Pack of Lies, page 27
Then he remembered the hard edge he’d rolled on earlier. Quickly he reached into the zippered lining of Eli’s coat, but there was no weapon.
Just Nielsen’s notebook.
Eli had stood there right in front of them all, taunting murderers, tempting death and lying his beautiful ass off to save their lives while the book was within arm’s reach the entire time.
A knack for hiding, indeed, Julien thought, shaking his head, and ran out of the tower room with a half-assed plan. At the bottom of the first flight of stairs, a lone wolf in fur stood on the landing alone, staring down over the edge. Julien swayed in place on the top step.
Eli? he tried to say, but no sound came out. He didn’t have the air left in his lungs. Its fur was steely gray with patches of fading auburn, and when it turned to look at him, he saw yellow-brown eyes. Not Eli.
The wolf snarled, and behind her Julien saw a flicker of movement. Two furry black paws clung to the edge on the wrong side of the fencing, claws caught in the metal grating of the landing. How long could he hold on like that? How was he holding on like that at all?
Julien held Nielsen’s notebook in the air. “Gwen! I have what you want!”
The gray wolf took a step toward him, shoulder hunching as if preparing to jump. Julien tore a hunk of about twenty pages straight from the middle of the notebook and tossed them over the edge of the stairs and into the wind. They were carried twisting and flapping like a flock of birds over the cliff side. Julien threw the rest of the notebook after them as hard as he could.
“What do you want more, to kill him or to get those pages before they’re lost for good?”
Gwen stared at him, brow furrowed, revealing her front teeth.
“Just go! Bucknell’s dead. You have the notebook. Take your chance!”
She took a couple steps backward, hind legs teetering at the stair’s edge, rolled her shoulders forward and leapt directly at him.
That was not how it was supposed to go.
Julien instinctively threw his hands up over his face and curled his body away just as he felt Gwen slam into him. It was her breath he felt first, warm even through the coat. Then her teeth sank into his shoulder and Julien sort of lost track of the order of things.
He knew he was no longer standing. He felt himself slammed into the stairs. He saw fur everywhere he looked and heard screaming, probably his own. He felt her biting him again and again and again. Ripping into his flesh.
He kept trying to grab at where she sank into his skin. Out! Get out! But his hand just slipped uselessly across her silky coat, muzzle, skull. Once he felt the smoothness of teeth under his fingertips and froze, too scared to reach again in case the next thing he felt was her jaw closing around his wrist, too tired and dizzy to know what to do instead. Then, with a tearing in his skin, a horrible yelp and the ringing thud of a body against metal, she was gone.
Julien forced his eyes open painfully, not sure when he’d closed them, and saw Gwen at the foot of the stairs scrambling back to her feet and staring back up at him. Ears flattened back and head low, she looked...terrified. Gwen let out a high-pitched sort of whine and jumped to the lower landing with a clatter of claws on metal, making her way to the bottom of the tower as fast as she could.
Heart pounding in his shoulder, Julien rolled his head back on the step and saw a dark shape crouching over him. From this angle all he could see was black fur and a wolf’s paw on the step by his cheek. It seemed too big. Thick. Wrong. Julien touched it and felt a man’s ankle.
It pulled gently away from him out of his darkening field of vision, and for a moment Julien was alone. Then Eli appeared, kneeling on the steps beside him, so pale he was bordering on blue, blood dripping down his arm from a gash across his hand, eyes luminous, face slightly too angular and teeth far too sharp. He looked like something out of a nightmare.
Julien thought he’d never seen anyone more beautiful in his whole life.
“I thought you’d fallen,” he croaked.
“I can be very misleading.” Eli’s smile looked strange on his pointy face. Much too sad. “Hey. Where do you think you’re going?”
I’m right here, Julien said, or maybe he didn’t. It was hard to hear himself in this strange, floating hush. He tried to stay focused on Eli, convinced that the moment he looked away Eli would disappear into nothingness, and watching him was the only thing still holding him here. But everything felt too heavy. And the sky was too pretty. It had started to snow again and the flakes looked like pages of paper in the wind.
Julien realized he was wrong. The panic right before falling asleep, the endless grief—they didn’t feel anything like dying at all. He closed his eyes and hoped for better dreams.
Chapter Thirteen
Dr. Irving to the nurses’ station, please. Dr. Irving to the nurses’ station.
Julien’s eyes blinked open and he winced. He tried to bury his head into the pillow to escape the fluorescent light, but his head ached like a hangover, his body sloped as if the entire right side was missing, and the paper-thin, scratchy sheet smelled like puree of sweet potato.
“Oh god,” Julien groaned, giving up on that immediately. He opened his eyes again, slower this time, and looked around.
The first thing he saw was the flowers. Cheery potted poinsettias. Bouquets of camellias and carnations. There was even a small bundle of floppy pale purple blooms Julien was fairly sure were sweet peas. He barely stifled another groan and turned his head the other way to find a man sitting by his bed watching him. A man he’d never seen before in his life.
“You have a few fans among the hospital staff. The notes are very...heartfelt.” The man wiggled his finger weirdly as if it was the word itself that was embarrassing and not the fact that he’d been snooping through someone’s get-well cards. “I’d try to remember that when you find out one of them told the press you’re here.”
“You read them?” Julien asked, mildly disapproving before the rest of what the man said caught up to him and the last tendrils of brain fog faded away. Everything crashed down on him at once. Eli. Wolves. Their night in the tower. Bucknell in the snow. Gwen in fur. Her teeth ripping into his skin.
Julien looked down at his arm so quickly his head swam. It was bent flat against his chest in some sort of sling and cocooned in padding from knuckle to bicep to shoulder to chest. So much padding that it might not be there at all. With growing panic Julien realized he couldn’t feel any of it. Only a heaviness on his chest and a tightness just below his collarbone. Julien tried to flex his fingers and felt a muted, tugging agony, like a charley horse echoing somewhere in the void of his right half. His middle finger managed to twitch, though, which meant the arm continued underneath those bandages. Probably.
“What happened?” Julien asked, tearing his gaze away from the lump of gauze he hoped was still his hand. “How long have I been here? Where’s El—”
He stopped himself. The man wasn’t dressed like a doctor or nurse. He wore casual, active-ready clothes, although it was difficult to imagine a person who looked less inclined toward coordinated, graceful action. Noticeably thin with strikingly long legs, he sat perched on the edge of his chair like he didn’t quite know how to fold his coat hanger body into a normal, relaxed position, and kept shifting in place and tapping his fingers restlessly on his thigh.
Was he a detective? A Fed? Who else would be sitting here waiting for him to wake up? How could Julien even begin to explain what had happened up there without mentioning the wolf thing? Worse, what if this man already knew the wolf thing? What if this was someone from the cabal sent to find out what Julien knew? What if he was one of the people Eli was afraid of sent here to take him away? Unless he already knew where Eli was, because he’d been arrested or hurt or—
“Stop that,” the man said sharply, tapping at the bed insistently just beside Julien’s leg without actually touching him. It was so bizarre that Julien actually stopped panicking for a moment. “You’re supposed to be taking it easy. Your arm got pretty torn up, but you’ll recover. You’ve been more or less unconscious for a day and a half and missed the fallout. Good call.”
He didn’t say it in an unfriendly way, but there was something about him that made Julien uneasy. He had a pleasant enough face—attractive but not especially so. Long, expressive hands. A gentle, crooked smile. Nothing that should feel intimidating at all. And yet...
“Who are you?” Julien asked.
“I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk,” he quoted, flapping his hand. “Not a man who likes talking to a man who passes out after hello like the last three times we’ve had this exchange. How do you feel?”
“Like my arm might actually have been ripped off but you don’t know how to tell me.”
The man’s smile got a little more crooked. “That does sound like me. Fortunately for both of us, you’ll be fine. Your arm’s attached. Your doctors said with physical therapy you should regain full motor function. You even got to sleep through your rabies shot.”
“Did I need a rabies shot?” Julien asked, startled.
“I guess that depends on who was gnawing on your arm.”
It was the eyes, Julien realized. They were a common enough brownish-hazel color, sure, but there was a discomforting sort of intensity to them. As if every minute movement and expression that Julien made was being caught and studied. It was a bit like finding a bird of prey walking around on the ground. Stilted and out of its element—with a gaze still sharp enough to notice a mouse a hundred yards away.
Julien had a feeling he had been cast in the role of the mouse. “I don’t remember much about it,” he said carefully.
“Do you know what attacked you?”
“No idea.”
“Want to make a guess?”
“Not really.”
“Who else was up there when it happened?”
“I don’t know.”
The man looked at him with frank disbelief. “You don’t know who you were in the tower with?”
“I don’t know who I’m in the room with right now,” Julien said pointedly.
“I work for the Trust. Have you heard of it?”
“I don’t know, have I?”
The man sighed. “Eli told me you were charming. I assume he’s never tried asking you a question.”
“Who?” Julien said.
“All right, all right.” The man shook his head. “If I’d known you’d wake up swinging, I’d have taken a one-and-a-half-day nap to prepare, myself. My name is Cooper Dayton and I’m an agent with the Trust. We investigate violent crimes against wolves. Would you like me to pause here so you can say something aggressively oblivious about wolves or may I continue?”
“Dayton?” Julien echoed. “You’re Eli’s family?”
The man looked genuinely taken aback. So much so that Julien wondered if he’d fucked up.
“I mean, you’re the one who owns the retreat?”
“Yes,” Dayton said after a moment. “I guess I am.” He rotated what looked like a wedding band on his finger absently.
Julien couldn’t remember if this was the ex or the one who’d married the ex. He wasn’t sure which he’d prefer him to be. “Is Eli okay?”
“He’s fine. I left him playing gin rummy upstairs in the maternity ward and cheating so outrageously that one woman faked her water breaking just to avoid paying up.”
“But was he hurt? Can I see him? Is he—okay?” Julien realized he’d asked that already. But he didn’t know how else to ask. Is he happy? Does he want to see me? “What’s going to happen to the retreat?”
Dayton was looking at him a little strangely. “He’s a little banged up, but no one tore his arm off, if that’s what you mean. And nothing’s going to happen to the retreat. Thanks to Eli’s impeccable managerial foresight to spend all of his time elsewhere, the retreat isn’t even involved in this latest clusterfuck. Ian Ackman’s being autopsied soon, but I’m confident Cody Reeves murdered him last year and that David Bucknell murdered him in turn.”
“Is Bucknell—”
“Dead,” Dayton said bluntly. “We’ve asked for a full review of all of Bucknell’s previous cases, as well as an examination of the Maudit Falls Police Department as a whole.”
“You think he’s done something like this before?”
“I’m not expecting to find a string of murders in his past if that’s what you’re asking. But if he was willing to abuse his power to get what he wanted this time, I think it’s fair to question whether he’s ever wanted anything before and what happened then.” Dayton quirked his lips into an odd half smile, half grimace. “I’ve never known that sort of entitled corruption to spring up without precedent, have you?”
No, he hadn’t. Particularly with Bucknell, who had spent the last year lying to, manipulating and essentially torturing a woman he’d known his whole life.
“Does Annabelle know what happened?”
“She’s been informed.”
“Is she okay?”
“After finding out how one of her oldest friends killed her boyfriend and her boyfriend killed her partner? Not particularly. Though I think she stands a better chance of becoming okay than she did surrounded by assholes. Eli told me Professor West is planning to stay with her for a while. At least until she decides what to do with the lodge.”
Julien bit back a curse as a swooping pain yanked oddly somewhere under his collarbone.
“What’s wrong? Do you want a nurse?”
“It’s fine. I just squeezed my fist too tight,” Julien said hastily. “When did Eli talk to Patrick?”
Dayton gave him another curious look. “West stopped by this morning. Is that a problem?”
“No. You’re sure he didn’t know anything about...anything?” Julien winced at himself.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Dayton said after a moment. “The cryptozoologist being one of the few humans not aware. But so far it looks like Gwen Evans only told Bucknell about wolves to have an inside man at the lodge and control the investigation into Ian Ackman’s disappearance. Celia De Luca is claiming she knew nothing about Gwen’s hunt for Nielsen’s treasure and I’m inclined to believe her. Unfortunately she also denies being the one to assign Gwen to infiltrate and spy on the retreat, which I doubt very much. But if there’s an upside to all of this, it’s that Celia De Luca is going to have to back off from interfering with this area for a while. Whether she was acting immorally under her orders or going rogue, Gwen’s actions don’t look good for Celia, either way.”
“Did you find her?” Julien asked. “Gwen, I mean.”
“No. She’s gone. Along with Nielsen’s notebook.” Dayton hesitated. “The Trust is going to want to collect your copy.”
Julien had been expecting that. “Aren’t you the Trust?”
“Yes,” Dayton said, though he shrugged as he said it. “I’d also like a look at the thing. Would Gwen have any way of knowing you have a copy?”
“No.”
“Would anyone?”
Julien shook his head.
“Eli told me about your brother,” Dayton said so matter-of-factly that Julien’s throat caught painfully. “How is it, do you think, he was able to find the cave when Gwen and Bucknell couldn’t?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did your brother know Ian Ackman?”
Surprised, Julien just stared at him for a moment. “You mean before Ian died? No, not that I know of. Do you... Are you saying you think someone told Rocky where the cave was before he got to Maudit?”
“Those directions on your version of the map, is that the sort of thing your brother would have written?”
“It was his handwriting.”
Dayton studied him, and improbably his gaze seemed to grow more intense. Julien looked away, feeling strangely guilty. He had the nagging urge to defend himself. To explain to Dayton about Rocky and the mistakes he’d made. All the things he’d gotten to tell Eli and all the things he hadn’t.
Julien flexed his fingers impulsively and was punished with that nauseating tugging feeling. The pain helped clear his head. There was a sharper center to it now, like squeezing a pillow with a piece of glass buried inside, and he realized the drugs were wearing off. Not a moment too soon, really. He didn’t like this erratic feeling. Eli might consider this guy family, but Julien didn’t know him. Didn’t trust him one bit.
When he looked back up, Dayton was pulling a small card with an illustration of a teddy bear holding a heart on the front from his pocket. He handed it over.
“What’s this?” Julien asked, taking it.
“Your medical charts.”
Julien resisted throwing the card back at him. Inside there was the usual get-well scripted nonsense, with a handwritten note added at the end in pen:
Congratulations on your find! Happy Hunting!
“Where did you get this?” Julien asked.
“It was delivered with those purple flowers there. Any idea who might have sent you that?”
Julien shook his head.
“What about the message? Do you know what it’s referring to?”
“I don’t know,” Julien said. “The notebook? Or the money? Gwen?”
“But those aren’t what you came to Maudit for. And you didn’t manage to hold on to any of them from where I’m sitting.”
“Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner leaves a little something to be desired?”
Dayton shrugged. “That’s fine. Saves me the trouble of trying to be subtle when I tell you this. I have strong feelings for Eli. Shockingly they’re not all variants of exasperation. It’s important to me that he’s happy.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Please. I—” Dayton started to say when a small knock startled them both. Julien looked up to see a man opening the door. More than anyone he’d met in Maudit so far, this was who Julien would have guessed was a wolf. Tall and muscular, he had an expressionless though undeniably good-looking face and radiated a deadly sort of competence even in a pricey-looking suit.
