Wolfe Read online

  “Oh?” I frowned. We migrated to the nurses’s station.

  Without looking up as he scribbled a signature on some forms, he added, “The best disconcerting fact? The injured eye is almost perfect.”

  I blinked. I’d seen the damage, though it had been a while since then.

  “I believe the man has perfect vision, despite him keeping that eye hidden.”

  I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows this time. “What should I tell him?”

  “Nothing. Yet. But I am wondering if this is the man described in his history. That man had a serious brain injury and an eye damaged beyond healing. How can this be Andy Carruthers? Only one relative verified his ID. They’ve never visited him since and the ID was done soon after brain surgery. It doesn’t add up. I’m not even sure that man was him.”

  If he wasn’t Andy, who was he? And which man did my handlers want me to watch?

  A few days later, Dr. Hass began lowering the dose of some of Andy’s drugs. We nurses discussed this course of action with trepidation among ourselves. Having a man of Andy’s size collapse in seizures, or worse, a psychotic episode, wasn’t our favorite scenario.

  But nothing seemed to happen. Nothing obvious, apart from Andy becoming more alert, quicker on his feet, less likely to fumble or trip. The DNA test came back as verified correct. The MRI showed Andy had never had the brain injuries his records stated he’d suffered.

  Dr. Leroy muttered a few swear words and I decided I should tell my handlers. Any change, they’d said. This was one.

  The state couldn’t declare Andy to not be Andy...without other evidence. The bulldog mascot tattoo on his back suggested marine. I had a feeling the doctor was reaching out to people higher up the chain to see if someone else had the same DNA. It was possible, if rare.

  If they did, what might that precipitate? Maybe he’d be snatched away by the CIA and my job would be over? I’d like that, though I’d be sad to see him go, whoever he was. We’d begun to have small, halted conversations and made other progress.

  The man liked watching birds and several species visited the garden, so I showed him, or rather reminded him, how to look them up on a computer. That led to him sketching them. We had watercolors. I showed him those too. Now the birds gained color. My god, he was such an artist. The birds came to life on the page.

  A sparrow was today’s focus. He sat beside me on the bench, using the pencil deftly then adding color. This was the best place to sit and draw. The bench was set back from the pond and partly shaded by trees and shrubs. When the breeze picked up, the light flitting through the swaying greenery must make the page hard to see.

  “Like this one?” He handed me the book with the completed painting.

  “This is amazing.” I smiled. There was such pleasure in seeing art made before your eyes. Miraculous. “I don’t know how you do this.”

  Beneath the perfectly rendered bird, he’d written in tiny, precise letters the species name and other details, including that I was next to him when he drew it. I handed back the little painting.

  “Thank you, Kiara.” He nodded then took my fingers and swiftly kissed the back of them, like some reawakened southern gentleman. “You gave me the paints, so I credit you with helping me do this.”

  “It was nothing. My job.” I shrugged, feeling stupid to dismiss his thanks. A blush warmed my face then the tingle of remembered skin contact in my hand, where it now rested on my lap. I was intrigued by his words also. His little speech of thanks was as much a miracle as his art.

  A spam email came in on my opened iPad. I stared, horrified. It signified that a new drop had arrived for me to pick up. A new thumb drive. What would it say?

  Nervously, I looked sideways at Andy...or rather, at whoever it was who sat beside me. I’d not asked, ever.

  “Can you tell me, please...”

  “Yes?” One brow quirked upward and I couldn’t help but notice the strength of that mark above his eye. Though he was tanned, the darkness of his hair contrasted severely with his skin. “What is it, Kiara?”

  My heart fluttered. This was one of those frisson moments. Caught almost tongue-tied, I stuttered then recovered, swallowed. Asking this seemed, somehow, momentous. “What is your name? Is it really Andy?”

  His mouth tightened and he observed me. Was he deciding whether to lie?

  “No. I told them long ago when they found me. They didn’t listen. My name is Wolfe.”

  I inhaled sharply. F. U. C. K. Truth it was then. “Last or first?”

  “Both? I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “Maybe it will come to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  He had both eyes open. Today was very much a day for truth then. Both eyes were a startling blue. Had he been concealing the healing of his eye...or the lack of injury? Wait. No. I had seen the opacity. His cornea had once been white and sunken. You just didn’t heal like that. No one could. They hadn’t even bothered lining him up for corneal surgery, having assumed the internal damage was too great. That was how bad it’d been. Yet here he was, seeing me – no doubt with great clarity, from the steadiness of his gaze.

  What was he?

  All the tiny hairs on my neck and arms stood up. For how long had he been fooling us? Or was it simply the lower drug dosages that had wrought this crazy miracle?

  Impossible. Incredible. Alarming.

  Argh. My head spun with all the ramifications and possibilities, and I rose, dusting off my lap. “I should go in.”

  As I walked away, he spoke again. “Don’t be afraid.”

  I was wondering as to the meaning, perhaps avoiding letting myself know it, when he dropped in the last words.

  “Of me.”

  Though my throat tightened, I didn’t turn. I hurried along the path that led to the door...that led inside to safety.

  I was afraid. And I didn’t know why.

  Wolfe. How appropriate.

  I was beginning to see, no, to feel, why they wanted him watched.

  He wasn’t what he seemed to be.

  * * * * *

  Once unencrypted, the thumb drive said all the wrong things.

  Take him to your house. Hold him there for one hour.

  I assumed that was so they...whoever they would be I didn’t know...could check that nobody had detected us or trailed us.

  Why my house? Did they want me picked up by cops?

  Maybe they wanted me to go back to Croatia, or to Russia? It seemed so. If I wasn’t fast at leaving the USA, or hiding, I’d be in jail after removing a patient from care and giving him to strangers. I was to deliver him to another New York address after waiting that hour.

  This wasn’t good. I’d lose my job, my career, my country, and I’d been here most of my life. Croatia five years. Russia, two. Here? I had been born here, so that made it... I added it up again. Nineteen.

  I buried my face in my hands, pressing on my eyes to stop them leaking tears. Damn them. What choice did I have? My stepfather had made one stupid mistake and now they held it over me. Do this or he, and probably my mother too, would be prosecuted. Treason wasn’t a slap-over-the-knuckles offence. He hadn’t mean it to be treason, just hadn’t thought.

  Damn them to hell.

  I expected them to want me to go with them too. They wouldn’t leave me to be questioned by some belated intelligence operative, whenever the CIA figured out Wolfe was somebody of importance. Having me killed seemed a possibility and it made me even more anxious. I’d probably watched too many Hollywood spy thrillers.

  What had this man done? Screwed Putin’s mistress?

  I chewed on the inside of my lip.

  What was done was done. Abandon my mother, my stepfather – who was a good man – or this.

  I’d have to take my car into work tomorrow, but they didn’t expect nurses to abduct patients. I could do this. Lunch hour would be a good time to do this. Some of the men were going to a meeting, after lunch, about vets and government funding. I could fudge a si
gnature to say Andy had gone too.

  Then I’d leave with him. They’d realize I’d vanished, but not connect it to him immediately, and I could text in and say that I’d taken ill suddenly. A bad excuse but it’d hold off enquiries for hours. They’d just swear at me in my absence and think about firing me.

  The one big question was, would he come with me? The lowered medication meant he was brighter, thinking better, and less compliant.

  My hypothesis had been correct. Inside his mind, Andy was firing on almost all four cylinders. The drugs had affected him in an idiosyncratic way. Terrible really. But...

  I straightened in my chair. The second big question. What happened when his system was fully clear of drugs? He might become difficult to control.

  I should get a small stockpile. What the fuck did it matter if they discovered I’d stolen drugs? The US government would shoot me, or jail me for a hundred years, if they worked out I was involved in espionage.

  My heart ached. I didn’t want to do this.

  This was a sad day. I’d had such hopes.

  Chapter 3

  Wolfe

  I was in a car. I’d been in buses before, I vaguely recalled. Field trips, visits to doctors, maybe. I remembered the trips and being wrapped in that fog. Sometimes things were so clear now that I was dizzy from the sensations.

  The world whirled. I grinned at the word rhyme and at the whizz and rumble of traffic flying past this white sedan of Kiara’s.

  “You okay, Andy...I mean Wolfe?” A little frown formed then vanished. “Should I call you that? I mean if Andy isn’t –”

  “Sure.” I nodded to reassure her.

  “Until you remember the other name?” The light we were stopped at changed and she stepped on the gas.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Wolfe.”

  It sounded as if saying it made her uncomfortable. Funny. It was a name associated with a predator but why would that bother her? Unless she thought of me as other than safe?

  Idly, I watched the traffic, thinking, loving being able to think. I felt fresh, alive, unfettered.

  Kiara had said bad men were coming for me at the village and that was why I had to go with her.

  She was lying.

  How did I know that?

  I didn’t know how I knew.

  But...simply knowing thrilled me.

  I liked her, but she deceived me for some reason I couldn’t figure out. She thought I was stupid and I wasn’t, or not anymore. I think I had been, so I could forgive her assumption.

  Her hair was up in a bun...

  Light gleamed on the tightly woven strands and sometimes sneaked around the edges to blind me. I kept looking at her anyway. Seeing her in silhouette, concentrating on driving, left me free to observe.

  I should be grateful for the help she’d given me. I was. Besides, she enticed me. The uniform shaped across her ample breasts, concealing and revealing all at once – the subtle curve of upper breast and of her cleavage...the straining of buttons, the glimpse of thigh where the dress had ridden up, even the shift of muscle as she used the brake.

  I imagined sliding my hand over her thigh then between her legs.

  I drew a breath and reached down to retrieve the sketch pad from the floor, turned to a fresh page, and began to draw.

  “What are you drawing?” She dared a sideways glance before the road compelled her attention.

  My lips parted but I held back the smile. “You. I haven’t tried drawing a person.” A woman. I swear my balls tightened at the very thought of calling her a woman.

  “Okay.” She chuckled. “Make it good.”

  “I will.”

  “This’ll take another hour before we’re home. The traffic’s awful.”

  She was lying about the bad men, but I was curious. Where was she taking me? I was done with doctors. The situation had matured. My past, dark and tumultuous, waited above and at the fringes. A tidal wave would be no less scary. I admitted that to myself. My past scared me. It was an unknown, yet in my dreams I’d seen it as bloody and filled with horrors.

  Waiting for that to come to me was not my way. I’d seek it out and meet it head on.

  Perhaps she was a part of my forgotten past? Time would tell.

  I started out imagining her sitting in a field of flowers but the sketch took on a life of its own and I followed where it led, adding more details, more darkness at the edges.

  By the time the car was purring closer to where Kiara said we needed to be, my hand had cramped and my arm trembled from fatigue.

  What a sketch and where had my strength gone? I’d hefted boulders, once, climbed sheer walls by force of will.

  Had I? Where the fuck had that come from?

  “Done?”

  “Huh?” She meant the drawing?

  “Finished the artwork?” She turned the wheel. “Nearly there. We’ll have to walk for a few minutes to get to my apartment. I don’t have a parking space under the building.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I stared at the page, flexing my fingers to try to get the blood flowing. No daisies. No flowers. The pencil had created her naked, with an ugly, rough chain circling her neck. She kneeled at the feet of someone huge, a colossus of a man seated on a throne of bones. He wasn’t done but when he was, he’d have the other end of the chain wrapped in his veined fist and he’d be snarling.

  I probably shouldn’t show her this sketch.

  That was when the color began peeling off my hand and tumbling away. I clenched my fist and more flakes filled the air. The car expanded, shrank, and colors settled into a pulsating vibrancy. I inhaled, smelling dust, fumes, gasoline, and her. She penetrated everything – female, fertile, and lush with the scent of her cunt.

  Impossible. The blue of the sky filled my eyes... The reds of signs popped, the greens of the grass spiked through pavement, even the brown of the dust on the glass vibrated in my vision.

  I gripped the pencil and it snapped. I teetered on the edge. I wouldn’t look at her until this went away.

  I was going crazy, wasn’t I?

  “Oops. Brandon fuckwit is here.”

  I dared to eye her, despite knowing her voice might be the trigger and her cunt was an apocalypse waiting to devour me. The erection in my pants throbbed.

  If I couldn’t get –

  “Get the fuck away, bitch! My park!” The roar of a male, outside the car.

  I snarled. The sound shocked me.

  An orange cone was set in the middle of a space our car was aimed for. The engine idled. Behind us came the honk of a horn.

  “Brandon! You can’t save it!” She said in an aside to me, “He does this. Asshole. Tries to save parks while his girlfriend brings the car around.”

  I should laugh at that. My muscles said otherwise. Blood thrummed in my head in a hot tide. Flesh and bone screamed as I made hard fists, tighter, tighter. The car handle squeaked as I turned it, shoved the door wide, and exited.

  Gray and rusty buildings towered above. A dog, small and terrified, poked a nose out of an enclosure. The wire jingled. Kiara’s car throbbed and she glared from behind the windshield.

  A man in a torn-sleeved shirt and jeans leaned on the trunk of the car at the front of the space. His fair hair rose up like a fence. Tattoos played down his arms.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he sneered but stood and had backed a half step before I caught up and lifted him by his throat and threw him so he rolled along the concrete, head over heels, leaving traces of blood and shredded flesh.

  “Go!” I kicked the cone aside and stood on the sidewalk watching him run.

  His last word gift, a dwindling fuck you, made me grin.

  With the car parked, the engine switched off, and the doors locked, Kiara joined me. “What the hell was that?”

  I wasn’t sure myself. Colors still bobbed on the periphery. When I followed her, the buildings above leaned in, as if to see what I would do next. Or maybe to bury us. I growled at them and was satisfied the
y’d stay away for now.

  The woman’s ass beckoned me onward. The darkness sifted down, filling shadows, hiding. Not so bad, I decided. Darkness was good sometimes, I could find the sun again, when I needed to. In the meantime, where was she going? There were bad men somewhere, I remembered.

  She’d know who.

  My shoes crunched and scraped on litter and the crumbled pieces of brick and concrete. The sides of the buildings crept closer.

  “Not far to go. I don’t come this way by myself.” Her smile invited my assent. “You get some creeps lurking here sometimes but it’s a good way to get into my apartment without most people seeing us. Today, that’s a plus. We’ll just wait a while and some friends will come.”

  Ahead, our path led under a building. There were doors in there and dim overhead lighting. Fluorescents. I recalled that name. Sound echoed.

  The colors ebbed and flowed, weakened.

  Again with that smile of hers and I saw sweat on the back of her slender neck, recalled the clutch and release of the steering wheel as she drove. Her fingers fidgeted at the handbag where it tapped against the side of her pale uniform. She worried.

  Why?

  What did she know? Why lie to me? The woman lured me.

  “No one under there?” Her laugh was bright. “Why am I worried when I got you, Andy? The way you tossed Brandon...”

  “I’m not Andy.” The word rasped from my throat, grumbled even, ripped out through my loathing. A false name, a false past. “Not me.”

  “’Kay. Oopsie.” She turned and backed a few steps. “Sorry. Wolfe. I’ll remember.”

  Guess I was glowering. Her backing up sent a delicious tremor though my groin. She tripped on a stray brick and muttered fuck before recovering. Her eyes were big and she fumbled in her bag.

  Though she looked down and spoke quietly while she searched, as if to herself, her words reached me. “God. Today is just... Why did I agree to this?” Her swallow moved that little female throat, tempting my teeth, pulling a smile from me after all. “I’ll just get my keys.”