Fair Game aao-3 Read online

  ‘And the nail on the coffin is this – Travis and Senator Dwight Heuter had a younger sister, Helena. In 1981, when she was sixteen, she turned up pregnant – raped, she claimed. She moved in with her big brother and then committed suicide a couple of years later, leaving Travis in charge of her half-blood boy. A retired teacher I talked to told me that the boy was “different,” not precisely slow or autistic, but definitely odd, with a tendency toward violence. His name is Benedict Heuter and he finds menial jobs, according to the IRS’ – this had been the last little bit he’d needed to tie it all up in a bow – ‘and for the last five years he’s been doing janitorial work or maintenance, moving every year or so.’

  Charles backed out of the IRS database and closed his doorway. Then he slid into a chunk of Darknet – a separate little space of the Internet unseen by search engines and mostly engineered by hackers who’d abandoned the Internet for most of their more questionable pursuits – and pulled up a list of properties from Travis Heuter’s tax records, something he’d copied over during an earlier excursion into the IRS database.

  ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to get at that information,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Don’t look,’ said Goldstein, peering over Charles’s shoulder. ‘We don’t know anything about illegal hacking.’ He whistled cheerily. ‘Travis Heuter owns half the world.’

  Charles searched for Massachusetts and found an address.

  ‘Not that one,’ murmured Isaac. ‘That’s downtown. You want ten miles southwest of here. Not that one – that’s way up north. There. Dedham. One of my college girlfriends kept a horse out there and that’s about the right direction and distance.’

  Charles didn’t want to be wrong, so he committed that address to memory, but kept going through the records until his search jumped back to the beginning. It was Dedham or they’d have to follow the bond. Either way, Heuter was done.

  Weighing time lost investigating versus lost time, Charles took a moment to look up the address on another Darknet site that specialized in property records official and unofficial – the Darknet was a rather tedious mix of conspiracy theorists, brilliant black hats, and OCD record keepers. Travis Heuter’s Dedham property was a largish two-story farmhouse with a barn on four-point-two acres that had sold five years ago for close to a million dollars. Charles printed the house plans and the county record of the last survey of the land, folded them, and shoved them into his pocket.

  ‘One of my pack has a van waiting for us outside,’ Isaac said. ‘Shall we go?’

  Focused on Anna, Charles had forgotten that they would need a car to get there. It was probably best that he not drive.

  12

  Anna was panting with the pain of shifting, and her muscles shook at random for what she told herself was the same reason. She felt weaker than she’d ever been while in wolf form and she smelled wrong, too. Sick or drugged, maybe.

  The other man, the one who was not Les Heuter, was still ranting in the other room about what he would do to her in very explicit language … which meant that either her shift had been Charles-fast or he had been talking for fifteen or twenty minutes. She was betting on the latter.

  Heuter encouraged the other man, whose name evidently was Benedict, adding ugly details or making fun of him, whatever it took to goad him to new heights. Heuter probably thought that she was cowering in the cage listening.

  ‘Do you remember what we did to that girl in Texas?’ Heuter asked.

  ‘The one with the butterfly tattoo?’

  ‘Not that one; the tall one—’

  Anna came to her feet and shook like she was throwing water off her fur in an attempt to get her muscles working – and so she would not look as though she was cowering in her cage, afraid of them before they’d even done anything to her. She did her best to tune them out, turn them into background noise like an unpleasant song on the radio.

  She needed something else to focus on.

  Her night vision as a human was pretty good. In her wolf form, it was even better. Her cage hung about two feet off of a polished floor that looked more out of place than the cage itself did in the big open room. There was a lingering scent of horses to tell her that this had originally been a barn, but someone had repurposed it into a dance studio. At the far end of the room, on the short wall, a bench held a couple of pairs of slip-on shoes and what looked like a … belly-dancing coin belt.

  Next to the bench, one corner of the barn was closed off and a sign that read office hung on the door. A wall of mirrors spanned the long side of the barn, mirrors that reflected her image, still looking like she was terrified. A long brass bar, placed about three feet up and running the length of the mirrored surface, clinched the deal. She was imprisoned in a cage hanging from the rafters of a dance studio. No dungeon or dank hidden basement for her. When she was performing regularly, she used to have nightmares about being imprisoned on a stage where she would be able to get out only if she played ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ backward, which should have been easy but someone had replaced her cello strings with violin strings. A cage in a dance studio was better than that, right? Honest terror instead of frustrated embarrassment.

  She had to get out of here.

  But, in the meantime, she needed to do something about the frightened-looking werewolf reflected in the big mirror.

  She stood up straighter and pricked her ears, and the mirror-Anna appeared slightly less pathetic. She didn’t quite manage scary – Charles could do that without even trying – but at least she didn’t look so scared. She was a werewolf. She was not a victim.

  Seeing that they had brought her to a barn turned dance studio, Anna wondered if there was any connection to Lizzie. Maybe she had danced or taught here. Maybe this was how the killers had found her. Or maybe Beauclaire and his daughter were simply on Cantrip’s mysterious and sometimes inaccurate list of fae and others living in the United States – a list Heuter would have access to. But if there was a link between Lizzie and this dance studio, there was a slight chance that Charles could make the connection and find her.

  Because he had to know she was gone by now. If he hadn’t contacted her through their bond, then he couldn’t. He’d have to find another way. And the dance studio might lead him here … in a couple of months or so.

  And now she looked pathetic again. There was a sharp smacking sound – like someone getting slapped in the face. A second smack, and the background noise of the men fantasizing about torture and rape stopped abruptly.

  ‘You know what I told you.’ An old man’s voice, a little quavery but still powerful, spoke in almost-soft tones that reminded Anna of Bran when he got really angry. ‘You keep using those words and you’re going to forget and use them in public. Then you’ll lose your nice job and find yourself out in the streets begging for bread because I’m not going to feed you. No child of my house will be useless and living off the dole.’

  Someone said, ‘Yessir,’ in an almost whisper.

  ‘Those words are for trash,’ the old man continued. ‘For lowborn scum. Your father might have been scum, but your mother was a good girl and her blood should be stronger. You shame her when you speak that way.’

  The old man’s voice changed a little, as if he’d moved, but also sharpened. ‘And you. Les, what do you think you’re doing? Do you think I don’t know where he gets it? You think you’re so damned smart, but you are nothing. Nothing. Too stupid for the FBI, too pansy-ass for the military. You like to forget who is in charge here, or what our mission is and what it means. Distraction is not useful; you know how hard he has to work to seem just like everyone else. You want him to get caught? How far would you get trying to destroy the creatures who are taking over this land of ours without Benedict? Are you trying to ruin us?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Heuter’s voice was subdued, but there was venom lurking below the meek tones. ‘Sorry, Uncle Travis.’

  ‘You aren’t a kid anymore,’ the old man said sternly, apparently missing the unde
rcurrents in the younger man’s attitude. ‘Start acting like it. What are we doing here?’

  ‘Saving our country.’ Heuter’s voice strengthened, almost military-style – and he was telling the truth. ‘Making our country safe for her citizens by taking out the trash and doing the things that our government is too liberal, too soft, to do.’

  Anna couldn’t fathom it. She remembered his little speech at their lunch yesterday; he’d been telling the truth as he believed it then – and though she’d thought him unlikable, she’d also felt a certain respect for him.

  She should have remembered Bran’s law: zealots are one-trick ponies. They love nothing so much as their own cause. Don’t get in their way without expecting to be hurt. She’d always thought Bran had been talking about himself – but she knew better, even if he didn’t. Bran was driven, but he loved his sons and he loved his pack. He was not a one-trick pony.

  ‘Do you remember the little girl that we hung by her braid while we—’ The lust in Heuter’s voice as he’d urged the unseen Benedict on to a greater frenzy was more real than the sincere speech he’d given her at the lunch table.

  Heuter wasn’t a zealot, either, she decided. He only said he was protecting America from monsters to make himself believe that he was in the right as he satisfied his lust for power over others, his desire to cause other people pain and suffering. Murder and rape were his real cause; keeping America safe was only an excuse.

  ‘Can I have her first, Uncle Travis?’ Benedict asked. ‘I like the girls better. And her husband hurt me. Can I have her first?’

  ‘That’s better, boy,’ the older man said. ‘You keep your language polite. Let’s go take a look at her before we decide anything. We’ll have a while to play before you get to feed on her death. There will be time enough for everything.’

  He sounded like he was talking about going fishing instead of torturing and killing someone. The door near her cage opened and the old man turned on the light as they all walked in.

  Hail, hail, the gang’s all here, she thought as she got her first good look at her captors.

  Even knowing what she did, Les Heuter still looked sort of all-American, like the kind of guy who helped little old ladies cross the street. The other young man, Benedict Heuter … he was big. Taller than Charles and maybe fifty pounds heavier, and Charles wasn’t a beanpole. There was something wrong with his eyes and he smelled like a deer in rut. She found it uncomfortable to meet his eyes – and she could stare down Bran. It had nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with the madness in his face.

  The features were different, but Benedict’s expression, the thoughts that lurked behind his eyes, were classic Justin, the crazy werewolf who’d Changed her and … done all the other things that no one else had particularly wanted to do to an Omega wolf. Not long after she and Charles met, Charles had killed Justin. But even years later, she had nightmares about Justin’s eyes.

  Because Benedict made her so uneasy, she turned her attention to the other stranger in the mix. Clearly related by blood to both of the younger two, the old man – Uncle Travis, that was what Heuter had called him – showed her what Heuter would look like in forty years, assuming he didn’t die under her fangs as she hoped. Age had not so much bent this man as clarified him. Heuter still looked a little soft around the edges; it was what gave him his wholesome appearance. This man was all rawhide and leather.

  Even in his mid-sixties or early seventies, he was good-looking, with bright blue eyes unfaded by the years and sharp, clean features that might have been spectacular when he was young but had been solidified by a sense of strength and determination. If Anna thought that the strength of character in his face was slightly mad – well, she was in a better place than most to make that judgment.

  He moved like there was muscle under his skin despite his age. And from the body language of the others, she knew that here was the Alpha wolf. He ruled by fiat, by strength of character, and by their understanding that it was this one who kept them safe and gave them direction – and would kill them if he needed to.

  The body language she observed when the older man wasn’t looking at his minions also told her that Heuter chafed at his secondary position: he was ready to take over at the first sign of weakness. It had been in his voice, too. The old man should have known, and that he didn’t, signaled to Anna that he was weakening and would not rule here much longer.

  ‘Let’s have a look at you, darling,’ the old man crooned as he came up to the cage, seemingly unfazed by her change to wolf. ‘Black as pitch and ice blue eyes. I’ve never seen a wolf with blue eyes before.’

  She had to fight not to back away. Close up, he smelled of pipe tobacco. Charles sometimes smelled like that after he performed one of the ceremonies his grandfather had taught him.

  Charles didn’t do one often, but she’d learned to see the signs. He’d get restless for a few days. Then he’d head off to the woods on his own – or haul her off with him – to find a place to burn tobacco and sing to the spirits in his mother’s tongue.

  Sometimes he’d tell her what he was doing; sometimes he wouldn’t. She didn’t ask him about the rocks he’d bring in or the small bits of cloth he’d set on top of them during certain seasons of the year. He’d told her once that some things were to be shared, and others were not – and that was good enough for her.

  But Charles’s tobacco scent had come to be comforting. She resented the old man for ruining it.

  ‘Uncle Travis, she’s a wolf.’ Benedict’s voice was a whine better suited to a teenager arguing for a later curfew than the grown man he was. Anna was sure by now there was something wrong with him, something more than his being a sociopathic – or was that psychopathic? – serial killer. ‘She’s no good as a wolf. I don’t like old men or boys, but I can do them. I won’t do a wolf – that’s just sick.’

  ‘Hush,’ said the old man. ‘They can’t stay wolves forever. Tomorrow’s the full moon; she can stay a wolf through that, but then she’ll have to change back when the moon sets.’

  He was wrong. As long as she didn’t mind losing herself to the wolf, she could stay in wolf shape indefinitely, but he sounded very confident. Maybe Cantrip’s databases had inaccurate information about more than simply who was and was not fae.

  ‘I can’t wait until tomorrow,’ said Heuter.

  ‘You’re not a werewolf,’ Benedict said. ‘You don’t need the full moon to do anything.’

  ‘No, I don’t care about the moon.’ Heuter smiled. ‘I can’t wait to see that smug bastard lose it because we have his wife and he can’t find her.’

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere near him,’ Uncle Travis snapped irritably. ‘Don’t be stupid. You’ll get cocky and he’ll smell it on you. Smell her on you, maybe.’ He didn’t take his attention off Anna, so he didn’t see the resentment that flashed and disappeared on Heuter’s face.

  Anna didn’t have Charles’s memory for information, but she was pretty sure that Heuter was nearly thirty. That was old to be taking orders issued as if he were a child. Werewolves had to follow their Alpha’s orders that way, though. They followed them or they were killed. Maybe it was the same kind of thing for Heuter? Maybe his uncle read him better than she did, and the threat of death was enough to keep him in line.

  ‘You look so meek in there,’ Uncle Travis said – and it took a moment for Anna to process that he was talking to her because he’d switched from talking to Heuter without altering his voice or his body posture. ‘Are you afraid, princess? You should be. Your kind is trying to take over the world. You don’t fool me with the “we’re good guys” spin-doctoring. I know a predator when I see one. It’s just like the gays. Just like the gooks and the spics and the dagos. Trying to turn this country into a cesspool.’

  Gooks were … Vietnamese, right? Score one for her high school history class, because she’d never actually heard that one out loud before. Spics were Hispanic. She had no idea who the dagos were. Her racist vocabulary obvio
usly needed work. What would a racist call werewolves? Wargs? She kind of liked that one, but suspected that racist bastards didn’t read Tolkien. Or if they did, she didn’t want to know about it.

  ‘But we’re here to stop you,’ Uncle Travis said, then smiled seductively – and he was handsome enough that she would bet that a lot of women had followed that smile into a bedroom. ‘And for payment, all we ask is that we have a little fun along the way – right, boys?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the big man. ‘Yes, fun.’

  It was weird hearing the simplemindedness in his speaking voice and smelling his lust. In her experience – and she’d volunteered in high school with a group that specialized in free babysitting for parents with autistic or special-needs kids – most people who were mentally disabled were pretty sweet as long as their parents hadn’t totally spoiled them.

  Benedict was not sweet, and he was something a lot more deviant than a spoiled brat. Listening to him and smelling his need gave him an oddly pedophilic vibe. It made her feel filthy by association.

  Anna wondered if there had always been something wrong with Benedict, or if Uncle Travis had turned him into this … twisted soul.

  ‘Look at her, Uncle Travis,’ said Heuter. ‘She’s just staring. Is she too scared to fight? Or maybe she thinks she can get away, that she can fight us and win. Maybe she’s not scared of a bunch of mere humans.’

  ‘No snarls or raging,’ agreed Uncle Travis. ‘Might mean she’s already given up. Maybe we won’t wait until she’s human. She’s not half as big as that last one was, and he didn’t give us any trouble.’ He put his face near the cage, as if by accident, but she could smell his excitement. He was taunting her, trying to get her to attack. ‘We took that one apart, piece by piece, until the creature that was left was a mewling, broken thing. We put him down out of pity when we were done with him.’

  Otten hadn’t been trained by Charles, Anna reminded herself firmly. Let success make them careless. She relaxed her ears and changed her posture until the glimpse she saw of the black wolf in the mirror showed a beast who was scared and alone, who knew there was no way her mate could find her – as if the reminder of what had happened to Otten had been enough to steal her confidence.