“Ohhh-kay.”
We hadn’t gotten far when Wanda pul ed the car over. “I need to know something, Jessie.”
“What?”
“Whose side are you on in al this?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Theirs.”
Wanda nodded. “That’s what I figured. I’m not going to waste your time trying to explain how we’d like to save the werewolves—”
“They have names.”
She just plowed ahead. “To find a cure for their abbreviated life spans,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“No. Wait. You want to do what? ”
“We want to fix the werewolves, and not in the trip-to-the-vet way.”
“Huh.”
“It’s come to our attention that having a more normalized population is more beneficial to the ongoing success of both military and government operations.”
“Okay. I don’t believe you.”
“I knew that would be a risk of my being honest with you.”
“How would you benefit from undoing their time line?”
“Imagine. You’re forty—or younger, in their case, as they’re doubly ful -bloods—and you col apse in public. A good Samaritan gets you to a hospital. Doctors find you’ve got the liver and heart of a ninety-year-old. And some parts of you, internal y, are just sort of melting. Is it a new disease? Quick, get the CDC on the phone! But faster stil you’ve got NBC and ABC on the phone. And … disaster. And that’s if your werewolf hasn’t triggered and destroyed the E.R. So. Fix the life span and there’s less chance of them making the evening news as some bizarre focus spot. Less chance of an inquiry into the experiments we did during the Cold War, and before—”
experiments we did during the Cold War, and before—”
“We did? Our scientists did stuff like this, too?”
Wanda paused. “No. Not like this. We were the good guys.”
I squinted at her summary. “Seriously? It was that black and white? We were the good forces of democracy and they were the diabolical Communist Reds?”
“Ugh. Look. It doesn’t matter who did what. The fact is, we made some bad choices—did some unethical experiments. But that’s history. We just don’t want it being rehashed. So.”
“So?”
“We want to help them, but it takes time,” Wanda said.
“Yeah. Their most precious commodity.”
“Exactly. So while we’re scrambling for a cure—based on the samples you got them to agree to give
—we need to keep a better watch on them so they don’t do something stupid.”
“Have you met Max?”
“Precisely.”
“Why not tel them the truth? Give them some hope?”
Her eyes slid toward me. “You know the truth isn’t always accepted. Or believed.”
“Yeah. They don’t trust you.”
Wanda nodded. “So I need a huge favor. I need you to plant a bug.”
“What?! I. Wil . Not.”
“Jessie. This can alert us if trouble starts or if somebody gets hurt. We can get someone there to prevent it from making the papers.” She touched my shoulder with her free hand.
I shook it off.
“If the public found out, they’d be hauled away, you know? There’d be no more—”
“No more Rusakova family.” She was right. If Pietr wondered what sort of monster crawled beneath his skin, what would the public demand the government do to find out?
“What if the Mafia returns? They’l need backup.”
Another good point. “You do it.”
“They’l be watching me, Jessie. I won’t have a chance.” She fished around in her purse and pul ed the bug out.
Such a smal thing, real y.
“They trust you.”
“That’s because I won’t betray them.”
“Right. You won’t. You’l protect them. If there’s trouble, we’l know about it. We can get there and help.”
Opening my hand she placed the bug in my palm. “Help us help them, Jessie.”
“Where?”
“Under a table in the sitting room.”
“Okay. But if they catch me we’re both in big trouble. I will throw you to the wolves. Like a juicy bone.”
“Nice.” She pul ed back onto the road. “Glad to know you haven’t become jaded by helping your government and friends.”
“Yeah. What were the odds of that?”
* * *
The wad of cash Wanda presented to the Rusakovas went a good distance toward cementing their agreement. Alexi quickly divided the money into mortgage, utilities, food, and incidentals. The last two piles were thinnest.
“They’l need to hunt,” he pointed out. “Otherwise we can’t maintain their calorie count.”
Wanda glanced at each of the Rusakovas in turn.
“You don’t want them roaming hungry, do you?” Alexi asked.
“No. Crap.”
“Not so easy being a werewolf keeper, is it?”
“You are not our keeper,” Max snarled.
Alexi braced himself. “I am my brother’s keeper,” he said. “And, like it or not, I am stil your brother.”
Max paced. Growling. I heard joints snap, changing. Without looking, I knew his eyes glowed red with emotion.
“Max…” I stepped back.
He swung his head toward Alexi, jaws long and lined with sharp teeth, eyes glowing like banked coals
—holding his transformation mid-change. It seemed even more a threat—seeing the wolf’s head on the broad human shoulders.
Max puffed out a breath. “Brrrrotherrr.” He swung his heavy head toward Pietr. “Brrrrotherrr,” he repeated, looking to Catherine. Swinging his head back to center, he lunged, snapping at Alexi; his teeth closing a hairsbreadth from Alexi’s face.
I jumped.
Alexi simply sighed. “You want the job?” he asked Wanda as Max’s feral features sank back into his human face.
“Hunting.” She hit something on her cel phone. “Signal’s not so good in here.” She stepped out of the sitting room, fol owed by the Rusakovas.
It was my chance.
They trailed her past the staircase. The back door made its regular whine of protest and I dropped to my knees, reaching under the marble-topped table to plant the bug. It stuck easily. I was preparing to stand when I heard him.