“Just be glad that he didn’t.” She walked back to her people and the cleanup.
I didn’t even want to think about it. “I need my clothes.”
“They kind of got trashed. You ready to get out of here?”
I propped myself against Ben and braced against the wall to get myself to my feet. My muscles popped, and my bones creaked. Ben pulled me to my feet without effort. I let him hold me up. I’d turned Wolf twice in the last twenty-four hours. I’d never done that before, never turned a second time so soon after the first. Almost, it seemed the pieces hadn’t come back together quite right. Fur still peeked between the cracks. Wolf still looked out of my eyes. My brain felt fuzzy, the world looked strange; the shadows seemed to loom.
He must have noticed me craning my neck and squinting, trying to focus.
“You’re going to have to sleep a week when this is all over,” he said.
God, that sounded so nice . . . “I could just let Carl kill me. Sleep all I want then.”
He gave me an odd sideways look.
“Kitty! Are you all right?” Ozzie intercepted us. He was actually wringing his hands.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. Though I must have looked awful, all tangled hair and bloodstains. “So, are you worried about me, or are you really worried about your cash cow?”
He gave me a look that was half hurt, half admonishing. “Geez, Kitty, give it a rest. When I heard the gun and they told me who got shot I about had a heart attack. Don’t ever do that again.”
I smiled tiredly. “I’ll try not to. Ozzie, have you met Ben?”
Ben said, “He introduced himself while you were asleep.”
Ozzie pointed at him. “Don’t let her get shot again.”
“I think we’d better get home and cleaned up,” he replied.
Ozzie found me a T-shirt and sweats from the stash of KNOB giveaways. I could add them to the million KNOB T-shirts I already had. I was just grateful not to have to drive home naked.
During the ride home, Ben kept asking if I was okay. Huddling in the passenger seat, I kept muttering that I was fine.
Finally, he gave a frustrated sigh. “You’re damned lucky, you know that?”
Yeah, I was. I had to remember that. I smiled at him. “Thanks. For taking care of me.”
“We’re pack.”
I wished he would stop saying that. I wasn’t sure why it was starting to piss me off. He wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true. Maybe because it sounded like a cop-out. Like if we weren’t pack, he’d have
been out of here a long time ago.
chapter 13
The car’s tires squealed as Ben swung into the parking lot of his building. With his help, I stumbled out of the passenger seat and limped toward the front door. I hurt all over. The bullet wound itself had faded to an ache, but the shock of it, the shape-shifting, and waking up on the hard floor had wracked my whole body. I wanted a very hot shower.
Ben stopped before we reached the front of the building, and I lurched to a halt beside him. I started to ask why—I wasn’t really paying attention, not like I should have been. I was lulled into a false sense of security, tucked snugly under Ben’s arm. But then I saw Cheryl marching toward us on the sidewalk. She wore her usual T-shirt and jeans, and a furious expression. I hadn’t seen that expression since she caught me borrowing her Metallic Mayhem nail polish when I was eleven.
Out of all the trouble I was currently facing, I hadn’t expected this.
“What’s she doing here?” I muttered.
“She’s your sister,” Ben said. “You tell me.”
I’d done something. Something so horribly wrong and sinister she had to come in person to chew me out. And I thought I knew what it was. “Mom went in for surgery yesterday,” I said. “I wasn’t there.” No, I was at the shooting range, learning how to be a killer.
A sudden cold washed through me, and I tried to dismiss it. If something had gone wrong with the surgery, someone would have called me right away, not waited a day.