Wolfe (3 page)

“Maybe.”

He had both eyes open. Today was very much a day for truth then. Both eyes were a startling blue. Had he been concealing the healing of his eye...or the lack of injury? Wait. No. I
had
seen the opacity. His cornea had once been white and sunken. You just didn’t heal like that. No one could. They hadn’t even bothered lining him up for corneal surgery, having assumed the internal damage was too great. That was how bad it’d been. Yet here he was, seeing me – no doubt with great clarity, from the steadiness of his gaze.

What was he?

All the tiny hairs on my neck and arms stood up. For how long had he been fooling us? Or was it simply the lower drug dosages that had wrought this crazy miracle?

Impossible. Incredible. Alarming.

Argh.
My head spun with all the ramifications and possibilities, and I rose, dusting off my lap. “I should go in.”

As I walked away, he spoke again. “Don’t be afraid.”

I was wondering as to the meaning, perhaps avoiding letting myself know it, when he dropped in the last words.

“Of me.”

Though my throat tightened, I didn’t turn. I hurried along the path that led to the door...that led inside to safety.

I
was
afraid. And I didn’t know why.

Wolfe. How appropriate.

I was beginning to see, no, to
feel
, why they wanted him watched.

He wasn’t what he seemed to be.

* * * * *

Once unencrypted, the thumb drive said all the wrong things.

Take him to your house. Hold him there for one hour.

I assumed that was so they...whoever they would be I didn’t know...could check that nobody had detected us or trailed us.

Why my house? Did they
want
me picked up by cops?

Maybe they wanted me to go back to Croatia, or to Russia? It seemed so. If I wasn’t fast at leaving the USA, or hiding, I’d be in jail after removing a patient from care and giving him to strangers. I was to deliver him to another New York address after waiting that hour.

This wasn’t good. I’d lose my job, my career, my country, and I’d been here most of my life. Croatia five years. Russia, two. Here? I had been born here, so that made it... I added it up again. Nineteen.

I buried my face in my hands, pressing on my eyes to stop them leaking tears. Damn them. What choice did I have? My stepfather had made one stupid mistake and now they held it over me. Do this or he, and probably my mother too, would be prosecuted. Treason wasn’t a slap-over-the-knuckles offence. He hadn’t mean it to be treason, just hadn’t thought.

Damn them to hell.

I expected them to want me to go with them too. They wouldn’t leave me to be questioned by some belated intelligence operative, whenever the CIA figured out Wolfe was somebody of importance. Having me killed seemed a possibility and it made me even more anxious. I’d probably watched too many Hollywood spy thrillers.

What had this man done? Screwed Putin’s mistress?

I chewed on the inside of my lip.

What was done was done. Abandon my mother, my stepfather – who was a good man – or this.

I’d have to take my car into work tomorrow, but they didn’t expect nurses to abduct patients. I could do this. Lunch hour would be a good time to do this. Some of the men were going to a meeting, after lunch, about vets and government funding. I could fudge a signature to say Andy had gone too.

Then I’d leave with him. They’d realize I’d vanished, but not connect it to him immediately, and I could text in and say that I’d taken ill suddenly. A bad excuse but it’d hold off enquiries for hours. They’d just swear at me in my absence and think about firing me.

The one big question was, would he come with me? The lowered medication meant he was brighter, thinking better, and less compliant.

My hypothesis had been correct. Inside his mind, Andy was firing on almost all four cylinders. The drugs had affected him in an idiosyncratic way. Terrible really. But...

I straightened in my chair. The second big question. What happened when his system was fully clear of drugs? He might become difficult to control.

I should get a small stockpile. What the fuck did it matter if they discovered I’d stolen drugs? The US government would shoot me, or jail me for a hundred years, if they worked out I was involved in espionage.

My heart ached. I didn’t want to do this.

This was a sad day. I’d had such hopes.

Wolfe

I was in a car. I’d been in buses before, I vaguely recalled. Field trips, visits to doctors, maybe. I remembered the trips and being wrapped in that fog. Sometimes things were so clear now that I was dizzy from the sensations.

The world whirled. I grinned at the word rhyme and at the whizz and rumble of traffic flying past this white sedan of Kiara’s.

“You okay, Andy...I mean Wolfe?” A little frown formed then vanished. “Should I call you that? I mean if Andy isn’t –”

“Sure.” I nodded to reassure her.

“Until you remember the other name?” The light we were stopped at changed and she stepped on the gas.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Wolfe.”

It sounded as if saying it made her uncomfortable. Funny. It was a name associated with a predator but why would that bother her? Unless she thought of me as other than safe?

Idly, I watched the traffic, thinking, loving being able to think. I felt fresh, alive, unfettered.

Kiara had said bad men were coming for me at the village and that was why I had to go with her.

She was lying.

How did I know that?

I didn’t know how I knew.

But...simply
knowing
thrilled me.

I liked her, but she deceived me for some reason I couldn’t figure out. She thought I was stupid and I wasn’t, or not anymore. I think I had been, so I could forgive her assumption.

Her hair was up in a bun...

Light gleamed on the tightly woven strands and sometimes sneaked around the edges to blind me. I kept looking at her anyway. Seeing her in silhouette, concentrating on driving, left me free to observe.

I should be grateful for the help she’d given me. I was. Besides, she enticed me. The uniform shaped across her ample breasts, concealing and revealing all at once – the subtle curve of upper breast and of her cleavage...the straining of buttons, the glimpse of thigh where the dress had ridden up, even the shift of muscle as she used the brake.

I imagined sliding my hand over her thigh then between her legs.

I drew a breath and reached down to retrieve the sketch pad from the floor, turned to a fresh page, and began to draw.

“What are you drawing?” She dared a sideways glance before the road compelled her attention.

My lips parted but I held back the smile. “You. I haven’t tried drawing a person.”
A woman.
I swear my balls tightened at the very thought of calling her a woman.

“Okay.” She chuckled. “Make it good.”

“I will.”

“This’ll take another hour before we’re home. The traffic’s awful.”

She was lying about the bad men, but I was curious. Where was she taking me? I was done with doctors. The situation had matured. My past, dark and tumultuous, waited above and at the fringes. A tidal wave would be no less scary. I admitted that to myself. My past scared me. It was an unknown, yet in my dreams I’d seen it as bloody and filled with horrors.

Waiting for
that
to come to me was not my way. I’d seek it out and meet it head on.

Perhaps she was a part of my forgotten past? Time would tell.

I started out imagining her sitting in a field of flowers but the sketch took on a life of its own and I followed where it led, adding more details, more darkness at the edges.

By the time the car was purring closer to where Kiara said we needed to be, my hand had cramped and my arm trembled from fatigue.

What a sketch and where had my strength gone? I’d hefted boulders, once, climbed sheer walls by force of will.

Had I? Where the fuck had that come from?

“Done?”

“Huh?” She meant the drawing?

“Finished the artwork?” She turned the wheel. “Nearly there. We’ll have to walk for a few minutes to get to my apartment. I don’t have a parking space under the building.

“Uh-huh.”

I stared at the page, flexing my fingers to try to get the blood flowing. No daisies. No flowers. The pencil had created her naked, with an ugly, rough chain circling her neck. She kneeled at the feet of someone huge, a colossus of a man seated on a throne of bones. He wasn’t done but when he was, he’d have the other end of the chain wrapped in his veined fist and he’d be snarling.

I probably shouldn’t show her this sketch.

That was when the color began peeling off my hand and tumbling away. I clenched my fist and more flakes filled the air. The car expanded, shrank, and colors settled into a pulsating vibrancy. I inhaled, smelling dust, fumes, gasoline, and her. She penetrated everything – female, fertile, and lush with the scent of her cunt.

Impossible. The blue of the sky filled my eyes... The reds of signs popped, the greens of the grass spiked through pavement, even the brown of the dust on the glass vibrated in my vision.

I gripped the pencil and it snapped. I teetered on the edge. I wouldn’t look at her until this went away.

I was going crazy, wasn’t I?

“Oops. Brandon fuckwit is here.”

I dared to eye her, despite knowing her voice might be the trigger and her cunt was an apocalypse waiting to devour me. The erection in my pants throbbed.

If I couldn’t get –

“Get the fuck away, bitch! My park!” The roar of a male, outside the car.

I snarled. The sound shocked me.

An orange cone was set in the middle of a space our car was aimed for. The engine idled. Behind us came the honk of a horn.

“Brandon! You can’t save it!” She said in an aside to me, “He does this. Asshole. Tries to save parks while his girlfriend brings the car around.”

I should laugh at that. My muscles said otherwise. Blood thrummed in my head in a hot tide. Flesh and bone screamed as I made hard fists, tighter,
tighter
. The car handle squeaked as I turned it, shoved the door wide, and exited.

Gray and rusty buildings towered above. A dog, small and terrified, poked a nose out of an enclosure. The wire jingled. Kiara’s car throbbed and she glared from behind the windshield.

A man in a torn-sleeved shirt and jeans leaned on the trunk of the car at the front of the space. His fair hair rose up like a fence. Tattoos played down his arms.

“Who the fuck are you?” he sneered but stood and had backed a half step before I caught up and lifted him by his throat and threw him so he rolled along the concrete, head over heels, leaving traces of blood and shredded flesh.

“Go!” I kicked the cone aside and stood on the sidewalk watching him run.

His last word gift, a dwindling
fuck you,
made me grin.

With the car parked, the engine switched off, and the doors locked, Kiara joined me. “What the hell was that?”

I wasn’t sure myself. Colors still bobbed on the periphery. When I followed her, the buildings above leaned in, as if to see what I would do next. Or maybe to bury us. I growled at them and was satisfied they’d stay away for now.

The woman’s ass beckoned me onward. The darkness sifted down, filling shadows, hiding. Not so bad, I decided. Darkness was good sometimes, I could find the sun again, when I needed to. In the meantime, where was she going? There were bad men somewhere, I remembered.

She’d know who.

My shoes crunched and scraped on litter and the crumbled pieces of brick and concrete. The sides of the buildings crept closer.

“Not far to go. I don’t come this way by myself.” Her smile invited my assent. “You get some creeps lurking here sometimes but it’s a good way to get into my apartment without most people seeing us. Today, that’s a plus. We’ll just wait a while and some friends will come.”

Ahead, our path led under a building. There were doors in there and dim overhead lighting. Fluorescents. I recalled that name. Sound echoed.

The colors ebbed and flowed, weakened.

Again with that smile of hers and I saw sweat on the back of her slender neck, recalled the clutch and release of the steering wheel as she drove. Her fingers fidgeted at the handbag where it tapped against the side of her pale uniform. She worried.

Why?

What did she know? Why lie to me? The woman lured me.

“No one under there?” Her laugh was bright. “Why am I worried when I got you, Andy? The way you tossed Brandon...”

“I’m not Andy.” The word rasped from my throat, grumbled even, ripped out through my loathing. A false name, a false past. “Not me.”

“’Kay. Oopsie.” She turned and backed a few steps. “Sorry. Wolfe. I’ll remember.”

Guess I was glowering. Her backing up sent a delicious tremor though my groin. She tripped on a stray brick and muttered
fuck
before recovering. Her eyes were big and she fumbled in her bag.

Though she looked down and spoke quietly while she searched, as if to herself, her words reached me. “God. Today is just... Why did I agree to this?” Her swallow moved that little female throat, tempting my teeth, pulling a smile from me after all. “I’ll just get my keys.”

Fleetingly, she met my gaze before turning to the gap in the building again, to that opening.

No one was here. Just two double-steel doors ahead to the right. Another few doors to the left. All shut. A few cars in a row, parked nose-in to the wall, and a big rectangle of light where the building was open at the other end for the cars to drive in. A cracked tile floor.

We were almost under there, in the cave of the walls. The hum of the building’s machinery blocked the sound of the traffic and the sound of people. The colors flocked in, intensified, screeched a little before the screech changed to a static buzz.

“Did you lie to me...girl?” I wasn’t sure she’d heard. Like, maybe, I didn’t want an answer, yet. Slow answers could be so nice, extracting them.

“What? The elevator’s just...” She indicated. “You be good now, won’t you? This won’t take –”

Then I felt something shimmy in – a connection to her, an old but new sensation. So I grabbed that link when I grabbed for her. She took a step but I caught her with two fingertips, by the collar of her dress, and hauled her back to me, wriggling.

“Hey, hey,” she rasped, half-choking. She could’ve screamed, though. Not wanting anyone to hear, I guessed, despite the violence. Scared of being found out more than of me?

“Why’d you lie? Why?” I lifted her a few inches and shook her a little, in mid-air, then I pinned her to the corner of the building by her shoulder. “Why? What bad men?”

“I...never –” Her voice ran down. She’d figured out denial wasn’t going to work on me.

“Yeah. I know. I know things, in here.” I put my finger to her forehead then ran it down her skin, down the side of her face and across her cheekbone, then along her jaw and beneath.

I tipped up her chin.

“You’re going to do something for me.”

I could feel the connection strengthen, waver, feel a buzz of static in my ears.

Could I? Should I?

She’s only another girl.

Another...like I’d had many. Had I? I couldn’t keep up with myself.

Doubt sidled in and poked me.

“What?” Her husky, expectant reply pulled me back. The link was in her, hooked in, deep. She’d never get it out.

“Pull up your dress and show me your panties.” I felt her thigh. Stockings. I pinched the slithery fabric then let go.

Her eyes took on a starry glaze and widened in one jump – like maybe she’d seen heaven pass by.

“Do it. Fucking do it.”

I stepped away to watch. Her hands crept down her sides, as if someone else controlled them. Me. Her mouth worked, her lips said silent curses or prayers.

“Now.” This was fun.

“I am. I am.” She shook her head crazily but her hands still crept down. “Stop. Please.”

“No.” I smiled at how she struggled but obeyed.

After a strangled whimper, her fingers gathered the bottom of her uniform, to either side, and she inched the dress upward. A hint of panties showed – a tiny triangle of pretty, pink lace.

“More. Tuck your uniform behind your ass and lean on it. Then pull down the top of your panties until I can see you properly.”

She’d know what to do.

At the push of her fingers, the panties rolled to the top of her thighs.

Once she’d done that and stood there quivering, waiting, I leaned in with one arm propped on the wall, and I kissed her on the mouth. I sucked the life out of her, enjoying how she let me and only made small sounds of pleasure or dismay. When I stopped, she grunted, unhappy.

“Bastard,” she whispered.

Some of her still knew what was right.

Some of me did too, but I grinned. “Yes.”

It was what it was. Control, complete and devastating. To her. The control pumped excitement through me. I could fuck her here and she’d let me. My cock swelled in anticipation.

She had no idea how this could be. Neither did I, though I knew I’d done this before. Sometime. Somewhere unknown. To women I’d forgotten. Did it matter? The why?