Chapter 16
Carl ached. There was no other word for the exhaustion that pulled at his heart and mind.
It began with a physical burn from the fight earlier today.
Plus, shifting left a residue in a body.
A kind of toxin that had to be worked out either in bear or human form.
It was normal, but it often required ibuprofen or a hot tub to soak the misery away. Carl had neither.
Next came his frustration at their lack of progress.
He and Tonya had visited every possible site in the county for another secret lab to no avail.
With modern satellite imagery and their combined knowledge of the area, they’d been able to investigate a dozen possibilities but had found nothing.
Well, not quite nothing. They’d stumbled over three small pot fields, but Carl hadn’t cared enough to deal with that.
Even Tonya had just texted the info to her boss and moved on.
But now it was after dark. Tonya had moved past cranky hours ago and was now into grunt-and-point mode as she dropped him off at his home. Which left Carl heading up the walkway to face Becca and the ache that had filled his heart for most of the day.
She was repulsed by him. He didn’t blame her.
After all, it had taken him years to come to an armed truce with the animal inside him.
The thing was brutal and violent. All it knew how to do was destroy.
That was useful so long as his intelligence kept it under control.
He’d learned in his first years as Max to open the cage and aim the creature at whatever nasty had to be taken out.
Then the moment the danger was past, the grizzly went back into lockdown.
But this morning had required him in full grizzly.
Which meant she’d seen him at his most brutal.
He’d felt her revulsion like a physical blow.
And when she’d turned from him? It was like being kicked to the curb by civilization.
She was a soft kind of girl, raised in the city, educated well, and living in an area that didn’t even have crime.
Of course the sight of him covered in gore would make her ill.
So he’d stayed away, searching for her adopted son as the only way he could help her.
But he’d stewed about what had happened, worrying it like a diseased tooth until he was as surly as Tonya.
And now he was home, his body tired, his mind still churning, and his heart aching because the woman he wanted had rejected him.
What a pathetic sack of shit he was.
He pushed open the front door, expecting the place to be deserted.
Alan liked to work in his room, and Becca was probably hiding from him.
Except instead of the typical dark, the living room was bright with light.
Alan was sitting on the couch watching TV and Becca was at the dining room table working on a laptop.
They both looked up when he entered, but if they said something, he lost it amid the smell.
Garlic bread and lasagna. He’d know that scent anywhere, and it drew him inside like nothing else.
It was his favorite meal, and he hadn’t had it homemade since his mother died when he was sixteen.
His stomach growled, loud enough to be heard over the TV.
Becca smiled and gestured, but she needn’t have bothered.
He went straight to the kitchen cabinets for a plate and silverware.
It was a triumph of civilization that he didn’t just pick up the pan and gobble it whole.
Becca joined him in the kitchen, her scent an odd combination of his soap, tomato sauce, and gunpowder.
He wrinkled his nose, trying to understand if he had that right, but then lost the thought as she scooped up a huge serving onto his plate.
And when he started to dig a fork in, she pulled it out of his hand.
“It’s cold. You need to microwave it for a minute.
” She fitted the action to her words and he almost howled at the loss.
Then he stood there like a child counting down the seconds on the machine while he waited.
His stomach growled three more times, though she poured him a glass of something and he drank that just as a way to wait.
Raspberry iced tea? From a jug?
He frowned at the container on the counter, and Becca answered before he could ask it out loud. “I made some sun tea this afternoon. Is it cold enough?”
He didn’t even know what sun tea was, but he nodded as held out his empty glass. Twenty-three more seconds until lasagna. Twenty-two. Twenty-one.
While Becca poured him more tea, Alan turned off the TV and leaned against the kitchen door. “I take it you didn’t have any luck.”
Carl shook his head, his gaze not on his brother but on Becca’s face. She kept it neutral, but he saw her disappointment. Her lips tightened and she even swallowed as she put away the tea. Meanwhile, heaven came at the sound of the microwave finishing. Lasagna!
He took it out and shoveled in his first bite while it was still too hot. Didn’t matter. Heaven in a single bite.
“This is good,” he managed.
“I can’t believe you didn’t just burn your tongue.”
He shrugged. “Hungry.” And wasn’t he doing a great job of acting like a mature man? A caveman spoke better than he had. So he forced himself to swallow and hold off shoveling in a new bite. “Thank you for the dinner. You can’t know how much I appreciate it.”
She smiled, her cheeks warming to a rosy pink. “I had to do something. Alan said your mother used to make lasagna. I found her recipe. I hope you don’t mind.”
Mind? He was ready to worship at her feet for this. But he didn’t say that. It was too brutally honest. Instead, he looked around the counter. “Recipe? Where—”
“The box was in the cabinet up there.” She pointed to the corner cabinet, which was filled with stuff they hadn’t used in years: a food processor, a couple casserole dishes, and he didn’t know what. And—obviously—his mother’s recipe box.
“Make anything you want, any time you want. I’ll pay for the food. Whatever you need. Please.” Was that too much like begging?
“How long has it been since anyone’s cooked for you?” She looked at both men.
Alan shrugged. “We usually eat whatever the kids are being served.” The after-school program had snacks every afternoon.
And since shifters tended to eat a lot, even before their First Change, the meals were heartier than the usual crackers and a slice of cheese.
They got burgers, hot dogs, and pizza on a regular basis.
For Carl and Alan, that meant that weekends were filled with leftover burgers, hot dogs, and pizza.
All of which added up to homemade lasagna as the nearest thing to heaven in a very long time.
“I made salad, too,” she said, then chuckled. “But I can see that you’d rather eat the pasta.”
He was already serving himself more. At least this time he managed to wait somewhat patiently as the microwave worked. Meanwhile, Becca leaned against the refrigerator, obviously working hard to appear casual. “Did you learn anything at all?”
He could see the worry in her eyes and hated making it worse, so he tried to put a positive spin on the situation. “We’ve eliminated a lot of possibilities. That’s good progress. The entire police force is working on this. They’ll figure out the next step.”
She nodded, her gaze canting away. “Nothing new, then.”
No way to answer that directly without confirming her worst fears. So he touched her chin, pulling her gaze up to his. “We’ll find him. I swear it.”
She searched his face and he kept it as open as he knew how. Let her see his absolute determination to find Theo and punish the bastard who created the situation in the first place. Whatever he showed her must have been convincing because eventually she nodded.
“Thanks.”
Jesus. “Don’t thank me, Becca. This is what I do.
It’s the Max’s job to protect everyone here, especially the young.
” And it killed him that he’d failed in that.
“Thank you for the food.” Now that there were calories in his stomach, he noticed that the pile of laundry was gone and that someone had tidied up their home.
That sure as hell hadn’t been Alan. “Thanks for everything,” he said, gesturing at the clean home.
“I have to do something or I’ll go insane.”
“She also went to the gun range today,” Alan said, his voice excruciatingly dry. It was his lawyer way of criticizing. “I told her we’d keep her safe, but she insisted.”
That explained the scent of gunpowder. “You don’t have to be afraid here,” Carl said. Though he could hardly blame her for being worried, what with grizzly wars taking place on the front lawn.
She sighed. “Turns out a gun didn’t make me feel safer,” she said as she handed him a slice of garlic bread. “I’m a sucky shot.”
“You’re a great cook,” Carl said, and she couldn’t know how much he needed that. How he wanted a woman who wasn’t about destroying. Whose focus was on building and nurturing.
Meanwhile, Alan continued to poke. “Did you run into any trouble today?”
Carl glanced at his brother, hearing the underlying question there: Is Tonya okay? “Nothing we couldn’t handle. We’re going to start at dawn tomorrow. Start searching farther afield.”
“Everyone wants to help. Marty’s coordinating food baskets for the people at the watch points, but beyond that I don’t know what else we can do.”
Carl couldn’t think of anything either. “No more teens in their First Change?”
“No one’s old enough. It’s just Theo now.”
Right. His gaze went back to Becca’s pale skin. She was holding it together better than many mothers would, but the strain was showing. “You should get some rest,” he said to her softly.
“I…” She shrugged. “I can’t sleep.” Then she gave an awkward shrug. “I made pie. It’s not fancy, but—”
“Pie?” he interrupted. He shoveled in the last bites of his lasagna. “Where?”
“Blueberry.” She opened the refrigerator. “I can heat it—”