In the Shadow of the Wolf 3 - Splintered Lies (2 page)

While Nick had expected some form of that question, he hadn't anticipated Joe being quite so blunt. He blinked.
"We can't just go kill someone." Eyeing the stubborn, rebellious expression on his best friend's face, Nick considered his words carefully. "Even if we could, we don't know who to shoot. The information I gave you is all we have. Quent was working with a senator. We have no idea which one. Right now we don't know anything useful." Nick felt frustrated. He knew Joe needed to do something. Physical activity would help burn off his first surge of anger-fueled adrenaline and let him focus on the investigation.
Nick watched Joe pace. His friend's expression was blank, his jaw set, his control a fragile thread slipping through his fingers. Nick saw it in the bunching of muscles at the back of Joe's jaw, in the way his hands fisted and relaxed at his sides.
Joe turned to Nick. "Where do you suggest we start?"
Their habitual roles slid comfortably into place: Nick the thinker and Joe the action cop. It had been like that their entire lives. Joe ready to get out there to do things and experience life, Nick holding back, uneasy if he didn't know what to expect.
"Is your fax machine hooked up?"
Joe glanced over at the bulky all-in-one printer sitting on a small table beside his computer desk. "Yeah." He hesitated before adding, "Mara did it. We've gotten exactly one fax on it."
Determined not to let Joe's melancholy distract him, Nick pulled out his phone and touched the screen. "Make sure it's on." He walked over to a window that faced the backyard and looked out past the neatly groomed yard to the woodland that appeared almost as neatly kept. The hallmark of a wolf/human community was the parkland located in the center, acres of thickly wooded land for the wolves to run. It reminded Nick of the way many affluent housing areas were built around a lake, with access available to everyone in the community, but a few had the privilege of living right on the edge of the woodland itself. Joe's house hadn't come cheaply, but the direct access to a run would be considered priceless by any wolf family. Jogging paths and a playground were somewhere else, things hadn't become so integrated that humans and wolves ran together. Pure humans didn't understand how completely a wolf retained his identity no matter his shape.
Nick touched the screen of his phone and held it to his ear. "Hey, Rob."
"How'd it go?" Rob sounded hesitant.
Nick glanced back to where Joe poked at the machine. "Not sure yet, but he knows. Could you fax over the reports you told me about last night and everything else you have? I know it's a lot, but if we don't find a place to start, Joe's not going to keep it together."
"Damn stupid thing," Joe grumbled in the background.
"Maybe you better email them too."
Nick listened to Rob rifling through papers. "Consider it done. Got the number?"
"Hold on." Nick crossed the living room to stand beside Joe. "What's the fax number?"
Joe looked up from poking buttons. "Same as the house. I turned off the answering machine; if we don't answer it'll go to fax. I think."
"Same as his house phone, he says," Nick reported, speaking into the phone again. "Thanks, Rob, we'll be in touch."
"No problem. Let me know if you need anything else." Rob disconnected and Nick tucked his phone back into his pocket.
Nick and Joe hovered in uncomfortable silence around the fax machine waiting for some sign it was going to work.
"I hope Rob doesn't think I'll be following police procedure on this one." Joe met Nick's eyes. "You ought to get out of here, no point in both of us destroying our careers."
Nick shrugged. "I'm on leave, might as well hang around. I got nothing else today."
Joe's eyes narrowed. "Leave as of when?"
"As of three o'clock this morning when Rob called to tell me about the tests."
Joe's eyes narrowed. He obviously had something to say about the situation, but just then the phone began to ring. Nick grabbed Joe's hand when he instinctively reached for the receiver to answer the call. Joe jerked away like he'd been burned.
"Fuck, I know, all right?" He stepped back, out of Nick's reach.
Hurt, Nick frowned. "What the hell?" His phone signaled he'd received an email just as the landline stopped ringing and the familiar screech of the fax machine receiving information filled the air. Nick opened his email as the machine spit out the first page of the fax. A picture of Mara curled up on the edge of the road, seemingly uninjured except for the blood pooled under her hips. The police report, pictures.
"Joe, don't." Nick reached for the pages coming off the fax machine in a desperate effort to protect his friend. He was seconds too late; Joe had the first few pages in hand and stared at the top one in shocked surprise.
"Mara."
His broken whisper tore Nick's heart. Joe thumbed through the pages and all but one slipped from his grasp. That single page he held so tightly it crumpled in his grasp.
"Niko."
The raw agony in Joe's voice brought Nick to his side. It didn't matter that recently Joe had begun acting as if Nick had the plague and tried to stay out of reach. Nick needed to make Joe's pain stop, and the only way to do that was distract him from the picture in his hand. With a last glance at the tiny baby lying still and lifeless on a cold metal table, Nick closed his email and put his phone back into his pocket.
"Don't look." Nick tried to pry the paper out of Joe's hand but he wouldn't let go. Nick remembered every small detail of the perfect baby, umbilical cord still attached to the placenta lying beside him. Fine blond hair dusted his body and covered his head in fine strands. His little eyes were closed, his hands curled into fists.
"Did I ever tell you we were going to call him Niko?" Joe's attention didn't waver from the photo. "We named him after you. It was Mara's idea." His voice was rough with emotion and his face pale and drawn as he touched the picture. Nick stood helplessly beside him, afraid to offer the comfort of his touch. What he was hearing was enough to rock him to the core.
"Mara gave him my name?" Nick couldn't have kept the shock from his voice if he'd tried.
"She said it was the right thing to do." Joe shook his head. "Before that I never realized she knew."
"What? What did Mara know?"
Joe didn't answer at first but when he lifted his gaze to Nick's his expression was tight with grief.
"The Russian spelling of your name. She wanted Nikolai; in fact she wanted the whole thing. Nikolai Alexander Christie. Hell of a mouthful, don't you think? She said it was a good and noble name, like you."
"What did you mean she knew?"
"She wasn't blind. She knew what I turned my back on and what it cost you. When I chose her over you."
Nick's heart stuttered and threatened to stop. "Joe, I never said a word about what I felt. I swear to God."
"I know that, Nick, you never did anything but accept defeat gracefully. You never fought for me at all." Joe shrugged and gave a faint smile. "That's how I knew I'd made the right decision. I don't know how Mara figured it out, but she did. I loved her so much and now all I have is this." Silent tears made their way down Joe's face and stained the page in his hand. The printer ink ran, blurring the image. "Look at him. He was a little person, my son, and I don't even know what happened to him." The face Joe turned to Nick was ravaged with grief and horror. "What did they do with my son?"
The identifying label under the picture read "Baby Christie" and the horror of the moment chilled Nick as he realized what had mostly become of the boy's body.
"They had to cut him out of his mother. She was already dead, he was too, and they still cut him out," Joe said.
"Standard autopsy procedure I guess," Nick's tone was cautious, unsure of Joe's stability. A parent shouldn't have to see such grisly photos, civilian or cop.
"Where is my boy?" Joe choked on his question.
Feeling every bit as sick and desperate as Joe looked, Nick reached for his phone. He had no idea why the baby hadn't been cremated per standard procedure, but they'd had the body available for further testing. Nick watched as Joe sank to the floor, the picture of his son clutched against his chest, staring blankly into the distance. Nick's throat was clogged with tears as he put through another call to Rob.
"What's up?" Rob said. "Did you get the files?"
"Yeah we got them. Police files
with
autopsy pictures." Nick moved away from Joe so he could talk properly.
"Dammit, I didn't stop to think, I just wanted to make sure you guys had everything available. Fuck. I'm sorry." Rob sounded about as shitty as Nick felt at seeing the pictures.
"Yeah, well, it's done. Rob, why wasn't the baby already cremated? Do you know what they've done with his body this time? Joe's freaking out." Nick lowered his voice in an effort to keep the conversation from upsetting Joe even more.
"The baby? Joe's baby? They put him back."
Nick paused, unsure he'd heard correctly. "What did you just say?"
"The morgue called the office because they needed a decision and Joe wasn't doing so good. Hell, you know the shape he was in. So I told them to put the baby back inside his mother."
Relief flooded Nick. "That's not standard procedure."
"No, it's not. I pulled rank and some favors and made it happen. I had no idea we'd need to exhume the bodies." Rob sounded tired. "When the tests are all done Mara and the baby will be reburied together."
"Thank you." Nick ended the call and stuffed the phone back into his jeans. He knelt beside Joe and laid a hand on his arm. Joe didn't pull away or look up. He was hugging himself as he rocked in silent misery.
"Look at me."
Joe didn't respond. Nick took hold of his chin, turning his friend's face in his direction. Joe's stubble was rough under Nick's fingers, and his teary eyes bloodshot; he seemed unable to focus. Nick stroked Joe's rough cheek. "It's okay, Joey, do you hear me? It's okay. They're together."
Joe frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Just that; Rob fixed it so they put the baby back next to Mara."
"You mean they didn't separate them?" Joe's eyes were so wounded Nick almost had to look away. "What about now, you said they exhumed the bodies for more tests, what are they going to do with them after?"
"Put them back exactly like they were. We can add the baby's name to the headstone if you want. We didn't know you'd named him."
Relief flooded Joe's expression followed quickly by anger. He jerked away from Nick's touch. "Would you quit fucking fixing everything?"
Taken by surprise, Nick fumbled for something to say. "Joe, I didn't do anything. It was Rob. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I loved her," Joe shouted at Nick. "It wasn't a lie or make-believe. I loved her."
"What the hell? I know you did. Why do you keep telling me that?" Nick struggled to understand why Joe seemed so agitated about the validity of his affection for Mara, something Nick had never questioned.
Joe didn't answer. His eyes narrowed and something shifted in his expression. The look on his face became one Nick hadn't seen in years, one that made his heart stutter. Joe had stalked him sometimes when they were in college, a sex game they liked to play. Nick would leave for class or work the same as he did every day, but instead of Joe doing likewise, he spent the day shifted, following Nick.
Nick remembered those few times Joe managed to catch him by surprise. Joe's current expression was the same one he'd worn when he managed to corner Nick alone and shifted back into a man. A look that was followed immediately by Joe in Nick's space, mouth taking without asking, hands hot and eager under his clothes.
Trying to catch his breath and rein in a body betraying him with its primal reaction to Joe's look, Nick edged away.
"Joe?" Nick tried to keep his voice steady, but Joe's swift changes in mood undermined Nick's attempt to remain calm.
"I loved her. When I made love to her she was enough. I didn't have to close my eyes and fantasize anything else. Mara loved me; coming together with her was one of the most beautiful things in my life." Joe's face contorted in pain with the memory, but his eyes remained fixed on Nick. "Afterward she always curled against me, practically purring her satisfaction; I'd wrap her in my arms and we'd sleep. I loved her, she should have been enough, but in my dreams you were always there, waiting."
Nick's mouth went dry. He'd spent years hiding his feelings, making certain not to reveal the slightest trace of his yearning. In all that time he'd never had so much as a hint Joe harbored any lingering feelings beyond friendship for him.
"I cheated on my wife in my dreams, and you never so much as looked at me sideways. You never acted like you missed me, as if what we shared was nothing."
The raw pain in Joe's voice wrecked Nick. His mind happily supplied snapshots of times Nick had stolen careful looks at Joe. Moments he'd suffer over later, racked with guilt, cock in hand, as he didn't just remember old times with the man he loved but fantasized new ones with images of Joe fresh in his mind.
"Damn it, Joe, you were married. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Stalk you? Jump you in a dark alley?" Nick took a deep breath and said what he'd always believed as the truth. "You had Mara, you didn't need me."
"You're like something burrowed under my skin. No matter how much I loved her and tried to lose myself in her, there you were, my best friend haunting my dreams."
"Listen to yourself! Dreams, you
dreamed
about me. So the fuck what? You're bisexual and made the decision to cut dick out of your life. Your brain supplied an outlet for you." Nick took a deep breath and tried to calm the racing of his heart. "When you were awake you only had eyes for her and telling yourself anything else is just bullshit. Best friend was all I had left. Now she's gone and it's still…"
Nick couldn't finish what he had to say, finding himself flat on his back, pinned to the floor by Joe's weight.
"I fucking loved her." Joe sobbed as he claimed Nick's mouth in a kiss that left Nick too shocked to resist. Stunned, he lay there unable to pull his thoughts together as Joe's tongue pushed feverishly into his mouth. The picture of his dead baby was crushed between their chests.
Heart pounding, Nick gave in to the moment he'd craved for so long. His hands bracketed Joe's head and he spread his legs, welcoming his best friend into the eager cradle of his hips. Their hard cocks pressed together, throbbing with demands for freedom from their denim prisons, and stealing blood from brains that needed it to think straight.