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“I don’t have much time for vacations,” I told him.
“Not even when you were a kid?”
I shook my head. “My family didn’t travel much.” Another lie. My relatively well-off parents had taken me on wonderful trips to Disney, the Grand Canyon, Mexico. We’d even spent a Christmas in New York City to satisfy my mother’s fascination with oversized Christmas trees. But I hadn’t talked about my parents in years. And it hurt too much to talk about it casually.
“Still not much of a sharer, huh, Rabbit?” he asked, when I’d sidestepped a question about my birthday. “See? Cagey.”
I had opened my mouth to make some excuse, when an indignant squeal sounded from the backseat. Saved by the bell . . . or the tied-up felon, as it were. Muffled by the gag, Jerry’s pleas for us to let him go plucked at my heartstrings, and I rolled around in my head the many alternatives to giving him to Caleb’s clients. Until Jerry called me a not-very-nice four-letter word beginning with C, which came across loud and clear even with the gag. And while my sympathies cooled considerably, Caleb got angry enough that he pulled over, got a black cotton bag from his serial-killer tool kit, and pulled it over Jerry’s head.
“You are really good at that,” I told him. “Truly, disturbingly efficient.”
“I briefly considered a career as a preschool teacher,” he said, chuckling when my eyes went wide.
“Try not to be too angry with him,” I told Caleb, patting his arm gently. The gesture seemed to settle him, relaxing his shoulders and smoothing the firm set of his jaw. “I would probably call me names, too, if I was in the same situation.”
“I wouldn’t let you get into this sort of situation,” he retorted. And when I gave him an amused look, he added grudgingly, “I would try.”
I snorted. He really seemed to think he could control the universe, but I found it reassuring that he didn’t seem to think he could control me. As much as he might want to lead me in one direction or the other, he seemed to have accepted that it was futile. I liked that feeling, knowing that I’d shown some backbone in this bizarre situation, that I hadn’t backslid to the faulty instincts that got Tina Campbell into trouble.
I decided to enjoy this small victory and keep quiet for the rest of the drive to the airstrip. Caleb had turned up a Tim McGraw CD to cover Jerry’s muffled curses anyway, so further conversation wasn’t necessary. I would have to list Caleb’s taste in music as the chief of his personality flaws. I could forgive the overprotectiveness and the questionable job, but I drew the line at boot-scootin’ music.
As our headlights flashed over the faded red Quonset-style hangar, Caleb motioned for me to slide low in my seat and slipped a baseball cap over my head, covering my face. He unbuckled and turned to me as Jerry noticed we had come to a stop and began thrashing violently.
“I know you don’t like being told, but trust me when I say the less these people see of you, the better. Just act like you’re taking a nap or something.”
I nodded, pulling my collapsible weapon of choice from my bag, but I kept it low and out of sight of the trio of burly men standing near the faded red metal building marked “Bird in the Bush Piloting Service.” Considering the sheer size of Caleb’s clients and the flash of what looked remarkably like a Russian mob tattoo on the tallest one’s hand, I decided that just this once, I wouldn’t be contrary. I slouched down and yawned widely, pulling the cap lower over my eyes. I would keep an ear out for any sign of trouble, but a “waking nap” didn’t sound too bad, either.
Jerry was deeply unhappy to be unloaded from the truck and marched across the frosted grass, if his colorful, anatomically unlikely insults were any indication. Even after his use of the unforgivable C-word, his whimpers and whining still struck a guilty chord within me. How could Caleb just go through the transaction as if he was dropping off a bag of laundry? And he was delivering it to people who would beat the absolute crap out of that laundry—and that was being optimistic.
While I kept low and still in the truck, I found myself getting more agitated by the minute. What if that was me? What if some bounty hunter came and packed me up like so much luggage and dropped me at some nondescript location to return me to Glenn? Would Caleb help me? Or leave me to the bounty hunter out of professional courtesy? What would become of me if the price of selling me out went higher than the price of keeping me at Caleb’s side?
I was pondering these cheerful issues when Caleb yanked the truck door open, beaming from ear to ear, and clapped an envelope into my hand. I stared down at the plain white paper, marveling at its weight. How much had he been paid for Jerry’s head? How much would Glenn be willing to pay for information about me? The thought made my stomach pitch, but Caleb seemed oblivious to my queasy distress.>I shook my head. “Really?”
Caleb shrugged. “What?”
Unimpressed by Caleb’s life coaching, Jerry seemed to exhaust himself thrashing and growling muffled insults at us and fell asleep. It seemed impossible to sleep in that position, but given his steady snores, he was apparently comfortable enough. I napped off and on, only feeling slightly guilty that I’d had more sleep than Caleb in the last twenty-four hours and he was the one who was driving. Since he’d sort of banned me from driving, he could just deal with it. Funny, I’d had intermittent insomnia ever since I’d filed divorce papers, but I was able to nod off in a moving vehicle with a werewolf and a fugitive.
Sometime around midnight, Caleb stopped for coffee at a run-down all-night diner halfway to our destination. I woke up enough to check on Jerry, who was still unconscious, and reassemble my hair into something like a ponytail. I offered Caleb a grateful smile when he handed me a large orange juice. At that point, I wasn’t sure if I could handle caffeine or coffee breath.
“It occurs to me that other than your upsetting fondness for plastic restraints and preserved meat, I don’t know much about you,” I said, sipping the juice and welcoming the rush of blood sugar.
“I’m an open book,” he said, and gave me a sunny smile that was just obscene at that hour.
And by the way, werewolves were anything but open and honest. The CIA could take lessons in discretion and misdirection from a werewolf pack. They tended to live in insular communities, separating themselves from the outside world. If humans noticed something “off” about a werewolf, the wolf was a master at redirecting the questioning until those humans were so confused they were no longer sure what they saw. For every odd behavior, they had a dozen plausible explanations. They shared their secrets with a few select, trusted humans, usually the ones they mated with. And for a misguided human who betrayed a werewolf clan . . . well, I don’t know what happened to them. I never saw one twice. The problem with dealing with large predators is that they usually know how to hide a body from other large predators—even if those large predators include state troopers.
“And what do you do in your spare time?” I asked.
“Hunting,” he said. “Hiking.”
“An outdoorsy type, huh?” I asked, having just a little too much fun with the I know something you don’t know game.
“You could say that,” he said. “And what about you? Any hobbies I should know about? Taxidermy? Exotic piercings?”
“How did you go from taxidermy to body piercings?” I asked. “Also, FYI, piercings are not a hobby.”
“I never know with you wild tattooed women,” he said. I shot him a dirty look. He grinned. “So what do you do for fun?”
I pursed my lips and resolved to do penance for my teasing with a healthy dollop of truth. “Dye my hair. Obtain illegal identification. Forge government paperwork.”
