Pack of Lies, page 8
Nia studied him, dark eyes disappointed, and then let out a heavy sigh. “You don’t know the first thing about this territory, Mr. Smith. It wouldn’t be so shameful to admit you’re out of your depth and walk away. I imagine it wouldn’t be the first time.” She signaled Brett to the door. “Think about it. Sometimes plans just fall through. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong person in charge.”
Fortunately, they left after that. Unfortunately, as far as parting shots went, it was a haunting one. Eli sat on the couch with Boogie twisted on her back in his lap, staring at the fire, thinking. When was the last time he’d been the right person for a job? For a job he wanted to do? He couldn’t seem to remember. Somehow that made Nia’s words feel more insightful than he would have liked.
“Are you all right?”
Startled, Eli turned to find Gwen watching him from the dark hall.
“What good are winter nights if not for getting melancholic?” Eli said lightly, a bit embarrassed to have been caught off guard for the second time that day. He was losing his touch. “Would you like to join me?”
Gwen hesitated then padded silently in and curled up in the chair opposite him. “Those were De Luca wolves,” she said more than asked.
Eli arched an eyebrow. “You’re remarkably quiet.”
“Sneaky and rude, you mean. Whenever my pack needs someone to eavesdrop, they send me. My old pack, I mean.” Gwen’s faintly sad smile turned anxious. “I hope you don’t think that means I’ll spy on you, though. I wouldn’t.”
Eli shrugged and didn’t bother to point out she already had. It’s not like he wouldn’t have done the same. “I had a similar role myself when I ran with rebels. Don’t worry yourself.”
“You were a rebel?” Gwen asked, sounding surprised. “I thought... Well, I heard them say you left Helena Park’s pack to be with her grandson and his human lover.”
Eli barked out a laugh, surprised. “What a delightful Design for Living that would be. But alas it wasn’t quite as dramatic as all that.” Or maybe it was. After all, it had taken four murders, a long-lost sister and a good deal of blackmail to get him to leave one pack for another. But that was another story. “Helena Park was my alpha until recently, yes, but before her I was with a rebel pack out west.”
“Was it...bad?”
“Not at first,” Eli said, which was putting it mildly. In actuality it had felt like belonging for the first time in his life. He’d have sacrificed anything for the chance to join them. In fact he had. “I was happy with them for a long time. I suppose that’s what made it harder to notice when things got bad.”
Gwen hummed, a sympathetic sound. “I thought I was lucky to be with my pack once, too. That we were special somehow. That we were...going places. Took a while to realize the alpha was going places, not me. All I was good for was hiding behind doors.”
“I suppose we all had our jobs,” Eli mused. “Though some were distinctly dirtier than others.”
“That’s one way of putting it. What did you do? With the rebels?”
“Oh, stole things, mostly.”
Gwen gasped softly under her breath. “Really? From—”
“Just unaware humans, of course,” he said. And aware humans. And other rebels. And the wealthiest ruling packs around, most of whom now held seats on the Preservation and absolutely could not realize who and where he was. And pretty much anyone who could either afford it or had something his alpha James particularly wanted.
“Shit, that’s...” Gwen bit her lip and peered at him from under her lashes as if deciding something. “I used to help my alpha blackmail people,” she blurted, then blushed. “An-anytime she wanted something from someone, I had to go find some dirt on them for her. It was a horrible thing to do, I know.”
Eli felt a prickle of uneasiness followed immediately by guilt. On his personal metric of loathsome, blackmail was high. But that might have to do with the fact one could find enough dirt on him to build a small island out of the Mariana Trench. There were after all people who considered letting yourself into strangers’ homes a worse crime, and Eli had never felt particularly bad about that. “I suppose we do what we think we have to in order to survive.”
“Sure. Until I realized my alpha thought she had to have power over all those people in order to survive. Most people can’t tell the difference between what they want and what they need.”
He hummed neutrally though personally he found the people who confused the two were often those who’d never really known real, desperate, life-or-death need.
“It’s why I finally decided to get out for good,” Gwen was saying. “What about you? What made you finally leave?”
“It’d be more accurate to say I was left,” Eli said, looking down at Boogie and stroking her softly under the chin. “Terrible job security in petty crime.”
There was a silence and when he glanced back up Gwen was watching him with a rueful grimace. “You’re right to be wary. But I swear I’m not going to blackmail you.”
“The thought didn’t even cross my mind,” Eli lied hastily. “It just isn’t a particularly good story. One day my pack took something we shouldn’t have. The alpha sold us out to some humans. There was some bad trouble. Helena Park saved me and offered me a place with her pack. I lazed around there for a number of years then took this job under Oliver Park and his mate, Cooper. That’s all.”
It sounded absurdly simple said like that, and he could see Gwen was still hurt. She wanted more. Expected it, even, after she herself had been brave enough to begin to share her own past with him. But there was nothing else he could say. It was a lonely life living so many lies. Every little bit of intimacy contingent on exposing a secret that put him at risk.
He couldn’t possibly explain the way he’d felt when he’d first seen James and his pack of rebels without revealing too much of his upbringing before. Couldn’t fully explain how James had immediately put him to use, stealing from the most powerful ruling packs around the country without revealing his slipping abilities. Couldn’t explain how James had traded a chained, slipped and monstrous-looking Eli to human hunters in exchange for his own freedom without reopening wounds that had only just begun to close and were still infected and raw.
There wasn’t much he could bear thinking about from that time. But he still remembered Helena crouching over him, a lump of ill-fitting, unmatched flesh and fur on the floor, and promising she would never ever use him the way James or the humans had.
“Why should I believe you?” he’d asked.
“Because I don’t need you. I never will.”
Almost pathologically cold, Helena. And yet it was the only thing she could have said that he’d believe. The Park pack was one of the most powerful ruling packs on the continent and Helena held an untouchable seat on the Preservation because of it. She had spies across all three factions—royal, rebel and WIP alike—and even deep within the Trust, the supposedly neutral government agency that investigated crimes against wolves. Helena needed a wolf that could contort his body to enter any home and pick any lock like the queen needed a petty thief to access the royal coffers. Nor had she seemed to mind that he’d spent most of his youth with the rebels stealing from rich ruling alphas like her. If anything, it had entertained her to hear which of her peers he’d robbed, who secretly showered in fur and who talked in their sleep. There was a strange sort of safety in being an amusement—unnecessary and ornamental. So he’d stayed with her, gotten better and gotten on with, if not life, then at least the act of living.
It was shocking how much time could pass that way. For years he’d wake up, run, eat, walk, get lost in stories, walk, run, eat, walk, run, run, run, sleep. Then do it all again in the morning. Every day filled with little pleasures to make himself feel well. To avoid the ever-watchful chasm of his past, his pain, his own nature. Until one morning Eli realized feeling okay had turned into the longest, most time-consuming passion of his life.
Maybe it had been foolish to leave that behind. But a collection of good days makes a good life like the same short story over and over makes a good book. And when his carefully constructed world had unexpectedly imploded last summer with James’s murder, he’d taken the opportunity to write his own fresh start.
Breaking away from Helena’s padded kennel, joining Oliver and his pretty little whippet’s pack... He’d wanted good this time. Sometimes, in his most maudlin moments, he wanted to be good. Which had, in its own circuitous way, led him to believing he could possibly be responsible for a place like this. How hopelessly arrogant. How utterly laughable. Never mind the humans, De Luca, or the Preservation; Eli couldn’t even have a properly empathetic conversation with a fellow rebel wolf without wrapping himself in lies on lies on lies.
“What are you going to do?” Gwen asked, pulling him out of his increasingly morose thoughts. That question again.
“As much as I hate to admit it, De Luca and her henchmen may be right,” Eli mused. “For all the ruling packs’ sins, they’re unmatched in their ability to put supernatural rumors to bed.”
“Oh no, you can’t!” Gwen said immediately, then bit her lip worriedly. “It’s just that I don’t know where I’d go if this place closed. I mean, I’d figure it out. I have before. But I’d rather not have to be on my own again. I know that’s stupid, but I... I hate it.”
“Not at all,” Eli said, a little startled by the vehemence in her voice at the end. “Most of our kind do. But you needn’t worry about that. Even if the Preservation gets involved, you won’t have to leave.”
Of course, Eli himself would need to be long gone by then. He simply couldn’t risk the eyes of the Preservation on him. Not now. Not ever. Nia and Brett didn’t seem to have any idea who he was in his previous life, but many of his old marks still held power in that world. How long would it take for them to start asking questions and making connections? Would Helena still protect his secrets then? Even her power had limits. In theory. Anyway, he didn’t like the idea of sticking around to find out. Oliver and the whippet could find a different, better choice to manage their project, and Eli would simply start over again as someone new. Just like he had countless times before.
“I’m sorry,” Gwen said. “I feel like I’ve brought a mess to your door.”
“Unless you’re the one playing the enigmatic role of Sweet Pea to frighten Annabelle to death, then you haven’t done a thing wrong.”
“You think that’s what someone’s doing?” she asked.
Eli looked at her sharply. “As opposed to there really being a Sweet Pea?”
Gwen shook her head quickly. “No. No, of course not. I meant, what if it’s not about frightening them at all? What if it’s a scheme to get, I don’t know, tourist attention?”
“Then it’s a scheme going poorly. The business seems to be running into the ground.”
“The opposite then. Sabotage. Who might want them to fail?”
“Besides the competitive business on the other side of the mountain with even less ‘guests’?” he said wryly.
To his surprise, she growled. “Doesn’t it make you angry? They’re going to blame us for this. Some fool puts us all at risk by fucking around with humans and instead of figuring out who and why, all De Luca does is use the opportunity to grab more territory. It’s everything that’s wrong with ruling packs these days.”
Eli shrugged. He tended to avoid emotions like anger until he was already running a brisk forty miles per hour in the opposite direction of any problem. Nursing a lifelong grudge didn’t hold quite the same appeal without a long life to live. “It’s terribly tiresome, yes, but De Luca won’t get away with it. When it comes to uncovering a plot, the owners have some experience. They’re Trust agents, you know.”
Gwen’s eyes flashed and she pulled away from him. The scent of her fear made his claws prickle. “The Trust? They can’t know I’m here! Weren’t you listening? I’ve—I’ve done things! Recorded people and helped set them up, and it won’t matter that I didn’t want to, they’ll take me away!”
“Oliver and Cooper aren’t going to care about all that,” Eli said. “They don’t even need to know.”
“Would you take that chance in my shoes?”
Well, no. Not in a million years. And if it were any other two Trust agents in the world Eli would have already run. He supposed it was hypocritical of him to be planning his own escape route and judging her for doing the same.
“Perhaps... I could look into it,” Eli said hesitantly. “Try to figure things out myself first.”
Gwen blinked at him, her face relaxing a little. “Really? And then you wouldn’t need to call the Trust?”
“Not if I’m successful,” Eli said, warming to the idea. If he could figure out who was really playing peekaboo between the trees and prove that it had nothing to do with the retreat, De Luca would lose any ability to make a complaint. Gwen wouldn’t get spooked by the Trust and Eli wouldn’t have to run. Oliver and Cooper could remain blissfully unaware on their honeymoon until it was time to come home, at which point Eli would have masterfully averted catastrophe and they would count themselves lucky to have invited such a responsible wolf into their pack and entrusted him with the running of the retreat.
After all, it was merely a matter of tracking down what amounted to a petty vandal, which didn’t sound very hard. He had plenty of experience with criminal investigations. Nearly always from the other side of things, but still. Surely that still counted for something. He knew it wasn’t Sweet Pea and he knew it wasn’t him, and that put him two major suspects ahead of everyone else involved, which wasn’t a bad start. Annabelle had even invited him to join her the next morning, which couldn’t be a better opportunity to try on his sleuth hat.
It seemed absurd, a monster going monster hunting. But why not? Just for a couple of days. What could possibly go wrong?
* * *
The next morning was gloomy. Everything was fogged with gray—the sky, the air, the snow—and there was a slight bite in the wind that warned of worse weather to come. It was the sort of day that begged you to stay home in bed.
Not that bed was a very nice place to be at the moment either. Julien had spent most of the night staring at the moonlight moving across his ceiling. The countryside was supposed to be so dark, but in fact the moon seemed brighter here. Maybe because of the snow or the lack of competition with city lights. A couple times Julien considered getting up to close the curtains, but then he’d have nothing to keep him company outside his own sleepless brain, aching like a bruise. Running shorter and shorter loops. Arriving nowhere.
He’d stayed up late poring over the books Patrick had recommended. The couple of times he did manage to drop out of consciousness, fleeting and dissatisfactory, he’d dreamed of animals running across the road, reflective eyes, Eli Smith standing at the edge of a waterfall fluttering his fingers goodbye, hello. It was easier in the end to watch the moonlight.
By morning, the weather had become dangerously foggy for skiing, so Annabelle invited the entire lodge to accompany her and Patrick on their hike to the activity site. At this point “everyone” consisted of a mere six guests, but it was still convenient for Julien, who had agonized over how he might ask to join them. Mr. and Ms. Miura politely declined, deciding to spend the day in town, which left Julien with Annabelle, Patrick, Cody and the trio of German university students who seemed to find the prospect of monster hunting too amusing to pass up.
They gathered by the ski lift. It was the quickest way up the mountain, Annabelle explained, that could also accommodate the entire group. “Then there’s a trail at the top we can take to the site. It’s about a twenty-minute hike until the—oh, Mr. Smith!”
Julien turned along with everyone else. Sure enough, Eli was walking toward them from around the lodge, impossible to miss in a retro snow jacket in geometric neon orange, teal, purple and lime green.
“Jesus,” Cody muttered beside Julien. “If there is such a thing as Sweet Pea, I hope he’s color-blind.”
“I didn’t think you were coming,” Annabelle called, apparently delighted.
Eli just smiled demurely. “Someone recently reminded me it’s good manners to acquaint yourself with the local milieu. And if there’s one thing you must know about me, it’s that I can’t abide rudeness.”
“That’s the spirit,” Patrick laughed.
Annabelle continued to explain how they were getting there, what to expect at the top and why they were going, but Julien wasn’t paying attention anymore. He drifted as casually as possible over to Eli, who stood a little distance from the others with a politely bored expression.
“What are you doing here?” Julien whispered. “Or did somebody else drop their poker chips?”
Eli smiled without looking around at him. “Worried I’ve had a change of conscience and decided to tell everyone I caught you with your hand in the proverbial cookie jar?”
“No,” Julien said quickly. Although that was one explanation for why his heart had started beating a little faster when Eli had arrived. “I have nothing to hide.”
“Neither do I,” Eli purred. “Look at us. Two open books.”
“Sure. Except yours is written in code. And invisible ink. And has one of those paper snakes that pop out and scare the shit out of anyone who picks you up.”
Eli made that odd huffing sound again. “I assure you, Mr. Doran, I’ve never received a single complaint from those blessed enough to pick me up.”
Annabelle saved Julien from coming up with a response to that by waving them over to the lift. “Come on now, boys! Fall in line, we’re heading up!”
Everyone else had already gotten into pairs while they were talking, so Julien supposed he’d have to ride up with Eli, which was bad luck. He was too distracting, for one thing. Julien had to muster all his focus for deflecting insults and sexual innuendo and cryptic comments, which embarrassingly didn’t leave much room in his head for anything else.
