The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf) Read online

  Park’s hand froze and pulled away. “You were hurt.” Not a question. An accusation for lying earlier.

  “It’s nothing. Probably happened before.”

  “When?” Park said bitingly. “The cat showing her affection again?”

  Park and Boogie had a curiously antagonistic relationship. Curious not because Boogie was usually such a paragon of hospitality, but because Boogie liked Park while Park went out of his way to avoid Boogie and referred to her only as “the cat.”

  Cooper sighed. “Okay, so Simpson may have...scratched me a bit. But it didn’t even bleed. You know that’s true or you would have noticed it before now.” He tapped his nose.

  Park didn’t like that. “Take this next exit,” he said without any of the flirtation of a moment ago.

  They drove in silence for a while, occasionally broken by Park giving directions. Cooper tried to keep his eyes on the road, but the long, flat, straight terrain made it too easy to look around. They were somewhere in Ohio now, and the night sky was so large he imagined he could see the curve of the atmosphere, resting above them like a contact lens. He thought about saying so, but Park had closed his eyes and seemed...off. Lost in thought again and beyond Cooper’s reach.

  Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “Are you upset I got Simpson off?”

  “Whoa,” Park said evenly. “What exactly went down in that flower shop?”

  Cooper smiled and a flush of relief soothed him. If Park was joking, they’d be okay, surely.

  “I’m not upset,” Park added eventually. “Anyway, it was your call.”

  “Damn right it was. Besides, isn’t the guy going to suffer enough? That’s got to be the worst breakup ever.”

  “As long as you didn’t feel like you had to drop the charges,” Park said, and Cooper stiffened, hands tightening on the wheel. It wasn’t often either of them referenced the animosity Cooper got from the rest of the bureau, and he wasn’t sure he liked hearing it now, even indirectly.

  He skirted around the question. “You’re the one always telling me prison is for rehabilitation, not punishment, and the only thing Simpson needs to rehabilitate is his broken heart. And his taste in men. I mean, I’ve had some pretty bad judgment in people before, clearly, but goddamn if it isn’t obvious from the outside.”

  Park hummed, possibly an agreement. “‘It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us,’” he said, like he was quoting something.

  “That’s some pretty dismal pillow embroidery.”

  “Maclean’s words, not mine.” Cooper felt the weight of Park’s gaze on him, and after a moment he continued the quote, “‘But we can still love them—we can love completely without complete understanding.’”

  Cooper’s heart beat faster. Park was probably just referencing what a sap Simpson was, but still, he tucked the words away to take out and search for hidden meanings later when he could wonder if Park had meant it for him and get furious at himself for wanting it to be. In the meantime, he laughed it off.

  “Sure we can. But that doesn’t mean we should.”

  Park huffed, sounding amused, but didn’t comment.

  “Do you ever miss teaching?” Cooper asked after a few moments of silence.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Park look at him quickly, a rare, genuinely surprised expression on his face. They almost never discussed their personal lives, a habit they’d fallen into after Florence, when every question about each other’s past seemed to tread too closely to some lie or misunderstanding from their less than ideal first case.

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “I don’t know, it was just something I was wondering before in the flower shop—”

  “Oh, good. Glad to hear your head was firmly in the game.”

  “—and the way you talk about books and shit sometimes. It sounds like you miss it.”

  “This job has its perks,” Park said vaguely. It was his usual deflection when anything about his life before the Trust came up. Cooper expected it but couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed.

  Up ahead, a bunch of cars were parked in the field running along the side of the road, and beyond them some bright, freestanding lights wiped out the stars. Cooper thought of the last stadium lights he had seen: Park naked in a cage, his face twisted with betrayal. Cooper knowing it was his fault...

  How could he dare think Park owed him information about his personal life when he was responsible for that? How could he dare think Park was quoting love poems at him? He was lucky to get whatever Park chose to give him.

  Park nodded at the lights in the field. “With aliens in town, I like our chances of getting a room.”

  “I want to believe,” Cooper said.

  The man at the front desk of the motel was short, slight, and a well-crafted sort of pretty. Subtle jewelry in his ears; glowing, poreless bronze skin; brows a tad too perfect to be natural; and a bright smile that got a lot brighter as he took in Park. “Good evening, gentlemen. Can I help you?”

  “Do you have any available rooms for tonight?”

  “Absolutely. Will that be one room or...?” The man glanced over Cooper with mild curiosity.

  “Two,” Park said. Of course it had to be two. The bureau was paying and couldn’t know they shared a room, but the satisfied smile on the man’s face still grated Cooper’s nerves.

  “Just the one night, you said? Too bad. Not nearly enough time...to see the sights.” The man fiddled around on the computer, filling out their payment information with slow, deliberate, one-fingered pecks. “In town on business?”

  “No,” Cooper said shortly.

  Park added in a nicer tone, “On our way back from business.”

  “So it’s time for pleasure.” The man winked and his fingers lingered while handing Park back his card. Park smiled. Cooper rolled his eyes. “Maybe you have time to take in a couple local legends after all. My name is Javier.”

  Local legend number one, no doubt, Cooper thought watching the way his fingers slid over Park’s palm as he finally let go of the card.

  “What would you recommend, Javier?” Park asked, either clueless to the blatant flirtation or deliberately leading him on.

  “Depends on what you’re in the mood for. Food? Drinks? Fun?”

  Park looked at Cooper questioningly. They’d eaten on the road, but Park was pretty constantly hungry. Something to do with the metabolic needs of his daily shift to wolf form. Too bad Javier’s ass wasn’t high in calories, because it was one hundred percent on the menu.

  Cooper concentrated on relaxing his jaw. “I’m not hungry,” he said, trying his best not to sound like a petulant child. Park frowned and seemed like he was going to argue, and Cooper’s stomach clenched.

  Unfortunately, since they’d been partnered full-time he’d been forced to explain his eating needs to Park. Ever since being attacked by a werewolf over a year ago and having thirty percent of his small intestine removed, Cooper had needed to adjust his eating habits to smaller, more frequent meals to reduce the strain on his guts. He’d tried to hide it from Park for as long as possible, not needing more reasons for Park to think he was weak. For a time, Cooper even tried to ignore his diet and eat what Park was eating when he ate it—hard for even an average human person—and had paid some disastrously rough consequences. But they spent a lot of time together, and after a short couple weeks of working and sleeping together most days, Park had awkwardly brought the subject up himself and Cooper was forced to explain.

  He regretted it every day.

  Ever since then Park had been hyper-vigilant that Cooper was getting enough nutrition. He often cooked him little omelets in the morning before Cooper woke, had started researching supplements and vitamins he thought Cooper should take, and packed snacks for him on cases as if he was a child.

  Park opened his mouth now, alm
ost certainly to insist Cooper get some protein before bed. If he brought up his health issues and babied him in front of perfect-brows Javier, Cooper was going to flip a shit. “Shouldn’t you—”

  He quickly cut Park off. “So what else is there to do?”

  Javier didn’t even look at him. “Well, if you came in off the highway, you may have noticed our very own famous haunted corn maze.”

  Park said, “We did see some lights.”

  “After dark it’s for adults only. Best thrills in the county.”

  Cooper imagined wandering around a corn maze in the pitch black and decided he’d honestly prefer an alien abduction.

  “And there’s the haunted hayride if you think you’re brave enough for some spooky stories. Ooooo.” Javier made a sound that might have been a ghost noise but sounded a bit too X-rated for your run-of-the-mill Casper.

  It made Park smile, though. “Isn’t it a little early for that stuff?” he asked.

  “It’s never too early for a good monster story to get the heart racing.” Javier winked. He seemed to linger just a bit on the word monster. And was it Cooper’s imagination, or did his eyes flicker, just a little? “Don’t you agree, sir?”

  Cooper grabbed his room’s key card off the desk and backed away. He felt flushed, his skin too tight, and the scratches on his shoulders were starting to throb. “I’m exhausted. I’m gonna head up. See you tomorrow.”

  Park looked startled by his sudden departure, but Javier cheerfully waved goodbye and Cooper left—no, retreated. If he were a wolf, his tail would be glued between his legs. But he was just a man. And a pretty pathetic one these days, at that.

  Safely in his room, Cooper tossed his bag in the corner, locked his weapons in the safe, and sat on the bed in his clothes. He checked his messages. His boss, Special Agent in Charge Santiago, had called to express her approval of the quick and efficient wrap-up to the case. Perhaps she hadn’t heard the full story of the flower shop incident. Ava, his young neighbor and cat sitter extraordinaire, had texted three pictures of Boogie looking various shades of smug. She had apparently presented Ava with a large live cricket that morning. There were pictures of that as well. He wondered if she and Boogie both had considered that a job well done and just let the critter hop back into the crevices of his apartment. He grimaced.

  The sounds of footsteps and laughter drifted down the hall—Javier guiding Park to the room next door to Cooper’s, just in case he got lost in the labyrinth of the two-story motel. Cooper waited, barely breathing, until he heard the sound of Park entering his room and Javier’s footsteps leaving, back down the hall, alone. He sighed, at the same time relieved and frustrated with himself for being so.

  Cooper briefly imagined going by Park’s room and suggesting they go out and make time for some pleasure. They weren’t in any real rush to get back to DC, after all. Now that this case was closed, they each had a couple days off. Days Cooper had been planning to use to, well, talk. With Park. About them. And what that meant, exactly. Or something.

  Suddenly the thought of a night wandering around lost in a corn maze didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

  Feeling twitchy and not at all tired anymore, he got up and rummaged through his overnight bag for the little tube of Neosporin he kept with him at all times. It was tucked into a subtle inside pocket along with condoms and lube, which he had also started carrying with him. Not that he and Park should be fucking on cases. But if one year as a Boy Scout had taught him anything...it wasn’t explicitly to carry condoms with you at all times—if it had, maybe he wouldn’t have dropped out—but he did like to be prepared. Besides, the case was over and he didn’t need two days to talk. In theory, anyway.

  He and Park had been sleeping together for almost four months now, and Cooper still hadn’t found a way to clarify what was going on. Were they dating? Fuck buddies? Clumsily falling onto each other’s dicks with regularity? They didn’t go on dates. They worked together. They hung around Cooper’s apartment watching movies and discussing books. They had sex. They didn’t talk about it.

  Any sweet nothings exchanged happened in the dark while covered in sweat and other fluids, and were thus void. Most of the time Cooper fully expected Park would just stop showing up at his apartment one day and that would be that. They still wouldn’t talk about it and they’d keep working together, without the sex, until Cooper imploded like a collapsing black hole of emotional repression.

  In the hall he heard a knock, and for one embarrassingly giddy moment he thought it was Park, using some ESP shit to eavesdrop on Cooper’s neuroses and here to tell him he did care and he would never stop showing up.

  Cooper kicked himself. Have some shame, Dayton.

  But then he heard the door to the room next to him open and recognized the flirty receptionist’s voice, back again. Cooper hurried to his door and peered out the peephole but couldn’t see anything at that angle. Feeling absurdly childish, he strained his ears to hear, but Javier’s voice had dropped to a murmur.

  Cooper imagined what he’d do if he didn’t hear the footsteps leaving alone this time. If instead he heard two voices move into the other room. He wished he weren’t too chickenshit to walk out into the hall and stake his claim on Park right then and there.

  Of course he wouldn’t. He couldn’t risk word getting back to the bureau. They’d separate them as partners at a minimum, and despite what SAC Santiago had assured him, he still felt his position with the BSI was tentative at best.

  That’s what Cooper told himself. But that wasn’t the real reason. Even if he was a wolf, the chances of this Javier guy somehow finding out they were BSI agents and reporting an inappropriate relationship to DC were nonexistent. It was the relationship part that kept Cooper frozen in place, listening at peepholes. He just didn’t have the right to stake claims on anyone.

  In the hall, the voices ceased and Park’s door closed softly. Cooper tensed. Held his breath. Listened. But the TV in the room on the other side suddenly switched on, and he couldn’t hear voices coming from Park’s. Or footsteps leaving.

  Cooper forced himself back to his bag and pulled off his T-shirt to get a look at the scratches. They couldn’t even really be called that. More like four angry pinpricks that faded in comparison to the bruises around them. Still, they stung like hell as he rubbed Neosporin in. Everything was hurting more than before for some reason.

  He put his T-shirt back on, and then, after a moment’s consideration, his jacket, too. If caught, he could pretend to be looking for the vending machines. Park would even approve of that, as long as it was trail mix.

  Cooper checked that the coast was clear and then stepped into the hall. Not breathing and stepping as softly as possible, he crept the few short feet to Park’s door and listened for voices. He swore to god, if he heard Javier making any ghost sounds, he would—

  Park’s muted laughter hummed through the wall. Cooper pounded on the door before he could get a rational thought in. Three official knocks. And then another three. And another.

  Across the hall, a woman in pajamas opened her door a crack, keeping the chain on, and peered out. “What the hell—”

  Cooper flipped her his badge. “BSI. Back in your room, ma’am.” She slammed her door shut quickly.

  He was about to knock again when Park’s door opened. He had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt and was smiling. He looked warm and relaxed in every line of his body except for his bare feet. Those were tensed and he rocked slightly but continuously on the front pads, but that was typical. A quirk Cooper had noticed not long after Park had started spending most nights at Cooper’s apartment. Cooper would always wake after Park did and find him rocking gently on his toes by the stove, cooking them breakfast. The familiar sight released something tight and snarled in Cooper’s throat, and he sighed.

  The reprieve was short-lived when Park raised his eyebrow in surprise and said
, “Oh, it’s you.”

  “Expecting someone else?” Cooper snapped, and shoved past him into the room. He glanced around the empty space and frowned at the television where Grace Kelly was gesturing excitedly from a murderer’s apartment while Jimmy Stewart flipped out in his wheelchair across the way. He punched the off button aggressively.

  “Hey. Didn’t you say I should watch that?” Park asked. He’d closed the door and was leaning against the little desk pushed against the wall. His hands held the edge and his large shoulders turned in on themselves, making him look smaller than he was, purposefully unguarded and non-threatening.

  Cooper recognized this stance, too. He’d watched Park slip into it often enough while interviewing suspects and witnesses: humans who got edgy, their reptilian brains picking up on some predatory aura Park gave off, or other wolves who recognized him as a threat, no subconscious necessary. Park would pull in on himself like he could trick them into calming down. The weird thing was, it usually worked. And now he was using it on Cooper, looking touchable and comfortable and sweet.

  Cooper fought it, unwilling to let go of his anger yet and admit he’d stormed in here for no reason. He grumbled, “Yeah, well. Who starts a movie right in the middle?” It was a playful argument they had often, lounging around Cooper’s apartment. How could so much about Park feel so familiar while Cooper still knew so little about him?

  Park tilted his head. “Is that why you were yelling at the neighbors and trying to break down my door? To critique my viewing experience?” He shook his head, mock impressed. “Ebert’s got nothing on you.”

  Cooper scowled but drifted toward him anyway like he was being pulled, and Park shuffled his legs apart slightly until he matched Cooper’s height. Cooper ran a hand over Park’s chest, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles, and didn’t look him in the eye.

  “No.” Cooper cleared his throat. “I thought I heard a knock earlier.”

  “Hmm,” Park said, arching into the touch slightly, without moving his hands. He always seemed slightly warmer than most people. Whether that was a wolf thing or a Park thing, Cooper wasn’t sure. He’d never asked in case the answer was neither and Cooper’s own body just flushed every time they touched.