Linda Thomas-Sundstrom – Wolf Bait (страница 2)

Jenna looked him over, probably searching for evidence of a double entendre, and sighed. "Do you want to see her?"

"Yes. Absolutely." How could he not, after the vague and intriguing hints she'd dropped so far? Jenna had no doubt seen a lot since she'd taken over his position, and yet she'd seen nothing like this before?

Again, he took stock. Jenna's mouth, a mouth he had kissed, tasted, reveled in, taken full possession of in all sorts of wicked ways, was drawn up in a tight line. Her sky-blue eyes were huge, with traces of red weaving through the whites. She'd had little sleep lately herself. Because of this?

Reaching up to shoulder height, she used her long fingers to press open a panel, fingers that just weeks ago had been wrapped around his lustful body parts, fingers that had made him writhe in delight. Matt felt a buzz of recall as she hit a small black button in the door of the cell they were facing.

Yes, cell was the better term. These were no cushy prison holes, no normal spaces.

"New thing?" he said, ignoring the sudden, inexplicable roil in his stomach as he alluded to the glass revealed in the opening.

"One-way glass," Jenna explained. "We can see in, but whoever is inside can't see out. If you want her to see us, we press another button. If you want her to hear us, there's an intercom. I suggest, though, that we keep the noise to a minimum. I'd like you to observe her first, if that's okay?"

"Fine."

He stepped in front of the door, in front of the non-breakable, non-penetrable glass, and swallowed hard. Looking in, he blinked a few times in rapid succession, then actually felt his face drain of color. His hands went up and against the door with an audible thud.

Jenna James watched Matt's face closely, not bothering to peer over his shoulder at the thing in the room beyond. She had observed this room's activity until her heart just couldn't stand any more pain.

It had been a full twenty-four hours since the patient had been brought in by anonymous drop- off. Six hours since she'd called Matt, knowing he would come, and that what resided in this room was, in a way, bait. The dangling carrot necessary to see Matt again, face-to-face.

Now, she felt a pang of guilt. His face had lost expression. He seemed to have stopped breathing. Was it because he hated this place, or because of what he was seeing inside that room?

Since Matt had left Fairview, she had never spoken to him of her work. Besides, when they'd been together, talking had always been kept to a minimum. More physical activities had precluded chitchat. Activities that usually included a king- size mattress. It was a fact that they were never able to keep their hands off each other, that their attraction was almost surreal in intensity. It was also a fact, she had realized lately, that anything other than small talk could have made for a charged situation, producing fear on both sides.

For me, the fear that Matt might close up tight and that I'd lose him in the end.

For him, fear of what? Commitment? Confiding? Being too close to the job he’d despised?

Losing him altogether was not an option she cared to contemplate. She had been in love with Matt Wilson since their first meeting, on her first day on the job at Fairview. She had instantly been drawn to everything about him: his rugged looks, dark, shaggy hair and perpetual five-o'clock shadow; his rangy, six-foot-two body; the way his green eyes, so light in his tanned face, seemed to see everything, take in everything.

The way those eyes of his had searched her up and down, as though they found nothing about her lacking.

For a long time, Matt had been absorbed in his work at Fairview. These days he was absorbed elsewhere, mainly with the Miami Police Department, where his medical accolades had been tossed in a drawer. She had been supportive of their time apart for a while, even made excuses for him. But lately her gut instinct told her that he was hiding something important from her, hence the distance, the quiet.

Matt had gone from an immeasurably hot pursuer to unreachable, overnight. From lover to…nothing, without so much as a glimpse of the old Matt's soul, something so necessary in a true connection.

Was it clichéd to believe that talking would serve the major purpose of setting things to rights?

Had it been wrong of her to invite him here? She could hardly breathe around him.

Had it been wrong to keep what was in this cell?

Matt’s hands kept him supported now. His knuckles, on either side of the glass, had gone white. She should say something, but couldn't. Touch him? Every nerve in her body warned her not to.

Hating the awkwardness, Jenna waited a few moments more before looking into the cell.

Damn! Matt stared at the thing pinging around in there, and felt his own body react with a ripple of pure terror.

The thing inside of this padded cell was a woman, all right.

Barely.

It was hard to get a good look. She was thrashing uncontrollably. Hitting the walls. Ramming herself right and left, on her feet and then on her knees when she'd fall. She rolled, lunged, tore at herself with her hands—hands that weren't really hands anymore, that were more like an animal's paws that had been bound tight with surgical tape.

Her body was grotesquely out of proportion, as though she'd been stretched by some evil demon. She was naked, sort of. In actuality, her body appeared to be producing its own furry covering, though the process hadn't been completed…yet. The thing in the cell was raw, and nearly completely mad. She was half bare skin, half fur. Half human, half animal.

Matt felt a sound rise up from his belly, from somewhere so deep inside that it rolled upward as though moving through a mile-long tunnel. He stopped the sound in his throat, held it back with every ounce of willpower he possessed, knowing he had started to shake but unable to do anything about that if he was to keep the growl trapped inside. If he was to keep the secrets to himself.

Must hang on!

Jenna was beside him, and nothing if not observant. She'd note the shudders running through him, note how his insides were rippling and his pulse pounding. Jenna was outstanding at her job and in perceiving anomalies.

Which was why he hadn't called her after their last night together. Why he couldn't have called her. Not after what had happened to him. Not until he had gained some control, gotten some answers.

How could he have explained, exactly, lucidly, what had transpired three months ago, on the last night they'd made love in her apartment? What had happened to him on the way to his car?

How could he tell Jenna that this thing in the cell—the mad thing she had labeled a monster by putting it here—was merely a woman caught in transition? A woman who hadn't yet adapted to the new shape she was to become?

Possibly just an average female.

Until she had been bitten.

By a werewolf.

Whatever drugs Jenna's staff had given this poor creature had jumpstarted this transition, usually tripped in the dark of night, by a full moon, into high gear without the presence of those other governing factors. The confines of this eight-by-eight cell would be claustrophobic.

In essence, the woman in there was being tortured, kept from attaining the new shape her mutated cells demanded she attain. Frozen in a horrifying sort of limbo, compulsively seeking her new self, her human side weaker than what was trying to take her over. She couldn't stop the process, become, ask for help, or go back.

I'm so sorry, Matt thought, fighting the urge to break down the damned door. Jesus, I'm sorry.

Next to him, Jenna's body was tight as she observed this so-called anomaly. She remained mute when the thing in the cell suddenly ceased its terrible gyrations. She kept quiet when the thing turned slowly, as if it could sense them staring.

Jenna said nothing when, even with the high-tech glass separating them, the thing in that cell looked at the door as if it knew he and Jenna were there.

But Jenna jumped back when the thing lunged, as it pressed its constantly morphing face, a face like some hideous version of a cartoon nightmare, to the spot where Matt was resting his forehead.

Jenna uttered something undecipherable as the thing in the cell stared back at them through terrified green eyes the same color as his own. As what had once been a young woman opened her mouth, exposing a set of newly formed, razor- sharp teeth, as if pleading with him to intervene.

Like calling to like.

Beast recognizing beast.

Through a two-foot-thick padded door.

Shit. Hell. No! Matt's blood began to sprint hotly through his veins. His fingers started to tingle—always the first sign in a mounting crescendo of dubious signals.

Darkness poured in suddenly from the periphery. From out of that darkness, and up from his gut, something unwelcome came tumbling. A unique presence. A horrifying one.

Needing to protest this dark entity's progress, assuming this was being caused by his empathy for the poor, freaked-out woman in the cell, Matt let loose of the howl he'd been holding—a howl that tore from his throat as a reciprocal cry.