Laura's Wolf (Werewolf Marines) (46 page)

She and Keisha were discussing pink cocktails when an email from an address Laura didn’t recognize popped up.

Hello. I hear you deal with unusual problems. I have an unusual problem. I was hiking alone when I was attacked by a coyote or something – I didn’t get a good look at it. I’ve recovered physically, but a lot of strange stuff which I’m not comfortable describing over email has been happening to me ever since.

I’ve been getting messages from someone who said that if I paid them off, they’d make sure I was okay, and otherwise, everything that was happening would get worse and worse until I couldn’t stand it any more. I informed the police, but they just said to come back if I got an explicit threat.

I haven’t given anyone any money, and, in fact, everything
has
been getting worse and worse. Would you be willing to come to Phoenix, Arizona to look into this?

In case you’re wondering if this message is for real, I was told to say that I’m looking for Lemon Meringue and Guinness. I really hope this isn’t a joke, which I have to say is what that sounds like, because I am in serious trouble.

Best wishes,

Francesca Hernandez

Laura almost cheered aloud. DJ had promised to have every werewolf he knew spread the word about Lupine Investigations, but this was the first message they’d received. She wrote back with the assurance that it wasn’t a joke, they were there to help, and to please give them an address where they could meet in a few days, and printed Francesca’s email for Roy to read.

When she walked into the living room, the radio was playing classic rock. But her relief only lasted the second it took to see the haunted look on Roy’s face and the tension in his posture. He turned off the radio and beckoned to her to sit beside him. His hands were shaking.

She sat down, wondering what to say. Should she ask him how he was? Should she ignore it and see if he brought it up? Should she distract him with the email? Was she wrong to be sympathetic and worried, when she ought to be more frustrated and angry? Or was she wrong to be frustrated and angry, when she ought to be more sympathetic and worried?

She wished she’d had more experience with intimacy before she’d gotten involved with Roy. A romance between a loner con artist with a lying habit and a combat veteran with PTSD and a Captain America complex was a situation that begged for advanced relationship skills. Laura felt like she’d been thrown into the final year of medical school before she’d even finished tenth grade.

“I’m not fine,” Roy said abruptly.

Laura looked up at him, surprised.

“Obviously,” he added, holding up his trembling hands. “But I’m not pretending I’m all right, so you don’t have to pretend either.”

She put her arm around his shoulder, and felt some of his tension go out in a shuddering breath. “What does it actually feel like?”

“You sure don’t go for the easy questions,” Roy muttered. “Can’t you just look in the pack sense?”

Laura touched their bond, but it told her nothing that she hadn’t already seen: Roy was staggering under the weight of the pain he always carried. “It says you’re not fine. I could probably get a more specific idea if you wanted to stay in the pack sense for an hour and then make love.”

She’d hoped Roy would smile. He didn’t. “I can’t make love when I feel like this.”

“What
do
you feel like?”

“It’s hard to describe. It’s like everything’s gone slightly out of focus. Or it’s not quite solid. Like I could put my foot wrong and break through the ice. But it’s not the world that’s off, it’s me.” He shook his head, looking frustrated. “Sorry. I know that doesn’t make much sense. It feels worse than it sounds.”

“I did try to stop you,” Laura couldn’t help saying.

Roy took a deep breath, as if he was going to say something, and then released it without speaking. He took another deep breath, and then spoke. “Yeah. The news show set me off. You knew it would, and to be honest, I did too.”

Laura wanted to grind her teeth with frustration. “Then why did you listen? Are you still trying to prove how tough you are? You don’t need to prove that!” Then she had a more disturbing thought. “Or are you punishing yourself for not being over there?”

Roy had seemed distant before, but that brought him closer. “Laura, no. I wanted to hear that report because it’s about something that’s important to me. I didn’t
want
it to do this. It just seemed worth it if it did.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know.” Roy’s sigh stirred her hair. “Ask me again tomorrow. I’m sorry. It’s probably going to be a rough night.”

Laura knew she couldn’t possibly dread Roy’s nightmares as much as Roy did, but it was a close call. “I take it you’re not planning to stay up until you pass out in the kitchen?”

“No, I’ll spare you that. And I’ll spare myself; that’s a hard floor.” He rested his hand on her leg, rubbing back and forth. She guessed that he was reminding himself that he was here in the cabin with her, touching her curvy thigh and worn denim and the raised edge of the seam, not in Afghanistan.

“Here, have some good news. Take your mind off things.” She handed him the printed email.

Roy read it, then sat straight up. “We’ve got a job!”

“I figured we could get more details, then take off.” Laura had thought they could leave the next day, if Francesca responded in time, but she doubted Roy would be up to it that soon. “Maybe the day after tomorrow.”

“Sure.” Roy sounded tired, the excitement draining out of him like water from a sieve. He leaned his head on her shoulder, his silky hair brushing her cheek. He’d trimmed it a while back, but only enough to keep it out of his eyes.

“Will you be all right with it?” Laura asked hesitantly. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but anything could happen on this job. There’s obviously a blackmailing rogue werewolf involved. Like Gregor.”

“Hopefully not like Gregor.” Roy reached past Laura to knock on the wood of the table. “I know what you’re getting at. But that radio show was about exactly the sort of thing that sets me off. This should be more like police work. I don’t think it’ll bother me. But if it does, well, I get bothered sitting at home listening to the radio. I may as well be bothered doing something worthwhile that I’ll enjoy.”

“One month of peace, and you’re bored already?” Laura teased.

“A little. Don’t tell me you’re longing to get back behind bullet-proof glass.”

“No.” Then Laura admitted, “I guess I’m wondering how
I’ll
do. If there’s something that reminds me. If I end up in a situation where the only way to defend you or me or Francesca is to kill someone.”

“This isn’t war. We’re not going there to kill anyone. We’ve got cop tools: persuasion…” Roy touched Laura’s lips. “…And intimidation.” He indicated himself. “My mom went up against gangsters and murderers and drug dealers, but she never fired her gun except on the range.”

“I know. But we can’t know what’ll happen. You didn’t want me to kill anyone, but Gregor took that decision out of your hands.”

Roy studied Laura’s face. “Do you still want to do this? Seriously. Think about it.”

Laura thought about it. For all the risks, to her and to him, she did want to help Francesca. And she wanted to match her wits against those of the blackmailing rogue werewolf. She might not be as restless as Roy probably was, but she had the itch to get out and do things, to live on the edge again. And to do it with him, instead of alone.

“I want to,” she said.

Roy took her hands. “Whatever happens, I’ll be there for you. Everything you’ve done for me, I can do for you. If you have nightmares… If you need me to stay by your side, if you don’t even want to be alone in a room…”

His hands were still shaking. He’d pushed himself enough; she didn’t need to make him ask her for what she already knew he wanted.

“I’ll stay with you too, Roy. I know you don’t want to be alone today.”

“Thanks.” He sounded a little choked up.

“I don’t either. I got my solitude in the other day, when I drove down to Fresno.” Laura patted her lap. “Want to lie down?”

“Do I dare?” Roy asked lightly, his voice back under control. “My mother warned me about creepy hair-petting women.”

“My father warned me about men who pretend to be asleep so they can creepily lure innocent women into petting their hair. Lie down if you want to lure me.”

Roy promptly lay down with his head in her lap, on his side with his back pressed into the couch. If she hadn’t already known, she could have measured how edgy he was feeling by how much it bothered him to have his back exposed.

She stroked his hair, letting the fine strands slip between her fingers. Laura had felt so furtive the first time she’d done that, so convinced that no man like him would ever want to have anything to do with her. When she’d finally made herself walk away, she’d felt as lonely as she had every day in high school, or when she’d looked down at the endless, empty cloudscape as she’d flown away from New York. But here he was, committed to her, trusting her with his body and his vulnerability.

Laura remembered her first sight of Roy, framed in the barn door, wary and lost and startlingly tall. Flushed and sweating with fever, asking her to watch over him. Naked in bed, showing her his scars. Stealthily pressing a spatula down on an omelet. Shouting at her to live with tears running down his face. Kneeling at her feet in the hallway. Lying on his back on the living room floor, shaking with the effort of not touching her. Pulling himself up into a tree, muscles bulging. Firing his pistol from the floor of Gregor’s lair. Ashen and gasping in Miguel’s arms. Leaping over DJ’s Harley as a huge white wolf. Reading on the couch beside her. Watching intently as Jim Sullivan adjusted his form with the compound bow. Sprawled on the porch with the pack, lazing in the sun. Slow-dancing with his cheekbones streaked with black.

She knew Roy wouldn’t let himself sleep, but he relaxed under her touch. After a while, he rolled on to his belly, face turned to the side, and secured an arm around her waist. She rubbed his back and shoulders, gazing out the picture window at the hills. Snow began to fall, silent and peaceful, like curls of white smoke.

Laura wondered what Roy was thinking about. The ambush where DJ had been burned, probably.

“You should bake a blueberry pie,” Roy said unexpectedly. “For old times’ sake.”

***

Roy seemed in a better frame of mind by dinner, at least enough to have a piece of her blueberry pie. But by the time he got in bed, he was so tense that he flinched when she lay down beside him.

“Sorry,” he said, and pulled her closer. “I’ve been trying my best to take it down.”

“I know you have.” Laura touched their bond, letting him feel her presence.

“I asked DJ to show me his scar.” Roy’s voice was low, but it sounded loud with the snow muffling all other noises.

“What, you mean when he was here?” Laura asked.

She felt him nod.

“Hadn’t you seen it before?”

“Yeah, but in Afghanistan, I’d been trying not to. So I’d never gotten a good look at it.”

“What did it look like?”

“Shiny. Lumpy. Like melted wax.” Roy swallowed. “And a red welt over his ribs. He said it didn’t hurt, but there were certain movements he didn’t like to do because they made him feel like it might tear open. I didn’t get up the nerve to ask until right before he left. It’s what set me off the last time.”

It was strange how she could know Roy so well and even glimpse his emotions through the pack sense, and still have no idea, at times, why he did what he did.

“Then why did you ask to see it?”

“To put another picture in my head,” Roy replied, as if he was surprised that she didn’t already know. “Something other than charring and blood and that crack down to bone. To see that he had healed.”

“Oh. Are you picturing it now?”

“I’m trying. I keep getting stuck on, ‘But he never should have been hurt in the first place.’ You know how you keep thinking, ‘If I’d done this or if I’d done that, then everything would have been different and I wouldn’t be so fucked up now’?”

“Absolutely,” Laura said. “‘If I’d noticed the shapes of guns under the coats.’ ‘If I hadn’t tried to con Gregor.’ ‘If I’d commanded Gregor a second before
he grabbed you instead of a second after.’”

“Yeah. And, of course, a lot of them might not have made any difference even if you had done them. But I was going down my list of ifs, and eventually I hit the only one that really would have made me not be so fucked up now. ‘If I hadn’t ever enlisted.’”

“What if you hadn’t?” Laura asked. “Yeah, you wouldn’t be dreaming of combat now. But what else would have happened?”

“DJ wouldn’t have been hurt,” Roy replied. Laura was opening her mouth to contradict him when he went on, “He’d have been killed. No one else was close enough to get to him in time. Not to mention that I never would have even met him or any of the guys in my unit. If I’d never enlisted, I don’t know if I’d even recognize myself.”

Laura tried to envision civilian Roy, extrapolating from the teenager he’d told her about: that angry, painfully self-conscious boy, so desperate to prove himself. “I can’t imagine it. I knew you were a veteran before I even met you.”

“I loved it, you know,” Roy said softly. “In a way, I loved it right up to the end. That probably sounds strange.”

“No.” Laura nearly stopped there, then made herself admit, “I loved being a con artist. The price just got to be too high.”

Roy’s hair brushed against her cheek as he nodded. “Can you imagine if you’d done something completely different with your life? Like, if your father had been a traveling salesman?”

“I wouldn’t have conned my own family, that’s for sure,” Laura said bitterly. “Forget conned
them
—more like I conned myself, right out of their lives.”

Roy laid gentle fingers on her cheek. “You could still call them, you know. It’s not too late.”

“You just want a sweet, white-haired, Jewish grandmother-in-law to fuss over you and feed you home-made chicken soup,” Laura said, hoping to distract him with teasing.