Teeth of the Wolf

Teeth of the Wolf ebook-9-1

CHAPTER 4

- Pandora -

“Wait here,” Penny says. The back door is sticky. The accident must have dinged up the door frame. Swivelling on the seat, she forces it open with quick jab of her heel. “I won’t be long. I’ll just get Beaker running these samples and be straight back down. You can turn the car about if you like.”

Matiu raises an eyebrow. “In ever decreasing circles, you mean?”

“Matiu…”

“Penny, I’ll be here,” Matiu says, impatient. “Stop gassing and hurry up, OK?”

“Right.” Scuttling across the road, Penny punches the code into the archaic keypad and hauls open the heavy fire doors. One flight of stairs and another set of fire doors and she’s in the lab. She sucks in a breath, tasting Cleanase and butyric acid, overlaid with the fake lemon of floor cleaner, and feels her shoulders relax, a nasty knot between her shoulder blades easing. It’s the best kind of stress relief. She loves this lab, loves everything about it, right down to the individual gas outlets. She throws her satchel on a benchtop, then grabs her lab coat from her hook by the door.

“Penny, is that you?” Grant Deaker, aka Beaker, is her technician, filched from Noah Cordell when she left LysisCo. His safety goggles covering half of his face, he pokes his head around the end of the bench where he’s setting up an assay.

“I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question,” Penny replies, pulling her arm through the sleeve of her lab coat. Given she and Beaker make up the entire workforce of Yee Scientific Consultancy, who else could it be?

Beaker ducks behind the bench so only the top of his hair is visible. “The landlord.”

“Not without providing me with 24 hours’ notice,” Penny says. She opens her satchel and begins unloading the samples.

“He came an hour ago.”

“What?” Penny’s head jerks up. Please don’t let the landlord have a beef with her. She’s barely getting by as it is. She can’t afford to change premises. “What did he say? Have the other tenants been complaining? I’ll bet it was that arsehole on the ground floor—the one who hates dogs.”

“Just kidding,” Beaker says. Bobbing up above the cabinets, he grins. With the goggles on, he looks like an oversized fly.

“Beaker,” Penny wails. “Quit mucking about.” Chuckling, he disappears from view. Penny dips her hand into her shirt pocket and examines the smear of black blood taken from Kingi’s Mustang. “I can fire you, you know,” she says sternly. “It’s in my power.”

She won’t. Beaker’s the best there is. A distant descendant of Rutherford, Beaker is a stickler for experimental rigour. He’ll have deduced that while it wasn’t probable someone other than Penny had entered the lab, it was still possible. It’s one of the reasons Penny is determined to keep him on: he’s so thorough, always questioning assumptions. In science, you can never prove anything right, and Beaker’s one of those rare sorts to test and re-test hypotheses, often employing different methodologies, comparing the results and ensuring that there are fewer chances of being proved wrong.

Penny turns the sample from the Mustang over in her hand. For some reason, she doesn’t want Beaker to process it. Why? It’s just blood, and Simon Kingi is a convicted felon. Why not trust Beaker to run the assay?

“Actually, I thought it could be your dad,” Beaker says, walking past her with a tray of cuvettes. Startled, Penny thrusts the sample into her satchel. “Because he’s phoned three times already this morning.”

“Yes, I got his messages, thanks,” she says, smiling a little too brightly. Beaker pinkens, his freckled skin glowing against the starched white lab coat. If Matiu were here, he’d tease her about encouraging the boy, since he seems to think Beaker has a puppy dog crush on her. That’s total rubbish.

No. 1: Blushing is a normal stress response experienced by everyone. It’s only because redheads have pale complexions that the relative changes in skin pigmentation are highlighted.

No. 2: Beaker’s not a boy. He’s thirty-two!

No. 3: Last but not least, Penny’s Beaker’s boss, so of course he jumps to and does everything she says. It’s got nothing to do with infatuation and everything to do with fulfilling the terms of his employment contract. A crush? They share a professional admiration and mutual respect for each other, that’s all.

Mutual respect. So why are you hiding this sample from him, Penny?

“Your father seemed pretty agitated,” Beaker’s saying. “More than his usual…um…more than usual.”

Beaker must have copped an ear bashing from Dad.

“I hope everything’s OK?” The cuvettes safely in the fridge, Beaker turns, pushing his safety goggles to the top of his head so his red hair sticks up. The look he gives her is so earnest, she almost giggles.

“You know how parents are, Beak,” she says, buttoning up her lab coat. “Not having four extra rolls of toilet paper on hand constitutes an emergency.”

“Yes, I thought it would be something like that, but then Carlie, from Despatch called, wanting to know why you weren’t where you were supposed to be.”

That niggly knot returns to stab Penny in the back. She sighs. “It’s my aunt. She’s been hospitalised. Matiu and I were on the way to Greenlane Hospital when we were in an accident and that delayed us so—”

“Hang on. Back up, back up. An accident? Penny! Are you OK?”

“I’m fine—we’re all fine—although we might not be when Dad sees fleet car 55. It wasn’t our fault, but it got squished up against the barriers in the collision. Right now, it looks like one of Salvador Dali’s elephants has stomped all over it.”

Beaker stares at her. “You’re sure you’re fine?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, if you’re fine, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at the hospital?”

“Samples, Beak.” She flaps the Little Shoal samples in the air. “I have to get them started. I can’t risk Tanner giving the work to someone else. I can barely afford to pay you as it is.” She stalks to the microscope, yanking the stool from under the bench. Its legs scrape on the ground. “It was irresponsible of me to take you from Noah…”

Beaker places his hand on the microscope, stopping her from hauling off the dust cover. “Penny, firstly, I would not work for that snake in the grass even if he paid me.”

“Technically, that’s what working for someone means.”

Beaker ignores her. “Secondly, your aunt is in hospital. This is not the time to be talking about things like pay packets. We’ll discuss it when the time comes. Give me those samples. I’ll get on to them while you go to the hospital. What are we looking for? Bodily fluids? Hair samples? Soil and residue? The normal stuff?”

Penny lets her shoulders drop. She relinquishes the sample packages. “Beaker, thank you. Honestly. I’ll make it up to you.”

The technician’s blush is as crimson as his hair. “Don’t be silly. We’re a team.”

“You’re sure about this? You don’t mind?”

Beaker makes a shooing action. “Go on. Get.”

“Thank you.” Penny slides her satchel off the desk and makes a show of hanging up her lab coat, but as soon as Beaker is back at the bench, she sneaks into the chemical store, placing the windscreen blood sample into plastic packaging and slipping it behind a row of reagent jars. There. It should be safe and stable until she has time to get back and test it.

“Penny?”

Penny whirls.

It’s just Beaker. His brow furrows.

“Oh…um…just thought I’d cool off a second before I go outside in that heat.” She blows out theatrically, fanning her hand in front of her face. “Phew, it’s hot out there. Well, that should do it. Bye, Beak.” Leaving him standing there, she flees out the fire doors and down into the street.

If there aren’t many cars on the road these days, it’s because they’re all in the Greenlane Clinic carpark.

“For f**k’s sake.” Matiu bangs his fist on the wheel.

“What about there?”

Matiu zooms forward, but a little smart-car is already occupying the space. Annoying. It didn’t need a full park. You could park a bus in there. A pedestrian, seeing their beaten-up car and Matiu’s scowl, gives them a wide berth. By the time they’ve found an empty space and a shady spot to tie up Cerberus, Matiu’s like a ripe tomato left in the sun. She has to run to keep up.

“Matiu, sweetie, you need to calm down. You’re not going to be any good to Mum or Whaea Mārama like this.”

Whoops. Bad move. Matiu pivots on his heel and grabs her by the arms. “And whose fault is that, Pandora?”

“Not mine!”

“Really? Who took her sweet time swanning about the park with her crime tape, then? Who had to stop on the bridge and blather on and on to Tanner, and then if that wasn’t enough, fart around another half an hour making doe-eyes at lover-boy at the lab?”

She twists, trying to throw him off. “I was not making doe-eyes at anyone. I was dropping off samples for my colleague to get underway, because that is my job, Matiu. This might surprise you, but I’ve worked hard for this: it’s how I make a living.”

Letting her go, Matiu pushes his sunnies up onto the top of his head and looks her squarely in the eye. “Yep, that’s right. It’s always about you, isn’t it, Pandora?” He stalks off towards the hospital entrance, his jacket slung over his shoulder.

“All about me? All about me? Hey!” Dashing forward, Penny flicks him in the back. He turns. “I’m not the one who got us in a car chase. I didn’t go smashing in a windscreen, wrecking a perfectly good tablet and several perfectly sound vehicles. And don’t forget who was following us, Matiu: only Simon—” She jabs him in the shoulder with her finger. “Bloody—”

Jab.

“Kingi—one of your former associates. If I was dallying at the Mustang with Tanner, it wasn’t to pass the time of day: it was to make sure he didn’t suspect you of anything. Anyway, Tanner’s the least of your worries. What about Dad? He’s going to be ropeable enough when he sees the car, wait ‘til he finds out you’re back running with Hanson’s old crowd—”

She’s about to jab him again, but Matiu catches her hand. “I’m not back in the gang, Pen.”

“So you say.”

“Penny, I’m not.”

In her bones, she doesn’t believe he is—doesn’t want to believe it—but damn it, she doesn’t want to give him the last word either. Shrugging, she steps into the hospital lobby. “Whatever.”

- Matiu -

Matiu stalks through the overpoweringly white hallways like a wounded angel. His footfalls are heavy, shoulders stooped, eyes downcast as he attempts to leave Pandora behind—or at least make her do that silly skip-jump-step she has to do to keep up with him. Still, he’s livid at her for suggesting he might be running with the pack again. When would he have the time? What would he have to gain? Holy s**t, the people he used to know keep turning up dead, or corrupted by something from the other side of the veil. He wants no part of that. At the thought, his arm itches again. With all that’s happened since leaving the park, he’d almost forgotten the constant, painful itch under his bandage. But here, surrounded by doctors and trollies laden with medical supplies to trigger the memory, the tingling, burning sensation comes back in force. It should’ve healed by now, but it’s taking its goddamned time. Like it’s not just a burn, but something burrowing into his skin, chewing on his flesh. Something no amount of antibacterial spray or saline solution is going to wash away. Something he brought back with him from over there. Is this how it started for Hanson, too? For Kingi?

He resists the urge to scratch, and hopes he’s just being paranoid.

Mārama’s ward is on the third floor. Matiu strides past the lifts and hurdles up the stairs two at a time.

“Seriously?” Penny groans. When he glances back, she’s pushing the call button for the lift, staring daggers at his retreating back. He allows himself a sour grin. Stairs are good, helping him burn up the leftover adrenalin from surviving a run-in with a murderous aberration intent on…what? Killing them? Or something worse? He was pleased to be driving when they left the scene. He’d seen Penny’s hands, shivering like leaves in a breeze. His would’ve been trembling too if he hadn’t been gripping the steering wheel.