“Please,” I begged. “Puhzhalsta.”
His eyes snapped closed and he shook his head, fighting some silent inner battle. When they reopened they were the bril iant blue of a clear summer sky. “Fine,” he breathed. “They can take us into the heart of their operation. But understand,” he said, eyes locking with mine, his voice clipped and cold, “if they do not give us what we want, we wil tear that heart out.”
My head jerked down in agreement. And fear.
I wondered if it was possible the CIA’s poor handling of the situation could turn normal y sensible Pietr into the monster he feared was so much part of his nature. What did it take, after al , to make a man a monster?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
For once, the CIA’s timing worked in our favor and Wanda drove me to the Rusakovas’ that afternoon, pausing briefly to pick up Officer Kent. I cal ed ahead to let them know our numbers had changed and the agents brought good news.
I hoped I wasn’t lying by proxy.
The car was stifling, warm and thick with an overpoweringly spicy scent. “Your car deodorizer is a bit much.”
Kent chuckled from the back seat.
“Can you even taste your coffee?” I asked, peering into the flipdown passenger mirror.
He just raised his ever-present mug in my direction in a silent toast.
When Catherine opened the door to the house, ushering us within, Wanda smiled, pausing just inside the door. “It’s a nice day,” she commented. “Let’s take a walk.”
“Take a walk? You promised good news,” I reminded her. “Do we get to see their mother today?” I asked, aware of the way the Rusakovas bristled and shifted, surely wondering.
Kent grinned and adjusted something inside his coat. Pietr and Max moved in to stand on either side of me. Cat sidled up behind, and Alexi crossed the floor to stand beside her.
“We do,” Wanda assured.
Kent opened the door again, letting the autumn breeze waft through the foyer.
The Rusakovas straightened, drawing up to their ful heights, and I saw their noses wrinkle, faces pul ing into masks of absolute distaste.
“Perhaps Officer Kent needs a shower,” Max snarled, his eyes narrowing.
“Or a drowning,” Cat suggested, covering her nose.
Wanda winked and tugged a pouch from her shirt pocket, dangling it before me.
I sniffed. “What the…?” The same stink as the car’s hung from her hand.
“I guess we won’t need these,” she said, looking at Kent. “Once they know where we are, diluting our scent won’t matter. They’l find us whenever they want.” She shrugged.
I repressed a shiver, wondering what Wanda’s group had that made them so confident about handling any unscheduled meetings with the Rusakovas.
She tossed the pouch into the wastepaper basket by the door. Kent dug into his jacket pocket and withdrew a matching pouch, shook it for sheer devilment, and tossed it away too.
The ful -blood Rusakovas sneezed.
“What’s in that?” I asked.
“An old remedy to deal with pesky tracking dogs—and werewolves,” Kent added, flashing a smile.
“Shal we go now? Times a-tickin’,” Wanda reminded.
Max stifled a growl, and the group of us, an awkward al iance, stepped onto the porch. Alexi pul ed the door shut and I was thrust into the middle of an argument.
“Why are you coming?” Max asked his adopted brother. More than a question, it was a chal enge to Alexi’s previous role in the family.
“She’s my mother, too,” Alexi said.
Catherine wedged herself between Max and Alexi, placing her smal hands on Max’s wide chest and peering up into his face.
“He’s right. And Mother would want to see al her children, no matter if they’ve strayed from the pack.”
Looking over her head at Alexi, Max agreed. “I just wouldn’t want to be you when Mother learns how you betrayed us.”
Alexi sighed, shoulders slumping.
We walked only a few blocks, out of the Victorian and Queen Anne sections of Junction, and into the smal er remnants of a Colonial farmhouse area.
Wanda paused by a mailbox before passing through a hedgerow dotted with rosemary and other aromatic plants. The place stank of herbs. The dirt around their bases had only recently been disturbed, the plants fresh this season and not meant to last a Junction winter.
I wondered if any of us were.
We walked down a pathway of large, flat rocks and stepped up onto an old stacked stone porch. Here the suburbs and modern living caught up to the past and tried to swal ow it whole. What had once been a large farm plot with one home on several hundred acres had been reduced to a single house, an old garage and gas station at its back. Strange, a fieldstone Colonial, just a few hundred yards and a postage stamp worth of a backyard away from the broken-down Grabbit Mart at its back.
Wanda stepped to the doorway, knocking out a strange rhythm with her fist, and I was surprised when the door swung open revealing two very neatly dressed men. Two men most comfortable when armed
—the two from the abandoned church. I gawked, realizing what their presence implied. “Seriously?”
Where were the thick metal doors that slid open when the right person put their palm on a special sensor? My eyes scanned from the ground to the roofline. One smal camera pointed toward the road, the type anyone could get from RadioShack.
If this was the facility where they contained a secret like werewolves, where was our tax money going?
“Step inside,” Wanda directed us with a curt nod.
Warily we obeyed. Like most Colonials the house was smal , close. The impression of intimacy it gave only made me feel less at ease.
Clustered together in what served as the main hal , we looked expectantly at Wanda and Kent for instructions. That the Rusakovas stood in a house so near their own and yet so wel hidden only made them more anxious. Max shifted from foot to foot, eyes glittering.
“Where is she?” Catherine asked.
The two men looked at Wanda and Kent.
The shorter one spoke. “First things first,” he said. “I believe part of the deal was that we would get blood, skin, and hair samples before any of you see her.”
The heat rol ing off Pietr and Max at mention of the delay threatened to smother me. I kept my tone control ed. “Almost there,” I promised. “We’l see her soon. And what an amazing building.” Casting a glance from one end of the hal to the other, I patted Max’s arm and smiled at Cat. “Just a little longer.”