Martin Greenberg: The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

She picked up the phone and punched in the numbers fast, not giving herself a chance for second thoughts.

The barracks were empty, leaving David’s office silent and bleak. The boys were on furlough with their various families for December.

His mercenaries specialized in live retrieval which tended to be in and out stuff, a couple of weeks per job at the most. He didn’t want to get involved in the gray area of unsanctioned combat or out-and-out war-where you killed people because someone told you to. In retrieval there were good guys and bad guys still-and if there weren’t, he didn’t take the job. Their reputation was such that they had no trouble finding jobs.

And unless all hell really broke loose, they always took December off to be with their families. David never let them know how hard that made it for him.

Werewolves need their packs.

If his pack was human, well, they knew about him and they filled that odd wolf-quirk that demanded he have people to protect, brothers in heart and mind. He couldn’t stomach a real pack, he hated what he was too much.

He couldn’t bear to live with his own kind, but this worked as a substitute and kept him centered. When his boys were here, when they had a job to do, he had direction and purpose.

His grandsons had invited him for the family dinner, but he’d refused as he always did. He still saw his sons on a regular basis. Both of them had served in his small band of mercenaries for a while, until the life lost its appeal or the risks grew too great for men with growing families. But he stayed away at Christmas.

Restlessness had him pacing: there were no plans to make, no wrongs to right. Finally he unlocked the safe and pulled out a couple of the newer rifles. He needed to put some time in with them anyway.

An hour of shooting staved off the restlessness, but only until he locked the guns up again. He’d have to go for a run. When he emptied his pockets in preparation, he noticed he had missed a call while he’d been shooting. He glanced at the number, frowning when he didn’t recognize it. Most of his jobs came through an agent who knew better than to give out his cell number. Before he could decide if he wanted to return the call, his phone rang again, a call from the same number.

“Christiansen,” he answered briskly.

There was a long silence. “Papa?”

He closed his eyes and sank back in his chair feeling his heart expand with almost painful intentness as his wolf fought with the man who knew his daughter hated him: didn’t want to see him, ever. She had been there when her mother died.

“Stella?” He couldn’t imagine what it took to make her break almost forty years of silence. “Are you all right? Is there something wrong?” Someone he could kill for her? A building to blow up? Anything at all.

She swallowed. He could hear it over the line. He waited for her to hang up.

Instead, when she spoke again, her voice was brisk and the wavery pain that colored that first “Papa” was gone as if it had never been. “I was wondering if you would consider doing a favor for me.”

“What do you need?” He was proud that came out evenly. Always better to know what you’re getting into, he told himself. He wanted to tell her that she could ask him for anything-but he didn’t want to scare her.

“I run an agency that places foster kids,” she told him, as if he didn’t know. As if her brothers hadn’t told her how he quizzed them to find out how she was doing and what she was up to. He hoped she never found out about her ex-boyfriend who’d turned stalker. He hadn’t killed that one, though his willingness to do so had made it easier to persuade the man that he wanted to take up permanent residence in a different state.

“I know,” he said because it seemed like she needed a response.

“There’s something-” she hesitated. “Look, this might not have been the best idea.”

He was losing her again. He had to breathe deeply to keep the panic from his voice. “Why don’t you tell me about it anyway? Do you have something better to do?”

“I remember that,” she said. “I remember you doing that with Mom. She’d be hysterical, throwing dishes or books, and you’d sit down and say, ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’”

Did she want to talk about her mother now? About the one time he’d needed to be calm and failed? He hadn’t known he was a werewolf until it was too late. Until after he’d killed his wife and the lover she’d taken while David had been fighting for God and country, both of whom had forgotten him. She’d been waiting until he came home to tell him that she was leaving-it was a mistake she’d had no time to regret. He, on the other hand, might have forever to regret it for her.

He never spoke of it. Not to anyone. For Stella he’d do it, but she knew the story anyway. She’d been there.

“Do you want to talk about your mother?” he asked, his voice carrying into a lower timbre; as it did when the wolf was close.

“No. Not that,” she said hurriedly. “Nothing like that. I’m sorry. This isn’t a good idea.”

She was going to hang up. He drew on his hard-earned control and thought fast.

Forty years as a hunter and leader of men had given him a lot of practice reading between the lines. If he could put aside the fact that she was his daughter, maybe he could salvage this.

She’d told him she ran a foster agency like it was important to the rest of what she had to say.

“It’s about your work?” he asked, trying to figure out what a social worker would need with a werewolf. Oh. “Is there a-” His daughter preferred not to talk about werewolves, Clive had told him. So if there was something supernatural she was going to have to bring it up. “Is there someone bothering you?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. It’s one of my boys.”

Stella had never married, never had children of her own. Her brother said it was because she had all the people to take care of that she could handle.

“One of the foster kids.”

“Devonte Parish.”

“He one of your special ones?” he asked. His Stella had never seen a stray she hadn’t brought home, animal or human. Most she’d dusted off and sent home with a meal and bandages as needed-but some of them she’d kept.

She sighed. “Come and see him, would you? Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be there,” he promised. It would take him a few hours to set up permission from the packs in her area: travel was complicated for a werewolf. “Probably sometime in the afternoon. This the number I can find you at?”

Instead of taking a taxi from the airport, he rented a car. It might be harder to park, but it would give them mobility and privacy. If his daughter only needed this, if she didn’t want to smoke the peace pipe yet, then he didn’t need it witnessed by a cab driver. A witness would make it harder for him to control himself-and his little girl never needed to see him out of control ever again.

He called her before setting out, and he could tell that she’d had second and third thoughts.

“Look,” he finally told her. “I’m here now. Maybe we should go and talk to the boy. Where can I meet you?”

He’d have known her anywhere though he hadn’t, by her request, seen her since the night he’d killed his wife. She’d been twelve and now she was a grown woman with silver threads running through her kinky black hair. The last time he’d seen her she’d been still a little rounded and soft as most children are-and now there wasn’t an ounce of softness in her. She was muscular and lean-like him.