Prisoner (Werewolf Marines) (28 page)

The rest of the pack was silent.

“All right,” DJ said. “Offer’s on the table.
Let me know what you decide. There’s no time limit.”

He went to the table where they’d left their
breakfast trays, Echo and Charlie following. DJ sank into a chair
and downed his triple espresso in a single gulp. Echo pushed the
extra one she’d ordered into his hand, and he drained that too.

“That’s sweet of you, Echo, but he’s going to
be bouncing off the walls,” Charlie remarked.

“No, he won’t,” Echo said.

DJ spun a fork in his left hand. “Thanks for
being there, Charlie. Thanks for standing up for me, Echo. And for
the coffee. I’m tempted to get another, but after a certain point
it does start revving me up. That’s what happened with the No-Doz.
I took the equivalent of ten espressos, and the sky started
dripping down on to my helmet. I think I’ve had enough excitement
for the day.”

To Echo’s relief, the pack rose in a body and
left the cafeteria. Now that she wasn’t waiting for one of them to
try to kill her or DJ, she drenched her waffles and bacon in maple
syrup. Once the first bite of salt-sweet-starchy hit her mouth, she
became ravenous.

DJ, who had also been watching the pack,
stopped twirling his fork and fell on his steak and eggs like a
starving wolf.

Charlie picked up a strawberry, examined it
carefully, then began to eat it in tiny, bird-like bites. Echo
forced herself not to nag Charlie to get some protein, stare
disapprovingly at her “breakfast” of five strawberries and half a
slice of plain toast, or quiz her about the state of her digestion.
Charlie hated all that, and Echo didn’t want to get in a fight with
her sister in front of DJ.

“How’s Kevin?” Echo asked. Boyfriends were
always a safe topic.

“Oh, we broke up.” Charlie didn’t sound
particularly upset. “He was getting too possessive.”

“I thought you liked possessive,” said
Echo.

“I like possessive gestures.” Charlie
finished her strawberry, nibbling carefully around the cap. “I
don’t like being interrogated about everyone I’ve ever dated, with
a nasty judgy look in his beady little eyes.”

“What’s a possessive gesture?” DJ asked.

“Glaring at men who are looking at me.
Stepping between me and other men. Putting his hand on my hip in a
way that signals, ‘You’re
mine.
’ That sort of thing.”
Charlie examined a second strawberry, found some invisible flaw in
it, and set it aside.

Echo suppressed a snicker at DJ’s perplexed
look. She was willing to bet he’d never made a possessive gesture
in his life.

“But Josh in accounting has been looking at
me in a flirty way. Echo, you know Josh—” Charlie began, then
interrupted herself. “No, you probably don’t. He’s black, very
tall, with silver-rimmed glasses and lovely sharp cheekbones. And
he has an
air
about him. I sense dominant tendencies. He
seems like the kind of man who owns a box of silk scarves and
velvet blindfolds. Elegant instruments of bondage.”

“Wow,” DJ muttered, looking pole-axed.

Echo snickered. “DJ, you have a sister too.
Didn’t she ever talk to you about guys?”

“No.” DJ grinned at her. “Five talks about
women. She’s told me some wild stories. But I don’t recall her
using the phrase ‘elegant instruments of bondage.’”

“No one but Charlie would ever use that
phrase,” said Echo.

Charlie took a sip of tea, unperturbed. “Just
you wait. I’ve got my eye on Josh. I give him two weeks, max,
before he’s unlocking his box for me.”

“That sounds like…” DJ began. “I don’t even
know what that sounds like. I’m getting another steak, anyone want
anything?”

“Hazelnut cappuccino,” said Echo.

Charlie shook her head, and DJ fled with his
plate.

“You scared him off,” Echo said, though she
couldn’t help being amused.

“I cheered him up,” Charlie corrected her.
Her dreamy gaze sharpened. “Was he exaggerating about the
meltdown?”

“No.” Echo swished her last piece of bacon
through the maple syrup. “And I don’t blame him. ‘Brutal’ didn’t
begin to cover it. He was literally drenched in blood. It was
dripping off his hair. And—” Echo thought about how to phrase it
for the benefit of the bugs. “Even if you’re killing in a fight,
even if it’s not cold blood, it can be hard.”

Charlie, who had lived with the bugs all her
life, understood as easily as if Echo had said,
It wasn’t a
fight.

“You kill in cold blood,” Charlie pointed
out.

“I’m used to it.” Echo frowned. “Working here
will be hard on him. I didn’t think about it before. I wish I could
say I’d do the cold blood work so he doesn’t have to, but I’m not
sure how possible that’ll be.”

“He’ll get used to it,” Charlie said
callously. “You did.”

A spark of anger flared in Echo’s chest.
“Don’t be mean. You didn’t see how messed-up he was last
night.”

“I’ve seen how messed-up
you
used to
get. How about how hard it is for
you?
”

Echo didn’t know how to answer that.
“Charlie…”

“Let someone else take some of the burden,
for a change,” Charlie went on. “So he was a wreck last night. He
seems fine now. He’s strong. Lean on him.”

“I can’t get used to leaning on him,” Echo
hissed, dropping her voice.

She didn’t say it, but
he won’t be around
long
didn’t have to be spoken.

Charlie took a nibble of toast and a sip of
tea before she replied. “Give him a chance. He might last longer
than you expect.”

He might never escape.

Echo rubbed at her shoulders, which had
suddenly started aching. “I hope not.” For the bugs, she added, “I
never wanted a partner.”

DJ returned with his steak and Echo’s
cappuccino. He sat down, glancing warily at Charlie. “Awfully quiet
around here. Don’t let me wreck your girl talk.”

“Boys can be included,” Charlie said
magnanimously. “DJ, have you ever tried bondage?”

He nearly choked on a bite of steak.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Echo said.
“Charlie, stop torturing him. Are you sure you’re a sub? You’re
acting like a sadist.”

As Echo had hoped, that sent Charlie into
lecture mode. “Domination and submission aren’t the same thing as
sadism and masochism. You could be a submissive sadist. Or a
dominant masochist. You see…”

Echo drank her cappuccino while DJ ate his
steak and asked questions. It seemed like he was perfectly happy to
talk about sex in the abstract, so long as it wasn’t his own sex
life under the microscope.

She let the conversation drift over her head
and focused on the sweetness and nuttiness and heat of her drink.
She didn’t want to listen to DJ discussing sex when she could never
have it with him, she didn’t want to get used to leaning on a
support that would soon be gone, she didn’t want him to be wrecked
by being forced to do her job, and she especially didn’t want him
trapped here forever.

As far as she knew, no one had ever escaped
Wildfire Base alive. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t possible. If
anyone could do it, DJ could.

A messenger approached their table. “Mr.
Dowling wants to see Echo and Torres in his office.”

Echo gulped the last of her coffee, DJ
stuffed a giant chunk of steak in his mouth, and they both stood
up.

“Bye!” Charlie called, but their mouths were
too full to answer.

In Mr. Dowling’s office, DJ’s gaze flickered
all over the place. She was sure he was memorizing the layout and
inventory, all the way down to the pencil jar.

“I’ll make this brief,” Mr. Dowling said.
“Torres, I know about your deal with the made wolves, and I don’t
see any reason to interfere with your…” He gave a condescending
sniff. “…customs. They’ve been warned not to take any revenge
beyond what you offered them.”

Echo renewed her vow to watch out for the
pack. Guadalupe and Amber in particular. Just their luck that the
most deadly of the werewolves were also the most pissed off.

“As I said last night, good work,” Mr.
Dowling continued. “Congratulations, Torres, you’re done with
training. You two are officially partners.”

Both DJ and Echo stared blankly at him. Echo
had no idea what feelings DJ was concealing, but she was flooded
with anxiety that they’d immediately be sent to assassinate someone
in cold blood and hope that being able to go on missions would lead
to DJ escaping. But as soon as she had that hope, she missed him so
intensely that it made her chest hurt. How absurd was that? He was
standing right there beside her.

Mr. Dowling seemed mildly disappointed by
their lack of reaction. “Torres, you’re injured. And both of you
could use some R&R.”

He tossed them a car key and a pair of credit
cards. “Take a break. Drive to Las Vegas. I’m giving you three
days.”

“I can leave the base?” DJ exclaimed.

“What did I just say?” said Mr. Dowling.
“Take off. You know what happens if you don’t come back.”

From the rage that flashed across DJ’s face,
Echo half-expected him to vault over the desk and grab Mr. Dowling
by the throat. Then it smoothed out, replaced by an icy calm.

“Speaking of Roy, you should make him get out
of bed and exercise,” DJ suggested. “Give him some light work. Have
him interact with people. He thinks he’s in a military hospital, so
have someone put on a uniform and give him some orders. He won’t
refuse. He’ll be useful to you if he gets better, and he’s not
getting any better with nothing to do but be depressed and
lonely.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” Mr. Dowling
said. And that was all DJ could get out of him.

DJ practically flew down the corridors. They
stopped at Charlie’s apartment to let her know, but she wasn’t
there.

“Probably opening Josh’s box,” Echo said, to
watch DJ squirm, and left her a note.

At their apartment, DJ flung some clothes in
a bag and carefully wrapped his iPod, then paced around, waiting
impatiently for Echo to finish packing.

“Don’t say anything private in the car,” she
warned him. “You’d have to tear it apart to get at the bugs.”

“No problem.” He sat on his bed, then moved
to her bed, then belly-flopped on the floor with his feet on his
bed. “Come on, how many tank tops do you need? Buy new ones in
Vegas!”

His enthusiasm was contagious. They ran
together to the vehicle bay, dodging guards and lab techs and
paper-pushers.

“Shotgun!” Echo called, and tossed DJ the car
keys.

Five minutes later, they were flooring it
through the desert. Echo was dubious at first about DJ’s
pedal-to-the-metal driving, then saw that he had the skills to
compensate. She settled back and relaxed as he kept up a delighted
stream of commentary over the landscape and the sunlight and his
most memorable trips to Las Vegas.

“I’d just come home from my first
deployment,” DJ said, gunning the car over an enormous pothole and
nearly sending it into orbit. “Five years ago. I’d turned
twenty-one in Afghanistan, so it was also a belated birthday trip.
Needless to say, I got so drunk that I don’t remember much of it. I
was with some of the guys from my unit, some of my old friends from
San Diego, Five, and some people we sort of collected along the
way, I don’t really know who they were. I think one of them might
have stolen Alec’s gold watch. Or he might have lost it in a
drunken bet that he doesn’t remember. This time I won’t drink so
much. We all spent a lot of time throwing up, except for Five.
You’re going to laugh, but that’s her power.”

“Not throwing up?”

“I think it’s actually immunity to poison.
Obviously, she can’t test that. But she never gets hung-over, she’s
never had food poisoning, and she’s traveled all over the world
without so much as a stomach upset, even though she drinks the
water unless it actually has stuff floating in it.”

DJ swerved to avoid a roadrunner.
Thoughtfully, he added, “Though a lot of water-transmitted diseases
are parasites or bacteria, and poisons can’t be alive, right? So
really her power is the ability to eat or drink anything without
getting sick.”

“The power of iron stomach,” Echo said.
“That’s a good one, actually. What are the rest of your family’s
powers?”

“Dad dreams of random people’s lives. It’s
cooler than it sounds, because they’re all in other countries. I’m
sure their lives seem ordinary to them, but I used to love sitting
down for breakfast and hearing about an hour in the life of a yak
herder or a Zen monk or a kindergartener in Hungary.”

“Or a child soldier,” Echo said, and
immediately regretted it. Why couldn’t she be more like DJ, and
enjoy a happy moment without looking for the dark side?

But DJ didn’t seem perturbed. “Well, that’s
the funny thing. When I got older I asked Dad if he was censoring
them, to leave out the depressing ones. He said no. Apparently his
power only draws him to peaceful lives.”

“What about your mom?”

“Strength, like me. That’s a coincidence;
powers don’t run in families. Grandma Steel has super-fast
reflexes, and Nutmeg has a photographic memory. He can recall books
word for word. He aced the bar exam.”

DJ chattered on until they reached Las Vegas,
where he promptly pulled into a strip mall and withdrew some cash,
then drove to a different strip mall and beckoned her out of the
car.

“I’m buying a disposable cell phone,” he
explained. “I want to call Five.”

“Are you crazy?” Echo whispered, glancing
around the parking lot. “Her phone’s probably tapped.”

“Can’t be,” he whispered back. “She buys a
new disposable one every month or so. We use them for
werewolf-related phone calls when I’m deployed.”

“Don’t tell her where the base is,” Echo
warned him. “If your family decides to launch a rescue mission,
they’ll probably get Roy killed.”