Wren and the Werebear (17 page)

"Hello?"

On the other end of the line Wren couldn't hear anything. There was a muffled cough, and then her mom's voice.

"Wren?"

"Yes? Mom?" Wren set the shark's tooth down on the counter next to the phone.

"Oh, sweetie. Oh, darling." Her mom started to cry, and the rest of the world melted away.

Wren heard her heart beating in her ears, as though in slow motion. Her fingers found the shark's tooth, and she turned it in her hand, the edge smooth against her skin.

"Mom? What is it? Is it dad?"

"Wren, baby, I'm sorry. He didn't—he didn't make it."

Wren leaned against the counter, unable to keep her balance. The room spun around her. Her mom was still talking between sobs, saying something about the surgery. Something about complications, and a blood clot. Wren couldn't understand anything she was saying. Then her mom was crying into the phone, and Wren's fingers tightened around the receiver. It was not a sound she recognized.

"Mom? Mom?"

"Baby, we lost him. I... I can't... they're asking about a funeral and I can't..." Her mother broke down into a new round of sobbing.

"Mom? I'll take care of it. Mom?"

Wren's vision focused into a narrow point—the shark's tooth. She held onto it, focused onto the little white bone with all her being. The tooth's side was slightly curved, she saw now. Curved and thin, ready to slice through anything. She scraped the point along her palm, pressing it just enough that it dimpled but did not break the skin. Her mom was still talking. Wren closed her eyes and the tooth disappeared.

"I love you so much, baby. He loved you so much. You know that, right?"

"I know." Wren's hand ached from clutching the phone so tightly. She gulped and bit down on her lip, trying to keep the world from spiraling away from her. "I'll come back tonight if I can, or tomorrow. The first plane I can catch."

"I have a letter from him for you. I have... oh, baby, I'm sorry. I can't talk anymore. I can't... I can't..."

"I'll be there as soon as I can, mom," Wren said. "I love you."

"I love you too, baby. I love you so much."

The phone clicked in Wren's ear and then there was silence. Wren stood behind the hotel counter, waiting for something to happen. Surely something had to happen. She could not understand why the world still existed around her as though everything was normal, as though nothing had happened.

Her father was dead.

All at once she saw the next few days, as clear as if she was remembering the events in the past. Every step clicked into place. She would pack up, check out of the hotel. Call the airport, get the earliest flight to Chicago. At the airport she could call to make the arrangements for the funeral. Call her dad's lawyer. Figure things out. On the flight she would call her mom to make sure that she was doing alright. What was the name of her mother's best friend in Chicago? Wren couldn't remember. She would surely be taking care of her mother.

Wren felt like a string was winding around her, pulling her limbs into a cocoon. Every new thought tightened her chest, tugged the string even tighter. She had to make plans. She had to get plane tickets. She had to... she had to...

Unable to breathe inside anymore, Wren stumbled out the back of the hotel. Matt was nowhere to be seen. The trail beckoned her, and Wren moved toward it. Alone. She needed to get away from the phone, the hotel, the half-packed luggage that told her only that she would be moving again, moving soon, always moving.

One step at a time, as if in a hypnotic trance, she made her way up the trail to the fire lookout. Dawson was not in his cabin, and not at the lookout when she peered over the top of the ladder. She had half expected him to be waiting for her there, but there was nobody.

The sun was setting over the ocean, and the red-orange light made the limbs of the pines and redwoods seem afire with color.

Yes, fire. Wren wanted to burn the world down, to destroy everything. Nothing mattered. She hadn't avenged anyone. Not Tommy, not her dad. Nothing she did would ever bring them back. The shifter was dead, and it didn't matter at all.

And she couldn't feel the pain. That might be the worst. She was so strung up with all of the things that needed doing that there was no pain, none at all that she could feel.

She clenched her fist hard. A prick in her palm made her look down. She was still holding the shark's tooth, and it was cutting into her hand. The point had broken the skin, made her bleed. The red was bright even in the fading sun.

And just like that, she felt it. The grief tore through her body and stripped her of any strength she'd pretended to have. There was no Wren the assassin. No Wren the tracker, Wren the shifter hunter. Wren the killer. There was only Wren the little girl, and nobody there to protect her from the terrible truths of the world.

Falling to her knees under the fire lookout, Wren began to cry.

The forest around her absorbed her sobs, softened the cries with the whisper of lush pine branches. The birds quieted in the redwoods and the sun dropped, dropped all the while, closing the distance between itself and the horizon. The shark tooth slipped from her finger and fell between her feet, and she did not notice it fall.

***

A rustle in the brush by the trail made her head snap up. She reached for her gun but it wasn't there. Her breath tensed in her body until Dawson came out from around the trees. He was dressed in an old ranger uniform and his hair was tousled, with a pine needle still stuck behind one ear.

"Wren," he said. He came up the slope and knelt in front of her, leaving a few feet between them. Behind him wisps of clouds moved across the sky, red and gold.

"Not you." Wren's voice cracked with tears.

"I'm sorry."

“That’s it? You accuse me of lying to you, when you’ve been lying to me from the start?”

“I didn’t know who you were.”

“And I didn’t know you.” Wren glared at him. Anger and fear and sorrow whirled through her so quickly that she didn’t know which emotion would come out on top.

“You let me go.”

Wren looked down at the ground. She had, hadn’t she? She’d let him go. When it came down to it, she hadn’t been able to do her job. Hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. What was it that had seized her and made her unable to do her job?

Him.

“What do you want?” Wren asked.

“I wanted to thank you. For saving my life. And...”

Now that he was closer, Wren could see Dawson's eyes were rimmed red. His lip trembled before he spoke again. "I heard about your dad. Wren—"

Wren broke into tears, and then Dawson was there, his arms wrapping around her, curling her up against his chest, and she sobbed hard against his chest as his hand caressed her hair. He clasped her to him so tightly that she thought she would suffocate. She cried and cried, and all the time he held her.

It was only when she had stopped crying that he offered a handkerchief. She sat back and took it gratefully. When she looked up to see tears in his eyes, she realized that she was not the only one grieving. The shock of it hit her with a forcible pressure. The man in the forest. The shifter.

"Who was he?" she whispered.

"Who?"

"The other bear. The one they... the one they shot."

Dawson's throat hitched and he looked away, toward the woods.

"My brother."

There was no bitterness in his voice, only sadness. Wren took his hand and he squeezed it once before wrapping her into another hug. They rocked against each other, both letting tears fall for the family they had lost.

The sky darkened, and Wren realized that the sun had slipped under the horizon. She wondered if the sun had flashed green. She wondered if her dad had ever seen the green in the sunrise. Another tear made its way slowly down her cheek.

Dawson cleared his throat. It was strange to feel his arms around her, so strong, and to hear him speak in a voice so low and trembling.

"He wrote to me," Dawson said. "He couldn't stop himself from killing. He would bottle it up until it exploded inside of him. When he asked to come here, I thought I could teach him how to stop. I thought our community would be able to help him. I thought..."

He trailed off, shaking his head.

"You can't stop," Wren said, frowning. Everything she'd read about shifters said the same. "It's... isn't it your nature to kill?"

"To kill," Dawson said. "And I do kill. Deer. Fish. Not people."

"So that you won't be caught."

"No." He turned to face Wren, his eyes shimmering golden even in the quickly dimming light. He spat the words out. "Because I'm not a killer. He was."

"He was still your brother."

"I knew this would happen someday. He's been running for so long, it had to catch up with him. Someone was going to catch him."

"But it was me." Wren pulled back slightly. Dawson shook his head and squeezed her palm.

"You didn't kill him."

"I tracked him. I made the call. Just because I didn't pull the trigger—"

"It was the right call." Dawson's jaw was locked, and his face was steeled. Even in the dusk, she could see him grit his teeth before he spoke again.

"I understand why humans are scared of us. The anger we carry...it's painful. Death is part of our nature. It's a disease, to be like this. I could control the anger, change it into something else."

"Your brother couldn't?"

"He was weak. He didn't try hard enough. Or maybe he did, and he just couldn't control it. I don't know anymore. It doesn't matter anymore."

"I'm sorry."

"I was supposed to protect him. But I couldn't protect him from himself. Not when he was... like that. Please, Wren. Understand. It's hard for us to be the way we are."

"You're a shifter." Wren rolled the word around on her tongue. She tried to blot out the images of Tommy tracking the bear. The image of the wolf attacking her. All of the nightmares of the past few years.

"Most of us are, in this town."

Wren's heart seized in her chest as she looked up at him.

"Matt? And his son?"

"Not Matt. Shawn, yes. And Eliza. Their mother was, too. She was killed by an assassin back in Oregon."

Wren's lips parted in surprise.

"An assassin... like me." Wren shuddered. Was there anything she hadn't ruined? Any place that hadn't been tainted? She felt again the familiar urge to bolt, to leave before she could hurt anyone else. To start over. Start clean.

"I have to go," she said, standing up quickly. "I have to get back to my mom. For the funeral." Her voice caught on the last syllable, but she pinched the word off with her tongue and looked down at the ground. The blades of grass struggled up through the pine needles on the ground.

"And after that?" Dawson stood up and took her hand, his palms enveloping hers. The moon was rising on the other side of the ridgeline, and as the sun fell into the ocean the air grew blue with the moon's light. She could see the moon reflected in his irises, white and round. "Where will you fly, Wren?"

"After that... I don't know."

"Back to Washington D.C.?"

"No." The word was final.

Dawson knelt and picked up the shark tooth, handing it back to Wren. It was so dark even in the moonlight that she didn't know how he'd seen it.

"Come back here."

Wren shook her head. Tears slipped from her eyes, and she wondered how she'd gotten so weak. She was unable to stop herself from crying. She held the tooth in her hand tightly and breathed out, trying to gather herself.

"Why?" she asked.

"Why?" Dawson brushed her hair back and looked her in the eyes, as if to tell her that what he said meant more than anything he'd said before.

"Why? Because you're the most beautiful and intelligent woman I've ever met. Because you don't mind getting mud in your hair and sand in your toes. Because there's something between us and you can feel it, I know you can. Wren, when you dance with me I want to dance forever."

Wren shook her head, her sorrow clenching her throat. She wasn't worth his words.

"I'm no good for you. For anyone, but especially for you."

"Because you drive me crazy?"

"Because I'm a killer. Because I'm supposed to kill people like you."

"Will you kill me when you come back?"

Dawson cupped a hand under her chin and lifted her face up. With the sun gone and the sky dark, she could see the twinkle of stars behind him.

"No," she said, her cheeks wet with tears.

"Then you will come back?"

Dawson's voice, so open, so trusting, made Wren's heart wrench in her body. She had no strength left to argue, and she didn't know what she would argue against. She had nowhere else to go.

"I don't know," she whispered.

Dawson wrapped his arms around her and she felt her cheek press against his chest. She heard his steady heartbeat against her ear. He buried his face in her hair and kissed the top of her head.

"You're a strong woman, Wren," he said. His hands smoothed her hair, ran down her back. Every motion was consoling, and she leaned into his touch. "Grieve for your father. Comfort your mother. And when everything is done, if you still don't know where to go... come back to me."

Wren's eyes filled with fresh tears, and when she closed them she could still see the constellations swimming on the back of her eyelids. She stood there a while in silence, letting her grief spin out of her into the darkness. Then she had to go, and Dawson let her leave.

Chapter Twenty-one

Wren did not see Dawson again before leaving. The pain of grief began to fade as soon as she left to walk down the trail, and by the time she'd reached the hotel she was safely wrapped in numbness and duty.

She packed her remaining clothes and left a few bills in her hotel room for Matt. She called ahead to the airport and booked a flight for Chicago. Nobody was in the hotel lobby when she left—it was late, after all, and probably they were eating dinner.

It was dark when she started her ride back down to the airport, dark when she kicked her motorcycle into fourth gear and sped down the curves of the coast. The waves looked unearthly, the white crests moving slow and glimmering in the blue light of the moon. She passed the small towns along the way, wondering what secrets were hidden in each one.