Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(124)

Women were always smiling and pretty on the outside.

He got into his truck and backed out of his parking spot. He did not look at Duffy’s red Mustang as he drove past it on his way out of the parking lot and out onto the Bypass Highway he needed to take home.

•   •   •

Mel’s rental house was very small. The wind whistled through it, and the floors creaked. Chris had told her he didn’t want his wife living in a building he thought was going to fall over in the next good storm. But Chris was overseas, and she wouldn’t get to see him again for six months.

He didn’t have to live by himself in a house with too many ghosts and not enough people. When Chris’s unit left for overseas, Mel had moved to Richland to take care of her mom, who had just been diagnosed with cancer. She was supposed to have had more time, but Mel had still been unpacking when her mom died.

So Mel sold the house she’d grown up in to pay her mother’s medical bills and rented a one-bedroom cottage built when Richland was born during World War II. It wasn’t fancy, but it was charming once she’d gotten through with it. If she hadn’t sent Chris a photo when he’d requested it, he wouldn’t have worried about it. But he’d asked and she’d sent and so she had to deal with the consequences.

Chris wanted her to move back to the base in North Carolina, but she’d grown up in Richland, and she liked her job—except for the last month or so, and even that was better now. When Chris came back, they would talk. Until then, she’d wait for him here.

She was watching TV when someone knocked at the door. Though it was dark, it wasn’t late; the news was just coming on. She didn’t even think about checking to see who was at the door. Richland was a safe place to live.

She got a look at who waited on the porch and put her leg and shoulder against the door to hold it where it was.

“Mr. Duffy,” she said, trying not to show the fear she felt. What was he doing here?

He smiled at her and held out a bottle of wine. “Mel, honey. We need to talk.” He brushed past her and into her house without her quite knowing how he did.

He glanced at her living room and walked by it into the small kitchen, set the bottle on the table, and started opening cupboards.

“Charming house,” he said. “I just knew it would be. You have a way of making a place warm wherever you go.”

“Mr. Duffy,” she said, instinct keeping her by the front door because it felt like an avenue of escape. “This is inappropriate.”

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Now where do you . . . there they are.” And he got down the long-stemmed crystal glasses that had been a wedding present from Chris’s sister. He popped the cork with a corkscrew he’d brought and filled the glasses with wine.

“Come in and sit down, Mel,” he said, with a sharp smile. “And let me explain a few things to you.”

She twisted the front doorknob.

“You do need your job,” he said. “I’m afraid I have some proof that you are selling proprietary secrets.”

For a moment, indignation overcame fear. “I did not.”

He sat down at her table and swirled the rust-colored wine, then sipped it. “But I have proof. I’ll show it to you. We are going to talk about how you will end up jobless and in jail. But that’s just you. You need to consider how it will look for your Marine if his wife is convicted of selling the location of nuclear material to interested parties.”

She felt the blood leave her face as she understood just how far he was willing to go. She should have left when she had a chance.

“Or”—he smiled and her stomach tightened with revulsion—“you can become my secretary with a healthy raise. Marie is transferring to another department and her post is open. Of course, you’ll have to persuade me.”

“Persuade you?” Her voice sounded wobbly, and she wished, harder than she ever had in her life, that Chris were here. Chris would wipe the floor with him.

Duffy tilted his glass toward the untouched one on the table. “Sit down, Mel. Don’t look so terrified. I’m hardly a ra**st. Who knows? You might like it.”

•   •   •

Ben drove home from work trying not to think about anything, but the scent of his mother’s perfume lingering in his imagination left him restless and angry. He made it into his house, then stared unseeing at the food in his refrigerator. He knew he needed to eat, but he was too distracted to focus on food.

He hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Not since he’d killed Terry.

He stopped in the middle of his kitchen and did some deep breathing to keep the wolf back. Now that he was home, there was no one who would know or care what he was. But it was a bad idea to let the wolf out while he was this angry, and thoughts of Terry made him . . . very angry or something very near it.

He paced from the fridge to the door and back, kicking the dustbin in frustration when it got in the way. He hadn’t thought of Terry in months.

Terry had been the pack’s second in London, in Ben’s first pack. He worked for the Alpha, who was a loan shark. The whole pack worked for him, really, but Terry got paid for it. Terry’s job was to go collect from people who weren’t making their payments. Shortly after Ben was Changed, he was sent to tag along to make sure matters were discreet. The Alpha felt that Terry might forget himself and hang around until the police came by.