Moon Dance (34 page)

“
You’re writing an email
from her?” Dana wanted to slap him.

“
I’m just canceling the rest
of her classes so no one wonders where the heck she is,” he said.
“I mean, she can’t teach. She’s knocked out.”

“
Yeah, because you shot
her.”

“
Dana.” He stood up from the
computer. “This is going to be fine. Seriously, stop freaking
out.”

Cole was going through
Larissa’s bag. He yanked out a set of keys. “Okay, here’s what
we’re going to do. You drive the car we brought here, and I’ll
drive Larissa’s car. You can follow me. I just got to figure out
where her house is.” He went back to the computer. “I think she
should have access to the faculty directory, which lists
addresses…”

“
Don’t you think it would be
better if we just left?” said Dana.

He turned to her. “And go
where? You got an idea where we can go?”

She sighed.

“
This is going to work,” he
said, going back to the computer. “There. That’s her address.” He
fumbled on the desk for a pen and scribbled on it. He straightened.
“Look, I’ll bring the car around to the place where we parked,
okay?”

“
Cole, this is
crazy.”

“
Yeah, so when have we ever
done anything sane?” He hoisted Larissa up over his shoulder.
“Let’s go.”

“
You’re going to carry her
like that? What will people think?”

“
It’s college, right?” said
Cole. “I’ll just say she’s drunk.”

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Larissa Fielding was tied to a chair in
her kitchen, still passed out, and Cole was bustling about, cooking
spaghetti on the stove.

Dana sat at the table,
watching both of them, feeling sick to her stomach. This was not
going the way she’d expected. She had no idea why Cole thought they
could trust this woman, but it didn’t seem like they could. And now
they were basically holding the poor woman prisoner in her house.
Heck, if this was the plan all along, they could have broken into
any old house, tranqed the people that lived there, tied them up,
and started eating
their
food.

“
Relax, Dana,” Cole kept
saying.

But she couldn’t.

He handed her one of the
cell phones they’d stolen. “You want to turn that on and see if we
got any texts?”

“
Is it safe?”

He shrugged. “Safe enough, I
guess. The people I texted wouldn’t have direct contact with Enoch,
and he’s the only one who could trace the phone. So, everyone else
is just someone with an ear to the ground. They might know
something. They might not.”

Dana turned on the phone. At
first there was nothing, but then text messages began to appear.
Dana scrolled through them. Most of them didn’t say much. No one
knew anything.

“
We’re not getting
anything,” she said.

“
Damn it,” said Cole,
stirring the spaghetti. “How many texts did you get?”

“
Six.”

“
Some people haven’t
replied,” he said. “Turn it back off. We’ll check it
later.”

“
If they can’t trace the
phone, why does it have to be off?”

“
Better not to take chances,
right?”

He was right. She turned off the
phone.

Larissa lifted her head. She surveyed
her surroundings, the fact that she was tied to a chair, and then
she started screaming again.

Cole turned around. “Hey,
Larissa. There’s no need for that.” He held out the fork he’d been
using to Dana. “Can you keep an eye on the pasta?”

Dana took it.

“
What are you going to do to
me?” said Larissa. She sounded close to tears.

Cole pulled a chair up next
to her, facing her. “Nothing. I won’t do anything.”

Larissa looked at Dana. “I
saw you two on the news. Now you’ve got a partner in crime, huh,
Cole?”

“
Look, there’s no crime,” he
said. He considered. “Well, kind of, maybe, but we’re not going to
hurt you. I came to you for help. We used to be
friends.”

Larissa took a shaky breath.
“Oh, God.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “If you’re not going to hurt
me, why am I tied up?”

“
I just didn’t want you
running off and doing anything stupid before I got a chance to talk
to you,” said Cole. “How about I untie your hands, okay?” He
reached around and freed her.

She stretched, massaging her
wrists.

Cole took both of her hands
in his. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

Larissa started to pull her
hands away, then stopped. “What are you doing here, then?” Her
voice was getting stronger.

He looked up at Dana, and
then back at Larissa. “Look, we just need someplace to stay. Not
for long, just until I can get in touch with some people. I
thought… there aren’t a lot of people in my past that I would
consider friends, but you and I… well, I thought I could trust
you.” He released her hands and sat back.

Larissa took a deep breath.
“You thought you could trust me, so you tied me to a
chair?”

“
That’s what
I
said.” Dana ran the
fork through the boiling water and pasta.

Larissa massaged the bridge
of her nose. “Cole, it’s been years.”

“
I know.” He bent down and
began working on the knots at her feet. “Maybe I shouldn’t have
tied you up or shot you with a tranq gun.”

“
You shot me?” said Larissa,
her voice cracking.

“
With a tranquilizer dart.”
Cole sat back up, looking exasperated.

“
For Cole, that
is
showing restraint,”
Dana said.

Larissa laughed nervously.
“Well, that doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease.” She got up from
the chair. “What about my classes? I had two other classes this
afternoon.”

“
I emailed Betty and said
they were canceled.” He stood up too.

“
You emailed…” Larissa shook
her head. “Oh my God, I never thought I was going to see you
again.”

“
Well, sorry about that,” he
said.

The buzzer on the stove went
off. Dana took the pot of water off the burner. “She obviously
doesn’t want us here. We need to leave.”

He went over to the stove
and picked up the pot. “Is that what you want, Larissa?” He started
to drain the pasta in the sink.

Larissa was hugging herself.
She still looked thrown. She turned to Dana. “You. How did you end
up mixed up with him? I remember the reports from years ago. You’re
the one who got him arrested, right?”

“
We don’t call it arrested
in the SF,” said Dana, “but yeah, that was me. It’s
complicated.”

“
When I saw him on the news
a few days ago, and you were with him, I…” Larissa turned around in
a circle. “I don’t know what to think. It hasn’t been exactly easy
for me, knowing that I had sex with a serial killer werewolf, and
then you just march back into my life—”

“
What?
” Dana looked at Cole, who was
pouring sauce all over the spaghetti. “You brought me to your
ex-girlfriend’s house?”

Cole laughed. “No, it wasn’t
like that at all. We were just friends.”

Dana looked at Larissa.

She was backing away. “Are
you two like… together?”

“
You were friends that had
sex?” Dana glared at Cole.

He shrugged at Larissa,
stirring the sauce and pasta together. “Basically.”

“
And you brought me here?”
Dana thought she might strangle him.

“
You
are
together, aren’t
you?” said Larissa. “Look, I’m not interested in him or getting in
between anything or…” She swallowed. “Please don’t hurt
me.”

Dana massaged her temples.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” She turned back to Cole. “It’s like
you’re completely clueless about normal human emotion, I swear to
God. You do not bring me here to hide out in the house of a woman
you used to sleep with. It’s wrong on so many levels.”

He threw his hands up.
“Okay, okay. We’re going to leave. It’s what you wanted, and you’re
right, I didn’t think this through.”

“
Good,” said
Dana.

Cole held up the pot. “Can
we eat spaghetti first?”

* * *

They were all chewing and no one was
saying anything.

Larissa cleared her throat.

They both looked at her.

“
So,” she said. “You really
thought of me, Cole? After all this time, you thought of
me.”

He twisted spaghetti around
his fork. “Yeah.”

“
Why?” She turned to Dana.
“It’s like he said, there was nothing romantic about our
relationship. It wasn’t anything like that. Personally, I’m not
really one for romance, anyway, but between Cole and I there wasn’t
even… warmth.”

He raised his eyebrows.
“Sure, there was.”

“
No,” Larissa said. “We
talked philosophy. We saw each other at work. We had sex a few
times. That’s all.”

“
What do you mean you’re not
one for romance?” said Dana. “We just listened to you give that
whole lecture on romance novels.”

“
Oh, I like
romance
novels
,”
said Larissa. “It’s just real-life relationships that I’m not fond
of. There’s a big difference between books and reality. For one
thing, real men are nothing like men in romance novels. Take Cole,
for instance. You can’t tell me that he seems like a hero from a
romance novel.”

Well, all that stuff about
beast-men and civilization had sort of—

“
Larissa,” said Cole,
“this might sound kind of weird, but I’ve changed since then. Maybe
I didn’t convey to you that I appreciated your friendship, but I
did. It meant a lot to me. I’ve never really been good at friends…
I’ve never really been good at
people
, actually, but you were easy
to talk to, and you seemed to respect my thoughts, and… I don’t
know. I misread everything, and I’m sorry.”

Larissa set down her fork and looked at
him.

“
That’s why I came here,” he
said. “But I’m going to leave, and I’m sorry we scared
you.”

“
Where are you going to go?”
said Larissa.

He sighed. “I have no
fucking clue.” He put a bite of spaghetti in his mouth, chewed, and
swallowed. “But we’ll figure it out. It’s not your problem, don’t
worry.”

Larissa furrowed her brow.
“You
have
changed.
You’re…” She cocked her head to one side. Then she turned to Dana.
“So, how did you end up with him? Why would you be with someone
like this?”

“
I’m not—” Dana broke off,
looking at Cole. “It’s really hard to explain.”

“
Not hard,” he said. “She’s
not with me. We sort of accidentally had a child together, and that
child has been kidnapped by bad people, and we’re trying to get our
daughter back. That’s it. There’s no romance, Larissa. Dana’s too
smart for that.”

“
A child.” Larissa looked
down into her pasta. “But the news said that you two had murdered
people, and that you were dangerous.”

“
Not Dana,” said Cole. “If
she’s done anything, it’s only been to protect herself. But
everything’s gotten out of control.”

It wasn’t true what Cole had
said. Dana had killed people for bad reasons. But she was strangely
warmed by the idea that he’d lie to make her sound better, that
he’d take it all on his shoulders.

Larissa looked up at them.
“Oh, what the hell? You can stay. Not long, though. Just
overnight.”

* * *

“
Ha!” said Cole.

“
What?” Dana was sitting on
the couch in Larissa’s living room, watching television with
Larissa.

Cole held up the cell phone,
which he’d just turned on. “I got a text. A lead.”

“
You did?” said
Dana.

“
Yeah, someone knows
something about the kids. They don’t know anything about Enoch, but
we were only looking for Enoch to find Piper, so that doesn’t
matter,” said Cole. “I need to make a call, but I need to use a
different phone, just to be safe.”

Dana started to get up.

He held up his hand. “No,
don’t worry about it. You sit tight. I’ll do it, and I’ll come back
and tell you what I know, all right?”

Dana settled back on the
couch.

He left the room.

Dana went back to staring at
the television screen. She realized that she really hadn’t
registered anything that was happening on the program for quite
some time. She’d been staring at it, but she hadn’t been
comprehending. She guessed that things were too screwy for TV right
now.