Secret Worlds (509 page)

Holbrook led the way out of the elevator, weaving through the sea of cubicles until reaching one at the end of a row. A small shiny nameplate tacked to the outside of the cubicle bore the name J. Lloyd. It looked like a bomb had gone off in there, every available surface, including large portions of the floor, covered in stacks of file folders, loose papers, hand written notes, and Post-Its. The cubicle’s occupant was a middle-aged man with sandy blonde hair, blinking blue eyes, and a ketchup stain on the front of his shirt.

“Hey Jim, do you have those case files I asked you to track down?” Holbrook asked.

“Sure, they’re around here somewhere,” he answered, as he pushed his chair back from the desk and looked over the mountain of paperwork. “Now where did I put that box?” he muttered, shuffling random stacks of paper back and forth across the small space.

“Is that it?” I asked, spotting a bankers box in the only relatively clutter free corner of the cubicle.

“Ah ha!” Jim crowed in triumph, zeroing in on the box I had pointed out. “Well done!”

As Jim scooted his chair across the floor to retrieve the box, I gave Holbrook a significant look and received a brief shrug in return.

“Should be everything you asked for,” Jim beamed.

“Thanks, Jim,” Holbrook said, accepting the box. “Say hi to Tanya and the kids for me.”

Falling into step behind Holbrook, I followed him back through the maze of cubicles towards the elevators and then down a hallway leading off to the left.

“Here we are,” he said, pausing outside a darkened office, the small nameplate next to the door reading “Special Agent D. Holbrook.”

Juggling the box and his backpack, he pushed open the door with his hip and flipped the light switch with his elbow, bathing the room in fluorescent light. The room was small and windowless, and smelled of spilled coffee and him. A desk lurked in the center of the room, a computer monitor sitting on top along with a desk calendar filled in with several notes written in a sharp, precise hand.

The rest of his desk was devoid of clutter, not even a single pen out of place. It was the complete opposite of my work space at home, which was covered in dozens of scribbled sticky notes, sketches, doodles, and various scraps of paper. Briefly, I wondered if I’d ever see my cluttered desk, or get to sleep in my own bed, again.

Setting the box down on the edge of the desk, Holbrook dropped his backpack in the corner of the room and draped his jacket over the chair. Turning to face me, he took Loki’s carrier from my clasped hands and set it down gently beside the desk. Loki let out a single meow before turning around inside the crate and burying his nose beneath his tail, almost instantly falling asleep again. At least he didn’t seem too put out by all the shuffling around we’d been doing over the last couple of days.

Turning back to the box on his desk, Holbrook set the lid aside and began flipping through the folders.

“There’s a break room down the hall on the left. There should be some coffee, tea, and maybe even some donuts if they haven’t all been scavenged yet,” he said, setting several files aside on the desk until he found the one he wanted. “I need to go check in with my boss, but I shouldn’t be gone long,” he said, pausing long enough to notice that I was still standing in the doorway, my hands clenched at my sides. Moving to stand in front of me, he tucked the folder under his arm to lay both hands on my shoulders, the now familiar electricity arcing between his fingers to send tremors of sensation through my skin. “You’re safe here, Riley. I promise.”

Unable to say anything for fear that my emotions would overcome me, I just nodded and stepped aside to let him pass. I hadn’t realized just how much my little spat with Johnson had unsettled me until Holbrook’s behavior tugged at my heart strings. If the guys protecting me would just as soon see me dead in a ditch somewhere, what hope did I have of surviving Samson a second time?

And since when did I become such an emotional wreck?

“I’ll be back soon,” he said before turning to stride down the hall, his long and measured steps carrying him away. I watched his retreating back with a growing sense of unease, feeling as though he were taking a small piece of my safety away with him.

Huffing out a tense breath, I wrapped my arms around my middle and turned to regard his office. The wall behind his desk was filled with filing cabinets and bookshelves that stretched up to the dingy ceiling tiles. The shelves held several sets of volumes, a cursory glance showing that most of them were about supernatural law and governmental regulations. A few personal items were tucked in amongst the volumes, and I found my feet carrying me across the room to investigate before I realized what I was doing.

My fingers roved over the objects, a faint tingle buzzing in my fingertips like an echo of the electricity that passed through me every time we touched. A baseball with an indecipherable signature scrawled across the scarred surface sat safely nestled in a plexiglas cube, a pair of dog tags coiled next to a folded American flag in a glass fronted frame, and a photograph of a younger Holbrook and an older man with similar features, both of them beaming at the camera as they held up their fishing poles, proudly displaying their catches.

A ghost of a smile drifted across my face as I touched the picture of the younger version of the agent, the bare skin of his chest and shoulders bronzed by the summer sun as he stood on an old wooden dock, a long arm draped around the older man’s shoulders.

My smile turned wistful as the memory of early summer mornings spent fishing with my grandfather rose faintly melancholy in my mind. It had been thirteen years since he passed away; ten since my grandmother had followed.

My recollections of my parents were limited to my mom slipping away in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again; and a simple pine box carrying the body of my war-casualty father, whom I’d never really known. It was my grandparents who had raised me. They were the ones who had helped me with my homework, taught me how to hook a fish, bake a cake, and drive a car. It was them that I missed desperately every day, their loss that was a gaping hole in my middle.

I felt like an intruder standing in Holbrook’s office, looking at the pieces of his life that I could never touch, pieces that didn’t include damaged women with psychotic werewolf ex-boyfriends. Frustration bloomed as I stared at the picture of the carefree and happily smiling youngster. I’d been like that once, young and blissfully ignorant, feeling chafed by the simple life I led. And then Samson had come along and torn my life to shreds. I mourned the naïve girl I had been, and cursed the fact that fate had taken that life from me. I had resented it at the time, but as I stood there, the weight of Samson and Johnson’s hatred weighing down on me like a ton of bricks, I would have traded anything to have that life back.

Swallowing hard against the sense of loss swelling in the back of my throat, I refused to let it overrun me again. I was not this weak and pathetic woman I had become in the last few days. I would not allow myself to become the victim again.

Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath, making myself hold it until my lungs began to burn with the need to exhale, before letting it slip out between pursed lips. I breathed in and out several times until I had regained some semblance of control.

I didn’t realize I had clenched my hands into frustrated fists until the wetness of blood oozed between my fingers. Slowly uncurling my fingers, I gazed down at my hands and the four small crescents my nails had cut into each of my palms. I watched as the flow of blood slowed and then stopped, the tiny wounds fading to fine white scars before disappearing entirely. Even after eight years I was still struck by the miracle of lycanthrope healing, something as benign as a paper cut erased without a trace in a matter of seconds.

Calmer now, I still felt like an interloper, as though I was peering into some private part of Holbrook’s life that I shouldn’t see. Wiping the traces of blood from my palms on the legs of my jeans, I turned away from the picture of him and the older man. My gaze drifted over the rest of the room, passing over my shadowy reflection in the dark screen of his monitor. The woman that looked back at me from the dark glass was hollow-eyed and pale. I almost didn’t recognize myself from the young girl who had spent summers fishing with her grandfather. Had the last few days so transformed me? Or was it the years since Samson’s attack that had changed me so irrevocably? Would I end up as a deranged monster like him? After all, it was his power that had changed me. Did that mean that I carried a part of him with me?

The room suddenly felt hot and small, as though the walls were closing in, threatening to crush me. In the blink of an eye sweat covered me from head to toe and my hands trembled at my sides.

I had to get out. I had to get away.

Stepping out into the hallway I paused, retaining just enough control to keep from bolting. Forcing my eyes closed I leaned against the wall, pressing my forehead against the cool surface and waited for my ragged breaths and the pounding in my temples to subside. I couldn’t remember the last time I had come so close to having a full-blown panic attack. They’d been common enough during the trial and in the following months, every unexpected noise or foreign smell tearing at my fragile self-control. It had taken months of therapy to get a handle on my new situation and make it through the day without freaking out.

Coffee. I need coffee,
I decided, sure that the caffeine would help to steady my nerves. I strode down the hallway in search of the break room, and, more importantly, coffee. Coffee fixed everything.

I heard jovial banter as I approached the break room. Three women sat around a table eating lunch, two of them looking younger than I was and the other old enough to be my mother. They looked polished in a way I rarely did, dressed in dark slacks and crisp white shirts that had probably never seen anything worse than an errant coffee stain. The sight of their manicured nails and pressed shirts made me feel like a slob.

Their conversation came to a lurching halt as I entered the room, the soles of my boots squeaking on the linoleum. I cringed at the sound, feeling more out of place than ever. It was at times like this that I wished I was really as invisible as I usually felt, that I could just slip by unnoticed.

Risking a glance at them, I found the three women watching me with unabashed interest, their heads bent close together. I caught the words “werewolf girl” and “Johnson” and my shoulders stiffened. It looked like news of my little altercation with Johnson in the parking garage had already spread around the office like wildfire and become lunchtime fodder for the masses. It turns out that even the FBI is prone to idle watercooler gossip.

In a flash, I was transported back to my high school days. I shuddered at the memory of being the girl with no parents, always hovering on the fringes of the various cliques, never seeming to fit in anywhere. My time at college hadn’t met with much success, either.

With just a couple of quickly whispered words by a group of strangers, I was transformed into that unsure girl. And that just pissed me off.

Turning my back on the women, I stomped over to the coffee machine, trying to keep my hands from curling into fists at the sound of their whispered suppositions. Their judgment grated on my nerves and set a fire in my chest. I could feel the muscles in my shoulders tightening while my jaw stiffened until my teeth ground together with near shattering force. I was beyond tired and frustrated, and what little patience I had left was rapidly wilting beneath the heat of my mounting anger. A snorting chortle from the older woman in the group was the final straw, and, like the proverbial camel’s back, my resolve broke.

My eyes bled over to gold in a single heartbeat, my anger lending strength to the wolf, calling her up from the dark recesses deep inside. By some small miracle I managed to avoid wolfing out right in the middle of the FBI lunch room, but the effort of keeping the wolf at bay made my entire body tremble.

I was able to pinpoint the exact moment that they realized something was wrong. The room went deathly quiet the instant their hindbrains kicked in, the part that instinctively knows they should be afraid of the dark and the monsters it held. The tension was palpable, and the air was suddenly redolent with the tantalizing scent of their fear.

It took a herculean force of will not to shift at the sound of their chairs pushing back from the table in a rush. Under the guise of inspecting the selection of tea, I listened to them gathering up the remnants of their lunch, their frantic steps torture on my frayed self-control. The wolf wanted to chase them down and sink her teeth into the softness of their flesh. Holding my breath I ignored the intoxicating scent of their panic, ignored the way it called seductively to the wolf, luring her ever closer to the surface.

It wasn’t until their steps had faded away down the hall that I let my breath out slowly between clenched teeth. Flexing my fingers at my sides I hissed at the burning sensation of the air hitting the fresh crescents my nails had gouged into my palms. Stumbling to the nearby sink I turned on the cold water and splashed it over my face, sloshing just as much down the front of my sweater in a display of my typical grace.

After the attack, it had taken a long time, and a lot of close calls, to get a handle on the wolf and her mercurial temper. Most of the time I was able to keep her in check, especially if I made sure to take regular runs through the woods, sating her need for the hunt. In fact, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had lost control. I was shaken at having come so horrifyingly close to losing it in a public place. Somehow I didn’t think a building full of FBI agents would hesitate to put me down. After all, it is illegal to shift in public. Living alone in the wilderness has its distinct advantages.

The coffee sitting on the burner was bitter smelling and looked as thick as tar, but it was caffeine and it was hot. I ignored the tremor in my hands as I filled a cup, added three packets of sugar and a heaping dose of powdered creamer. I almost spit it back out after my first, tentative sip. Dumping more sugar and creamer into my cup, I flipped open the bakery box on the counter to find a couple dried donuts sitting amongst a sea of crumbs.