Under Wraps

I took a chance. “I really don’t think it was gangbangers.” I touched the broken skin above my eye, fresh pain blooming at the slightest touch. “I don’t think they do this kind of damage. This almost seemed … personal. Don’t you think?”

“We got to you just in time,” was all Opie said.

“Well, when you got to me, what did you see?”

A full thirty seconds of silence passed, and then Opie looked me full in the face and said, “We should get you upstairs.”

He insisted on walking me to my front door and standing far too close to me while I pushed the key in the lock. Then Opie slipped in front of me and into the apartment, doing a Law & Order- style, guns-drawn exploration of the house while I eyed him disdainfully from my spot in the hall. When Opie was certain no gangbangers were using the plastic ficus for cover, he left.

I immediately fished in my bag for my cell phone and sighed when I saw that Parker had tried to call me six times. I dialed him, and he picked up on the first ring.

“Lawson!” he shouted into the phone. “What the hell? I’ve been trying to call you for hours! Is everything okay?”

“It’s Sophie,” I sighed, “and yes, I think so.”

“Is everything okay at UDA? Where’s Sampson?”

“Yeah, yeah, the UDA is fine. But I don’t know where Mr. Sampson is.” I slumped into the couch, and found myself bawling.

“I can’t understand what you’re saying,” I heard Parker say between my hiccupping wails. “Slow down.”

“Something attacked me!” I sniffed. “They said it was gangbangers! But I don’t think it was gangbangers!” Sniff, sniff, wail. “My car is broken! Like a tin can!”

“Stay right there. I’m on my way.”

Barely fifteen minutes had passed when there was an insistent rapping on my door. My heart thundered as I stood on tiptoes and peeked through the peephole, seeing Parker’s head, distorted and huge in my view.

I opened the door timidly, just an inch, and my eyes settled on Parker’s. His were deep navy blue and intense.

“You didn’t ask who it was.”

I rolled my eyes, the relieved joy of seeing him standing in my hallway seeping away. “I have a peephole. And what is this, some kind of after-school special? I’m the victim here.”

Parker pushed the door open and walked past me. “And I’m trying to make sure that it never happens again.”

I closed the door and tumbled the lock, glancing once more out the peephole for Parker’s benefit. Then I sat on the couch, and Parker settled down next to me.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” he said.

But I couldn’t.

My eyes were locked on Detective Parker Hayes sitting on my couch at 3 A.M.: dark hair disheveled and unabashedly sexy, his square jaw littered with razor stubble, T-shirt on backward, his undershorts sticking out of the top of his sweatpants.

“Is that Daffy Duck?” I asked, eyeing the black cartoon ducks on his waistband.

He zipped up his sweat jacket and crossed his legs. “Geez, Lawson, can you keep your mind off my shorts for five minutes and let me concentrate? Now tell me what happened tonight.”

I opened my mouth to say something haughty and disgruntled, but Parker clapped a hand over my lips, effectively silencing me. “Just tell me what happened tonight, Sophie.”

I told Parker again about finding the broken chain and then about the attack on the street. “It was horrible,” I said, feeling my body start to shake. “The parts I remember. And then I woke up in Chief Oliver’s office.” I hugged my arms across my chest, holding onto my elbows. “They said it was gangbangers, but it wasn’t.” I wagged my head.

“You’re sure?”

I raised an eyebrow at Hayes. “You know what we’re dealing with.”

“Actually,” Hayes said, rubbing his palms on his thighs, “I don’t. Gangbangers I’m fairly used to. This kind of thing”—he gently thumbed the cut over my eye—“I’m really not. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m a little sticky from the blood and sore, but other than that, I’m pretty much fine.”

“You shouldn’t have been out alone in the middle of the night. It could have been much worse. I don’t know what I would have done if …”

I raised an eyebrow. “If what?”

Hayes shook his head. “Nothing. Was there anything else you remember? Anything else you can tell me about?”

I blew out a sigh and crossed the living room, digging my hand into my coat pocket. I sat down next to Hayes again. “When I went back I found this.” I held the little tuft of hair out to him.

“What is it?” he took it, examining it from every angle.

“Fur. It was stuck in one of the tears on my console.”

“Fur?” Hayes’s eyebrows shot up, and he sniffed at the tuft. “Dog fur?”

I looked down at my feet. “I’m thinking werewolf.”

“Sampson.” Hayes put the tuft of hair down on the coffee table and bounded to his feet, crossing the room in two long strides. He touched me gently, staring deeply into my eyes. “Did he bite you? Are you hurt badly?”

He gently rubbed his thumb over the cut on my forehead again, and I winced—although whether it was from the residual pain of the wound or the screaming desperation of my sex-starved body I wasn’t sure. Either way, it was uncomfortable and I stepped away.

“I can’t imagine Sampson would do something like this. And if he did, why now? Why not any other time, when we were alone together at the office? He wouldn’t attack. Not me, of all people.” I swallowed hard against the lump rising in my throat. “He likes me.”

The muscle in Hayes’s jaw twitched. “If he hurt you in any way …”

I pulled at the sleeve of my shirt, and Hayes’s eyes went wide at the yellowing bruise on my forearm. “He didn’t scratch me or bite me.”

“But your eye—”

“That was from the car. I hit my head. If it was Sampson”—I shook my head slowly, trying to avoid the newest flood of tears—“well, it doesn’t seem like the person I ran into was the same person who tore that guy limb from limb. I mean, look at me.”

Hayes swallowed hard. “I am.”

“What?”

“Look, Lawson, maybe the chief and Officer Franks just got to you before Sampson had a chance to really hurt you. You said you don’t remember much. And, how much do you really know about werewolves? What they’re capable of?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again, frowning. “My boss is a werewolf.”

“Your boss is a man who becomes a werewolf when you leave at night. How much do you know about him when he’s dogged out?”

I felt my eyes narrow, and Hayes raised his shoulders as if to say “So?” I blew out a defeated sigh and flopped down onto the couch.

“Not too much, I guess.”

“How does he act when you chain him up?” Hayes’s cobalt eyes were on mine and they were smoldering. “Is he violent?”

“No,” I said, shrugging. “He never has been.”

“And his hair—fur, I guess—does it look like this?” Hayes held up the clump of hair again.

“I don’t know. He’s fine when I lock him up and I—I leave before he changes.”

“So you’ve never actually seen him as a wolf?” Hayes sat down close to me on the couch, his thigh brushing mine.

I clamped my hands together in my lap. “Well, no, not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”