by Lisa Ladew
She rounded the corner, entered her bedroom, then stopped in front of a piece of decorative molding in the wall. She dropped to her knees first, then her belly, took out a pick from her pack and lowered her chin to the floor to pick the lock of her main safe, the one she’d created herself by digging out the hole in the wood and plaster, pushing the safe back there, rebuilding everything, and fashioning a hidden door and lock. A thought struck her and she dropped the pick to the floor with a plink, then reached out her bare fingers, settling them onto the wood that hid the lock.
A soft snick rose from the molding and the hidden door swung open.
Damnit. What in the hell was going on?
***
Rogue tried hard to keep her focus as she strode down the sidewalk, approaching Soren’s four-million-dollar digs in Lincoln Park from the north, the way she came from when she wanted to stop at Bradford’s house. No one was watching her, but someone was watching Soren’s place. That someone was across the street, holed up on the roof deck above the garage. His focus swung to her and she pulled into her persona. Young librarian. Sensible skirt with tights underneath. Clunky shoes. Hair twisted into a bun. Thick glasses hiding her face. Purple messenger bag draped over one shoulder. The someone watched her legs move under her skirt for a few minutes, then flicked his attention back to Soren’s house. Great. Cops. She always felt so conflicted about cops, loving them and hating them at the same time. It was the same way she felt about Chicago. The same way she felt about her profession. Confliction seemed built into her being.
She sensed two more of them in other yards across the street. Soren paid off most of his neighbors with lavish gifts and sometimes outright bribes, but apparently it didn’t always take.
How was she going to convince Soren that she hadn’t been the one to tip them off? Or maybe she had been. No one caught her stealing the file from Chief Lorenzo’s place, and she’d taken several files, not just the one, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t connected the burglary to Soren because of what had been taken.
She didn’t want to be seen entering his place if it was under surveillance. So she would have to tell Soren she was coming in from the back. But not yet. First she would do a bit of her own surveillance.
She turned right and headed up the stairs to the porch of the neighboring custom-built brick home and hit the doorbell, smoothing her skirt and hair, then turning her face to the camera. No one answered. She pulled out her key. Bradford wasn’t home and that was exactly what she’d been hoping for. He was the lead developer of nanotechnology at Intel and worked long hours, but he was happy to share his home with her on the off-chance she’d be there when he got home occasionally. Which she was. Occasionally. He was much older than her, but handsome and sweet.
She opened the door to his palatial home and slipped inside, quickly punching in the code to the alarm, not bothering to admire the stark whiteness of everything. The floors, the walls, the balustrade, the stairs, all of it was white. It was an impressive look, but not one she would replicate when she bought her own mansion. She craved something… more. Coziness, maybe.
“Rosita, it’s just me,” she called, knowing the maid wasn’t in, the house was empty, but still playing along.
She climbed the gleaming stairs, letting the heels of her shoes make tiny echoing clips on the marble. When Bradford watched the video later she wanted to look normal. Like she belonged there.
Inside his monster-sized bedroom, she dropped her bag on his bed, then kicked out of the horrible shoes and went straight to her drawer in his dresser and pulled out the book she had in there, and one other item. She settled on the seat in the reading nook in front of the window, made a show of reading for a few minutes, even though she knew there were no cameras in here, then she shifted her position, pulled open the drapes, and glanced out the window lazily, like her mind was drifting.
Tree limbs were in her way, the buds of springtime popping like crazy. She propped a pillow under her butt, then another, then twisted until she could see right in Soren’s house, his library completely open to her. But her gaze didn’t stay there. It followed the open door into the hallway, then landed on the ornate mirror she’d given him, even telling him exactly where she thought it would look best.
Through its reflection, she could see into Soren’s office. The door was open, like always. He disliked feeling shut in, even to a room as large as his library. She knew he’d spent a little time in jail, maybe that was why.
Soren was there, sitting behind his desk, but he wasn’t alone. A large man with the build of a natural athlete who’d let himself go sat in the leather chair opposite him, speaking with vehemence, thick movements of his hands punctuating his every thought. Rogue frowned and stuck a tiny earbud in her ear, then flipped on the receiver in her hand, holding her breath to see if either man reacted. When they didn’t, she huffed out her breath, glad she was right in thinking her bug was too far away for his constant all-in-one detector, that sat in the middle of his office, to notice.
The two men looked vaguely alike, had the same shoulder-length hair, but Soren’s was silver while the other man still had blonde threading through his. Soren was tall and lean with wiry muscle and a thick silver moustache and dark eyebrows, a combination Rogue had always liked, while the other man was bigger, but with more fat around his midsection. He had a full goatee instead of a mustache.
Soren regularly scanned his office for bugs, but a bug had to be turned on for it to be found. This was the first time she had ever turned hers on. A woman working alone in this business needed to be even more cunning than anyone else, but she’d never felt she needed to go this far before. Until she’d been followed, she never would have. Now to find out if Soren was the one who’d had her followed. She turned the sound all the way up and pressed the bud into her ear.
The man was still talking, his voice a low growl that sounded a lot like Soren’s. “She could be useful.”
Soren shook his head. “She already is useful. But not to you.”
Rogue frowned, wondering if they were talking about her.
The other man shook his head as if he didn’t like that answer, then relented. “Fine. Back to our little party. The one today is just for show. It won’t blow more than a hole in the wall if it does go off, but it won’t. You know the chief has done what he was supposed to do and the SPD already has that intel. You’ll get confirmation as soon as your girl shows up with your file. They’ll do their search, find the medium banger, assume that was it, and drop their guard. In a few days, we’ll plant the big banger, the real one, and blammo, goodbye Wade Lombard, goodbye KSRT. Score one for the big boss.”
Soren didn’t say anything for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was strange. Rogue had to listen for a long time before she realized he was terrified. Normally, he was as unflappable as she was.
He looked around his office, strategically located in the center of the house with no windows or outside walls. “Can he hear us right now?”
The other man, who sounded like Soren with a hard edge, snorted. “I think he could show up right there if he wanted.” He flicked a finger toward the center of the room. “But we’d see him come. He has to rip a kind of hole to get over here. And a smell like fire precedes him. The felen can feel him come, but they can’t feel me.”
Rogue frowned. Just what in the fuck did that mean?
Soren dropped his gaze to the center of his desk. “I wish you never would have come to me with this, Rex. I don’t want to be involved. I might not be on the wolf side of the law, but I don’t want to kill people.”
Rex snorted. “Don’t pull that bullshit on me. I know exactly how many people you’ve killed.”
Soren’s head raised and his eyes blazed. “Only for good reason. I’m not looking to eradicate an entire species.”
Rex shook his head and stood up, kicking Soren’s expensive leather chair over on its side while Soren watched impassively. “Fuck that. You telling me that some part of yo
u doesn’t burn to get back at all the wolfen, those fanged assholes who think they are so much better than you and me?”
Rogue wrapped her arms around herself, not sure why she was trembling.
Soren spoke softly. “I’m telling you exactly that. They are cops, I’m a criminal. They are just doing their job. They don’t have anything against foxen, and I don’t have anything against them.”
Rex leaned over his desk. “Then let me tell you this, brother of mine. All your money and all your power will mean exactly dick when The Father takes over. When that happens, our lives will be measured by his mercy, and that cannot be bought, it can only be earned.”
Rogue suddenly knew exactly who this guy was, Rex Brenwyn, Soren’s brother. She didn’t know why she hadn’t put it together before now, except she’d thought he was in prison for life. She chewed on his words, especially the father. Not my father or our father, but the father. Boe had said those exact words so many times when she’d first come across him, clothed in rags and wandering around the park next to her home in Serenity, blabbering endlessly about things that made no sense. Except the wolves. That part made sense, or at least she wanted it to. Foxen was another word she’d heard before, but wasn’t completely certain what it meant.
Rex stood tall and thumped a fist on his chest. “You have no choice, Soren, but to join me.” He dropped his hands to the desk again and practically hissed at Soren, while Soren’s face took on a green pallor Rogue could see even from the next house. “You will have everything you’ve ever wanted. Ten times the money and power you have now. You’ll be a ruler of the world, not just some shitty crime lord in one district of Chicago. No one will tell you no. And whether you hate them or not, I promise you that all those wolves-”
Rogue sucked in a breath at the word.
“-they hate you. They think they are better than you. And they will be destroyed for it!” He pushed off the desk in one great heave and whirled around, disappearing from Rogue’s sight for a moment, then he came back close where she could see him from the side. “Look at this!” He ripped up his shirt to his chin. Rogue studied him for only a second until she realized she couldn’t see the skin of his chest or his belly-his angle was wrong, so then her gaze shot to Soren’s face.
Soren’s eyes were huge in his head and his mouth was working like he was trying very hard to speak but had no words, only a guttural response that could not be translated.
“Who wants a renqua? This thing gives you power, makes you a monster among males,” Rex shouted, his voice full of passion and insanity. Rogue frowned at his words, at everything he’d said, feeling like she’d fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole to a place where nothing made sense.
Soren’s handsome, normally placid face folded in on itself in disgust and something more, maybe a sick sort of interest? Rex turned directly toward Rogue’s line of sight and strode toward the mirror in the hallway, the one she was viewing the scene through, his eyes fiery.
She threw herself off of the window seat onto the floor in one smooth motion, knowing how unlikely it was that he had been looking at anything but his own reflection as he approached the mirror, his face twisted, his hand yanking his shirt up, baring the awful mark that looked like a clawed handprint three times as large as a human hand that had been branded into his skin.
But she swore his eyes had met hers.
Chapter 11
Bruin reached the bottom step of the stairs in the tunnel and Mac grabbed his shoulder, holding him back. He needed to be the first one in the room. Bruin acquiesced easily, standing sideways so Mac could push past him.
The room was small and bare, and Mac knew immediately that it was empty. A crushing disappointment dropped into his spine and he sagged with the weight of it as Bruin’s light played around the room, revealing absolutely nothing but a chair and a small table.
Bruin sucked in a breath, making Mac take a closer look, trying to concentrate even as the lovely citrus smell pushed in at him from all sides, pulling his attention, demanding it.
Bruin gave a low whistle. “It’s like a cave painting.”
Mac’s eyes searched the walls, but then he realized Bruin’s face was pointed to the floor. Mac stepped back, but when he realized he couldn’t avoid stepping on the designs without leaving the room, he walked right over the top of them, stepping gently, wishing he had more light.
Every inch of the floor he could see was covered with curlicued, intricate circular designs that seemed to radiate out from one starting position, where they’d been black, but the farther they circled out, the lighter they got, until they where white, like instead of color being added to the floor, concrete had been scraped away with a tool. Mac crossed the room to stare right at the central design, the one that everything else flowed from.
It was a startlingly detailed and beautiful rendition of a wolf, done with black lines, the wolf itself howling toward the stairs they’d just come from, it’s graceful neck stretched long, one lower canine visible, the one eye he could see open and shrewd, the hair on its muzzle and around its ears detailed and fine-looking. It spoke to him, called to him. It reminded him of the wolf from the park next to Mik Maks.
He dropped to one knee to examine it, only then noticing the words hidden in the curlicues closest to the wolf. He twisted his neck to read them.
The wolf calls to me. I cannot resist him. I run to him, even though it costs me everything.
Mac touched a finger to the words, frowning, then lowering himself further on the dirty floor, dropping his face right to the cement and smelling. She’d been here. Her skin had been pressed against the floor. Assuming Bruin was right and the scent was of his mate, then his mate was the one who had drawn this wolf and written these words.
Mac took a deep breath and pushed to his feet, strange emotions pulsing around in his head that he couldn’t define, it had been so long since he’d even cared what they meant. His chest ached and his muscles felt strangely weak, while his eyes kept returning to the words over and over.
Bruin held something up. “This is how she did it.”
Mac wrestled with the strange feeling in his chest, trying to push it away, but it wouldn’t go. He pulled at his loose shirt collar, trying to get relief from a shirt that suddenly felt too small. No relief came, so he gave up, instead crossing the room to Bruin and snatching whatever it was out of his hands.
It was actually two items. The first, a Sharpie marker, the cap discarded, the marker part completely gone, the plastic scraped away halfway down the side. The other one was a knife-handle, the blade scraped away to nothing.
Mac tried to imagine creating this work of art with a sharpie and a knife, scraping for what must have been hours, and he couldn’t do it. His chest tightened further, making him swallow and try to suck some air into his lungs.
Bruin walked around the room, shining his light in broad arcs. “I dunno, Mac. If your mate did this, I gotta say, I’m kind of worried about her.”
Worry! That’s what he was feeling.
Shit.
Chapter 12
Rogue lay stretched out on the floor, her heart hammering in her chest, as she waited to hear something-anything through her earpiece. Had she been discovered?
When Rex finally spoke, his tone had not changed, nor had his subject, so, unless he was just that good, no, she hadn’t been discovered. She rested her face on Bradford’s thick cream carpet and allowed her breathing to return to normal, as the image of that clawed handprint played through her mind, leaving her only a bit of consciousness to listen to the conversation still playing out in Soren’s office.
Rex seemed to be done with Soren. For now. He growled at his brother, and Rogue could imagine him leaning over the desk, elbows locked, gazes meeting. “You need to make a decision, and I pray you make the right one. The Father will not take kindly to you wanting to stay out of it. You might be targeted before the wolven, if that is the course you decide on. Brother.”
There was no goodbye. No
shuffle of feet through the house, no opening or closing of doors. Only a gasp from Soren. Then silence.
Rogue pushed over onto her back, thinking of the time she’d seen that exact same clawed handprint. Boe had one on his chest.
She shook her head at the ceiling, feeling like she’d fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone. All this father mumbo jumbo, talking jewelry, and her popping open locks without touching them. She touched a hand to her head, waiting for it all to make sense. When it didn’t, she pushed to her feet and began setting Bradford’s bedroom back to how it had been when she’d arrived. The future was a mystery, as always, but some piece of intuition told her she’d never be back in this home. Whether that might be or not, her only choice was to keep moving.
Rogue left the way she had come, ducked into the bathroom of the closest coffee shop, did an easy prest-o change-o that had her looking more like herself than the shy librarian Bradford knew her as, except for the oversized sunglasses and the pink ball cap, then headed around the block in the other direction. She jogged into an alley, then vaulted over a neighbor’s fence, pausing behind a tree long enough to text Soren to pick up his dry cleaning after five. He knew that meant she was coming in the back way.
He didn’t respond, just pressed his finger to the screen long enough for her to see it.
She broke cover and walked to his back gate, punching in the code that would gain her entry, glad when it didn’t just pop open, feeling no eyes on her. Which was silly. Incomplete surveillance. But once she was in his yard, she felt someone watching her from a rooftop, two houses down. Crap. But again, she had the strangest premonition that she would never be in this house again. That, indeed, her life in Chicago might be over. She accepted that. She’d always known it would come sooner or later. That’s why she worked so hard. Retirement would come early for her.
As long as he didn’t get raided while she was inside the house, she would be ok. She could lose any ancillary tails the cops placed on her easily. She’d never been arrested. No reason for her fingerprints to be in the system. The only wild card was in the bag she had on her hip. So she would get rid of it. Now.
