PackRescue (2 page)

She kept moving and didn’t freeze or bolt when a shaggy head
lifted off the back of a chair and pale eyes watched her as she walked past the
living room. They glowed in the near darkness before shutting tiredly. The
werewolf’s head drifted back down. Silently, Fina continued down the hallway,
picked up her sandals and handbag and opened the front door. She closed it
behind her but not enough for the latch to make that unmistakable snick as it
caught. Moving deliberately and expecting to be tackled from behind any second,
Fina walked to her little SUV, opened the driver’s door, got in and drove away.

Fina didn’t know where she was heading until after she
turned in at the sign marking the entrance to Whitesage Nursery. The sun was
starting to come up as she pulled into the parking spot marked Reg Whitesage,
Owner. For an insane minute, Fina reminded herself her father would give her
hell if she stole his spot. Keys in hand, she headed for the side door of the
nursery complex…the door marked Office. She scratched her cheeks, annoyed by a
sudden itchiness, and realized there were tears on her face. Fina stopped
letting them bother her and simply let them fall as she unlocked the door to
her pack’s primary business, turned off the security system and headed for her
father’s office.

Her hand was trembling and she shook it, making it obey,
before turning the tumbler on his wall safe. The tumbler clicked one last time
and the bolts pulled back. Fina turned the handle and her hand went straight
for the papers bundled in the back. She checked them with numb deliberation…her
father’s will, deeds to the pack’s land, investment statements. There was a
tidy stack of twenty and hundred dollar bills and Fina took those too, closed
up the safe and left the office. Her next stop was one building over—the
refrigeration drawers. The secure drawers holding the company’s trademark stock
of rare, exotic and antique fruit and decorative plant seeds were small and
unassuming and unless you knew what they were, you’d overlook them completely.
She opened up one of the computer terminals nearby, keyed in new access codes
and wiped the old ones out. Fina made sure the refrigeration units were locked
into a hibernation setting and headed for the exit. She moved to one of the few
windows that opened, cranked it and breathed in the outside air. She didn’t
scent the rogue wolves. She closed it up again and returned to the main office,
rearmed the security system, locked the door and stepped outside.

She breathed in again, as fully as she could this time, letting
the humid air pass over her tongue and into her nose. There was blood in the
air, lingering traces of it. With the dawn, the wind had died down and Fina
detected traces of the slaughter of her pack, overlaid with the scents of other
werewolves. She knew who they were because each one of them had left his stench
on her body.

Back in her little SUV, Fina bundled up the papers and
money, shoved them under the seat and drove away. It was going to be another
scorcher and when the wind picked up in a few minutes, it would come out of the
southeast. At the next intersection she turned north, heading downwind. The
windows were shut and the air-conditioning was on…much of her scent would be
contained in the vehicle but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The road took her through their little hamlet. The automatic
streetlights switched off, making Fina start. She gripped the steering wheel
tighter and kept driving. The little general store-slash-post office marked the
northern boundary of her pack’s lands. Humans lived beyond that and, in the
quiet, empty, dawning light, Fina drove past their sleeping homes. She drove
past the high school…they’d finished writing their final exams last week. She
and Helen were going back to college in the fall. Fina was studying business
administration and would come back to work full-time in her family’s business
after she graduated—work with her father and older brother and the other
members of her pack.

Fina lacked the ability to question the sanity of her
deep-seated denial. She and Helen were best friends even though Helen was human
and had no idea she’d lived amongst werewolves her entire life. Fina’s hand was
already reaching for her cell phone before she yanked it back. She wanted to go
to Helen’s home—knock on the door and collapse in Helen’s mother’s arms and
weep and scream and—and Fina kept driving, obeying the speed limit. She rubbed
her sore eyes impatiently. Humans and human law enforcement couldn’t help her.
She couldn’t send them into a den of rogue werewolves. The death count was too
high already.

Fina exhaled shakily. She was alone, barely out of her
teens, and her pack was dead. She had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She
could ask another pack for sanctuary but after the rogues she had no stomach to
trust other wolves. She couldn’t be sure of her welcome, despite the fact she
was female. Strays were usually weak and useless.

In their world, power was held by the strongest. Alphas
could be challenged for leadership, although it was usually done honorably,
one-on-one. Rogues and strays were viewed with distrust and often eliminated
but unless the rogues who had killed her pack went after another pack, no
werewolf alive would be quick to challenge them. They’d be monitored of course,
and nervous, wary eyes would track them. But the cruel truth of it was her pack
lands had been taken over and Fina had two choices—bond with the rogues or
leave. She’d already made that choice and was about to press down harder on the
accelerator when her foot shifted to the brake pedal. She switched on her turn
signal and pulled up in front of the local primary school.

Fina’s wolf eyes spotted something that defied logic. There
was a small boy sitting on the curb in front of the locked, dark school, with a
backpack beside him and a small electronic game in his hands. He didn’t even
look up when she stepped out of her vehicle.

“Ryan?” Fina said, her voice barely above a whisper. Ryan
Upton was the son of her father’s Beta and she’d babysat the loud, exuberant
six-year-old often enough to make her consider foregoing the pleasures of
motherhood entirely. She kneeled in front of him. Ryan loved his toys,
especially his electronic gizmos, but she saw that the game in his hand was
simply cycling a Game Over message, even though his small, dirt-crusted fingers
were moving randomly over the buttons. She brushed his dark-blond hair off his
forehead. Like any werewolf, even as a child, he inhaled, instinctively
focusing on her scent before her face. He jerked upright and scooted back from
her.

Fina knew why. She smelled like the rogue wolves.

Ryan’s brown eyes were frightened and too large for his
small face but his shoulders went down when he recognized her.

“How did you get here, Ryan?” Fina asked as she picked him
up. He didn’t protest. Even when she leaned over to pick up his backpack, he
sat with disturbing stillness in her arms, his thumbs still pressing buttons.
She sat him in the passenger seat.

“My dad and I, we were going to have a sleep out last night.
In the tree house he built.” Ryan Upton continued to focus on the game in his
hands and lifted his arms only when Fina fastened the seatbelt around him.

Fina knew Ryan’s mother would die before letting her only
cub wander out alone. Ryan’s father would die before letting rogues take over
his pack.

Ryan continued unemotionally, “Something happened because he
told me to climb up into the tree house by myself. He told me to get into my
sleeping bag and stay there until he came and got me. I waited and went to
sleep but I knew I had school today and I got here early.”

Fina was astonished that Ryan had obeyed his father and
stayed put overnight. The kid only listened to her when she threatened to take
away his toys. She shut the passenger-side door, looked around, scented the air
deliberately, got back into her vehicle and drove back onto the road. She
turned on the air-conditioning, closed the external air vents, checked the
rearview mirror and pressed on the accelerator.

An hour before dusk, Fina opened the motel room door and
held Ryan back so she could walk in ahead of him. She was so used to him
barging ahead, being loud and annoying, that his acquiescence was eerie. It
wasn’t just letting her check out the room before letting him enter either.
After she’d picked him up, she’d driven for two hours before stopping for gas
and breakfast. She paid with cash. Ryan hadn’t complained when she’d ordered
pancakes, fruit and milk without consulting him. He’d just picked up a fork
with one hand after she cut his pancakes up into bite-sized pieces, started
eating and kept playing with his game with the other hand. Lunch was the same,
only they had cheeseburgers. By then, Fina’s brain had stepped out of
autopilot. It’d had to. It wasn’t just her anymore. She checked the map in her
glove box, drove to the nearest large town and headed for the Wal-Mart. Ryan
sat in the cart, his thin legs dangling in the air, his fingers moving randomly
over another one of his electronic games—the batteries had died on the first
one—while she bought them each two changes of clothes, underwear, socks and a
pair of shoes, along with a headphone-jack equipped portable radio. She also
picked up a jumbo pack of batteries.

At the next stop, Ryan walked beside her, holding on to her
purse strap with one hand as she entered an electronics store in the same
plaza. She bought a laptop, wireless internet service and a new cell phone. The
cash wouldn’t hold out if she used it on big-ticket items so she used her
credit card…well, her father’s credit card. Fina thought she’d lose it when she
signed the receipt but the light pressure on her bag forced her to keep it
together. The rogues would have figured out hours ago she’d taken off and was
probably not coming back. They weren’t vested in her and although their Alpha
would probably knock some heads around for letting their one and only female
get away, it would be a lot easier to look for other women to join their pack
than to track her down. They had their own land now. Chances were pretty good
they’d be able to lure a few young or disenchanted females away from other
packs. They wouldn’t look for her, that was, until they realized she’d taken
all the pack’s assets—and Fina had a plan to systematically strip every last
penny from the pack’s coffers. When the human authorities figured out a
massacre had taken place—if they ever did—the rogues would have to vacate the
pack’s houses for a while, at least until they came up with a cover story for
their presence. Who knew? Maybe they’d figured that part out already. All she
knew was they’d be seriously pissed when they realized they were living on land
they couldn’t legally claim title to, with businesses they probably had no clue
how to run and not a cent in the bank to tide them over until they figured out
how.

She loaded Ryan and their purchases into her vehicle and
headed for the largest crossroads in the area. A poster slogan she’d read in
some history class had been popping into her head that afternoon, not often but
often enough for Fina to latch on to it weirdly.

Go west, young man.

If it worked for young men, it would work for her too. Fina
reached the crossroads and turned onto the westbound interstate ramp.

Just after noon the next day, Fina was using a pay phone in
a mall maybe forty miles from her home. She’d doubled back in a big circle,
paying cash at every stop. The phone was the only one in the mall but the
anonymity of it was vital. “May I speak to Percival Dust, please,” she said
politely to the woman who answered.

There was hesitation on the other end of the line. “One
moment please,” the woman finally replied and put Fina on hold. Canned music
echoed through the remarkably busy mall, considering it was a Thursday, but
then the high school kids were out of school now and the grade school kids
would get out the end of next week. Fina glanced over at the mall’s daycare
service. Ryan was inside the fenced-off area, sitting on a colorful square
cushion, playing with one of his electronic games. When a little girl came up
to him and asked him what he was doing, he showed her. Fina had asked him to be
quiet and polite and wait for her. She was still surprised every time he
obeyed.

“Percival Dust here.”

Fina gripped the top of the pay phone and sighed. Kevin
Percival Dust was her pack’s lawyer. Her father had picked him because he wasn’t
local, although still in Tennessee. He was good at his job, he worked out of a
mall—which meant if one of them had to go in covertly they could pretend they
were shopping—and he was happy to indulge his clients’ quirks for a slight
markup from his usual fees. One of the Whitesage account’s quirks was a
safeword. If they needed an urgent meeting and asked for Percival—Kevin’s
middle name—instead of Kevin, he’d introduce himself back as Percival if it was
okay to come in. Until now, Fina was pretty sure nobody had had to use the
service.

“I’m downstairs. I need to see you,” she blurted out.

“Come up,” was the lawyer’s curt and immediate response.
Fina deliberately hadn’t watched the motel’s TV and every time the news came on
the car radio, she’d changed stations. She didn’t want Ryan to hear news about
his family’s death sandwiched between traffic reports and an ad for potato
chips. Last night, she’d been too tired and too frightened to turn on the
portable radio after Ryan had gone to sleep in the bed beside hers. From Dust’s
response, she had to assume there’d been something about her pack on the news.

Fina glanced over at Ryan once more, scented the air yet
again then got onto the escalator that would take her up to the professional
offices rimming the second story of the mall.

On being shown in, she sat down nervously in a leather chair
across the lawyer’s desk. She set her purse down by her feet. Kevin Dust was
pushing forty and pudgy. Wiped out follicles had left him with only a rim of
dark hair around the back of his head. His eyes were a dull dishwater gray but
once you looked past the uninspired color you could see the man’s intelligence
looking back at you.