Cade pressed his thumb against his forehead. He never remembered more than bits and pieces of what happened during the full moon. Most people didn’t; the rest were liars. He would bet the wolf never had to deal with this sort of thing, though.
“Why aren’t you already in the office?” he asked.
He couldn’t see it this time, but he’d watched Lem shrug his way out from under something so many times he didn’tneedto see it. His memory provided the visual of a carelessly hitched shoulder for him.
“I called in to say I was running late,” Lem explained. “Elliot said you weren’t in yet either, so I figured you’d not know if I had a lie-in. Guess I was wrong.”
Cade clenched his jaw for a count of five and then decided that was too much to deal with in a public place. He had a reputation to protect, and the CEO of Cold Winds Security couldn’t curse out an employee where just anyone could hear. Any offending cop who’d crossed him, sure—he’d called Marlow, or a Night Shift who looked sort of like him, a eunuch with balls full of Kleenex once—but not his own people. They got the dignity of being dressed down in private.
“I’ll deal with that, and you, later,” he said coldly. “Get to the office and get me the name.Do notget pulled over for speeding on the way. I won’t bail you out this time.”
“Make up your mind, Cade,” Lem said, his voice lazy and good-natured. Sometimes Cade wasn’t sure if Lem realized when he’d actually crossed the line and didn’t care, or just didn’t know there was a line. “Do you want me to care about getting to work on time or not?”
Cade sighed as Lem sniggered at his own joke.
“Remind me again why I haven’t fired you?” he asked.
“Because firing your own little brother is Victorian mill-worker shit?” Lem said. “What would you do to top that?”
Cade hung up on him. He pulled his tag out of the reader and tucked it back under his sweatshirt. It felt warm and faintly greasy against his skin from contact with the overused machine.
The squirm of distaste that Cade felt made him snort to himself. He used to wake up after a full moon naked in the woods with no idea where he was and no way to call for help, not that any would have been coming. Now he complained that the tags that meant he could pick up his calls, pay for a taxi, or buy new pants—all with a swipe of the chip—felt a bit sweaty?
It was one thing to improve yourself—and Cade thoroughly appreciated how far he’d come and from what—and another to get soft.
“City wolves couldn’t hunt a Twinkie out of its wrapper, never mind a hare on the run,”his dad’s voice cracked between Cade’s ears.“You’re better than them.”
Long practice let Cade hit the pause button on that memory before it played out any further and spoiled the moment. His childhood was best enjoyed out of context. His dad was better as a ghost.
It was typical of the old bastard that he had—so far—refused to make that wishful thinking a reality.
Cade headed out into the street to see if he could find a cab. Now that he wasn’t braced to resist whatever O’Hara wanted, he could feel the question of the dead girl catch his interest. People died during the full moon sometimes—shot by the Night Shift, caught by a wolf who’d wake up in the morning with the taste of meat in his mouth and not know it was Jessica instead of rabbit—but not often, and they didn’t leave neat corpses.
A woman in a three-piece suit, heels dangled from one hand and phone pressed to her ear with the other, gave him a quick red-lipped grimace of apology as she dashed past him.
“… didn’t get them to the courier,” he caught as she paused on the curb to wait for a break in the traffic. “I know! I know! It just got away from me, but the judge won’t—”
She bolted across the road, dodged a bike messenger, and headed around the corner onto Oakwood.
It was possible that was what had happened to their dead girl, Cade supposed. If she’d died just before the full moon—of natural causes, even—and then gotten lost in the shuffle of the handover. That happened. Not all wolves were created equal. Some were more sensitive to whatever triggered the change from man to wolf than others. Cade changed early and back late; others didn’t change until the moon was high in the sky. Some changed at a different point every month.
Mistakes happened. Forms didn’t get signed because paws were bad with pens, appointments were missed, and bodies ended up unclaimed when they weren’t where they were meant to be.
Cade made a mental note to check the call logs in the hours leading up to the shift as he raised his hand to grab a yellow cab’s attention as it cruised past. The driver ignored him. Cade bit the inside of his lip as old insecurities made a bid to rise from the dead. He didn’t look lost or poor, just that he’d been caught out like any other wolf who’d gotten the idea to range too far from home turf. The driver had no idea where Cade had come from or how generously he would have tipped.
The next cab stopped. Cade pulled the door open and scrambled inside. The air freshener, cut into a cartoon pork chop shape, dangled from the mirror and filled the inside of the cab with the smell of old stones and moss. It swung as the driver reached up to adjust the mirror so he could see Cade.
“Where to?”
Cade weighed the list of things he had to do that day. He was tempted to go home, start the day out right with a good soak to get the smell of the morgue off him and his choice of freshly laundered outfits. It was a good hour out of the city—not at the Reserve; even if he could afford it, they didn’t want the help in residence—but still rural and relatively private. By the time he got there and back, even if he broke some speed laws, he’d have lost half the day.
So, the office shower and a suit that his assistant had gotten dry-cleaned a week ago it was.
“Prospect Tower,” he said. “West side entrance.”
The driver whistled. “Nice,” he said as he pulled back into the flow of traffic. “My cousin worked on that when it was going up a few years ago. He snuck me in one night. Amazing views. You work there?”
Cade pushed his sleeves up his forearms. “I own it.”
