The Bureau (A Cage for Men and Wolves Book 1) Read online

  "I'm sorry..." Elliot mumbled after a second.

  Clover felt a churning in her stomach. She'd been relieved to be with him again, but she hadn't expected him to seem concerned about her. She figured it was the proximity they'd been in—and their strange circumstances—which made them feel bonded somehow. She had to remind herself that he was a Bureau worker, though, just like everyone else.

  "Well, I suppose it's no worse than breaking into someone's house and assaulting them."

  Elliot hummed noncommittally as the doors to the lift opened in the lobby.

  "So you thought I was going to have a private office and free access to anything you wanted. Or, at the very least, you thought our databases were just open for anyone. And then you didn't know that our indentured wolves work maintenance?" Elliot was barely trying to hide his smile as he closed the stained glass door behind them.

  The trip on the subway had been less traumatic than that morning, but Elliot's new boldness had put her in a bad mood.

  "Shut up. You could have at least given me a heads up about Pierson."

  "I thought you knew." Both of Elliot's eyebrows were arched high as he removed his coat. "Though, I'm starting to get the impression there are a lot of things you don't know."

  "Do you want to sleep in the bathtub again?" She checked the back door, still nervous that her fortress would be breached.

  "You didn’t know a single thing about the Bureau, or about what you were doing in general, but you thought ruining someone’s life would just happen to work out for you." He waved his hand as he walked up the stairs, his voice a strange combination of amusement and anger.

  "Get off your pedestal." Clover was too tired to do anything other than follow him. "You're ruining lives every day. Just because you're not the type to slap someone across the face, doesn't mean you're one of the good guys." She was eager to get back into her own clothes.

  After they'd both changed—Elliot into house pants and a T-shirt, and Clover into her familiar knitted top and worn jeans—they turned their attention to dinner. Clover's crew hadn't been fed a real meal during their shift, so she was too impatient to wait for anything that needed much attention. Eventually, Elliot agreed to make them sandwiches.

  "Couldn't you ask your dad to get the files for us?" A mouthful of crust muffled her words.

  "That would be a little suspicious, don't you think?"

  It felt strange, sitting and eating together, like they were friends rather than prisoner and captor.

  "Well then maybe I should bite someone who does have access to them."

  "No one has access to them," he defended. "Once a case has been finalized, there’s no reason to get back into it. The only reason we keep them at all is for accounting reasons. Why else would we need to go through them?"

  "Jeanette!" Clover almost spit her food onto her plate in her excitement. "A lady I worked with today. She said her owner is in the accounting department. He could get them for us."

  Elliot gave her a look reminiscent of the one she got in his cubicle, but this time there was a layer of annoyance added to it. "No one is going to just give us those files. We'd never be able to trust him, and there's not an excuse in the world that would make what's going on here look normal."

  "Then you come up with something," she snapped back, hating the feel of her prisoner at the wheel.

  "I can put in a request for them, but I'll have to come up with a good excuse for why I need them." Elliot eased an icepack he'd made onto his bruised shoulder. The bite wound had swelled up during the day. "It could take a while for the request to go through."

  "How long is 'a while'?"

  "I don't know. Maybe a week?"

  Clover stared at him. She’d wanted to be done in a week. Now she couldn't even start for a week? She did the math that every werewolf had become skilled at in her head. She had twenty-four days left until the full moon, give or take. That sounded like a lot, but she suddenly found it hard to swallow. If this tiny step—the one that was supposed to be the easiest—was setting her back, what other problems might she run into?

  "God, I've made such a stupid mistake." She put her face in her hands.

  "You're just now figuring that out?"

  "I mean you! You were supposed to be important. You were in the newspaper." She leaned back in her seat, grabbing the side of the table like it would keep her grounded.

  "They just like to blow things out of proportion."

  "Naming you as successor doesn't sound like ‘blowing things out of proportion' to me."

  "My family's been running that place for generations. Of course they'd be interested in me."

  "You make it sound like you don't want to be in charge."

  "Actually, I don't."

  "Yeah, right." Without a word, she extended her hand toward him, waving her fingers demandingly for the ice pack.

  He passed it to her without argument, probably thinking he could keep her temper in check if she had ice on her still-tender burn. Clover sighed as the cool plastic touched her neck. Holding it with one hand she went back to her dinner. She was almost done before Elliot said anything else.

  "I only did the newspaper thing because my dad forced me. I’d rather just let Dominic take over."

  Clover choked on the last bite of her sandwich and threw the ice pack onto the table. She knew she wasn't being subtle, but her mind was so crowded that her terror kept getting lost, only to spike again when she recalled the new obstacle Rainer had become.

  "He really scares you, doesn't he?" The sharp green of Elliot’s eyes watched her. "Dominic, I mean. You froze up when he walked into the office, too." He took a bite of his food, like he didn’t realize how uncomfortable he was making her.

  "Is that a problem?" Clover challenged.

  "Not really. He's a scary guy." He paused, then continued more cautiously. "Have you met him before?"

  Clover knew her transparency meant he didn't need to ask that question, but his intentions were clear. She wanted to be in control, and he knew. She was both annoyed and grateful that he let her keep that.

  "We'd read about him in the papers," she muttered, returning the icepack to her burn.

  "When they ran the story about the pack on the west end?" Elliot's voice was masterfully neutral, seeming neither proud nor distressed about the news.

  "Yeah. He kind of has a reputation. Then I got to play a game of chase with him."

  They both went silent, the weight of an encounter like that seeming clear, even to Elliot. Not wanting to give up her dignity, though, Clover took a deep breath, puffed out her chest, and smiled.

  "But I gave him the slip. It was the day before I broke into your house, actually." She smiled in a way that dared Elliot to question her. He didn’t have to know that she'd cowered in the sewers.

  "Actually," Elliot began, seeming very serious, "He was in a pretty shit mood that day."

  They looked at each other across the table for a second, then Elliot started to smile, and she saw his attempt to comfort her. Under that, she saw personal satisfaction. He liked that his brother had failed, and suddenly they had something in common: a hatred of Dominic Rainer. Clover fought the smile tugging at her lips, the bubbling satisfaction they shared making it impossible for her to keep stern. Deciding it wasn't a battle worth fighting, she laughed at her plate.

  "Was he really?" she asked after a moment, enjoying the momentary relief.

  "He was pissed. Threw a tantrum in dispatch. He gets so angry when things don't go his way. He's like a child."

  They both chuckled again, quietly, and maybe a little uncertainly. Given their situation, neither of them thought that laughing together was really appropriate, and Clover wondered where, exactly, Elliot stood with his family.

  "Why is his name different?" Clover asked as she handed the icepack back to her prisoner, who was quickly feeling more like a partner in crime.

  "We're stepbrothers," he readily explained as he eased the icepack onto his shoulder again
. "When my dad remarried, my stepmom already had a son. He kept his father's last name."

  "How old were you?"

  "Young. We grew up together. After my stepmom left he wanted to change his name so he could take over the director’s chair, but my dad wouldn’t have it. We both think Dom’s a better candidate, but there’s a lot of pressure for the position to stay in the family. It’s like a throne or something.”

  "You mean you actually want Rainer to be in charge?"

  "I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want him to, necessarily. But the Bureau is kind of his life. He seems more qualified than I am. And I don’t really want the responsibility, you know?"

  "He’s totally ruthless, though. Doesn’t that bother you?" Despite his attitude, it was a relief talking to someone about Rainer. She didn’t like what he was saying, but she accepted the icepack when he passed it back to her.

  Elliot shrugged. "It wouldn’t really be my business once he was in charge. Besides, changing things would be hard, even if he had the Director’s position. I know he wants to dissolve the slavery program, but it funds all of the Bureau’s endeavors. The share-holders would never let him make changes like that.

  "If he doesn’t want to keep them as slaves, what would he do instead?" She asked, her voice smaller than she'd meant it to be.

  "Well, he'd kill them," Elliot said, seeming surprised she had to ask. "All of them."

  Clover felt her stomach clench, both at the idea of someone so brutal taking control of the Bureau, and the realization that the friendly atmosphere she had been feeling was all a joke. She could hear it in his voice: his indifference. He wouldn’t care about what happened to Clover, or her pack. This was a sibling rivalry over a seat of power inside a company that turned a buck through the mass murder and trafficking of innocent people. He was as guilty as anyone else.

  "Try not to sound too upset about it." She threw the icepack down again, this time with a definitive flick of her wrist.

  “Hold on, now. Just because I don’t want to be in charge doesn’t mean I want him killing an entire tier of our workforce.”

  "Yeah, the workforce. That’s what you’re worried about. Not the innocent people who would be murdered.”

  “I think we both need to calm down.” He raised his hands like he was surrendering. “I mean, we’re talking about werewolves here, not people.”

  Before the thinking part of her brain caught up with Elliot's words, she lunged across the table. Her hand caught a fistful of blond hair, and her knee landed in her plate. She was even more furious when Elliot looked surprised as she punched the expression off his face. She was shouting as Elliot fell out of his chair, dragging her off the table with him—something about him being an insensitive prick.

  The fight that ensued was mostly Clover trying to do irreparable damage, and Elliot trying to subdue her. He begged for her to get a grip, but, even while shouting, he refused to hit back, which only made her angrier. Once Clover rammed his head into the side of the fridge, though, he snagged her by her hair.

  "Will you calm down?" he screamed. "I don’t want to kill anyone!"

  Clover was still straddled across his stomach, trying to detangle his fingers from her hair with one hand and claw at his face with the other, when a pounding resonated through the house. Immediately, the heat drained from their fight. They froze as a unit. Then the stained glass door shook with another round of knuckles and Clover stood up. Both moved slowly—as if afraid of spooking a rabid animal— to look down the hall. Through the glass, the light from the street outlined a dark figure.

  "It's Dom." Elliot's throat sounded dry, and neither of them moved toward the door.

  - 13 -

  Clover mapped her escape route in her head. She could make it out the back door before Rainer could break the lock on the front, or before Elliot could turn on her and let him in. She was more familiar with the area, now, too. The far eastern corner of the park across the street was heavily wooded, and there was a large storm drain near the subway entrance she'd met Fisher at. She could disappear into either.

  Her body flinched toward the back exit every time the door shook under Rainer's fist, but her feet stayed cemented in place. She could run, but that also meant giving up her only opportunity to find her family. She wouldn't be able to trick Elliot again, and even if she managed to take a different prisoner, the entire Bureau would be looking for her.

  "Clover."

  Elliot's voice barely registered. Had he been saying something? He sounded serious, but if she took her eyes off the door, Rainer would sneak inside. She was sure of it.

  "Hey, look at me." This time, his hands forced her to turn toward him, making it impossible to ignore him any longer.

  She knew her pupils were blown out in fear, because everything looked bright, like the whole room was overexposed. Elliot's face was in such sharp focus that she noticed a tiny freckle under the corner of his left eye that she'd never seen before.

  "Go upstairs." He spoke like he was repeating himself, his words pointed and spaced out. "He can't see you dressed like this."

  He was right. She didn't need a pamphlet to tell her that being out of uniform was inappropriate, and as she recognized his sincerity she felt foolish for thinking he would willingly let Rainer in. Maybe she shouldn't have hit his head against the fridge like that.

  "I'll take care of him," he said, obviously steeling himself.

  Clover thought she should thank him, then the handle began rattling at the front door and her body flew up the stairs, instinctively fleeing her natural predator. By the time she slammed the bedroom door behind her, she could hear the two brothers shouting through the door at each other.

  Taking stock of the disheveled room, she hoped Elliot would be able to turn the other man away before he got in. On the floor, at the base of the dresser, was the small bundle that held her branding kit, which had tumbled loose when she'd thrown it there the night before. Her other belongings were laid out by the pallet she'd slept on, and many of the toiletries she'd thrown from the bathroom still littered the floor.

  "Where is she?" Rainer's baritone voice shook its way up the stairs and Clover knew he was inside.

  He was looking for her. Actively. With shaking fingers she snatched her branding kit from the floor, wrapping it up and throwing it into the back of the closet, quickly followed by her satchel. She couldn't let him see the room like this. Downstairs, muffled voices moved toward the back of the house where the kitchen chairs had been tipped over and the little pane of glass in the back door still sat unfixed. There was nothing she could do about that.

  As she finished kicking the soaps, washcloths, and spare razors under the bed she heard footsteps on the stairs and suddenly remembered the reason she'd been sent upstairs in the first place. Her uniform laid scattered across the foot of the bed and the floor and she realized she wouldn't be able to change in time.

  "You can't just barge into other peoples' houses." Elliot was shouting from just down the hall. She was impressed by the depth of his tone, which nearly matched his brother's now. Rainer's familiar boot tread didn't hesitate, though.

  "I know you're hiding something," Rainer growled, "and I'm not leaving until I find it."

  With no time left, and with her heart beating frantically in her throat, Clover did the only thing she could think of; she tore her worn clothes from her body, kicking them under the bed as they dropped to the floor, then scrambled under the blankets. She pulled the downy comforter over her bare chest just as the door flew open, Rainer ignoring his younger brother's violent pull on his uniform.

  "I told you to lea—" Before Elliot could finish, both men came to a stop just inside the door.

  Clover had known that Rainer was suspicious, so she knew he was expecting to find something, but a naked, deceptively debauched looking werewolf in his brother's bed was not it. For a long time the three stared at each other, Elliot's mouth hanging open in an expression somewhere between embarrassment and betrayal. Even
Rainer's eyes had widened briefly.

  "This isn't what it looks like." Elliot stumbled over his words.

  Rainer and Clover both looked at him, but while Rainer seemed amused, Clover was not. He needed to shut his mouth, and if she'd been alone with him she would have shut it for him. This distraction from their actual plan was exactly what they needed, but Elliot refused to look at her, making it impossible for her to send him any kind of silent warning.

  "You really expect me to believe that?" Rainer asked, his face contorted in what Clover assumed was supposed to be his smile.

  "Yes!"

  “Really? With your mussed hair and stretched T-shirt?” Rainer’s hand swept across his brother’s blond hair that stuck out at odd angles from where Clover had grabbed in in their fight. She may have also torn the neck of his shirt.

  Elliot knocked his hand away, looking like he wanted to slam his brother into the door frame.

  Clover’s throat was dry when she tried to interject. "I can expl—"

  "Shut up!" The concussive sound of Rainer’s voice made Clover jump inside her armor of blankets. "You speak in front of me again, and I'll make sure even my brother won’t want to look at you," Rainer warned, deep and sincere.

  Clover didn't need anyone to tell her that she'd gone pale, or what his threat implied. Memories of the beating she'd seen in the park so many years ago resurfaced again. She wondered if that girl survived, and what sort of permanent damage she'd suffered if she had. Unable to keep steady under his ice-cold stare, Clover looked at the blankets instead.

  "That's enough, Dominic," Elliot insisted, though Clover could hear the faked bravado. "She's mine, and she's allowed to say whatever she wants."

  There was a confused fluttering in Clover's stomach. She found something about Elliot standing up to this man, who they both feared, strangely admirable. Then she remembered she was still considered property, and while she understood that she was free to leave if she wanted—that Elliot was only pretending at her request—it still infuriated her. She'd never thought she'd have to convince herself of the same thing she'd tried so hard to convince Hannah of: Even a kind owner is still a villain.