Pack of Lies, page 23
Eli threw the cards down in front of him, sending them fluttering around the cabin, and stood. He hurriedly crossed the room, dropping his jacket and toeing off his shoes unthinkingly, ignoring whatever Julien was saying so very urgently in the background. He unlocked the door, and stepped outside onto the platform. The cold fresh air was an immediate relief and Eli breathed deeply as he found the stairs and began to undo his pants. He could already feel his body leaning into a shift, aching for the familiar comfort and safety.
It was probably because of the way he was suddenly dropping in height that the bullet missed him, sailing over his shoulder and clanging against the metal railing with a bright spark.
Eli hit the ground in fur and scrambled on all fours back up to the observation deck. Another pop-clang, pop-clang rang out around him and he saw bursts of light in the corner of his vision. Inside the tower room, Julien was yelling. Eli reached the door and was just realizing he’d need to slip a thumb to get back in when it swung open from the inside.
Eli pushed past Julien’s legs and heard the door slam and lock behind them. He slid into the bench, claws scrabbling across the slippery wood floor and spun to face the door in a defensive position, haunches up, teeth bared, snarling, but the outside world was silent. No more gunshots. No footsteps on the stairs. The danger remained below.
Julien stood with his back pressed up against the door, staring down at him with wide eyes. Eli waited for him to say something, but Julien seemed to be in some sort of state of shock. Eli knew what he must look like. He hadn’t had time to take his clothes all the way off and he felt them hanging strangely on his body now, making it fairly difficult to mistake him for just some random enormous black wolf that had taken advantage of the chaos to book a room for the night. So be it. Eli had never in his life been ashamed of being a wolf, and he wasn’t going to start now. It still didn’t feel real to Julien? Well, Eli could be of use there, too.
He bounced on his front paws for momentum—muscles, flesh and bone slipping, aching like that first perfect stretch of the day—then quickly stood up into skin. Julien made a small terrified sound, but otherwise didn’t move, rooted to the spot. Now he reeked of fear.
Good, Eli thought viciously, and tried to feel it as well.
Julien’s whole body was trembling and the blood smell was sharper than before. There were great big smears of it on the floor, bench and door. Even as they stood there, a couple more droplets fell from his fingertips to soak into the wood by his feet. He’d clearly reopened the wound while struggling to get to Eli. To help him even while his own hands were bound.
Eli adjusted his skewed, torn clothing and walked up to Julien, who continued to just stand there. He flicked a single claw out to slice the tie around his wrists, slowly, deliberately, letting Julien see just how sharp and long and part of him it was, then slipped the claw back to a dull nail. “You’re bleeding again.”
Julien blinked, looking away from Eli’s hand and down at his own sleeve as if confused. He touched it and looked back up at Eli, eyes wide like a child’s. Or like a man just woken from a nightmare.
Eli sighed. “Take your jacket off and sit down away from the windows. It doesn’t look like we’re leaving anytime soon and I’m not dragging your anemic body around again if the castle is stormed.”
Julien reached for his zipper obediently, but his fingers were too clumsy and he couldn’t seem to grip the tag. After a few fumbling attempts, Eli unzipped it himself and tugged it off as brusquely as he could while staying careful not to touch him.
“Sit,” he repeated, and Julien wobbled his way down to the floor with his back to the bench while Eli knelt beside him. He began to redress the wound, listening to his dangerously frantic heart rate.
“You—” Julien said at one point, but that was all he could manage before falling silent again.
At least now Eli could be certain that Julien really didn’t know more about wolves than he’d admitted. It would be impossible to fake a reaction like this. Surely that was a relief, no matter what it felt like.
“Do try to get it together, Doran,” Eli said as he worked. “I need your focus.”
Julien blinked at him, then nodded, almost like an afterthought. It reminded Eli of last night and Julien gently and immediately offering a way to communicate without speaking. No doubt he’d be reading all sorts of shit into that now that he was comparing Eli to what real animals do and don’t do.
Eli shoved aside the fresh wave of sharp-edged discomfort. “The way I see it, we have two options. Wait it out in here until someone comes looking for us in the morning, or make a run for it out there now. How well do you see in the dark?”
There was a pause like Julien was trying to piece together the question. “I wear glasses to drive at night,” he said eventually.
What the fuck. “In here it is.” Eli tightened the knot around Julien’s bicep and heard his soft grunt of pain.
That at least seemed to snap him out of it. “You want to wait here? While—while a killer circles below?”
“Do you have a better plan? Outside we’re at the disadvantage. There’s only one predictable route out. It would be like shooting fish in a stairwell. Even easier if you’re moving slowly in the dark.”
“Do our phones still not have service?”
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” Eli said sarcastically. “Look, I don’t relish the thought of spending another night with you either, but as long as we’re in here, we’re safe. That’s a dead-bolted steel door. Short of explosives or one of us opening it ourselves, no one is getting inside. But I can’t do anything against a gun long-distance.”
Eli finished the last knot and stood up, moving across the cabin. “Someone will come looking for us eventually. The shooter can’t stay out there forever. The eagerness of their trigger finger indicates they know it, too. All we need to do is play out the clock.”
Thankfully Julien didn’t argue, just nodded slowly and put his jacket back on. All by himself this time, though his hands were still shaking. Eli put his own shed clothes back on and sat on the floor across the room, mirroring his position. “It’s going to be a long night of waiting. Sleep if you want,” he said, and Julien let out a strangled sort of laugh.
“You’re joking.”
“Well, don’t cling to consciousness in the hopes of any scintillating conversation on my end,” Eli said.
“I’m sorry I can’t spare you my waking presence. I’m just a little worked up right now what with the gunman, and the hole in my arm, and you—you—” Julien was gesturing to the floor, then up, then down again, presumably referencing the shift. “And you expect me to sleep?”
“Right,” Eli said. “You can take first watch then. Wake me if you die.”
He lay down curled on his side with his back to Julien. He considered slipping his ears to fur, but didn’t. Although he could hear even better like that, it would be fairly useless at the moment. Anything that escaped the muting effect of the snow was obliterated by the howling wind. And Julien’s chattering teeth were loud enough as it was.
He couldn’t really afford to sleep, of course. Someone had to keep apprised of this unholy mess. They were trapped in here for the night. On the other hand, they were safe in here for the night. In fact, this could even be considered a nice little calm before the storm. Eventually the cavalry would arrive, and that’s when it would really get bad. For one of them, anyway.
It seemed inevitable now that the Preservation would send someone in, first and foremost to deal with Julien. What if he told them about Eli’s slipping? What had he actually seen? Eli had slipped his claws to cut his ties, but practically any wolf could do that. He’d slipped his ears when Julien was shot. That was...not good. But Julien had been frantic and confused and bleeding, so maybe he hadn’t noticed. Eli had slipped a good deal of his musculoskeletal structure trying to get out of the cave as quickly as possible. He’d been terrified to find himself suddenly staring into the eyes of a stranger, thinking that a ghost of his past had caught up to him at last. That was very bad indeed. But would Julien even know how unnatural that was? Or did it all just look like one big horror show to him?
And to think, when they’d been hiking through the woods, Eli had felt like things might actually work out. Maybe they really could figure out who killed Cody and Eli wouldn’t have to run this time. Maybe they’d figure out this Sweet Pea mess so that the De Lucas had no case. Maybe they could put this whole disaster to bed before the Preservation had any cause to look his way at all. It would be a close call, certainly, but Eli had thrived on those once upon a time. For just a moment, sitting there in that cave, his biggest worry had been how to tell Julien he couldn’t possibly keep seeing him; his biggest fear realizing how much he wanted to anyway.
Not that any of that mattered now. He hardly recognized the people they’d been this afternoon. Julien had been playing a role and Eli had been playing the fool. It was painful knowing he’d been pursued because he was at best a pawn and at worst pitiable. But it was a pain Eli had felt many times before from people he’d trusted a great deal more. Julien was just a man he’d met this week who’d made him laugh and come and promised nothing.
Eli had no reason to be this hurt. No reason at all except for the raw and tender nervousness he felt whenever he focused on Julien’s too-fast heart; the shameful, animalistic urge to protect his belly and snarl at the horror in Julien’s eyes when Eli had shifted; the knowledge that the question of whether or not he might ever trust Julien with who he was had been taken out of his hands before he’d even thought to ask it. If he never heard the word monster again, it would be too soon.
Eli dragged a claw through the soft wood of the bench wall, cutting a line through someone’s doodle of Sweet Pea.
“What was that?” Julien whispered urgently. “Someone’s here.”
“No, it was nothing,” Eli said, then, because he wasn’t that cold-blooded, added, “Just contributing to the decor.” He carved another loud line through Sweet Pea in a nice surly X to demonstrate. Above it was that same A+D in a heart that he’d seen before. Ackman and Dunlop? Annabelle and David? Anywhere-but-here and the ghost of Benny Dobbs? Eli considered clawing it out, too, and immediately felt absurdly childish. He folded his arms, which didn’t help.
“Who do you think is out there?” Julien asked, barely louder than the wind.
“I don’t know.”
“Celia De Luca?”
“What? No,” Eli said, genuinely taken aback. “God, no.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, if a wolf had wanted to kill us on that cliff side, at least one of us would be dead by now.” Eli paused, listening to the slight catch and restart of Julien’s breath. Eli wasn’t breathing much himself, waiting for Julien’s response, but the silence stretched on. “Not to mention the whole benefit of being the alpha of the largest pack around is you have plenty of good little wolves to do your dirty work,” he pushed. “A pack I’ve never been a part of in my entire life, by the way.”
This time Julien just hummed softly, as if in mild, polite interest and, frustrated, Eli rolled over to face him.
Julien was also curled up, mirroring his position on the floor and watching him. When their eyes met, he smiled in a shaky way that seemed almost sad. Either that or very, very cold. Although his jacket zipped up under his chin and the hood was pulled up around his face, he was still shivering badly.
“Out of questions already?”
“Not quite,” Julien said with that same sad, quivering smile. “But I don’t want to bore you. Not when it’s been such a dull day already.”
Eli snorted despite himself.
“Thank you, by the way.”
“For what?” Eli asked warily.
“Oh, pushing me out of the way of gunfire. Getting us both to shelter. Not letting me bleed out on the floor even though you’re squeamish and would have been a lot happier if I’d remained unconscious.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Eli said. “I’m not squeamish.”
Julien made an amused sound under his breath. “I’m not sure how you’re supposed to thank someone for saving your life.”
“Save mine next time and I’ll show you.” The words slipped out and hung in the air for a moment, and too late Eli heard the innuendo. He curled up on himself a little tighter, bracing for a reaction, but Julien didn’t seem to have noticed. He just picked at the wood floor with a distant, thoughtful look on his face.
Then a small branch hit the window outside and Julien jerked in place, looking at the door immediately. “Is that—”
“Wind,” Eli said, and Julien blew out a long breath.
“Someone must be desperate to make sure we don’t tell what we know if they’re willing to stay out all night in this weather.”
“How ironic then that we know absolutely nothing useful at all.”
“But we do,” Julien protested. “We’ve got the common link now. Someone is killing whoever finds Nielsen’s treasure. Ian, Rocky, Cody, us.”
Eli frowned and tried to remember the scents of the cave, his eyes drifting shut—musky air, the warm, tingly smell of old cash, Julien’s scent sharpened by nerves, the oily leather of Nielsen’s notebook, the husk of Ian Ackman, who had been tucked away for, what, fifteen months?
Eli frowned. “They’re all very different, aren’t they? We’re shot at as soon as we leave the cave. Cody was stabbed and displayed when he got back to the lodge. Someone went to great lengths to cover up Ian’s death entirely and—” He opened his eyes and glanced at Julien, who nodded.
“Rocky died over a month later, across the country in what looked like an accident. You think there’s more than one murderer?”
Eli shrugged. “I think if it were as simple as one person killing to keep the cave a secret, they would have relocated the contents by now. Five attacks in less than two years is hardly a sustainable business plan.”
“What about Sweet Pea?”
“Is that your prime suspect? I suppose we can’t agree on everything,” Eli drawled.
“I meant, who’s setting the fires? Who dug up that hiker’s remains? Who was in the kitchen last night carving accusations into the wall? Because if I knew I’d killed someone and his body was hidden on the mountain, I don’t think I’d be drawing more attention to myself by staging Sweet Pea’s comeback tour.”
“I suppose you think it’s wolves.”
“Well—” Julien shifted around the floor. “Someone didn’t want to be seen on that wildlife camera.”
Eli bit his tongue, irritated that Julien made a good point. “Maybe. But I don’t see what cause a wolf would have to drum up the Sweet Pea legend either. The De Luca pack might want to cause trouble for the retreat, but they wouldn’t go so far as to kill Cody just for a territory grab and certainly not for a mere two and a half million dollars. And...” He hesitated, feeling oddly reluctant, but Julien needed to be told. “I can say with near certainty that wolves didn’t kill your brother to protect our secret. Not the De Luca pack. Not anyone.”
“What?” Julien blinked as he shivered. “But he was right. This proves it. He found the notebook and uncovered werew—a conspiracy.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t,” Eli said. “But do you think he’s the first one in the whole world to notice? We have a great many nonfatal fail-safes in place for just such a thing. A handful of humans figuring it out here and there will never be a threat. Certainly not one worth killing over.”
“Then, what, you don’t think his death is related at all?” Julien demanded incredulously. “That it’s a coincidence that I just found out werewolves are real and now you and I are trapped with a murderer waiting outside the door?”
“There are a large number of words I’d use to encapsulate our current situation before I got to coincidence. But surely you agree what’s happening to us and even what happened to Cody are nothing like your brother’s death. If someone here knew he’d found the cave, why wait a month to silence him? And for what reason? A copy of a notebook that’s half in code that they fail to even collect? Maybe coming to Maudit is what alerted him to wolves, but it’s not what killed him. It doesn’t make sense. You know that. No one here would have any reason to even know he found the cave at all, the way he left th—the original behind.”
“You were going to say the body,” Julien said after a moment. “Who would have any reason to suspect he found the cave when he didn’t report Ian’s body.”
“Yes,” Eli agreed. “That is the elephant in the tower.”
“I’ve been telling myself Rocky didn’t have time to tell anyone, to do anything. But you’re right. No one chased him out of Maudit Falls. He wasn’t on the run for a month. He went on other trips. He saw friends and family. He tried to tell me about werewolves. He could have told me about the murder right then and there. I would have actually believed that. I would have actually tried to help him instead of—” Julien bit his lip.
“Why didn’t he, do you think?”
Julien was quiet for so long that Eli thought he wasn’t going to answer at all. An unpleasant thing, dissecting the wrongs of the dead, particularly the ones who died wrongfully. Particularly the ones you loved.
But suddenly he spoke. “You know, when Rocky was five he almost drowned. Weird, how that works.”
Eli hummed. “Live long enough and you can find echoes of anything.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been locked up in a tower waiting to die before.”
Eli paused a beat too long and Julien’s face began to twist in alarm. “No,” Eli said, cutting that look off. Not in a tower. “What happened when he was five?”
Julien studied him with a strange look, but said, “We were at this wrap party for one of my stepfather Skip’s movies and the director lived right on the beach. The party went late, of course, they always did. Me and Rock were the only kids still there, as usual. I put him down to sleep out on the deck so I could sneak a couple of drinks—I must have been sixteen, seventeen. But when I came back out he was just...gone.”
