What the heck had Samuel been doing all the way out at the bridge on the old highway north of Hanford? That was clear on the other side of the Tri-Cities and then some, and nowhere near any possible route between our house and the hospital. Maybe he’d been running out in the Reach, where people were scarce and ground squirrels plentiful. Just because he hadn’t told me that he was going out hunting didn’t mean he hadn’t. I wasn’t his keeper.
“He didn’t say anything about danger to him,” I told her truthfully and followed it with a small lie designed to lead her into telling me more details. “I thought it was just the car.”
“That’s Doc Cornick,” she snorted. “He wouldn’t let us do anything other than get the glass out of his skin—but just from the way he’s moving, you can tell he did something to his ribs. And he’s limping, too.”
“Sounds like it was worse than he told me,” I commented, feeling sick to my stomach.
“He went all the way through the windshield and was hanging on to the hood of the car. Jack—that’s the policeman—Jack said he thought that Samuel was going to fall off the hood before he could get there. The wreck must have dazed Doc because he was crawling the wrong way—if Jack hadn’t stopped him, he’d have gone over.”
And then I understood exactly what had happened.
“Honey? Honey? Are you okay? Here, sit down.”
She’d pulled out a chair when I wasn’t watching and held it behind me. My ears were ringing, my head was down between my knees, and her hand was on my back.
And for a moment, I was fourteen again, hearing Bran tell me what I’d already known—Bryan, my foster father, was dead—his body had been found in the river. He’d killed himself after his mate, my foster mother, had died.
Werewolves are too tough to die easily, so there aren’t many ways for a werewolf to commit suicide. Since the French Revolution pretty much unpopularized the guillotine in the eighteenth century, self-decapitation just isn’t all that easy.
Silver bullets have some difficulties, too. Silver is harder than lead, and the bullets sometimes blow right through and leave the wolf sick, in pain, and alive. Silver shot works a little better, but unless rigged just right, it can take a long time to die. If some busybody comes along and picks all the shot out—well, there’s all that pain for nothing.
The most popular choice is death by werewolf. But that wouldn’t be an option for Samuel. Very few wolves would take up his challenge—and those that would . . . Let me just say I wouldn’t want to see a fight between Samuel and Adam. Even odds aren’t what suicidal people are looking for.
Drowning is the next most popular choice. Werewolves can’t swim; their bodies are too dense—and even a werewolf needs to breathe.
I even knew why he’d chosen the location he had. The Columbia is the biggest river in the area, more than a mile wide and deep, but the three biggest bridges over it—the Blue Bridge, the suspension bridge, and the interstate bridge—all have two heavy-duty guardrails. There is also a fair bit of traffic on those, even in the middle of the night. Someone is sure to see you go over and attempt a rescue. It takes a few minutes to drown.
The bridge he’d chosen instead was not as heavily traveled and had been built before bridges were designed so that even morons would have a hard time driving off of them. The river is narrower at that point—which means deeper and faster—and the drop-off is . . . impressive.
I could see it, Samuel on the nose of the car and the police officer running up. It had been sheer dumb luck that the only other vehicle on the road was a police car. If it had been an ordinary bystander, he might have been too fearful of his own safety to attempt a rescue, and would have let Samuel drown. But a policeman might just follow him in and try to rescue him. Might put his life at risk for Samuel.
No, Samuel wouldn’t have fallen once the police officer found him.
No matter how much he wanted to.
My dizziness was fading.
“You be happy,” he’d told me when I’d left on my ill-fated date. A wish for my life and not for the date.
The jerk. I felt the growl rise in my throat and had to work to swallow it.
“He’s all right,” the nurse assured me. I pulled my head out from between my knees and noticed on the way up that her name tag read JODY. “We got the glass out, and though he’s moving stiffly, he hasn’t broken anything major or he wouldn’t have lasted this long. He should have gone home, but he didn’t want to—and you know how he is. He never says no, but sends you on your way without ever saying yes either.”
I knew.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, standing up slowly so as to give the appearance of steadiness. “It just caught me off guard. We’ve known each other a long time—and he didn’t tell me it was anywhere near that bad.”
“He probably didn’t want to scare you.”
“Yeah, he’s considerate like that.” My aching butt he was considerate. I’d kill him myself—and then he wouldn’t have to worry about suicide.
“He said he was going to find a quiet place and rest for a minute,” Nurse Jody said, looking around as if he ought to appear from thin air.
“He said I could find him in the X-ray storage room.”
She laughed. “Well, I guess it is quiet in there. You know where it is?”
I smiled, which is tough when you’re ready to skin someone.
“Sure.” Still smiling, I walked briskly past curtained-off rooms that smelled of blood and pain, nodding to a med tech who looked vaguely familiar. At least the baby’s cries had muted to whimpers.
Samuel had tried to commit suicide.
I knocked on the storage-room door, then opened it. White cardboard file boxes were piled up on racks with a feeling of imposed order—as if somewhere there was someone who would know how to find things here.
Samuel sat on the floor, his back against a stack of boxes. He had a white lab coat on over a set of green scrubs. His arms rested across his knees, hands limp and hanging. His head was bowed, and he didn’t look up when I came in. He waited until I shut the door behind me to speak, and he didn’t look at me then either.
I thought it was because he was ashamed or because he knew I was angry.
“He tried to kill us,” Samuel said, and my heart stopped, then began to pound painfully in my chest because I’d been wrong about the bowed head. Very wrong. The “he” he was talking about was Samuel—and that meant that “he” was no longer in charge. I was talking to Samuel’s wolf.
I dropped to the ground like a stone and made damned sure my head was lower than the werewolf’s. Samuel the man regularly overlooked breaches of etiquette that his wolf could not. If I made the wolf look up at me, he’d have to acknowledge my superiority or challenge me.
I change into a thirty-odd-pound predator built to kill chickens and rabbits. And poor silly quail. Werewolves can take out Kodiak bears. A challenge for a werewolf I am not.
“Mercy,” he whispered, and lifted his head.
The first thing I noticed was hundreds of small cuts all over his face, and I remembered Jody the nurse saying that they’d had to get the glass out of his skin. That the wounds weren’t healed yet told me that there had been other, more severe damage his body had to address first. Nifty—just a little pain and suffering to sweeten his temper.
His eyes were an icy blue just this side of white, hot and wild.
As soon as I saw them, I looked at the floor and took a deep breath. “Sam,” I whispered. “What can I do to help? Should I call Bran?”
“No!” The word left him in a roar that jerked him forward until he was crouched on both hands, one leg knee up, one leg still down on one knee.
That one knee on the ground meant that he wasn’t, quite, ready to spring on me.