Pack Dynamics (8 page)

She waved her fingers weakly. “Just a dizzy spell.”

“Do I need to get you someone to eat? One of the servants would be more than happy to provide you a snack, or I could—” He stripped his sleeve back even as he spoke.

“No, darling, thank you.” This worried him even more. She cupped his cheek. “But I think our timeline should be moved up. If it can be.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Anything for her.
Anything
, he thought, and picked up his phone as she left, dialing the number of one of the people he had in his pocket on the board of directors at Jarrett Biologicals.

“I thought I told you not to call me,” Barnhardt said, obviously unhappy at being disturbed. “Especially on a Saturday.”

“And a good day to you, too,” Ostheim said. “You people need to learn a better way to manage Jarrett. Because whatever you’re doing now isn’t working.”

“Do you
watch
the news?” Barnhardt sounded impatient. “He has the controlling interest in the company. Nobody ‘manages’ him well but Megan Graham, and even she only succeeds about half the time. And no one manages her.”

“No?” Ostheim drummed his fingers on the table and made a decision. “She has a secret you might do well to exploit.”

“Miss Graham has never had a moment of impropriety. I don’t see what you could possibly say—”

“Miss Graham is a lycanthrope, just as I am. It’s not impropriety, but it is a secret she wishes to keep from Alex Jarrett. A word in her ear at the right moment could be apropos.”

A pause. “You have proof of this?”

“Would I offer you the information if I thought you couldn’t use it? We don’t let outsiders in on our status without very good reason.” His very good reason was ill and resting up in their room.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“See that you do.”

O O O

Mike Reed sat in his preternaturally neat office at Jarrett Biologicals, elbows resting on an uber-organized chrome and glass desk, massaging his temples. The pounding in his head beat a counterpoint to the pounding on his door that told him Brandon was worried.

Mike had done some idiotic things in his career, but this took the cake, mashed it up, and fed it to a colony of fire ants. He had no idea what had possessed him to bring that particular compound with him when he got the call, other than Hasgrave’s urgent tone of voice on the phone coupled with the outrageous hour.

And then to use it and
leave
? Mike was socially awkward at the best of times, and Jarrett was a force of nature who generally got exactly what he expected—in this case, he expected Mike to want to come back here and work on his latest project. And rather than argue the point, he’d done exactly that.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” He straightened two pens beside his mouse pad that were already perfectly aligned.

But he hadn’t even hesitated. The guy had been dying on the table, and the standard stuff had already been fruitless. Except.…

Side effects.

Only they weren’t side effects. Side effects were
unintended
consequences of medication, whereas the effects here were not only intended, but the stated goal. The “side effects” of this thing were the benefits that had manifested in the OR.

Which meant he’d better get Ben the hell out of there before the intended effects became evident or who knew what would happen?

Well, no one. And that was a problem. Because he hadn’t tested this on people yet—and wasn’t sure he should, because it wasn’t meant for “people” in any case—but he had a bunch of scary-looking rabbits, both alive and in various stages of dissection, back at his house, and they’d been out of control and hard to kill, with fangs and claws like something out of a horror movie.

Mike buried his head in his arms. He wasn’t sure, when all was said and done, that Ben would thank him for saving his life.

Chapter Six

Janni’s brow creased. Ben had snarfed down three huge roast beef sandwiches and two slices of stuffed-crust all-the-meats pizza and fallen asleep on her shoulder. “Not that I’m complaining about him being actually alive, but should he be this tired?” she asked Alex. “Because you got shot, too, and you’re not crashing in the middle of a sentence.”

She could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes, wondering how much he should tell her. “Ben’s injuries were … a little worse than mine, Janni,” he said slowly.

She lifted an eyebrow, and his mouth did that thing it did when he hadn’t been completely honest and gotten caught. Alex had a terrible poker face.

“Okay, a lot worse than mine.”

“How bad was it?” she asked quietly.

“How much do you want to know?”

“Just give me the general picture. I don’t need details, but toss me a damn bone, Alex.”

“Mine was pretty simple, through and out, right side, the bullet didn’t tumble or splinter a rib on its way in. And I hadn’t been tortured for two days first. Ben—” Alex paused for a second, and Janni found herself wishing she hadn’t asked. “Well, he probably would’ve died if Mike hadn’t gotten here when he did.” His mouth quirked again. “There it is.”

She closed her eyes and breathed for a few seconds. She’d suspected, but not known. And she wasn’t sure that knowing was better. Kissing Ben’s hair, she squeezed him, not hard, not wanting to wake him up, but needing to feel him, whole and solid and alive, next to her.

He stirred, and sighed, and opened his eyes with a lazy smile, the one he had just for her. “Hey. Did I fall asleep?”

She nearly choked, because he’d almost been taken from her twice in two days, and how could he be this cavalier about it? “Yeah.”

“You all right, honey?”

She swallowed. “Fine.” More breathing. “Okay, maybe not.”

He sat up and reversed their positions, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the top of her head. “You wigging out?”

Everyone else busied themselves doing other things.

“A little.” Sniffles. Dammit. She hated crying in front of him, because it stressed him out, especially when he was the cause of it. On the other hand, she’d determined long ago that crying over physical issues rather than psychiatric ones was more permissible. So. Here she was. Sniffling.

“Because it’s okay for you to wig out. If it was you, I’d be a basket case. More of a basket case,” he said into her hair, and her heart twisted at how very self-aware he was. “No lie. You don’t have to be my Hermia, little and fierce, all the time.” He exhaled a shaky laugh. “Although it’s awesome when you are.”

“Just … please be more careful? Please?”

“Trust me, my life isn’t usually this exciting.” He kissed her again and put his hand over his heart. “I solemnly swear that my life will go back to boring. No more shooting people. Or getting shot. See? All better.”

Never had Janni simultaneously wanted to kiss and kill him at the same time as much as at this moment. She settled for a not-so-gentle hug. “I’ll hold you to that.”

Alex’s cell phone rang. He looked at it before answering. “Yeah, Mike? What, no, he’s fine. You’re fine, right?” he said to Ben.

“Considering everything? Yeah, better than fine,” Ben confirmed. Only Janni was close enough to notice the light tremor running through him, and she stroked his chest with the backs of her fingers in an attempt to soothe his always-unquiet nerves.

“He’s fine. No funny side effects … should there be some? What did you use? I forgot to ask.…” He listened for a minute. “Really? Excellent … Sure, he can probably come by the lab in the next day or so … Okay, you could do that instead. Thanks, Mike, we owe you one.”

“Funny side effects?” Janni asked warily.

“Eh, Mike’s a worrywart. The stuff he used is perfectly safe. It was just a higher concentration than normal is all.” Alex shrugged. “He’s coming by later to check up on the results.”

Janni snuggled into Ben’s side. “And you’re really okay, right, Ben? You wouldn’t shit me about it so I wouldn’t worry? Because I know you.”

“Nah, honey.” He took his glasses off and waved them around. “Better by the minute. Seriously.” He dropped the pitch of his voice so only she could hear. “Physically, anyway. The other part—well.”

She relaxed, somewhat, because the other part was old hat and routine and she could deal with that. “Okay, then.”

O O O

Megan wasn’t so sure, and she almost wished that Mike would show up sooner rather than later, because her wolf was more restless than usual and she didn’t know why. She noticed that Ben’s expression got pensive when he put the glasses back on, and he took them off and hooked them over the collar of his T-shirt, rubbing the bridge of his nose and grabbing another slice of all-the-meats pizza, which her inner wolf approved heartily.

Or maybe he was just tired again. Tired still. Megan had never had occasion to be on the receiving end of the nanotech that had gotten her boss out of one wild scrape after another, but she’d seen how it made Alex alternately ravenous and exhausted. Whatever this new stuff was, it apparently worked the same way.

In spades. Ben nodded off practically in mid-bite. Janni grabbed the pizza before he dropped it, set it aside, and smoothed his hair back. Exhaling a trembling breath, she hopped off the bed. “You got a little girl’s room down here?” she asked.

“Round the corner on the left,” Alex said, pointing.

“Thanks.” She made her escape.

Megan gave her a few minutes and followed, finding her sitting on the floor in the hall with her knees pulled into her chest and her arms over her head. “How’re you holding out?” Megan asked gently.

Janni didn’t look up. “It’s hard, you know? Seeing him like that? And I don’t like crying in front of him because that makes things even harder on him than they already are.”

“I know.” Megan sat beside her. “I’ve seen Alex hurt like that plenty of times. And I have to take care of him, because he won’t take care of himself, and there’s no one else to do it but me.” Of course, most of Alex’s wounds were self-inflicted—which didn’t actually mean they were easy to deal with.

Janni looked at her from under her arm. “But you don’t love him. You say.” She scrubbed at her hair with her fingers. “It’s different.”

“I don’t love him, and, yes, it’s different,” Megan acknowledged. “But I like him, and so it’s still hard.” Maybe if she could get Janni talking, it would ease the knot in her own chest. “How did you meet?”

“Dad left us when I was four, and Mom moved us here from Texas when I was five. Ben and I went to high school together.” Janni huffed out a strangled laugh. “Not sweethearts or anything, just friends with the same people, and we weren’t even that close. After we graduated, he joined the Army and went to Afghanistan, and I went to college and majored in theater and English, of all the stupid-ass things. I was waitressing for a high-end caterer—still am, waiting for my ‘big break,’ like that’ll happen. I do some work at the PI firm on the side sometimes; I think my mom would like me to take over when she retires, honestly. I don’t know if I will.” Janni seemed to realize she was rambling and wrenched herself back on topic. “So Ben came back just devastated because his parents got nailed by a drunk driver while he’d been held prisoner by insurgents.”

Megan flinched, and her wolf whined. “That … had to be hard on him.”

“You could say that. I didn’t find that out until later. So some mucky-muck or other puts on this big dinner for returning vets, hires my boss to cater it, might have been Alex, in fact. And I’m there, waiting tables, hadn’t thought about Ben in months except in passing—you know, ‘Gee, I wonder how old what’s-his-name is doing’ sort of thing—and there he was. Barely holding it together. You could see the effort he was making to not collapse and lose his shit at this thing, because it was too much, too soon. He’d only been back for something like five months, and he’d been a prisoner for seven.” She rubbed her arms. “And he managed it. I have no idea how, I would have been hiding under the table making blubbering noises, but he did it.”

“Tougher than he looks,” Megan said.

Janni nodded. “Oh, yeah. But he’s a lot more fragile than he looks too.…”

O O O

Janni had been the last one out of the reception center that night. The live-in owner locked up behind her, and she walked across the parking lot to her car. The familiar strains of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” made Janni look up from fumbling for her keys, and she felt a moment of disquiet when she realized that hers wasn’t the only car left in the lot.

She shaded her eyes from the overhead lights and saw that whoever was in the beat-up yellow Jeep was resting his forehead on the steering wheel with his shoulders slumped. She tilted her head and frowned, debating if she should get involved. She’d been on her feet in high heels for three solid hours and just wanted to go home to a hot bath and a movie script. She had an audition the next day.

But she wasn’t completely heartless, so she decided to make sure the guy was okay and then go. She took a couple of steps toward the car, squinting, and realized she knew him. She took her hand out of her purse and off the grip of the little .380 her mother insisted she carry when she worked late nights (because she wasn’t completely stupid, either). Walking up to the car, she tapped on the window with a fingernail in the silence between songs. The window slid down, and Ben looked at her without turning his head.

They’d recognized each other at dinner, made small talk. Janni had inwardly admired him, because he’d been through hell in Afghanistan and come out whole on the other side. But “whole” was apparently an illusion he wore like a mask, and maybe she hadn’t been imagining things when she thought he might flee from the room at any second during dinner.

The mask was off now. His over-long blond hair was a curly mess; it looked as if he’d been running his hand through it again and again. Dark circles surrounded his eyes behind his glasses. He’d taken off his suit jacket and unknotted his tie, and the sleeves of his white dress shirt were rolled up over his forearms.

“Hey,” he said. She could barely hear him over the music. His fists clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. She didn’t think he was even conscious of doing it.

She inhaled sharply when she saw the handgun sitting on the passenger seat. “Hey,” she answered. Trying to be nonchalant and failing rather miserably. She couldn’t keep the squeak out of her voice, and she swallowed hard at the metallic taste of fear that filled her mouth. “I’m, uh, done here and could really use a cup of coffee. I’d love some company?” Her palms were sweaty and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

He closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. His hand twitched toward the gun, and Janni froze—no way could she stop him if he was going to do something drastic, although adrenaline had flooded her system and she was pretty sure she could jump over the Jeep from a standing start if she wanted to, even though the thing had a good four-inch lift. She wasn’t worried about Ben shooting her, because … well. He just wouldn’t. But shooting himself was a real possibility.

A memory from high school bubbled up—she’d been upset about something, didn’t even remember what it was, and he’d made her laugh with some unexpected and off-the-wall sarcastic comment. It was something he did all the time, back then.

But she wondered how close to the edge he was now, if confronting him was
the
one last thing that would push him over, if maybe she should have left him alone. But “left him alone to do precisely what” didn’t bear thinking about, and his hand stopped briefly before moving to the radio knob to turn the music off. “You know a place?” he asked into the sudden silence.

“Yeah.” Her heart hammered in her chest. “There’s one just around the corner. Let me take you there.”

He forced the most brittle smile she’d ever seen, and she relaxed. Marginally. “Okay,” he said. “Sure. Okay.”

She stepped away to give him room to get out, and the window rolled back up before his door opened and the locks clicked. She glanced through the door as he got out, and the gun was gone from the seat. She hoped he’d put it in the glove box instead of his pocket, but didn’t want to ask. They got into her little blue Hyundai, and she started it up and put it in gear before she noticed— “Seat belt?” She’d fastened hers automatically.

“Don’t wear ’em,” he said shortly. She flinched, and he eased up with a rueful twist of his mouth. “Bad memories, honey. I don’t like being restrained. It’s a thing.”

When they got to the cafe and sat down with decaf and coffee cake, Janni had to almost physically stop herself from asking what had happened to him in Afghanistan. Reliving the horror right now wouldn’t do him any favors, and he still had the tense bearing of someone who wanted to bolt off into the night.

Ben picked at the cake with his fork, not eating, just shredding it. Now that she had him, she didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t seem inclined to volunteer. Her heart hurt to see him like this—the boy she’d gone to school with had been cheerful on good days and bitingly cynical but still funny on bad ones, and the man who’d come back from war was a silent, wounded stranger.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not very good at this interpersonal stuff anymore.”

“No, hey, it’s all right.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “I get it.”

His head didn’t come up, but his eyes did. “Do you?”

She examined the silverware pattern. What a stupid thing to say. “Well. Not really. How could I? But—” She faltered. “If you want to talk about it, emphasis on the
if
—”

“I don’t. Talk about it.” The muscles in his throat worked as he swallowed, hard. Scars ringed his wrists, standing out in sharp relief against his tan, and he rubbed them with his thumbs. The short, choppy sentences came out in a rapid staccato. “More a matter of can’t. That way lies panic attacks. Hyperventilating. People call ambulances or the cops because I pass out or lash out, in public. Random panic attacks and flashbacks are awful enough. Remembering on purpose is just stupid.” A light tremor shook his whole body, and his face was gaunt and pale. He abruptly set his fork down.