by Lauren Esker
Neither was Avery, but the longer they delayed, the more likely they were to be discovered. "Don't do anything you aren't comfortable with. Cho, just have him stand guard or something, okay? Start slow instead of pushing him into the deep end."
Cho flicked her tail impatiently. Mayhew swallowed again, and shifted. Nicole flinched back as the large, hairy spider leaped out of his collapsing clothing, scuttling up the back of the seat. Avery held out a hand and Mayhew ran onto it, hesitated, then scuttled up onto his shoulder and settled under his coat collar.
Avery gathered up their crumpled clothing, folded it, and put it in the backseat, then found Cho's keys in the pocket of her discarded jeans and locked the car.
"Now what?" Nicole asked, with Cho clinging to her wrist like a bright-eyed bracelet. The gecko was almost convincing as an inanimate accessory, except for the way that her eyes would occasionally shift in one direction or another.
"Now, I suppose, we find out what EGL looks like from the outside."
***
They didn't walk directly across into the parking lot, but circled around the back and walked up the access road. The janitor's van passed them on its way out. Avery risked a quick peek at the driver, but it was definitely not one of the people who'd attacked him the previous night. And then he told himself not to be paranoid.
Nicole had chosen to walk on the side of him opposite the spider on his shoulder. She took his hand. Cho had given up on being a bracelet and scurried up to be a hair accessory instead, perched on Nicole's ear with her nose thrust out from the tangled mess of chestnut-accented curls.
"That tickles," Nicole complained.
"Such is the glorious life of the SCB agent." On Avery's shoulder, Mayhew was too lightweight for his presence to register. All Avery could do was hope the spider had managed not to fall off.
"Aren't we awfully conspicuous?" Nicole asked as they approached the larger of the complex's buildings.
"There's no way not to be. We aren't doing anything wrong. Nothing we even need a warrant for. Just walking around a little."
"But what if they see us?" She was visibly anxious. "What if they confront us about it, Avery?"
"And then what?" he asked, and twitched his coat back just enough to remind her of the shoulder holster underneath. "This isn't one of Chester's paranoid fantasies. They can't just disappear us. I'm a federal agent. We have two more agents, who they almost certainly don't know about, as witnesses in case anything does happen. The only reason to avoid having them see us is to keep from tipping them off that we're onto them, and honestly? I don't really give a damn about that."
He realized as the words came out of his mouth that he was angry. Which struck him as odd, almost enough to make him laugh—wasn't anger something a person should be aware of? But he hadn't even noticed it, and yet, he was. Very angry. And, he now realized, he'd been angry ever since he'd first seen that box of puppies on his desk.
.... No, not puppies. Children. Mistreated, abused, left out in the rain. He'd been very, very angry about that. He'd never really stopped being angry in the last few days, except sometimes when he was around Nicole, just for a little while.
He simply hadn't known who to be angry at.
And he'd had no idea.
How often am I angry without noticing it? he wondered. The startling thing was that he'd never even thought about it before. Never thought, for one thing, that maybe the reason why other werewolves were nervous around him wasn't just because he was packless and different. Werewolves were highly sensitive to each other's moods, and even if the humans around him couldn't recognize his emotional states any more than he could, there was no way a werewolf pack would be unable to avoid noticing anger in one of their own.
Assuming there was anything to notice.
I can't possibly have spent my entire life walking around as a ball of tightly controlled rage and never even noticed ... could I?
"Avery?" Nicole said softly, and he became aware he was holding her hand so tightly that she was squirming a little. Cho was peeking at him through the waves of Nicole's hair in a narrow-eyed kind of way, looking about as suspicious as a gecko could. Avery, I'm onto you, that look promised.
"I'm okay," he said, to himself as much as to them, and guiltily eased off the pressure on Nicole's hand. He tried to let go, but she recaptured his fingers, and then stood on tiptoe to catch his mouth briefly with hers. Her lips were soft and sweet as always, and ...
There wasn't any reason why kissing her should make him feel better. And yet, it did. He supposed it didn't need to be rational to work.
Also, being able to put a name to the emotion raging inside him made it less potent. Yes, he was angry, and he was damn well going to do something about it. He could take his anger and point it like a blade toward the people who'd hurt those children, the people who'd done whatever they'd done to turn a normal werewolf into something like the creature he'd fought behind the Hodgson house—because he was increasingly sure that it had been a werewolf once.
Anger was a tool, and he planned to use it as such.
"We'll get 'em," Nicole said reassuringly when he reluctantly broke the kiss, as if she had a werewolf-caliber ability to read the thoughts and emotions behind his eyes. And perhaps she did.
"We sure as hell will."
The side of the EGL building was a two-story white cliff, with few windows and no opportunities Avery could see for a gecko to get in. The roof might be a possibility, but Cho showed no inclination to jump out of Nicole's hair, so they walked around to the front. Here was the main entrance, with EGL printed in discreet white letters on the smoked glass of the sliding doors.
Cho stirred on Nicole's ear, tipping her small pointed snout upward. Following the direction she indicated, Avery located the security camera under the building's eaves. They couldn't approach the doors without being recorded, but even from outside the camera's circle of view, he could tell the building was closed. Glimpses were visible inside of a modern-looking lobby with a security desk and gleaming tile floors. All the lights were off, and there was no one in evidence.
"If we're not concerned about being seen," Nicole murmured, "is there any specific reason why we're avoiding the cameras?"
Avery gave her a quick smile. "Well, there's no point in going out of our way to advertise our presence, right?"
Cho stirred suddenly in Nicole's hair, jumped down to her shoulder and scurried down her arm.
"I think she wants off," Avery said. He crouched at the edge of the paved walkway, pretending to look at the handful of late-blooming flowers still remaining in the landscapers' ornamental plantings.
Nicole looked puzzled, but followed suit. Cho ran into her hand, and her face cleared. She touched the ground, and Cho scampered off, then looked up with quick, impatient jerks of her tail.
"That's Morse code," Avery reported, trying to keep the grin off his face. "She says ... 'Come on.' That's your cue, Mayhew."
The spider's furry legs tickled the back of his hand, as Mayhew scurried unhappily to join Cho on the wood chips covering the garden soil between the plants.
"Cho, seriously, don't do anything to get the kid hurt, okay?"
The gecko flicked her head at him and scurried off between the plants. Mayhew, with a last depressed look upwards from his beady scattering of eyes, followed her.
"We'll meet you back here," Avery called softly after her. "Or wait for us at the cars if you get there first. I've got your keys, remember."
He didn't get an acknowledgment, but he and Cho had done this kind of thing enough that he trusted her not to miss a rendezvous. Mayhew he was less sure about.
Rather than heading for the door, they went straight up the wall. There was a recessed space above the doors, into which they vanished, only to reappear on the side of a narrow shaft that appeared to be some sort of gutter, heading for the roof.
"I sincerely hope she knows what she's doing, bringing him along," Avery murmured.
Nicole shud
dered. "I know it's not his fault and he can't help what he turns into, but there are a lot of poisonous spiders in Australia. I didn't realize I had such a ... hmm, I guess you'd say visceral reaction to them."
"Let's just hope he doesn't get himself stepped on." And now he wished he hadn't considered that unpleasant risk of sending Mayhew undercover. Cho, at least, was relatively safe from intentional crushing—most people thought geckos were cute, and since they weren't native to the Pacific Northwest, the most plausible explanation for her presence was that she was an escaped pet. Spiders, on the other hand ... especially large, hairy ones ...
"So what do we do while your colleagues are doing their thing?" Nicole asked.
"For starters, we've probably spent enough time staring at foliage."
They both straightened, and she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow. "You really don't think we're in danger?"
"Not at the moment. I don't get the feeling we're being watched." Still, he steered her away from the building, on a meandering course through the parking lot that would eventually lead them back to their cars. No sense waiting out here in the wind; Cho and Mayhew might take hours.
"Is that something werewolves have a sixth sense for?"
Avery laughed. "I wish. No, it's more of a sense you hone in combat zones, I think." He glanced across the expanse of parking lot, studded with puddles, to the lightly trafficked main road. If someone were going to try something, now would be the time ... but he reminded himself that, to an outside observer, he and Nicole were no more alone than they had been a moment ago. It only felt like it.
A cool wind ghosted up the back of his neck, and he shivered. Don't be paranoid, he told himself again.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you ...
"Erin says the kids are doing fine," Nicole reported, checking her phone. She, at least, took his reassurances at face value. "All six of them. Poor Erin. She says Hannah is doing a great job of babysitting, though. Basically she's in baby heaven. I guess she's been going through a mini-mom phase lately."
"Is that a thing girls do?"
"I never did. Although, as second-eldest of four kids, I got about as much mini-mom duty as I could stand. I didn't start wanting kids 'til I was a little older, and then I decided I probably shouldn't be a mom anyway."
The pain in her voice pulled him from his own bleak thoughts. "Why not? You're wonderful with the babies. I think you'd be a great mother."
She tried to smile. "Just old habits from taking care of my younger siblings. Like riding a bike."
"It seems like a lot more than that."
She didn't answer, looking away. Avery had the sense he'd touched on some deep, raw wound in her; he had enough of his own that he recognized the signs in others. He just couldn't imagine what it was. He already knew what he had thought was her most closely guarded secret. Were there others? Had she been hurt in other ways, that she hadn't yet opened up to him about?
Avery put an arm around her and gave her a hug. She didn't try to pull away, just sighed and leaned into him, sliding her arms around him as well.
After a little while she said, slightly muffled by his coat, "I can tell you're looking around again."
"Being cautious, that's all."
With her arms still clasped around his waist, she tipped her head back and looked up at him. "Do you have the collar with you?"
"You think I should sniff around as a wolf?"
"Why not? I can get the leash and walk my weird black dog."
***
The dog-walking didn't get any noticeable results, but it was fun for both of them. After a little while, Nicole took a break in the car while Avery ran around the industrial campus by himself, relying on her "ownership" to get him out of trouble if anyone reported a stray black dog. He came back to her at last, panting and cheerful, with Mayhew and Cho hitching a ride on the shaggy fur of his back—they'd been waiting for him by the door, as promised. Nicole unlocked Cho's car for the two of them, then hung out in the front seat of the Prius while Avery got dressed in the back.
"You need a big car like Jack's," she remarked, leaning on the back of the seat. "More privacy and more room."
"This car is perfectly fine. It's an excellent commuter vehicle."
Nicole laughed. Traces of her earlier melancholy remained, but she seemed a lot more cheerful now. "Did you find anything?"
"Nothing at all. Not that I was looking for anything specific, but there definitely haven't been any werewolves around here, and between all the overlapping human smells and the recent rain, I can't pick out anything specific. Let's hope Cho and Mayhew had better luck."
The two agents in question were just getting out of their car. Cho looked energized. Mayhew simply looked wet, the plastered-down condition of his hair in contrast to his dry clothes.
"What happened to you?" Avery asked.
"Let's just say it's been raining off and on for days and flat roofs mean lots of puddles." Cho nudged him. "Too bad you're not a water spider."
"You can stop saying that, please, ma'am." Mayhew ran a hand through his damp hair, trying to sort it into some semblance of order, and only made it stick up in all directions.
"No other mishaps, I take it."
Cho shook her head. "No, and not a single sign of anything I shouldn't officially be looking at, either. I mean, not that I'd recognize anything weird if I saw it, but it's just labs and offices and the usual kind of stuff you'd expect to find in a place like that, shut down and locked up. Nobody around, no weird-looking experiments, no lightning rods and stitched-together body parts. Loads of offices. As far as I can tell, it's just what it looks like on paper: an ordinary biotech firm."
Avery hissed out a breath through his teeth. "I didn't smell anything out of the ordinary either. Damn it. This is the only lead I had."
"Don't give up yet. Regroup, consider, and contemplate our next move."
"Which is?" Nicole asked, glancing between them.
"Paper trails." Cho pointed at Avery. "Which he can do, since it's his case."
"If they are doing some kind of mad science here, there's got to be something weird," Avery explained. "Too much grant money coming in for the papers going out, ethics violations, something."
"And it's your problem. I'm coasting on my pickpocket collar right now." Cho slapped Mayhew's shoulder, making him flinch. "But the kid did great on his first outing, so there's that. C'mon, Mayhew, let's find you a towel and then buy you a drink to celebrate your first field assignment. Or at least a late lunch. You guys want to come?"
Avery glanced at Nicole.
"If you want to, I don't mind," she said. "I'm not really hungry yet, though, and I feel like we should probably get back to Erin's."
"You heard the lady." Avery waved them along.
Cho's Mini Cooper peeled jauntily out of the parking lot, with a hand waving out the window. Avery leaned thoughtfully on the door of his car for a minute before getting in.
"Penny for your thoughts," Nicole said.
Avery popped down the door locks, a gesture as automatic as his habitual glance into the backseat whenever he got in the car. "I don't know. I really thought we'd find something here."
"Maybe there isn't anything to find."
He started the car, but didn't shift out of park, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "I keep feeling like we're missing something."
"It's really important to you, isn't it?" she asked gently. "This case. Solving it for those kids. They mean a lot to you, even in just this short time."
Avery only shook his head, not a negation of her statement, but an attempt to encompass something too big to talk about. "I don't know. I want them to be safe, and to grow up happy. That's the important thing."
Nicole sucked in a sudden, deep breath. "You asked me why I didn't want kids. I ... don't mind talking about it. I was caught off guard earlier, that's all."
"You don't have to. Really. You don't owe me an answer. In fac
t, you can tell me to go to hell if you want."
"I know," she said, smiling faintly. "But, I guess, it's exactly what you would expect, knowing about my past. No child deserves a mother who's in and out of institutions. That's all."
The unhappiness in her voice wrenched his heart, and Avery leaned over to take her hand. "That's your past, not your future."
"I know, but it's not a sure thing. And some of the meds I've taken—okay, right now I'm on SSRIs and those aren't so bad, but there are definite risks of birth defects with some of the ones I've taken in the past, and may need to take in the future. And pregnancy messes with your hormones anyway. Postpartum depression is a risk even for women who don't have my issues."
"There are other ways than biological motherhood. I'm not trying to talk you into it," he hastened to add. "Just pointing out that it really is up to you. Biology isn't destiny, and neither is brain chemistry. At the end of the day, what matters is the decision you make."
"I know. But what if I really do go off the deep end, Avery? I'm thirty-six, maybe a decade out from menopause, and that can mess with your head, too. What if I ended up one of those women who ... who hurts their own children, or worse? Given what I've seen at work, I know better than anyone that there's no magic to motherhood, to prevent a messed-up woman from hurting her kids."
"That's not you. That'd never be you."
"You don't know that," she said. "And neither do I."
"It's a risk," he said. "It's also a risk that I'll turn out like my parents—or, hell, that I could just snap after too many sleepless nights and drop a kid off a balcony. People do that, you know."
"You wouldn't," she said loyally.
"I like to think not. But when it comes down to it, I don't really know. Nobody does. Just like we don't know, until danger comes, if we'd be people who'd stand our ground or run away. Or what we'd do in any new situation."
"Avery, I'm not brave. I don't know much, but I do know that."
"Don't say that." It came out more harshly than he'd intended. "Don't ever say that. If you think you aren't brave, then you need to take a closer look at yourself."
