Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (3 page)

Even though everyone was already gone, it still took almost an hour to get the place ready for the next day of work. There were tables to wipe down, chairs to stack, an endless parade of glasses to wash again and, just like always, broken glass to sweep up from the floor. The cause of most of
that
was the Wolf pack, of course. They probably smashed about one out of five of the bottles and glasses we brought them, but we just had a grin and bear it.

I tried not to bitch and moan about it. After all, Bruno had the money to replace it, so why should I care? It was only backbreaking labor at a bare minimum wage, but at least it kept us warm. Now that the place was empty, I could feel the cold wind that swirled outside pushing in around the seams, oozing past the badly placed grouting and drifting down from the roof, where the snow was stacked high above us.

“Well,” Carla said, once we were finally finished, “How about we call it a night?”

I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand and nodded with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. “That sounds like a damn good idea to me. Time to go back to the motel and crash.”

“Yep. There are just enough hours in the day to grab some sleep so we can do this all over tonight.”

I sighed. “Do you think Bridget will show up this time?”

“I know you haven't walked this cold, cruel world for as long as I have,” she said with a wink, “so listen up girly. This was the third shift that Bridget's missed. Around here, if someone's gone that long without you hearing from them, they're either frozen up in a ditch or they’ve moved on to greener pastures.”

“Do you think something happened to her? Should we be looking for her or filing a missing person’s report, or something?”

Carla shook her head. “No, I'm just being silly. All I'm saying is that Bridget has probably taken off for good. She didn't have ties to this place. Nobody does, not really. She just got a better offer from somewhere or found some dude who convinced her that they’d have some good times if she went on down the road with him for a bit. That's it. I wasn't suggesting any foul play, so relax.”

I glanced at the tables the Wolf pack had occupied without realizing it. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure. Zoe, you have to understand, life isn’t like those books you read. It’s nowhere near as exciting, and it's a hell of a lot less bloody. Stop looking for conspiracies where there aren’t any. It's pretty cut and dry. Bruno and his gang run the place and everyone lets them, because that’s the only thing we can do. End of story.”

“I know…” I said, letting my voice trail off. I didn't like it, not one little bit, but she wasn’t wrong when she said that there wasn’t anything I could do about it. “I'm just worried about her, that's all.”

“Well, don't be. She didn't worry about us when she took off. And wherever she is, I can practically guarantee she's not wasting any of her thoughts on you and I as we work our poor fingers to the bone in her absence. Now head off, and I'll see you in a few hours.”

“You’re the boss,” I said, grabbing my jacket from behind the bar and shrugging into it. “Sleep well, okay?”

She nodded absently, heading off to the back. Even though she was letting me go home, I knew that Carla still had a couple of tasks to complete, not the least of which was adding up today's takings. If she was lucky, she'd only be here for another hour. I knew she wouldn’t let me help. I’d offered once, and she’d gone a little berserk. Once she’d come back down to earth, she’d apologized profusely, blaming the need to count the money herself on her OCD.

I was appreciative of her sending me home, but that didn't mean I liked leaving her behind. “You sure you don’t want me to wait around for you?”

“I'm fine,” she called as disappeared into the back room. “You get out of here, huh?”

I did as I was told. The front door was locked, so as not to let in any late-night drunks, and I unlocked it so that I could leave. Once I had, I locked it again behind me.

As I always did this time of night, I couldn't help but stop in my tracks and crane my neck up at the sky, my mouth falling open in wonder at the beauty of the stars above. You can see so many up here, and it felt like they were close enough to touch. The rainbow shimmer of the northern lights, green to orange to amber to a deep, almost bloody purple, draped a beautiful, wispy ribbon over everything.

It was drop-dead, knock-you-on-your-ass gorgeous.

Yeah
, I told myself, snarky as ever.
If only you could walk around staring at the sky, you’d be okay. Unfortunately, that would just mean I’d trip on the muck and the bullshit that litters this town. Now stop staring and get yourself into your bed before you freeze to death out here
.

The roads were too iced over for cars to make their way on them with any sort of safety, but that didn't matter to me. I didn't have a car anyway. I was up here, at the end of the road and at the end of my line, and until I saved up enough to make things right back at home, there wasn't anywhere that suited me better than right here.

There weren’t a lot of houses to be had, and the rental market was almost nonexistent. I'd been making do on a flimsy mattress in the motel down the street for the last few months, a shitty little place called The Goodnights Inn that Bruno was a part owner of. I didn't like that he didn't pay me enough, and that some of my meager wages went to him anyway just so I could have a roof over my head, but not liking it and being able to
do
something about it were two vastly different things.

If I was learning anything up in Alaska, it was that sometimes you just have to put your head down and push on. Complaining about something doesn't change it.

I crunched my way through the snow and the ice as I moved down the street, not bothering to keep to the sidewalk. I walked along, lost in my own thoughts, trying to calculate again and again how long it would take me to pay off everything I owed when I saw a hint of movement out of the corner of my eye.

It was strange, and it immediately set me on edge. It wasn't windy, and yet something had definitely moved in the shadows off to my right. I froze, worried. Could it be an animal? It wasn't at all rare to see wolves up here, and even grizzlies and random herds of moose had marched right through town a couple of times since I’d been here.

The last thing you wanted to do was turn the corner and find one of them staring down at you. After all, they were all wild animals. Even though they probably didn't mean you any harm, if you spooked them or got between them and their babies, they were more than happy to wreck you.

If it
was
an animal, the best thing I could do would be to hurry to my motel and shut the door behind me. Come to think of it, that was probably the best thing to do if it was a person, too… Nobody lurking in the shadows right now would mean me anything but harm…

You should leave. You should put your head down and get away, right this second!

But I didn't. I couldn't. Something pulled me in the direction that had drawn my attention and I went with my gut. I crossed the street, picking the way along the patches of ice and trying to avoid the loudest of the crunchy snow as I did my best to get closer to where I'd seen the movement without making a ruckus.

I was over near Cole's Outfitting, on a little path that took you up past his building and into the empty hills beyond. The town was perched on the edge of the wilderness, and if you went behind the outfitters and picked up a stone you could hit the beginning of the forest if you tried hard enough.

There were footprints in the snow, and to my untrained eye they looked to be fresh. I wasn’t a hunter though, and the ways of the wilds weren’t mine to know. I’d been up here long enough to know that the snow would've started to fill these in if they were anything more than a couple of hours old, though.

What's more, there were two sets of tracks.

I followed them, and found pretty quickly that I could trace them in the moonlight as they headed off in the direction of the forest. Once I got on top of the little hillock behind the outfitter’s, I could look down and see that they descended the other side, cutting straight through the trees.

That was where I lost my nerve. It was one thing to be within sight of the town's only real street. I wasn't exactly brave or bold, but at least I knew I could probably turn around and sprint back to the hotel if things went bad.

But that forest… The way those dark trees crowded together, their branches rubbing against each other in the wind. Even from my hotel room at night, sometimes I could hear the big branches snap under the weight of ice and snow, the noise rolling through town like a rifle in the distance.

If I went into those trees, would I ever come back? It felt like I was Little Red Riding Hood, and this was the moment when I should say, ‘You know what, I think grandmother will be just fine today. She doesn't need me. Let the old woman sleep in peace.’

I didn't feel like I was being pulled forward. Not anymore. Whatever instinct had brought me here was gone now. I thought better of where I was, and turned around and hurried back down the hill to my motel room, looking over my shoulder every few steps until I was safely inside.

I woke up from a dreamless slumber however many hours later.

Someone was banging on the door hard enough to rattle the walls. I didn't know where I was, and like a fool I reached out for Jake.

It was always like this when I woke before I was ready. I hadn't had my son beside me for almost eight months, but it never failed. The mind is a hard thing to retrain, and mine simply didn't want to listen. My little boy was living with my grandparents, and I didn't know how much longer that it would be before I could change that. In theory, I was up here to live off the grid and earn some money, but every time I looked at that logically I just saw myself digging my own hole deeper and deeper.

I sat up, and whoever had been pounding on the door knocked again.
Hard
. The door shook on its frame, and I hurried over to it. I'd been so exhausted last night that I was still wearing the same clothes, so at least I didn't have to worry about decency.

My face was wet, though. I'd been crying, which meant I’d dreamt of Jake again. I quickly wiped the tears from my cheeks and opened the door.

“Get your ass to the bar,” Bruno said, his breath stinking of chewing tobacco. With that, he turned around on his heel and stormed off up the street.

I looked over my shoulder at the digital clock the motel hadn’t bothered to provide. It sat on the nightstand, staring blankly at me except for three numbers. 3:37. I should've still been asleep. I didn't need to be at the bar until five in the afternoon, so what was the rush?

Whatever it was, I was willing to bet my bottom dollar that I wasn't going to get paid for the extra time I’d have to put in today. And there wouldn't be time to shower or do anything else, either. Not with Bruno in that kind of mood.

I watched him as he hurried off of the street, as broad shouldered as a bull, favoring his right leg in a limp, the result of a car crash if rumors could be believed. He was a tough old bastard, and it didn't look like the ice and snow was slowing him down one bit.

I went back inside and grabbed a couple of things, tugging my mobile phone off the charger and slipping it into my parka before at least changing my T-shirt. Once I was done with that minimal amount of housekeeping, I rushed off after him.

As soon as I got outside and closed the door, I realized something was wrong. There were too many people around, for starters. The road was normally quiet, and I rarely saw anyone else that shared the motel with me, but not today. Six or seven guests, if you could call people that would be otherwise homeless and instead sprung for this cheap dive
guests
, stood outside their doors, chatting excitedly.

I didn't know any of them. In fact, I’d made it a point
not
to know any of them, and so I could hardly walk up and find out what they were talking about.

I heard snippets of their conversation on my way past, though. Nothing I could really piece together, just drifting fragments. When they saw me coming, their voices died down anyway, so all I really got was words like ‘vanished’, and ‘lost’, and ‘frostbite’.

That was enough to get my head spinning. Was it the handsome guy I’d been crushing on? The one who kept coming in, who sat in the corner every night and downed a dozen or so beers. If anyone had vanished last night, it would have been him…

I surprised myself by how worried I was. I didn't know him from a hole in the ground, but here I was, my chilled breath catching in my throat as I hurried to the bar, my brain crafting dozens of ways that those words I’d overheard could apply to him.

Was he dead? Had he fled the town? And if he
had
left, was he even now slowly freezing to death in the wilderness?

As I hurried past the outfitters, I couldn’t help but look toward the gap between the buildings. The tracks were gone. Snow had filled them in overnight, and it was as if they were never there in the first place. Had he made them?

And even if he had, there'd been two before I came across them, so who had made the second set?

I knew in my gut that it had been Everly. I could see it vividly in my mind’s eye. The nice drunk I’d been coddling would have wandered off into the woods, most likely to sleep it off. Everly would've seen an opportunity to do violence, and that was all the motivation he'd need to follow the poor man.

Had that been the movement I'd seen last night? I felt sick to my stomach now. If I'd had the strength of character to act, maybe I could've saved him. We’re all up here running from our demons, and the simple fact that a man drank too much didn't mean that he deserved for the world to abandon him. After all, he paid his tab and didn't bother anyone. What more could anyone ask?

I got to Bruno’s and let myself in. The lights were on and the chairs were down, and Carla and Bruno were already there. The two of them were sitting at one of the two tables that the Wolf pack and occupied last night, and Bruno was cracking his knuckles as he waited for me to sit down and shut up.

I could see that Carla’s OCD had already kicked in. She was counting the scratches on the table out loud, and form the looks of it Bruno wanted to bash her head in…

I wanted to say that I was sorry I was late, even though I was technically more than an hour early. And that I was sorry for not hurrying fast enough.

The urge to grovel made me feel sick to my stomach. I only wanted to say those things because I thought it was what he wanted to hear, and I hated the instinct to open my mouth and apologize for something that wasn't my fault.

But for once, I amazed myself. Instead of kissing the boss’s ass I simply set my jaw and looking at him.

Bruno was surprised as well. I could see in his cold, dead eyes that he was expecting to have to wave off some platitude, and it threw him when he didn't get it from me.

“Are you ready to start?” He asked, his voice gruff as he tried to hide the fact that he was off balance from my lack of reaction.

“Start what?” I asked. Even though I'd found some new level of defiance, I was smart enough not to throw it in his face.
Just because you found your backbone, girl, doesn't mean you have to rub his nose in it. Play it safe, just like always
, I told myself.

“I want to know what the fuck happened here last night,” he said. “And I don't want the two of you to leave out any details.”

I shrugged. “Okay,” I answered, not really knowing what it was he was looking for. “We opened at six, just like always. It was quiet for a while, and then we had the usual wave of customers.”

“Who? I just told you I want details,” Bruno barked.

Carla jumped in to save me and started ticking them off on her fingers. She listed the names, including the members of the Wolf pack who’d gotten there early, and when she was done I could tell by Bruno’s face that he already knew all the stuff she was telling him.

I
didn't
know what the point of this interrogation was, but I knew it was in my best interest to play along. Besides, I was already here. There'd been a lot worse that had happened to me in my life than having to show up a little more than an hour early for work, so I wasn't going to give him much grief about that.

“And what happened after that?” he demanded.

I shrugged. “We sold drinks. Except to the Wolf pack,” I added hurriedly. “They drank for free, just like you told us.”

“That's fine,” he sighed, clearly annoyed. “We’re not having this conversation because someone shortchanged the register, or something. I'm not taking inventory of beers, so spare me those details. Just tell me how the night played out.”

I looked at Carla and she looked at me. What did he mean, how the night played out? All we’d done was sell drinks, just like always. For once, the Wolf pack hadn't gotten into a massive fistfight to end the night, so I suppose if he was looking for something different that may well be worth adding.

I cleared my throat. “Things got quiet, toward the end. The Wolf pack started to leave, and the night wore on. Some of them left on their own, since most of them had already paired up with some ladies and headed out for parts unknown. By the end, it was just Everly,” I said, though a twist in my gut reminded me that I wasn’t
exactly
telling the truth…

“That's it?” Bruno was watching me, and I felt like those little specimens that we had stared at underneath a microscope when I was in eighth grade. I was lying, lying without even realizing that I was lying until the words were out, but now that I knew that I'd left out the cute drunk in his usual corner, I couldn't really go back and put him in without looking even more suspicious that I already did.

“Just Everly,” Carla said calmly, covering for me. “He was the last one here. He'd had a few, and we were wondering if he was going to drink us out of house and home. He surprised both Zoe and myself when he shut up shop, and once he was gone we locked up. We spent a while cleaning, then I went back to do the books and sent Zoe home. That's it. That's the whole story, Bruno.”

“That's it?” He asked again, shifting his gaze to her and then back to me. Just that look on my flesh made my skin crawl, and I didn't quite know how to react. I fought not to shift my weight in my seat, or wrap my arms around myself as I felt a chill wind creep in underneath the door to swirl around us.

What was he looking for? What did he want to know?

Bruno glared at us both, then said, “You’re going to hear a lot of stories, these next few days, but you may as well know the truth now. Everly's dead. His throat was ripped out, and he didn't last long after that, I can assure you. Some of my boys found him this morning, frozen stiff as a board. I want to know who did it, and I'm going to turn this town upside down until I do.”

“My God,” I said under my breath, a little tremble running up my legs and down my arms. Everly had been a bastard, and truth be told he probably deserved everything he got, but that didn't mean it was easy to hear that a man that had been walking around last night was a corpse not even eighteen hours later.

“We’ll keep our ears to the ground,” Carla assured him, “just like always. That's what you want, right? If anybody mentions who did this, if somebody gets drunk and decides to brag, we’ll let you know.”

“You'll let me know, will you? Is that supposed to mean something to me?” he asked, raising his voice and putting his hands flat on the table as he stood to tower over both of us. “One of my enforcers gets murdered in the middle of the fucking night and I'm supposed to feel better because Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum are on the case. Do me a favor, okay? You stupid bitches keep your mouths shut and your eyes to yourselves. I'm only telling you this because you’re going to hear it anyway.”

I swallowed hard, obviously hard enough for Bruno to hear me because his gaze swung back in my direction. “We understand,” I said softly. “It’s none of our business, and we’ll keep it that way.”

Bruno shook his head and scratched at his oily hair. “Damn straight it's not your business,” he agreed.

For a moment I thought he might lash out, either smash the table to pieces or pick up the chair and throw it across the room. Or worse. Maybe he was going to hit one of us…

I felt like I should cower. I felt like yesterday I would've cowered, or flinched when he raised his hand like a beat down dog that knew the next strike was coming.

Maybe yesterday, but
not
today. Things were different today, mostly because I thought I knew who'd done this, and those two sets of tracks in the snow meant more than I thought they did last night.

Yesterday, I was in a hopeless place, but now I’d found a spark of life in this cold, forbidden town.

And I was determined to find out his name today.

Bruno looked at me, once more surprised that I wasn't acting the way he thought I should. I knew I ran the risk of pissing him off, but I couldn't pretend to be the person I'd been. I didn't feel like that, and so I couldn’t act like that anymore. If he wanted to hit me, that was fine, but I wasn't going to give him the pleasure of showing fear before it happened.

“Stupid cunts,” he said under his breath, and surprised me by leaving, throwing the door open so wide that slow flurried in behind him before it swung shut.