Pack Dynamics (19 page)

“Fine,” she grumped, getting out and wrapping a towel around herself. Before she made the call, though, she turned her electric blanket on so it would have the bed nice and warm by the time she was done making her excuses. Then she could tumble in and sleep for a few hours before having to deal with whatever trouble Alex managed to get himself into in her absence.

Because he would. He always did.

O O O

Janni wrapped herself around Ben, too emotionally exhausted to cry. He’d collapsed into the bed, kissed her, and immediately fallen into a deep sleep, without a word. Cuts and punctures marred his skin, although they were already healing, and without scars, too. That was something, at least—the psychic scars he bore were quite enough without adding more physical ones to his body.

But she’d known that him going out like that was a stupid idea, and she was damned if he was going to do it again tonight, moon or no. She stuck her nose in his damp hair, which smelled of him and soap and something new and wild and not unpleasant, not at all. He’d managed to clean himself up, somehow, and she wondered how that had gone and wished he’d awakened her for it so she could’ve helped him.

She was frightened by how very much she loved him at this moment, because she wanted a future with this man and had no idea if that was even possible right now—at least the way she’d imagined it. Time yawned ahead of her, misty and uncertain and dangerous, and she squeezed him hard enough to make him grunt in his sleep.

He rolled over and enfolded her in his arms and legs, nuzzling her ear before relaxing. She was going to have to get used to him not breathing, or at least not breathing as much—she wondered if she could use it as a cue for nightmares or something. If he would even have nightmares anymore. This dynamic was going to take some getting used to.

She snuggled into his chest. He was worth it.

Chapter Fourteen

“Isn’t that interesting,” Alex said, hanging up the phone.

Janni had joined him in the basement lab a couple of hours after breakfast, leaving Ben to sleep, and she looked up from doing a background check on McFoucher. “Isn’t what interesting?” she asked.

“Seems that Brandon Kincaid, Reed’s head lab assistant? Has cleaned out his desk and disappeared. He’s not answering his cell or his home phones either.”

“Huh. Well, that’ll give me something concrete to do instead of flailing at shadows,” she said. “Be hard for him to not use his credit cards or do bank transactions. I take it you want to talk with him?”

“Especially now.”

“Well then, I’ll find him for you.”

Alex’s phone rang, and the display showed Megan’s number. He looked at the clock, startled, because she never called this time of the morning. Usually she was already at his house or at the office, in fact. “Megan? Are you all right?”

“Well, yes and no,” she said. “Nothing really to do with our current situation, but my little female problem is being more troublesome than usual.” She sounded pathetic. “Can you live without me until noon or so?”

“As long as you’re here in time to remind me to eat,” he said, only half-joking. “You know, Megan, you work for a pharmaceutical company. Surely we make something that will help you with this.”

“Not so far. I’ll see you at noon?”

“Noon it is. Get some rest.” He scribbled a note to himself to get one of his divisions working on something for painful periods, because Megan’s problem was unacceptable to him on both a personal and business level. Especially since she had been so distracted by it that she hadn’t even asked how Ben’s night had gone. Not that he wanted to tell her, because she didn’t need the worry—and now he could put it off for a few hours.

He went back to his computer monitor, breaking down the structure of the lycanthrope nanotech. Almost had it, and then he could set about doing something with it.

O O O

Ostheim’s driver took him to the office after dropping Idna off at home to get some sleep, and the first thing that confronted Hans, other than the fact that Lockwood had killed and eaten a staff member on his way out of the warehouse lab, was Dr. McFoucher’s resignation. And that wouldn’t do.

She actually picked up the phone on the second ring. “Mr. Ostheim, I expected you to call me sooner than this.” She’d known he wouldn’t let her go without a fight, which was good, because he’d hired her for her cleverness.

“What do you mean, you resign? You can’t resign.”

“Can and did. Standard non-disclosure applies, of course, but those little experiments we did with more than one unwilling test subject? You don’t pay me enough for that. You
can’t
pay me enough for that, in fact.” She paused. “I’ll forget they ever happened, because I’ll get in trouble, too, and I’m sure you’ve cleaned up any evidence anyway, but I can’t continue to work for a company that expects that of me.”

“We did good work there. You saved Idna’s life.”

“At the expense of another, who would have objected strenuously no matter how politely you asked—had you bothered asking.” She sounded tired.

He played a card he hadn’t realized he was going to until he said it. “Lockwood survived.”

She barked out a humorless laugh. “Really. Because the heart monitor told a different story. I’m a doctor, Mr. Ostheim. I think I know
dead
when I see it.”

He needed her. Her brains, her intuitive leaps, her willingness to go above and beyond in the name of the next great discovery. Not many people knew about vampires and werewolves; fewer would work with them and had the smarts to make actual contributions. “The procedure vamped him.”

“Did it? Well. Good for him. I’m hanging up now, and I wish you the best of luck.”

He struck before she could cut him off. “You’re not unlisted, are you? What if he comes after you?” He let her digest that question for a moment. “I’m insulated from his anger. I have my own security force, and I’m a werewolf myself who could most likely kill him without too much trouble if he decided to take vengeance on me. You, not so much.”

She didn’t hang up, and he heard her drumming her short, unpainted nails on some surface or other. Finally, she said, “You know what? I think I’ll take my chances with him. Because maybe I deserve it if he comes after me.” A click and the “call ended” screen told him that he’d lost her.

Most of the people who worked for him didn’t have that much of a conscience, and he wondered if she’d perhaps become yet another liability he needed to clear up. He scraped his hand over his face. Rather than making his life simpler, Idna’s cure had filled it with complications.

It wasn’t fair.

O O O

Michelle McFoucher unknowingly mirrored her ex-boss’s gesture, rubbing her face with frustration. Her elderly long-haired dachshund Franz licked her hand, and she absently scratched him behind the ears. She’d managed all of four hours of sleep, broken by nightmares and prickled by guilt. She had no idea what she was going to do as far as her career went, but not working for Ostheim Industries seemed like a step in the right direction.

Her phone rang again, and she stared at it as if it were a particularly venomous snake. The caller ID said “Alex Jarrett,” but that had to be a joke.

Didn’t it?

Why would her boss’s chief rival call her out of the blue like this?

Hesitantly, she picked up. “Hello?”

“Dr. Michelle McFoucher, please.” She’d met Jarrett, of course, and she recognized his voice—he was calling her personally instead of having his hyper-competent personal assistant do it. The day couldn’t possibly get more surreal.

“This is she,” she answered, as if in a dream.

“Dr. McFoucher, Alex Jarrett. I’d really like to talk to you about some work you’ve been doing for Hans Ostheim.”

She snapped to attention. “I can’t do that, Mr. Jarrett, even if I want to. I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement.”

“I think you might be interested in one of the side effects of your research.”

That particular carrot wasn’t tempting, so she cut it off at the pass, wearily wondering how he knew. “Is he mad? Because I wouldn’t blame him.”

“Why, Dr. McFoucher, him who?”

“Mr. Jarrett, let’s not play games here. We’re both too smart for that. Should I hide? Because I do have a bolt-hole. Is that why you called, to warn me?” She started planning on what she’d take, what she’d leave behind—and was saddened by how little she had that she valued. Franz. A few family keepsakes. That was it.

“Ben’s not holding a grudge. Very much. But I’d really like it if you’d talk to me about the specifics of the procedure, just to set my mind at ease and see if there’s anything I can do for him.”

“Mr. Jarrett, I’ll be blunt, okay, because that’s the only way I know how to be.”

She took a deep breath. “Last time I saw Ben Lockwood, a heart monitor and my own medical knowledge told me that he’d died as a direct result of something I did to him—against his will and in a particularly cruel manner. I’m less than comfortable with this knowledge, and I’d really rather pretend it never happened. In fact, I’m just about ready to change my name and go get a job on the East Coast as a waitress, frankly.”

She hadn’t meant to be quite that blunt. She hadn’t even been that blunt with herself, yet.

“That would be a tragedy. I’ve seen your work, Dr. McFoucher, and you’ve done some amazing things. Come talk to me,” he urged. “What can it hurt?”

Alex Jarrett was one of the few people on the planet who might understand a discussion about this, and she knew that she should talk to someone about it. A psychiatrist was right out, because they were for crazy people. A priest would work … if she believed in God, which she didn’t, so, no. Her mother had been dead for over a year.

Her mouth twisted. Alex Jarrett, Father Confessor. She wondered if the role would suit him, if he had a couch and would take notes, if he’d make her cookies. If he’d help her make sense of the chaos her mind had become since she’d violated her own ethics out of fatalism and the notion that if she didn’t do it, Ostheim would simply have found someone who would, who might be less gentle about … killing a man. She remembered the silver chain and Lockwood’s smoking skin and panicked struggles. Not that she’d been gentle. “Fine. What time?”

“I’ll have my driver pick you up at one, how’s that? We’ll have lunch.”

If she wanted to escape, at least he was leaving her a window. “Okay.”

O O O

Alex looked up from a microscope as the sound of Megan’s heels on the stairs alerted him to her presence in the basement lab. She gave him a wan smile. “Rough night?” he asked.

“You could say that. I saw Ben upstairs—I guess he had a hard time, too?”

Alex frowned. “Ostheim came after him. I have no idea how he got away, but he managed it somehow.”

“Then it’s not over yet. Why can’t that idiot man just be happy his wife is cured?”

“Vampires are weird about their offspring. There’s a whole psycho-sexual dynamic that goes into it, emphasis on the ‘psycho.’ Maybe Ostheim’s jealous.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Been doing some research?”

“Eh, a little, in between all this. I have to admit it’s interesting.” He waved a hand and leaned back in the chair. “Of course, a good ninety percent of what’s out there is bullshit, but enough of it isn’t that I’m getting a good idea of what’s what. Werewolves are a lot simpler. They’re basically big dogs with an inflated sense of pack.” Which explained why Ben had torn that one guy to pieces—the man had injured his
mate
.

“I can see you’ve been busy.” She gestured around at the controlled chaos of the lab. “What have you found out? And did you remember to eat something besides one of those horrible shakes?”

“I’ve figured out the nanotech, for one thing. Very tricksy stuff, that is—I should have been paying Reed more because the man was a genius. And I have a lunch appointment with Dr. Michelle McFoucher, so I’ll eat something good for me there.” He couldn’t keep the smugness out of his voice; he had made an appointment all by himself that he had every intention of keeping. Ha. “Could you print out that email about Ben dying? I’d like to take it along.”

“Gotcha,” Janni said from across the room.

“Who’ve you caught now?” Alex asked with good humor.

“Brandon Kincaid. His phone records tell me he talked to Ostheim on Saturday, not too long after Reed used the nanotech on Ben. And guess who checked into a no-tell motel last night and used his card to put gas in his car and eat dinner.” Janni tapped her teeth with her pen. “Either he isn’t worried about being found or he’s dumb as a stump. Want me to go get him?”

“Oh, yes. I’m betting he knows something. The timing of him taking off is just too coincidental.” Alex shrugged. “And if he doesn’t know anything, we can just cut him loose.”

“Back in a flash.” She got up, checked her purse and her gun, and strode out the door. Alex knew exactly why Ben called her “Hermia.” Five-foot-nothing of fire-forged steel; little and fierce, indeed.

Alex looked at his watch. “And I have to go too, Miss Graham. I have a lunch appointment with a lovely scientist.”

“Here’s that email,” Megan said, handing it to him.

He gave her a jaunty grin. “Things are looking up.”

His grin slipped a little when he realized that Phelps wouldn’t be driving him, and why—but Harris, one of his backup drivers, was waiting on standby. Alex grabbed a laptop to do some work on for the trip over to McFoucher’s place and piled into the back of the Bentley, ignoring the tightening in his chest and focusing on what he had to do.

He was just glad that Megan hadn’t asked him if he’d slept at all. Glossing over that sort of thing wasn’t ever easy because she had a tendency to nag. But he fed off the energy he generated in the throes of really good research, and sleeping wasn’t really an option. He knew he’d pay for it later, he always did, but for now?

Getting chased by an angry Pamplona bull had
nothing
on this.

O O O

After pouring herself a cup of coffee, Megan dove into the wreckage of Alex’s schedule. The first thing she needed to do was placate the Board—several members were wildly unhappy with her boss, and a couple were making noises about injunctions and no-confidence votes.

The current emergency seemed to be winding down, and she hoped it would be completely over within the next couple of days. With this in mind, Megan fired off some properly apologetic emails, setting up yet another teleconference for Thursday at nine in the morning.

Her phone rang a few minutes later. She looked at the caller ID and cringed. Calls from board members never boded well.

“Hello, Mr. Clarke. What can I do for you today?”

“Nine in the morning seems ambitious,” he said without preamble, “knowing Alex the way I do.”

“He’ll be there if I have to drag him by the scruff of the neck,” Megan said.

“See that he is. Barnhardt and Peterson are getting restless again, and they’re not the only ones. Canceling three meetings in a row was … impolitic.”

“I know.” The problem was, she fretted, that she couldn’t exactly say that the reason they’d canceled the Saturday meeting was because Alex had been shot while rescuing someone he’d hired off the books to look into industrial espionage they thought might be coming from inside the house. Even though Clarke and Alex were actually friends, Clarke could only be pushed so far, and he’d be less than pleased at this latest turn of events. Megan could have lived without it herself.

“Especially since we specially scheduled the one on Saturday.” He clearly wanted to know why, without coming right out and asking.

“It was a real emergency, Mr. Clarke. I wish I could tell you more, but I really can’t without clearing it with Mr. Jarrett first. But Thursday should be fine.”

“Make sure that he’s there, and sober. He doesn’t have many friends left on the board, Miss Graham. I don’t know how much longer I can hold off some of the more vociferous members.”

Her mouth turned down at one corner. “I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will. He works you too hard.”