Page 18 of The Beast's Baby
They’d sat at the small dining table in her living room, finishing their shared lunch. Salmon and boiled potatoes. A simple salad. No wine, though he’d craved it. Their eyes had met, as they had plenty of times during the hour that he had spent with her, but this time the look lingered.
“Why me? I mean, not only I am not a wolf like Christopher is, but I am also quite a bit older than he is. D-do you even like me?” he’d wondered.
She had smiled in that wolfish way then, wiping her mouth with her napkin. “Not really,” she’d admitted.
“Why not?” he’d inquired, truly curious.
“Because you seem to think you know everything,” she said. “But really I think you know nothing at all.”
She hadn’t elaborated, but her words had left him wondering if she might be right. Again, he remembered what she had asked him when she confronted him about the truth of the trial. Did he really think the people who hadn’t told her the whole truth had been completely forthcoming with him?
And what about Olive?
He was about to make a mental note to try her cellphone again when he remembered he needed to charge his own. The charging cord had slid off his desk between the back of it and the wall. He sighed, getting up off his chair to pull the desk out from the wall; the cord wouldn’t simply slip out when being tugged. There was the whisper of paper sliding against plaster and then the edge of a note poked out from behind the desk.
He stared at it.
He reached down, picking it up. On it was Olive’s distinctive scrawl and his eyes rounded as he read what she had written down. It wouldn’t look like a straightforward warning to anyone but him since they’d developed their own little language for passing the time during boring Zoom meetings, but he could read the warning loud and clear.
MRM compromised. Not sure how high up. Looking into it. Be safe.
Olive was missing. He’d been right. And… he’d been lied to.
Fuck.
He put the note in the pocket of his jeans, trying to calm his racing heart. He stared at the screen of his computer for ten minutes without being able to do anything about the fear in his chest. Olive. What if she was hurt? He hadn’t known her that long, but she’d become a friend.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Fuck,” he said out loud.
And then his mind went to Isobel.
And as though the thought had been there for much longer, as though it wasn’t forming with this revelation but rather this revelation brought it into the light so that he could look at it properly for the first time, he knew what he had to do.
***
He didn’t bring flowers, but he did bring a bottle of wine. All he could think about was the optics. It had to look good. They wouldn’t have much time at all.
He’d worn dark blue for the occasion, hoping she liked the color. Hoping even more that she would trust him. She hated him. She had every right. He had to admit he wasn’t entirely sure he was all that fond of her either. Perhaps a little fascinated.
He opened the door to her room, having double-checked with the guard on main duty—Chuck—that the cameras were in fact switched off.
This was their shot. Their only shot.
He was going to sneak her out of there.
If she’d come with him. If she’d believe him when he told her that she’d been right all along, that he had no fucking clue what he’d gotten himself into.
He drew a breath and then smiled when she appeared in the doorway of the bedroom.
She was wearing soft, grey pajamas. The top was tight fitting, showing off how she wasn’t wearing a bra and suddenly he had trouble concentrating.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” he replied, reminding himself he wasn’t actually there to sleep with her.
The material of the pajama bottoms hugged her hips and when she walked into the living room her thighs were outlined in ways that made his mouth run dry.
