Chapter Fifteen
Officer Harris smiled, stepping out from the shadows of the mine wall, his face off-color and his expression terrifying under the harsh lights. The gun he pointed at Cooper didn’t help either. At his feet a battered-looking Robbie Gould lay unmoving, his hands twisted and cuffed behind his back.
Dead? Or unconscious? He didn’t look good, that was for sure. Limp, pale and crusted with blood and dirt. Only the suspicion that Harris wouldn’t keep a dead man tied up gave Cooper any hope that Gould was alive. Not that Harris was looking all too rational at the moment.
“You don’t look surprised to see me, Agent Dayton,” Harris said with the same pleasant tone as always. His dark eyes, however, were flat and cold like a snake with nothing more on its mind than its next strike.
“Well, there were a couple clues,” Cooper said, trying to copy Harris’s tone. His gun, still clutched in his hand, inched up. “Bornestein’s missing computer seized by cops. Gould’s call to the police.” He decided not to mention the bug spray Rudi had smelled. If he didn’t make it out of here, he didn’t want to put her in danger.
Harris laughed, sounding genuinely amused. “Well, aren’t you just Sherlock Holmes. Though I’m afraid your endgame could use some work—and you can put your gun back down. All the way on the ground. Kick it over to me, that’s right. Now put your hands up.”
Cooper didn’t argue. His Taser was still holstered beneath his jacket, but it was a hollow comfort against Harris’s gun. He just needed to keep Harris talking and hope Rudi brought Jefferson to the mine ASAP. He could sense Whittaker and Park watching from inside the cage but didn’t dare take his eyes off Harris.
“It’s been you all along, using your uniform to manipulate the searches and move unnoticed. Is this where you brought them to be killed before dumping them around the forest?”
“I did what needed to be done to protect this town.”
“From who?” Cooper didn’t outright say Because you’re the only lunatic carting around bodies, but it was implied.
Harris didn’t look offended. If anything he seemed thoughtful. “Monsters, of course. Wolves.”
Cooper inhaled sharply. He’d had a growing suspicion, but it was still startling to hear Harris say the word. To admit he was aware. “There was no werewolf kidnapping and killing people. It was you killing werewolves. And, I guess, whoever got in your way.”
“Justice. You of all people should understand, Agent Dayton.” Harris tilted his head to contemplate Cooper. The gesture was so reminiscent of Park, Park who was gentle and kind and currently caged up like a rabid animal behind him, that Cooper felt a surge of rage flood his veins. As if it wasn’t enough Harris was repugnant, he expected empathy? Felt righteous?
“Understand?” Cooper said, voice barely under control. “What is there to understand? How you tortured and murdered innocent men?”
“Innocent men,” Harris scoffed. “Was Jacob Symer an innocent man? I know he ripped you apart like a rag doll and left you to die. Just like he ripped apart women in Philly after he—” Harris’s voice caught. It had turned as graveled as the earth below their feet. The first sign of genuine emotion he had shown, perhaps, since Cooper had met him, and something clicked in Cooper’s head.
“He killed your daughter, didn’t he?”
Harris blinked rapidly. His eyes unfocused, obviously replaying some memory. Cooper’s hand inched towards his Taser. “When I found out he was living here, I transferred to Florence. I was going to do it right. Find the evidence your goddamn BSI couldn’t. I wanted to put him behind bars myself. He wasn’t here two weeks before that poor girl came to us for help. Said he was harassing her at work. Same thing that happened in Philly. And what did we do? Nothing. It’s a public place, Chief said. No overt threats were being made. He’s a fucking monster, his existence was an overt threat.”
“She didn’t know that. But you did. Why didn’t you tell the BSI?”
“And watch him slip through their fingers again? BSI never could tie him to the murders, only to your attack. It wasn’t good enough. He was going to get away with it while those idiots in D.C. were busy tripping over bureaucracy. So focused on keeping their fucking secrets that they don’t even do their jobs!” Harris’s eyes tightened with rage. “No. There was no guarantee I’d find him again.”
Cooper was surprised by how informed Harris was. But if someone he’d loved had been brutally murdered, he’d have done everything he could to get answers, too. Maybe he’d even be tempted to seek revenge. But this? All the others? Whatever Harris’s original plan had been, this went beyond vengeance. And Cooper didn’t think he could have done it alone.
“So you killed him? Judge, jury and executioner?”
“Me? No. Execution was too good for him. He ripped my daughter apart. I wanted him to feel the same way.”
“How?” Cooper asked. “What...is this?”
He risked looking away from the gun and around at the cage. The cameras, the blood in the center of floor covered in Astroturf. Oliver and Whittaker were both standing now. Whittaker was leaning forward, his glowing eyes intent on Gould.
Oliver stood behind him, a restraining arm around his shoulders. He met Cooper’s gaze and gave him a look that said...what? You’re in danger? No shit, Sherlock. Help me? Ditto. It’s going to be okay? Outlook not good. Not unless he kept Harris talking until backup got here.
A low moan came from a slightly stirring Gould on the ground, and Oliver’s arm tightened around Whittaker. Whether he was restraining him or holding him up wasn’t clear. Under the stadium lights their entwined shadows looked like embracing lovers or grappling wrestlers in a ring. A stage. An arena.
“You’re...fighting them?” Dayton whispered it, almost afraid to take the guess, of saying it out loud. It was too absurd if he was wrong.
And too horrifying if he was right.
“When the world sees them as the vicious predators they are, maybe then there will finally be justice. People have a right to know. I’m telling them.”
“By abducting werewolves like Symer and Baker and making them fight each other on camera?” More, too, Cooper realized. The missing pack member from Worcester. The werewolves who disappeared on their way through town. Harris was hunting them down and making them fight to the death like dogs in a ring. No wonder the bodies had looked like werewolf attacks. They were. With Harris pulling the strings.
Where the hell had that footage gone? How much damage had already been done? Cooper thought of Bornestein’s missing computer, the expensive gym equipment. There was no way Harris could have put all this together himself.
“So it’s all been about justice, has it? Then was it your idea to auction off the videos online to the highest bidder? Or was that Kyle’s?”
“We’re doing the world a service. The money was just to help that. Not for profit. But for our mission.”
“But Kyle didn’t see it that way, did he?” Cooper said, improvising on his feet as clues fell into place. “He was just in it for the money. Did you argue? Did he threaten to leave? Or to turn you in? He was doing the majority of the work. He stole the material to put this place together from his last job. He’s the one who brought in bears when you couldn’t get werewolves for fights. He didn’t need you. Didn’t need to share the profit. Is that why you killed him?”
Harris’s face was growing steadily darker, and he started shaking his head.
“No,” Cooper continued. “You left that to Baker, didn’t you? Maybe you promised him freedom if he killed Bornestein for you? Or maybe Baker just hated him enough to kill him anyway. Did you sell footage of that? Or was that justice, too?”
“You’re wrong, I had nothing to do with it. Kyle should have known not to turn his back on a dying animal. I got him for that.”
“By abducting another werewolf to kill Baker. How the hell were you doing it? Finding them, luring them? Is that where Gould came in?”
Behind him Whittaker yelled, “No!” His voice was hoarse, but there was still fight in him. “Robbie would never—”
“Shut your howling! Gould came to me. He knew something was going on with the Pumphouse and all the freaks who went through there. Thought it was the mob. In Florence.” Harris laughed. “Idiot.”
“But you realized he’d stumbled on the Route 66 stop-off of werewolves. So you promised him answers and tried to get him to bring Sam up here with him. Did you think he was going to take Bornestein’s place? That you would tell him about werewolves and he would be your new partner? Your inside man?”
Harris gave Cooper a funny look. “I didn’t need another partner.”
Cooper saw a shift in the shadows behind Harris. He raised his voice. “Oh yeah, you’ve obviously got everything under control. I can tell from all the bodies piling up. A bunch of whom aren’t, you know, even werewolves.”
“I told you Bornestein—”
“I’m talking about Gould, Eagler and Miller. You talk about punishing the guilty and exposing werewolves, but what about them?”
“I saved Jenny Eagler’s life.”
“Saved her life?” Cooper said. “You abducted her. She almost died.”
“That was not my fault!” Harris shouted. “It was his.” His gun shifted off Cooper to point at Park, and Cooper slipped his fingers around the handle of his Taser.
Cooper was a good shot. An excellent shot. It was the one thing he supposed he should be grateful to his dad and the hollow bonding activities he’d forced on Cooper and his brother. But a Taser wasn’t known for its accuracy and Cooper didn’t want to risk it. Not with Harris’s gun pointing at Park. C’mon, Jefferson.
“Stupid Miller. Obsessed with that girl and she couldn’t even remember his name. He came crying to me about how she was all over that animal that night.”
“So you thought she was a werewolf.”
“Turns out she was just perverse.” Harris spat on the ground. “But it’s not my place to judge her for that.”
“So you dumped her in the field. But, what, Miller saw you take her? Did he follow you to Baker’s? Did you try and convince him to join you too or did you shoot him on sight?”
“Fool was always spying on me. Following me around. Followed her around, too. When he confronted me I brought him up to Baker’s, showed him the videos. How anyone can watch that and not see them for what they are... But he didn’t understand. He thought it was cool.” Harris choked on the word like it was rotting in his mouth. “What else could I do? He needed to be put down. Poor Mikey. He would have been so upset to hear all the shit the chief said about him when I told her I caught him drinking on the job. It’s a good thing he wasn’t around to see the suspension she was going to slap him with as soon as the fancy agents left town. In the meantime she had me tell him to stay home ‘sick’ in order to avoid any embarrassment. That made things a hell of a lot easier for me, don’t you think?”
Cooper swallowed and focused on not looking over Harris’s shoulder at the movement in the shadows. His throat was so dry it caught and scraped with every swallow. Harris was insane. That was the real danger of killing. Murder was like getting a tattoo. The first one you carefully ask yourself why; each one after you ask yourself why not?
Harris aimed his gun at Cooper’s head. “Too bad good luck never lasts. Now I suppose I’ll have to put you down, too.”
Cooper’s hand clenched his Taser even as he heard someone snarl and slam into the cage. Park. He felt a flicker of fear. Not yet. He didn’t want to leave Park to face this on his own—
“Tim, stop.”
Cooper swayed with relief as Jefferson strode into the cavern. The sight of his partner’s cool confidence, the unconcerned way he assessed the situation, taking in the horror scene with an almost wearily unsurprised expression, unclenched something inside of Cooper. In fact, Jefferson was so unconcerned he didn’t even have his gun up...
“He’s seen too much, Marty,” Harris said, not even glancing over his shoulder, gun not wavering from Cooper’s head. “And we’ve wasted too much time already.” Harris’s voice had changed. It echoed as if he was speaking from the end of a long tunnel. Or was his voice the same and it was Cooper who had changed? He couldn’t hear properly over the blood pumping through his head, and his belly cramped so hard he swayed forward.
Someone said, “Jefferson, what’s going on?” Cooper realized it was his own voice.
Jefferson’s hands went up, palms out in a placating gesture, as if Cooper was the one waving guns in the air and making threats. “Dayton, listen to me. It isn’t what you think. God’s sake, Tim, lower your weapon.”
Harris hesitated, then lowered his gun slightly, keeping it aimed at Cooper’s kneecaps.
“What—what’s going on?” Cooper repeated stupidly. He sounded like a child. He felt like a child.
Jefferson walked toward him, smiling a little sadly. He stepped around Gould’s unmoving body without a glance. Nor did he look concerned to have his back turned to Harris’s gun.
Cooper looked away from Jefferson’s face, at once familiar and that of a stranger, to look into the darkness of the tunnel behind him as if someone else was going to pop out of there. As if this was all some elaborate joke. “I—where’s Rudi?”
“Don’t worry about the wolf bitch. She won’t be getting in our way.”
Cooper heard a gasp and snarl behind him. “You killed her?”
“No, no.” Jefferson smiled. “We could still use her.”
“For...what?” Cooper whispered. He had the sudden, wild thought that Jefferson meant use her for overpowering Harris. But no, Harris was just one man.
I don’t need another partner.
“You knew. You’ve always known. You were looking for Symer from the beginning, and when you tracked him here you told Harris because you knew he was crazy enough with grief to kill him.”
Jefferson had on his patient face, the one he gave Cooper when he was close to figuring out a case that Jefferson had already solved. Cooper reached into his pocket and Harris raised his gun again. Cooper froze.
“Easy, Tim. He’s just working it out,” Jefferson said.
After a moment Harris lowered his gun. Cooper pulled out the arcade bracelet and tossed it on the ground between them, not bothering to keep his fingerprints off it this time. It seemed like a moot point.
“Ben Pultz, the kid from D.C., he didn’t just disappear. You shipped him here to be slaughtered,” Cooper said now. His voice still sounded funny. Like his tongue was too thick for his mouth.
“No. I sent Pultz here because he was a predator who was going to go free. Just like Symer.”
“He had an alibi—”
“A flimsy one. If it wasn’t him who killed that woman, it would have been him one day.”
“But he wasn’t the only one, was he?” Park’s voice said from behind him. A look of such loathing flickered across Jefferson’s face he was unrecognizable for a moment before it smoothed out again to mild annoyance. “The Trust was getting reports of missing werewolves. Of course, with tensions the way they are, plenty were going off the grid anyway, so it took us a while to notice what linked some of the disappearances; they’d all crossed paths with you.”
Cooper felt sick. He remembered the cases where they’d brought a wolf in for questioning only to have him disappear. How impressed Cooper had been with Jefferson’s patience.
Justice will out, he’d say calmly while Cooper fumed.
“They crossed paths with Dayton, too. You had two common links to follow up on,” Jefferson said, voice mild. “I figured it was too much of a coincidence, this special new project getting its trial run with Dayton, of all people. A rookie. Not when agents like Corrigan would jump at the chance to bend over for wolf rights. Instead you specifically requested Dayton. He could be linked to every missing wolf and had a personal motive for revenge against Symer to boot. Bad luck you chose the wrong man to investigate.”
Cooper looked around quickly at Park, who met his gaze with something sad in his eyes. Regret, maybe. Regret for what wasn’t clear. That he’d thought Cooper was murdering werewolves? That he’d pretended he didn’t know about what happened with Symer and let Cooper open up to him like a fool? That he’d continued to lie about why he’d been put on this case as they lay in each other’s arms after making lo—fucking? Or had he still thought Cooper had something to do with this even then?
Park looked away and said, “I was wrong. But if you hurt Cooper, the Trust won’t take long to figure it out and then they’ll know it was you.”
“Why would I want to hurt Dayton?” Jefferson smiled, and there was nothing kind about it. “He’s my partner. That doesn’t have to change.”
A strange sound escaped Cooper’s lips. He felt like someone had kicked him in the throat.
Jefferson moved toward Cooper again and stopped a couple feet away from him. “Listen to me. Why did you join the BSI, Dayton? Hell, why did you join the FBI? To protect people who can’t protect themselves. That’s all we’re doing here. Mistakes were made, yes. Harris shouldn’t have involved civilians. But this is a war. Sacrifices are made for the greater good.”
He looked at Cooper with pleading eyes. “Tell me you understand, Dayton. With you, another professional who understands how dangerous they are and what’s really at stake, we can finally make a difference. There’s more support out there than you know. This isn’t a secret. Bornestein may have been a fool, but he did us one favor by showing us how many people out there already know about wolves and want to watch them get their own. People who want to see wolves like Symer get what they deserve. Tell me you understand, Dayton.”
Cooper stared into Jefferson’s earnest, pleading eyes. He didn’t see the flat insanity there he saw in Harris. Jefferson truly believed he was protecting mankind. He wanted Cooper to believe it, too.
Cooper said, “I understand.”
“What!” That was Whittaker, his voice sounding strangled. Cooper couldn’t turn around and look. The thought of what Oliver’s face would look like kept his gaze firmly forward, staring at Jefferson.
“Marty, I don’t trust this,” Harris said, shifting his grip on his gun.
“No one asked you,” Cooper said. “Look. I don’t agree with how you’ve gone about it, but you know I’ve thought the system we have now is screwed up. And now I find out, instead of fixing it and defending innocent citizens, the Trust is busy investigating us? Lying to us? That’s not what I pick up a badge and put my life on the line for.”
Jefferson’s eyes practically sparkled under the lights. “Yes. That’s it precisely. I knew you’d understand, Dayton. I’m sorry I didn’t bring you in sooner.”
Cooper acknowledged that with a stiff nod. “I understand why. But what now? How are you—how are we going to get out of this?”
“Whittaker is as good as convicted thanks to his disappearance. I already told the local chief we were following a possible lead to his whereabouts. Bringing in a hostile murder suspect...well, accidents happen.”
Cooper spoke over Whittaker’s furious swearing. If Oliver was saying anything, he couldn’t hear it. “What about Gould and—and Park?”
“They’ll need to be put down, of course. Too bad about Gould, but...he made his choice. The problem is we can’t get the fucking wolf to turn on him. No matter what.”
Cooper took a steadying breath and turned to regard the cage. Whittaker had slipped into a defensive crouch, his muscles taught and quivering, irises blown wide so that no white showed at all. It wouldn’t take much to snap the last of his control. Oliver was still standing, arms hanging loosely in front of him as if he hadn’t noticed they no longer held Whittaker. His face...
For a heart-stopping moment Cooper thought Park was injured; Harris had shot him somehow without them noticing or Whittaker had ripped out of his grasp literally. Park’s expression was pure pain. But the hurt and horror wasn’t directed toward Jefferson or Whittaker, and Cooper knew it was he who had injured Park. His words were the weapon.
“Loving someone makes you do crazy things,” Cooper said, and looked back at Jefferson. He hoped the breathlessness of his voice sounded more thoughtful than agonized.
“What are you talking about, Dayton?”
“Whittaker. He loves Gould. Very much.”
Harris laughed. “If you want to call it that. Love. It’s disgusting. Animals perving on men. It’s bestiality.”
“Yes,” Cooper agreed. And even if all their lives had depended on it, he couldn’t bring himself to look back at Oliver. “It is disgusting. But useful.”
“What do you mean?” Jefferson said.
“We can use Gould not as an opponent, but as motivation.” He drew his Taser, his last ace up his sleeve, and both Harris and Jefferson’s guns pointed at him immediately. Jefferson might talk a big game about wanting Cooper to join them, but he didn’t trust him fully. Not yet. That was good to know. “Hey. Would you calm down? I thought you wanted to hear my plan. Or do you really think I’m going to try and fight my way out with a single Taser against two guns? C’mon, Jefferson, you know me better than that. I told you I want to help.”
After a moment, Jefferson lowered his gun but didn’t tell Harris to do the same. “Then what are you doing, Dayton?”
“These Tasers were made especially for wolves, right? Who knows what it would do to a human? It might even be fatal.” He pointed the Taser at Gould’s prone body. “Turn your cameras on. Whittaker will fight if he doesn’t want his friend to suffer.”
“Bastard!” screamed Whittaker. He slammed into the fence and clung to the side, shaking it. For a moment the whole thing looked like it might topple like a house of cards. But the thick steel links held strong. “You won’t get away with this, you sick, twisted fucks!”
Jefferson walked right up to the cage, watching Whittaker’s rage impassively. A scientist at the zoo. “Turn the camera on, Harris. Dayton is right. I have a feeling you’re going to get your best fight yet.”
Harris chuckled and quickly started up the twelve-foot ladder built into the cage and toward the camera positioned at the top.
C’mon. Cooper watched him climb in peripheral and drifted casually forward, adjusting the Taser in his sweaty hand. One shot. He looked past the snarling Whittaker at Oliver, needing to see him in case this all went to shit, even if the last thing he saw was hate in his eyes.
“All right, camera’s rolling,” Harris said, starting back down the ladder.
“Please, please don’t do this,” Whittaker said, voice ragged.
“Get off the cage and fight for your friend,” Cooper said without looking away from Oliver. Confusion, anger, pain and just a glimmer of something Cooper hoped was faith. “Get off the cage or I will kill him.”
Whittaker let go of the links and stumbled backward.
“Well, would you look at that.” Jefferson laughed. “You know, I think he actually really cares about him.”
“Yeah,” Cooper said to Oliver. “I think I do.”
Cooper just registered the infinitesimal widening of Oliver’s golden eyes before he flung himself on Jefferson’s back, knocking him off balance and tackling him into the ladder.
“What the fu—” Harris was shouting, but Cooper had already brought his Taser up, held it to the pole pressed against Jefferson’s face and squeezed the trigger. And kept squeezing.
Cooper felt Jefferson jerk spasmodically beneath him and heard Harris’s shout of surprise. Jefferson, feet firmly grounded, would get the worst of it, but all Cooper needed was for Harris to let go of the ladder, and judging by the sickening crack of skull and rock floor, he had.
Cooper rolled off Jefferson, releasing the Taser, and scrambled for the gun he’d dropped. He had a moment to notice the hairs on his arms standing up and the uncomfortable tingling in his jaw before he heard Oliver’s voice ring through the cave.
“Cooper, behind you!” Cooper felt a surge of warmth to hear him speak his name with concern.
So not the time, Dayton.
Cooper spun around, gun up. But Jefferson wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed, mouth agape and a sickly sheen of sweat coated him. Harris, however, had stumbled to his knees; one hand clutched his bleeding head and the other pointed a gun at Cooper.
No. Not yet. Not now.
“You shi—”
A foot came out of nowhere and slammed into Harris’s head like a football. He toppled over and lay still.
“Rudi!”
“Sam,” she said. It came out like a sigh of relief. Cooper caught a glimpse of the fierce, raw love in her face, a mother’s love, before Rudi composed herself. “And Ollie. Good to see you looking so...well.” She smirked. Oliver blinked and casually covered his groin.
“You’re here,” Cooper said dumbly.
“Yeah. Met your partner. Didn’t go so hot. But I guess you know that now.” She nodded at the eerily still Jefferson. Cooper wondered if he was dead, and felt a strange combination of sickening regret and furious satisfaction. One for the Jefferson he thought he knew, the other for the person Jefferson had revealed himself to be.
“I’m...sorry,” Cooper said. The words felt stupid and woefully insufficient, but he had to get used to them. He had a feeling he’d be saying them a lot. He didn’t look at Oliver.
“I thought you were—I thought that asshole had—” Sam’s bravado was cracking. “How did you—” He broke off and tensed, looking toward the tunnel.
What fresh hell...
But it was Christie running into the room and coming to a halt.
“Yeah,” Rudi said, nodding at him. “Had some help with that from this guy.”
“What—” Christie was staring around the mine, Gould, Harris and Jefferson unmoving on the floor, Cooper slumped over on his knees, Oliver and Sam naked in a huge cage with a running video camera focused on them. The footage would need to be found and destroyed before local PD got their hands on it, never mind what had already made it out into the world.
“So nothing unusual is going on, huh?” Christie shouted, glaring at them all.
“It’s over now,” Cooper said. He hoped that was true.