Frostbitten
Page 13

"Pull over and-" My expression stopped him short. He rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Okay. We'll talk at the hotel. But I don't like thinking you've been this upset-"
"I'm not upset."
"Concerned, and waited a week to talk to me. No wonder you were so happy to see me."
I looked at him. "Yes, I want to talk, but I did miss you. A lot."
"Can I get that in writing?"
I managed a smile. "Not a chance."
 
 
GONE
 

COMING INTO ANCHORAGE now, I got my first daylight look at the city. Ignore the gorgeous backdrop of ocean and mountains, and it could pass for any medium-size city with strip malls and strip joints, Wal-Marts and Walgreens. What did stand out was the snow-or the lack of it. The streets were bare and a lot of yards were, too. According to the digital signs we passed, it was forty degrees, the same as we'd expect in upstate New York this time of year, and we definitely had more snow. Dennis's apartment building was as normal and average as the city itself. Nothing sleazy or spectacular. Nothing historical or post modern. Just an unassuming, well-kept building.
According to the tenant list, Dennis was using his real name. All Pack werewolves do. We have IDs with aliases, but part of the reason for joining the Pack is to settle into territory, and it's easiest to do that using your birth name.
I buzzed his apartment from the building vestibule. When no one answered after the second one, I was about to find another way in when a tenant held the door open for us. I thought she'd mistaken us for neighbors, but as we walked into the lobby she asked who we were there to visit. I said Dennis. She didn't know him, and seemed faintly embarrassed by that, as if she should.
Clay knocked on Dennis's door. At a second knock, a neighbor's door opened. An elderly woman with bushy white hair and huge glasses peered out, blinking like a wizen-faced snowy owl.
"Sorry," I said. "We didn't mean to disturb-"
"Are you looking for Dennis?"
"Yes, we're friends of-"
"He's not there, dear. Been gone awhile." She eased out the door, gripping her housecoat around her plump body. "Dennis isn't the sort to make his presence known, not like some people-" A glare at the door across the hall. "-but I usually see him every day. He brings up my mail and asks if I need anything when he goes out."
"And he hasn't been by lately." I spoke slowly, waiting to be interrupted again, but when I finished, she only blinked at me.
"He's been away a few days?" I prompted.
"Oh, no, dear. More than that. He's always going off for a day or two. This time it's been close on a week."
I felt Clay shift behind me. He didn't like that answer.
"So Dennis doesn't usually-" I began.
"You should speak to Charles. He's worried about him, too."
"Charles?"
"The landlord. Here, I'll take you to his office."
I said that wasn't necessary-we'd find it-but she insisted, toddling down the hall in huge polar-bear-paw slippers. As we took the elevator, she asked me questions-where we were from, what we did for a living, did we have any children? I answered honestly. That's one rule of werewolf life-tell the truth when you can and it'll make the lies easier to track.
Clay kept quiet as we walked, but he held the door for her and checked his pace to hers. That's the wolf again-indulge the young and respect the old. Not a bad philosophy in general. Now if I could just adjust his attitude toward the other 90 percent of the population.
The landlord wasn't in his office. We found him in the front foyer, changing one of the tenant names on the list. The old lady-Lila-introduced us, then got her mail and scuttled off to read her new copy of People.
Charles the landlord was younger than I would have guessed. He looked about midtwenties, Native, burly and a few inches shorter than me.
"Yep, been almost a week, like Lila said." He pasted the new tenant name in place. "Place like this, we get mostly good folk. Denis is one of the best. Pays his rent in advance, never calls me in the middle of the night for a plugged toilet, does his own repairs, even helped me paint last fall when the student I hired didn't show."
He ushered us back inside. "I don't see Dennis every day, like Lila, but we usually bump into each other a few times a week. We stop and chat, then he'll come over to my place, and the wife makes him coffee." Charles chuckled. "The wife hardly ever makes me coffee, so that's a sure sign she likes him."
"It's been quite a while since we've seen Dennis," I said as he peeled a Sponge Bob sticker off the wall, "so we don't know him that well. He was a friend of my husband's dad when Dennis lived back east."
Charles picked at the glue left on the wall. "Whereabouts back east?"
"At the time, it was New York state," I said carefully, thinking I was being tested-and not knowing whether Dennis had told the truth.
Charles laughed, making me jump. "I knew it. I knew it. The wife and I have ten bucks riding on this, trying to guess by the accent. I said New York; she said New Jersey. I wanted to ask, but she thought that was prying." He glanced at Clay. "You friend with Joseph?"
It took a moment for Clay to connect Joseph to Joey. "When we were kids. We lost touch after they moved."
"So we don't have his address," I said. "Or we'd stop there and ask."
"Damn. I hoped you did."
"Does he come by often?"
Charles snorted and started picking at another sticker. "I've been here three years and I've seen him only a few times. It's not right. His dad's a great guy. He's always talking about his son, and the guy can't bother coming to visit? Not right."
So Dennis and Joey were still introducing themselves as father and son. I hadn't been sure. With slow aging, that's one relationship werewolves often fudge.
"Do you have any idea where Dennis might be?" I asked. "Lila said he takes off a lot."
"He's got a cabin about thirty miles south. Usually he goes there for a few days a month. Sometimes longer, but when it's that long, he tells me, so I can collect his mail. He could be there, though. That's what I figure. Got himself snowed in."