Rivals (Book 2 of The Warden series) Read online

  “Don’t,” Danato said flatly. He could see the wheels turning in her head. She was preparing a full-on debate to try to win the issue. It would be a pointless argument that would only end with him asserting his authority. “I’ve explored every option. There is no way to move him without violating prison standards.”

  “It’s just one prisoner.”

  “I know your conviction, Cori, but understand that moving one prisoner is not just about space and cost. If I move him, I have to take into consideration the vulnerabilities of every prisoner around him and his to them. I can’t move him if it will risk lives to do so.”

  “You don’t trust him.”

  Danato didn’t like the statement. It meant that she did trust him. He had up to this point resisted the urge to ban her from seeing him. He knew that would only put a match to her gasoline. “I don’t trust any of the prisoners. I have already spoken with him. We’ve come to a few minor agreements that will make him more comfortable. He was moved to a bigger cell, and he has been given better furnishings.”

  Cori stood up and went to the door for her dramatic exit.

  “Cori.” He knew she wasn’t giving up yet. She turned back. He resisted the urge to ask her to sit back down. “This discussion is over.” He tried his best to soften his voice. “I’ve done what can be done. If you plan to take over this job, you will need to be prepared for disappointment.”

  “I assure you, I am,” she said before giving the door its second round of abuse for the day.

  35

  Ethan ran across graveled roofs, giving chase to his prey. At the first alley, he skipped the vacancy with ease. With the ending of the next roof, he was forced to leap. At the edge of the building, he jumped with little hope of landing on the other side.

  For several seconds, his feet were suspended in the air, searching for solid ground. When the last hope of reaching the next building left him, he gave in to the plummet with a long, drawn-out curse.

  Two men on the roof behind him skidded to a halt at the roof’s edge just in time to see him miss his target. “Ethan, you crazy son of a bitch!” they yelled from above as he fell.

  Ethan’s skin burned as the pool below slapped him harshly. He went under hoping he had landed in the deep end. He hit the bottom with a nice bump and relaxed into the atmosphere of muted sense.

  Overhead he could hear his friends laughing and yelling. He waited several seconds before two splashes followed him into the pool. They swam to him to check if he was conscious. He crossed his arms under the water and shook his head, refusing to surface. They swam back up to wait for him on dry land.

  After emerging and wringing out their clothes, Daniel, Ethan, and Heaton headed back to where they started. Heaton was a tall skinny black man who insisted on trying to pull off dreadlocks. So far, he was unsuccessful. He walked with a slight hitch in his step alongside Ethan, the last vestige of his shortened career in the British military.

  They made their way back to an old Volkswagen van via sidewalk instead of roof.

  “What were you thinking?” Daniel mused. “I mean, did you suddenly think, ‘hey maybe I’ll catch her this time.’ I can’t believe you even tried. Again!”

  “Just because no one has ever caught one doesn’t mean I can’t try,” Ethan defended his insanity.

  “No, it just means you’re stupid to try,” Heaton chimed in as he opened the side door to make room on the back seat for wet coats to be draped.

  “You knew there was a pool, right?” Daniel asked.

  Ethan gave him an annoyed looked.

  “Are you thick?” Daniel scolded. “You never would have made that jump in a million years; I hope to hell you knew there was a pool to catch you.”

  Ethan ripped off his coat and handed it to Heaton to hang up. “Haven’t you ever tried to go beyond what the rules tell you?”

  “The rules of gravity?”

  “The werewolf rules!” Ethan shouted back.

  Heaton and Daniel exchanged a look. Heaton put a finger to Ethan’s chest. “They aren’t rules. They are facts. The fact in this case is that no one has ever caught a female werewolf, therefore it is likely that no one ever will; therefore… un-catch-able.”

  Ethan glared at him as well. He still wasn’t ready to believe that.

  Heaton looked back at Daniel. “He still doesn’t get it.”

  “I get it.” Ethan shoved Heaton’s finger away. “What’s the harm in trying? It’s sport, right: the most challenging hunt ever.”

  “Ethan.” Daniel leaned sideways against the van. “The harm is: that werewolf was toying with you. She knew you couldn’t jump that roof. She just basically double-dog dared you to jump it,” Daniel pushed his hands off his temples, miming his brain being blown away, “and you did.”

  “Lucky for us,” Heaton said. “She did know there was a pool there to catch you.”

  “The dangerous part is this,” Daniel continued. “She has your scent. Any time she wants to mess with your head, she’ll hunt you down. You’ll conveniently find her, and think you have the drop on her, but she will already know your every move. Trust me, Ethan; Cori has got to be easier to catch than a fem-wolf.”

  “This isn’t about that!” Ethan snapped.

  “The hell you say. Freud would have a hay day. Of course, he would have thought you had an obsession with dogs, not Cori.”

  “It’s nothing to do with her.” Ethan ground his teeth.

  “How did that go, anyway?” Heaton asked, walking around the van to the driver’s side.

  They all loaded into the vehicle with Heaton driving. Daniel settled into shotgun before he continued. “She’s a lot more than he gave her credit for.”

  “Really?” Heaton glanced to Ethan in the seat behind Daniel.

  “I said she was pretty,” Ethan said from the back seat.

  “Bullshit!” Daniel objected. “You made her out to be “Sarah plain and tall.” She’s Cori short and tight.” Daniel gave a grunt and a hip thrust to add to his description. Ethan punched his shoulder.

  “Doable?” Heaton asked.

  “Totally.” Daniel rubbed his shoulder. “If she weren’t in such bad shape, I would have tried.”

  “You said she was fine. What’s wrong with her?” Ethan asked.

  Daniel gave Heaton a glance. “I told you what was wrong. She is recovering well. I was referring to in such bad shape over you. She was downright pissed when she realized you weren’t going to be there.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Ethan said, trying to be only passively interested. He had poured his heart out numerous times when he was drinking with these two, but he didn’t like offering them his life story sober. He wasn’t entirely sure why he did it drunk.

  “Actually,” Daniel continued, “she may have been pissed ‘cause I told her every bleedin’ thing you ever told us about her.”

  “What?” Ethan sat up straight in the back seat. He couldn’t remember all his drunken confessions, but he knew some of them were rather hostile in theme. “Like what?”

  “That she wasn’t that hot, but you’d do her anyway, because she’s a safe investment.”

  Before Daniel could laugh at his exaggeration, Ethan’s seat belt was off and he was around the seat with fists wrapped in Daniel’s shirt pushing into his chin. “You son of a bitch, that’s not what I said! She’ll hate me now! How could you do that?”

  Heaton stopped the van and grabbed Ethan’s arm gently. “Ethan, he didn’t say that to her. Daniel, tell him you didn’t say that!”

  Daniel sputtered under the pressure on his larynx. “I told her you appreciated a humble woman over a vain one.”

  Ethan started to release. “You shouldn’t have told her anything.”

  “I told her you thought about her all the time.”

  Ethan released his shirt. “Why did you speak to her at all? I just wanted to see if she was okay. Now she thinks I don’t want to see her.”

  “She thinks you’re resisting your f
eelings for her,” Daniel said. “Which you are!”

  Ethan sat back down and belted up. Heaton continued to drive.

  “Why don’t you just go back there?” Daniel ranted. “You want to be with her, so be with her.”

  “I’m not going to go back there to be with her, unless I can be with her. She has to make me an offer of love. She already knows how I feel. If I stay and we do nothing but bicker and dance around our feelings, what’s the point? I don’t need a woman to grant my every desire, but I at least want one that wants me around.”

  “I’m telling you, she does,” Daniel exclaimed.

  “If I walked into that prison tomorrow, would she smile and come rushing to greet me?” Ethan asked, knowing full well that nothing was ever that easily interpreted with Cori.

  Daniel exchanged another look with Heaton.

  “Will you stop doing that?” Ethan yelled. “Just tell me.”

  “Honestly,” Daniel said, “I think she would still be a little offish to you, but only because her pride hasn’t been hurt enough to warrant showing all her cards.”

  “What does that even mean?” Ethan asked.

  “It means she’s stubborn as a mule,” Heaton added.

  Daniel nodded.

  “I know that! What do I do about it?”

  “You can’t push a mule,” Heaton offered.

  Ethan slammed his fist into the ceiling of the van.

  “Easy on the wheels,” Heaton begged.

  “I’ve been not pushing for a long time. I’m sick of being patient.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want you to go see her,” Daniel said. “If you went to see her you would have thrown yourself at her. She might have accepted you. She might have been scared off. I don’t know crap about you two together, but the two of you apart is hurting her. Just give it a little while longer.”

  “You want me to hurt her a little longer?”

  “Yes, and then I want you to go back to her with a smile and just enough flirtation to get her thinking about you, but not enough to get her on the defensive.”

  “This sounds so conniving.”

  “If you love her like you claim, then you hunt her down like you did that fem-wolf. Only you don’t jump off the building. She does.” Daniel paused to collect his metaphor. “And you aren’t you, you’re the pool.”

  Ethan chuckled at him. “You want me to bait her with my manly wiles—“

  “Do men have wiles?” Heaton asked.

  “Shut up,” Ethan continued. “You want me to bait her, force her to make the leap of faith, and then I catch her?” Ethan thought about that plan. He liked it. He just wasn’t confident that she would make the leap. One way or another he was taking a leap too.

  36

  Cori skidded to a stop in front of a glass-fronted square cell. “Cleos? Cleos!” Cleos sat within the cell reading under the glow of blue light.

  Cori jumped around in front of the cell, continuing to yell, while he sat calmly within. She waved a piece of paper frantically before him. Finally, she gave up and slammed her fist on the glass.

  He looked up. He furrowed his brow and came to a two-sided box built into the glass enclosure. He pressed the button. “Hello, Cori.”

  “I took my test today!” she said unnecessarily, speaking into the box on her side.

  “Oh, yes, that little endeavor. I really thought you would have quit trying for that after Ethan left.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Oh, never mind. I overthink things. I didn’t think you were fully healed up,” Cleos said.

  “Actually, I feel really good. Non-existent prisons get the best health care. No, I took the written test today.”

  “How did it go? Clearly horrible.”

  “What?” She perched her hands on her sides.

  Cleos smiled. “I take it you passed.”

  “I got a ninety-two.” Cori flattened the paper to the glass.

  Cleos examined the paper test with the big red 92 and smiled.

  “I needed an eighty-six to pass, and they said only the best wardens have gotten into the ninetieth percentile. I told Danato, and he was surprised. Actually, insultingly surprised. I’m wondering if I didn’t score higher than him; he seemed a little perturbed.”

  Cleos nodded, taking in her ranting, overlapping sentences.

  “I just wanted to come down here and thank you because I wouldn’t have begun to know what to study if it weren’t for you. I know this cage isn’t what I promised you, but I guess it will do, right?”

  Cleos nodded. “It’s alright. Better than I expected of Danato. When do you take your physical exam?”

  “Three weeks. Apparently the board only comes in the summer months, not that I blame them. I’m terrified though. I don’t really know what to do to prepare.”

  “Sleep, eat, and exercise.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any words of advice?” she asked.

  “None that you’ll listen to,” Cleos said.

  “What do you mean? I listen to you.”

  “Cori,” Cleos stepped closer to the glass. “Do you remember why you started this journey?”

  “I didn’t want to be somebody who needed to be taken care of. I wanted to be my own rock. I… why are you asking me this?” She didn’t understand why he wasn’t jumping up and down with joy. Or at the very least congratulating her.

  “I have insight into your mind. Parts that you don’t even pay attention too. I’m not sure completing your test is what you want.”

  “Why…?” Cori shook her head, trying to formulate a question. “Danato worked so hard to get me this opportunity. How will it look if I quit? How could anyone take me seriously after I made such a big deal about getting this job? I didn’t think I could do it, but I got the elementals back in their cages, even when the military couldn’t. Cleos, I’ve earned this.”

  “Yes, you have. I don’t know your long-term future for certain, but from what I see in you, you may want to ask yourself what the wardenship will give you. If you figure that out before you compete, you might be happier in the long run.”

  “Okay.” She slid her paper achievement off the glass wall and headed out. “I’m going to go show this to someone who actually gives a crap.”

  “Cori!” Cleos pressed closer to the glass. She looked back. “Cut your hair!”

  “Why?”

  “It’s an unwanted appendage when it comes to fighting dragons.”

  37

  Danato abruptly halted as he passed the downstairs bathroom. The door was half open and Cori stood in front of the mirror with scissors to her neck. “What are you doing?”

  He barged in, prepared to stop a suicide attempt. He saw the tentative cut she had made lying against her chin. Six inches or so of flaxen hair lay in the sink, threatening to clog the drain. Cori looked at him with teary eyes. “What are you doing?” he asked softly.

  “Cleos said that hair and dragons don’t mix.”

  Danato’s head tilted back as he added that concern to his own list of worries about her upcoming test. He didn’t like that Cori had spoken with Cleos, but he did have a valid point. “Yes, I didn’t think of that. Any excessive length will provide an opportunity for him to snag you.”

  “It’s just hair,” she said, losing a tear.

  Danato nodded.

  “It will grow back,” she said.

  Danato nodded again. He understood that he wasn’t the one that needed convincing.

  “Then why does it feel like a hysterectomy?”

  Danato chuckled and hugged her from behind. “Because you think your femininity is dependent on it.” He pulled her hair away from her face, looking at her reflection. “It’s not.”

  “You cut it.” She shoved the scissors at him.

  He flinched away from them. “How is that a good idea?”

  “If it looks horrible I will have someone to blame.” Danato laughed and took the scissors. He didn’t have any experience cutting hair, but he went
at her golden locks with the precision of a surgeon, one little lock at a time.

  38

  Cori ran through the halls of the prison, trying to maintain some semblance of calm. After a quick corner that sent her sliding into the adjacent wall, she stopped running and caught her breath.

  She combed back her short bob-cut hair with her fingers. She checked her shirt for anything resembling that morning’s breakfast. She even checked the zipper on her pants. Passing by an observation window, she checked her teeth for—once again—anything resembling breakfast. This also prompted her to check her breath.

  She strolled into the truck dock slightly out of breath and rubbing her shoulder. Several of the loading attendants lounged by the door. They glanced at her with knowing smiles. She checked her watch, before smoothing down her hair again.

  “Either you’re early, or he’s late,” the oldest man said.

  “Men,” she scoffed, shrugging her shoulders. She was about to leave rather than be gawked at by the attendants, but she heard the semi-trailer pull in. She checked her watch again and tried to wait casually against the back wall while the vehicle was positioned before letting anything or anyone off.

  The attendants headed to the dock and opened the garage door. A gust of cold air filled the room from the gaps left between the truck and the dock door. The truck door rose without their assistance. Ethan stood on the other side looking tired and unshaven.

  His tight black stocking cap and leather jacket were probably just as cliché as Vince’s long black trench coat had been, but it didn’t seem to stop her from admiring the view. She smiled at his calm command as he strutted across the dock.

  She took a step away from the wall to greet him. She pulled her lips down into a simpler smile so she wasn’t grinning like a clown when he first saw her. She tipped her chin for a casual nod when she thought she was in close enough view. He glanced at her and gave a return head nod, after which he walked right on by, to the exit.

  Cori’s brow dipped and her mouth dropped. All hopes and fantasies of rushing into each other’s arms faded away. She had officially become the casual head-nod friend. Not even the friendly “Hi” friend, just a nod.