Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf)

by Adhara, Charlie

  “If they’re dead, why take them and leave Freeman to be found?” His phone buzzed again and Cooper took it out to check the messages quickly. They were from Park.

  Cola says no record of Agent Bennet in employ.

  Get out now.

  “Problem, Agent Dayton?”

  Cooper looked up and slipped his phone back in his pocket. “Nope. No problem,” he said. Bennet—or whoever she was—stared at him from behind her glasses. Her demeanor had shifted, just slightly to watchful and dangerous. Or maybe he was just aware of the danger now.

  “That was my partner. He’s finished and waiting for me at the station.” Cooper stood, collecting the folder with him. “So I should go.”

  The woman looked up at him, expression blank. “We haven’t discussed next steps,” she said.

  “Thanks for the info. Park and I will, ah, check it out. And I’ll be in touch with you this time, how about that?” Cooper took a step back, and the woman’s hand shot out and closed around his forearm. He dropped the folder and papers spilled across the floor, white glinting in the low light, like fish on a deck.

  “Sit down, Cooper. I don’t want to hurt you.” He felt the prick of claws through his sleeve.

  “Agent Bennet?” he asked, trying to sound confused. “What are you doing?”

  She stood and pulled him closer to her, stepping on poor Girard’s emails. He barely noticed her slip into his pocket and pull out his cell phone. Her left hand dragged down his arm, partial-claws scraping not enough to bleed but enough that he didn’t dare move until she was gripping his thumb.

  “You don’t mind if I borrow your phone, do you?” she murmured gently, and pressed the home button against his fingerprint, unlocking the screen.

  “Wait—”

  “Cooper!” Park’s voice. Somewhere out in the museum.

  The woman stared past him, to the door, and for just a moment her face twisted to something like excitement before fear took over. She let go of Cooper, shoving his phone into his hand, and stumbled backward into a dark corner of the room just as Park burst through the curtain, nearly ripping it from the rod.

  “Cooper!”

  “Here. I’m fine,” Cooper said, stumbling a bit when Park grabbed his shoulder and tugged him against his side protectively. “I’m fine,” he repeated, putting a reassuring hand on Park’s arm and looking into his eyes, which were inhumanly reflective in the dim light.

  But Park wasn’t even looking at him, just staring into the corner, frozen.

  “Agent Bennet here was just telling me some interesting things about the Freemans,” Cooper said faux casually, not sure how Park wanted to play this.

  Park was squeezing his shoulder now past the point of comfort, and Cooper tried to twitch him off casually without making a big deal of it, but the grip didn’t relent. It was so unlike him to forget his own strength and physically hurt Cooper.

  The immediate relief he’d felt on hearing Park’s voice was fading fast. Something was wrong. More wrong.

  Park still hadn’t responded. He stared at the woman and she stared back. The grip on his shoulder was significantly painful now, and Cooper suspected he’d have finger bruises there within the hour. He put his own hand over Park’s to tug him away. Even still, Park resisted for a second, as if he didn’t feel the touch, but finally dropped his hand. Cooper could hear his breathing, unusually fast and loud.

  The room had gotten darker as on the screen the camera crawled across the ocean floor while underwater plant life swayed and bobbed. Cooper opened his mouth, but Bennet beat him to it.

  “Oliver,” she said. “It’s...good to see you.”

  Park made a small, disbelieving sound.

  “You know each other?” Cooper said finally. Perhaps she was a Trust agent after all.

  “Yes,” the woman said slowly. “Of course. I told you I work with—”

  “Don’t lie to him.” Park spoke finally, his voice barely more than a croak. “Not him.”

  Bennet didn’t offer any more information, didn’t even look in Cooper’s direction. He couldn’t get a handle on her expression behind the dark lenses. Determined, certainly. That was in her jaw. But something else, too. Hurt? Wistful?

  She sighed and finally took the sunglasses off, propping them on her head. A vicious scar sliced through the corner of her left eye, giving it a somewhat lopsided wince, and leaving her iris a milky blue-white.

  Beside him, Cooper heard Park exhale sharply. “When did that happen?” he asked.

  “Years ago.”

  More heavy silence. Cooper was going to lose his freaking mind. This entire weekend had contained more dramatic pauses than a French new-wave film. “If someone is ever going to fill me in, now would be great.”

  Park shuffled, looking like he hoped the woman would respond. Cooper thought he was barking up the wrong tree there. The woman was barely blinking.

  “This is Daisy Boudillion,” Park said. “Or, occasionally, Daisy Boudillion Park. She’s my...mother.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Cooper’s mind was racing. Park’s mother. The mother who had gone out one day and never come back. The mother Park had thought dead for most of his life until Marcus disobeyed the pack and told him the truth. The mother Park had quit his job as an English professor in order to find. He’d forged a deal with the head of the Trust, Margaret Cola, only to find out she, his own mother, had been with the WIP all these years and was unwilling to meet him or even really speak to him.

  She looked nothing like him. She looked too young to be Park’s mother. Couldn’t have been more than nineteen, twenty years old when she’d had him. And it wasn’t like he was the eldest child, either. Park had never mentioned anything about the years he lived with his parents besides that they were uncomfortably poor, moved around a lot and had no contact with the rest of the family. To be a mother so young of so many in that situation must have been hard. Really hard. Not that Cooper now forgave her for what she’d done to Park. But...he just hadn’t realized, is all.

  “So,” Cooper said. “I guess that means you’re not really a Trust agent. You never were.”

  “She’s a con artist,” Park said flatly.

  “Yeah, I’m seeing that. Where did you get the badge?”

  For a moment her look of impatient irritation was almost identical to Park’s before smoothing. “The WIP has been watching the Trust closely for some time now. When Oliver first contacted me through Cola’s contacts, I was able to trace one of them and took the liberty of, ah, acquiring his badge.” She shrugged. “I figured it might come in handy one day. Or many days as the case has been.”

  “But you knew things,” Cooper said. “About me and Oliver’s first case together. How? Where did you get that information?”

  Park laughed bitterly. “That’s easy. She got that from me, too. Isn’t that right? I’ve been emailing her every three weeks or so. Little things about my life. Then bigger things. I even told her all about you, hoping something would be interesting enough to prompt a response. Any response. But it never did. I honestly thought she just didn’t bother to open them.”

  Daisy flinched, but Park kept going. “I didn’t think anything could hurt worse than that. Guess I hadn’t considered the possibility that you actually were reading them to use the information in your cons. That was unimaginative of me.”

  He hesitated, giving her the chance to say that wasn’t true, that’s not how it was. He wanted her to. God, it was written in every line of his face how badly he wanted her to. But Daisy said nothing.

  Park closed his eyes, centering himself, before opening them. “What I don’t understand is why. Why do all this? You pretended to be a Trust agent so you could lie to Cooper to what end? So you could tell him—about me? About what I’ve done?” His voice cracked a little, and Cooper’s guilt tripled. “Were you trying to scare
him off to protect him? Because I know it wasn’t for my benefit.”

  Daisy licked her lips, turning away from her shaking son. She addressed Cooper alone. “I may not be an agent, but I wasn’t lying about the rest. Any of it. I really am here to find out what’s going on. There have been whispers amongst my WIP contacts. I know a coup is coming. Someone is trying to dismantle the Parks’ reign.”

  “And you turned Cooper against me because you thought it was me.” The way Park said it wasn’t a question.

  She eyed him, like he was a stranger on the street shouting nonsense and she was considering whether it was worth her time to correct him. “I’m not entirely without friends in this town. I’ve kept an eye on you and your brothers and sisters all these years. I know Joe groomed you to take over,” Daisy said stiffly. “I know he manipulated you. Had you doing horrible things.”

  The sound Park made deep in this throat didn’t sound human, and Daisy took an instinctive step closer. For a moment it looked like she was going to reach out to touch him, before noticeably stopping herself.

  Christ. How could the absence of touch hit so hard? Cooper was practically reeling from it himself. Casually, he slipped his hand into Park’s and his fingers were almost immediately crushed. That was fine. He could withstand a few bruises for this.

  Daisy’s eye flickered, noting the small moment. Without any inflection she said, “Even you must know there are many who believed you were returning to Port Drove to take over the territory. Many would even welcome it.”

  “Would you?”

  She tilted her chin up. “You know I don’t approve of how your grandparents run the territories. I think Helena’s time is long overdue and a change would be good for everyone. But...no. I never wanted that to be your path in life.”

  “Well, abandoning us with the very people you hate is a funny way of showing it.”

  The look Daisy gave him was very condescending. “Your father and I made the best choice we could in a bad situation. You’re not a parent. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “And you consider yourself a parent?” Park said.

  Daisy’s lip twitched, nearly flashing her teeth. “Sacrifices had to be made. At least I knew Joe and Helena would teach you to be tough. With them I knew you’d be safe.”

  “Safe, but not someone you wanted to know or even send a goddamn email to, right? A bad person. Someone who does horrible things.”

  “What I may or may not have thought doesn’t matter now,” she said impatiently, which seemed like a wildly bold and patently false statement to Cooper. “I’m only here to prevent a full-on pack war from erupting. As I’ve already discussed with your partner, the Rosettis are almost certainly behind the attacks. Either as a pack with Sylvia at the helm or, as Agent Dayton believes, Geoff alone.”

  “Whoa,” Cooper said hastily as Park whirled on him. “I don’t know what I think. But I think you should listen to what...”

  He struggled for what to call her. Your mom was obviously out; the woman clearly had no interest in being a mother. Daisy seemed overfamiliar. Mrs. Park? Ms. Boudillion?

  “...to what she found about the Freemans.” He could hear the reluctance in his own voice. He wanted nothing more than to put Park in his pocket and get him as far away from this painful mess as fast as possible, pack war be damned. But there was a murderer out there and two missing people were depending on them.

  He squeezed Park’s fingers in apology and felt Park cling to him desperately. At least he looked steadier and his voice was calm when he said, “Fine. Tell me. What do we got?”

  Quickly Daisy explained what she had already told Cooper.

  “And you think Sylvia is the anonymous benefactor?” Park said doubtfully when she was done. “She’s known our family for years. That seems pretty Machiavellian for someone who used to bake me banana cake for my birthday.”

  Daisy huffed. “A foolproof defense.”

  “It’s more than you’ve done for the last thirty years,” Park snapped back.

  “It could also be Geoff,” Cooper injected. He wanted Park to have the opportunity to air his grievances, but now was not the best time. Not without a couple of professional relationship counselors on hand and better soundproofing than a curtain. “Or really anyone in the Rosetti pack, though those at the top would benefit the most, right?” He looked between the others for confirmation and got nothing. “Either way, I think the next step is to talk to Sylvia Rosetti before the police do.”

  “It won’t be the cops’ case much longer,” Park said. “I’ve called the BSI.”

  Cooper felt his mouth gaping and he closed it. “What? When?”

  “This morning. After...after our conversation.” He lifted his chin and looked Cooper in the eye. “I explained the whole situation to them. Everything. Now that a human is dead, I’m surprised they’re not here already.”

  Cooper didn’t know what to say. After their fight? What did this mean?

  “Agents are coming here?” Daisy hissed. “I need to leave.” She put her sunglasses back on and started toward the door.

  “Hey,” Cooper said, stepping in her way. “What do you mean, leave? Where are you going?”

  “I can’t be here when they arrive. I’m not—” She glanced at Park. “I have some outstanding warrants.”

  “But you can’t just disappear,” Cooper said. The unspoken again hung in the air. “How can we reach you?”

  “You already have everything I’ve got. Find Dr. Freeman. She’s the only one who can prove the Rosettis are behind this. There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “But—”

  “Cooper,” Park said, his voice rough. “Just let her go.”

  Without a second glance, Daisy Boudillion Park slipped out of the room. Neither Cooper nor Park stood in her way.

  There was a moment of utter silence. And then the video started over again, the sounds of waves and a distant foghorn. The sonorous voice of the narrator wondering if the deep ocean was Earth’s greatest unsolved mystery.

  “Are you okay?” Cooper said.

  Park stared at him like he didn’t understand the question. Fair enough. Who would be okay after that?

  Cooper reached out tentatively to touch his arm. “Hey—”

  Park jerked to life and whirled through the curtain.

  Cooper exhaled, then followed. The brightness of the museum’s main room made his vision swim and he blinked rapidly, glancing to the large skylights. There was something about coming out of a dark room after an extended time that made the sight of daylight shocking, so shocking, like you couldn’t believe the rest of the world had continued on without you.

  Park was pacing back and forth in front of the divider, shoulders occasionally twitching like he was shaking off some invisible touch.

  Cooper opened his mouth. Closed it. What the hell could he say?

  “Oliver?” he prompted quietly, then jumped when Park slammed his hands against the divider and dragged them down, claws slicing open the canvas, leaving four violent gouges, and snarled, a purely animalistic sound that echoed around the room and set Cooper’s hair on end. Park yanked his claws out of the board, which trembled, threatening to fall, and hunched over, hands on his knees, breathing deeply.

  Cooper licked his lips and walked cautiously forward to touch Park’s back. Park let out a ragged sigh and then another, and Cooper couldn’t resist tugging on his shirt and pulling him into his arms. Park clung to him, grasping at his back, and his head dropped to Cooper’s shoulder, face buried in his neck. Cooper felt the vibrations of sound against his skin and then Park’s agitated trembling slipped into something more rhythmic. He realized Park was crying.

  He didn’t say “It’s okay” because it wasn’t, or “I know” because he didn’t. He didn’t say “I’m sorry” because it was an empty, ritualistic platitude, or “You don’t need her�
� because need had nothing do with it. It was about want. And at some point, at least once in a lifetime, no matter who or why or what came before, everyone wants their mom.

  Cooper just squeezed Park tighter and pressed kiss after kiss to his temple, the top of his head, his shoulder. Willed him to feel how much Cooper loved him. One person can’t love you enough to make up for all the people who don’t, but Cooper wasn’t trying for all the people. Just the one. Just for right now.

  He wasn’t sure how long they stood there. Even after Park stopped crying, his body stilled and his breaths evened out, he kept his face pressed against the crook of Cooper’s neck. He could tell Park was reluctant to move from this moment and deal with what came next. He was, too. So they stood and swayed while Cooper stroked his hair, sweaty despite the chill of the room. Cooper wished he could keep him like this, tucked away against his shoulder for the rest of the day.

  Finally, Park straightened, pulling out of his arms. His face was red and a little swollen, and he avoided Cooper’s gaze. “Ah, fuck,” he said, and ran a hasty hand over his eyes with a heavy sniff. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Cooper said immediately, earnestly.

  It was true they rarely got emotional like this—they each had a lifetime of brainwashing that tears somehow devalued a man to contend with, after all—but while he wished the circumstances were different, he felt stronger and closer to Park than ever before. He didn’t want to see Park ever cry again, but in a weird way, he wanted to be there every time he did.

  “Can I—What can I do?”

  Park shook his head, scrubbing at his eyes again, until they had expanded to their wolfy, glowing gold, entirely erasing the red and making his expressions harder to read. It was the first time Cooper had seen Park choose to bring the wolf to the surface when it was just the two of them, as a protective device. The first time he’d used the wolf to block Cooper out. It worried him.

  “Let’s go talk to Sylvia Rosetti,” Park said.

  “You mean now? Are you sure? Maybe we should wait until the cavalry arrives.”