Chapter One #2
Besides, he isn’t even that cute. He’s unnecessarily big and doesn’t even realize that. Every time I “accidentally” ran into Harold when I was trying to get him to trust me, Mickey would literally jump on me, smiling his stupid puppy smile. And then he’d look at me with his stupid doe eyes.
Mickey licks my finger in his sleep. He’s the cutest dog in the entire world. I’ll fight anyone who challenges that.
“Done. Now, you’ve never met Harold Nolan.” Sam’s voice brings me back to the present. Oh, right, I need to deal with the nearly dead werewolf five feet away. “Check his call history and messages, just to be sure.”
I do as he says, while Harold gives out one last whine before his eyes go blank.
“Is he dead?” Sam asks.
I check Harold’s pulse. “Yup.”
“Did you at least tell him why he had to die?” Sam asks hopefully.
“Umm… yes?”
“This is so wasted on you,” he complains.
“I'm sure he already knows he killed his wife, Sam,” I say absentmindedly, checking his phone for any residual evidence.
“But I wanted him to... ugh, only you can make murder boring,” he says, resigned.
Who says it was boring? It’s so much fun to watch Sam bristle and mutter about me being the world’s most generic serial killer.
Now that my job is done, there’s a steady wave of self-satisfaction thrumming through my body.
Not glee or anything psychotic like that, but just this feeling of accomplishment of cleaning out some trash from the world.
This one being my first mission in seven months, is a bonus.
I almost started to believe the werewolves of Los Angeles had collectively decided to clean up their act.
“I’ll be sure to put aside a bigger production budget next time,” I assure him and walk over to Mickey one last time.
“You'll be fine here. Just don't eat him,” I gently pat his head while he snores.
I head into the kitchen and dig out Mickey's food. I set some out for him so he's happy and well-fed until someone finds Harold. If no one does, I’ll have Sam place an anonymous call to make sure Mickey is safe.
It's not for Harold, he can go fuck himself. I look at his unmoving body. Well, he can't anymore.
Satisfied, I give the place one last glance. After packing both the coffee cups inside my bag, I stalk out of there like I was never in.
“The door-cam recordings are replaced,” Sam announces as soon as I’m back on the street.
My pace is quicker on the way back to the car, not enough to draw attention, but now that the task is done, my body is relaxed enough to show the normal effects of the high-stress situation.
I never let it happen when I’m on the job.
Years of meditation make sure my heartbeat doesn’t give my plan away to a werewolf.
Their sharp hearing will catch any change instantly, and even though they won’t consider a puny human like me a threat, I’m not taking any chances.
When I close the car door safely behind me, the call automatically connects to the car speaker.
“So, how was the party?” Sam asks.
“Boring, irritating, packed with werewolves,” I say, too used to abrupt topic changes from him.
“Oooh, did Detective McHottie show up too?” he asks, excited. Too excited.
“You mean, did he show up for his brother’s engagement party? Yes, Sam, he did. And I told you we’re not giving him a code name. Especially not that one,” I insist.
“But it fits,” he says, like it’s so obvious. “The guy is hot. Let me have this,” he pleads.
“Sure, you can have it. Better yet, you can call him that when he’s shoving me into the backseat of his car and hauling me off to prison. You can even thank him for his service,” I say dryly.
Sam snorts. “He’s not going to catch us because they’re not investigating any of our cases. They all go straight to the natural causes pile,” he assures.
“Are you sure?” I ask for what has to be the thousandth time.
“Elliot, you know I have systems that automatically check the LAPD database every half an hour,” Sam says for the thousandth time.
“I’ll know if there’s so much as a peep.
I designed this really cool model that doesn’t just crawl through their…
” I tune out his mambo jumbo that goes right above my head.
Sam and I met in college where we bonded over being nerdy scrawny kids filled with angst. As we got to know each other, we realized we shared more than our love for punk rock and avoiding fuckboys. We both knew about werewolves and we wanted to change the world.
It took some time but I opened up about my past and he did too.
His sister was killed by a werewolf and his family couldn’t prove anything.
On one particularly drunken night, we came up with the plan to do something about this injustice.
But we laughed it off the next morning. The thought stuck though and a month later, we were changing our entire lives to make it work.
Sam was always good with computers, but he didn’t want to study it for years. So, he did courses and learned skills from shady places to become as good as he is. I started applying to veterinary schools to get access to chemicals and labs.
Slowly and steadily, we built a system that worked.
When Sam’s parents died in a car crash, leaving him with all the money he could ever need, we finally started implementing our system.
It started slow and safe. Now, we take on every target we can find.
But the fear of getting caught still looms like a black cloud ruining a perfectly good day.
“...I know, but HTML is completely outdated now, machine learning is where it's at. I’ll have to figure it out,” Sam is saying when I tune back in.
“Totally,” I say.
“Anyway, tell me, what's the deal with Detective Nicholas ‘McHottie’ Harper?” he says, his voice thick with innuendo.
“If it didn’t work as a code name, it won’t work as a middle name,” I say. “Don’t you have your violin classes or whatever you’re into this month?”
“Oh, shit, I’m late for the theremin session,” he says.
“Of course you are. Go be anywhere else but here on the call with me,” I say, disconnecting the call.
I immediately get a text from him.
Rude!
I take a deep breath. Even after a decade, this part never gets easier. I want to hit the gas and get away from here. But I also want to go back to that house and claw Harold’s eyes out for what he did.
I take another breath and do neither. I’ve solved the problem. He can’t hurt anyone else. I’ve become what I needed when I was a helpless kid. No one can hurt me anymore, and I won’t let any werewolf hurt anyone else.
I learned early on that we live in an unfair world, and no one would believe me if I told them the truth. So, I had to take things into my own hands. Become the judge, jury, and executioner.
I push all the anger, frustration, and the annoying fear out with the next breath, pulling up the wall that protects me from pesky emotions, and drive into the night back to my empty apartment, my cold bed. Because that’s all my cold heart deserves.