Stolen

TORTURE

When Winsloe returned I was dozing in my chair. He burst into the cell waving a manila envelope.

"Devil of a time finding these buggers," he said. "Larry had already filed them in his to-do box. Way too efficient."

I roused myself. Tried to look interested. Accidentally yawned.

"Am I boring you, Elena?" Winsloe asked. The edge in his voice twisted his grin into a teeth-baring grimace.

"No, no." Bite back another yawn. "Of course not. What do you have there?"

"Surveillance photos of a werewolf I'd like you to identify."

"Sure"-Damn it, Elena. Stop yawning!-"if I can, but my memory for faces is pretty bad."

"That's okay. This one doesn't have a face." Winsloe chortled. "Not a human face, I mean. He's a wolf. If you ask me, all wolves look the same, which is why Larry didn't bother asking you for an ID. But then I thought, maybe that kind of thinking is too race-centered. You know, like those witnesses who get on the stand and finger the wrong black guy because all black men look the same to them?"

"Uh-huh." Get to the point. Please. Before I drift off.

"So, I thought, maybe all wolf faces don't look the same to a wolf. Or to a part-time wolf." Another chortle that set my nerves on edge.

"I'll do my best," I said. "But if I've seen this mutt before, I've probably only seen him as a human. A scent would be better."

"Scent." Winsloe snapped his fingers. "Now why didn't I think of that. See? Race-centered again. I think I'm sharp if I can identify the smell of pepperoni pizza."

I reached for the envelope. He thumped onto the bed and tossed it beside him, as if he hadn't noticed me reaching for it.

"Could I see-?" I began.

"A team spotted this guy late last night. No, I guess that'd be early this morning. The wee hours anyway."

I nodded. Please, please, please get to the point.

"Very bizarre circumstances," Winsloe mused. "Ever since we snatched you and the old witch, we've had a team trying to find the rest of your group. We could always use another werewolf, and Larry's pretty keen on getting that fire-demon guy. We lost track of them after we grabbed you two. That's not exactly a secret, though I'd rather you didn't tell Larry I told you. He's not too pleased about the whole thing, but I'm sure it makes you feel better, knowing your friends got away."

Winsloe paused. And waited.

"Thanks," I said, "for telling me."

"You're welcome. So, we've had this team scouting the area, picking up tips, most of them useless. Yesterday Tucker recalled that group and sent a fresh one to replace them. Keeping up morale and all that. The first team was heading back and spent the night in some backwater motel. Next morning, they get up for a pre-dawn start, go outside and what do you think they see there, on the edge of the woods?"

"A-uh-" Come on, brain, wake up. "A-umm, a wolf?"

"Glad to see you're paying attention, Elena. Yes, it was a wolf. A big fucker of a wolf. Standing right there, watching them. Now either this is the biggest coincidence in the universe or this werewolf had been following them. Searching for the search party."

Brain kicking in now. "Where was this?"

"Does it matter?"

"All werewolves are territorial. Technically mutts can't hold territory, but most stick to a familiar piece of ground, like a state, just moving from city to city. If I knew where this took place, it would help me figure out who it might have been."

Winsloe smiled. "And help you figure out where you are. None of that, Elena. Now let me tell my story. So, the guards see this wolf and they figure out that it's a werewolf. One grabs a camera and snaps some photos. The other two go for the tranquilizer guns. Before they can unpack them, though, the wolf vanishes. So they gear up and head into the woods. And do you know what? He's right there, like he's waiting. They get close, he runs, then stops and waits. Luring them in. Can you believe that?"

"Werewolves retain human intelligence. It's not that strange." But it was. Why? Because luring prey was an animal tactic and mutts didn't use animal tactics. No, I corrected quickly. They rarely used animal tactics. Of course they could. Some did.

"Wait," Winsloe said, grinning. "It gets weirder. You know what this wolf does next? He separates them. Takes a commando team, including a former Navy Seal, and figures out how to separate them. Then he starts picking them off. Killing them! Can you believe that?" Winsloe laughed and shook his head. "Man, I wish I'd been there. One werewolf turning those military goons into blithering idiots, wandering around the woods, getting picked off like blonds in a horror flick. The wolf kills two and goes after the third. And what do you think he does?"

My heart was pounding now. "Kills him?"

"No! That's the topper. He doesn't kill him. He runs him ragged. Like he's trying to exhaust him, like he wants to keep him alive but too weak to fight. Okay, maybe I'm reading too much into this, attributing human motivations to an animal. Anthro-what do they call that?"

"Anthropomorphism," I whispered, feeling as if all the air had been knocked from my lungs, knowing this was no accidental segue.

"Right. Anthropomorphism. Hey, that's what your boyfriend studies, right? Anthropomorphic religions. Boring as hell if you ask me, but people say that about computers, too. Each to his own. Now where was I?"

"The wolf," I whispered. "Running down the last survivor."

"You don't look so good. Maybe you should come over here and lie down. Plenty of room. No? Suit yourself. So the wolf is running circles around this last guy. Only something goes wrong."

I wanted to stop up my ears. I knew what was coming. There was only one way Winsloe could have the photos in that envelope, only one way he'd know this story. If the last team member had survived. If the wolf-

"Somehow that canny fucker screwed up. Miscalculated a turn or a distance maybe. He got too close. The guard fired. Pow! Dead wolf."

"Let-let me see the photos."

Winsloe tossed the envelope at me. As it tumbled to the floor, I scrambled after it, ripping it open and yanking out the contents. Three photos of a wolf. A golden-haired, blue-eyed wolf. I felt a whimper snake up my throat.

"You know him?" Winsloe asked.

I crouched there, clutching the photos.

"No? Well, you're tired. Keep them. Get some rest and give it some thought. Xavier's probably waiting for me upstairs. I'll come back in the morning."

Winsloe left. I didn't see him go. Didn't hear him. All I could see was the photographs of Clay. All I could hear was the pounding of my blood. Another whimper crept up from my chest, but it died before reaching my mouth. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't make a sound.

Suddenly my body convulsed. A wave of agony blinded me. I toppled, photos fluttering the carpet. My leg muscles all knotted at once, like being seized by a thousand charley horses. I screamed. The waves hit in rapid succession and I screamed until I couldn't breathe. My limbs flailed and jerked as if being wrenched from their sockets. Some dim part of my brain realized I was Changing and told me to get control before it tore me apart. I didn't. I gave into it, let the agony rip through me, welcomed each new torment even as I screamed for release. Finally it was over. I lay there, panting, empty. Then I heard something. The faintest scratch from the hallway. Winsloe was there. Watching. I wanted to leap up, charge the wall, and batter myself against it until it broke or I did. I wanted to tear him apart, mouthful by mouthful, keeping him alive until I'd wrenched every last shriek from his lungs. But grief crushed me to the floor, and I couldn't even find the energy to stand. I managed to pull my belly off the ground and hauled myself into the narrow crevice between the foot of the bed and the wall, the one place where Winsloe couldn't see me. I wedged into the tiny space, tucked my tail under me, and surrendered to the pain.

I spent the night replaying Winsloe's words, fighting against my grief to recall each one. Where had the guards seen the wolf? Behind the motel or beside it? Exactly when did it happen? What did Winsloe mean by "pre-dawn"? Had it been light out yet? As I asked these questions, part of me wondered if I was just allowing my mind to stutter through inanities rather than confront the soul-numbing possibility of Clay's death. No. These questions held clues, minute clues that would reveal the lie in Winsloe's words. I had to find that lie. Otherwise, I feared my breath would jam up in my throat and I'd suffocate on my grief.

So I tortured myself with Winsloe's story, his hated voice invading and filling my brain. Find the lie. Find the inconsistency, the misspoken word, the detail so obviously wrong. But no matter how many times I replayed his story, I couldn't find a mistake. If Clay found the search party, he'd have done exactly what Winsloe claimed he did: lure them into the forest, separate them, and kill them, leaving one alive to torture for information. There was no way Winsloe could make up something so true to Clay's character. Nor was there any way Winsloe could have guessed what Clay would do in that situation. So he'd told the truth.

My heart rammed into my throat. I gasped for breath. No, it had to be a lie. I'd know if Clay was dead. I'd have felt it the moment the bullet hit him. Oh, God, I wanted to believe that I'd know if he was dead. Clay and I shared a psycho-physical connection, maybe because he was the one who had bitten me. If I was hurt and he wasn't around to see it, he'd feel it, knowing something was wrong. I'd experience the same twinges, the same floating anxiety and unease if he was hurt. I hadn't felt anything that morning. Or had I? I'd been asleep at dawn, drugged by Carmichael's sedative. Would I have felt anything?

I stopped myself. There was no sense dwelling on vagaries like premonitions and psychic twinges. Stick to the facts. Find the lie there. Winsloe said the last guard killed Clay, then returned with the photos and the story. If I could talk to that guard, maybe he wouldn't be as accomplished a liar as Winsloe. Maybe-I inhaled sharply. The guard had brought back the photos and the story. What about the body?

If that guard had killed Clay, he'd have brought back his body. At the very least, he'd have taken photos of it. If there'd been a corpse or photos of one, Winsloe wouldn't have settled for showing me pictures of Clay alive. He'd known exactly who the wolf was and he'd told me the story to torture me, to punish me. This was my comeuppance for disobeying him the night before. One small misstep and he'd lashed out with the worst punishment I could imagine. What would he do if I really pissed him off?

Eventually, after I'd persuaded myself that Clay was alive, the exhaustion took over and I fell asleep. Though I'd fallen asleep as a wolf, I awoke as a human. It happened sometimes, particularly if a Change was brought on by fear or emotion. Once we relaxed into sleep, the body morphed painlessly back to human form. So I awoke, naked, with my head and torso sandwiched between the bed and the wall and my legs sticking out.

I didn't get up immediately. Instead, I thought of ways to catch Winsloe in a lie, so I'd be certain about Clay. I had to be certain. Winsloe had left the photos. Maybe if I studied them I'd see something-

"Open this fucking door now!" a voice shouted.

I bolted upright, knocking my head against the bed. Dazed, I hesitated, then wriggled from my hiding place.

"Let me out of here! "

A woman's voice. Distorted, but familiar. I winced as I recognized it. No. Please no. Hadn't I suffered enough?

"I know you hear me! I know you're out there! "

With great reluctance, I moved to the hole in the wall between my cell and the next. I knew what I'd see. My new neighbor. I bent to peer through. Bauer stood at the one-way glass wall, banging her fists soundlessly against it. Her hair was snarled and matted, face still streaked with blood. Someone had dressed her in an ill-fitting gray sweat suit that must have belonged to one of the smaller guards. No more meticulously groomed heiress. Anyone seeing Sondra Bauer now would take her for a middle-aged mental patient coughed up from the bowels of some gothic asylum.

After last night's rampage, they'd put Bauer in the next cell. The last wisp of hope in my dream of escape evaporated. Bauer was now as much a prisoner as I. She couldn't help me one whit. More than that, I now had a crazed, man-killing werewolf in the next cell, with a hole through the wall that separated us. Was this Winsloe's doing? Wasn't last night's torture enough? I realized it would never be enough. As long as I was in this compound, Winsloe would find new ways to persecute me. Why? Because he could.

I wanted to crawl back into my hidey-hole and go to sleep. I wouldn't sleep, of course, but I could close my eyes and blot out this whole nightmare, dredge up some happy fantasy world in my mind, and live there until someone rescued me or killed me, whichever came first.

Instead, with great effort, I plunked onto my bed and surveyed the room. My Change had shredded my clothing. So much for my wardrobe rebellion. I exhaled. No time for brooding. I'd have to wear whatever they'd given me. First step: Get presentable. Then I'd find out why Bauer was in the next cell.

When I emerged from the bathroom, clean and dressed, I returned to the hole and peeped through, in case Bauer's presence there had been a sadistic twist of my imagination. It wasn't. She lay huddled at the foot of the door, whimpering and scratching the glass like a kitten caught in the rain. I might have felt sorry for her, but I was fresh out of pity.

I sensed someone in the halls. Maybe it wasn't so much "sensing" as assuming Tess or Matasumi would be observing the new werewolf. I raked my fingers through my hair, straightened my shirt, and walked to my own one-way glass wall.

"Could I please speak to someone?" I asked, calmly and clearly, hoping to set myself apart from the lunatic next door.

Moments later, two guards entered my cell.

"Could someone please tell me why Ms. Bauer is next door?" I asked.

They looked at each other, as if debating whether to answer. Then one said, "Doctor Matasumi felt it was necessary to confine her. For security reasons."

No shit. "I certainly understand that. But could you tell me why she's in that particular room? There's a hole in the wall joining our cells."

"I believe they are aware of that."

"They?" I asked, all wide-eyed innocence.

"Doctor Matasumi and Mr. Winsloe."

"Ah." I inhaled softly. My teeth ached from all this saccharin. "So they are aware they've given Ms. Bauer a cell with access to mine?"

"Mr. Winsloe felt it fulfilled all necessary security requirements."

With as sweet a smile as I could muster, I thanked them for their time and they left. So I'd been right. This was Winsloe's idea. Put Bauer in the cell next to mine, leave the gaping hole unrepaired, and see what happens.

Once they were gone, I checked the hole. I'd torn it open nearly to the steel bracing, and it was less than a foot square. So there was no real risk of Bauer breaking through. The most we could do was communicate.

Without warning, Bauer leaped to her feet and slammed her fists against the glass. "Open this door, you fucking bastards! Open it or I'll rip out your goddamned hearts! I'm the big bad wolf now. I can huff and I can puff and I'll blow you to smithereens." Her voice trailed off in a high-pitched hiccuping laugh.

Well, theoretically we could communicate.

I examined the photos of Clay for clues as to when and where they were taken. The date stamp on the back said August 27. I mentally counted days. August 27 had been yesterday. So Winsloe's story had been true-at least the part about someone taking these pictures of Clay the morning before. I still refused to believe he was dead. Judging by the realism of Winsloe's tale, I assumed Clay really had killed several members of a search party. That made sense. If Jeremy discovered these guards were following the group, he'd have sent Clay after them with instructions to bring one back alive for questioning. But the last time I'd seen Clay, he'd been in no shape for high-risk missions.

"Do you recognize him?"

I whirled to see Winsloe and his two guards in my cell.

Winsloe smiled. "Werewolf hearing not up to par this morning, Elena?"

Come to see what damage your sadistic ploy has wrought, Ty? Well, last night's breakdown was all the reward you're going to get. I was back and ready to play the game.

"Sorry," I said. "I was busy studying these pictures. He looks vaguely familiar, but I'm not coming up with a name." Eyes still riveted on the photos, I asked, "So, how did Xavier like the cognac?"

A split second of hesitation. I peeked out of the corner of my eye and saw Winsloe's mouth tighten. Score one for me. I bit my cheek to keep from grinning. Winsloe rolled his shoulders and crossed the room. When he looked my way again, he'd replaced his smile.

"Bastard never showed up," Winsloe said. "Probably passed out somewhere sleeping off that Jack Daniel's."

Oh, yeah. Sleeping it off in a five-star hotel somewhere with a wallet full of Winsloe's cash.

"Probably," I said. "Now, about this wolf you want me to ID, like I said last night, a scent would be better. Get me a scent and, if I've met the guy, I'll know it."

"You're that good?"

I smiled. "The best. If you had an article of clothing or-" I jerked my head up. "I know. The body. You have the body, right? Doctor Matasumi wouldn't leave the body in the woods for anyone to find. Take me to it and I'll give you that ID."

Winsloe pulled out my dining chair and lowered himself onto it, buying a few extra seconds. Come on, asshole. Think fast.

"Well, that's a problem," Winsloe said. "The guard was really shaken up after he shot the brute. Hightailed it back here. Larry and Tucker lit into him like you wouldn't believe. Leaving a werewolf corpse in the woods? We didn't hire these guys for their brains, that's for sure. Tucker rounded up a new team yesterday afternoon and sent them out to retrieve the body. Only they couldn't. Guess why."

"It was gone."

Winsloe laughed and tilted his chair back. "A fellow horror-flick buff. You got it. They found the spot and they found the blood, but no body. Now Larry's furious, thinking the project's in jeopardy because someone found the body. But there's another possibility, isn't there? That the werewolf is still alive." Winsloe hummed the theme to Halloween. "So I ordered another team to start looking for our mystery immortal. But don't worry."

"About what?"

Winsloe grinned. "I know what you're thinking, Elena. Don't put on the tough-chick face for me. You're worried that we'll find him. Am I right?"

"I really don't care-"

"Sure you do. You're worried that we'll bring this 'mutt' back here and he'll try to hurt you, like Lake did. Or, worse yet, that he'll usurp your position here, that we'll find him a more interesting specimen and dispose of you. But that won't happen. I won't let that happen, Elena. You're too important to me. No other werewolf will take your place. I've made sure of that. Before that last team left, I took them aside and promised a hundred-thousand-dollar bounty for the guy who brings me the head. Just the head. I made that clear. I don't want the live werewolf."

He stood to leave. I clenched my fists, nails digging into my palms until I smelled blood. Winsloe took five steps. Ryman smirked at me, then pulled open the door for Winsloe. Before stepping through, Winsloe snapped his fingers, pulled a smaller envelope from his pocket, and tossed it at my feet.

"Almost forgot. New surveillance photos. Fresh from last night. Seems Tucker was using his brains, sending a new team to find your friends. They found them. For a few hours at least. They've lost track since, but I'll keep you posted. I know you're concerned."

I gritted my teeth. Daggers of fury threatened to split my skull.

"Seems they're looking for someone," Winsloe continued.

"Me," I managed to say.

"Oh, I assume that, but now someone else has gone missing. Our team managed to capture some bits of conversation. Someone's jumped ship. Someone important. Problem is, we're having trouble figuring out who it is. Larry's working on it, comparing these new pictures with our old ones. Maybe you can see who's missing. You don't have to tell me, though. I wouldn't ask you to rat out your friends."

Winsloe left. I closed my eyes, felt the pain stab through my skull and palms. It took several more minutes before I was ready to look at the photos. When I did, I found pictures of the group conferring and milling about. I didn't need to figure out who was missing. One look at Jeremy's expression told me. Clay was gone. He hadn't been acting under Jeremy's command the morning before, when he'd tracked down the former search team. He was on his own. Alone.

Clay was coming after me.

I spent the rest of the morning racking my brain for a new escape plan. I had to get out. Not eventually, not soon, but now, immediately, before Winsloe tired of this latest game and upped the ante yet again. The harder I struggled to come up with an idea, the more I panicked, and the more I panicked, the harder it was to come up with an idea. I had to calm down or I'd never think of anything.

Bauer settled down later than morning. When I was sure she was lucid-which I determined by the fact that she'd stopped screaming and started eating her cold breakfast-I went to the hole and tried to talk to her. She ignored me. When she finished her meal, she rummaged for a pencil and paper in a drawer and wrote a two-page letter, then walked to the door and politely asked someone to deliver it. I could guess the contents: a plea for release, a more reasonable version of what she'd been ranting about for the last few hours.

So Bauer wanted out. Well, so did the rest of us. Did she feel like a "guest" now? As I thought this, a plan formed in the back of my brain. Bauer wanted out. I wanted out. When I'd first gone to nurse her, I'd hoped that in her gratitude she'd help me escape. Gratitude was out of the question now. But what about escape? What if I offered to take her with me? Bauer knew the compound's weaknesses and its security system-that is, if she was sane enough to remember. Combine my strength and experience with her knowledge and we could be a formidable team. Not exactly a complete and foolproof plan, but it was a start.

One remaining problem-well, okay, there were lots of remaining problems-but a big one was how to escape the cells. I pondered the possibility of staging something that would get me out of my room. Sure, I could probably do it, but could I get Bauer out at the same time? Unlikely. When the guards brought my lunch, I studied the door as it opened, seeing how it operated, looking for a weakness. Then I noticed something so blatant I kicked myself for not seeing it before. The guards didn't completely shut the door. They never did. Why? Because the door opened only from the outside and they never brought an extra guard to stand in the hall and let them out, as Bauer and Matasumi had always done. When they entered, they left the door a half-inch ajar, giving them finger room to pry it open. How could I use this to my advantage? Well, I could knock out one guard while the other pulled his gun and shot me-okay, bad idea. I could say, "Hey, what's that crawling down the wall?" and make a break for it when they turned away. Umm, no. Better give this one some thought.