Chapter 36
36
Elliot Crane
I can hear ATVs.
Come home.
Now.
Please.
I ran to the car, ignoring the pain in my knee. I’d left my phone on my desk to help Roger load in some evidence from a crash on 22 south of Shawano. When I got back to it, I had two missed calls and two texts.
“Fuck!”
“What’s wrong?” Lacy asked.
“They’re going after Elliot,” I replied, grabbing my coat.
“I’ll call Gale!” Lacy called after me as I ran out, not bothering to put on the coat.
I shoved it into the passenger seat and tried to ignore the fact that I was shivering with cold. I didn’t want to spare even the seconds it would take for me to put it on. I chose to ignore things like stop signs and stoplights when there was no one else coming —I needed to get to Elliot. Quickly. A minute sooner. Another minute. A second. A breath. A heartbeat.
Driving through downtown Shawano in the snow was torture. I wanted to go faster, but I grew up in the South, where snow was an alien substance that I had very little understanding of how to drive in. Elliot had tried explaining several things to me the first time I’d had to drive to work in it, but I still didn’t know why he’d insisted on putting a bag of cat litter in my trunk.
Why was he home? Elliot was supposed to have been at the Harts’ today, helping Judy with baking or something. He wasn’t supposed to be alone at the house, because while Smith had arrested Buettner, yesterday the asshole had posted bail. I’d sworn a blue streak worthy of Hart when Smith had called to tell me, and while Smith had been very sympathetic, there wasn’t anything either of us could do.
So today I’d begged Elliot to go over to the Harts’, and he’d promised to do so.
It is late, almost dinnertime , I reminded myself. Elliot had probably assumed I’d be home soon—which I would have been even if it hadn’t been for his texts.
I crossed the river and opened up the engine, through the city where there were other cars and the possibility of pedestrians. Now it was just highway and then…
I whipped up the gravel of the driveway, my back tires skidding as I pulled in.
I left the car door open and ran for the front door. It was locked, and I fumbled with the keys, the scent of blood in my nostrils, panic thick on the back of my tongue.
The door flew open, and I pushed my way inside, not bothering to take off my shoes.
The smell of blood was stronger, thicker, cut by the sour tang of fear.
“Back here,” Elliot’s voice called, the words oddly thick.
It only took a few seconds, and I was in the living room, and I stopped short.
There were two other men in the room, one of them bleeding profusely from one arm, the other frozen in place with Elliot’s hand held out, pointed at his throat.
Or, more specifically, Elliot’s claws . Wicked, six-inch long claws that could easily have ripped out that throat.
Elliot’s features were oddly shaped, his body hunched, and his mouth full of teeth that were too big and too sharp. Why he’d sounded funny.
I’d never seen a shifter do this—shift only partway and hold it there.
It was honestly terrifying.
The two would-be assailants seemed to agree, although the one on the floor seemed to be bleeding a lot more than he should have been, his skin pale and a little waxy. The bleeding man was slumped against the wall beside the broken patio door. The other held a crowbar—presumably the thing that had broken said door.
“The cops are on their way,” I said, trying to keep the pulse hammering in my throat from pushing me into the shift that prickled my skin. I didn’t have the control to keep myself even a little bit human, and there was enough rage and adrenaline pouring through my bloodstream that if I shifted, I might well be fully feral, and that wasn’t going to make the situation any better for anybody.
“Good,” came Elliot’s response, although it was a low and threatening growl. “You should probably keep that fuck-head from bleeding to death on my carpet.”
I wondered which one of them—if either was—was Buettner. And who the other dickhead was.
I stepped closer to the man sitting on the floor, his eyes unfocused.
There was a lot of blood.
“Fuckin’ cut my fuckin’ arm,” the man slurred.
I wanted to make some sort of snide remark about the fact that he deserved it for having broken into someone else’s house. I didn’t. Aggravating anyone—especially the guy with the crowbar—was a bad idea.
Because I knew Elliot was weak—a lot weaker than he looked right now, thanks to what was probably a lot of cortisol rushing through his system.
I walked to the kitchen, grabbed a towel, and threw it at the guy on the floor. “Put this on your arm and put pressure on it,” I told him. Judging from the spray and quantity of blood, he’d hit a vein or artery. I wasn’t sure if I’d feel bad if he bleed to death on the floor—although I was already annoyed about having to get blood out of the carpet.
“Shawano police!”
Elliot and both men twitched, although I recognized Smith’s rough voice.
“In the back!” I called.
The guy with the crowbar looked at the door, then turned and sprinted through it, stumbling and falling down the few stairs that led into the garden, then dragging himself back up.
“Joel, man!” the guy bleeding on the floor wailed.
“Guess your buddy isn’t very loyal,” Elliot growled.
Smith and several uniforms swarmed into the room, although both of them recoiled from Elliot, one of them raising his gun. I stepped between him and Elliot without thinking, sucking in a breath as my brain caught up with the instinctive action my body had taken.
“Put that down, Hanson,” Smith all but spat. The uniform, his pale face flushing, lowered the gun.
“The other guy ran out the back,” I said, the words clipped by the anger I tried to stifle.
“Rickers, go,” Smith ordered.
The other uniform—the one who hadn’t pulled a gun on the victim—nodded once and clambered through the broken doorway, snapping on his flashlight and heading out into the yard, presumably following the footprints through the snow.
Then Smith turned to the quaking man bleeding by the door. “So,” he said, his tone oddly flat. “You thought you might compound those threat and attempted homicide charges with breaking and entering and assault? Or were you just planning to jump directly to murder?”
The bleeding man on the floor looked up, his expression resentful. “Wasn’t gonna kill him,” he whined. “Just scare him.”
I felt a low growl rumble in my chest, and Smith put a hand on my arm. I knew he was telling me to calm down, and I didn’t want to. I had to, though. Growling at a crime scene might already have been enough to out me as a shifter, and the fact that I was here at all probably meant that the whole department would know by the end of tomorrow that I was gay and living with Elliot Crane.
I didn’t actually care if they did. I wasn’t terribly keen to start finding threats in my locker at work or nasty notes left under my wipers about being an animal or a ‘homo,’ as had happened once at one of my jobs in college, but if that was what happened, so be it.
Elliot wavered a little—just for a second, and he quickly regained control, but I’d seen it. I stepped closer to him, wanting to give him support, but his expression darkened, and I stopped myself from reaching out. He clearly didn’t want me to.
“Mr. Buettner, not only have you broken and entered, but you have assaulted and threatened the same man you already assaulted and threatened while out on bail. This is not going to go well for you.”
Buettner said nothing, just stared sullenly at the floor.
“Hanson,” Smith ordered. “Take this piece of trash out to the car.”
Hanson the gun-happy cop reholstered his weapon and roughly hauled Buettner to his feet. “Come on,” he half-grunted. It bothered me that I couldn’t tell if the man’s annoyance was directed at Buettner, at Smith, or at the fact that he had been ordered to arrest someone for threatening a shifter.
As soon as Buettner and Hanson were out of the room, Elliot stepped into my body, his weight hitting me hard enough that I staggered a little. Just a little, though—I recovered quickly, then wrapped Elliot in my arms, careful of his injured side and shoulder.
“You okay?” Smith asked him.
“I’ll be fine.” Elliot’s answer was short, and I could tell he was upset—about his injuries, Smith’s question, the fact that two men had broken into the house, about the shattered door that was letting in cold air… Maybe all of those things. God knew they were all on my list.
I tightened my arms around him, and I felt him shudder a little.
Smith glanced over at the open doorway, which was letting in a lot of cold air. I was trying not to shiver. “Is there somewhere warmer where I can take your statement?” he asked.
Elliot nodded once, then limped away from me. That was when I noticed that he’d shifted back to fully human—maybe that had been the reason for what felt like a shiver in my arms.
He led the way past the entry and down the hall into the room that had been his mom’s studio. One whole wall was hung with mats and woven hangings, and there were finished baskets on most of the shelves. There were also books everywhere—many of them on native plants, healing practices, and history. In the center of the room was a small round table with four compact leather armchairs around it.
Elliot gestured with his good arm for Smith to take one of them, and we joined him. I resisted the urge to reach out to put a hand on Elliot—his arm, his thigh, anywhere. He was holding himself stiffly, and I didn’t think he’d appreciate it, even though my skin itched with the need to touch him.
Smith pulled out his phone and brought up a recording app. “Do you mind?” he asked Elliot, who shook his head.
“Gale?” came Lacy’s voice from by the door, causing Elliot to twitch.
“Seth, would you?—”
“Yeah.” I pushed myself to standing, not bothering to let him finish. I was antsy and irritable, and anything would be better than sitting and trying not to crawl out of my own skin, both literally and figuratively.
I didn’t look at Elliot, mostly because I was afraid he was either going to be mad at me or upset that I was leaving, and I didn’t think I could tolerate either option. It was probably better for me not to be a part of a police interview, anyway. Not if my hands had been anywhere near the evidence used on the case—which they had been.
I went and met Lacy at the door. “Back this way,” I said to her, not bothering with a greeting, given both the tension of the circumstances and the fact that I’d just seen her about a half hour ago.
I showed her to the living room, crossing my arms and rubbing my own biceps at the cold. I could hear the furnace working overtime, trying to counteract the cold December air.
“Sheesh,” Lacy murmured. “This is a right mess and no mistake.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
The glass from the patio door had shattered into sharp, jagged pieces, both large and small, several of which had been ground into the carpet by the shoes of the two men, and probably also Buettner’s butt when he’d sagged onto it. There was blood spattered in a rough semicircle around the door, with more soaked into the carpet where he’d been sitting. I was not looking forward to getting that out.
Especially not before Noah and Lulu showed up.
Tomorrow.
Shit.
It was late—almost midnight—by the time everybody had gotten what they needed and left the house, and I’d wrestled a big sheet of plywood from the garage and screwed it into the frame of the patio door to block the worst of the cold. Elliot had scrounged up some batting from somewhere—apparently he still had most of his mom’s old crafting supplies stashed in a closet—and I stapled that over the seams to stop the worst of the draft.
It was hideous, but at least it helped bring up the temperature in the house.
Before she’d left, Lacy told me to just come back after the holidays—unless there was an emergency, of course. I’d nodded. It was only an extra day off. I’d be back at work on Tuesday, since they gave us Monday off anyway to account for the holiday.
Although all three of us—Roger, Lacy, and me—knew full well that we’d end up working at least one of those days. As the new guy, I got the first call, then Lacy, then Roger. Repeat as needed. I was under no illusion that people would very obligingly not get into fatal accidents or avoid violence just because it was Christmas.
Roger’s family was celebrating on Monday because of spouses, so we’d skip him that day, and Lacy’s family was doing the twenty-fourth, so I’d gotten incredibly lucky to get the holiday itself off—which was good, because Elliot was dragging me, Noah, and Lulu to Madison with Hart’s whole family. I couldn’t decide if that was sweet or terrifying.
Elliot had gone to bed, and I’d left him curled up on his side, the bedside lamp on and the heavy curtains drawn across the floor-to-ceiling windows. I hoped that since Buettner and his friend—since Rickers, who had apparently been a high school track star, had successfully run him down and dragged him back in cuffs—were now in jail, that maybe Elliot could at least get some sleep.
He’d supervised the installation of the plywood and batting, but when I’d started cleanup, he’d mumbled something about not bothering, then went to bed.
I wasn’t going to not bother, though.
I swept up as much glass as I could, then went and got the shop vac from the garage to try to get the rest. Then I used up all the baking soda in the house pouring it on the blood to absorb some of the not-yet-dry liquid and to make scrubbing the stain out a little easier. I wasn’t entirely certain it would work, but I was going to try.
Later. After I got some sleep.
I hadn’t really eaten much, though, and my stomach gurgled, protesting the fact that I’d had only a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and nothing else all day.
I went into the fridge, thinking that Elliot probably also needed to eat, even if he didn’t want to. I pulled out the makings for sandwiches—turkey, mayo, lettuce, onion, tomato, cheese for Elliot. I made us each a few sandwiches, stacked them on some small plates, and carried them into the bedroom. I set the plate with Elliot’s sandwiches on the table beside where he lay, then took mine to my side of the bed.
I set the plate down, then got under the covers, sitting up against the headboard, my legs covered by the bedding.
I reached out and ran a hand over Elliot’s head. “El?”
He made a small sound.
“You should eat something,” I said softly, stroking his hair.
He grumbled a little.
“Elliot.”
One hazel eye opened and squinted up at me. “Why?”
“Because adrenaline with no food does a number on you. I made us sandwiches.”
I helped him sit up, still grumbling, but he ate quickly, clearly hungry.
“More?” I asked, when he finished—I was almost done with mine, too.
But he shook his head. “I just want to sleep.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
I took both plates back to the kitchen, then put them in the dishwasher before coming back to bed.
I thought Elliot was already asleep, but when I lay down on my side of the bed, he immediately snuggled close, his injured arm resting on my chest, his head on my shoulder. I reached up with my hand and gently stroked his hair, then pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“I love you,” I whispered into his skin.
“Love you,” he half-grumbled back, and despite everything, I felt myself smile in the darkness.