Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Read online

  Silence.

  “You’re saying he was murdered,” Cooper said slowly, disbelievingly. Park didn’t look capable of saying anything at all. “What did the police say?”

  “There was no police involvement,” Helena spoke up again.

  Cooper stared, not sure what he was hearing at first. “What do you mean they weren’t involved? How could they not be? There must have been an investigation. An autopsy—”

  “Was not performed. Joe was ninety-two. It was not difficult for the authorities to believe he had become confused, wandered away and succumbed to the cold. We couldn’t risk the questions.”

  “We thought it was unintentional,” Marcus said, voice quiet and looking nervously at Helena. Beside him, his wife, Bethany, placed a pale, reassuring hand to his shoulder. “He was naked, so we assumed someone had shot him while he was in fur, thinking he was a plain wolf. We’ve had trouble with hunters trespassing before. We were prepared to deal with it. But now...”

  “No way anyone thought Helena was a wolf,” Cooper finished. “A plain wolf,” he corrected himself. “If this was the same person behind both attacks, even more reason to call the BSI. There’s a field office not far—”

  “No,” Helena repeated herself firmly.

  “No? You just said yourself your pack is under attack. Your partner was murdered. Someone just tried to kill you.”

  “And your government-sanctioned hunters will help with that how, exactly?” Stuart said. “The BSI is not for us.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  ...anymore. Right? Cooper looked to Park for backup, but he just frowned and shook his head quickly in a leave it gesture.

  But Cooper couldn’t. “We need to report this to someone, anyway. You shouldn’t have to face this on your own.”

  “We always have,” Helena said. “We will deal with it.”

  “You keep saying that. But what does that mean?” Cooper recalled the conversation with the research party yesterday. “When you thought Joe’s death was an accident, were you the ones who stole the research team’s guns? Sabotaged their equipment?”

  “You mean those trespassing bastards masquerading as researchers?” Stuart said. “You know she’s not even employed. We had the police contact her supposed university, and they’d terminated her months ago.” His eyes narrowed. “How do you know them?”

  “I don’t,” Cooper said quickly. “They just gave me a ride into town after the accident.” The entire pack was watching him suspiciously, as if he had just declared himself a spy. “Did you—”

  “We had nothing to do with their missing guns. Besides, isn’t it obvious who’s behind this?” Tim asked. He looked around at each of the others, blinking owlishly behind his glasses and obviously relishing the drama of the moment. “The Rosettis are finally making their move.”

  The table erupted into a variety of responses to that.

  “No,” Stuart said. “Absolutely not.”

  “It is possible,” Marcus said.

  “But we haven’t had trouble with them for years,” Lorelei said.

  “Overdue,” Tim responded airily. “Sylvia Rosetti is ambitious. You didn’t expect her to play second fiddle forever. And you said it yourself, Stu. They’re vultures, desperate to take control.”

  “I was talking about Allana, who has been finagling to steal our territory for months,” Stuart protested. “Not Sylvia, who we’ve lived next door to in peace for years. Meanwhile, those trespassing humans with tranquilizer guns have been harassing us for over a week, trying to set the cops on us, trying to break into our home—” He had worked himself into such a rage that his eyes were glowing, the whites completely gone, and his daughter, Delia, had to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  “I agree with Stuart,” Cooper said, surprising himself and everyone else in the room. “The dart—as I remember it, anyway—looks very similar to what I saw their guide, Girard, using yesterday.”

  “But there’s no reason for them to kill us,” Park said quietly. “Joe might not have gotten along with humans, but a random research team, sponsored or not, has no reason to kill us.”

  Cooper tensed. He hadn’t expected disagreement from his own camp, so to speak. They were normally in sync during an investigation.

  He felt...unbalanced. He realized quite suddenly that this was the first time he’d ever shared a room with people Park loved as much as, if not more than, him. It wasn’t a bad thing. Just different.

  Tim was nodding. “You said those guns were stolen from the researchers, anyway. And based on the amount of time it took a human out, Mai believes the drug was specialized. Likely by a wolf who knew tearing out a throat would get them flagged by the BSI.” Stuart started to protest and Tim cut him off. “Maybe not Sylvia Rosetti. But perhaps one of her pack. Or one of the smaller packs around town. Hell, even a lone wolf could have been feeling lucky.”

  “Tim has a point,” Marcus said, glancing at Helena, who had gone stonily silent, simply listening to her children argue their various cases. “It’s no secret as to where we live. And god knows we’ve made our fair share of enemies over the years. There are plenty of wolves with reason to want the pack to fall apart. Oliver knows that better than us. Maybe he—”

  Park stood, his chair rocking on its back legs and almost tipping over. The wooden arm he had clutched now had four deep gouges in the side. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I came to pay my respects to my grandfather. That’s it. I have nothing to do with the rest of...this.”

  He walked to the door. “Cooper, are you coming?”

  Cooper realized he was gaping. “But...”

  Park didn’t wait for him to finish, just left the room. The door shut with a soft click that might as well have been a slam, and the room seemed to echo with his absence.

  Cooper stood shakily, astonished. What the hell was going on? “I should...”

  No one bothered to glance his way. They each stared at the table or each other, looking guilty, upset or frustrated. Only Helena met his gaze calmly, knowingly.

  See? See how he runs from his own family? Turns his back on what he is?

  Cooper scowled but couldn’t seem to look away. Her eyes were enormous and arresting in their darkness. Pools you didn’t dare touch the bottom of for fear of what slithered beneath the surface.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” Marcus sighed.

  Lorelei petted his arm. “You couldn’t know he’d be so touchy. All these years later, honestly.”

  Helena’s eyes flickered, releasing Cooper from their hold. “Oliver is right. If there is to be a pack war, it doesn’t involve him. Not anymore.”

  Cooper shuffled backward. Obviously that was his cue. “I’ll just...”

  “Mr. Dayton.” Helena played thoughtfully with today’s heavy necklace at her throat—some sort of intricate brass knot. “Remember. No cops. No BSI. You have no proof of what happened today and no one here will back your story.” The others stared solemnly at him in agreement. “We deal with this on our own.”

  * * *

  He found Park pacing in the sitting room across the entry hall. His face was shuttered, but suppressed anger sharpened every movement and every angle of his body.

  “Are you okay?” Cooper asked quietly.

  Park waved his question away. “I should never have brought you here,” he said. “I should never—It’s always something with them. Always.”

  Cooper thought that was a bit unfair. Park made it sound like being fatally targeted was just this week’s typical family hijinks. Previously on Everybody Hates the Parks...

  He shook his head, chiding himself. Clearly, he was still getting over the effects of the drug in his system. Everything seemed surreal, still one step removed. Of course, that could also have something to do with the subject itself. Pack wars, lone wolves with mysterious grudges and
hostile takeovers...oh my.

  And Park had the audacity to tease him for comparing it to the movies. He’d arrived in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and woken up from an unexpected intermission in The Godfather. It was too much.

  Cooper swayed on his feet, then sat gingerly on a beautiful royal blue armchair that looked more expensive than his entire wardrobe. His whole body felt stiff and trembly.

  “We’ll leave,” Park said, still pacing. “Right after the ceremony. Unless you want to go now. That’s totally fine. Better, even.”

  “Ceremony?” Cooper repeated, confused. “Don’t tell me the service is still on.”

  “Of course it is. Canceling would be a sign of weakness. And we can’t have that, can we?” Park added bitterly. “No, they’ll just smile through it, as always. Put on a good face. Never let them see you break.” He shook his head. “Well, we don’t have to. We can leave right now.”

  Could they? Besides the obvious, they were trapped in the middle of nowhere, with no transportation and what looked like a vicious storm on the horizon, while at least one killer lurked in the woods. Cooper couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so isolated. Maybe that was part of the plan all along...

  “I think our brakes were sabotaged,” he said, surprising himself. He hadn’t even been thinking it consciously, but some part of him must still have been in working order, because it made sense. “I think someone is targeting the alphas in your family, including you.”

  “I’m not part of this family,” Park snapped, whirling on Cooper. He closed his eyes against whatever he saw in Cooper’s face and gentled his tone. “Not in the way that matters to whoever is doing this. Marcus was right. They have enemies as a pack. I’m not part of that pack.”

  “He also said you’d know that better than any of them,” Cooper said. “What did he mean by that?”

  Park looked away and started to pace once more, a bit more sedately this time. But there was still a crackling energy rolling off him, electrifying the air and setting the hairs on the back of Cooper’s neck on end. “My work with BSI, I guess. You and I see this sort of stuff more than them.”

  Not really, Cooper thought. With one notable exception at the beginning of their partnership, they were nearly always called in to investigate wolf attacks on humans. Cases flagged for particular, “unusual” wound patterns. Only in a handful of those had the victim also turned out to be a wolf. Even then it was always your typical crime of passion that had nothing to do with being a wolf at all.

  This felt like war. Systematic, strategic strikes. The first declarative hits between one gang and another.

  Instead of that, he said, “If the BSI sees this all the time, why aren’t we calling them in?”

  “I didn’t mean this this. I meant death. Violence.” Park flapped his hand, casually encompassing all the horrors their job exposed them to. “C’mon, Cooper, you know they would never come. There aren’t dead humans, and the BSI wouldn’t look twice at a wolf taking potshots at another wolf. Besides,” he added darkly, “the pack would never agree to it.”

  “Do they need to? I’m not going to be bullied into silence. A man is dead. Isn’t it our duty to do something about it?”

  “Something will be done. But—” Park hesitated. “The BSI is not well-respected up here. My family is. If the local wolves find out we’re under attack and have called the BSI in, at least at this stage, where we still don’t really know anything, they could lose a lot of respect. Respect is everything. It’s one of the main currencies of our entire culture. Please trust me that calling the BSI would cause more trouble than it cures.”

  Cooper frowned, opening his mouth to retort. But Helena’s words floated through his mind. That someone like him couldn’t understand. A tool of the people who hunt and steal from us. He swallowed. And sadly, Park was right about the other thing, too. The BSI likely wouldn’t consider it in their purview. So who the hell did wolves turn to when they were in trouble?

  “All right, fine. What about the police?”

  “Once they know more, they will get the police involved. She pretends otherwise, but half the department is in Helena’s pocket. It won’t be difficult to point them in the direction of the unsub and say take out the trash. They just can’t have them stomping around investigating at this early stage. This isn’t something unaware police are equipped to deal with. Putting them in the middle of a pack war is putting them in danger.”

  “Because you’re absolutely sure it’s not the Freemans?”

  Park gave him a blank look.

  “The scientist, the husband and the holy gunman,” Cooper reminded him. “’Cause while some of their guns may have been stolen, I did just see them running after wolves with at least one working just fine yesterday. And it sounds like they have some reason to be angry, if not a total motive. How many times has your family sicced the cops on them? Call me crazy, but that looks like a clue, Blue.”

  “No.” Park shook his head. “Cooper, trust me, that’s nothing. If you knew half the shit my family has gotten up to, you wouldn’t doubt that shooting at Helena today was anything but an attack from another pack.”

  “Okay, but I think we should try and get in touch with them, anyway. We can at least try to match their darts to the one pulled out of me to confirm it to be from one of the stolen weapons. And if we can figure out who took their tranqs—”

  Park held up his hand. “Cooper, please, enough. I know that look. But this isn’t something we should get involved in.”

  Cooper gaped at him. “But we’re already involved! I talked to your cousin this morning, Raymond—he seemed to know something was going down. He warned me I was in danger.”

  Park was just looking at him with abject horror. “Raymond? Spoke to you? Are you sure you don’t mean Ricky?”

  “No, definitely Raymond. Young, blond dude. Fifty percent wackadoodle, fifty percent terrifying, a hundred percent naked.”

  Park ran a hand over his face. “Raymond hardly ever wears skin,” he muttered. “The end times must really be upon us.”

  “That’s what Helena said. What does that mean? What’s his story?”

  “No story, really. He just prefers being in his wolf form. Said it feels more comfortable one day and that was that. Tim blames Joe for it. Thinks he was too hard on him growing up, what else is new. But I’ve heard of others who choose to live in fur full time, too, and not for any reason other than natural preference.”

  “He doesn’t get sick from not being a, you know, person...shape? The way you do when you don’t shift into a wolf?”

  “No. It only affects us one way. Though it can be disorienting being in skin after long periods of not. Wolves start to...lose their memory of how to act. Like it isn’t really your body anymore.”

  That made sense and fit what Cooper’d seen in Raymond’s behavior. Which made it all the more troubling that he’d forced himself to shift and come in at all. “He tried to tell me something about she knows. Any idea what that’s about?”

  Park squinted out the window at the dark gray sky. “No.”

  “Well, is there a way we can track him down again? Ask him?”

  “No.”

  “Oliver, please. Not to be blunt, but your grandfather may have been murdered. Don’t you want answers?”

  “What do you want me to say?” Park turned back to him and raised and dropped his hands with a slap against his thighs. “‘Well, gang, it looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands’?”

  “Honestly? Yes,” Cooper said, frustrated. “Your grandfather is dead. Your family is under attack. I’ve been attacked. Maybe twice. I want to know that means something to you.”

  “Of course it means something,” Park said, quiet, cold and deadly. “You think I don’t want to find whoever did this to you right now and rip them apart? It’s taking everything I have not to completely lose m
yself right now. Every basic instinct inside me is screaming to shift, hunt and destroy the threat.”

  Cooper couldn’t stop the shiver that rolled down his spine. Park clocked the reaction and tilted his head to the side. They watched each other for a long minute.

  “I’m afraid of who I am here,” Park said finally. His voice had cracked open to something almost painfully vulnerable, and he was looking up at Cooper from beneath lowered lashes as if watching and waiting for him to walk away. “You should be, too.”

  Cooper stood and took hold of Park’s hand. “I’m not. I could never be. And I’m way too stubborn to lose you, even to yourself, so don’t worry about that, either.”

  Park bit his lip. “I need to tell you something,” he said. His breath had sped up and he rubbed his palms down his thighs nervously. “I—”

  A soft chime filled the house, humming through the air, one, two, three times. Park exhaled, seeming almost relieved. “That’s someone at the gates. The guests are arriving.” He looked deep into Cooper’s eyes and touched his finger gently to the scab on his brow. “Are you sure you want to stay?”

  Cooper reached up to grab his hand. “If you really think it’s best for you to get out now, okay. It’s your call and I will support you. But I don’t want to be the reason you leave and regret it for the rest of your life.”

  Park nodded seriously. “We’ll stay tonight for the wake. But, Cooper, please, listen to me. I don’t want to get involved in the rest of it.”

  Cooper opened his mouth, and Park cut him off. “If I start asking questions about pack relations, it could get taken the wrong way. Like I want to know for...personal reasons.”

  “Isn’t it personal?”

  “Please, just trust me on this one.”

  “I always trust you,” Cooper said immediately, and Park smiled, but it was strained, unhappy.

  “Well, not always,” Park joked awkwardly, referring to when they first met.

  Cooper shrugged in a so-so gesture. Because what Park didn’t know, had never known, was even then, despite what Cooper had been told, what his own consciousness warned, he’d been drawn to Park almost from the start. He’d had to fight his natural wanting to trust Park—with his back as a partner, with his body as a lover. He’d lost that fight faster than with anyone else he’d ever trusted before.