Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) (4 page)

He drove well, but I was always jumpy in the car, even after two months on the road.

Another reason for the road trip was to get me comfortable riding in a car again.

After the accident I had avoided cars, taxis and buses—anything on four wheels with an engine. I’d made sure to find a job within walking distance of my condo and, if I really had to, I took the bus as it was the least like a car, but I sat there in rigid fear until my stop, where I couldn’t get off fast enough.

I still wouldn’t drive, although Murphy asked me if I wanted to at least three times a week. I always refused. It was the one thing I wouldn’t do to please him. I did everything else I could think of that I knew or suspected would make him happy. I wasn’t ready to drive. I wasn’t sure I ever would be.

It was a two-hour trip and I wished I could read in the car, but I couldn’t relax enough to do that. I constantly scanned the road ahead for obstacles and accidents.

Murphy and I sometimes got lost in conversation and that’s the only time I really even slightly relaxed. Today we didn’t talk. Instead, we sat side by side as the miles melted behind us like dirty snow.

I played with a strand of my hair, winding it around one finger and letting it spring free, before repeating the process.

Things started to look familiar just past the state border.

“Want to stop for a minute?” Murphy asked. He was always quick to find a rest stop for me to stretch my legs when he thought the road was getting to me.

A large sign welcomed us to Connecticut, and off the exit, a small brick building had been erected that contained rest rooms, vending machines and brochures about attractions. This was typical across the country. We’d stopped at many of these just past the border rest stops from state to state.

I nodded and Murphy merged onto the exit, guiding the Prelude off the interstate into the parking lot.

Snow stacked up in a grubby pile at the end of the lot where the plows had pushed it. Some of the parking spaces were covered with patches of black water that would ice over at night but now, at just past one in the afternoon, were melted, cold puddles.

Murphy parked the car over one of them, but left the space where we’d exit the car clear.

The cold air invaded my nostrils and throat the second I opened the door. Murphy waited for me on the sidewalk. It was dotted with bits of sand and salt put down so people wouldn’t slip on ice on their way to the rest room.

Our car was one of three in the lot. The other two were filthy and old. Ours was a prince among paupers. Murphy took good care of that car. He washed it every week, vacuumed it out and patiently picked up all the fast food bags and wrappers I carelessly let fall to the floor mats.

I’d heard once that Irish men treated their cars the way their forebears had treated their horses and I could believe it. If Murphy could have fed the Prelude oats and mash, and curried it down in the stall at the end of each day, he would have. Instead, he took it to by-hand car washes and spent two hours buffing, waxing and scrubbing dirt and grime from the hubcaps and windshield.

I helped him, but my help was half-assed, at least according to him, and so most of the time I sat on a bench or in the car and read a book or a magazine. Murphy was about the car the way I was about shoes. He didn’t see it that way but it was true. Nobody needed to wash their car every damn week. Or spend two hours doing it himself instead of going through an automatic car wash where it would have taken ten minutes. Only suggest to him that we do that and it was enough to send him into a fifteen minute tirade about how those automatic car washes were for shit and scratched the paint job and didn’t get the undercarriage and
how the hell can you even suggest a thing like that, Constance. Don’t even think such sacrilege, please
.

I did suggest it about once a week because I secretly laughed my ass off at how frothed at the mouth the man would get. Like clockwork. Every single time.

He was waiting for me by the vending machines outside the ladies’ room. The day after shifting was hell on the bladder. We drank tons of water before we shifted because if we didn’t, the muscle cramps the next day were severe.

Instead of walking to the car, I went in the other direction, toward a small stand of maple trees and what, in spring and summer, would be a flower bed. Right now it was a sullen brown pile of half-frozen mud.

Murphy fell into step with me and we walked together without speaking. I wanted to hold his hand because I wanted the contact and the comfort but I was too fragile. Murphy didn’t like to be touched first. When I forgot and did reach out to him, he invariably froze for a second before relaxing. He wouldn’t take his hand away from mine, but he would freeze at first and I knew I’d take it way too personally today so I didn’t risk it.

Instead I kept as close as I could get to him without touching him. Our coat sleeves brushed, but our hands never met.

We avoided the grubby snow bank by common consent. The bottom edges of it were liberally stained with dog piss. If I concentrated I could smell it. If I really focused I could tell which stains belonged to different dogs and which were made by repeat offenders. I had some dubious talents as Pack and that was one of them.

The whole damn snow bank depressed me, just like the whole damn thing with Grandfather Tobias and our trip to Connecticut.

“This sucks,” I announced, apropos of nothing.

“At least you have the vindication, the satisfaction, of knowing for sure,” he remarked. He’d carefully and considerately avoided talking about the situation, allowing me to go first. The entire hour and a half we’d been in the car, he’d wanted to talk about this but he wouldn’t bring it up unless I did. He’d learned over our road trip that silence drew me out better than direct confrontation.

“You know the grandfather in your pack rigged Sorcha’s accident too,” I said in a low voice.

He shrugged and the wind blew his straight blondish-brown hair around. He’d cut his hair very short since Houston, but there was still enough for the winter wind to play with.

“He hasn’t confessed yet.”

“Has he been questioned?”

Murphy looked at me from the corner of his dark eyes. He was hunched against the biting wind and had his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets. His expression was a baffled mix of despair and rage.

“He’s disappeared. Nobody knows where he is and nobody can find him.”

I chewed on that for a moment, wondering how long he’d known this fact and hadn’t told me.

“Since when?”

“Almost right after the incident in Houston.” His mouth turned up wryly. He was referring to his near-fatal overdose.

“Someone gave him the heads up?” A cold sliver of disquiet slid down my spine then back up again as the implications hit me.

“Looks like it.” We stopped where the sidewalk ended, facing each other. The ground beneath the maple trees looked muddy. I had on boots—black winter boots with sheepskin lining. I’d bought them on sale last spring and this was my first chance to wear them. They would have been okay in the mud, but Murphy didn’t seem inclined to wander off the path. He had a pair of dark brown Timberland boots. They were waterproof but, ten to one, he didn’t know that. He hadn’t bought them—I had.

He saw me examine them critically and shook his head.

“Don’t even think about it. I like these boots and if they go missing I’m going to hunt them down.”

“You’ve been wearing them for two weeks, Murphy.”

“And I’ll be wearing them for two weeks more and two weeks after that probably. I like them.”

“At least wear one of your other pairs once in a while? Couple times a week? Please?” I begged. The frigid wind blew a strand of hair into my eyes and I brushed it away with impatient fingers.

He gave me an ironic smile, one that tugged at something inside me. Sometimes when he looked at me, my heart gave a strange little flip.

“Only if you leave these alone and let me wear them in peace,” he said.

I lifted a hand in a solemn oath. “I swear,” I said in a serious tone that made him roll his eyes.

“Why didn’t Grandfather Tobias get a warning the same as Grandfather Mick?” We were halfway back to the car when I posed the question. Murphy gave an eloquent shrug.

“Maybe he did and he chose to disregard it.”

The Prelude’s lights winked as Murphy unlocked the car with the button on the ignition key. He opened my door for me and I hesitated before getting all the way in.

“You know something I don’t?” I knew I sounded suspicious, but damn it, sometimes the man could be an oyster.

He flashed me an enigmatic smile and waited for me to get all the way in before he shut my door. I watched him through the windshield as he crossed in front of the car and got behind the wheel.

Before he turned the key in the ignition he looked at me and said, “Wanna drive?”

“Get the hell out of my face, Murphy.” I pulled at the seat belt.

“Just thought I’d ask.” He turned the key. The Prelude’s engine purred into life.

“I will never drive this car.” I crossed my arms mutinously as he looked over his shoulder and backed out of the parking space.

“You are going to drive again someday.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” I advised, and he gave me another ironic smile before putting the car in drive and moving forward.

We were back on the interstate in less than forty-five seconds. Traffic was sparse—it was New Year’s Day and most people were sensibly sleeping off their hangovers and binging on junk food. Not us. We were almost to the safe house in Hartford where I’d have to confront the man who had murdered my bond mates. Happy fucking New Year indeed.

Chapter 4

Hartford was a relatively small city dominated by tall buildings which housed insurance companies. The safe house was in the Asylum Hill neighborhood—which was rather apt, I suppose. Located on Farmington Avenue, the Great Pack owned it in conjunction with the Regional Council of New England. It dated back to the late 1800s and had five bedrooms and three baths upstairs, while the downstairs was divided into a large front room, a small kitchen, a half bath, a dining room stuffed with Colonial furniture and two conference rooms, one rather larger than the other.

I remembered the larger conference room vividly. I’d spent hours there going over the accident with Councilor Allerton and the Regional Council. One awful day had been spent with my pack—and one and all said vicious and hateful things about me. Even Callie, my best friend besides Elena, had not defended me. She had not added any vituperative fuel to the fire, but she’d sat there in a silence that indicated she did not disagree. She had studiously avoided my gaze.

My pack had painted me as the quintessential party girl, someone who didn’t give a shit about anybody but herself or about anything except the next opportunity to have fun. They said my contributions to the pack funds were minimal because I refused to get a steady job and instead only wanted to play my harp for money. I wouldn’t even go to the parks and play for tips. No, I was too superior for that. I would only play for weddings and business parties. I wouldn’t even deign to teach.

It didn’t matter that when I did have a gig, which wasn’t as sporadically as Jonathan made out—I brought in more money for four hours’ work than most of the pack brought in for a week’s. They were all in retail, except for Grey and Elena. Elena had gotten Grey a job with the game developers. He had been a beta tester and she, a designer. They had both worked from home. The company was based out of California. I could have been a beta tester too, but Elena and Grey wanted me to spend my time practicing the harp. We’d talked about me teaching, but as Elena had indignantly said every time Jonathan made a snide comment about my work ethic, between us we brought in more than three times than the rest of pack.

In exchange for my flexible work hours, I was the one who had cooked for our triad and I’d been responsible for most of the housework and laundry. I’d run errands and done the shopping.

But the way Jonathan characterized it, I had been a lazy-ass bum supported by my hardworking bond mates and the rest of the pack.

Even Vaughn hadn’t stuck up for me. Vaughn was the only other member of the pack who knew his way around a musical instrument. He was pretty good on the piano and the two of us used to spend many Sunday afternoons playing duets. Sometimes he’d gone on gigs with me and I’d arranged that, but he’d never said a word in my defense. He’d even agreed that my musical contribution to the pack had been negligible. Playing music wasn’t work. It was an indulgence—a hobby.