrust she’d seen on Lupo had faded a bit, and he seemed ready to partner with this guy.
And she had to admit, he was fascinating.
The door opened behind her, and she started to turn away to leave the space to the newcomer, when she heard the click of the lock.
“No, don’t move.”
It was Simonson.
He was behind her, his outline visible in the mirror. His hands were on her back.
“What are you—” she started, hoarsely.
“Shh, let me feel you,” he whispered, and his voice was gentle, belying the rough exterior.
She felt his hands on her back, spreading, kneading downwards. His fingers were strong, like ten steel rods applying gentle pressure that she sensed could become rough at any second. It made her tingle in all the right places.
She looked for his face in the mirror, moved her head, and saw him sniffing her hair.
Shit.
Had she known it would end up like this all along?
His hands roved on her back, but then they slowly wrapped around her torso and cupped her breasts. His groin ground her pelvis into the sink, and she had no trouble feeling his excitement growing behind her. She let her head loll back, and now his rough face scraped her cheek and she inhaled his scent that reminded her of wood smoke, gunpowder, and some kind of manly soap, like Lava. Did they still make that? It reminded her of her father’s workshop.
His fingers found her nipples, squeezed, alternating.
It drove her crazy, and she felt herself melting, melting. Damn him.
His tongue then started twirling around her ear, circling a few times before leaving a cooling trail on and around her lobe.
She hadn’t known it would end like this, but she’d been hoping, hadn’t she?
The alternating attention to her ear and her nipples was maddening.
Since he was silent anyway, she pulled her head away from him and angled it so she could trap his tongue with her lips, and he let her. She sucked on its squirming tip and then nipped at it with her teeth, then he resumed the assault, and she took more of it into her mouth as if she could swallow it whole. Their lips met as they tasted each other’s tongues, and his fingers squeezed her nipples harder and harder, making her groan with desire into his mouth.
He stopped suddenly and pulled away, and she thought she’d go crazy, but then he was ripping at the buttons of her pants and peeling the fabric down her thighs. His nose buried in her neck now, his hands went for her panties, which were wet by now, and he twisted them down her thighs as well, exposing her buttocks to his hands.
Kneading her flesh there, he nosed her head around again and fitted his lips over hers and they stood like that, their heads almost touching the mirror, his body cupping hers from behind.
If he doesn’t unleash himself soon, she thought, I’m going to rip his pants apart.
She needn’t have worried. He groaned now and, without breaking the wet connection of their lips, took his hands off her tingling butt cheeks. She felt his pants sliding roughly down his thighs, and then he was freed and prodding at her crack.
Jesus, he’s enormous.
Heather opened her eyes and looked into his as they kissed. His erection parted her folds below and entered her slowly, maddeningly. His eyes were swirling like kaleidoscopes with specks of gold dust floating in and out.
She groaned as his full length entered her and found herself grasping the sink as if she intended to crack the porcelain into pieces. Her head was angled painfully so she could continue their rough kiss, but she didn’t care about a sore neck tomorrow. All she cared about was taking as much of him as she could into her body. They ground together as he thrust slowly in and out, reaching her depths and then depriving her over and over. His fingers pinched her nipples oh, so painfully through her blouse.
Wolf's Edge (The Nick Lupo Series Book 4) Page 23
