“Do you think someone here killed David out of revenge for killing Joe?”
“Why would you even think that?”
“You said your family was going to deal with finding the shooter. You didn’t want to get involved. What would happen if they found something that confirmed Stuart was right—the Freemans, intentionally or not, killed Joe? You’ve alluded to the fact that your family enacts its own justice outside of the law before. And...it’s just like the story, isn’t it? The first werewolf and the hunter hanging from the tree.”
“Cooper.” Park shook his head. “That’s a fairy tale.”
“You said it varies between packs.”
“Yeah, maybe certain details, but the hanging hunter part is very common. Especially around here. I’m sure loads of kids grew up hearing that story.”
“And the rest of it? What the hell did you mean when you said they’d deal with it if not...”
“If not murder?” Park sounded incredulous now. Then, even worse, he laughed at Cooper, like the things he was saying were too absurd to believe. Like he was being a fool.
“Fine,” Cooper snapped. “If you’re not protecting someone, then what’s with the lying? Why are you telling me to interfere with a murder investigation?”
Park ran his hands through his hair and tugged, muttering, “Christ, I knew it was a bad idea bringing you here.”
Cooper inhaled sharply. It hurt. Of course it hurt. More so because of the whispers of doubt that were already lurking deep inside him all this time. The fear of this very thing shadowing every action, every interaction since he’d gotten here. This was a mistake. You’re a mistake.
Park didn’t seem to notice. He was saying, “I’m not asking you to interfere with anything.”
“Yes, you are,” Cooper said, wishing desperately his voice weren’t trembling. “Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Put a good face on a bad thing and cover shit up. Fix things for the pack. Paying people off and creating a nice little story for the authorities to believe while you do whatever the fuck you want behind the scenes. Shepherding everyone around. Well, too bad. I don’t want to be one of your sheep.”
Park paled right before his eyes, expression so shocked Cooper might as well have slapped him. His breath came in short, fast gasps. “Wh-what did you say?”
“You heard me,” Cooper said, even as he wished Park hadn’t. The whole reason he’d waited to talk about this was so that they could do so calmly, reasonably, with plenty of time and no risk of interruptions. Not now, when he was hurt, angry, and there was a dead man in a tree. “I know about the Shepherd. A-about you.”
“Where did you hear that?” Park whispered, lips barely moving.
“Agent Bennet told me.” Park’s face remained eerily stony, with no sign of recognition. “The woman I saw in the Rosettis’ market. She’s an agent for the Trust, and she was here last night. I...spoke with her.”
That got a reaction, fleeting and indecipherable though it was. “Did you call her here?”
“No,” Cooper said sharply. “You said not to call the BSI, so I didn’t. She’d already been watching your family long before I got here.”
Park studied him, then nodded. “And what exactly did Agent Bennet say?”
Cooper told him. Everything he could remember, as close as he could get it. He didn’t have to ask if Bennet had been telling the truth. He could tell by Park’s face she had.
By the time he’d finished, Park was breathing heavily, his eyes had slid shut. He didn’t open them when he spoke. “She seems chatty, your Agent Bennet.”
“She’s not my anything,” Cooper snapped. “Well?”
“What do you want me to say? It seems you’ve already heard it all.”
“Why didn’t I hear it from you?”
“Because it was years ago. I—I told you I got caught up trying to please my grandfather for a long time.”
“Yeah, see, I kind of thought you meant the usual stuff, like dressing neat, getting a useful degree and dating a nice werewolf boy. Not that you were fucking Genghis Khan, feared by all and uniting the packs by any means necessary! The devil’s in the details with this one. Literally.”
Park flinched. “You don’t understand. That time of my life was complicated. I didn’t have a lot of choice.”
Cooper scoffed. Threat removed. “Sounds like you were well in control of your own decisions.” He paused. “I took a look at the files.”
“Jesus.” Park aggressively ran his hand back and forth across his scalp. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Yeah, well, it happened. For the record, the whole ‘caught snooping through your secret lair’ roleplay? Not so sexy now that I know you weren’t joking.”
“You don’t think I actually imprisoned people in there,” Park hissed.
“I don’t know anything! Because you never bothered to tell me anything.”
“That’s not who I am anymore. I don’t like talking about it because I don’t like thinking about it.”
Cooper laughed, disbelieving. “Have you met me? I don’t like to talk about anything, Oliver, but I do it for you. You think it’s fun for me to tell you about my dead mother and my childhood bullies and my psychopath partner? It’s not. Do you think it makes me feel good when you see me vomiting because I ate too much too fast for my fucked-up gut or when you come back to the apartment and I haven’t dressed or showered or moved because my anxiety is spinning out? It doesn’t. It’s painful, it’s humiliating, it’s fucking hell. But I work on it anyway because I thought that’s what people do when they’re in love and want a—a serious life together.” His voice was getting louder, echoing around the high ceilings. They’d be overheard for sure. He didn’t care anymore. “I thought we were more than just a good time, sex and laughs.”
“We are,” Park insisted. “I do want that.”
“Really? Because it doesn’t look like that from here. It has not been easy for me, but I gave you all my soft spots and you gave me the same perfect, phony fucking mask you give everyone else.”
“I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Then stop hurting me!” Cooper yelled.
Park stumbled back, physically shaken by the pain in Cooper’s voice. “I didn’t mean to—” He bit his lip hard, fists clenched and trembling. “I just wanted to be as good as you thought I was.”
“I didn’t need good. I needed a partner who respected me enough to let me decide what and who I want for myself. It’s like you took away my choice.”
“Cooper, please—”
The door to the living room flew open and Stuart stormed in, Lorelei floating behind, hovering by the doorway. “What the hell is going on in here? Why aren’t you helping move the South Annex files?” He eyed Cooper. God knew what he saw. It couldn’t be pretty. “This place is going to be crawling with cops in no time and you’re having a lovers’ spat?”
“Did someone call them already?” Cooper asked. His lips felt clumsy and numb and his voice was still too loud. He couldn’t seem to regulate anything. His volume, his breathing, his words, his heart.
Call them already. A minute ago he was shocked the police weren’t here yet. Now he felt panicked knowing they were on their way. He needed more time. Park hadn’t bothered to turn around and was still staring at him.
“Helena called five minutes ago.” Lorelei answered Cooper’s question, eyes moving lazily between them as if measuring the space or, who knows, comparing their auras. “Eli’s snowmobile has been removed and the others are almost done with the west trails. Tim’s still out there looking for Raymond.”
Cooper felt a trickle of worry. Raymond... What if they didn’t find him in time? What was to stop the police from shooting a potentially dangerous wolf?
“We’re fortunate it snowed last night,” Lorelei was saying. “Less tracks to explain when
they search the property.”
Stuart sucked his teeth critically. “A search, my god. They’ll probably get all of Port Drove involved. Two hundred and thirty-five years we’ve managed to keep humans off our property, and a couple nights with him here and the place is infested. This is exactly what I was telling you, Ollie. You think I haven’t been in your situation? It doesn’t work.” He reached up as if to touch his own scar and then jerked his hand back to tug on his mustache instead. “It can’t.”
“Get out,” Park said tightly. He still didn’t turn.
Stuart bristled, drawing himself to his full height. “You better watch what you say to me. I—”
“Get out!” Park spun and snarled at him, an inhuman sound that ripped straight out of his chest like a physical weapon thrown across the room. It was the most vicious noise Cooper had ever heard Park make, and he couldn’t help stumbling backward, grunting out of surprise and animal fear.
In contrast, Stuart just bent his knees, feet rooted in place, and bowed his head down and to the side. Not far enough that Cooper couldn’t see the flash of his teeth and the look of impotent rage in his downcast eyes. In the doorway, even Lorelei had stopped swaying, her roving eyes still and blank, as if listening to someone whisper in her ear.
There was a moment of utter silence where Cooper felt like he was the only one not hearing the message.
He wouldn’t actually hurt Stuart... Cooper touched Park’s shoulder, just gently, just enough to ground him, and Park turned his back on his uncle, looking at Cooper with wide, imploring eyes. Behind him Stuart immediately slunk out of the room and Lorelei watched him go.
“The police will be here in ten,” Lorelei said after a long moment, looking at Cooper with fierce curiosity. It looked like she wanted to say more, but she pursed her lips and slipped out after her brother.
“Cooper—” Park began.
“This isn’t the time. You heard Lorelei. I want to know what we’re saying to the cops. We can talk about the other thing...later.”
Park nodded hesitantly. In contrast to the snarl, his voice was quiet, gentle, almost pleading when he spoke. “Look, maybe you were right. Maybe it was a mistake not to call the police yesterday. Maybe if we had, Freeman wouldn’t be dead. I’ll take responsibility for that. But what’s done is done. If we come clean about it now, there’s going to be questions. Questions I cannot answer. You don’t know what that’s like.”
“You’re right,” Cooper said numbly. “I don’t.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s the problem. Honestly, I haven’t understood seventy percent of the things that have happened since I got here. I’m so far out of my depth, I don’t know what’s right anymore.”
“I know. And I didn’t want that for you,” Park said earnestly. “I tried to keep you separate from all this, this world—”
“But that didn’t work. For either of us.” He sighed. “Helena said this would happen.”
Park blinked, and he bit at the scar on his lip. “What did she say? When?”
“Yesterday, on our walk. She said I couldn’t possibly understand what it takes to protect an entire species. She was right about that. Maybe she was right about everything else. Maybe I am making it worse. Maybe I make you worse. We can’t go on like this.”
Park jerked his head. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know,” Cooper said.
He stared down at the carpet. It was intricately patterned and bright orangey-red and lapis blue. A design and color scheme that should have been garish and hideous but just looked expensive. He hadn’t taken his boots off when they’d stomped into the house, and a dark spot of melting snow spotted with mud was spreading beneath him. He felt like a dog about to be sent back to the pound for piddling on a carpet worth more than his life. He didn’t belong here.
He needs to be with his own kind. Someone who understands what he’s been through, what he goes through every single day and will for the rest of his life. Someone who sees him unflinchingly for what he is.
“I’ll tell them,” Park said suddenly. His voice was desperate. “Everything. Everything I can,” he amended, strained, as if the words themselves were coated in acid and he couldn’t bear to have them coming out of his mouth.
“No.” Cooper didn’t look up. He wasn’t even sure that’s what he wanted anymore. He wasn’t sure of anything. Who the hell was he to show up in someone else’s world and tell them how to behave? Even just inviting the cops onto the property was putting family members like Raymond at risk of death. That wasn’t something Cooper had ever needed to consider before.
And what Park said was true: one question would lead to another, and he couldn’t think of an answer that satisfied everyone without exposing werewolves. For better or worse, the Parks had chosen this path the moment they’d tampered with Joe’s body and Cooper had been dragged along for the ride. Whatever else was going on between him and Park, Cooper wouldn’t be the one to put his family in danger of exposure. The one to endanger their entire world.
“Forget it. Do what you think is best and tell me what to say.”
“Do you still trust me enough to know what’s best?” Park said quietly.
“Unfortunately, I can’t seem to stop myself. I never could.”
Chapter Eleven
Cooper sat in the police station lobby, waiting for Park to finish giving his statement. There were still police on-site and searching the woods for the now officially missing Dr. Freeman and Charles Girard. David Freeman’s body had been removed and preliminary reports put time of death in the wee hours, when night first becomes morning. He’d been killed a little distance away from the tents and then purposefully taken to where his body was staged. Why? And what had David been doing wandering around the forest at four in the morning? Had he heard a noise and gone to investigate? Had he been meeting someone? Had he gone alone?
The local authorities were polite enough but not interested in sharing too much information. In fact, Cooper was surprised he’d gotten as much as he had. A benefit of being associated with the Parks, he assumed. Though now that their property was a crime scene, there was a slight but distinct chill between the police and the family.
Cooper checked the clock on the wall and rubbed his scars anxiously. Park had been speaking to the inspector a lot longer than Cooper had.
It’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s not like Park is guilty.
But it was hard to shake the paranoia. He wasn’t used to this degree of lying and covering your tracks. The question was, could he get used to it?
You don’t need to... Things can go back to normal when you get home. You can leave this crazy, stressful world behind. That was tempting. To just shut his eyes and get through this until he could pick up where they’d left off in DC, tentatively happy and blissfully, blissfully ignorant. But that wasn’t fair. Because that life was just another cover-up, with its own secrets, distractions and stories meant to make the human not look too closely. Only this time Cooper had been the human on the outside.
It was hard to know where to go from here. He loved Park. So much. But the hurt he felt from being lied to had given him, if not clarity, at least a reason to step back and really look at what they were doing. Helena had been right. Park clearly wasn’t okay.
If Cooper were an armchair psychologist, he’d guess the early abandonment Park had experienced by his parents paired with Joe’s extremely conditional love had shaped him into someone who’d do anything, be anyone, for love. That sounded romantic. It wasn’t.
And though it was never Cooper’s intention to fuel that, he hadn’t exactly helped, either. He’d been all too willing to accept Park as perfect. It had felt nice to believe someone so close to faultless had looked at Cooper’s fault-ridden life and thought, Oh yeah, I want in on that. It was validating and had given him the breath and the boost he’d needed to process the last coupl
e of years and heal. But it hadn’t left Park a lot of space to unpack his own shit.
There’s not enough room in this relationship for the both of us.
He’d heard that sort of thing from separated couples before. We love each other but aren’t the right fit. Those were usually the ones who stayed amiable for years after, who kept their mutual friends and maybe even got invited to each other’s weddings. The sort of people who believed love wasn’t enough; you had to be right and beneficial for the other person, too.
Did Cooper believe in that? Maybe, maybe not—it was hard to tell. All he knew for certain right then was that the idea of standing around Oliver’s wedding to some other man making small talk with old work colleagues saying we loved each other, sure, but it just didn’t work out made him want to set the whole world on fire.
“Sir?” A young woman in uniform behind the station desk called him over. She was holding a dated, dark brown landline. “You said you were Agent Dayton with the BSI?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“You have a call waiting.” She covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “It’s your boss.”
He frowned. Santiago? Did she even know where he was? He took the phone with thanks he didn’t really feel. “Hello?” Cooper said cautiously.
“I have that information you requested,” a woman said in his ear. Agent Bennet.
“I may have a minor update as well,” Cooper said. The woman in uniform was watching him and he tried to angle his body away from her, but the curly cord chained him to the desk.
“Good,” Bennet said. “When we meet, we can trade.”
“Now’s not really a good time. I’m—”
“In the police station, waiting for the Shepherd to finish giving his statement and Inspector Pictou is listening in. Smile at Inspector Pictou, Agent Dayton.”
Cooper grimaced weakly and the woman in uniform, who clearly believed he was getting reamed out by his boss, gave him a commiserating smile back.
“Where are you?” he said.
Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Page 19
