He gritted his teeth suddenly.
He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but the music somehow seemed to get louder as he took another sip of his beer.
He didn’t understand how she could she listen to her music turned up that fucking loud. She had damn shifter hearing, for crying out loud! He could hear it just fine from inside the living room, and his hearing had been damaged from more gunfire, car bombs, and ordinance delivery than any man should have to be exposed to.
Peter closed his eyes and almost got up to go say something to her, to bark through the door about shutting her damn music off. Then he remembered how much he probably seemed like his father right now. Boyce Frost. How many times had his father burst in like that, yelling at him to turn his damn music down? Hell, looking back, it seemed like half their arguments started around the subject. Peter ran a hand down his face, his callused hands scratching over his five o’clock shadow.
“Jesus,” he murmured as he managed to calmly push back from the table. “Maybe I need to buy her some headphones or something. That way she can wreck her ears in peace and quiet.” He got up and headed to her room and knocked on her door. He might have begun to sound and act like his father sometimes, but he still hadn’t broken the sacred rule of her boundaries. Her room was her room, even if it was his house. He only entered when he was invited. Like Dracula.
The music’s volume lowered almost immediately. “Shit!” she said with an almost audible wince. “Sorry, Peter! I’ll keep it down.”
“Uh-huh,” Peter grudgingly said, trying to sound like he had at least a little confidence in her promise. “Dinner will be ready soon.”
“What’re we having?” she asked through the door.
“How about you open the door so I don’t have to talk to a wooden door?”
He heard her light footfalls as she crossed the room and pulled open the door, those dark eyes of her looking up at him. “Please don’t say leftover stew again.”
“You’re in luck then,” he said with a small smile. “Your favorite. Leftover stew.”
She groaned and rolled her eyes. “Ugh, why do we always eat the same thing?”
“Because I barely know how to cook, and I work all day, that’s why. If you don’t like what we eat, you’re welcome to make something yourself.”
She took a step back into her room and shook her head. “But I have schoolwork!”
He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “Well, how about this then? Why don’t we work on some recipes over the weekend, things that we can freeze and stick in the oven. Like casseroles and things like that?”
She made another face. “Casseroles? That’s almost worse!” She gave an exasperated sigh. “Why can’t we get McDonald’s, or even Dixie’s, every now and then? Just something else!”
“Because you need to have a well-balanced meal at night, that’s why. And stew gives you three vegetables and a meat. Do you not like my stew? Is that it?”
“No!” She paused as she sat down on her bed, Peter still exactly where he was when she’d first opened the door. “Okay, a little bit. I mean, it’s okay. But you need something else in there besides salt and pepper.”
“So you don’t like it? That’s what you’re saying.”
“I’m just saying it could, you know, use improvement. How about this? There are all these apps now, and videos online and stuff. Fast recipes we could try together? Maybe I could use it to learn how to cook on my own or something.”
He straightened up a little and raised an eyebrow. Was she actually asking him to do something with her that didn’t involved running around in wolf form? “Sure, I guess. Why don’t you pick out some of the recipes you want to try and run them past me, and we can go into town on Saturday and pick up all the ingredients.”
“Really?” she asked, brightening up. “Are you sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be? It’ll give me a chance to brush up on my cooking skills, too. Someday you’re going to be out of the house, and I’ll need to learn to cook something besides stew, won’t I?”
She returned his grin. “Maybe you’ll find a nice girl, too, like the guys in the pack?” She didn’t notice the slight drop in Peter’s smile. “And you’ll have to cook for her?”
He tried to continue smiling at the mention of a nice girl, but his head and heart were already drifting back into the past, to the mate he’d lost all those years ago. He’d never replace her, would never be able to find another woman who measured up or made his soul sing the way she had.
“Yeah,” he said quietly, “maybe. Well, anyway, stew’s ready when you are. Just grab a bowl.”
She must have seen the change on his face finally, because her smile faded. “You okay, Peter?”
He shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked as he went to close her door with a quiet little thud. He headed back into the kitchen, trying to cram his dark thoughts back into the attic of his mind. That was where those thoughts and emotions needed to stay, bundled up and packed away in that dusty, cobweb-riddled space. He’d shoved all those memories up there for a reason, if only to be able to function from day to day.
But now Vanessa’s blue eyes and dark red hair seemed to be dancing in front of his mind’s eye. Her barrel curls bouncing around her face, her little grin teasing him in death, just like she’d teased him in life as they were growing up together. His best friend, his soulmate, his pack mate. He put a hand on the hallway wall to steady himself. Vanessa Springer. His first and only love.
Peter paused and shook his head, sighed. It had been so long since he’d really thought of her with more than just a passing interest. But she’d been dead for years already, burned beyond recognition with Peter’s family and the rest of their pack. Now he could almost smell her memory. The musk of her after a long run, the lilac and lavender of the perfume she seemed to put on everything.
He swallowed hard, trying to collect himself. “It’s just a memory,” he reminded himself aloud. “Just a memory, Peter. Nothing you can do about it but find the bastard’s who did her in.”
He managed to pick up the pieces of his momentarily shattered psyche and collect them into one roughly Peter Frost-shaped bundle, before dragging his feet into the kitchen and pulling a bowl down from the cabinet and a loaf of bread from the pantry. He grabbed a spoon from the drawer and ladled out a bowl of stew, tossed a couple pieces of bread on top, and went back to the kitchen table.
Mary came out a moment later and began to get her own meal together as Peter shuffled and jogged his papers into some semblance of a stack, and pushed them off to the side. She sat down at the kitchen table, right across from him, her lips tightly pressed together.
Peter blew lightly on a spoonful of stew gravy. He wanted to ask her what was wrong, but one of the first things he’d finally learned when Mary had come to live with him was that Mary would let him know when she was ready to talk. Before that moment, trying to pull information from her would be harder than interrogating an enemy detainee. He swirled his spoon around in the broth, looking for a nice chunk of beef.
“Hey Peter,” Mary said after a while of silently eating, just the sound of her spoon scraping the ceramic bowl filling the room, “I’ve been wondering.”
“About what?” Peter asked after swallowing down a mouthful of stew. “College?”
She gave him a look like he was crazy, realized he was being at least half-serious, and shook her head. “College? Why would I want to do that?”
“Can’t be layabout teenager forever. Unless you want to join the service like I did.”
She made another face. “Not happening.”
“What’s up, then?”
“I’ve been thinking about that night,” she replied, trailing off, a frown creasing her lips. “About the fire at my house, with my family.”
This was new. In the whole time he’d known her, from the moment he’d picked her up from his old war buddy’s house where he’d been fostering her, to when she’d mo
ved in, to when she’d joined the pack as a junior member, Mary had never mentioned anything about that night. All he knew was that she’d come home to find the house burning, that she’d called 911.
“What about it?”
She furrowed her brow, lines forming on her forehead. The face gave her the appearance of a woman three times her age. “If I tell you, you have to believe me. Okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I believe you? If you saw something, you saw something.”
“I just don’t want you to think I’m crazy or something, alright?”
He smiled a little, despite the gravity of the situation. “You do realize we’re shifters, right? How much crazier than that can things get?”
She took a deep breath. “Believe me. They can get crazier.”
Chapter Thirty – Jake
The day had been long over, and the moon was full as it could get as it looked down on my little pickup pulling into the parking lot of the Sage and Sun Motel in Casper, Wyoming. Elise groggily lifted her head from my shoulder as my truck bounced up the drive from the highway, and I cruised to a stop near the manager’s office.
“Shit,” Elise mumbled, seeming a little embarrassed as she straightened up, “sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep like that.”
“No worries,” I said, shifting the stick into neutral and turning off the engine. No worries, indeed. The last few hours where her un-beanied head had been laid against me had been the best hours of the trip. I was almost sorry this leg of our little road trip was coming to an end. “It was a long day, and you drove for a good four or five hours of it.”
She reached out and wiped my shoulder a bit with a wadded up napkin she must have taken from the diner back in Yellow Rose. “Think I drooled on your shoulder, though.”
I twisted my head to the side and tried to catch it. “Changed my mind,” I said, trying to brush it off.
She laughed a little before realizing how close she was still seated next to me, her side practically against mine as her legs lay across the seat, down into the passenger-side foot well. She readjusted herself and said, “Whatever, Jake.”
Silently lamenting that she’d moved back to her side of the bench, I leaned forward and peered into the darkness, up at the motel office sign ahead of us. “This is the place, I guess.”
Elise leaned forward. “Looks like it. Think we’ll find a lead here?”
“Hope so. We’re batting about a thousand so far, and I’d hate to break that streak.”
“Especially after such a long drive,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck beneath her long mane of curls. “Think we should get a place for the night?”
I nodded. “Probably a good idea. Place looks pretty skeezy, though.”
“Think we can stay without getting hepatitis?”
“We’ll sweep for syringes first. Back in a minute.” I left the keys in the ignition for her and climbed out of the pickup. Hands on my lower back, I gave myself a good stretch before stomping up to the front office and going inside.
The room was unremarkable. Ugly plants, uglier paint. A boring painting of a cattle-drive on one wall. The room was separated by a wooden counter, with a kind of dopey-looking guy in his late-twenties sitting at a small desk on the other side, his legs kicked up and his smartphone propped on his knees.
He just looked up at me, his face nearly blank.
“Evening,” I said. “Need two rooms for the night.”
He groaned, swung his legs off the desk, and dropped his phone on the desk. “Sure. Two rooms, just for tonight?” He grabbed some papers and got up from his seat before coming to meet me at the counter.
“Preferences? Smoking, non-smoking?”
“Non-smoking if you have it.”
We went through the process of picking out the room and prices. Screw syringes giving us hep. At these prices, I might’ve contracted it already by just stepping foot in here.
“Hey,” I said as he was bent down over a carbon-copy form, filling it out, “I got a question. I’m looking for a couple of girls that stayed here maybe a month ago?”
“Get a lot of people passing through.”
“One had curly black hair, the other with long blonde dreadlocks, I think. Girl with black hair would’ve been going by Lilith or Eve. The other Jasmine.”
“Yeah,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows in concentration as he slid the form over to me to sign. “I remember ‘em. Real pretty. Got a lot of noise complaints first night the black-haired one showed up.” He looked up at me, his lips pressed together. “You a cop or something?”
I shook my head, reaching for my clip with my business cards. “Private investigator out of Colorado. Trying to help the family find the girl with the noise complaints.”
He picked up my card and examined it as he idly scratched his head. “The blonde one, she stayed here for a little bit. Both checked out when the black-haired one showed up.”
“Any chance I could get into the room they stayed in? Maybe look around?”
He looked up at me, eyebrow raised.
I reached back into my pocket and pulled my wallet, pulling out a fifty. “What about this?” I laid the bill down in front of him and pushed it his way. “If it’s vacant, just give me that room for the night. How’s that sound?”
He slid the bill off the counter and deftly tucked it into a pocket. He fished around for a moment behind the counter and pulled out two sets of keys. “Here you go, man. Room 23, that’s the one the blonde girl stayed in. Was here for a few weeks before the other got here.”
“Thanks,” I said, stuffing both keys into my breast pocket. “If I have any other questions, I’ll let you know.”
The clerk made a face like he was torn between making a little bit more money on the side or playing on his phone.
“Easy pay, man,” I reminded him.
Finally he shrugged and nodded. “Sure, dude, why not.”
I nodded before I turned and headed back out to find Elise. She climbed out of the pickup, both of our bags in hand, as I reappeared. “Anything?”
“Got the room her friend stayed in,” I said, patting my breast pocket, the keys jingling together. “Figure we’ll look that over, then split up for the night.”
She hesitated just a moment before nodding and handing me my bag.
Together we headed over to room 23, both quiet, the length of the day settling in on us like a blizzard of snow.
There’s a kind of ache that settles into the body after a long drive. The kind that’s really only relieved by a long soak in a hot bath, followed by a good night’s rest. One glance around the Sage and Sun, with its peeling paint, distinct smell, and dingy windows, told me I’d be better off just taking a long soak in a sewage run-off.
We came to a stop in front of the room and gave each other a look. It wasn’t lost on me how strange it was that I was renting a cheap motel room with Elise, even if I wasn’t going to be sharing it with her. It certainly wasn’t what I’d envisioned when I first met her.
“Ready?” she asked anxiously.
“Ready.” I slid the key into the lock and twisted it to the side. I opened the door as the bolt slid back, stepped inside, and flicked on the light.
Yep. It was a shitty motel room, alright. Bedspread the color of sand and Wyoming skies, carpet as old as the seventies. I took a discreet sniff as I walked into the room, picking up the fragrance of mold and mildew, like a wet sheep on a cool, misty morning.
Elise shut the door behind us as she stepped into the room, tossing her bag full of clothes on the little table near the door. I slung mine off my shoulder and put it on the floor.
“Think we’ll find anything?” she asked.
“If this were any other motel, I’d be iffy. But the clerk said the girl Eve met stayed here for almost a month beforehand, so there’s bound to be something she left behind that the maid missed.” I looked around, at the dust on the table and a little bit of paper in the corner. “And, the way their cleaning service is here
, I have a feeling that’s likely.”
“Where do we start, then?”
“Pick a spot,” I said as I went over to the TV stand and the little fridge tucked in next to it. “Any spot.”
We searched for the next ten or fifteen minutes. I staked out the bathroom and began my search there. Nothing of interest, really. There was a smell of something like mouthwash, maybe, and toothpaste build-up on the sink. The bathtub actually did look surprisingly clean and the shower curtain looked new. So the room had that going for it, at least.
But nothing else. Dammit. I was sure we’d be able to find something, a clue or flower or number scrawled on a piece of paper. Something, anything, we could use to try and find Eve. Maybe our luck was running out.
I was just about to lift the lid on the toilet’s tank, moving onto a deeper search, when Elise called out from the room. “Jake! Come check this out. I think I found something.”
Chapter Thirty-one – Elise
Jake ducked his head out of the bathroom as I held up the little goldenrod-colored pamphlet I’d found folded and tucked into the nightstand Bible.
“What’d you find?” he asked, coming over for a closer look.
“A pamphlet.” I gestured to the open Bible on my lap, feeling like a character on that show Little House on the Prairie.
I’d been searching all the nooks and crannies of the room, looking under the bed and furniture, desperately searching for any kind of clue. Mostly it had just been dust, dead bugs, and old cigarette holes left in the carpet. Finally, my options exhausted, I sat down on the bed and realized I hadn’t even bothered to look in all the obvious spots yet.
He came over and took the pamphlet from me as I sat there. He looked at the strange single-colored drawing of a two-peaked mountain with a sketch of a wolf in front of it. Below the picture of the wolf howling at the moon was a Bible verse, Jeremiah 5:6.
“Wonder why they gotta make fun of how short Jeremiah is.”
“Very funny,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Looks like some kind of crazy person’s pamphlet.”
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