The Shifter's Choice (4 page)

Sonia stared down at the two skinny kids they had been, with arms looped over each other’s shoulders like two vines growing together. Marianna had gotten out, though. Gallaudet University on a full ride. A whole college for the deaf. It was just amazing. And with Marianna taken care of, Sonia didn’t have to steal anymore to keep them in that crappy apartment. Her mother came and went like the tide. Back in jail, back on the streets, back in her bedroom with money in her pocket that she’d spend on booze. She wasn’t dependable. Marianna needed dependable. Maybe Sonia could get through the next four years, be honorably discharged and go live near Marianna. Maybe even with her sister. Get their own place. She’d find a job to help Marianna again, if she even needed help anymore.

Sonia kissed her index finger and then pressed it to her sister’s image. Then she tucked the picture frame back in her empty bag. Someday, she’d have a bedside table or a mantle or a bureau of her own.

Something.

Someday.

She sat down to write Marianna a letter and then realized that she could not include anything about Johnny and that her letter would be inspected by strangers. So she described the scenery and all the annoying habits of her bunkmates. She didn’t like sharing a room with a group of strangers any more than she liked sharing her private letters with censors. But then who would?

The following morning she tried to take a run before breakfast, but her muscles were too damned sore so she opted for a long hot shower and lunch with the perkiest and most irritating member of her quarters before reporting to the captain for transport to Johnny’s home.

All the way up the mountain she told herself how immature and childish she had been. She couldn’t call him furball or swear at him. It was so unprofessional. Today she’d do better. She’d set the guidelines and her expectations. They’d begin with the basics. Who. What. Where. When. She’d teach him the signs for time. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.

The captain did not get out of the Jeep this time. “I’ll send Zeno up to get you in ninety minutes.”

“Ninety?” she stammered. The sheer number of minutes between then and now stretched to the horizon. “I thought... I thought...”

But he already had the Jeep in Reverse.

She stood rooted to the spot as the vehicle disappeared. Sometime after the Jeep had vanished down the road she snapped herself out of her daze and turned toward the adorable house that happened to belong to a werewolf.

She called for Sergeant Lam repeatedly but got no response. Belatedly, she realized that he might not appreciate being summoned like a dog. If he were not a monster, how would she approach him? Sonia decided on the front door, climbed the steep steps and knocked.

Johnny opened the door. His dark visage filled the frame and this time she did not back up at the sight of him. Instead she snapped a salute which he returned and then stepped out onto the porch. It seemed she would not see the inside of Sergeant Lam’s home today. Sonia found herself disappointed. She was curious about him and about how he lived.

He motioned her to the porch as she remembered how he had carried her to safety while she’d wept like a child in his arms. She followed him across the spotless wide planking that had been stained a natural color. The railings were also wood.

He motioned to a table under the wide roof. Who had hung wind chimes from the beam above the rail? she wondered.

He sat on a long bench before a coffee table that fit him much better than the two adjoining chairs and made the sign for her to sit. She removed her cap and placed it on a chair and then sat beside him on the bench. He instantly moved away as his eyebrows lifted.

Sonia spotted the bag she’d left yesterday and busied herself removing the small dry-erase boards and markers of various colors and lining them up on the table. By the time she placed the eraser Johnny groaned. She was losing her audience.

Sonia was determined to keep control today. No swearing. No temper. Just cool professionalism and a lesson that she’d stayed up half the night going over. She tried to channel Mrs. Kappenhaur, her seventh grade music teacher, the only one she’d ever liked.

“Today’s lesson is ninety minutes. We will be covering time and some words to express needs. For example, ‘What time is the meeting?’” she signed.

Johnny signed more obscenities
.

“Yes. I’m sorry I showed you that one. Let’s begin with these.” She signed as she spoke. “Who? What? Where? When?”

Johnny grabbed a board and uncapped the green marker. She sat fidgeting with her own board as he wrote with an unsteady hand. It was painful to watch and when he finished she could barely make out what he had written.

“Y R U here?”

Off topic already, she realized, hurrying along. “To teach you.”

“Y U stay?”

Sonia scowled. “We aren’t talking about me. I’m here to teach
you
to sign. That’s all you need to know.”

Sergeant Lam threw his dry-erase board off the porch.

They scowled at each other.

“You do not have the right to poke around in my private life. I’m your teacher.” There. She’d been decisive without swearing at him and she hadn’t lost her temper. But she could feel her pulse throbbing in her temples and Johnny was baring his teeth. She dug in her heels. This would only work if he kept his nose out of her business.

He lifted a blue marker and wrote “Trust me.”

She laughed. “Trust? Why should I? Listen, Lam. You are not my therapist. I’m here to teach you sign. That’s it. You don’t get a free pass to all my secrets. Got it? So take it or leave it.”

He gave her a hard look. She didn’t care. This was nonnegotiable.

“I’ll keep coming back and I’ll teach you. But no personal questions.” She signed as she spoke. “Understand?” She then lifted her eyebrows to indicate it was a question, repeating the sign. “Understand?”

He nodded, stood and then jumped off the porch. By the time she reached the rail he had disappeared into the green curtain beyond the yard.

She watched him go. “Well, that went well.”

Sonia descended the steep stairs and crossed the yard, staring down at the jungle below her. She was not going back in there again.

“Sergeant Lam!” she called. She tried again and received no response. After several minutes she gave up.

“I’m going to keep it professional,” she muttered in a mocking tone. “I’m going to set ground rules.” She gave a mirthless laugh and began signing as she spoke. She threw her hat and felt no better.

Sonia waited twenty minutes. He didn’t come back. She returned to the porch and replaced the caps on the markers.

She stared at Johnny’s board.
Trust me.

It was impossible. She didn’t trust anyone but her sister. That’s how she’d survived. It wasn’t a fair request.

She walked to the edge of the clearing realizing that he didn’t have to be fair. Life hadn’t been fair to him. Besides who could he tell? And what secrets did she have that weren’t already in that damned two-inch thick file the captain had? But it was different saying them aloud. So different. Besides it was a sucky story. Depressing and humiliating. She’d be sparing him by keeping her mouth shut.

Or she could tell him whatever he wanted to know and get his furry butt back in that chair.

She could keep her secrets or her freedom.

She gave a cry of frustration. This overgrown furball was going to get her locked up. If she didn’t get him back here then the captain would find out and... Sonia marched to the porch rail and gripped it tight as she leaned out toward the yard and filled her lungs with air.

“All right!” she shouted to the jungle valley. “I give up! I’m here because if I don’t teach you sign, I go back to jail. Do you hear me? I’m an ex-con and you learning sign is all that’s keeping me from going in for six. Johnny! Damn it, do you hear me?”

Johnny opened his front door. She whirled to face him as he fixed her with a long steady look. He’d been in there all along, she realized. From his place in the door frame, he lifted his hands as if gripping bars and then lifted his brows.

“Yeah. Breaking and entering. Stupid. I tripped a silent alarm. Cops got me and locked me up. If you don’t learn sign I go back there.”

And there it was, the reason he couldn’t run her off and the reason she’d come back.

“Can we start over?” she said, signing in synchronization.

Lam placed one fist on top of the other and lifted them as if preparing to swing an invisible bat. He made a smooth strike, his big, gnarled hands sweeping in a wide graceful arch from one shoulder to the other. Then he held up two fingers. She understood.

“Two strikes.”

Their eyes met and this time she nodded.

“Okay, but how is this going to work? You just ask me any damned personal, prying question you like and I have to answer it?”

He nodded.

“Well, I don’t like that plan.”

He shrugged and stepped inside his threshold. The door began to close. She hurried after him.

“Wait!”

He did, but he kept one hand on the door, ready to slam it in her face. Behind him the television blared. Football, she realized.

“Okay, okay. Goddamn it okay!”

Lam made his fingers and thumb form a circle in a quick mimic of her sign of okay. There was nothing wrong with his brain. But those claws! Damn, they looked like tiny bayonets. Her shoulders sagged as she accepted yet another defeat. She was not going to be able to keep Lam at a distance. She was certain this werewolf was going to try to unlock every embarrassing secret and forbidden memory. Like Scheherazade, she was here only as long as she interested him. But unlike her, the stories would all be true. Sonia glared up at him with all the hatred in her soul. He’d trapped her the same way the U.S. Marines had trapped her. The same way the captain had trapped her. She was getting tired of being trapped.

Four years. That was what stood between her and a new life. Record expunged. Fresh start. Useful training. She wondered where she would be able to fit “tutored a werewolf” on her resume. She snorted.

“All right, Sergeant Lam. What do you want to know?”

Chapter 4

S
onia waited as Johnny returned to the porch, scooping up a red marker and a board. Then he walked past her and into his house, turning to motion her in. She crossed the threshold and her breath caught. His place was spotless and lovely as any magazine spread. The rattan couch looked as if it were never used. The low chairs and ottomans were way too small for Johnny and she couldn’t picture him eating on a glass dinette with royal-purple place mats, cloth napkins and a green glass vase filled with several sprigs of orchids. Beyond the breakfast counter a spotless kitchen sparkled with natural wood cabinets and slate tiled counter tops. How did he keep it so clean and where did he eat? Better still,
what
did he eat?

“Do you even use this kitchen?” she asked.

In answer he opened the freezer to reveal it stuffed with frozen meat.

“Fruits and vegetables?” she asked.

He gave a shake, no.

So he ate meat, possibly raw, alone in this empty kitchen.

Suddenly the spotless house seemed as sterile as an anonymous, impersonal hotel room. From the outside it looked like a home. But from in here it seemed a different kind of prison.

She heard a football game and realized the living room had no television. She glanced toward the hallway that must lead to the bedrooms. Was that where he lived? Because he certainly didn’t spend time here. He motioned to the couch and chose to sit on a leather ottoman that she thought might collapse under the strain.

She turned her attention back to Lam to find him watching her.

“Okay, Johnny. What do you want to know?”

He wrote “jail” on his slate.

She sagged into the hard, new cushions. “Oh, damn. Really?”

He continued to stare and she knew she wasn’t weaseling out of this one but she tried. “I broke into a house. I got caught.” She shrugged. “Arrested, fingerprinted, court date, a deal to serve four years with the U.S. Marines. That’s it.”

She waited for some reaction. He blinked and shook his head and reached for the board and wrote. He turned the board around and she read, “Why B and E?”

Sonia blew out a breath from her nose, a blast like one from a fire breathing dragon.

“Because I just was a bad kid. I got into a lot of trouble.” She stopped talking and set her jaw as the burning started in her eyes. She didn’t want to think about that now, but he was making her. She glared.

He motioned for her to continue.

“What do you want me to say? I’m not the good little soldier, John. Not even close.”

He sat forward and nodded his encouragement and touched the word “why” on his board.

She showed him the sign and he copied it.
Why? Why? Why?

Her head bowed and she looked at her hands laced and locked up tighter than her heart. She wasn’t answering. She’d keep her fingers still and her mouth shut. Johnny stood, heading for the kitchen. When he reached the back door she realized he was leaving again and shot to her feet.

“Stop!” she ordered.

He did.

“Come back.” Sonia admitted defeat.

Johnny resumed his place, staring at her with his eyes big and yellow and his expression placid. He still looked fearsome as hell but Johnny was nothing if not a good listener, she realized. He lifted his chin as if encouraging her.

Sonia signed slowly now as the words were coming from somewhere so deep she hardly recognized her own voice. Her fingers danced along with each sign as naturally as breathing. “Okay. My mother, she drinks—a lot. Been in rehab. Been in jail. For drinking mostly and for the crap she did when she was drunk. Driving, fighting, stealing, causing accidents, bringing home men, pissing in public places, passing out in public places, getting fired, getting pregnant and forgetting about the two kids she already had. Me and my sister, we don’t look much alike, if you know what I mean.” She couldn’t look at Johnny now, not with the shame rushing up to burn her face, so she focused instead on the magazines fanned across the coffee table, all Martha Stewart and all five years old. “A mean drunk, that’s what the landlord called my mama to her face, before he called protective services.” She stared up at Johnny, feeling the burning in her eyes but she would be damned if she’d let him see her cry. She widened her eyes and willed the tears back.

Sonia kept signing. “So I wasn’t a good kid. I got into fights. Kids made fun of Marianna, that’s my kid sister, so I kicked the shit out of them. Then some parent advocate got ahold of my mother and said that the school district wasn’t meeting my sister’s needs. That Marianna had rights and Marianna needed a special program.” She met his steady gaze. “My sister is deaf, Johnny. Born that way. They said it was because of my mom’s drinking, but mom was in jail when she was carrying Marianna, so that wasn’t it. Anyway. She was either born deaf or maybe she got sick and that made her deaf. Nobody ever bothered to tell me. So my kid sister is smart, but she can’t really talk. Sounds funny, you know? When she was little we had our own signs. Then I found a book and taught her some real signs. Later, when she got in that special program, she taught me. Marianna got into a residential school, but it was up in Elmsford and that’s like twenty miles from where we lived. They said I couldn’t go there because I wasn’t deaf. I didn’t think she could get along by herself, so I cut school and took four buses and I found her. You know what? It was the best damned thing that could have happened to her. She lived in a big dorm. She got regular meals and had friends like her. She was wearing clothes I’d never seen before, clean clothes. The school officials called my mother and she came to get me. But she came drunk, of course, so the school called the cops and, long story short, Marianna graduated with honors and I went to a group home, for good that time. I dropped out of high school and ran away. I was a regular rebel without a clue. When you turn eighteen you age-out. That means no more foster care.”

Johnny sat next to her on the couch, turning to face her. She shifted so he could see her sign, even though the words she formed didn’t mean anything to him yet. It gave her comfort, like she was talking to her sister.

“I was on the streets for a while until I got assistance with housing. I even got my GED. Then I applied to community college and got in under probation. I didn’t make it through the first semester. So, if you’re not in school, you lose the subsidy. I got a job but it didn’t pay enough to cover the bills so I...” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I robbed that house. Took a bus to a nice white neighborhood, picked a house with a nice private yard and threw a nice little cement rabbit through that nice shiny glass window. And you know what? I wasn’t sorry. Why did this family have a house like this when I couldn’t make rent? And the food they had in their kitchen. It could have fed me for six months. But they also had a silent alarm. Cops got me still in the house because instead of taking their cash and getting the hell out of there I stopped to eat a bowl of cereal with milk. I made a shitty burglar. But I wasn’t a minor anymore and this was a felony.”

Johnny lifted the board and wrote “You wanted to get caught.”

“No, I sure didn’t.” She pressed her fingers into her eyes for a minute then went back to signing as she spoke. “Well, maybe I did, but I sure the hell didn’t want to go to prison. What I did was stupid. I’m not a thief, I’m just...angry. Or I was. So my lawyer worked out a deal. Go to federal prison or join the U.S. Marines. Seemed like a no-brainer.” She lifted her hands and then dropped them. “So I’m a marine. Wouldn’t be if I didn’t have to be. Wouldn’t be here now but the captain said he’d lock me up again if I didn’t teach you sign. I can’t go back to prison, Johnny. I just can’t.”

The silence stretched.

“I’m sorry. I’m not like you. I’m not a good soldier. I didn’t sign up to serve my country or protect people. I signed up to avoid a prison cell. So what do you say? Will you learn a few words to keep the captain off my back?”

He signed,
Yes.

She blew out a breath, feeling somehow lighter than when she walked in. All that armor was heavy and he’d made her set some of it aside. She smiled at him and he lifted his brows. “Okay, then. Hey, Johnny, why didn’t you want to learn? I mean it will make things so much easier...”

He stood up so abruptly that the ottoman slid back several inches. Whoa, what was that about? she wondered. Seemed Johnny had a few sore spots of his own. She recalled him breaking the first board and throwing the second and leaping off the porch and walking out on her. Johnny
really
didn’t want to learn to sign. Her curiosity prickled and she watched him stare out the front window. Her not wanting to teach him made a lot of sense. Her not wanting to talk about her rotten childhood, she understood. But this confused and intrigued her. She walked over to stand beside him. He didn’t look at her, but his ears moved and he turned toward the road.

A Jeep horn blared. Sonia jumped. He’d heard that way before she had, she realized.

She signed,
Time to go
.

He nodded and walked her to the door. For some stupid reason she didn’t want to go, which made no sense at all. So she lingered inside the open door. The horn sounded again. Sonia stepped out onto the porch and realized it had rained again. The mist rose from the earth in tiny wisps. She was about to descend the steep steps, but Johnny took hold of her arm and walked her down. At the bottom she turned to the Jeep and found the driver was a dimple-faced man she’d never seen before. Her relief at not seeing the captain was palpable and she blew out a breath.

She used the wide stones to cross the stream and realized Johnny didn’t follow her. She signed,
Goodbye
and he signed back,
See you tomorrow
.

She paused, impressed. Had she taught him that? She glanced at the bag she had left on his porch yesterday, recalling the book on sign language. Sonia considered the possibilities. Had he been studying?

The driver met her halfway and waved at Johnny. “See you tomorrow morning, buddy.” His grin lasted only until he turned around and then his expression turned somber.

“I’m Carl Zeno,” he told her offering his hand. “One of the Den Mothers. That’s what we call ourselves. Beats Wounded Warriors, don’t you think?”

Sonia murmured a greeting as she released his hand and climbed into the passenger side. The corporal set them in motion. She glanced back to see Johnny lifting a hand in farewell. She waved back.

“Say,” said Zeno, “were you
inside
Johnny’s place?”

“Yes.”

“He doesn’t let anyone in there. How’d you do it?”

“He invited me.”

“Just like that?”

She shrugged.

“What’s it like?”

Somehow talking to Zeno about Johnny seemed wrong, so she opted for telling him it was nice.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a woman. He’s never had a woman teacher. I was talking to the guys about it. They think it’s a really bad idea. He’s moody, you know? You might want to be careful in there. So, you got off-base permission yet? I could show you around.”

She put on her seat belt realizing that she felt safer with Johnny than with his den mother. “Not yet.”

Zeno nodded as he kept his attention on the road. “Did he attack you yesterday? Because a guy at the medical center said you were pretty banged up. The guys were saying that maybe we ought to be there when you’re with him.”

“Johnny didn’t do it. I fell.”

He gave her a look that told her that he didn’t believe her. “Listen he’s taken a swing at all of us. Threw a full can of beer at Dom once. But he never actually hit us. If he did that to you—” Zeno pointed at her bruised cheek and the scratch that she knew crossed her forehead “—then you should tell the captain. They’ve got ties but I think he’d listen.”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“I think they should lock him up instead of locking us all up in this half-assed zoo. Lam’s just a mess. Won’t talk to us, ditches us nearly every day. The guy’s not human anymore. I don’t know why the captain doesn’t see it.”

* * *

That third lesson set up the pattern. Not the falling down the mountain and nearly dying part or the sitting on his pristine couch part, but the prying into her past part. Sonia had to endure a series of personal questions on whatever popped into the sergeant’s brain and then he’d endure her lesson and learn a few more signs. He threw in a few she hadn’t taught him so she was certain he was reading that book when she wasn’t around. By the end of each lesson she was exhausted, wrung out emotionally, but at least she was not in the brig and the captain was off her ass.

But what would happen when she no longer interested Johnny?

He was such a good student. She still didn’t know what the big fuss about not learning sign had been. A power play maybe or a pissing match. Men were funny about their pride and dignity and Johnny
was
a man, despite what those Den Mothers thought.

Over the first week he’d learned where she grew up and that her sister was at Gallaudet University outside of Washington, D.C. And she’d taught him colors, numbers, the alphabet and a series of action words, like walk, run, come, go, listen, do. Lam was now using both the board and sign language to communicate.

Lessons took place outside in nice weather and inside in the rain. It rained a lot here, but not for very long. Today they were on the porch and he had a pitcher of lemonade for her and it really tasted like he’d made it from fresh lemons.

She signed to him a question without speaking,
Did you make this?

He asked her what the sign for make meant.

When she finger spelled
M-A-K-E
he flopped his arms, unwilling to answer.

She kept signing as she spoke. “Because this is really tasty. Just the right amount of tart with the sweet. You made it, didn’t you?”

He rolled his eyes and nodded, admitting that he’d made it. She grinned, pleased at his efforts. Somehow she suspected that he didn’t make this routinely for himself.

“Fruits.” She smiled. “You having some?”

He shook his head and finger spelled
O-N-L-Y M-E-A-T.