The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) Page 3

  “What?” He asked, taken aback.

  “Did I treat you differently—worse,” she choked on the word, “than I treated Adam?”

  Alec ruminated on the question, the thousand sleights, the thousand ways a child feels less loved than other children flashing through his mind, and suspected, all children feel it, from time to time. “No,” he answered. “But, then, you knew—or suspected—I was different? Always.”

  “Yes.”

  “The eyes?”

  “The eyes.” She reached across and stroked his cheek with the love of a mother. “Not my eyes. Not your father’s eyes.”

  “And not Darius’s eyes.”

  “No, not his either. But whose?”

  Alec smiled. “Mine.”

  Ilene suddenly wept, tucking her face into her hands. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

  Alec rubbed her shoulder, and pulled her to his chest to comfort her. “You have nothing to apologize for, Mom. I love you.”

  Ilene gathered herself after a few moments. She took a deep breath, wiped her eyes, and her mouth turned up in an embarrassed smile. “I cry so easily.”

  “We have a lot of reasons to cry.”

  “That we do.” She agreed and stood. She cleared her throat. “A mobile came in a box for you. When you were a baby.”

  Alec felt a surge of excitement, and then a flash of the house on fire, of everything from his childhood being burned to ash entered his mind. “Destroyed in the fire?”

  Ilene shook her head. “No. It wasn’t at the house. You never used it. I couldn’t hang it over your crib. It seemed poisoned. It’s at your grandmother’s house. I stored it there.” She looked Alec in the eyes. “Something about it told me not to throw it away.”

  “Can we get it?”

  “Thursday morning?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, I did throw it away. Without even opening the box. Then I retrieved it. When I opened it, I knew, without a doubt, who had sent it. I knew. And I knew throwing it away would change nothing.”

  Alec stood, hugging her again. “You did the right thing.”

  The Trail

  Jenna Nichols tied her tennis shoe in the morning darkness, wincing when she dropped her second shoe, and her husband, Darrin, stirred on the bed. She sat on the edge of the bed, motionless for just a moment, and then, certain he was asleep, hurried from the bedroom. She eased the door closed behind her. A nightlight in the bathroom at the end of the hall offered enough light to see.

  On her way to the stairwell, Jenna stopped at the nursery to peep in on Sable, her one-year-old daughter. She was sound asleep.

  Jenna strapped her heart rate monitor to her arm and headed into the cold, pre-dawn morning air. Her suburban Chicago subdivision was completely still, no dogs barked, no cars were backing out of the driveways, no children laughed. The quiet was complete. Above her, a few stars twinkled in the last of the night sky.

  After stretching at the edge of her drive, Jenna turned on her monitor, popped her earphones in her ears, and began a quick warm-up stride down the sidewalk. She followed the sidewalk to the edge of the subdivision, and once there, turned onto a wooded jogging trail. The trail was dark, but she knew it well. Intermittent light from lampposts and houses broke through the bare limbs, offering her enough light not to fall. She flipped the light on in her dog walking hat as an added safety measure and began her stride. Hump day, she thought resolutely.

  Jenna sucked cold air into her lungs as she hurried through the woods, knowing she had only 45 minutes to run and cool down—and she wanted to get at least six miles in as she prepared for her first half-marathon. The music thumped in her ears, and she tried not to think about her day and only focus on the run. She loved this quiet time, before Darrin was rushing around for work, before Sable was up, before she was running to daycare and then work. This time was a precious, daily ritual that she loved.

  Jenna turned as the trail merged with a state park trail into darker woods. Some mornings she took their dog, Petey, but the small terrier slowed her down, often almost tripped her, and she figured what protection did he really offer anyway? She consciously checked for her pepper spray and realized she’d forgotten it. She pushed the dark thoughts out of her mind and concentrated on her breathing.

  She had just reached mile three, and the twenty-four minute mark, when a loud noise—muffled by the music, broke her stride. Ignore it, she told herself and resumed her pace. She would turn around in another half mile—and she was determined to make it.

  A few minutes later, Jenna turned at the three-and-a-half mile mark and jogged back down the trail toward home. She picked up her pace. Her goal was to make the three miles back at a better time. Jenna reached the three-mile marker and cast her eyes side-to-side, the odd noise still lingering in her mind. As she passed, the song on her iPod faded out, and she heard the noise again. She stopped suddenly and pulled the earphones from her ears. The music sounded distant and tinny as a new song started.

  “Hello,” Jenna called as she peered into the woods just off the trail. The small light on her dog-walking cap lit up the trees and branches, leaving gaping canyons of darkness in the deeper woods. “Hello?” She repeated, certain she had heard a woman—in distress.

  She heard the noise again, not quite a cry, or a whimper. Jenna trembled. “Do you need help?”

  She reached in her pocket, realizing she’d left her cell phone with her pepper spray. Her jaw tightened and every fiber of her being told her to run, come back with help. She fought the urge, thinking that minutes mattered when someone was injured. She took a step into the woods, listening. Snow dusted the brown leaves on the forest floor. Twigs beat against trunks in the breeze with a distracting tapping.

  The February air suddenly felt bitter against her sweaty skin and damp clothes. A violent shiver shook her. She told herself that she had imagined the noise. She started to turn for the trail. Again, the soft cry of distress stopped her.

  Jenna took another step into the woods. She rounded another tree.

  Her scream sent sleeping birds into the dark air, their calls echoing across the forest. Jenna stumbled back, her eyes wide, disbelieving that she had found someone so badly injured. A woman, around her own age sprawled across the leaves, blood soaking her tattered clothes. Her skin was stained in bloody smears. Great gashes covered her arms, legs, and across her chest to her neck, where blood flowed heavily onto the ground and puddled around her. Jenna fought the urge to flee and fell to her knees. “I’ll help,” she whispered.

  The woman muttered.

  Jenna shook her head, not understanding, thinking the woman was in shock. Jenna grabbed a piece of the woman’s shirt and pressed it to her neck, trying to stop the blood.

  The woman muttered again.

  “What?” Jenna asked.

  “Run,” the woman whispered.

  Jenna heard a branch snap behind her.

  Wednesdays with Adam

  Ilene turned off the car and immediately felt the cold radiating through the glass into the warm bubble. She tightened her scarf, and before opening the door, she looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She could only see her eyes, but she felt that they told everything. Dark circles hung under them like shadowy moons, and the lines around her eyes had deepened. She felt that in the last nine months, she had aged a decade.

  With a portentous sigh, she threw the door open and braced against the February air. The air clutched her face with its cold hands and she shivered. The morning sun did little to cut through the gray clouds that blanketed the sky. She scanned the cemetery. She was alone. She passed rows of headstones, her footfalls crackling the ice-crusted snow.

  When she reached Adam’s tombstone, she sat in the snow, ignoring the chill from the ground. She rested her gloved hand on the cold marble and the corners of her mouth turned up in a faint, weary smile. She said little on her Wednesdays with Adam, but the time could be spent nowhere else. Sometimes she whispered his name
or voiced memories, but more often, she enjoyed the solitude and the imagined company he kept her. She could see him as a child, often with Alec. Some memories were stolen clips from home videos, but others were straight from her mind, moments not captured on film or video, only in her heart.

  She felt sadness clinging to her, like the ice on the top of Adam’s tombstone, and she stood to dispel it. She tried to make this spot a place for reflecting on her many, many treasured memories. The ache overtook her, and she turned from Adam’s headstone as if ashamed as tears rolled over her cheeks. She looked across the cemetery.

  The cemetery where the family had their plots was old and wooded. A small river cut through the cemetery and the land rolled in gentle hills, lending a park-like quality. Dogwoods and magnolias, she recognized among the trees. She pictured the barren branches burdened with pink and white blooms, adding to the beauty of the cemetery in the spring.

  Ilene wiped her hand across her cheeks and scanned the rows of stones, the nearly two hundred years of loved ones laid to rest. Monuments and mausoleums built for the loved ones of the city founders dotted the cemetery. Even in winter, green ivy clung to many of them.

  Ilene turned back to Adam. “I love you, son,” she whispered through her tears. “I miss you so much.” She sat back to the ground. She placed her arm on the tombstone and then rested her head on her arm, allowing the tears she had been fighting.

  * * * *

  Sitting in her car at the edge of the cemetery, Carmen Salazar lowered the binoculars she held to her eyes as Ilene began to cry at the headstone of her son.

  A pang of guilt shot through Carmen for intruding on this private moment between mother and son. She imagined her own grief if she lost her daughter, Mona.

  She admitted to herself, over the last six months, the family had done nothing out of the ordinary. They seemed like nothing more than a grieving family. She leaned back in her seat, stretching her back. Carmen looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She wondered if she should see a therapist. Perhaps the missing persons cases—that day under the barn—had affected her more than she let on. Isn’t my behavior obsessive? She wondered. Trailing a grieving mother to the graveyard? Following a young woman to the gym? Spying on to two young men in love?

  With the engine off, the car was cold. Carmen rubbed her hands together and blew into them. She hated the sneaking around, spying on a family that had already suffered so much loss. But she couldn’t help but feel that they knew more than they told, that there was more to what happened to them than the official story. She watched as Ilene stood and walked toward her car to leave.

  Carmen wanted to stop, to tell herself that she had seen nothing so far, because there was nothing to see. Yet her instincts told her to hold on a bit longer. To watch more closely.

  Because something was about to surface. She could feel the approach of the inevitable in her chest.

  The Reform School

  Collin Stalinski knew this time he was in trouble.

  The police had caught him, literally, red handed. He had been in the middle of spray-painting the side of a building when the police cruiser shined its giant search lamp on him.

  Boom. Spotlight.

  Of course, he ran.

  He listened as the judge read the list of charges: vandalism, defacing public property, resisting arrest, fleeing the scene of a crime. This judge had been lenient on him before, but Collin knew this time was different. His signature style—his graffiti art—was recognizable and now could be traced to him for dozens of murals he’d painted all over the city. Yes, this time he was in trouble. No probation. No slap on the wrist.

  “Mr. Stalinski,” the judge began. “This is not your first time in my courtroom.” Her words fell stern, without emotion. She looked down at the papers before her. “Given your academic achievements, I’m inclined not to send you to juvenile detention.”

  Collin felt his heart soar.

  “However...”

  And then fall.

  “I feel that you need some motivation to place your considerable abilities to good use. You need direction. I sentence you to three months at Cornerstone Boys Reformatory School.” She smiled. “I think there’s hope for you yet.” She slammed the gavel down.

  Collin looked back at his mother; her eyes filled with tears, her face shattered with disappointment, failure. “Mom,” he said as the bailiff placed his hand on Collin’s shoulder to direct him away.

  * * * *

  Cornerstone Boys Reformatory School loomed like a cathedral on a river bank in the outer suburban sprawl of Detroit. The sky and water behind the school blazed red as the prison transport bus arrived, and Collin prepared to step off the bus. He looked at the dark silhouette of the four story building and shivered. Part of him was glad he had been shipped outside the city where no one would see his wrists chained, see the rough company he was in.

  Cornerstone was built as a Catholic boys’ school, closed due to finances, and taken over by the state as a reformatory. The program was endowed by a philanthropist who hoped “to reform the self-esteem and therefore public value” of the adolescent boys sentenced there. He and the three other young men on the transport shuffled down the walkway to the building. The Spanish Mission style, orange brick building looked like it belonged on a hillside in California. Collin looked up to the headstone over the doorway. Carved in the stone were the words “Enter shackled. Leave unfettered.”

  Collin made his way in, stopping at the guard station. He entered a room with the other boys, stripped off his clothes and personal items, which were bagged, and changed into the white shirt and blue pants that were his wardrobe for his stay. He was assigned a roommate, Tony, one of the young men who arrived with him. After they were checked in, they were herded by guards into a small room, what Collin guessed had once been a chapel. A man in a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie stood at a podium in the front of the room. As Collin, Tony, and the third new inmate, Mark, sat, the guards waited in the aisle, with their arms folded over their chests.

  “Welcome to Cornerstone Boys Reformatory School.” The man at the podium smiled. But Collin noted his smile was not warm. It was a wide smile, but not friendly. The man’s dark hair was swept back against his head, without a single strand out of place. His green eyes bore down on them keenly.

  “I’m Proctor Roth. I ensure that things run smoothly here at the school, that your needs are met, and that you take the curriculum here seriously.” He walked around the edge of the podium and stepped down from the raised stage and sat on the top step, his feet on the step below. “We take your education and your reform very seriously.

  “Cornerstone never takes any cases that we would consider, let me say, irredeemable. Every student in here has committed some small offence, but is likely on his way to ruin, throwing away talents that society will find useful.” He turned to Collin. “You’re academically gifted as well as have a—shall we say penchant?—for art.” He turned to Tony. “You’ve been in a number of fights...you’ve never started them. But you’ve finished them. If you could just channel your physical gifts, you could do amazing things.” He turned finally to Mark. “Shop lifting.” He shook his finger and clucked his tongue. “We’ll help you see the error of your ways.”

  “Yeah, well, what are my gifts?” Mark said belligerently.

  Proctor Roth smiled the same cold smile. “Your talents are less obvious. But useful. And we’ll show you those here, too. As we say, ‘Arrive in shackles. Leave unfettered.’” He stood and nodded to the guards. “You’re dismissed to your rooms. You are to be at breakfast at 8:15 am and no later. Classes begin at 9 o’clock. There is no tardiness. No skipping classes. No being sick. And no disrespect.” He smiled again, arching his eyebrow delicately. “Consequences here are severe.”

  Home

  Darrin Nichols looked at his Omega wristwatch, a gift from his parents, before pulling his tie up into a tight Windsor knot. “Jenna, come on, I’m gonna be late,” he cursed silently
under his breath. He walked back into Sable’s room to check in on her. She was bouncing in the playpen, happily. He had already changed her and fed her—two tasks he wasn’t planning. Normally, he would have left for work twenty minutes ago. Hell, I’m always the first one in anyway.

  After twenty more minutes, he called work to let them know he would be late. He stormed into the backyard, his steps crunching on icy snow on the deck. Damn it, Jenna.

  “Jenna!” He called. Darrin frowned, and walked back into the house, pulling the sliding glass door shut behind him. He made his way through the house to the front door. On the front lawn, he glanced down the curving subdivision road in both directions, not sure what he hoped to accomplish. With the sight of the empty street, the first flutter of fear moved within his chest. He spun and hurried back inside the house.

  Darrin snatched his keys and walked next door without his coat to knock of the neighbor’s door. He didn’t know if the neighbor, a nurse with a rotating schedule, was home. Luckily, she answered. “Hey, have you seen Jenna?” She shook her head, her face pinched with an unspoken why would I know where she is. “She went for her run this morning and she isn’t home yet,” he explained. “It’s not like her.”

  “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

  “I hate to ask, but could you watch Sable—just for a few minutes—while I look for her.”

  “Well, I,”—she seemed to be searching for an excuse—“Sure. Just for a while. Want me to come over?”

  “Please. She’s dressed and fed. I just can’t leave her alone...and if something’s happened—well, I don’t want her with me.”