Like Gus St. Claire had a breeding program for the damn things.

  He glanced back at the four-top. Yes, the chairs were out of place, but he was the one who had messed them up—so this was normal living chaos he was looking at, not ransacked shit. And as he one-foot-after-the-other’d out toward the open living space, that opinion didn’t change. The colorful collection of psychedelic concert posters from the late sixties and seventies were on the walls in their frames at right angles, none of the glass broken, nothing off-kilter. The TV was set properly on a low-slung table, the couch cushions were undisturbed—

  As he tripped on something, he managed to catch his balance by flapping his arms, and when he saw what had caught his boot, he cut the bird stuff and frowned.

  The stack of paperwork was fanned out around its staple, as if it had been dropped or thrown. And he might have ignored whatever it was except for the fact that he recognized one of the signatures on the last page with all the notary stuff.

  His own.

  As Lydia strode through the upper level, he gingerly lowered himself down to his knees. His hand was shaking as he reached out, and he made a mess of the pickup, the papers flip-flopping, fluttering, justifying their need for that staple.

  As he started to go through the document, he couldn’t believe what he was reading. So he went back to the beginning and gave it another shot. Because surely this wasn’t what it looked like—

  WHEREBY the party of the first part, Catherine Phillips Phalen, does intend to transfer the ownership of the compound “Vita-12b,” its predecessors in development, and all relevant data to Dr. Augustus St. Claire…

  “What the fuck…” His eyes continued to sift through the words, the operant meaning refusing to process. “What did you do, Phalen.”

  Was this what Gus had been taken for?

  As if the condo itself could answer that question, he looked around—and saw what had caught Lydia’s attention. In the midst of a messy pile of unopened mail on the floor by the front door, there was a pattern of dig-deeps in the wall-to-wall carpet and some bloodstains that were turning brown. So whatever had happened had gone down some time before. Like maybe twelve hours ago?

  “He’s not here.”

  Daniel was careful pivoting in his crouch toward the stairs. Lydia was halfway down them and finally stalled out, her hazel eyes wide, her cheeks windburned and bright red against a base of pasty white panic, her grown-out, blown-out, blond-streaked hair frazzled from the wild ride in. With her gray trail pants, and her black turtleneck and heavy fleece, she was wearing what he thought of as her uniform—and he wished she were covered head to toe in Kevlar.

  “Where is he,” she whispered in despair.

  For a split second, silhouetted on that staircase, she was all he could see, all he could think about—even with the urgency of what certainly appeared to be a kidnapping at best, a beatdown-and-disappear-forever at worst.

  Remember this moment, he told himself. Imprint this and store it with the hoard.

  At the end, when things got really bad for him and he was just a flicker of consciousness trapped inside the husk of his body, he was going to need to remember what she looked like. Sounded like. Smelled like.

  His beautiful wolven. An evolutionary masterpiece, two sides inhabiting the same body, both human and lupine. A shifter that was very real, instead of some Halloween myth.

  A miracle he still did not completely understand, but that he no longer questioned. How could beauty like hers be defined, anyway.

  “Daniel… are you okay?”

  I love you, he thought at her.

  During the frantic ride in, with all his focus on getting them here, he’d slipped back into the black ops soldier he’d once been, and the return had landed him in such a familiar place that amnesia had wiped out reality. Everything was back now, though, from the rolling nausea in his gut to the god-awful wobble that dogged him—to the goodbye that was coming for them, sure as if they were stalked in the shadows, his killer closing in.

  Fuck it, his killer was already here, inside of him.

  He put up his palm as more alarm hit her face. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

  Liar. And yet it was a truth. He was no more worse off than he had been, and when you had terminal cancer, no change was the new getting-better.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  For a brief moment, a flare of intention reignited his body, purpose and sharp thinking tingling through him. But it was just a pilot light that flared and faded—

  The sound of a vehicle screeching to a halt brought both their heads to the front door, and through a part in the drapes of the window seat, the blacked-out Suburban that had pulled in behind the bike was like a presidential detail rolling up.

  He glanced back at Lydia and held out the documents. “I don’t know where he is. But we may have the ‘why’ of all this right here—”

  The loss of consciousness came with no warning. One moment, he was up on his granted-they-were-loose legs. The next, the carpet was coming at him like a rugby player who felt his momma had been insulted.

  The last thing Daniel was aware of was the graceful wings of the paperwork as the legal document that transferred ownership of a potentially billion-dollar cancer drug rippled to the floor ahead of him.

  Goddamn it, he needed Gus more than ever right now.

  And someone had gone and killed his fucking oncologist.

  TWO

  LYDIA SUSI KNEW that Daniel was going down a split second before the collapse claimed him. Over the last six months, she’d developed a sixth sense about his passing out—or maybe a change in his scent was the tip-off, her wolven nose a barometer for the subtle shifts in his hormones.

  With a lunge and a swing of her legs, she vaulted over the half-wall balustrade of the staircase, but she didn’t make it in time. Gravity was quicker than she was, and Daniel’s fragile body landed in a heap on the carpet, his arms flopping when he didn’t even try to brace himself against the impact, his head bouncing in an alarming recoil thanks to the face-first digger.

  As she threw herself down beside him, the tile in the kitchen registered out of the corner of her eye. At least he hadn’t been in there when he’d—

  “Daniel,” she said hoarsely. “Daniel…”

  With gentle hands, she rolled him over, and the way his skull lolled to the side made her send up a plea to her dead grandfather. But like that Finnish specter ever did anything to help? And why hadn’t she thought more about Daniel on the ride over here? She should have known that he didn’t have the strength for that roaring trip, much less for what was waiting for them.

  Gathering herself, she tried to calm down. “We just need Gus to have a look at you—”

  Except there was no Gus. Anywhere. That was why they’d come.

  Fine, someone else, then. Back at C.P. Phalen’s hidden lab. Where a possible cure that Daniel was refusing to try was still waiting for its first patient.

  “Daniel, can you hear me?”

  As she waited for a response, she pictured the love of her life as she had first seen him, coming into her office at the Wolf Study Project, knocking her off her feet even though she’d been sitting down. Candy, the receptionist, had given her a heads-up, but she hadn’t been prepared: Daniel’s face had imprinted on her brain before his features had even registered, and the sheer size of him, his big shoulders, his strong legs, his muscled arms, had made her aware of her own body from across the room in ways that should have gotten her written up for an HR violation.

  “Daniel?”

  Six months later, he was a fragile echo of that previous man. He was down fifty pounds, maybe sixty. After chemo, his hair was nothing but a shadow of new, lighter-colored growth on his head. His skin was sallow, and his eyes, which were a logy half-mast at the moment, had sunken into his cheekbones.

  “Daniel—”

  The door in from the garage flew open, and the woman who burst into the kitchen was another exercise in past-present, compare-contrast: C.P. Phalen, the corporate battle-ax, as Daniel called her, had downshifted from her black suits, stilettos, and precisely waved cap of blond hair, to sweatpants, sneakers, and all kinds of flyaway pinned down by a cheap barrette. She was going by Cathy now—not that Lydia had been able to make the name switch in her head.

  Something about the woman screamed authority, even when she was in that fleece she seemed to wear all the time now.

  Gus’s fleece.

  “Oh, shit,” the woman said as she stopped short. “Is he dead?”

  Can we not use that word, Lydia thought.

  “No,” she replied in a croak. Not yet.

  “Thank God. I’ll call Gus—”

  C.P. shoved her hand into a pocket, but as the knee-jerk impulse went no farther—just as Lydia’s hadn’t—those cool blue eyes shot to the bloodstains on the carpet. As all the color in her face drained out, a twitch started to spasm in her left eyebrow.

  “He’s not here,” Lydia croaked unnecessarily. “I even checked under the bed.”

  As more SUVs pulled up outside, there was a long, tense moment while C.P. blinked fast. Then her expression tightened into a mask of composure and she followed through on taking out her phone.

  “I’ll get Lipsitz for him, then,” she said under her breath. “The man’s got a bedside manner like a toaster, but he’s an excellent doctor.”

  Not as good as Gus, Lydia thought as she refocused on Daniel. He was still breathing, thank God, and she told herself the fact that his lids were partially open was good. Even though it probably didn’t mean anything.

  “Wake up,” she whispered. “Come back to me…”

  She was so consumed by measuring his every inhale and exhale, she didn’t notice the men who entered through the garage until they filed past her. The heavily armed guards were in black uniforms without any state, local, or military insignia, and they wasted no time fanning out and going through the rooms. She wasn’t going to bother to argue that she’d already looked around. They wouldn’t take her word for it.

  Glancing up at C.P., she said, “I need help getting him back to the lab—we came on the bike—”

  “We’ll put him in the Suburban—”

  “I’m not leaving my Harley here.”

  At the mumbled words, both of them looked down at Daniel. His eyes were open and his stare was more aware, though nothing much else had improved. His body was still in an awkward tangle and he didn’t seem to have the energy to straighten himself out.

  But she’d take the consciousness.

  “We’re not going to worry about that.” She smoothed a gentle palm over his brush of new-growth hair. “Let’s take care of you.”

  As C.P. barked orders into her phone, Daniel tried to sit up—and of course, he fought the help that was offered, pushing Lydia’s hands away. When he finally managed to brace his upper body against his elbows, Lydia gave him some space and tried not to stare at him like she was searching for evidence that he was about to die. Right in front of her. On the pale wall-to-wall condo carpet. With there being nothing she could do to stop the Grim Reaper’s robbery.

  A familiar helplessness settled on her shoulders like a pair of heavy claws, a crushing sense of inevitability causing her to collapse on the inside.

  “I’m not leaving the bike,” he repeated with exhaustion.

  “We have other problems—”

  “Well, I have that problem. And it’s going to be solved before I go anywhere.”

  His voice was sharp and she opened her mouth to argue. Except he didn’t have the strength for a heated exchange, and frankly, neither did she.

  “We’ll come back for it.”

  “No.” He shook his head, then swallowed like he was trying not to throw up. “I want you to take it back. They can load me into that SUV like luggage. You’ll be on my bike. That’s how it’s going to go.”

  Who gives a shit about the Harley, she wanted to scream at him.

  But she tried to put herself in his position. When easy options were impossibles, you thought in different ways. You put out demands because you had no choice. You dug your heels in on things that felt arbitrary and insignificant to other people because that was all you had.

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you,” he said roughly.

  “They’re waiting for us back at the lab.” C.P. ended her call. “Let’s get you moving. My men will process this scene and I’ll drive you myself—”

  “Why the hell did you do that to him,” Daniel cut in.

  The other woman’s eyes narrowed, and instantly, the cold calculation Lydia had associated with C.P. Phalen at first entered that stare. Gone was the friend she had become.

  “Excuse me.”

  “You gave him… Vita-12b.” Daniel pulled over the paperwork he’d been holding and had dropped. As he held up the pages, they shook like they were in a breeze because his hand trembled so badly. “That’s what I signed in your office, when you asked me to witness your signature. You gave him the rights to the compound and you made him a target.”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” The woman shoved her phone back in her pocket. “Can you stand? Or are we carrying you out of here—”

  “You put him… in the crosshairs. You live with… an entire platoon of those rent-a-guns—and you gave him… the drug that requires all that security—”

  “Right, we’re moving you.” C.P. motioned at the men who were coming down the stairs. “Pick him up and put him in my car. He’s going back to the lab right now—”

  “Fuck off.”

  Daniel grunted and heaved himself to his feet. As he lurched to the side, he threw his hands out for balance and before she could stop herself, Lydia jumped up and steadied him. When she realized what she’d done, she braced herself for more arguments—and as none came, she was grateful. But also more scared than ever.

  “Come on,” she said in what almost passed as a level voice. “I’m sure we’ll get updates soon.”

  She shot a meaningful look to C.P., and the woman nodded sharply in return. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll pass it along.”

  With that settled, Lydia started leading Daniel slowly through the kitchen to the garage door. As they went along, he did lean on her strength, but his back was straight and he seemed determined to go out on his own two feet. He hadn’t been using his cane for the last couple of days, and as he struggled now, the pit in her stomach was a spotlight on how much she had internalized the relative improvement after his immunotherapy had ended. With all its side effects winding down after the infusions had been stopped, the rebound was real, but temporary.

  The Keytruda hadn’t worked. Just like the conventional chemo hadn’t.

  This was the problem with smoking. Some people got away with it—and some did not. And you didn’t know which group you were in until it was too late. Meanwhile, Daniel’s terminal cancer was a bomb in her own life, blowing apart everything, laying ruin to her present and her future, but also taking her past, all those beautiful memories from the spring buried in a toxic swill of flashbacks featuring crash carts, and treatments that hadn’t worked, and scans that had spelled out more and more bad news.

  “Here, let me get the—”

  “I’ll get the door,” Daniel said firmly.

  She stopped and waited for him to slowly move ahead of her, open things, and hold the panel wide. As she passed by him, his eyes stayed down on the tile, his dignity as a man ravaged by a cruel disease.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  Emerging into the garage, the motion-activated lights came on and she glanced at Gus’s Tesla, thinking of the gas-guzzling Harley. How was it possible that they’d just been together in that apple orchard? The quiet moment they’d shared seemed like something that had happened months ago, and she missed that time like it was a friend she hadn’t seen for years. Then again, for a short shining moment, she’d felt as though they had stepped off to the side of their situation and been what they’d been before.

  Two people without a disease.

  But like all vacations, you had to return to your real life. Even if it was a nightmare.

  “Can you make it to the SUV,” she asked as she looked past a set of rolling trash bins to the pedestrian door on the far side of the space.

  “Yes,” he answered roughly. “I can.”

  Lydia took his arm anyway.

  I love you, she thought at him. Now and forever, you’re mine.

  “We’re going to find Gus,” Daniel vowed as they shuffled along. “And if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make this right.”

  She didn’t know how to respond to the vow.

  No, wait. She did.

  Reality was cruel, however, and reminding him of all he was limited by was mean. Besides, he knew the truth.

  That was why he was drawing such a hard line.

  This time, when they came up to a portal, she was the one who had to open it for them. Just the short distance from the kitchen had drained him of energy, and it was funny how you could miss arguing with your partner.

  Not funny at all, actually.

  THREE

  I HAVE SOMETHING MORE for you. Do you remember what it is?”

  As the question was put out there, it was a tough call what language the words were in. The syllables were from a Romance-based system of communication, sure, but other than that—

  “I asked you a question, Dr. St. Claire. Can you guess what it is?”

  No, the shit was English. Just with an accent.

  Gus opened his eyes. Or tried to—unless, wait… no. His eyes were open, it was his vision that was fucked. And what do you know, he didn’t need his HMS diploma to know blindness, in a person who had been sighted, was bad news—

  “What do you want, man,” he said through lips that were swollen from bruising.

  When the hell had he been punched? Where the hell was he? As he sent the questions upstairs to his gray matter, his brain was sluggish, his memory patchy. Likewise, the sensations in his body were distilled through a filter of numbness, nothing but echoes of aches and pains registering. Which given how fucked he felt was probably a good thing—