The Bureau (A Cage for Men and Wolves Book 1) (19 page)

These were holding cells.

A shiver ran up her spine as the realization hit her. This was where they kept the subjects being evaluated by Elliot and his coworkers. This was where their fates were decided. Clover gripped her stomach again and moved past the door, and the photo of the thirty-something-year-old woman who was looking teary eyed at her through the photo. She didn't want to look in that window.

As she walked down the hall, as silent as if she were walking through a cemetery, she was overwhelmed by how many cells there were. Every twenty or thirty feet another hall broke off from the main corridor she was on. These smaller halls went on for some ways before turning or splitting again. Even though each hall was marked at the junction with wide, red letters and numbers, she wondered how anyone could navigate the maze they formed.

Every door she passed made her insides hurt more. There were so many people here, waiting to be sold or to be burned alive. She wondered what it felt like to be inside one of those cells. She wondered how anyone could survive the trauma. Children and mothers and men who knew their fate was only being temporarily postponed—every one of them was a stronger person than she was, because she knew she would tear her own throat out before letting someone decide her fate.

She walked for several minutes down the mail aisle without seeing an end, then a distant murmuring caught her attention. Turning down one of the smaller aisles, she followed the noise, having to back track several times until she found herself on a narrow corridor labeled P-6. It was no different than any of the others, branching off several yards away into P-7 and P-8, but to her left, through the metal of the door, Clover heard what she’d quickly recognized as crying.

She tried to swallow the beating of her own heart when she saw the photo pinned to the folder—a little girl with a halo of black curls, too young to be her sister, but young enough to make her entire body hurt.

Looking through the window was a bad idea. She knew it was a bad idea. She knew it and she looked anyway. Inside, sitting on a cot built into the wall was a little girl smaller than her photo suggested. She wore a miniature set of tan coveralls that looked too grown up for her.

Clover’s hand came to the window, wanting to tap on it, wave to her, tell her somehow that she was going to be alright, but she froze once her fingers felt the chill of the glass. What good would something it that do? It might give her hope, but what was the point of giving her hope if she knew it wouldn’t save her. Wouldn’t hope just make her outcome more painful?

The helplessness that Clover had been feeling at the periphery of her mind crashed in around her like pillars of ice water. She wished that saving her family would somehow help this little girl—all the people trapped inside this labyrinth of cells—but it wouldn’t. It would only help her.

She watched the girl fold into herself, turn on the hard looking bed toward the wall. Clover had nothing she could give this child.

She pulled away from the door, not wanting to make any sound that might give this girl something to hope for. Everything hurt as she willed herself to go back to the entrance, back to Elliot—back to the people she might actually be able to help. Passing another junction, though, her senses were flooded by a familiar smell. It was weak, smothered by the scents of hundreds of other werewolves in that hall, but it was there. She knew this smell.

It took everything she had to not run as she bee-lined down several corridors, too distracted now to pay attention to the hall numbers.

Outside a nondescript door, pinned to the file, was a familiar face. Joshua Lowell, her pack-mate whose seven-year-old daughter had been complaining about her soggy letter only a week ago. A sensation like a hammer on her guts threatened to knock her feet out from under her.

Like she was being thrown forward on a tipping boat, Clover's body knocked into the door as she clawed her way to the bottom edge of the window. She wanted to see someone else inside the cell. Anyone else. But there, sitting on the same small cot that little girl had been, was her pack-mate, his head hung and hands gripping each other tightly.

"Josh!" Clover banged on the glass, not caring about the noise any more.

The face that looked up from the cot was so unlike the one she remembered. Josh was known for being the gentler of the two Lowell brothers. His eyes were kind, but now one of them was swollen shut and his face was gray. His lips, which were usually smiling, now looked grim and were marked by a patch of tidied blood where they'd been split.

He looked confused, but, as she waved her hand in the window, his good eye widened with realization and he launched himself from the hard looking bed. As he met her at the window, Clover saw his mouth working, but could only make out a muffled sound she thought might be her name. Immediately, her hands moved to the handle of the door. It was locked. Instead, she worked the latch which held the small slot in the door shut. With a little effort, the slat of metal slid away, then his hands were immediately clasping hers through the opening.

"Clover, what are you doing here?" He squeezed her hands between his rough palms.

Having never been closer to Josh than she'd been with any of the others, Clover thought it should be strange that he felt like the closest friend she'd ever had now. She could feel his usually steady hands shaking and she knew hers were trembling just as badly. Around his wrist was a metal bracelet with his personal numbers engraved across it in black.

"What are
you
doing here?" she mirrored. "What happened? Did they take Heather too? How long have you been here?"

"A few days," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Heather wasn't with me. I was with some of the other guys. We were out looking for you. You disappeared, what happened?"

Guilt speared Clover to the door. This was her fault. She was the reason he was sitting in a cell waiting to be incinerated. The now familiar taste of bile soaked the back of her throat.

"God, Josh. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." Tears poured from her eyes without resistance. She'd always been afraid of seeming like a child if she was seen crying, but now she realized that a child is exactly what she was. She was a young, stupid, irresponsible child, who might have just killed an innocent man because she was too suspicious of even her own pack to trust them with the truth. "This is all my fault." She held his hands tighter, as though she could pull him through the door to safety, if only she could get a good enough grip.

"Clover, what are you doing here? Why are you dressed like that?"

It was heartbreaking to know that he was only worried about
her
as he sat in his own grave. Clover had always been paranoid that she was not as good a person as the others in her pack, and now she knew she'd been right.

"I came here to find my family." She sobbed as she looked at him through the barred glass, unable to lie about her intentions anymore. "I got the uniform from Hannah. I kidnapped a bureau worker. Josh, I'm sorry."

A look somewhere between shock and admiration passed over Josh's face. "Everyone thinks you were taken, or that you're dead. Saundra's heartbroken."

Clover set her jaw against the guilt of her aunt unnecessarily mourning her loss. She had to pull herself together. "Well then," she began, wiping her face with the cuff of her sleeve before taking his hands again. "We'll just have to go tell her everything's fine. We'll tell her as soon as I get you out of here."

"Clover." His voice was gentle, and she hated herself for being the one needing comforted, but it was in his nature.

"No. It'll be fine. I can get you out of here." She could see the sad look of disbelief on his face, like he was tasked with telling a child that no matter how much you wished for something, magic wasn’t real. She knew that he was the worst possible candidate, and she could tell that he knew it too. He was a man in his prime, after all, with a strong will and strong body. No one would okay him for a finishing school. No one except Elliot. "I promise, I can make this okay. Elliot, the guy I kidnapped, he's an Evaluator. He can make sure you get sent to a finishing school. Then he can buy you and you and I can go back home. Together."

"No. Clover, they would never take me, and even if they did, I refuse to be a slave."

"You won't be!" Clover felt her throat constrict around a sob as she tried to convince herself of her own words. "Please, Josh. Please, just trust me. I can make this okay. Just, you just have to play ball with them, okay? Just do everything they say. Don't fight them. Just cooperate and I swear, I can get you out of here." She had to wipe her face again.

"Clover." His voice was low and steady, which only made Clover hurt more. "You need to calm down, okay?"

"I won't! What about Heather? Are you just going to leave her?"

He reached through the slot and laid his broad hand over her cheek the way her father used to. She shook her head at him as he smiled the way someone who'd come to terms with their fate might. "It'll be okay. Everything's gonna be fine, but you need to go home now, alright?" He wiped some of her tears with his thumb as he looked down through the window at her. "Your mom and dad would be so proud of you right now, but you're in so much danger here. They wouldn't want you risking your life like this."

Clover shook her head again. She wanted to close the slat. She didn't want to hear this.

"Go home to your Aunt Sandra, okay? She needs you. And I need you to do something too, okay?" His voice finally caught and he swallowed as he regained his composure the best he could, but Clover could hear the lump in his throat now. "When you get there, I want you to tell Heather that I love her, alright?" He sniffed and cleared his throat and Clover couldn't convince herself to interrupt him. "You promise me you'll go tell her, okay? Tell her I'm sorry, but that I want her to stay home. Tell her to never come looking for me."

Clover knew that message was aimed at her as much as it was at his little girl, and it made her heart break in a way she hadn't felt since her aunt told her that her family was gone. How could she tell him 'no'?

Clover opened her mouth before she knew what she was going to say, but then the sound of a distant door clicking shut echoed through the twisting corridors. They both went still, looking in the direction of the main hall.

"You have to go," Josh said, his voice quiet but urgent.

"Do what I said, okay?" Clover urged, her lungs paralyzed by the shot of adrenaline.

"Okay, just go." He was pushing her away from the door now.

At the last second, Clover remembered to close and latch the small opening that had acted as their portal to each other. If she was caught, she at least wanted to keep them from knowing that Josh had been the one she'd been talking to. She didn't look at the door again as she made her way back toward the main corridor.

For a moment, she hoped the sound was only Elliot coming to find her, probably angry that she’d wandered off. Then she heard more than one set of shoes.

She would walk quietly back to the main door. Quiet was good. If she was quiet she may even get out of there without being seen once. The space was huge. There was a chance she could avoid them. But the nature of the space, with its diverging hallways and smooth walls also meant she couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, or even how many pairs of feet there were. As she backtracked, the echoes rose the sound she’d initially heard into a cacophony—an army rioting through the halls.

She just had to backtrack. But had she come from the left or right at P-4? Instinctively, she chose the direction that took her away from the sound of footsteps. At least, she
thought
it was taking her away from them.

Eventually, voices began rumbling beside the sounds of shoes, and Clover realized she'd wandered into an R hall. Had she even seen an R hall on the main corridor? She tried not to run, tried not to bounce her location back to them like a sonar, but as her panic rose to breaching point, she could barely keep her steps in a straight line, let alone silent. There would be no storm drains to save her in this place.

As she passed another junction, a flash of black passed in her peripheral vision and a voice that was very clear, and too close to be an echo, shattered any semblance of control she had left.

"There she is!"

Clover took off at a sprint, her shoes now adding to the din reverberating through the halls. She had to find the door she'd come through, not that she was sure any more that it would help her situation. Her instincts told her to find Elliot though. She wondered if he even knew she was missing yet. She wanted him to show up again, out of the blue like he had in the office Pierson had taken her to.

These men were not as powerful at running at Rainer had been, but she was confined prey, scurrying around their maze, looking for an exit she wasn't sure existed any more. And as she turned onto a dead end, she felt her knees wobble, the despair settling a weight on her shoulders too heavy for them to bear. Even knowing they would be locked, she tried the doors to her right and left, like one of them would miraculously open onto another hall she could use to escape. They didn’t.

The chase that had started a week ago in alleys of the city was finally over. It was going to end there, in that mausoleum hallway. Just as she'd realized in the deserted office the day before, she had two choices. She could try to cooperate. She could say she'd gotten lost—but what were the chances of them believing her, or taking pity on her even if they did? Or she could fight them. Her chances of escaping if she fought weren't any better than if she cooperated, but she would at least have her dignity. She would die with her pride intact.