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All of the color drained from Caleb’s cheeks, leaving a waxy werewolf scrambling across the floor to kneel in front of me. “Tina, please.”
“Was it all a trick?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Did you really get into a fight with that Marty guy in the parking lot, or was that a setup to get my sympathy? Tell me you didn’t blow up my car for no good reason.”
“Tina—”
“I trusted you, you sonofabitch! And I don’t trust anyone. You promised me, no more surprises. And this is a hell of a surprise. You lied to me. Every time you opened your mouth and didn’t tell me what you were really up to, you lied to me. I mean, I get that you’re just trying to do a job, that I was an assignment. And after seeing you work, I can respect that it’s not anything personal. But why pretend you didn’t know me? Why didn’t you just tell me Schuna was hiring you to find me? Why pretend you liked me? How could you lie like that? Why not just gag me and toss me into the back of the truck like you do everybody else? It’s not like you didn’t have the chance. I couldn’t exactly overpower you. You let me think . . . how could you let me think that I found . . . just how the hell could you?”
My rant done, I sagged against the door, all of the wind knocked out of me. I hated the tears coursing down my cheeks, hated showing the slightest hint of how much he’d hurt me. But at least I wasn’t throwing up on him. I considered that a small personal victory.
His dark eyes flickered down toward my bags. “So you were just going to leave without saying anything?”
“I wanted a head start,” I told him. When his jaw dropped, I added, “You’ve made it pretty clear you don’t care who you’re tracking as long as you get paid. You don’t care what they did or who’s after them—”
“This is different!”
“How?”
“It just is. I can’t believe you thought I would just hand you over!”
“Are you really going to try to pull the indignant card right now?”
“You know what you mean to me!”
“No, I don’t really know what I mean to you. Everything you’ve told me is a lie. I can thank you, at least, for never saying you love me. You have at least that much shame.”
“I’ve told you I love you in about a dozen ways. But believe me, if I said the words, you’d bolt.”
I slapped his hands away when he tried to touch my cheeks. “Believe you?” I scoffed. “Because you’ve proved yourself so trustworthy, right? You didn’t even admit you were a werewolf until you had no choice. Oh, my God, is that it? Is that why you kept me around? I figured out that you were a werewolf, and you wanted to make sure I wouldn’t tell anybody? You—”
“No, stop it. Stop! Look, Schuna hadn’t told me anything personal about you.” He tried to reach for me again but thought better of it when I unleashed a growl so vicious it rivaled his own on his wolfiest day. “You were an assignment, just like all of my other assignments. When I got your paperwork, I had no idea you were the sweet little pack doctor my cousins had been going on about. I didn’t figure that out until you told me. You were just some runaway housewife with a drug problem and a worried husband at home. Schuna said his client just wanted to know where you were, that you were safe. I was supposed to send him the location and then wait for instructions. But you weren’t a priority case. I wasn’t even following your trail. I was still looking for Jerry when I came across that beautiful ‘home’ smell. I followed it for days, wandering around that armpit of a town. I saw you working at the grocery store. I did recognize you as Tina Campbell, and I realized the two women I was tracking were one and the same. From that moment on, your case was closed. I couldn’t take someone in when she smelled like my pack. I wanted to approach you, to ask how a little human like you could be connected to my pack. But I told myself, ‘Not tonight. Just hold on for a while. Watch her.’
“And I watched. I saw that the story Schuna fed me was total bullshit. I saw how sweet you were to everybody who crossed your path, even though it was so obvious that you were exhausted and scared and barely hanging on. I saw you smile . . . and that was it for me. You were it for me. I figured whatever was really going on with your husband, I could find a way to help you. I’d finally worked up the nerve to talk to you, which was why I was waiting in the parking lot for you—which I will admit sounds a little creepy, now that I’ve said it out loud. Anyway, I was waiting for you, and that’s when Marty showed up, and the whole thing just sort of snowballed.”
He looked at me, obviously hoping to see some softening of my expression. He winced when he saw me glowering at him. “And that convoluted, slightly insane story explains why you continued to lie to me, how?”
“Well, how the hell was I supposed to come out with all that without it sounding convoluted and slightly insane? You were already so skittish I was afraid you were going to bolt at any minute. Then you found my tool kit in the truck, and you did try to bolt. I’m so sorry I lied, but by the time I thought you might trust me, it was too late for confessions. I knew you’d be so angry that there would be no getting past it. I just wanted to get you back to the valley before I confessed everything,” he said, as if he could tell the last few words out of his mouth were not the words of a reasonable, intelligent werewolf.
“Where I would be trapped for the winter and couldn’t get away.”
He pulled a face that looked remarkably like a wince. “ ‘Trapped’ is such an ugly word.”
I glowered at him. “I can think of a few more.”
“Can I put some pants on so we can discuss this?” he asked.
“You’re worried about being naked? Isn’t that a werewolf’s favorite outfit?”
He shook his head, glancing down. “I feel all vulnerable.”
I rolled my eyes and waved toward the bathroom. He bounded up from the floor, having recovered from his Tasering in record time, and threw on some sweats. He offered me his hand, to help me off the floor. I glared up at him.
He sighed and dropped to the carpet next to me. “I’ve kept us moving just in case Schuna sent another investigator after you. And I’ve been feeding him fake progress reports. I told him you were spotted boarding a plane from Anchorage to Ontario. And then I told him you’d taken the ferry back to Washington State. Anything to keep him off your trail. We took off after Trixie because Schuna told me he was going to send a second investigator to Fairbanks to help out. I had to get you out of town. Suds is stalling him, telling him that I’m working on another case. By the time we got back to the valley, we’d be snowed in, and we’d have time to figure out something long-term. I’ve been trying to help you, Tina, I swear.”
“Well, it’s not working, because Glenn is still driving Schuna nuts with requests for follow-up reports. So, short of killing you or faking my death, this plan is a failure.” He opened his mouth, as if he was about to propose something, and I cut him off. “I am not faking my own death.”
“I was going to ask why I would have to be killed in this scenario.”
I ignored that, because I thought the answer was apparent. “I really don’t know where to go from here,” I told him. “Everything about us is just one layer of lies after another. We’re a lasagna of lies. This is a terrible basis for a relationship.”
