“Nice ride,” Cooper said cheerfully, nodding at the ATV. “Which box do I have to check next time to drive up rather than walk?”
Paul glanced at him, as if surprised by his presence or gall to break such a preciously uncomfortable staring match. “We normally discourage vehicles on the trails, but I wanted to join you as soon as I could. I can’t apologize enough for not being here to welcome you when you arrived.” He dipped his head in something that was not quite a bow, but uncomfortably close to doffing the proverbial cap.
“It’s...a beautiful property,” Park said carefully. It was still a lot smoother than anything Cooper could have managed right then, feeling unbearably awkward under the eyes of what seemed like all four couples still waiting by the river.
“Thank you. So kind of you to say. Of course, we’ve been very lucky.” Paul lowered his voice significantly. “I was wondering—of course you probably don’t remember. But—” He laughed. “Really funny thing, you actually helped out my old alpha Becca once.”
“I remember,” Park said.
“Oh!” Paul seemed thrown by Park’s bluntness. “I just wanted to say, that was the best pack I was ever a part of in no small part thanks to you and what you did for us.” He waited for Park to say something but got zip. “Well, ah, anyway, I hope you’re happy with your room. Number seven is our nicest cabin.”
Cooper and Park made satisfied noises and Paul beamed, back on track. “Wonderful. We’re so honored to have you choose our retreat to stay. And your mate,” he added, remembering Cooper’s annoyingly persistent presence. He licked his lips nervously again and glanced over his shoulder where Vanessa was loading the third raft and beckoning him over. He held his finger to indicate just a minute. “If I may say so, I understand you’re not using your, ah, family name.” Lip lick. “I didn’t tell Vanessa... But perhaps I—”
“No,” Park interrupted sharply, and Paul jerked and rocked backward. “I would be—” Park hesitated “—most appreciative to you, if everyone here knows me only as Andrew Preston. Guests and staff.”
“Of course. I understand completely. We’re very discreet here at Maudit. And if there’s anything—”
Park abruptly got to his feet, and this time Paul really did fall backward to the ground. He hastily got up and Cooper, feeling like a prick being the only one sitting, hauled his ass up, too.
“I believe your presence has been requested on this next raft,” Park said stiffly, formally.
“Yes. Good. Great.” Paul hesitated again, and this time Cooper was worried he was waiting for Park to literally dismiss him. But finally he said, “I have always had the utmost respect for your family and everything they did after the Division. I hope they know—you know—for however long we live down here, my loyalty remains.”
He dipped his head again, backed up a couple of steps, then turned to hurry to the river and Vanessa.
Cooper exhaled, long and slow. “Well.”
“I cannot be in a fucking trust-building activity with him,” Park said vehemently as soon as Paul was a fair distance away, leaving them alone on their side of the clearing. “He’s going to ruin this.”
Cooper put his hand on Park’s back in sympathy and watched Paul clamber into the river, enthusiastically introducing himself to the two couples already on board.
“He seemed nervous,” Cooper prompted. The little interaction with Paul, the fawning subservience, whether real or acted, had felt gross to Cooper, too, and he wasn’t even the target. But it was something they could take advantage of if Park was willing. “Paul’s more likely to talk to you than me—” he started, apologetically.
“I know,” Park interrupted. He hesitated, shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry. I’ll do better. He just...caught me by surprise. Don’t know why. He’s hardly my first. They either hate me like Muñoz or they—” He cut himself off this time. “Guess I was enjoying being someone else, even if it only lasted this afternoon.”
Something about that, hearing Park’s defeated self-chastising, made Cooper’s throat hurt. “We should go somewhere. After this,” he said, abruptly. “When we next get time off. Somewhere you can be you, fully you, and no one will care.”
Park looked at him, startled. His lips parted slightly and his amaretto eyes seemed softer, younger than usual. “I’d...like that.”
“Well, good. Me, too,” Cooper said, feeling oddly fluttery. “Mind you, anywhere fancy and you’re paying.” He patted Park’s butt playfully.
“Oh, to be the rich patron of a younger, demanding man,” Park bemoaned. “When will I escape your sexual snare?”
“When I murder you in Mykonos and abscond with my lover to spend your fortune.”
“I see you’ve decided to accept life in the lap of luxury after all,” Park said dryly.
Cooper winked. “Now, when have I ever been able to say no to your lap?”
“Last group, get ready!” Vanessa called.
They made their way to their raft where Jimmy and Lisa were having a hushed argument that cut off as soon as they recognized they weren’t alone. Cooper remembered the strange face thing and wondered if it was something worth asking about later.
“I didn’t realize you’d met Paul before,” Jimmy said loudly, even as Lisa sucked her teeth and hissed something under her breath at her partner.
“We have a mutual friend,” Park said shortly. “Shall we?” He gestured to the raft.
Cooper didn’t like the look in Jimmy’s eyes, but he said nothing else and obediently lifted the raft to bring it to the riverbank. He silently cursed Paul Claymont. He hadn’t said anything to outright expose Park’s identity, but how could the man practically crawl on his knees and think no one would notice?
...unless the point was so that people would notice. But what would be the benefit of drawing attention to Park like that? Right now the only person reacting was Jimmy, childishly jealous of their perceived special treatment.
The river was shockingly cold, but the farther away from the launch point they paddled, the more they caught the late-afternoon sun, until eventually the constant flyaway oar drips and splashes of ice water that leapt off the rocks and into the raft were a relief to heated skin. Despite Park’s own admission of not being a water person, he’d been assigned the front and Jimmy had immediately plopped himself alongside him but had been politely asked by Vanessa to move a row back due to weight distribution.
Being the last group, both she and Nielsen were riding with them, and she joined Jimmy on his row. Lisa and Cooper sat on the row after, and directly behind them sat Nielsen. When Cooper had glanced back at him, Nielsen had winked. Cooper kept his eyes forward as much as possible after that. Up ahead he could just see Paul Claymont’s raft rising and falling over the bumpy water. It wasn’t quite the Lazy River Log Ride Dr. Joyce had implied, and Cooper wondered how long until they got to the falls. He was exhausted and they hadn’t even gotten anywhere on the case yet.
They paddled hard into the strong current and then concentrated on navigating the jutting rocks and logs. Cooper kept waiting for someone—Vanessa or, hell, even Nielsen—to launch into some metaphor about why every position on the boat matters and only through communication can we get where we need to go, blah blah blah, but they both kept quiet. Vanessa seemed distant and distracted. More than once Cooper noticed her oar still in the water and have to jerk back into movement when the raft began to turn off course. Lisa was the only one determined to keep up the polite and enthusiastic chatter.
“Isn’t this beautiful? So nice. So fun. A real treat for us to get out of the suburbs, back into nature. I’m so glad we came back. Aren’t you, babe?”
Jimmy ignored her.
“You and Andrew just flew in this morning, didn’t you?” Lisa said to Cooper, determinedly. “This must be a terribly long day. Especially for you. I mean—” Blotchy spots of pink tinged her cheeks.
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“That’s okay, I ate my Wheaties.” He winked at her and she laughed in a relieved sort of way. “When was the last time you were here?”
“Oh, last October, wasn’t it?” she said. Before Kreuger would have been here, Cooper noted. “We couldn’t go rafting then, but we did the two-day hike with Hal. He taught us about edible plants and we camped out on the trail.” In Cooper’s opinion, she sounded far too nostalgic for someone remembering nibbling on wild fungi and shitting in the woods.
“Two days of hiking and camping?” Cooper repeated, alarmed, and heard Park cough, poorly disguising a laugh. “Do we have to—are we doing that?”
“No, activities change depending on the session,” Vanessa explained. “Since Reggie has joined us, we’ve been able to start offering our popular Intimacy Through Touch workshop.”
Park coughed again, and Cooper silently apologized to all mushrooms. He would rather eat every type of them than intimately touch Park in a room full of strangers and possible murder suspects any day. Even the poisonous ones.
“I was sorry to see Hal wasn’t still working here,” Lisa continued. “I wanted to ask him about this strange little plant we found in our yard. I have pictures on my phone. Where did he go?”
“The West Coast, I think,” Vanessa said vaguely.
“Do you think maybe I could get his contact information?”
“Oh, I don’t know if I have the right number anymore,” Vanessa hedged.
“I’d love to be able to ask him about this plant and if it’s the same one that he said the leaves are poisonous to us in fur but not if they’re steamed? Or maybe it was the roots we can’t eat in skin—”
Jimmy cut her off. “She obviously can’t just go around giving out people’s personal information.”
Lisa laughed but looked down at her oar, letting her hair cover her face for a moment before looking determinedly back up, smile in place. “Of course not. Silly of me. I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position.”
“Not at all,” Vanessa said mildly.
There was a strained silence.
“I know a little something about wild plants,” Nielsen said eventually. “I could take a look if you want.”
Lisa looked behind her and blushed slightly. “Oh, that’s very sweet of you.” She paused and looked uncomfortable. “With the poison leaves and such...do you, um, know much wolf biology, though?”
“Oh, I’d say I know a bit,” Nielsen said. There was a curious tone to his voice Cooper couldn’t identify.
“We’re almost to the turnoff point, but the river’s rougher up here than usual,” Vanessa interrupted them. “We should focus.”
Cooper would have suspected her of deliberately shutting down the subject, except the river really was getting choppier, angrier. The sun had disappeared and the rocks were harder to pick out in the gray light. None of this was helped by Jimmy trying to take control. He kept paddling harder and faster than both Vanessa and Park, and their raft was turning in directions it shouldn’t go. More than once they were getting stuck on stones and debris that could have been avoided.
“Would you just push?” Jimmy said to Lisa as they were trying to dislodge themselves from one such outcropping.
“I’m...trying...” Lisa grunted, and Cooper leaned over to her side with his own oar to help. “Oh!”
As the raft shot free, her oar got stuck between two rocks and yanked out of her grasp. She reached for it instinctively, flinging herself too far, and her body overbalanced into the water, legs flipping up as she yelped.
Cooper grabbed her. Just barely snagging a handful of thigh flesh. Enough to slow her down but not to pull her back. He knelt up carefully, leaning over the edge.
Everyone in the raft was yelling and scrambling toward them, trying to help. The raft tilted precariously, but Cooper got his other hand on her shoulder and tugged. He felt Lisa’s weight shift back toward safety and her hand shoot back to scratch blindly at his chest.
“I’ve got—”
Something hard and sharp slammed up and under his side ribs. Cooper choked in shock and tumbled into the dark water.
Chapter Five
People talk about how strong a current can be, all the time. The problem is you never quite believe them unless you’ve experienced being dragged down by one. Sure, water is dangerous. Everyone knows that. Strong, experienced swimmers drown every year. But until you’ve felt the absolute, relentless force of angry water, there’s still that secret, childish delusion that if your life depended on it, you yourself could swim really, really hard and be okay.
Cooper had grown up on Chesapeake Bay. He’d already experienced firsthand just how little currents cared about your secret, childish delusions. He knew he was fucked as soon as his head went under the water. And he knew it for sure when he felt the raft crash over him, pushing him down deep as it passed. There was no way they’d be able to paddle back for him. He’d have to try to catch up.
It wasn’t that the river was terribly deep. If he stood, Cooper could probably breach the surface. But with the relentless power of the current, there was as little chance of him getting his footing and standing as there was of growing gills.
He immediately let his body go lax, trying to float to the surface. It worked enough to get occasional gasps of air, but the water kept tumbling over his face, filling his mouth and eyes. If he could just get oriented, maybe he could get close enough to the raft that someone could help him... But all he saw was water. Water splashing and leaping.
Suddenly he felt something grab onto his arm. A hand from above, clenched around his elbow. Tugging him in a direction. A direction he would have sworn was wrong, moments ago. Cooper tried to grab back, but the hand slipped down his cold, wet skin. First to the wrist, then over his palm, and finally lost. A mere memory against his fingertips.
Cooper continued to move downstream. No matter which direction he reached, he could not find the hand again.
Stay calm. It’s okay. Park was there. Lots of people were. He wasn’t alone. Even if he couldn’t see them, they could see him. What he really needed to do was twist his body around so he wasn’t traveling downstream, headfirst and in danger of bashing his skull in before they could get to him.
But even this was a challenge. The water wasn’t moving in a straight line. There were obstacles at every depth level that scraped and battered his body and, most dangerously, little eddies that spun and dragged him down, away from the precious, intermittent air. Frustratingly, he couldn’t get the water out of his eyes long enough to see the raft, the bank or what he was heading toward.
What if the falls are nearby...
Cooper couldn’t help but picture the huge, gorgeous drop of water into the dark lake across from their cabin. The unforgiving cliffs that lurked just behind the mist. He reached out, desperately now, for something, anything to grab on to, eyes burning as the cold water slapped and dragged across them. The more he panicked and his muscles tensed, the harder it was to stay floating. Relax, relax, relax...
That’s when he felt the bite.
Okay, perhaps not a bite-bite. It wasn’t hard enough. But he did feel teeth, big teeth, and a big jaw closing around his leg. This wasn’t a fish or a crab or whatever else normally nips at you in a river. This thing had gotten its mouth all the way around his calf.
Cooper panicked, kicking blindly, and felt the teeth latch down harder. Sharp, shards of pain shooting through his flesh. Part of his brain understood it had to be a wolf. That part of his brain even understood the wolf was helping him, locking onto him the way a slippery hand could not.
But all that was secondary to the fact that his leg was in someone’s mouth and teeth were digging into his skin. He could feel the weight, the power of the jaw. He could feel the way it could rip his foot off as surely as if it were happening right in that very moment.
Co
oper stopped fighting. Not because he wasn’t scared. But because he wasn’t in the river anymore. Well, he was. He could still taste the muddy water as he swallowed it. Still feel the rocks and branches scrape at his skin as he was dragged over them...
But he was also in the alley. Standing in front of Jacob Symer, who had only been an unknown suspect then. The unknown suspect who had just been a human when wolves didn’t exist yet. Not to Cooper. He felt the water, the teeth, and he watched Symer’s claws scoop, almost lovingly, deep into Cooper’s belly. Felt the shock. The agony. Stared down at his own body and saw pink, shiny gut, open and exposed. Like roadkill. A dead animal. And he knew it was him. He was the dead animal.
Suddenly, hands were all over Cooper. Pulling him up. Arms lifting him, laying him down on solid ground. He saw the faces hovering around him. Expressions of fear, shock, relief, concern, fury. Lisa was sobbing, “He saved me. He saved my life.”
To the side of everyone else was a white wolf, its fur puffy and wet. It watched him with dark, wary eyes. Cooper registered this as he had everything else, without feeling. Like he was logging data that meant nothing to him.
Then the middle-aged Filipina woman was leaning over him, blocking his view, running her hands gently over his body, tugging at his clothes. He didn’t care about that, either. What was her name? Mutya, that’s it. She told him she was a doctor and asked if he could hear her and Cooper said yes. When prompted he told her his name, the year, where he was, no problem. He even remembered to say his undercover name, Kyle Davis. He wasn’t foggy or confused. In fact, he felt remarkably clear and very, very calm. Very...still inside.
He could hear Park’s voice and he sounded upset. Something within him felt unhappy at that. But it was like an echo in a deep cave. Cooper sat up, and Park and Mutya helped him to his feet.
“I’m fine. I’m seriously fine,” he said.
Weirdly, he was fine. Absolutely fine. Nothing felt wrong. Not much felt at all. Which didn’t explain why his whole body was shaking, his heart was pounding, and his face muscles were tensed and aching as if he was holding back tears even as he kept smiling as hard as he could to reassure all the people staring at him.
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (Big Bad Wolf) Page 9
