In those few moments before my brain had completely melted down, I’d deleted every e-mail Red-burn had ever sent me and then sent her a quick message telling her it was possible the account had been compromised and asking if she could call my phone. I’d changed the e-mail password and increased the security settings, arranging it so that any changes would be tracked through my cell phone.
Glenn thought he could find me. He had no idea how good I’d gotten at hiding.
With a decisiveness that seemed cold and alien, I swung my feet out from under the covers. I scrawled a short note to Caleb on one of his Post-its and stuck it to the lampshade. I concentrated on keeping my feet silent on the nubby motel carpet. My bags were already packed for the early-morning departure. All I had to do was slip on some jeans and shoes and somehow manage to open the door without waking up Caleb, who had superhearing. No problem.
Dressing quietly, I watched him as he slept, the weak light filtering through the curtains giving his skin a faint yellow glow. Just like the light that would spread over his skin before the change. I was more than a little disappointed that I would never get to see Caleb shift. I would have liked to see what he looked like in wolf form. Of course, his human form wasn’t too bad, either.
My fingers fumbled with the button of my jeans, and I shook them out. What was I doing? Why couldn’t I just wake him and tell him that I was freaking out and needed his help? Why couldn’t I give up my need to run as soon as things got tough? Why couldn’t I just tell him I knew about wolfiness?
>“My name’s not Anna.”
He gave me a squeeze. “I figured that out a while ago.”
There was another long, silent pause. He wasn’t going to ask me. He was waiting for me to tell him myself, to make the choice to share that part of me.
“It’s Tina,” I told him. “Christina, if you want to be technical about it. But I was named after my mother, and we couldn’t have two Christinas in the house. And I refused to be called Chrissie. Since then, I’ve been called Anna, Melissa, Brandy, Lisa, and Tess. I was Anna the longest.”
“What do you want me to call you?”
“When you’re not calling me Rabbit, you mean?”
He laughed into my skin, a canine whickering noise that was more wolf than man.
“Tina.” I sighed. “I would really like to be Tina again.”
He kissed the nape of my neck, sending a pleasant warm tingle down my spine. “I like Tina, too.”
I woke up to the sound of Caleb whispering, “You’re kidding me!”
I rolled over to see his bare back as he hunched over the edge of the bed. He was talking into his cell phone, muttering furiously under his breath.
“You’re kidding me,” he said again.
I sat up in bed, swiping at my face. I padded toward the bathroom to brush my teeth as Caleb continued muttering into his phone. He wrapped up the phone call by sighing and saying, “She’s going to be hell to live with after this.”
I arched an eyebrow and spat out the excess toothpaste. He ended the connection and flopped back on the bed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“What?”
Caleb sat up, rolling his eyes. “That was Merl’s office. Mort showed up at the airfield last night, just like you said he would. He checked in to the hospital this morning for presurgery testing. Merl is expressing his gratitude with a rather large check.”
My lips wanted to twitch into a grin, but I tamped it down. “Gloating would be an ugly thing to do even when I was insanely right, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, it would,” he said, giving me an exasperated look.
He hauled himself out of bed and helped me gather up our bags. We completed our various packing-up chores side-by-side, organizing the files, securing the equipment, checking under the bed and in the bathroom for forgotten items. Caleb was sulking, but it was a quiet kicking my own ass sort of self-flagellation to which I was not accustomed. He wasn’t throwing things around the room, breaking my stuff, or sending me wounded-baby-deer looks because I was so very cruel. He just silently worked through the moving-out checklist with his mouth clenched shut. As we walked out of the motel room, I bumped him with my hip. His lips quirked, but he actively suppressed the smile. Walking toward the truck, I bumped him again. He laughed, throwing his arm around my shoulders.
“We did the right thing, Caleb. We let Mort make the choice for himself. I’m sorry I went about it in a dishonest way, trying to sneak him out of the gas station. But it all worked out in the end.”
“But what if it hadn’t?” he asked.
I smiled in what I hoped was a winsome, nonobnoxious manner. “Well, then, I would owe you a rather large apology.”
“I know you don’t agree with what I do.”
“Not in all cases,” I protested. “But I think that you should check into backgrounds and circumstances a little more before you agree to look for someone. There are people out there who deserve to be left alone.”
He nodded. “I’ll think about it.”