Chapter 11
Dustin
I waited for Wade outside my office three days later.
He was an hour behind schedule, and although I was sure it was just the cruddy Chicago area traffic, I couldn’t help pacing.
I’d missed the hell out of him, and wouldn’t it be just like fate to fuck us up at the last minute?
I strained my eyes and ears for signs of his old woody wagon.
After another twenty minutes of catastrophizing, a cab pulled over at the curb and Wade climbed out.
I strode forward as he straightened and hauled him into a hug.
Not the kiss I wanted, out there on the street, but his solid body against mine and the smell of him in my nose settled the pacing wolf inside me.
Pack. Mate. Ours.
The way Wade nuzzled under my chin, audibly sniffing me, suggested he was seeking the same reassurance.
I squeezed him hard, then made myself let go. “What happened? Where’s your car?”
He took a bag out of the back seat, paid off the driver, and watched him speed away. “The damned thing wouldn’t start. I caught a Greyhound bus down into Niles, and found a cab as fast as I could. Sorry I’m late.”
“I’m just glad you’re here. Come on in. I’ll give you the ten-cent tour, but we have to get going.
Work first, reunion later.” I led him into my tiny street-level office.
I’d painted over the front window because no one going to a private eye wants to be on display.
The white coating let through plenty of light for werewolf eyes.
“Desk over there, my own filing cabinets.”
Wade barked a laugh, and I knew why. My own cabinet drawers were each strapped shut with an individual chain and combination lock.
“Well, I showed you the reason for that, right?”
“Good thing the mayor wasn’t as smart as you.”
“Dark-room back there.” I gestured. No doubt Wade could smell the chemicals, despite the light-tight door.
“I can make negatives, prints, slides, enlargements. Visual evidence is important.” I pointed out the second small room.
“Recording gear, climbing gear, whatever I might need. That third door there leads to the stairs. I live on the second floor.”
Wade turned in a slow circle. “It’s more businesslike than I expected.”
“It is a business. Dad’s money got used on the farm.
I have to support myself.” I grinned. “Plus I like detective work. I’m a snoop at heart.
” The clock on the wall reminded me time was ticking, though.
“I wanted to take you upstairs and show you my bed, but if I do that, we’re going to be too late. ”
“Damn that stupid alternator,” Wade said. “Can I kiss you, at least?”
“Hell, yeah. C’mere.” I opened my arms and Wade leaned into my embrace, his face raised to mine. Our kiss surprised me, not hot and wild, but slow and satisfying. Hello, and I missed you, and stay with me.
I hated to break the moment, but we were on a tight schedule. I pulled out of his arms and stepped back. “Okay, my car’s in the alley, all loaded to go.”
“You’ll explain on the way?”
“Yep.” I locked the front door, led him out the back, and locked up there too, setting my alarm— more modern than the city hall’s, with actual motion sensors in every room. Technology grew more advanced all the time.
I’d left my car in the loading zone out back, and once we were seated, I drove down the alley and turned onto the street.
The sun had set, and dusk was falling. I turned on my headlights and filled Wade in as I headed for our rendezvous.
“We’re meeting Harvey Rosswurn. He was the easier nut to crack.
He’s a total cliché, having an affair with his secretary.
Well, his ex-secretary. His current one is for real, but the previous broad now works in a real estate office, and sleeps with him on the side. ”
“How did you find out?”
“Surveillance. They met at a motel two days ago. One story, cheap place. They really should fix their blinds.”
“You have pictures?”
I flashed him a knowing smile. “I have lots of pictures.”
Wade chewed his lower lip. “You don’t feel it’s cheap to use them for our own good?”
My stomach twisted at that implied criticism of what I did, maybe who I was, since this was far from my first rodeo, but I played the question off lightly. “Hell, I’m saving your city millions in taxpayer dollars. Not cheap at all.”
“You don’t think the papers from the mayor’s office would be enough?”
“Maybe. Only, at this point it’s just a proposal, right?
The valuations for the buildings are inflated, but they could just claim those were estimates, and the final figures would be revised as needed, once the project was approved.
They could still lower the valuations and go through with their plan, even if their profits were cut way down.
The paperwork puts their plans in a bad light, but as long as it’s hypothetical, it’s not yet criminal. ”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Plus… Men respond to emotional risk a lot more dramatically than facts. Threatening to tell his wife about his cheating? That hits him where he lives, making him afraid of us, versus Let me get my lawyer on this.”
I could feel Wade’s gaze on me as I negotiated city traffic amid the blaring horns and crazy drivers. “You really think about all the angles, huh?”
“Fixer’s job. Like, if some human sees a wolf shifting, one way to keep them from mentioning it is to make them believe they’ll be ridiculed and humiliated for claiming something so ridiculous.
Playing on their emotions is a lot less violent than making them disappear, but it takes psychology.
” Dad had pushed me through a lot of human psych texts in addition to sharing his decades of experience.
I was relieved when Wade huffed a small laugh and settled, seeming less tense. “I could never do your job.”
“Well, remember when you tried to teach me to whittle? My rabbit lost its ears and turned into a mouse.”
“I’d forgotten.” When I glanced over, Wade had a faraway look in his eyes. “I guess, after Shawn, I pushed all the good memories of you down in a box where they couldn’t hurt me.”
“I’m sorry.” I reached across and squeezed his knee.
“Well, I can’t complain about how it worked out.”
“It’s been a lonely seven years for you, though.”
“Yeah. It was.”
“That’s the place.” I pointed.
Wade sat straighter. “We’re meeting in a house?”
“Yep. Rosswurn told his mistress he’d give her one of these extra cheap.
” We’d reached a small under-construction development in a modest neighborhood.
Six houses around a cul-de-sac, that Rosswurn had bought for a steal when the developer got overstretched and went under.
The buildings were a month or two from completion, just finishing work still left inside.
I drove well past the dead end road, then parked the car on a side street.
“Get the case from the back. And here— cotton gloves. Put them on before we go inside the house.” I lifted my duffel bag out of the trunk while Wade grabbed the slide projector off the back seat.
Glancing at my watch, I saw we had thirty minutes, as long as Rosswurn didn’t arrive early.
I hadn’t seen any cars near the development, and he didn’t seem like a “lie in wait” kind of guy, but I kept eyes, ears, and nose peeled as we approached along the sidewalk.
I could smell traces of the recently departed workmen, of coffee and fresh paint and sawdust and weed. Bad weed— someone was getting ripped off. After heading up the front steps like we belonged there, I slipped on my gloves, picked the lock, and let us inside.
The living room sat off to the right. I headed in there and set down my bag, then used a small, plug-in light to make sure we had power. I’d tested the outside outlet by the back door last night, but one never knew when the builders might’ve shut the electricity down for interior work.
All was good, so I covered the windows with my blackout tarps.
Workmen had left a suitable cardboard carton to support the slide projector, a bonus since I’d planned to just put it on the floor.
I set up my show-and-tell in the kitchen with an extension cord, and after a bit of fiddling, aimed the beam through the doorway to project on the fresh white living room wall.
My test slide came into crisp focus, a black “1” on a white background.
I’d brought a bedsheet in case I needed to create a screen, but the drywaller had given me a lovely flat surface.
“Okay,” I told Wade. “This is your job. This is slide 1. The others have a number in the corner and the carousel is preloaded. All you have to do is click through the numbers when I call for them. Here’s the forward and back buttons.”
“I can do that.” Wade knelt beside the projector and clicked through, grunting once at the first image of the unlovely Harvey Rosswurn naked, ending back on slide 1. “Got it.”
“I’m going to run the show from the dining room.
I’ll use a kid’s voice changer. Here’s yours.
” I handed him a red plastic mini-bullhorn.
Elaborate vocoders existed, but these did the job when dealing with humans who couldn’t separate the sounds.
“If you want to say something, do it like this.” I raised my blue bullhorn to my lips and pressed the button.
“You will sound like a robot.” The cheap toy emitted a metallic-robot version of my words, losing a bit of clarity but not the meaning.
“Oh, fun.” Wade spoke into his. “Mr. Spock wants you.”
I laughed. “I would totally do Mr. Spock, just so you know. He’s cool. Or I would’ve before I found you.”
Wade twisted to peer up at me. “And now?”
Any temptation to make a joke was lost in the intensity of his gaze. “You’re the only one I want in my bed. Or anywhere else.”
“Me too,” he said.