Werewolf single dad 4, p.7
Werewolf Single Dad 4, page 7
I didn’t know the reasons behind Goose’s intentions-- maybe he really was a good guy, and he was just acting like a hardass to scare Dayzee off. Or maybe he felt like he had something to prove to me or to himself by putting on the bully act since he’d been so clearly out of his depth in every other situation tonight.
I wasn’t sure what to think about Goose’s character now, but I knew I was going to be reviewing the little shifter’s case and reassessing if I really thought he deserved my help and kindness after all.
The smell of gas from Dayzee’s little car as he drove off found its way into the warehouse, and as the adrenaline left my body, I began to feel a heavy weight across my shoulders pulling me down, and I remembered I had a dead druggy draped across my back.
I’d had about as much as I could take of all of this, and without looking at or saying another word to Goose, I readjusted the dead weight on my back and walked out to the car.
The car was dented and covered in scratches from the two bears who had used it as a see-saw earlier. But more importantly than that, it was unlocked, so I pulled the trunk open and tossed Scribbs inside with just enough force to slam him while making it look accidental. I took what little joy I could from the sound of his head thunking against the floor of the trunk, and I laughed emphatically as Goose gave an immediate recount of our recent display of heroism and cruelty.
I took in a steadying inward breath as I prepared myself to laugh along with the shifter’s jeering all the way home, and I slammed myself into the passenger seat with a feigned shit-eating grin plastered on my face.
“We really fucking scared him, didn’t we?” I boasted. “Pussy practically ran off in tears.”
Goose threw his head back as he laughed, and the detailed recounting of the undignified event played through once again.
Yeah, he was definitely showing off at this point.
As I began to recognize the journey back to the park where my van was still parked, I started to drop the overjoyed act, and I nudged the atmosphere between the two-- well, sort of three if you counted the stiff in the trunk-- of us in the car to a more calm, reflective ambience.
It was just past two in the fucking morning. I’d told Trent I would be out on a secret mission, and I told him I didn’t know when I’d be back, but I didn’t tell him I’d be out the whole night and he’d be in charge of comforting my children if they woke up from any bad dreams.
I just prayed the kids had slept soundly, especially Dionne, because as much as she loved Tent, I could imagine that me not being there would trigger some sort of panicked trauma response going off the back of her losing her mommy not so long ago.
I was so nearly there. As long as there were no more disruptions, I’d be back inside my van in the next half an hour, which meant I’d be safe and sound in my own bed in my home in the next forty-five minutes.
I just had to hope Buzz and Dayzee hadn’t formed a vendetta club against me and were waiting outside my house with silver-tipped daggers.
Ah, man. I was furious at Goose for the way he’d treated Dayzee, but thinking about the situation all over again reminded me that I had to offer the fox shifter at least a weak explanation as to why a total stranger seemingly recognized me at the crime scene we’d returned to.
“Hey, you, uh… you ever seen the movie Split?” I tentatively asked. “About the guy who’s got multiple personalities?”
“I know you’re not going where I think you’re going with this,” Goose sighed and shook his head.
“Where do you think I’m going with this?” I asked.
“You’re going to tell me you’re in the process of being diagnosed with schizophrenia, or that the L is making you crazy, and that you go by a whole host of different names to a whole host of different people, but you only recognize those people when you’re seeing the world through each individual personality’s eyes, and currently, you’re not Mike, so you don’t recognize that person who recognized you.”
“Pffft, what a crock of shit,” I said. “That’s not where I was going with that at all.”
Fuck. That’s exactly where I was going with that.
“Look, man, I don’t need to hear it.” I couldn’t work out if I was detecting compassion or exasperation in Goose’s voice. It was possibly both. “You gave yourself a fake name when you inquired about a drug dealer to those guys at the parking lot and you had to roll with it. Then you ran into a guy you knew, and you panicked and acted all out of character to scare him off. Am I in the right ballpark here?”
“Uhh--”
“It’s fine, I get it.” There was a faint smile on Goose’s whiskered lips as he cut off my answer. “How were you to know you were going to be pulled into all this? Besides, everyone gives a fake name in this sort of situation. You think my real name is Didzy?”
“I actually didn’t know your name at all,” I confessed with a light shrug. “No one’s said it up until this point. You call yourself Didzy?”
“Nah, I called myself Gordo when I first walked into it all, and even that’s not anywhere close to my real name,” Goose snorted. “But one of the older guys who used to roll with my crew took one look at me after I’d shifted on a job once and called me Didymus-- apparently after some fox in some old fucking movie-- and unfortunately for me, it stuck.”
I knew exactly what “Old fucking movie” had inspired Goose’s comical streetname, and I had to admit I found it a little bit funny. He was a fox, so he’d been aptly named after Sir Didymus from Labyrinth. I felt like me and the old crew member who was seemingly no longer tied in with Bam’s crew would have gotten along very well with one another.
Though, Goose-slash-Didzy-slash-Gordo looked to be in his very early twenties, so hearing him call Labyrinth-- one of the movies that shaped my childhood-- “old” hurt me in a way I didn’t quite know how to articulate at ten past two in the morning.
“Far as I’m concerned,” Goose continued. “So long as that little guy got the message and keeps quiet, we didn’t run into anybody there tonight.”
Don’t worry Didzy, I’ll make sure Dayzee doesn’t say boo to a goose.
“Though, you’ve probably still got some explaining to do to him,” Goose continued with a slight scoff. “Just make sure you explain things in the right way, yeah? Wouldn’t want you incriminating yourself… or me. Just say you were acting under your Alpha’s orders or something and that guy on your back had it coming. Werewolves go around killing other werewolves all the time, don’t they?”
I saw a lightbulb flicker in Goose’s mind, and I suddenly felt worried.
“Say… what are the odds you’d have a friend who’s a medic and was called to the scene tonight…” The shifter’s tone suddenly sounded contemplative. “Who would have thought to have called a medic?”
“Maybe T?” I blurted. “She would have tried to save herself, wouldn’t she?”
“She didn’t seem capable of doing much talking when we left her,” Goose said. “As a matter of fact, her body was still there… wouldn’t a team of medics have taken her body away?”
“Nah, that’s a job for the forensics team, surely,” I said. “I heard the medic muttering something about that when he came in.”
“Oh, yeah, so did I.” Goose seemed placated with that answer, but he was definitely still chewing over the whole version of events.
“It must have been the kids who woke up and took the Lyco stash,” I said quickly. “Like we agreed earlier, one must have woken up, seen that T and her dogs were dead, freaked out, and woken the rest up. Maybe some couldn’t be woken up, so they made a break for it with the Lyco, but somewhere in among all that, someone called the medics.”
“Hm, maybe…” Goose still wasn’t convinced. “But why take their bodies but not the others?”
“That surely means they weren’t too far gone to be saved and taken to the hospital,” I said. “Which is a good thing, right? We don’t want the little people getting hurt in all this, do we? And that includes little people who work as medics and are just trying to do their jobs...”
“Alright, point taken,” Goose laughed. “I guess I got a little carried away with tryna scare that guy off.”
“Maybe a little,” I chuckled.
Okay, Goose had wormed his way back into my good books, but he was still skating on thin ice.
“How do you know him, then?” the shifter driving the car asked after a contemplative moment. “Or, more like, how does he know you?”
“Ah, I’ve been having a few medical tests done lately for some stuff, and he’s the medic who’s been on duty for the last few,” I lied.
Dayzee wasn’t actually a medic, he was a poison control specialist, but I hoped Goose wouldn’t have any reason to detect that minute detail.
“Ah, okay,” the shifter said. “Well, just make sure he keeps his mouth shut. If he’s been running tests on you, that means he’s a werewolf, doesn’t it? And like I said, it’s not illegal for a werewolf to kill another werewolf, so you make sure he remembers that.”
“I will,” I said.
“Hey…” Another worrying glimmer of realization flashed across the shifter’s face. “You said he ‘could have’ been a human… but if he’s been running tests on you, you would have gone to a shifter-only medical center, so you’d have known he wasn’t human, even if you couldn’t smell him...”
My brain felt like a failing engine turning over as I forced it to feed me the next lie, but I just didn’t have the energy for it anymore. So, I confessed to the shifter that I knew Dayzee was a werewolf, but I felt sorry for the little guy and didn’t want him to lose his life, especially after all the help he’d offered me in the clinic. I added that I only said that because I thought it would be the quickest way to talk Goose down, and it worked, didn’t it?
Of course, Goose understood my angle, and although his brow was furrowed and his lip was twisted with concern, he let it go.
We drove the rest of the way in silence, and I was a little bit worried that Goose was intending on ratting me out to his boss. But I imagined he knew he already had a lot of explaining to do RE the lack of uncut Lyco, so adding another grievance to the pile wasn’t going to be in anyone’s best interests.
“Welp,” I said as the shifter pulled into the park’s parking lot. “That’s my ride.”
“Whewwww.” Goose whistled then laughed mockingly. “Oh, man. She’s a beauty, ain’t she?”
“She’s got a few stories to tell, don’t you worry,” I chuckled, and then I gave Goose a sincere look. “Look after yourself, okay?”
“You, too, man.” Goose smiled faintly, and I could see the exasperation behind his eyes.
“I will,” I said. “Let the fat cats battle it out among themselves. Us cannon fodder have got to look after each other. And we gotta look after the little people… Especially the little people who are actually just little medics trying to do their job.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Goose laughed weakly. “Go on, get outta here. Wrench’ll be calling me up any minute asking where I am and what I’m coming back with.”
“Eesh, I wouldn’t wanna be there when you drop that bombshell.” My mind jumped toward the other bombshell of the body in the trunk, but my mouth decided not to go there. “I’ll just leave the valuables in the glove box, shall I?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
I pulled the little bag full of government money out from the glove box, and I exchanged it for my pocketfuls of jewelry. I asked Goose if he wanted his pants back, but he laughed and told me to keep them, so I bundled up my old ripped-up pair and held on extra tight to the pocket so my government phone wouldn’t fall out as I stepped outside the vehicle.
Finally, I was free.
Before I shut the door, Goose and I engaged in an awkward goodbye as we joked about the fact our paths would more than likely cross again.
“If you want your sweet reward, you’ll pick up the phone when he calls,” the shifter said.
“Honestly, I don’t know if the juice is worth the squeeze at this point,” I chuckled exasperatedly.
“Trust me, it is.” Goose raised his eyebrow knowingly, but his attention was suddenly diverted when his ringtone blared out from his phone that was balanced on the center console of the car. “Damn. You’d better get going. Wouldn’t want to drag you into anything else at this time of night.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” I tucked my torn-up pants under my arm, slammed the passenger door shut, and hot-footed it back toward the sweet embrace of my beautiful busted-ass van.
I loved her, but a new model was extremely necessary, and I was hoping to put whatever money I got from this government entanglement toward treating myself to a new set of wheels.
I sidled myself into the driver’s seat, and even with Goose’s doors now all closed, I could still hear Bam screeching down the other end of the phone.
Man, with friends like that, who needs enemies?
But Bam’s fits of passion weren’t my business anymore. I’d officially run out of fucks to give to Goose at this point, and I didn’t even offer a sympathetic look in his direction as his vitriolic leader chewed his ear off.
Though, the fox shifter had landed himself back in my good books after admitting he had been rude to Dayzee and understanding the whole alias thing. Now, I just had to hope he wouldn’t buckle under pressure and spill the beans to his boss.
Ah, well. That sounds like a problem for future Vincent. I’m fucking whacked.
I slammed my driver’s side door shut, and the ear-splitting tones of the Bam Margera look-alike were silenced.
Ah, peace at least.
Well. Peace aside from the exasperated voice that eventually piped up in my own ear.
“Sooo…” The bewilderment in Borello’s voice was clear. “You wanna tell me what all that was about?”
Chapter 6
“Oh, man, where do I begin?” I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands before letting out a weak chuckle.
“How about from the point where you took the surveillance hoodie off and jumped out of the car to-- presumably-- fight what looked to be two werebears?”
“You said we needed a distraction, so I got us one,” I said plainly.
“What?” Borello gasped. “You organized for two werebears to jump out in front of your car? How?”
“I’ve got a broad circle of friends, what can I say?” I kept my head down to hide my smirk in case Goose was looking, and I kicked the van into life. “It pays to make connections that go beyond your own kind, you know. And for the record, I only thought one would show.”
“Holy...” Borello chuckled. “I’d have never guessed that whole ordeal was all orchestrated by you. We were all losing our minds back here. I really thought you were in trouble-- We were ready to deploy a tranquilizer unit! But now knowing you arranged for that run-in to happen… Wow. I gotta say, Mike, that’s very impressive.”
“Ha, thanks.” I played it cool, but I was bursting with pride, so I pulled the subject away from my own glory to stop me giggling like a schoolgirl and sounding totally uncool in front of Borello. “The, uh, medic walking in and recognizing me wasn’t part of the plan, though.”
“Oh, yeah, that was a close one,” the agent tutted. “All units were told not to return to the scene until given the all-clear. We’ll have to put some sort of measure in place to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. I wonder if we can get an app made that overrides a phone’s silent mode when we have emergency announcements to make…”
“I don’t think there’s any need for something like that,” I said as I swung my car around an empty roundabout. “People have got to have their privacy, too. It was like one in the morning, he was probably asleep, then panicked when he realized he’d left some kit behind and jumped back in the car without checking his phone.”
“Oh, yes…” Borello hummed. “Leaving important medical equipment behind doesn’t go down very well, either.”
“Hey, don’t call him out about that,” I said gently. “Despite what I told old Didzy back there, I’m actually pretty good friends with the medic guy, and I think he’s had enough trauma for one night, don’t you?”
“Ah, then we’ll say no more on the matter,” the agent replied. “Our friend Didzy seemed understanding enough, didn’t he? I was quite surprised when he started agreeing with you about using an alias-- and how well he took your admittance to actually knowing the medic after all.”
“Yeah.” I paused for thought. “I think he’s a good kid, you know. I think he might have just bitten off a bit more than he could realistically chew when he got mixed up in all this, and now he’s kind of in too deep.”
“Well, he could always offer his services to the government,” Borello said. “If he tells us everything we need to know, he might receive a pardon for his own involvement… provided he hasn’t done anything unpardonable, himself, that is. The proof will be in the proverbial pudding, though, won’t it? Let’s just hope our friend doesn’t let the cat called Mike out of the bag when his boss starts quizzing him.”
“What will realistically happen if he does let the cat out?” I asked.
“Well, if-- as we suspect-- they are indeed all active Lyco users, you’ll be somewhat safe since they won’t be able to sniff you out and track you down to bring any of their grievances to your doorstep,” Borello said. “But some of these street thugs get fixated with their vendettas, and they search high and low until they find their man. We’ve seen it before.”
“That sounds like it would actually be quite good for them,” I laughed. “Gets them out of the crack house, doesn’t it? Nice way to get some fresh air and a little exercise.”
“Ha! Every cloud.” Borello cleared his throat, and I guessed he’d probably become concerned that it looked like he was having too much fun in front of his team.
