Chapter One #2
Left, left, another left, and I was behind the Thai place, the same one that seasoned the air with sweet oil and old garlic.
One of the bikes tried to cut me off at the next cross, but I dropped the car into neutral and skidded past him, the Subaru’s backend fishtailing and slamming me against the baby’s weight.
The biker’s helmet turned, caught my eye for one second—no expression, no panic, just a flick of calculation.
They were not amateurs.
I wound through the Pearl District on pure instinct, cutting past loading docks and over a sidewalk that had probably never seen a car before.
I lost two of the bikes at the Yamhill crossing when a TriMet bus decided to run its schedule like the world depended on it, blocking their line of sight just long enough for me to duck into the covered parking garage at 10th.
I killed the lights and rolled to a stop, heart thrumming, breath steady but shallow.
The baby’s fist thumped once against my chest, then relaxed. I looked down at her—still wrapped in my jacket, face pressed to the hollow between my ribs. If this was trauma, it was the most Zen trauma I’d ever seen.
I envied her.
The bikes didn’t pass by immediately, which meant they’d clocked my move. I popped the car into reverse, eased down the ramp, and watched the entrance behind me in the rearview.
Thirty seconds, maybe less, and I saw the first helmet appear. He slowed, scanned the garage with a head tilt, and then—no warning—kicked the bike over and came in, tires biting slick cement.
I went for the exit, not caring about the sign that said “DO NOT ENTER.” Out the ramp and onto the street, a full block ahead of the biker.
I took a left onto Johnson, then another onto 11th, then threaded the needle between a box truck and a Prius at the next light.
The bikes didn’t show in the mirror for two blocks.
Then, all at once, they were there—two up front, one off to the side, gaining fast.
Now the fun part.
I took the baby’s hand in mine, just for a second, and whispered, “Sorry, kid,” then slammed the gas.
I went up the curb, over a median, through the open gates of a construction site. My wheels caught in the mud, and I felt the car tilt hard left, nearly taking us into a stack of rebar.
I cranked the wheel, corrected, and burst out the other side of the site with a shower of gravel clanging off the undercarriage. The bikes followed, but one went down in the mud, helmet and all, and didn’t get up right away.
I had time to think again.
Steel Bridge was up ahead. I remembered, suddenly and with uncomfortable clarity, a training scenario where you have to lose a tail in an urban environment using only what’s in the car and what’s in your head.
Back then, I’d used the river—just floored it for the waterfront and prayed for the best. It worked. This time, I aimed for the pedestrian ramp, knowing it was a bad plan, but hoping the city’s design flaws would work in my favor.
I hit the ramp at thirty, scraping the Subaru’s underbelly on every raised bolt, but the car held together. At the halfway point, I pulled into a side lot and killed the engine, letting inertia carry me the last ten feet behind a line of parked semis.
The bikes came up behind me, but I watched as they shot past the ramp, not even pausing. I waited, counting the seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Thirty. Nothing but silence and the soft click of cooling metal.
My hands were steady as I started the car and pulled back onto the street, looping north along the river before cutting west and south, then back east again.
No bikes. No one.
The baby stirred. I risked a glance. She was looking up at me, face unreadable, eyes almost dark enough to be black.
For a split second I wondered if she understood, if her silence was some kind of grim agreement about the shape of the world.
Then she yawned, a huge, jaw-cracking yawn, and tucked her face deeper into my jacket.
I didn’t head to the hospital. They’d be waiting, or worse, they’d pull the video and have me ID’d before I even made it to the maternity wing.
I doubled back to my own alley, the one I’d started from, and parked nose-in so the plates wouldn’t be visible from the street.
The rain had picked up, and it hammered the windshield with a metallic urgency.
I braced the baby with one arm as I opened the door. Cold, sharp air hit my face, cutting through the stink of wet cardboard and oil. I ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time, the baby zipped tight to my body and the jacket hood up to shield her from the rain.
At the third floor landing, I stopped to listen. No footsteps. No voices. Just the hum of distant traffic and, beneath that, the impossibly soft snore of the baby against my chest.
I got the door open and slipped inside, bolting it behind me. Only then did I let myself breathe.
Inside, the apartment was all teal walls and warm light, every surface stacked with paperbacks, empty mugs, and the occasional clean t-shirt.
If I squinted I could almost pretend this was just another night, the baby a weird fever dream I’d conjured after too much caffeine and not enough sleep.
But the weight against my chest was real. The fist was real. And the silence that followed—the silence after a city chase, after running all your best moves and realizing you’re still in it—was the most real thing of all.
I stared at her. She stared back, tiny and alive, like she was waiting for me to come up with the next move. I didn’t have one. Not yet. But I had time, and I had a locked door, and for the moment, that would have to do.
In the calm after a chase, when the adrenaline fades and you’re left with whatever’s left of your mind, you cling to the rituals.
I dropped the keys into their bowl by the door, kicked off my boots, and set the grocery bag on the counter.
Then I peeled the jacket off my chest, careful, as if the thing inside was more volatile than nuclear waste.
The baby didn’t move until I laid her on the bed. It was the first time she wasn’t pressed directly to my body since I’d found her, and for a second she looked offended by the separation.
Her arms flailed, fists caught in the empty air, then she made a disgusted little snort and rolled onto her side, burrowing into the navy folds of the duvet.
I sat on the mattress’s edge, the bed springs groaning under my weight, and took inventory:
One: the baby was here.
Two: the baby was not dead.
Three: men on bikes wanted her, or me, or both, and they were good enough that I’d nearly lost the game in the opening round.
Four: my cell was almost dead, and the charger was in the car.
Five: I was now the guardian of a newborn, or at least whatever you called it when you found one in a dumpster.
The room reeked of yeast from the bakery downstairs, overlaying the faint, indefinable sweetness of the baby’s skin.
The walls were teal, the color chosen purely because my last boyfriend had hated it, and the only light came from my laptop, still open on the bed, the cursor blinking in the middle of a sentence about two vampires fighting over a rent-controlled condo.
I ran my hands over my face, then talked to the baby like she could answer. “Option one,” I said, voice low. “Call the cops, turn you in, become a hero. Also possibly get shot by mystery bikers, or have to fill out twenty-four hours of paperwork.”
The baby didn’t flinch.
“Option two, leave town. Go to ground. Survive on ramen and sheer spite.”
The baby made a gurgling sound, as if this was the obvious favorite.
“Option three, wait for the bikers to show, hope they’re the polite kind of hired killers. Maybe we can outlast them with the element of surprise and carbs.”
I reached for the phone, thumbed the screen to life, and blinked at the six percent battery.
The baby yawned, a tiny, perfect oval of jaw and gums, and for a second I almost felt something.
It passed. I pressed the three numbers that defined my faith in civilization: 911.
I was halfway to tapping “call” when I heard the sound.
It started with a pop, like knuckles cracking.
The baby’s body jerked, every muscle locked, then a shudder ran down her limbs.
I watched as her face contorted—not in pain, but in concentration.
The bones under her skin moved, rippled, changed shape.
The air filled with a sound like twigs snapping underfoot.
Where the baby had been, there was now a wolf pup.
I did not scream. I did not faint. But I did drop the phone, and it clattered onto the hardwood, screen shattering, the numbers 911 still glowing through a spiderweb of cracks.
The wolf pup was maybe the size of a house cat, pale gray with a white slash on her muzzle. She blinked at me, round and golden-eyed, then stretched her paws and yawned again. The sound that came out was halfway between a whine and a hiccup.
We stared at each other. My brain ran through every possible explanation, discarded them, and then, finally, just said fuck it.
The pup nosed forward, small claws catching in the duvet, and licked my hand.
“Okay,” I said, because there was nothing else to say.
I picked up the phone, or what was left of it, and dialed again.
The screen flickered, the battery icon threatening imminent death.
I scrolled through my mental Rolodex for someone who could handle a wolf baby, and came up with a vet I’d met at a dive bar on Alberta, the wildlife sanctuary outside Eugene, and a forest ranger who’d gotten weirdly personal at a book signing in Astoria.
None of those options seemed viable at two in the morning, and none explained why the baby was now a wolf.