Shifting. Part 18

"I already told you. I'm here to get my SUV." He rubbed his eyes and sighed. I folded my arms over my chest and shivered. A chill had crept into the night and seeped beneath my skin. Bridger unlocked his SUV. "Climb in. It's warmer in there." He pulled off his hoodie and handed it to me. I tugged it over my head and thrust my arms into the sleeves. It was filled with his warmth.

I got into the SUV, but Bridger, instead of getting in, too, walked to the vegetable garden and picked up the elk skull, ghostly white beneath the heavy moon. He carried it to the edge of the property and placed it back between the two trees. The exact spot I'd taken it from.

As he walked back to the SUV, his eyes met mine. He opened the door and the interior light flashed on.

"Don't mess with the ring of protection again," he said, and got in. He shut the door and the light stayed on while he put the keys into the ignition. The sleeve of his long-sleeve T-shirt lifted as he cranked the engine, and then the interior light dimmed to dark.

"Wait!" I turned on the light and leaned toward him. Taking his hand in mine, I pushed his sleeve up, revealing three b.l.o.o.d.y gashes on the back of his wrist. He sucked a breath of air in through his teeth and pulled his arm from me. "You're hurt. What happened?"

"It's nothing."

"What happened? Why are you here? And why are you bleeding? I want the truth."

He looked at me and lifted his hand. I shrunk away, thinking of Naalyehe's warning. But all he did was turn off the interior light. "When I got home from dinner, I could feel someone's fear-really feel it like I was experiencing it myself. It was so strong, I could even tell whose fear it was-Mrs. C.'s. I knew something was wrong. So I left and came straight here. When I got here, there were three wolves in her house."

"Wolves? The police officer said it was dogs."

Bridger shook his head. "Wolves."

"And one of them bit you?"

"No. Those are claw marks. I was chasing them from the house and one lunged for me."

"You were chasing wolves from the house, bare-handed?"

"I had Smith and Wesson backing me."

"Who?"

"Mrs. C.'s Magnum. You know, her gun."

I leaned back in my seat and stared out the front window. Wolves-not the pack of dogs that had attacked me a month ago. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? "That is freaky."

"Yeah." Bridger put the SUV into drive and pulled out onto the quiet road. We pa.s.sed a parked car wrapped in police tape. I pressed my nose to the window.

"Whose car is that?" I asked.

"Danni's," Bridger said, his tone nonchalant.

"Danni Williams's?"

"Yeah."

"What's her car doing parked in front of Mrs. Carpenter's property?"

Bridger glanced at me. "She came to vandalize Mrs. C.'s house. The cops found shaving cream and rolls of toilet paper in her car-her graduation gift to you, Maggie. Only, she got a bit of a surprise."

"What do you mean, 'bit of a surprise'?"

He pulled the SUV to the side of the road and looked at me. "She's in the hospital. She was attacked by the wolves, too. They don't know if she's going to live."

20.

I fell back against my seat and closed my eyes, fighting the churning in my gut. Danni Williams almost died?

"Your work clothes got ruined, didn't they?"

I blinked twice, trying to make sense of Bridger's words.

"Maggie? Your work clothes? Are they ruined?" he asked as if he hadn't just told me Danni might die.

"You're trying to change the subject."

"Yep. Do you have anything to wear to work?"

I groaned. "Not until I go to Wal-Mart. Stupid wolves shredded every piece of clothing I owned." Right down to my last pair of threadbare panties.

"You need to buy more, right?"

I looked at Bridger. "Right now? It's freaking two in the morning. There aren't any open stores," I snapped. I might as well have drunk five cups of coffee, I was so wired.

We drove to Swan Street and stopped at the gates barring entrance to the brightly lit O'Connell mansion. Bridger pushed his garage door opener thingy, and the gates parted.

"I want you to promise me something," he said as we drove down the long tree-lined drive.

An alarm went off in my head. I folded my arms and studied his profile. "Tell me what it is and then I'll let you know if I can promise."

"I'm going to offer you something, but promise me you won't get mad." He glanced at me.

"Sorry. No promise until you tell me what I'm getting myself into."

He exhaled loudly and shrugged. "You have major trust issues. Never mind!"

We got out of the SUV and I followed him to the front porch. He punched numbers into the keypad on his front door and opened it. "You're invited in," he whispered, and pressed a finger to his lips for silence. We stepped inside a well-lit room.

I don't know what I expected to find inside, but it was definitely not what I saw.

The mansion felt eerily dead and was so quiet I had no doubt I'd be able to hear a pin drop across the giant room I stood in. A ma.s.sive fireplace was at the far end of the room, framed in stone that reached to the top of the two-story ceiling. Elegant sofas and tables were centered in front of the fireplace. Stone sculptures of animals and birds, and cases filled with ancient Navajo beadwork and weaving lined one wall. Cases filled with guns lined another. Warm light from lamps with bases made of deer antlers flooded the room, highlighting giant framed paintings of open fields and mountain valleys.

Bridger led me to a flight of stairs, dark and wide. He turned on a light and pressed a finger to his lips for more silence, and I followed him up to a s.p.a.cious hallway lined with shut doors and ancient-looking portraits.

"Who are these people?" I whispered, studying each painting as we walked past.

"My grandparents and great-grandparents. This woman here-" He pointed to a young woman with black eyes and mocha skin, wearing beads and feathers in her slick dark hair. "She's my great-grandmother. She was Navajo. She married this man here." The man in the picture had pale skin, red hair, and green eyes. "That is my great-grandpa, Niall O'Connell. He came to America from Ireland, broke and penniless, and ended up one of the richest men in the country by the time he died. He started the mine."

We pa.s.sed a door on the right and I paused. Quiet sobbing was coming from the other side. I looked askance at Bridger and he rolled his eyes.

"It's only Katie, my little sister," he whispered. "My dad decided she needs to stay in Silver City for a while and she's having a tantrum."

"Why does he want her to stay?"

He paused for a long time, studying me before answering. "To keep an eye on me. And you."

"What do you mean?" I asked. He held a finger up to his lips and opened a door on the left.

I followed Bridger into a giant room with pale gray walls decorated with framed pictures of galaxies. There were double doors on the far wall leading out to a balcony. To the right was a sofa facing a flat-screen television. And to the left, a queen bed. My spirits sank.

Bridger went to the bed and looked at me expectantly. "Come here," he said. Then he must have felt what I was feeling, because his eyes became guarded and panicked, all at once. He took one look at my wide-eyed face and started laughing. "You have a dirty mind! My parents are asleep just down the hall! I brought you up here because Katie, being her typical, overly indulged self, gutted her closet first thing when she got home to make room for the new wardrobe she bought in Europe. Said she's outgrown her alternative dressing phase. I ..." Bridger looked away and ran a hand through his hair.

"You what?" I asked.

"I think you guys are about the same size. I thought, if you wanted to go through her old stuff before I take it to the secondhand shop ..."

As if to prove himself, Bridger pulled a bulging trash bag out from behind the far side of the bed and tipped it over the black quilt. Clothes spilled out. He lifted another bag and dumped it onto the contents of the first. Then another. And another. The bed was completely covered with stuff-jeans, dresses, shirts, sweaters, hats, scarves, purses, shoes, shorts, swimsuits, belts. They were all flamboyant, too-I felt like I knew his sister just by looking at her clothes. Almost everything was either black, bright orange, hot pink, or dark purple. And half of it was way too s.e.xy for me. There was also a large a.s.sortment of crazy tights: fishnets, black and orange stripes, cobweb tights, glitter tights. And most of the shoes had heels at least three inches high.

I looked at Bridger, thinking maybe I should have been a little bit offended by the offering, but I'd been a secondhand girl all my life. I walked to the bed like I was under a spell, like a fool finding the leprechaun's pot of gold, and picked up a pair of Diesel jeans. They looked like the right size. I tried on a pair of strappy red sandals. They fit-almost. Maybe half a size too big, but I didn't mind. I felt like a kid in a candy store, and every kid knows, if you get offered free candy, you don't care what kind it is.

"Can I try some of this stuff on?" I asked.

"And I thought you'd be mad at me for offering you Katie's stuff," Bridger said with relief. "You do realize it's the middle of the night?"

"I wouldn't be able to sleep even if I had a bed to sleep in." I stifled a yawn.

"Why don't you try them on in the morning? Let's veg and watch a movie," Bridger said, sitting on the sofa. I sat down beside him. The sofa was so soft, it might as well have been trying to swallow me.

Bridger scooted a few inches away from me and said, "We need to talk."

My heart started to hammer, and not in a good way. "We do?"

"Yeah." Bridger took off his shoes and put his feet up on an ottoman, his eyes never leaving my face. "I know how you feel about me."

I sank into the sofa and pressed my hands over my eyes.

"Maggie." His fingers clamped down around my wrists and tugged. I met his gaze and wished the sofa would swallow me. "Let me just start by saying I really like you, too. A lot." He let go of my hands and folded his arms across his chest. "You're one of the most intriguing, unique, beautiful people I have ever met. But I haven't been fair to either of us. I'm not supposed to date local girls. I've been taught that my whole life-so having my family come home has made me realize that I need to rededicate myself."

I couldn't look at him. I found a string on the sleeve of his hoodie and began running it through my fingers.

"Now that school's out, we won't see each other anymore," he said.

My heart sank with the thought of never seeing him again.

"The thing is," he continued, "I wanted to let you know I'm still here for you, as a friend. Nothing more, nothing less. So if you can forgive me for misleading you, maybe we can hang out sometimes. Nothing major, just the occasional movie, or hike, or something."

Why had it always been my lot in life to be removed from the people I cared about? I wondered. I could already feel Bridger slipping away forever.

"Hey, I'm not bailing on you. And I'll never ask anything of you but friendship. I just ... can't date local girls."

Yeah, I got it. No dating.

"Why don't you date local girls?" I asked. "Yana told me the same thing."

"I'm supposed to marry someone who has a similar background as me."

"You mean religious background? You have to marry a Navajo girl?"

He scowled. "Not quite. More like the same social background. So that my kids are ... like me."

I rolled my eyes. Yana was right. Rich people always wanted to produce rich offspring. I definitely didn't fit into that stereotype. "Sounds like your parents are breeding you. Like a racehorse," I said, my voice full of all the bitterness I felt.

Bridger frowned and nodded.

"Well, invite me to your wedding. 'Cause that's what friends do, right?"

A slow smile spread across his face. "You don't hate me?"

"I suppose not."

Smile still plastered to his face, he turned on a movie. With twelve inches of very obvious s.p.a.ce separating Bridger and me, I let the sofa absorb half my body and zoned out, letting the movie blur.

I snapped awake as light shone on my closed eyelids, but I didn't open my eyes. Someone walked into Bridger's room, two sets of feet tiptoeing over the hardwood floor. A woman gasped.

"She's here!" she whispered. "And wearing the sweatshirt I got him in Italy. I knew it was more than a casual friendship when I saw how he looked at her."

"You need to trust him," another voice mumbled-Bridger's dad. "He is eighteen and he knows his duty. I can tell he has every intention of following what he's been taught."

"I'm so glad you're making Katie stay. But what if-?"

"Shh-I think she's awake."

I opened one eye a crack, watching through my lashes as Bridger's parents came to the sofa, bent over the back of it, and each kissed Bridger's forehead. His dad looked at me. I froze on the other end of the sofa, closing my eyes and making my eyelids as soft and supple as if I were fast asleep.

"Good-bye, son," his mother whispered.

They left the room and shut the door.

21.