Archive of Our Own

When the call came at just after 3 a.m. Ben fumbled with the phone sleepily for a moment before answering, “Sergeant Fraser speaking.”

“Benny. It’s good to hear your voice. Been a while.” The voice on the other end of the line didn’t sound nearly as cheerful as the words alone might otherwise indicate.

“Ray! A pleasure to hear from you as always, if an unexpected one.” He slipped out of bed, careful to keep his voice low so as not to wake his sleeping husband or the toddler in the next room while taking the phone with him out into the cabin’s small living room.

“Is everything all right?” he asked. The earliness of the hour for this call was concerning - Ray usually remembered to account for the time difference between Florida and the Yukon - and his obviously false cheer doubly so. While the two men were very much still friends, time, distance, and busy lives had reduced their communication to telephone conversations a few times a year, usually around birthdays or the holidays, and the rare occasions when Ben had been able to fly down to visit. No such imminent occasion presented itself to his tired mind at the moment though.

“Family’s all okay here, Benny,” Ray assured him, anticipating his worry. “I’m calling about something else. It’s… look, there’s no good way to say this. It’s Victoria. She’s in Vegas, in Intensive Care. The Feds were investigating something out there that she was involved in and it looks like the thing went south—they think maybe her partners tried to double cross her. I don’t know all the details yet but it’s bad. They’re not sure if she’s gonna pull through or not, but they got her prints from the car she was in and contacted Chicago PD looking for someone to verify the ID; they got in touch with me. I can’t be showing my face in Vegas these days, otherwise I’d fly out myself, but I saw the photo and it’s her, Fraser. I wouldn’t be calling you unless I was sure.”

Ben didn’t know what to say. Ray’s words seemed to be reaching him from the bottom of a very deep well. “I see.”

“I figured you’d want to know.”

“Yes. Thank you, Ray.” Ben took a deep breath. “Does the FBI need someone to identify her in person?”

“Nah, they’re good, but I know some of the guys on this, I could put in a good word for you if you’d like to go see her before…” Ray trailed off and then cleared his throat.

Ben rubbed his eyebrow and bent to dislodge a brightly colored toy that had been wedged between the sofa cushions before sitting down heavily. “I… perhaps I should.”

“You don’t have to, Benny. Victoria’s done enough damage, you don’t owe her anything.”

“No, I know. I think I should see her though, if I can. If nothing else, I think it would be good to say goodbye.”

“If you’re sure, I’ll make the call. No telling how long she’s got though. You could get all the way down there and find out she’s already gone. Or could be she wakes up tomorrow and makes a full recovery, you know how it is with shifter biology.”

“If that’s the case, then I’m sure it will be beneficial to have someone there to make arrangements for her. She’s… family of sorts, after all.”

“Don’t you go paying for anything for that woman, Benny. Let the state bury her if it comes to it.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Ray.”

“Benny…”

“Make the call, Ray. I need to see about arranging flights and speak with my husband.”

“Oh, Kowalski’s gonna love this.”

“I’ll call you back in a few hours.”

“Alright. Talk to you then. Ciao, Benny.”

-

Ray did not, in fact, love the idea of him flying to Nevada to say goodbye to Victoria Metcalf.

“This woman tried to ruin your life, Ben.”

“I’m aware of that, Ray. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have ample cause to be angry with me, however.” Ben had his satchel open on the bed, and was eyeing their closet critically, searching for anything suitable in his wardrobe for Las Vegas in July.

“Don’t do that. Don’t you put this on yourself. You didn’t deserve what she did to you. Nobody deserves that.” Ray reached past him and shoved a handful of t-shirts into his arms.

“I’m not. I’m simply saying that I understand her motivations. I did send her to prison for ten years after she saved my life, Ray.” A pile of socks forcefully joined the t-shirts.

“Yeah, but she also gave you lycanthropy and then first thing when she got out, tried to frame you for a murder. Plus, she’s been living free as a bird for the past fifteen years!”

“Fourteen years. Though I don’t see what—”

“Fourteen, fifteen, whatever. The point is, clearly she’s moved on with her life, otherwise, she’d have tried to contact you again before now.”

“Perhaps not, I would’ve been obligated to arrest her if she had.”

“Yeah, but would you have?”

Ben gave him a flat look. “Of course I would. She killed a man. I’m no more free now to ignore the law than I was twenty-four years ago, even if I do regret that choice today.”

“That still doesn’t mean you gotta fly two thousand miles to visit her on her maybe-deathbed!”

“Ray.” Ben paused in his packing and took hold of Ray’s hand, running his thumb over the metal bracelet on the inside of his wrist. “This is something that I feel I need to do, for my own peace of mind. But if you’d really prefer that I didn’t go, I won’t.”

“Aw jeez, way to play dirty, Ben.” Ray shook his head, but didn’t pull away. “I’m not gonna stop you going, if this is really something you’ve gotta do. I just don’t like it.”

“Thank you.” Ben pulled him into an embrace and felt the tension in Ray’s body begin to slowly drain away as he stroked his back. “Victoria is my past, Ray. You and Charlie are my life now. Nothing is going to change that.”

“Better not,” Ray mumbled into his shoulder and squeezed him tight.

-

Eighteen hours later, Ben found himself standing in McCarran International Airport staring at a garish neon sign welcoming him to Las Vegas. Three flights, the steadily increasing press of humanity around him, and a slow line at US customs had left him feeling exhausted and irritable as he walked past rows of blinking slot machines in search of a taxi stand.

The heat, which a helpful digital sign near the exit advised him was a mere 100 degrees Fahrenheit at 10:07 p.m., hit him like a wall when he stepped through the automatic doors to the sidewalk outside. He’d experienced his fair share of Chicago summers while posted there, but this was nothing like that. He felt as though he’d been flash desiccated and had to take a moment to collect himself before continuing forward.

A woman dragging a large rolling suitcase jostled him as she pushed past. “Don’t stand in the doorway!” she scolded, not bothering to pause to look back at him in her hurry.

“Oh, pardon me.” Ben blinked and stepped aside.

Having finally learned his lesson after repeated admonitions from both Rays in his life that sometimes the most polite thing to do at a busy airport is to take your turn promptly, he located a taxicab and forthwith was on his way to the hospital where Victoria was being treated.

He called Ray—his husband Ray, not Ray Vecchio—from the cab after apologizing to the driver.

“I made it to Las Vegas safely. I’m headed to the hospital now.”

“Good. How was the last leg?”

“Crowded, but largely uneventful. Rather a lot of the passengers were visibly intoxicated less than an hour into the flight, however.”

“That’s Vegas for you. Not much else to do in that town but drink and lose money. Might as well start early.”

“Have you ever been to Las Vegas?” It occurred to Ben that he didn’t know the answer to that question, although there was very little about Ray’s life prior to their first meeting that Ray was not forthcoming about.

“Just the once, before my brother’s wedding. He wanted to have a big guys’ weekend for his bachelor party and it's not that bad a drive from Phoenix. I was absolutely plastered by five p.m., got the worst sunburn of my life, and I lost about two hundred dollars playing poker. It was a lot of fun; you would’ve hated it.”

“No doubt.” Ben smiled. “How’s Charlie?”

“He’s finally down for the count. Only took four tries. Frankie’s in there with him again. I swear that kid’s got a friend for life in that dog.”

“Franklin has an excellent nose for character, and a particular weakness for spilled food.”

“Yeah.” Ray chuckled and then his voice became more serious in tone. “I miss you already.”

“I miss you as well.” Ben sighed. “I should hang up; we’re nearly to the hospital, I believe.”

“Yeah, yeah okay. Love you, Ben.”

“And I you, Ray. Give my love to Charlie as well. I’ll call again in the morning with an update.”

“Good luck.”

-

From the outside, University Medical Center was a large, beige conglomeration of rectangular shapes; inside, it exhibited the same aggressively inoffensive aesthetic qualities that were common to most modern medical facilities and smelled cloyingly antiseptic.

Through sheer force of dogged politeness and no small measure of directed charm, Ben was able to obtain directions to the Intensive Care ward despite the late hour, where he was then made to wait outside for several minutes, as it was well past regular visiting hours. Fortunately, Ray Vecchio had ensured that the officer who had been assigned to keep watch at Victoria’s bedside was expecting him, and after an unpleasantly prolonged discussion with the head nurse about his special circumstances, he was permitted entry for ten minutes.

Victoria had changed very little in the years since he’d last seen her looking on in silent horror as he fell from the departing train. Her hair, unlike his own, which in the last few years had been steadily losing the war against encroaching white and silver strands, was still dark, and only a few more lines graced her face that he could see, though it was difficult to tell beneath all the bandages.

The room was quiet save for the soft electronic hum of the equipment at her bedside. They’d removed her from the ventilator earlier that evening, the nurse had informed him, and she was breathing on her own now, with just a nasal cannula for oxygen supplementation, but her prognosis was still very much unknown. She’d been shot with silver, which inhibited the naturally enhanced healing abilities of a shifter, and could poison her recovery if they’d missed even a little bit of the metal during surgery.

Ben sat in the chair beside her bed, feeling ill at ease and guilty as he reached for her hand. Victoria didn’t respond to his touch, and her hand felt unnaturally still and small in his grasp.

“Hello, Victoria.”

He’d had several hours - years, really - to contemplate what he might say to her when he saw her again, but at the moment words failed him. The ugly wounds she’d left on his psyche had long since largely healed over, with time and perspective and a happy marriage. He’d survived and moved on, and she had evidently not been quite so lucky.

When the nurses insisted his time was up, he rose from his seat wearily and made arrangements to return in the morning, leaving his cellular phone number with the nursing staff and officer on duty, so that he could be contacted should Victoria’s condition change.

His hotel was less than a kilometer and a half away, so he elected to walk rather than call for another taxi. If nothing else, it would feel good to stretch his legs. And though the oppressive temperature outside had dipped slightly into more bearable territory, he was exceptionally glad he’d had the foresight to buy a bottle of water from a vending machine before leaving the hospital.

Despite the late hour, there were still quite a few people gambling in the casino when he checked in. The constant noise and lights and cigarette smoke from the casino floor set his teeth on edge. His room was on a reasonably quiet floor thankfully, and afforded a rather impressive view of the infamous Las Vegas Strip, but Ben was far too tired to properly appreciate it.

After setting his alarm, he dropped onto the bed and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep almost instantly.

-

Ben was awakened in the morning by a call from the hospital. Victoria was awake and was being moved from intensive care to a private room. He would be allowed to see her again that afternoon, once the doctors had finished examining her and after the FBI had conducted their interview, provided her condition remained stable.

Buoyed by this hopeful news, Ben called Ray to update him on everything that had happened since they’d last spoken and then set about making the most of his time before he needed to arrive at the hospital.

His first order of business involved showering off the residue of three airplanes, a hospital, and dried sweat from the previous day’s exertions, followed by a shave with his disappointingly inefficient, but air-travel-approved safety razor. Feeling somewhat refreshed after that, he ventured out of his room to locate, in order: a late breakfast, a larger reusable water bottle, a pair of sunglasses, sunscreen, and an over-priced baseball cap bearing the cheerful slogan, “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada” in the style of the city’s famous sign, that design having been the least objectionable of the options readily available to him.

The hat was only necessary because, at Ray Vecchio’s insistence, he’d left his beloved Stetson at home to avoid attracting undue attention, and in his hurry to pack for this unexpected trip, he’d neglected to pack a suitable alternative. A quick glance at the local news had informed him that the day’s high temperature was expected to reach an alarming 116 F, and Ben had no intention of allowing himself to succumb to heat stroke if he could help it.

-

When he arrived at the hospital that afternoon as instructed, the FBI were still speaking with Victoria. So he selected the chair in the small waiting area on that floor most directly in the path of an air conditioning vent and sat with as much dignity as he could muster under the withering gaze of the displaced Las Vegas Police Department uniformed officer seated opposite him there.

More than an hour later, two men wearing grey suits and sober, nondescript ties emerged from her room, their expressions grim and humorless and gaits subtly altered in a way that Ben recognized as characteristic of persons wearing concealed firearms. Ben rose as they approached him.

“Sergeant Fraser?” the elder of the two men, who looked to be at least five years Ben’s junior and smelled strongly of cinnamon gum, asked.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Agent Dowling, FBI.” He flashed a badge at Ben, lightning quick. “This is my partner, Agent Hernandez. We’d like to speak with you for a few minutes before you go in to see Ms. Metcalf.”

Ben nodded, dropping into parade rest out of a long-ingrained habit.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the specifics of our investigation,” Agent Dowling continued, “but Ms. Metcalf appears to have become embroiled in an on-going territorial dispute among the organized crime families operating in the area, and we have reason to believe that she has information regarding both the whereabouts of a substantial sum of missing money and two key witnesses critical to our investigation.”

He sighed. “At the moment, she’s refusing to cooperate, but she seemed very interested when we informed her that you were here and insisted that she’d only talk to you. We’d appreciate you sharing any information that you’re able to get from her.”

“Has she been cautioned?” The question left Ben’s lips before it occurred to him that it might be poorly received.

Dowling scowled. “She hasn’t asked for a lawyer, if that’s what you’re asking. Just get her to tell you where the money is if you can, and maybe she won’t be looking at federal charges to go along with that Murder One warrant out of Illinois.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Ben replied in his best “trust me, I’m a professional”, as Ray liked to refer to it, voice. Given their shared history, he had no real interest in interrogating Victoria on behalf of the FBI, but he would pass on their message.

“See that you do.”

Ben stepped forward to go through the door, but Dowling stopped him with a hand to his chest. “And Sergeant Fraser, I’ve read the file on what went down in Chicago. No funny business.”

“I can assure you that’s the furthest from my intentions.”

-

Victoria’s eyes were closed when he stepped into the room, though the head of the bed had been raised so that she was partially sitting up. She still looked pale and incredibly fragile, but seemed less terrifyingly unwell than she had the night before.

“Victoria.”

“Ben.” Her voice was low and breathy, but she opened her eyes and looked directly at him. “God, what happened to your hair? You got old, Ben.” She huffed out a startled laugh and winced.

He ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. Ray’s gentle teasing about the state of his hair always had far less of an edge to it than hers did now. “Yes, well, time will do that.”

“What are you doing here?” Her tone was sharp, accusatory.

“They told me you might not make it.” He could be blunt too.

“And you came to what? Cry at my bedside? Tell me how sorry you are one last time?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

He raised his hands, a half-formed gesture to accompany his half-formed thoughts. “I don’t know. To say goodbye, I think.”

She made a dismissive noise in her throat.

“Agent Dowling said that you told them you’d only talk to me. What are you involved in? I’d like to help you, if I can.”

“Like you did the last time?”

“That was your own doing, Victoria. I did try to help you then. And even after everything you did, I very nearly left Chicago with you.”

“Why didn’t you try to find me then? I thought at first that you’d died that day, but then I saw your picture in a newspaper a year later. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have found me if you’d tried.”

Ben swallowed and crossed his arms. She knew him better than he’d thought. “You’re right. I didn’t try. I figured I owed you that much.”

“You’re wearing a ring. What’s her name?”

Ben frowned at the abrupt change of subject. “His name is Ray.” At her shocked look, he hastily added, “not the Ray you met.” He straightened his back and squared his shoulders, because he wasn’t ashamed to talk about his family, not even with her. Maybe especially with her. “We recently adopted a child together. Our son Charlie is two.”

He cleared his throat. “And you? Is there anyone else in your life now, Victoria?”

The long look she gave him was indecipherably closed-off. Finally, she nodded and said, “my daughter, Nora. Eleanor Marie.”

Ben immediately had a dozen more questions for her but waited patiently. Clearly there was more she wanted to say, but it was taking her a moment to decide how to say it.

“She’s actually why I asked to speak with you. I do need you to do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“I need you to go get her for me. Keep her safe. This business I’m mixed up in, if they find her, they’ll hurt her to get to me. I thought I was being careful, so careful, but they knew more than they should have.” She lifted a hand weakly to reach for a cup of water that had been left on a tray at her bedside and grimaced. Ben stepped forward to help her with it but she waved him off with a sharp look.

“They knew to come for me with silver, even though none of them are shifters, and I never told them what I was,” she continued after taking a long sip from the straw. “I don’t know what else they found out. I need to know that she’s protected. If you do that, I’ll tell the FBI whatever they want to know, but not a word until I know she’s safe.” She met his gaze, pointedly. “I’m trusting you to do this for me. She’s all I have.”

He nodded. “Of course. Tell me where to find her.”

“I left her at the hotel, but I don’t know if she’ll still be there. We had a plan, there’s always an emergency plan. If I don’t come back, she’s supposed to wait and then go to our backup location at a certain time. If I’m not there, she knows where to go and to try again the next day. Write this down; it’s important, Ben!”

He had to borrow a pen and notepad from the nurse’s station, but he dutifully copied down all of Victoria’s detailed instructions and pocketed them.

“I’ll find her. You have my word,” he promised, rising to leave.

“Ben.”

“Yes?”

“I am sorry. For everything.”

“I am too,” he replied and pushed through the door.

-

Agent Hernandez was still there waiting for him when he emerged from the room.

“You were in there for a while. She give you anything useful?” he asked.

He shook his head. “She’s concerned for her daughter’s well being. The men Victoria was working with may be looking for the girl to use as leverage against her mother. She’s asked me to retrieve her. Once her daughter is safe, she said she’ll tell the FBI anything you want to know.”

“This is the first I’m hearing of any daughter. If she’s so worried, why wouldn’t she say anything to us sooner?”

“I don’t know, but what reason could she possibly have to invent a child at this juncture? She’s currently lying in a hospital bed, recovering from major surgery, and you’ve posted a policeman on watch at the foot of her bed. She can hardly expect to evade custody with such a tactic.” Ben pivoted to step around the man.

“Sergeant Fraser, wait! Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m going to find Nora Metcalf. Your office has my number should you need to contact me. I’ll be in touch once I’ve found her.”

-

Victoria’s instructions to her daughter had specified an emergency rendezvous point inside the aquarium located within the Mandalay Bay resort, which a quick glance at the crude map of the area Ben had liberated from his own hotel room that morning informed him was located roughly eight kilometers south of his present location, at the opposite end of the Las Vegas Strip.

By Ben’s best estimates of how long it had been since Victoria had been hospitalized, that was the most likely location to seek out Nora presently. It was too close to their scheduled meeting time to risk trying her hotel first, though he was technically closer to it; he was more likely to miss her there and arrive too late to catch her at the aquarium as a result.

Time being of the essence, he decided it might be wise to hail a cab again.

Unfortunately, the taxi driver, possibly mistaking the urgency of his request for enthusiasm for marine life or more likely just facilitating a larger fare, elected to take the most direct route, down Las Vegas Boulevard. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been objectionable, except that it was now past 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and traffic along the Strip had begun to accumulate to an astonishing degree. As the car inched forward in traffic, Ben found that he had to resist an unusually powerful urge to fidget anxiously in his seat.

Under different circumstances, perhaps the spectacle of themed hotel facades and scaled-down replicas of famous monuments would have been entertaining, but in this instance, it was merely an unpleasant reminder of how very far from home and anything he knew he was.

Vegas was nothing like Chicago, with its canyons of skyscrapers and now-familiar landmarks. It went beyond just the oven-like temperatures, which bore practically no resemblance to the sticky Chicago summers he’d once endured. Everything here seemed comically exaggerated to the point of parody, and almost forcefully artificial. It made him ache to see something natural, even if it was just the bare desert landscape.

He wondered if Ray Vecchio had felt similarly overwhelmed, when he’d first come to Las Vegas as Armando Langoustini.

-

He ended up making it to the rendezvous point just in time, but only because he ran all the way from the cab through the casino to the aquarium entrance, relying more on his nose than anything else to navigate the confusing passages.

The woman at the admission desk there gave him a concerned look when he approached, red faced, breathless, and sweat-soaked, but sold him a ticket without comment. The sign behind her listing the aquarium's hours told him that if he’d arrived just five minutes later, he wouldn’t have been allowed in.

Mopping his face and neck with a handkerchief, Ben followed the trickle of visitors up an escalator bordered by textured stone planters filled with tropical plants. Once he passed through a faux overgrown temple and several reptile exhibits and into the aquarium proper, it became blessedly cool and more dimly lit, all the better to show off the enormous glowing blue tanks set into the walls and at carefully spaced intervals throughout the exhibit. Ben slowly made his way toward the large jellyfish tank Victoria had described, peering carefully at every person he passed for a young girl with long, dark curls.

Finally, up ahead, he thought he spotted her. She was older than he’d expected, at least as tall as her mother, perhaps even an inch or so taller, with the raw-boned skinniness of early adolescence to her frame. She wore denim shorts, scuffed running shoes, a dark t-shirt, her hair in a ponytail tucked through the back of a baseball cap, and a purple draw-string backpack.

As soon as he got close enough to catch her scent over the briny smell of sea water, he was certain. It was near enough to her mother's to be unmistakable, so much so that it took him a second to realize the full significance of that fact - Nora had inherited more than her mother’s curls, she was a shifter as well.

Victoria hadn’t thought to warn him, and he wondered if she’d even experienced her first shift yet. She looked about the right age for it, twelve, thirteen perhaps; if she hadn’t, it would be soon. As children, born shifters were generally indistinguishable from their human peers, until the onset of puberty brought a few more dramatic changes than usual.

Charlie still smelled perfectly human, though he and Ray knew, thanks to recent advances in blood testing, that someday he too would join his fathers on their monthly moonlit runs. It was the reason they’d been able to adopt him so quickly after submitting their application, few non-shifter families were willing to take on such a responsibility.

“Nora,” he called out as he came within a few meters of her, not wanting to crowd her. He could smell the stress hormones rolling off of her in waves, and see the worry in the anxious way she held her shoulders. Concern for her mother, no doubt.

She startled and looked up at her name, and spotting him, froze uncertainly. He watched as she firmed her jaw and squared her shoulders to face him, consciously making herself appear unafraid. “Who are you?”

“My name is Benton Fraser. I’m an old friend of your mother’s.” The description felt like the lie it was, but he could think of none better that would suffice in the moment and allow her to trust him. Identifying himself as a policeman certainly wasn’t likely to help in this instance and the truth required far too lengthy an explanation. “She asked me to come find you.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the code word?”

This, Victoria had prepared him for. “Vermilion.”

Nora bit her lip, but he could see her relax her stance slightly. “Where is she? Why didn’t she come meet me herself?”

He took a step closer. “She’s in hospital not far from here. There was… she’s been badly hurt. She’s going to be all right though. I can take you to see her. Now, if you like.”

She took a tentative step towards him and stopped. Sniffed. Frowned, a line forming between her eyebrows.

Ben held out his hand for her to shake, offering her what he hoped was a reassuring closed-mouth smile.

She accepted it and shook his hand quickly, before snatching her hand back like she was afraid of being burned. When he didn’t move to grab her or come any closer, she nodded.

“Okay.”

Ben’s smile came more naturally now. He gestured past the arched glass shark habitat tunnel that served as the aquarium’s main attraction, towards the illuminated red exit sign at the other end of the room. “I believe we need to go through there.”

He let Nora take the lead, following a respectful two steps behind her. She walked quickly, alternating between looking around at the other people in the aquarium and glancing back at him nervously.

Incredibly, they made it all the way out of the exhibit and back onto the casino floor before their luck changed.

-

Though a part of him had been halfway expecting this, Ben couldn’t help but feel somewhat irritated with himself for missing their approach when four men appeared as if by magic from behind the jangling and chirping banks of slot machines to take up positions subtly surrounding himself and Nora.

“Hey, man. I haven’t seen you in forever. How ya doing?” said the tall man to his right, slinging a friendly-seeming arm around Ben’s shoulders. He leaned in closer to add in an aggressive undertone, “Smile and play along, and nobody has to get hurt,” all the while grinning as though they were indeed old friends.

On his left side, Nora had gone pale and wide eyed at this intrusion and seemed prepared to bolt at the slightest provocation. Not entirely a bad idea, Ben thought, and licked his lips as he covertly surveyed their surroundings, looking for a possible opportunity to make a move.

“What do you want?” he asked, as the man steered them away from the populated casino floor and toward a quieter corridor. They really were being quite brazen, given the sheer staggering number of security cameras present, to attempt an abduction here.

“We just want to talk,” the man said, patting Ben’s shoulder. They turned a corner and suddenly Ben could see daylight to one side and a long corridor leading to a bank of elevators on the other. This would have to do.

“Nora,” he said abruptly. “Basecamp.” That was the word Victoria had used to refer to the hotel room she and Nora had been staying at; he hoped Nora would understand his meaning here. She looked over at him sharply.

“Run!” Ben instructed, taking hold of the arm that was wrapped around his shoulders and dropping into a crouch suddenly, using the movement as leverage to throw their would-be abductor to the ground. This summoned the man’s three companions to action, who came charging in at him in defense of their leader, but Ben was expecting them and came up swinging.

Nora, thankfully, took off running as instructed.

Outnumbered four to one, Ben was unlikely to win this fight if it continued for long, but he was more interested in keeping them distracted long enough for Nora to get to safety than avoiding injury himself. In the interest of maximizing his chances, however, he went for disabling blows, using every dirty trick his grandmother, years of pond hockey scuffles, his fellow cadets and instructors at Depot, and later, Ray, had taught him. Then he ran in the opposite direction, hoping to draw them further away.

Crude as it was, his plan worked for the most part, and he was able to make it to the bank of elevators and slip inside one of them before any of the four limping men trailing after him could catch up.

Hitting all of the available floor buttons to confuse anyone watching the electronic floor display, he rode the elevator down one level and leapt out. He’d ended up in the parking structure beneath the casino and darted into the maze of cars there in search of cover and a suitable exit to double back with.

As he crossed behind a concrete pillar at the far end of the garage, he felt a vibration at his hip. His cellular phone was ringing. Digging it out of his jeans pocket, he flipped open the phone. The caller ID display read “Ray Vecchio”.

“Not the best time, Ray,” he said into the phone, his back pressed against the pillar and head twisted awkwardly to keep watch for pursuers from behind.

Ray groaned. “What are you into now, Benny? Do you need backup? I can call my guy at the FBI back right now if-”

“That remains to be seen,” Ben answered, keeping his voice low. Still no sign of the men, they must have gone to a different floor, or given up on him entirely to chase after Nora. He suppressed the jolt of fear that thought sent to his heart as quickly as he could.

Though he’d only just met her, she seemed a very resourceful young lady, and if nothing else, fleet of foot. Surely she’d managed to get out of the building unscathed. Even in Las Vegas, four grown men couldn’t simply abduct a young teenage girl out of a busy resort without causing a scene.

“There’s been a complication. I believe I’ve just encountered some of the men Victoria was working for before she was hospitalized. I don’t think I’m who they were looking for though. Victoria has a daughter; she’s here in Las Vegas as well. She asked me to find her and protect her, and now I’ve lost her. She ran when I told her to, but I don’t know if I managed to give her enough time to get away—”

“Fraser. Listen to me,” Ray interrupted and Ben realized he’d run through that explanation without pausing to take a full breath. “This isn’t your fault. We’ll find the girl, but if she’s anything like her mother, she’s good at running away. She’s probably okay. One thing at a time though. Where are you?”

Ben told him and gave a brief description of the men who’d accosted them in the casino.

“And the kid, what’s she look like?”

“Remarkably like her mother. Roughly shoulder-length dark brown curly hair, twelve or thirteen years old, slim build, tall, perhaps five seven or eight?” he estimated. “Light eyes, possibly blue, the lighting was too poor to be certain.”

There was a pause and for a moment Ben worried that the call had been disconnected.

“You said she’s how old?”

“Twelve or thirteen, perhaps,” Ben repeated, feeling as though he’d missed a step.

“I gotta say, Benny, I got a real funny feeling here about this kid.” He could hear Ray take a slow breath and exhale before continuing. “Tell me what I'm thinking ain't possible, and I’ll feel a lot better. Not good, mind you, ‘cause there's still an innocent girl mixed up in all this no matter who her parents are, but please Benny, tell me I'm crazy here.”

But Ben could do the math just as easily as Ray, now that the implication had been presented to him. “It's not… impossible, Ray.” He drew in a shuddering breath, thinking back fourteen years. “In fact, it may even be probable, depending on her exact age, but I'm afraid I can't say for certain without knowing more.” He leaned back against the pillar and stared blankly at the ceiling. The emergency sprinkler mounted there failed to provide him with any of the answers he sought. “I confess I, that is, we, weren't very, ah, that is, at the time I was hardly expecting to require…”

Ray groaned. “You're kidding me! Benton Fraser, living embodiment of the Boy Scout motto to ‘always be prepared’, slept with a woman and didn't wear a rubber?”

“Twice,” Ben muttered under his breath, more as an admonition to himself than a reply to Ray’s question. It really had been monumentally reckless of them. He’d corrected for the lapse the next day, in a hurried visit to the corner store once they realized that they’d eaten everything he had in the apartment for dinner the previous night, save for half a carton of ice cream, but that was rather akin to shutting the barn doors without knowing whether a horse had already escaped.

“What was that?”

“Twice, Ray,” Ben repeated more clearly, his face growing hot. “That's not important right now though. What is important is locating the girl before anyone else does.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Okay. Are you gonna be able to get out of there safely? Or do I need to get the Feds to send somebody to come pick you up?”

Ben looked around again. The men from the casino still had yet to appear. “I think I’ll be alright, Ray. Their resources would be best put to use in locating Nora. I told her to return to her hotel. Assuming she was able to get away, I’m going to try to meet her there. Tell the FBI it’s the El Cortez.”

“Will do. And Benny?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful, okay? I know how these families operate. You might be in more danger than you think, especially since you don’t know the lay of the land out there.”

“I’ll do my best.”

-

After ending the call with Ray, Ben was able to find an unoccupied stairwell to return to the ground floor. He couldn’t see any of the men from before lying in wait for him when he emerged, but he couldn’t help but feel he was being watched as he made his way quickly towards the exit. It wasn’t even an irrational feeling, given the profusion of security camera domes dotting the ceiling and walls.

Before stepping back out into the baking heat, he paused briefly at one of the many kiosks selling souvenirs to purchase a t-shirt and a replacement ballcap for the one he’d lost in the fight earlier, both in a different color than those he’d been wearing.

It wasn’t much, but if the men who were after Nora had access to the resort’s security cameras, as he was beginning to suspect they might, considering how little their presence seemed to deter them, a change in his appearance might be wise.

Concealing his purchases as best he could, he walked briskly out of the nearest door and fled down the sidewalk some distance before ducking beneath a bus shelter and quickly putting on the shirt and hat. A woman waiting there wearing a dealer’s uniform eyed him appreciatively and he gave her a tight smile in return.

“Help you with anything hon?” she asked.

“Have you been waiting here long?” he asked, though it had now been nearly twenty minutes since the fight in the corridor.

She shook her head. “No, the bus comes every ten minutes this time of day. Where are you headed?”

“Oh, I’m afraid I’m not—that is, I’m not inquiring as to the bus schedule. I’m looking for someone, and wondered if you might have seen her pass by, but you wouldn’t have been here at the correct time. Thank you kindly anyway.” He nodded politely to the woman and turned to go.

“If you’ve lost someone, you might try guest services inside,” the woman suggested. “Ask for Jose, he’s the security shift lead. It’s harder to get lost in this town than most people think.”

“Ah. I’ll try that if I don’t find her soon, thank you.” If he were a superstitious man, Ben might have found this conversation somewhat unsettling, considering his recent thoughts regarding omnipresent casino surveillance, but as he was not, he continued on, sniffing at the air discreetly, hoping to catch a hint of Nora’s scent.

The crowds and bone-dry air were working against him, however, and if Nora had passed through this way, nothing of her scent lingered.

Ben weighed his options carefully.

The hotel she was, hopefully, headed for was located at the opposite end of the Strip from where he currently was. A considerable trek on foot with little in the way of alternative routes or cover to evade pursuit, aside from the sheer number of other pedestrians along the road.

Getting off the street as quickly as possible was likely Nora’s best chance of escape, either by boarding one of the city buses or finding a taxi willing to take on an unaccompanied minor as a fare. If she’d done so, he stood virtually no chance of tracking her route. Perhaps his best course of action was to get off the Strip himself and locate his own transportation and hope that she made it to the hotel safely on her own.

Crossing at the nearest opportunity, Ben hurried down an intersecting street to get off of the main thoroughfare, determined not to make the same mistake regarding his transportation selection as earlier. As he walked he felt the tell-tale buzz of his phone in his pocket again.

“Benton Fraser speaking,” he answered without looking at the phone.

“Hey, what did you do with those new shop towels I got last week?”

“Hello, Ray. I believe they’re in the hall closet.”

“Nah, that’s the first place I checked. I can’t find ‘em and I’ve been looking for nearly an hour now.” Over the sounds of traffic and shouted conversations coming from the throngs of giddy pedestrians he was weaving his way past, he could hear Ray moving around, opening drawers and rummaging noisily. He recognized the cheerful theme tune of Charlie’s favorite television program playing in the background.

“Ah. Well, perhaps—” Ben paused to press a crosswalk button and stood anxiously at the corner, waiting for the light to change. “Is this really that urgent, Ray? Now’s not really the best time.”

“Oh hell, what’s up? Sorry, I thought you were going to call me after they let you talk to Victoria. Figured you were still waiting since I hadn’t heard from you yet. Did something happen with her?”

The lights changed in front of him, but the walk signal remained frustratingly orange as a line of cars crept through the intersection.

“I was able to speak with her this afternoon, however—” He rolled his neck from side to side while attempting to think of how exactly to explain what was going on without worrying Ray unduly.

The movement caused a trickle of sweat to drip into his right eye and made him blink and drop his chin to shake it off. Looking down at himself, he saw his new shirt had already begun to darken noticeably at the center of his chest and under his arms, while the one he’d already been wearing had practically plastered itself to his back between his shoulder blades like a second skin. Perhaps he should have taken it off instead of doubling up layers in this heat, but as laissez faire as Las Vegas seemed to be concerning generous displays of naked skin in public, an occupied bus shelter had hardly seemed the appropriate place to begin removing articles of clothing.

...And now he was allowing himself to get distracted instead of having a difficult conversation with his husband. Ben shook his head to clear it and continued.

“I’m afraid the situation is a bit more volatile here than I’d been led to believe. It looks as though she’s likely to make a full recovery now, or near enough to it, but she didn’t come to Las Vegas alone. She brought her daughter with her.” He found himself taking a breath and holding it, not intentionally trying to draw Ray into asking him the same question Ray Vecchio had thought to ask, but not trying not to either.

“Okay.” He couldn’t tell from Ray’s tone if he was simply waiting for Ben to give him more, or he was distracted himself.

Ben exhaled and realized because the people next to him had begun to move that the walk signal had finally illuminated. “Her name is Nora. I believe she’s a shifter as well. And at the moment, I’m not entirely certain where she is or if she’s safe.”

“Shit.”

“Indeed. I’ve been told that there are a number of individuals in the city who are very interested in some information that Victoria has and may be willing to resort to any means to obtain it. I was just accosted by four of them, in fact.”

He could hear Ray swearing under his breath. “You’re okay though, right? Where are you? It sounds like you’re outside.”

“Yes, I’m fine. I was able to keep them occupied while Nora ran away, but I don’t know if there were more of them that I didn't see. I told her to meet me back at the hotel, that’s where I’m headed now. I need to call Ray again. He’s coordinating with the FBI here from afar and they have the resources to communicate with casino security directly. We’ll find her.”

“Wait, you already met this kid and then lost her?”

“I… well, it’s a bit more — yes, Ray, in short, that’s what happened.” He could explain the rest of it later.

“Sorry, not helping, I know. How old is this kid that she’s running around Vegas on her own? You think she’s gonna be able to get around okay alone?”

“I’m not entirely certain. Twelve or thirteen perhaps? At her age I’d already run away from home once, though I’ll admit there’s considerable difference between the Northwest Territories and the urban wilderness, so to speak, of the Las Vegas Strip. If she was able to evade the men looking for her, I’m reasonably confident in her navigational abilities. From what Victoria told me, elaborate contingency plans seem to be routine for the two of them, and she’s undoubtedly more familiar with this city than I am.”

Ray exhaled into the telephone receiver. “Right. Okay. I’m gonna let you go so you can get back to Vecchio, but keep me in the loop, alright?”

“Of course, Ray.”

“And keep your head on a swivel down there. If these are the same guys that put Victoria in the hospital, we know they aren’t afraid to shoot first and ask questions later. I’m not looking to become a single parent here.” Ben could hear the worry in his voice.

“Understood.”

-

Ben arrived at the El Cortez Hotel in just under fifteen minutes, thanks to a more expeditious taxi driver than his first that day. This one had actually listened to his plea for haste, or perhaps more accurately to the generous tip he’d supplied with the last of the American currency that he had on him, and taken a direct route adjacent to the Strip rather than on it.

Ray Vecchio had had little in the way of updates for him, except that the FBI had said they were on the case, and were presumably now interviewing the staff at the Mandalay Bay. No word yet on whether they’d successfully obtained any information that might lead to either the men who’d accosted them in the casino or Nora Metcalf.

The El Cortez was an older hotel, or at least what passed for older in such a young city. Somewhat removed from the larger resorts to its south, it was instead attached to a district the taxi driver had cheerfully informed him was known colloquially as simply ‘Fremont Street’, and was allegedly much preferred as a destination by local residents to the higher-budget and tourist-driven allure of the Strip proper.

These details were provided in a sort of conspiratorial tone that implied he was receiving privileged information not normally divulged to visitors like himself, however, since he seemed like an upstanding fellow, the taxi driver was willing to make an exception. Ben privately doubted that this was remotely the case. He’d heard similar things on many occasions in the back of Chicago taxicabs and had learned to accept these conversations as the thinly disguised advertisements that they were.

Inside the hotel, he found Agent Dowling waiting by the check in desk, scowling as he listened intently to his cell phone. When he saw Ben come in, his expression soured further and he held up a finger, signaling him to wait.

Ben was only just able to keep his face blank as he stood there impatiently waiting for Dowling to finish.

When whoever was speaking to him was finally done, Dowling disconnected the call without saying anything more than, “let me know when you have something,” then turned his full attention to Ben.

“Sergeant Fraser. You do realize that as a foreign national, you don’t have jurisdiction in Nevada?”

“Of course.” He didn’t see why that should be in any way relevant. It wasn’t as though he’d overstepped his authority by going to find Nora, especially when Victoria had personally requested that he do so.

“Then you understand that this is a matter for the FBI. If I tell you to stay out of something, I expect you to listen. I believe I was very clear back at the hospital that I didn’t want any funny business from you.”

Ben bristled. “With all due respect, Agent Dowling, I’m well aware that I’m not presently acting in any official capacity, nor have I pretended to be, but neither am I one of your subordinates. I have no intention of interfering with your investigation, but there’s a young girl’s life at stake now, and her mother has asked me specifically to find her and keep her safe. I can hardly in good conscience ignore that. Now, you can either help me, or get out of my way.” He moved to push past Dowling to head toward the elevators.

Dowling stepped into his path to stop him. “Don’t be stupid, Sergeant. We’re just as interested in finding Nora Metcalf as you are. And while I may not be your boss, I can have you detained for obstruction and deported if you continue to ignore my instructions.” He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the front desk. “She’s not here anyway. We’ve already checked the room. Nothing but a suitcase full of clothes and some toiletries.”

Ben looked at him directly. “Were you able to get anything from security at the other hotel?”

“Hernandez is there now. So far, it looks like the girl made it out of the Mandalay Bay. Beyond that, we don’t know yet. It’s going to take some time to check with the other casinos, see if any of their cameras spotted her passing through.”

“That could take hours.” And if Nora had been abducted on the street, there was little chance it’d been recorded anyway, as the hotels’ primary purpose in installing their fleet of cameras was to deter theft on the casino floor, not crime prevention outside their premises.

“Should’ve thought about that before you let the girl out of your sight, then,” Dowling snapped.

Ben actually growled at him then, surprising them both. It wasn’t often that he allowed that part of himself to show so openly, and it was an even rarer occurrence with strangers, but his wolfish instincts seemed to be riding especially close to the surface at the moment. He wasn’t particularly interested in thinking about just why that was at this juncture, however.

Dowling flinched, but seemed to recover himself quickly, eyes narrowing. “The Las Vegas Police Department has been given her description as well and every uniformed officer in the area is on the lookout for her. If you’ve got any better ideas, Sergeant, I’m all ears.”

The trouble was, he really didn’t have any better ideas. It had been a mistake to allow himself to become separated from Nora in the first place and he’d then compounded that error further by taking so long to leave the parking garage, costing them all precious time.

For a moment, he entertained the absolutely ridiculous notion of shifting and tracking her scent from the hotel like a bloodhound, but again, even supposing he could find her scent among all these people and the ever-present haze of cigarette smoke, it would prove a useless exercise if she’d gotten into a car at any point. He didn’t really trust himself to remain focused on a specific task while in wolf form amidst the chaos of this city either. He’d fallen out of practice dealing with large cities since moving north again.

Dowling took his silence for the answer it was. “I didn’t think so.”

“What are you proposing we do then?” Ben asked.

“Wait. Vecchio said you told her to meet you here, right?”

Ben nodded reluctantly.

“Maybe it’s just taken her longer to make her way to the hotel.”

He certainly hoped so.

Ben looked around, committing the space to memory in case it became necessary to find an escape route later.

The casino floor was, much like many of the others he’d seen so far, dominated by electronic slot machines, though the atmosphere was somewhat grimmer, with lower ceilings and more subdued lighting than the newer hotels. There were rather a lot of corners to hide in and opportunities to get lost in the identical rows, which would likely advantage the more experienced party in a chase, and he was feeling decidedly out of his element here.

To keep himself from pacing the lobby like a trapped animal, Ben unclipped the water bottle hanging from his belt and drank deeply.

He often thought that his years living with Ray had inadvertently ruined his once-legendary patience. Perhaps it had been Ray’s frequent insistence that there was nothing wrong with expressing the occasional negative emotion, or maybe it was simply his poor example. Ray was nearly as bad in that respect as Charlie, who had the excuse of being far too young to properly understand the concept of delayed gratification.

Fortunately, they were saved from a prolonged wait by Dowling’s phone ringing a few minutes later.

“Dowling. Yes? Where?”

Itching to move closer, Ben strained to listen to the other side of the conversation but couldn’t hear the words clearly enough to make sense of them over the incessant clattering and electronic trills from the casino.

“What about the others?”

Ben grit his teeth and thought of fresh snow, smooth and untouched, stretching to the horizon.

“No, we don’t want to spook them. I’ll be there shortly.” Dowling disconnected the call and turned to Ben.

“Las Vegas PD has one of the men from the Mandalay. They think the other three are still in the area, searching for the girl. They’re just down Fremont Street here. Come on, I’m taking you with me to make the identification, but once that’s done, we’re coming right back here to wait.”

Nodding, Ben followed Dowling outside and they made their way down the block in the direction of an enormous neon cocktail glass that didn’t appear to be advertising any particular establishment that he could see.

The sun had dropped near enough to the horizon that the buildings around them cast long shadows over the street, making the glow of the many neon and incandescent lights more prominent, but the cloudless sky was far from dark and the heat was still nearly as oppressive as it had been earlier. It seemed to radiate upwards from the ground.

Beyond the next intersection they came to, the street was blocked off to permit pedestrian traffic only, and seemed to become an outdoor shopping mall or entertainment venue of some sort. Streams of people were pouring into the area and Ben could hear amplified music being played nearby. Two police cruisers were parked near the concrete bollards outside this entrance with several officers lingering there, chatting amongst themselves and doing a poor job of disguising the fact that they were scrutinizing everyone who walked by.

Dowling headed straight for them.

Following a short conversation with the officer in charge, they were directed to the foremost squad car, where one of the men Ben had fought with outside the aquarium had been secured.

Dowling’s attempt to interview the man, once Ben had confirmed he’d been one of the men from the Mandalay Bay, proved fruitless however, as he was intelligent enough to invoke his right to remain silent and actually use it. Frustrated, Dowling went to go speak with the LVPD officers again, leaving Ben alone with their suspect.

“Do you have children?” Ben asked, once Dowling was out of earshot. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the squad car, watching the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror. The man blinked at the question, but didn’t respond.

“My son turned two in December,” he continued conversationally. “They grow up so fast. It feels like only yesterday he was learning to talk, and now we consider ourselves fortunate that he pauses to take a breath occasionally and eventually exhausts himself enough to sleep.”

He flicked his gaze up to meet the man’s gaze in the mirror. His audience was clearly listening to him, but seemed wary.

“Still, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t worry about keeping him safe. Where we live there aren’t so many people or cars, but the woods carry their own perils, and at that age, there’s very little that doesn’t pose some danger.” He closed his eyes for a moment. The car’s air conditioning hummed in the background.

“When I was very young, I remember being outside of our cabin playing with one of the dogs. There was an odd noise and I turned around to find a wolverine standing there, as close as I am to you right now. If you’ve never seen one in person, they can be absolutely fearsome creatures, tenacious and vicious in a fight, and we were well into the lean weeks of early spring when food becomes especially scarce for the wildlife in the Territories. My mother heard my shout and the dog’s barking and came running.

“To this day, I’m not entirely certain whether I imagined it, or if I didn’t, how she found the strength, but I watched my mother dispatch a fully grown wolverine with her bare hands.”

He looked in the mirror again, his pause deliberate. “It’s remarkable the things people will do to protect their children, don’t you think?”

-

Ben exited the squad car and went over to Dowling. “She went into the mall here. The other three men followed her in. Mr. Tagliatelle was waiting in case she slipped past them and doubled back.”

“What? Fraser, you got him to talk?” Dowling swung round to look at him incredulously. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing untoward.” He didn’t elaborate. “I’m going in there after her. Have your officers cover the other exits if they haven’t already.”

“That’s not what we agreed to. Sergeant!”

Ben ignored him and broke out into a run before Dowling or any of the officers could stop him, darting through the crowd and out of their line of sight.

It was still early enough in the evening that there was room to maneuver around groups without colliding with too many pedestrians, but busy enough that it was a challenge.

Further down, the open-air mall was enclosed by an enormous arched light display that doubled as a ceiling of sorts, part technological wonder, part billboard. The rapidly changing colors from this canopy made distinguishing faces at ground level harder and Ben had to slow down as he moved through the crowd to get a look at them all.

There appeared to be musicians performing live music at three separate stages each staggered throughout the concourse between casinos, restaurants, and bars, which only added to the chaos around him. It was hot, and loud, and he was searching for a thirteen year old girl in a sea of rowdy and at least partially inebriated revelers.

With two senses effectively disabled in this environment, he focused on trying to locate any trace of Nora’s scent. In this, at least, the heat could potentially help him; sweat tended to make individuals’ scents stronger and easier to track.

He weaved slowly through the crowd in a loose zigzag pattern, allowing himself to slip into the dreamlike state that often preceded a shift, where his senses became almost painfully amplified and human thoughts were sometimes overshadowed by lupine instincts. In certain instances this could be advantageous, however.

Prior to becoming a shifter, Benton Fraser had been a skilled and experienced tracker on his own merit, but the wolf knew how to truly hunt, and a member of his pack was in danger.

Finally, there, a hint of the familiar. He quickened his pace, chasing the scent, no longer paying much mind to the people he jostled out of his way pursuing it. It was getting stronger. She’d been through here recently, and she’d been scared.

Other scents that he recognized from that afternoon joined hers and his pulse quickened. They’d caught up with her, or were following closely behind. The trail took a sharp turn then, leading into one of the brightly lit casinos.

Ben was practically running now and had to consciously slow down to avoid attracting too much attention in the casino. The scents he was tracking edged along the outer walls, staying well clear of the gaming tables and bar, finally ending at an unmarked door.

Much to his surprise, the door hadn’t entirely latched securely when he tried the handle, and he went through it before any casino employees could notice and question him.

It led to an empty utility corridor, with bare concrete floors and blank walls lit by florescent lights hung from the ceiling. Their scents were even stronger here, without the competition from other sources, and he hurried after them, sensing that he was getting close.

Up ahead lay another door, this one marked with a glowing green exit sign above it. Just as he came to the door, he heard a shout from the other side —a male voice, panicked. He shoved at the push bar and burst out into an alleyway that stank of sun-baked garbage.

Nora was there, surrounded by the three other men who’d accosted them earlier. They’d backed her into a corner and she was hunched over strangely, clutching at her sides as though she’d been hurt, and instantly Ben was ready to lash out at her assailants, with teeth and claws, if necessary.

They were all hanging slightly back though, as if they were afraid to get any closer to her, and one of the men was holding his own arm awkwardly and staring at her with an expression on his face that looked a lot like horror. None of them had even registered Ben's presence yet, they were too focused on Nora.

At first, Ben couldn't figure out what had frightened them.

Then Nora cried out and dropped into a crouch, arms wrapping tightly around her knees. And from his vantage point, Ben could see the distinctive ripples of an on-coming shift moving down her back. This situation was about to become immeasurably worse.

That fact seemed to suddenly occur to the men watching her as well.

“She’s a shifter!” shouted the man standing nearest to Ben, who took a few hurried steps backwards and reached beneath his shirt, presumably going for the gun tucked into his waistband.

Ben didn’t let him get that far. He snatched the gun from him with ease and flung it away, twisting his arm and shoving the man up against the nearest wall. Behind him, he could hear the other two scrambling to react, and spun around to face them. They were likely to be armed as well, and Nora would be especially vulnerable until she completed her shift.

Fueled by adrenaline and his own very-near-to-the-surface wolf, Ben disarmed the second man as well, barrelling into him with an awkward tackle meant to throw him into his companion and put both men off-balance.

They grappled, Ben’s protesting muscles reminding him that this was his second brawl in the span of just a couple hours and he was entirely too old to be doing this sort of thing with any kind of regularity any more, extraordinary healing abilities or no.

His opponents were all younger men, and obviously less concerned about the possibility of causing permanent injuries, as evidenced by their more brutal fighting techniques. He’d been aided by their distraction and the element of surprise initially, but they quickly remembered that they outnumbered him, and began to press their advantage.

That is, they did until they were interrupted by a vicious growl coming from behind them. They all turned at the sound as one. Ben took the opportunity to pull free, putting some space between himself and the men.

Standing in the alley, her gaze fixed on their attackers, was a snarling black wolf baring brand-new, very sharp white teeth at them. Nora’s clothing lay in a torn heap behind her.

“You need to leave,” warned Ben, panting as he caught his breath. “Now. She’s new. You could be bitten or even killed. She doesn’t know how to control herself yet.”

The man nearest Ben shot him an incredulous look before returning his focus to the angry wolf staring them down.

“What do you know about it?”

Ben wasn't in a mood to argue. “She’s not the only shifter here.”

The man who’d been holding his arm earlier swore and shuffled a few steps nervously away from Ben. Nora growled louder and stared at him until he stopped moving again.

“Nora,” Ben called, trying to redirect her attention. “Nora, you need to listen to me. I know this is very new, and confusing, and you want to protect yourself, but I need you to let these men go.”

She looked at him, and then back at the men, clearly trying to make sense of what he was saying.

“Fuck, man, I didn’t sign up to be somebody’s dinner today,” said the man standing furthest away from Ben.

Ben ignored him and just kept repeating himself in a low, calm voice, “You’re safe now, Nora. Stay here with me. Let them go.” He took a step closer to her, hands held out where she could see them clearly.

Nora relaxed her snarl and whined, taking half a step towards Ben.

“Walk away, slowly, don’t run,” Ben instructed, not looking away from Nora. “If you run, she’ll chase you. If you try to go for your weapons, I’ll let her.”

The men began edging away from them, moving slowly, but wisely trying to put as much space between themselves and Nora’s teeth as they could.

Nora’s attention switched to them as soon as they started moving, but Ben called her name again to draw it back. “Focus on me. You’re safe. They’re not important.”

He took another step closer to her. She whined again and looked from him to the retreating men and back again once more.

“They’re not going to try to hurt you anymore. I’m here,” he said, offering her one of his hands to sniff.

She did, giving him a wary look, but then her tail gave a small, tentative wag, as she finally recognized his scent as familiar. He took one final step to close the distance between them and dropped carefully to one knee, letting his hand rest on her shoulder.

“It’s going to be alright. You’re safe.”

At his touch, she surged forward and leaned against him, pressing her nose into his shirt and whining. He stroked her dark fur and repeated his reassurances to her as he watched the men who’d tried to abduct them flee.

Nora wriggled in his grasp and turned around to press her back against his chest. He let her, dropping down from one knee to a slightly less awkward cross-legged position on the ground. The asphalt was still warm from the day’s heat, unaffected by the growing twilight, but not so hot through his jeans that it was more than moderately uncomfortable.

He kept up the steady stream of reassurances and soothing pats. Nora wouldn’t be able to shift back to her human form until she’d calmed down enough to rest.

His own first experience of the shift had been under much less fraught circumstances, though he’d unknowingly contracted lycanthropy as an adult and hadn’t been expecting the change. It had been quite a shock when it had happened to him. He hoped that Victoria had prepared her daughter for this eventuality, explaining to her what would happen and what to do when it did. If she hadn't, they were going to have to have an uncomfortable conversation once Nora resumed her human shape.

It wasn’t entirely unheard of that a born shifter’s first shift arrive unexpectedly, as stress was a known trigger for inexperienced shifters, but usually it came on a full moon, as that was when the need to change shape was naturally the strongest. If it hadn’t happened now, he guessed it would have in a couple days, or the next month, at the latest.

Nora eventually calmed down enough that she curled up half in his lap, nose tucked up against his leg. Once she seemed to have settled herself, he reached for his phone, keeping one hand on her to keep her from startling at his movement.

His first call was to Ray Vecchio, as he’d neglected to get Dowling’s number earlier.

“Benny. What’s happening?”

“I’ve got Nora. She’s safe. Tell Agent Dowling for me. We’re behind the… well, to be honest Ray, I’m not exactly certain where we are, but that’s not important right now. There was a bit of an altercation, and I’m afraid I had to allow our assailants to get away, but the most important information is, she’s safe and in my care presently.”

“Are you both still in one piece?”

“Yes, Ray. Please tell Dowling that I’ll meet him back at the El Cortez. It may be a while; in the excitement, Nora shifted, and I need to wait for her to shift back.”

“Dammit, Benny. I’ll tell him. Don’t be surprised if he calls you back screaming for your head on a platter though.”

“I’ll be alright, Ray.”

“You’d better.” Ray disconnected the call.

Ben sighed and looked down at the young shifter burrowing herself more thoroughly into his lap, as though by getting closer to him she’d be safer.

This close, and in this form, her unique scent was inescapable, as was the fact that she smelled undeniably of pack and family to him. And as much as Nora smelled like her mother, Victoria hadn’t felt like pack when he’d visited her in the hospital that afternoon. This was something else.

Ben closed his eyes and allowed himself to consider the possibility that this was his own daughter he held in his arms now, some fourteen years after the inauspicious circumstances that had led to her birth.

Why hadn’t Victoria tried to find him, once she’d known that he was alive? Why hadn’t she told him he was a father? He’d have… he didn’t know what he’d have done, really, but he wished he’d known, nonetheless. To have had the opportunity to know his daughter, or at least to have known she existed.

He’d apologized to Victoria, tried to learn from his mistakes, and accepted his responsibility for the hurt and raw anger that had made her lash out at him the way she had in Chicago all those years ago.

But that didn't mean she'd forgiven him and that anger was probably why Victoria had never tried to contact him. And of course he hadn’t come looking for her, so why would she? As much as their time together had impacted both of their lives, it had ultimately amounted to a sum total of perhaps eleven days spent in each other’s company. It would’ve been far easier for her if he didn’t know, less possibility that he’d seek her out and have her arrested.

He wondered if this deal in Las Vegas hadn’t gone poorly, if she’d ever have told him. Very likely not.

The unfairness of it all left a bitter taste in his mouth and a sharp, sour feeling in his stomach, even as he understood Victoria’s motivations.

It had hurt before, when she’d found him in Chicago, and he’d finally grasped the full extent of her plans. But that pain had been shaped by his own guilt into something he felt he’d deserved, just punishment for valuing the law and what his duty demanded over all other considerations. This felt more like the righteous anger he’d felt confronting Gerrard after his father’s death. But he’d been down that path before as well, and decided he didn’t want to be the man that letting his anger dictate his actions would make him.

So he did what he did best; he forced that instinctual fury down. He could confront Victoria later. The past was past, he couldn’t change what either of them had done.

More pressing concerns required his attention.

Like what was going to happen to Nora now? Victoria was in federal custody, and likely facing a lengthy prison sentence for what she did to her former co-conspirator Jolly and whatever charges the FBI had waiting for her involvement in this latest mess. Surely she knew this, and yet, she’d only asked him to see that her daughter was kept safe and protected.

Was he her first choice or simply the most convenient option? What other family was there to care for Nora?

He knew Victoria’s parents had long been out of the picture, since before she’d gone to prison in ‘85, and her only sister had been killed in the car accident that had allowed Victoria to briefly fake her own death more than a decade ago.

Ben had his own family now; Ray and Charlie and their home together, his sister Maggie and her young family, the Vecchios, Ray’s parents, and even his brother and his wife and their children. Taking in a teenage girl would be a monumental disruption to their lives. Yet how could he leave her to anyone else, even if he was wrong, and she wasn’t his daughter?

He dialed his phone slowly, wishing Ray were here with him now, so that he didn’t have to have this conversation over a telephone. Ray answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Ray.”

“Ben.” Ray’s voice softened. “How’s it going?”

“I… it’s been a trying day.”

“Yeah? Tell me about it. I’m nearly at my wit’s end here. You find the kid?”

“Yes, Ray. She’s safe with me now. Sleeping, I think.”

“Good. I don’t like this whole business with you getting into trouble in an entirely different country. What kind of partner does it make me if I can’t ride to your rescue at the drop of a hat?”

“You’re an excellent partner, Ray, the best I’ve ever had,” he answered.

“Uh oh. I don’t like the sound of that. What’s up?”

Ben hesitated. “It’s about Nora,” he said finally.

“Yeah, what about her? She’s okay, right?”

“I think she might be mine.”

There was a pause, and then Ray exhaled noisily into the receiver. “Yours as in, your kid?”

“Yes, Ray. I believe she may be my daughter.”

A beat, then another. “How sure are you? You’re not just convincing yourself she is because you still feel bad about how things went with her mom, are you?”

“She smells like pack, Ray. Victoria... doesn’t. Not anymore.”

Ray swore softly into the telephone. “I’m gonna need to come down there, aren’t I?”

“I… don’t know.” Ben didn’t know what they should do next. His limited experience with parenthood thus far hadn’t extended to making paternity claims or international custody arrangements.

“Okay. Just. Don’t do anything permanent until I can get down there, okay? We’ll figure this out. If she’s your kid, she’s your kid, and that means she’s family. She’s part of our pack. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay. I’ll call you when I have my flight information. Love you.”

“Love you,” Ben repeated, feeling overwhelmed and entirely unprepared for the situation in which he found himself.

-

He waited there for more than an hour until Nora’s fitful sleep resulted in her shifting back to her human shape.

Grateful that circumstances had conspired to leave him with a spare, he shucked his extra t-shirt and gave it to her to replace the one she’d accidentally shredded during her transformation.

Fortunately, her shorts had survived mostly intact, so she was able to dress herself in something resembling normal attire in short order. Her shoes had similarly managed to survive, and they had a stilted conversation while she put them back on.

“We need to go back to your hotel. I promised the FBI I’d meet them there, once you’d recovered.”

“What does the FBI have to do with this?” she asked, not unreasonably.

“I’m afraid your mother was involved with something the FBI was investigating here in Las Vegas. I’m not privy to the exact details, but I believe it’s connected to the men we encountered here and back at the Mandalay Bay, and to your mother’s injuries.”

“Is she still okay?”

“As far as I know.”

Nora bit her lip, obviously not consoled by this. “Are you going to take me to see her?”

“Once we’ve met up with Agent Dowling, I promise I will.”

Nora drew in a deep breath and nodded.

-

The walk back to the hotel was mercifully uncomplicated, once they were able to find a way back to Fremont and its mesmerizing lightshow. Dowling was furious with him when they met in the lobby and Ben handed over the three guns he’d retrieved from the alley.

His mood didn’t improve when Ben insisted that they go back to the hospital to allow Nora to visit her mother before any debriefing could occur, but eventually he agreed.

Dowling drove them over in his beige, late model sedan and Hernandez met them in the hospital parking lot.

Nora stayed close to Ben’s side the entire time, watching the two FBI agents uneasily as they made their way to her mother’s room.

Their elevator had just reached the second floor when the lights in the building flickered and the fire alarm began to sound. Ben made eye contact with Dowling as he and Hernandez immediately went for their sidearms.

“Stay close,” Ben instructed Nora, nudging her to stand behind him and handing her his phone. “If I tell you to get down or run, don’t argue, just do it. If we get separated again, use this to call Ray, he’s in my saved numbers, or call 911 and tell them where you are.”

They stepped out of the elevator into an empty corridor, nothing untoward immediately jumping out at them. The emergency lights on the wall were flashing. Ben let the FBI agents take the lead, they were armed after all, and together they made their way cautiously towards the doors to the ward.

Inside, the scene seemed undisturbed, except no nurses appeared to greet them and Victoria’s hospital bed, when they came to her room, was empty, the LVPD officer assigned to watch her missing from her bedside.

Dowling swore and reached for his cell phone, reporting what had happened and requesting immediate backup while Hernandez and Ben searched the ward. They found a nurse, unconscious but thankfully alive, beneath her desk. When they revived her, she had no idea what had happened, just that someone had struck her from behind. None of the other patients on the ward had been disturbed or seen or heard anything beyond the alarms.

Hernandez escorted Ben and Nora out of the building, hurrying them along over Nora’s protests and questions about what had happened to her mother. When they made it outside without incident, he insisted on driving them directly to the FBI’s field office, where they were promptly deposited into an empty conference room only to wait for close to three hours until anyone thought to come check on them.

-

Sometime during hour four, Ben was able to convince one of the agents there to feed them, and he and Nora shared a late dinner of fast food sandwiches and lukewarm fries, washed down with watery cola.

Since the hospital, Nora hadn’t said more than a few words to anyone.

At first Ben had tried to entice her to talk by telling a few stories, nothing too obviously allegorical, just a few harmless anecdotes from his own misadventures when he’d been learning to adapt to life as a shifter. But neither that, nor his attempts to reassure her that her mother was likely still alive seemed to penetrate her shell.

She simply sat, and watched him silently, her eyes an eerily familiar grey-blue, while his ramblings became increasingly inane.

Hernandez reappeared eventually, and took them across the street to a motel, where they were given a suite with adjoining rooms and zero explanations as to the status of the investigation, merely instructions to remain there for their own safety until someone came for them in the morning.

Ben called Ray again that evening and let him know the latest since the very brief conversation they’d had while he and Nora were waiting at the field office, and Ray let him know when his flight would arrive the next day. There was little more information for them to exchange, so Ben ended up telling Charlie a late bedtime story over the phone instead, in payment for accidentally waking him up with his call after Ray’d already gotten him to bed.

Nora had curled up on the bed by then, huddled under the thin motel blankets, pretending she wasn’t listening to their conversation.

He called Ray Vecchio next, hoping his friend had had better luck getting information out of the FBI than he had.

“I don’t know any more than you do, Benny. There’s no sign of her and those guys you scared off tonight haven’t resurfaced yet. The FBI is just as stumped as you are. I wish I had better news.” Ray sounded tired. It was rather late on the east coast, Ben realized, glancing at the clock beside the bed. Perhaps this conversation could have waited until morning.

“It’s alright, Ray. I know there’s only so much you can do.” Ben sighed and rubbed his face.

“You okay?”

“Yes, Ray,” he lied.

“How’s the kid?”

“Asleep, I think.” He looked over at the bed in the adjoining room, watching Nora’s back rise and fall steadily with each breath. “Ray, I…”

“Yeah?”

“What if she is mine?” he asked, keeping his voice just above a whisper.

He could hear Ray exhale slowly before answering him. “Then you deal with it. I dunno what else to tell you. Get the Feds to run a paternity test. If she’s your kid, you go from there. You don’t have to deal with this alone. I got your back, you know that. Kowalski’s gonna be in this with you 100% of the way. You’ve got family who care about you. You wouldn’t be the first guy to find out his past had consequences.”

“I promised Victoria I’d keep her safe.”

“Of course you did.” Ray sighed. “You’d have done that anyway. Look, the upside is, if she really is your kid, they’re not gonna fight you on this, there’s no sane judge on this planet that’ll say you can’t have temporary custody if her mom’s on the run from homicide charges, and it’s not like social services is so flush with foster homes they’re gonna deny a willing caregiver absent some kinda evidence that it’s not a safe placement for the kid. You know this.”

Ben rubbed his eyebrow. “I know.”

“One thing at a time here, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Has social services even seen her yet?”

“No.” Ben frowned. “The FBI seems to have forgotten to send someone to speak with her.”

“Maybe they figured she was safer with you for the time being than in a foster home. And you said she shifted earlier tonight; protocol says it’s better to keep ‘em with another shifter if you can. Hang in there, Benny. It’s gonna be alright.”

“Thank you, Ray. Have a good night.”

“Talk to you in the morning. ‘Nite.”

-

Ben was awakened by an FBI agent pounding on the door to the motel room.

He and Nora were taken back across the street and deposited in yet another nondescript conference room and left to wait for someone with actual knowledge of their case to arrive.

Their hosts had at least been kind enough to supply them with a limited breakfast, so they sat quietly and ate rubbery egg and sausage sandwiches together while they waited.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Nora asked, finally breaking the uneasy silence between them.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly, “I hope so.”

“What if she’s not? What do I do then?”

“Your mother has always impressed me with her ability to survive against the most insurmountable odds.” He looked at her, trying to convey the strongest possible reassurance he could muster without feeling as though he was lying to her. “I have to believe that she’s alright. No matter what happens though, I promise you’re going to be taken care of. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Nora sniffed and rubbed at her eyes.

He wondered if he ought to say something more. If it would be appropriate to voice his suspicions about their relationship now, or if he ought to wait until her parentage had been formally confirmed. It was likely to be an uncomfortable conversation, no matter when it occurred, and he didn’t want to complicate matters by making any premature statements.

He didn’t know what, if anything, Victoria had told her about the identity of her father or what her feelings were on that subject.

They were interrupted then by the appearance of another FBI agent accompanied by a social worker, who introduced herself as Carrie Price. Before Ms. Price took Nora to another room to speak with her, Ben asked to have a private word.

Voicing his suspicions to the social worker came more easily than he’d expected, perhaps because he’d had practice with both Rays. She took his revelation rather kindly, considering the circumstances. She assured him that it would be a simple enough process to prove paternity if he wanted to pursue it, and said arrangements could be made for them to be tested later that afternoon.

In the meantime, she spoke with Nora separately for about twenty minutes and then took responsibility for ensuring that Nora was comfortable throughout the process when Dowling and Hernandez returned to interview them both. Ben was grateful for her assistance.

Dowling and Hernandez were tight-lipped about the exact status of their investigation, however they did let on that it appeared that Victoria had left the hospital of her own volition after two as-yet-unidentified—at least as far as the FBI would admit—men had gained access to her hospital room by posing as federal agents and subduing the nursing staff. There’d been some sort of altercation in the room, but Victoria had evidently escaped and pulled the fire alarm, perhaps in the hopes of delaying her pursuers.

They’d missed her at the hospital by mere minutes.

-

With the search for Victoria still on-going, the FBI were reluctant to let either Ben or Nora out of their sight, and announced that the both of them were to remain in protective custody until further notice.

Privately, Ben had doubts as to the legality of such a pronouncement, but didn’t argue, as it meant he could continue to safeguard Nora’s well-being. Until he had proof of a familial relationship between them, he had no formal rights to insist that they be allowed to stay together.

Explaining the situation to Nora was indeed an awkward conversation. At Ms. Price’s urging, once Dowling and Hernandez had left, he raised the subject with her.

“I know you spoke with Ms. Price earlier, and she asked you some questions about how old you are, your birthdate, where you were born. If you’ll forgive a few more, may I ask you about your father?”

Nora bit her lip and looked from him to Ms. Price before shrugging. “I never met him. Mom said he died before I was born.”

“Ah.” Ben swallowed. “Do you know his name?”

She shook her head and frowned. “Mom didn’t like to talk about him. Is it important?”

Ms. Price spoke up then. “We’re hoping to find any family you might have. It’d be better if you could stay with them, until your mother—,” she paused, seeming to realize that she couldn’t exactly promise Nora would be able to live with her mother again should she resurface, “it would be good if you could stay with family.”

Nora looked to Ben. “I thought you said I could stay with you?”

“Well, that’s not exactly what I said, but that is part of why I’m asking.” Ben rubbed his eyebrow. “I may have slightly misrepresented myself before, when I said I was an old friend of your mother’s.” He felt himself flushing but continued on. “We were indeed very close for a brief time before you were born and she did ask me to come find you yesterday. But before Thursday night, I hadn’t seen her in more than fourteen years.”

He forced himself to meet her eyes. “This is all a very roundabout way of telling you that I believe it’s possible that I may be your father.”

“What.” Nora blinked at him, and swung her head from him to Ms. Price, as if trying to figure out if they were serious.

Ben waited for her to say more, not sure what, if anything he could add just yet.

“But Mom said…” she trailed off, clearly floundering for words.

“Your mother may very well have had good reason not to tell you. I certainly understand why she would have chosen not to tell me about your existence, though I wish she had. I was and still am a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And your mother… The police have been looking for your mother for a very long time.”

That was putting it delicately, but he didn’t really want to explain how her mother had killed a man and then attempted to frame her probable-father for the crime quite yet.

“I don’t understand. If you didn’t know about me before, what were you doing in Vegas then?”

“They called me when your mother was admitted to the hospital here and the FBI identified her fingerprints. I came to see her.”

“Oh. What happens now then?”

“Ms. Price is going to take us this afternoon to have a DNA test performed, so we can find out for certain if I am your father.”

“And what if you’re not?”

“If I’m not, I still intend to do everything I can to see that you’re safe and taken care of, until your mother is found and we can find you a more permanent place to stay. I don’t make promises that I don’t intend to keep.”

“And if you are my dad? What’s that change then?”

“If I am, then I hope that you’ll be able to come stay with me in Canada. If that’s something you’d like.”

“But you’ve already got a family, I heard you talking to your son on the phone. And your... Ray?”

“Yes, I have a husband, Ray, and a son Charlie. He’d be your brother if—”

She cut him off. “So what, they’re just gonna be cool having me come stay with you? You don’t even know me!”

“You’ll meet Ray later tonight, hopefully. I’ve told him about this already. I believe his exact words were something along the lines of ‘if she’s family, she’s part of our pack’. I’m hoping we can all get to know each other.”

Ms. Price put her hand on Nora’s arm. “I realize that this is a lot to process all at once. We don’t have to work out everything right now. Let’s just take this one step at a time.”

Nora and Ben nodded in unison.

-

Ray arrived in Las Vegas late that evening, having left Charlie in the care of their friend and neighbor Mrs. Suter, and braved the indignities of international travel. Anticipating a need for independent transportation, he’d rented a car at the airport and drove straight to the motel where Ben and Nora had been billeted.

At first, the FBI agent watching the door denied any knowledge of the situation, and attempted to turn Ray away, which only made him angry and, as anyone who knew Ray well could have predicted, led to him creating enough of a scene that Ben heard him outside and came to the door. When Ben explained who he was, the agent finally relented and allowed him to go in.

Inside the motel room, Ray fell heavily against Ben, who wrapped his arms around him tightly.

“You have no idea how good it feels to not be in an airplane right now,” Ray mumbled into his shoulder.

“I’m pleased to see you too, Ray.” Ben smiled.

Recovering his dignity, Ray pulled back from the embrace and straightened his back. “Okay, where’s the kid? You gonna introduce me?”

Ben thumped his shoulder and turned around, gesturing toward the door between the rooms, which was shut. “She’s in the other room; let me see if she’s still awake.”

He knocked on the door gently.

A muffled, “yeah?” came in reply a few seconds later.

“Ray’s here. Would you like to meet him?” he asked through the door.

There was a soft thump and approaching footsteps and then the door swung open.

Nora was wearing the cactus-themed pajamas that Ms. Price had gotten for her that afternoon along with a few other articles of clothing, after she’d realized that neither she nor Ben had anything to wear beyond the clothes they still had on from the day before. They’d asked the FBI if they would retrieve Nora’s luggage from the El Cortez, but they’d yet to do so, and Ben had been waiting for Ray to arrive to ask him to do the same.

“Hi,” Nora said in a quiet voice.

“Hey,” Ray replied. “I’m Ray.” He held out his hand.

Nora shook it after a moment’s hesitation. Ray grinned at her like he hadn’t noticed.

“Good to meet ya,” he said.

Nora nodded and brushed her hair back from her face.

“Why don’t we all sit down and talk for a while,” suggested Ben.

“Great idea, I’m beat.” Ray went over and flopped into one of the chairs next to the absurdly small table in the corner of the room, leaving the choice between the second chair and the bed up to Nora.

She followed him and sat carefully in the chair across from Ray, so Ben sat on the edge of the bed opposite them both.

“So fill me in, what’s the latest?”

Ben gave him an abbreviated account of their afternoon and what little he knew concerning the search for Victoria. Thus far, the FBI hadn’t found any trace of her or any of the three men he’d let escape on Fremont Street the night before.

“How long did they say it’d be until you hear back from the lab?” Ray asked.

“Tuesday evening at the earliest.”

Ray nodded, like he’d been expecting that, which Ben supposed was reasonable. They’d been fortunate to get an appointment for the cheek swabs on a Saturday as it was, but the actual testing would have to wait until the lab opened on Monday.

“Shame they don’t accept sniff tests in court for this kind of thing,” Ray joked, raising his eyebrows at Nora. “You were right, she smells a lot like you, but not… It’s weird. Sorry, kid, you’re probably stuck with us. Welcome to the family.” He winked.

Nora looked faintly overwhelmed.

“Ray, that’s hardly definitive evidence. Let’s wait until we have the DNA results before we draw any conclusions.”

“There you go, being Mr. Logic again, Frase,” Ray grumbled, half-smiling in that way that meant he was being playful, not serious.

Ben didn’t bother hiding his own smile in return. “We can’t all run on instinct all the time, Ray.”

“So you keep telling me.” Ray snapped his fingers suddenly. “That reminds me, the Feds do know they’re gonna have to let you out of this place tomorrow night, right?”

Ben sighed. “I don’t think that’s occurred to them yet, no.”

“Alright. That’s going on the agenda for tomorrow then. Gotta find us a good place to run where we can’t get into too much trouble. I brought along some of our camping supplies, but we’re probably going to need a lot of water too, if we’re running in the desert in this heat. Your job is to explain to the FBI why it’s not a good idea to leave three shifters cooped up in a motel room on the full moon.”

He pointed to Nora. “Your job is to decide what kind of snacks you want me to pick you up for the morning after. I recommend something with a lotta protein and a lotta carbohydrates; shifting’s hard work, need all the calories you can get after. Ben here likes pemmican and bark tea, but I tend to go for double chocolate protein bars because they taste a hell of a lot better.”

Nora stared at him, a little wide-eyed. “I like chocolate,” she said.

“Greatness. I’ll get you the good ones.”

Ben leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs. “Ray, I hate to ask this of you, but would you be willing to go over to my hotel and bring back my bag? It could wait until morning if you’re too tired, but I’d very much appreciate the change of clothing if you’re able.”

Ray stretched in his seat and yawned. “How ‘bout a compromise? I’ve got a few of your things with me in my bag ‘cause I knew you didn’t pack for longer than a few days. Then I can go over to the hotel in the morning and check out. No reason to keep paying for that room if they’re gonna have you here.” He stood and twisted to crack his back. “Be right back”

Ben followed Ray with his gaze wearily as he headed for the door to go retrieve his bag from the car. Nora’s voice after he’d stepped outside snapped his attention back to her however.

“He’s not what I expected.”

Her comment surprised a laugh out of him. “No, Ray is rarely what anyone expects him to be.”

-

They were all too tired to stay up any longer, so Nora went back to her bed in the adjoining room and Ben and Ray settled into theirs after Ray insisted on taking a quick shower.

“That went okay, right?” Ray asked, curling up against Ben’s back. It was too warm in the room for a blanket, even with the air conditioning unit at the window running as cold as its settings would allow, so they were just under a thin sheet together.

“I think so,” Ben murmured into his pillow. “I confess I don’t really have much experience with this sort of thing to compare it to though. This is uncharted territory for me.”

“Yeah, I get that. You’re feeling a little lost without a compass here, right?”

Ben hummed noncommittally.

“And here I was thinking we’d have a few years before we’d be dealing with a teenager in the house. Shows what I know.”

“Are you sure you’re alright with this?”

Ray wrapped his arm more tightly around Ben’s chest and pressed his lips to the skin just behind his right ear. “I’m okay, Ben. Really. I said ‘for better or worse’ and I meant it. And this doesn’t even come close to qualifying as ‘worse’. So you’ve got a kid you never knew about. That's not bad, it’s just unexpected. Well, I guess it is bad that her mom never bothered to tell you about her, but you know what I mean. We’ll make it work, we always do.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“Nah, of course it won’t. She seems like a good kid though. You notice she does that thing with her eyes, like you do, where you just look at somebody and they instantly want to apologize for whatever it is they’ve done wrong?”

Ben laughed. “I think that’s just your naturally guilty conscience, Ray.”

“Nah, that’s some Mountie superpower, that’s what that is. Who knew it was genetic?”

“We don’t know for certain that she’s mine,” Ben cautioned.

Ray snorted. “Like hell we don’t. Even if I didn't have the clear evidence from my nose, I’m not blind, Frase; that’s obviously your kid. You can see it in the shape of her mouth. Plus she’s got your eyes. They’re the exact same color. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed that.”

“Alright.”

Ray huffed a sigh into his shoulder and pressed closer.

“There’s still the matter of Victoria.” The darkness of the room and the intimacy of their embrace gave Ben the strength to voice his fears. “We don’t know where she is at the moment, or even if she’s managed to successfully evade the men who were looking for her. If she’s found and arrested again, she’ll be extradited to Illinois to face trial for murder—a trial in which I will surely be asked to testify against her. And if she isn’t found, we’ll be forever looking over our shoulders, awaiting the day she comes to reclaim her daughter.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d rather hoped this trip would mean I’d finally be able to rid myself of the specter she’s cast over my life, but it seems not.”

“Hey, no, you can’t think about it like that. You’re getting something amazing you didn’t even know you had outta this. We’re not gonna waste our time worrying about what might happen with Victoria. We can cross those bridges when we come to them.”

“Mm.”

“I know that’s easier said than done. Promise me you’ll try though.”

“Yes, Ray.”

“And hey, look on the bright side, at least this one we’re not gonna have to potty train.”

“That is a relief.” Ben laughed. “How will Charlie handle this, do you think? It’s a big change, bringing another person into the household.”

“Charlie’s gonna be just fine. He does okay with all the older kids at the rec center when I take him. He’ll love her in no time. I’d be more worried about her than him. Going from all this to live with strangers in the middle of nowhere, Canada, is gonna take a lot of adjusting.”

-

Morning came all too soon, and Ray, who was not confined to FBI custody for his own protection, left with Ben’s key card to retrieve his belongings and make final preparations for that evening for them.

After their hosts made it clear that their presence would not be required in the FBI field office, Ben and Nora were left behind to entertain themselves in the motel room. The stress of confinement soon began to wear on them both.

The day of the full moon was always a restless one, with the feeling of heightened awareness of one’s senses and nervous energy only becoming worse as the day wore on and the need to run and shift grew stronger. With some twenty-four years experience under his belt, Ben was used to the feeling, and had long since learned to ignore it enough that he could carry on with his normal daily tasks, but it was Nora’s first time, and it made her irritable and jittery.

While Ben had contented himself with reading the battered paperback he’d taken from Ray’s travel bag, a mystery novel involving such an absurd series of misunderstandings and mistaken identities that even he was having difficulty tracking who was who, Nora had taken to fitfully flipping through channels on the television and sighing.

After the fifth sigh, Ben looked up from his reading. “If you’re bored, I believe there’s another book or two in Ray’s bag there,” he suggested.

Nora set down the remote and rolled off of the bed to go dig in Ray’s bag. “Motorcycle repair? Sugar Ray Robinson biography?” she said, sounding disappointed.

“If you’d prefer, you’re welcome to trade for what I’m reading. Perhaps you’ll be better able to make sense of the plot than I am.” He held out the paperback.

She took it from him, eyebrows raised, read the back cover, and laughed.

“Yes, well, as you can see, the options were limited,” Ben said defensively. “If you’d rather have the repair manual…”

“No, this is fine,” she said quickly, and retreated to flop on the bed with her selection.

Peace in the room lasted only another hour before Nora put down her book in frustration. “I can’t read like this. It feels like there’s all this electricity buzzing under my skin, and if I don’t move I’m going to explode or something!”

Ben set aside his reading. “Perfectly normal, I’m afraid. It’s the influence of the full moon. Your body is preparing itself for what’s to come tonight.”

“Does it always feel like this?” she asked.

“You get used to it.”

“So that’s a yes, then.” She groaned and dropped an arm over her face.

“I find physical exertion tends to mitigate the worst of it. Quite a lot of firewood gets chopped on full moons when we’re at home and Ray keeps a heavy bag in the garage for such occasions. I’m sorry there’s not much opportunity for that here. You could try jumping or jogging in place for a while, that might help.”

To her credit, she took his advice, and went into the other room to switch on the television in there, setting the channel to one that sounded like it was playing a succession of music videos, and proceeded to dance along with the music. Ray would no doubt approve of this solution, though what choreography she was attempting to emulate was beyond Ben. Fortunately, Nora seemed happy enough with the distraction this provided, so he left her to it.

When she’d finally exhausted herself, Nora came back into the room and laid down on the floor on the opposite side of the bed from him. Ben thought perhaps she was going to fall asleep there until she spoke up.

“What’s really going to happen to her if they find her?”

Ben considered pretending he didn’t know who she was referring to in order to buy himself more time to answer, but decided that was the coward’s way out. “If the police or the FBI find her, your mother will be arrested and taken into custody. From there, most likely she’ll be taken to Chicago for trial.”

Nora sat up and looked at him. “Why Chicago? What did she do there? Why doesn’t anyone want to tell me? I’m not a little kid. You don’t need to lie to make me feel better. I can handle the truth.”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

She nodded.

Ben licked his lips and sighed. “Your mother killed a man in Chicago, before you were born. They’d robbed a bank together in Alaska in 1985, and were both eventually caught and sent to prison. That’s how we met, I was the arresting officer.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the icy wind and a thready voice reciting a poem steadily in his ear. It had been a long time since he’d told this story.

“After the robbery, your mother tried to run to Canada. The Alaskan authorities contacted the RCMP and I was asked to investigate after her small plane was brought down by the weather. When I located the plane, it had been abandoned, so I followed her tracks and found her nearly frozen to death near a place called Fortitude Pass just as the storm was closing in around us. It snowed for a day and a night and a day. We kept each other alive until the storm had passed and then, once we’d made it back to town, I arrested her, because I felt my duty required it of me.

“She was released after ten years and came looking for me. I was working in Chicago at the time, for the Canadian Consulate there. Jolly, the man she killed, followed her and threatened her, so she shot him and then asked me for help. I thought I loved her, so I tried to, but she was angrier with me than I realized. That decision nearly ended up costing me my life and my career.

“There’s a great deal more to this story, but I think that’s for her to tell you herself, if she wants.”

“Oh.” Nora looked as though she regretted asking the question.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I wanted to know.”

“I understand why she felt she had to do what she did at the time. I can’t condone what she did, but that doesn’t mean I believe your mother is an irredeemably bad person. I know that you love her and she loves you, and I would never wish to change that. The only thing she cared about when I spoke with her in the hospital was making sure that you were safe.”

“Okay.”

Ben sighed. She’d asked for the truth, and it was certainly no less than she was owed, but he wished he could offer her better news than the bleak prediction of her mother’s impending incarceration.

Further conversation on the subject was postponed, however, by Ray’s return to the motel.

“I’m back and I’ve got provisions!” Ray announced, shutting the door with the heel of his boot, both arms encumbered by plastic shopping bags. Ben went over to relieve him of his burden, setting the bags down on the bed. One of them appeared to be filled with takeout containers and smelled particularly enticing. He moved that bag over to the small table and began removing Styrofoam containers.

“Where did you go for this?” Ben asked.

“Mexican place not far from here. Followed my nose. Figured if we’ve gotta be in Vegas, I’m gonna take advantage of my chance to get some of the good stuff while we’re here.”

Nora had gotten up off of the floor when Ray came in and now stood hovering halfway between them as if uncertain where to go. Ray noticed and directed her over to get food. “There’s paper plates and forks in the bag. Grab some while it’s hot. I got a mix of stuff; should be plenty to go around.”

Ben finished arranging the cartons to his satisfaction and dug out the aforementioned plates and plastic cutlery, passing some to Nora. “After you.” He gestured at the table. “It smells excellent, Ray. How did you get on with your other tasks?”

“Not bad. Got the supplies for tomorrow morning and found a place where you can reserve a campsite for the night not too far out of town, out by Lake Mead. Some shifter groups online recommended it. Locals know to steer clear on full moon nights, and we should have enough space that we won’t run into the other shifters out tonight too if we stick to our assigned zone. They’ve got it scent-marked out pretty well, supposedly. I got us a spot.”

“That sounds fine. Are the roads to this campsite well enough maintained that we can take the rental car out there?” Ben began piling meat and beans and rice onto the fresh tortillas he’d just assembled on his plate.

“Yeah, I was worried about that too. Should be okay though, as long as we drive slow.”

Ben sat down carefully on the bed with his meal. “You can finish sorting that later. Food, Ray.”

Ray grinned and set down one of the sports drink bottles he’d been organizing; the other, he passed to Nora as he went to grab a plate. “How is it?” he asked her.

Nora swallowed and nodded vigorously.

“It’s very good, Ray,” Ben chimed in.

“Gets the Fraser seal of approval, alright, that’s what I like to hear.”

He filled his plate and sat next to Ben, bumping shoulders with him amiably.

“So what’d the wardens have to say about me springing you guys tonight?” he asked between large bites of taco. “We good to go?”

“The FBI has agreed, reluctantly, that it would be detrimental to our well being and, perhaps more importantly in their view, the integrity of the soft furnishings in this motel room, if we aren’t permitted a free pass for the evening.” Ben nodded towards the phone on the nightstand. “I’ve been given strict instructions to return by ten a.m. or they’ll be sending an armed search party after us.”

“Ugh. Well, it’s not like we’re going to want to spend too much time out in the sun afterwards.”

“No, I suppose not,” Ben agreed.

-

The road to the campsite was not, despite assurances otherwise, quite as well groomed as they would have liked. But they made it out there without damaging the suspension or any of the tires of the compact sedan Ray had been issued by the rental company, so Ben supposed it was good enough.

Once they were there, he and Ray began setting up camp like the well-practiced team that they were, pitching the tent and staking out a large canopy over its entrance to provide additional shade, and setting out a couple of the water jugs for later.

“Okay, so here’s the plan,” Ray said to Nora, as they were wrapping up preparations. “The tent is home base. Before we shift, I want you to go in there, give it a good sniff, roll around on the sleeping bags a bit. You want it to smell safe and homey so your wolf-brain knows this is the place to be at the end of the night. Ben and I have been doing this for a long time now, so when we’re wolfing it, try to follow our lead. We’ll keep you from straying too far from the pack.” He looked over at Ben, who nodded in confirmation.

“That said, this isn’t all serious business. It’s okay to have fun, run around, go a little nuts. This is our one night a month to cut loose and get down with our wild sides.” Ray grinned.

“Do mind where you step, though,” Ben cautioned. “We may heal more swiftly than normal humans, but I can’t imagine removing cactus spines from one’s paws is particularly pleasant.”

Nora nodded.

“Right. Any questions?” Ray asked.

“Where do we… uh, change?”

Ray spread his arms, indicating the dirt clearing they were standing in. “You’re looking at it.” Then he frowned, realizing what she was really asking. “We’ll turn our backs, let you have privacy to do your thing, but the whole getting naked thing is kinda part and parcel with the whole shifter business. You’re probably gonna get an accidental eyeful; if not tonight, then tomorrow morning. Sorry.

“Rule Number One of shifting with folks you don’t know too well or a mixed group is eyes at shoulder level or above and Rule Number Two is take all the space you need and let other people do the same. There’s a couple thin blankets in the tent on top of the sleeping bags, so when you wake up you can pull one over yourself if you need.”

Ben went over to the tent and began pouring water into the collapsible trough Ray had found that morning at a pet store. “If you need a drink tonight, we have fresh water here, and more in the car for later. I don’t think we’ll find anything much on our run, nor would I advise drinking from the lake, so if you get thirsty, try to remember to turn back toward camp.”

He looked over at Ray. “Are we forgetting anything?”

Ray looked thoughtful for a moment and then snapped his fingers. “Don’t pee on the tent.”

Nora burst out laughing and even Ben cracked a knowing smile.

Ray laughed too, but then added, “I’m serious though. It’s happened before. Wolf-brain thinks it’s a great idea to mark your territory, and the next thing you know, it’s morning, and everything stinks like the drunk tank back at the old precinct. If you gotta go, pick a rock downwind of camp.”

-

Moon rise came right before sunset that evening, and in deference to Nora’s novice status, they elected not to try and delay any longer than necessary.

As promised, Ben and Ray turned their backs as she stripped and stood in the clearing, waiting for the change to come. Ben felt obligated to try to offer some advice when it didn’t happen immediately.

“It’s difficult at first, because you’re not used to the process and haven’t learned to interpret the new signals from your body yet. But you’ve done this before. You can do it again. I have faith in you.”

“It doesn’t feel like the first time. I feel weird,” she said, her breaths coming in shaky gasps.

“The full moon always feels a little different. That’s to be expected. You’re doing well.”

“Deep breaths, kiddo,” Ray called to her. “Imagine you’re holding a fist really tightly. Then you want to let it go slowly, while you breathe out, until your whole body relaxes too.”

There was a pause, as Nora tried to follow his advice, and then, a soft “oh!” Her surprised exclamation turned into a groan that dropped in pitch as her shift began in earnest.

“That was very good, Ray,” Ben whispered.

“Old boxing trick, I’ve learned a few things about virtual- uh… visualization techniques over the years.”

When the disconcerting noises behind them had abated, they turned around.

Nora rose slowly to all four legs and shook herself and then looked over at them with sharp blue eyes expectantly.

Ray nudged Ben with his elbow. “Guess that’s our cue.”

Turning around again, they shucked their clothes and Ray tossed them into the open tent.

Ray looked at Ben and winked. “Show time.”

Reaching within himself, Ben released his own iron grip on the compulsion to shed his human form and dropped to his knees with a pained groan as the rush of the shift hit him all at once. Nearly a quarter century of practice meant that he no longer feared this process, and it had gotten easier to endure the temporary pain, but it still was very much an ordeal.

Soon there were three wolves standing in the desert clearing, watching each other, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move.

Finally, it was Ray that broke the stalemate, and went over to sniff Nora. He then batted at her playfully with a paw until she gave a tiny mock growl and responded in kind. Ben joined in with a teasing nip to Ray’s flank and then darted away, daring them both to give chase.

They ran and wandered and played for several hours, keeping within the scent-marked boundaries left by previous campers, and doing lazy loops throughout their limited territory.

Hunting was somewhat scarce. Ben caught a few scent trails of likely prey during the night, but nothing recent enough to properly run down. That wasn’t a priority though. They could work on teaching Nora to hunt another time. It was more important that the night passed without incident, and their pack was safe.

As the night sky began to lighten, they headed back to their den and bedded down in the soft blankets there, weary and content.

-

Ben woke to a sleepy Ray groping clumsily at his hip, trying to pull him closer and squeezing him suggestively when he succeeded.

“Ray,” Ben warned in a low voice raspy with mild dehydration. “We have company.”

Ray groaned and thumped his forehead against Ben’s bare shoulder. “Ah hell.” The grope became a friendly pat and Ray reached behind him to pull a blanket over them. “Issa kid up yet?”

Ben squinted across the tent. Nora appeared to have wrapped herself up like a lumpy mummy in the night and was snoring softly.

“No, I believe she’s still asleep.”

“Good.” Ray nipped at his collarbone, and then ran his tongue along that same place, making Ben jump.

“Ray!”

“Shhh… I’m getting up. I’m not gonna do anything else.” Ray wrapped the blanket around himself a bit more securely and rose to his hands and knees to dig around for his pants and underwear.

Ben did the same, and soon they’d crawled out into the bright sunshine to retrieve their breakfast from the car.

“How is it this damn hot at eight in the morning?” Ray mumbled through a half-chewed protein bar.

“I was wondering that myself,” Ben admitted, taking another long pull at his water bottle.

“I don’t remember it being this bad last time we visited my folks in Arizona.”

“That’s probably because we were there in March.”

“Huh. Good point.” Ray stuffed the rest of the bar into his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of a red sports drink. Ben tried not to shudder. Yellow was the only quasi-palatable flavor, in his opinion, insofar as it vaguely resembled lemonade. The red was positively medicinal.

Ray stood and stretched his back. “Guess we better wake Sleeping Beauty if we’re gonna get you two back by your curfew.” He went over to the tent and gave it a firm shake. “Rise and shine, kid, the early wolf gets the chocolate bar before it melts.”

There was a startled noise from inside the tent, and then a very messy head of curly hair emerged from the flap and glared at Ray.

“It’s still early,” she whined.

“It’s nearly eight fifteen,” Ben announced, rising to begin packing up their campsite. “We need to be on the road by nine if we’re to make our deadline.”

“They’re just gonna make us wait in that stupid motel all day again. I don’t see why we have to go back there at all. It’s not like anyone else knows we’re out here.”

“Yeah, but since when does anything the Feds do make sense,” Ray quipped. “C’mon. Up and at ‘em. Like it or not, we gotta make tracks.”

“Once you’ve gotten dressed, please roll up the sleeping bags and blankets while you’re in there. Your breakfast is out here waiting for you.”

“Yeah, alright,” Nora grumbled.

-

They made it back to the motel by 10:15, with Ben calling ahead to the agent in charge of their security detail to fend off any armed search parties due to the slight delay.

As Nora had predicted, they were not allowed to go anywhere else that day, so instead, Ray spent most of the afternoon teaching her how to play chess ‘properly’ (his own description) using a chess set constructed entirely out of scraps of paper with the symbols drawn on them.

Ben wisely stayed out of this endeavor and watched from the bed while pretending to read the motorcycle maintenance manual.

-

As the afternoon passed into early evening, Ben left them arguing over whether Ray had invented a rule he’d neglected to mention before using, and went into the adjoining room to call Ray Vecchio. The FBI had not seen fit to update them on the case, and Ben hoped that his friend had had more luck.

“Nothing to report, Benny,” Ray said, and Ben allowed his posture to slump incrementally as he sat in the uncomfortable chair beside the bed. “Sorry.”

Ben sighed. “I could be assisting with the investigation, if they weren’t so insistent on keeping me in the dark.”

“Yeah, I know. I get it. You’re doing what you’re supposed to though. You’re watching out for the kid.”

Ben rolled his neck. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Even if you did still have your liaising privileges, you’re too close to this case. They’d be irresponsible if they let you work it, and you know that.”

“Yes, I realize. It’s just, I’m not accustomed to being in this position.”

“Hang tight and focus on what you can control. That’s all you can do.”

“Yes, Ray.”

“You guys made it through a full moon without anything going sideways, that’s pretty good. What’s next with the kid?”

“The laboratory report for the paternity test should be available tomorrow afternoon. If the results are as expected, we have an emergency custody hearing scheduled with a judge on Wednesday morning. If not, social services will be looking into alternative placement arrangements for Nora.

“I was told my Canadian citizenship and residency preclude my being selected as a permissible placement, absent explicit permission from her mother to take her. Unless Victoria left some sort of signed directive regarding her daughter’s care that names me as guardian, we may be out of luck there. We only have my own testimony that she asked me to take care of her as we were alone when she said it.”

“I’m sorry, Benny. I don’t know what to tell you there. I guess we’ll deal with that if it comes to it. If she is yours though, are they gonna have a problem with you taking her to Canada?”

“I dearly hope not. The social worker assigned to Nora’s case is working to gather as much information for us as she can for Wednesday, in support of my petition. The answer will ultimately depend on the judge’s decision. And even then, we may need to go to the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco to obtain travel documents for her before we can return home.”

“San Francisco?”

“That is the nearest Consulate, Ray.”

“Yeesh, you Canadians sure don’t make it easy on yourselves, do you?”

“Yes, well, at least I have some experience navigating those particular bureaucratic waters.”

“That is handy.”

-

Ben made another call back home to check in on Charlie before returning to the other room.

Mrs. Suter informed him that he was doing very well, and Ben had a brief, mostly intelligible conversation with his son before Charlie got bored with the telephone and tossed the receiver to the ground unceremoniously.

He tried not to take it personally; two was a difficult age to be, after all, and he’d often experienced similar urges when presented with particularly exasperating telephone conversations himself.

When he returned to the other room, he found Ray and Nora had resolved their previous argument and ended their chess match, and were now bickering good naturedly over the television remote.

“You gotta help me out here, Ben, tell her that baseball isn’t boring.”

“Well, Ray, I’m afraid I’m not qualified to judge. Baseball is really more your area of expertise than mine.”

“Uh uh, no way, you’re not getting out of answering that easy.”

“In that case, I’ll say that I find baseball to be pleasant enough to watch on occasion, but I’m afraid when it comes to excitement, it hardly compares with other, finer activities such as ice hockey, for example.” Ben smiled at him.

“Ugh!” Ray threw up his hands. “I don’t know why I bothered asking a Canadian for support here. It’s America’s favorite pastime!”

“Ray, need I remind you that you too hold Canadian citizenship now?”

“Hey, I have dual citizenship and anyway that is not the point and you know it, Frase,” Ray grumbled.

Nora snickered and changed the channel back to the baseball game.

-

Tuesday began much the same as Sunday had, with an unfruitful conversation with Agent Hernandez over the telephone and continued forced confinement at the motel.

Ray took advantage of his own freedom to come and go by going out to retrieve meals and run errands, but otherwise kept them company and supplied the majority of the conversational energy.

Though she seemed to have become more comfortable in their presence, Nora remained very quiet and withdrawn unless prompted to answer a direct question or in the rare instances when Ray managed to surprise a laugh out of her. Ben hoped it was only concern for her mother and unhappiness at their current situation, not any deeper discontent.

He itched to do something, anything, that would end this miserable vigil. If the FBI hadn’t found Victoria by now, he doubted they ever would. It had been sheer bad luck on her part that they had found her this time. If she hadn’t gotten caught up in whatever gang war was quietly raging in Las Vegas, he suspected she’d have evaded their attention indefinitely.

And he’d have never been the wiser.

-

Finally, late in the afternoon, their various attempts to pass the time peaceably were interrupted by a knock at the door.

Ben answered it and found Ms. Price there, wearing an opaque professional smile, and carrying a large envelope. “Sergeant Fraser, may I come in?”

He stepped aside. “Yes, of course.”

Nora had stayed on the bed, where she’d been sitting, watching a movie with Ray, but Ray had gotten up when he heard the door and came over. Ben introduced him. “This is my husband, Ray Kowalski. Ray, this is Ms. Price, she’s the social worker assigned to Nora’s case.”

“Pleased to meet you, Ray,” she said, taking his offered hand and shaking it.

“Likewise.” His gaze dropped immediately to the envelope in her other hand. “You got news for us?”

“Yes, I have the results from the paternity test. Is there somewhere we can all sit down?”

“Certainly.” Ben led her over to the small table while Ray ducked into the other room to borrow a third chair.

“Nora, would you like to join us? This concerns you as well,” Ben asked.

Nora nodded and moved closer to them, but remained at the edge of the bed sitting cross-legged, rather than take the chair Ray offered her.

“Well, let’s have it,” Ray said, as soon as they were all seated. “Best to rip the band-aid off quickly.”

“Right. I won’t leave you in suspense any longer.” Ms. Price opened the envelope and removed a small bundle of papers from it, and handed Ben the topmost sheet. “The report shows with 99.94% confidence that you are Nora’s biological father. Congratulations.”

Ben’s heart jumped and he let out the breath he’d been holding in a rush. Ray grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. He squeezed back and looked to Nora for her reaction, giving her a tight smile.

Nora looked a little stunned, and wrapped her arms around her knees protectively, pulling them up against her chest.

“You okay, kiddo?” Ray asked.

She nodded.

“It’s perfectly fine to feel all sorts of emotions at a time like this,” Ms. Price said. “You don’t have to say you’re okay if you’re not.”

“No. I am okay,” Nora mumbled. “It’s just… a lot.”

“If you want, we can go to the other room for a while, put the movie back on, and let them talk about the boring legal stuff,” Ray offered.

“No, I want to know what’s going to happen now.”

“That’s fine. You just let us know if you change your mind.” Ms. Price smiled.

Ben cleared his throat. “Ah. The rest of the paperwork you’ve brought?” he prompted.

“Right. So, I was able to get a copy of Nora’s birth certificate faxed over from the Texas Department of Vital Statistics.” She laid that out on the table and pushed it towards Ben. He looked at it.

Eleanor Marie Metcalf had been born in Austin, Texas on February 4th, 1997 to Victoria Elizabeth Metcalf, mother.

...and one Benton Robert Fraser, father.

“She put my name on the birth certificate,” he said, feeling strangely numb.

“Yes, I didn’t hear back from Texas until late this afternoon. They haven’t quite finished digitizing their records down there evidently. Having this earlier would’ve saved us some time.” She passed him a few more papers, not leaving him any time to think about this revelation. “These are copies of Ms. Metcalf’s custodial records from the Anchorage State Correctional Facility, and the current warrant for her arrest issued by the State of Illinois in May of 1996.”

Ben glanced at them briefly, but he’d read through both many times before.

“And finally,” she handed him another couple sheets of paper, “this is the Declaration that you’ll need to file first thing tomorrow with the judge before the hearing. I need you to look it over and make sure everything is correct, and sign at the bottom just above where your name is printed.”

He nodded and began reading through it carefully.

“You need me to sign anything?” Ray asked.

“No, although you’re welcome to come tomorrow and wait with us in the courtroom. I’ll be there for Nora, and will try to help as much as I can, but Benton will need to take the lead at the hearing as the petitioner, unless you took my advice and obtained local counsel?”

Ben shook his head. “No, I’m afraid our present situation wasn’t particularly conducive to allowing us to find an attorney. I’ve done some reading this afternoon however, and I’m reasonably confident in my ability to present our case.”

That had been one of the errands he’d gotten Ray to run that morning, a trip to the local library to research Nevada law. Ray had brought back a stack of photocopies and a Family Law for Dummies book he’d found at a bookstore.

“Although,” Ben grimaced, “I don’t have anything suitable to wear to court.”

“Oh shit, yeah. Forgot about that. I guess I’d better go out tonight and find something for us both.”

“The family courts here only request business casual attire, so don’t feel that you need to dress too formally. A collared shirt and khakis would be fine,” Ms. Price said.

Ray looked at his watch. “I’d better get going, before it gets too late. Nora, you have anything you can wear tomorrow, or do I need to find you something too?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I have a dress?”

“Well, c’mon then, let me see it. I’ve done this court thing a bunch of times.” He corralled her into the other room.

Ben finished reading the document Ms. Price had given him and signed the final page as instructed. She slid one more page across the table to him.

“With Nora’s birth certificate and the DNA results in hand, I have authority to officially place her with you now. This form is acknowledging that you’re accepting responsibility for Nora’s care for the time being. Obviously, you’re still going to need permission from the judge to take her out of the country, since her mother isn’t here to give consent, but I’m hopeful given the circumstances, tomorrow’s hearing will merely be a formality.”

“I hope so,” Ben agreed and signed the form.

“Now, I’d like to have a word with Nora before I leave you, but then I’ll be back in the morning so we can head over to the courthouse together.”

-

The Clark County Courthouse was much like many other courthouses Ben had been inside in his lengthy law enforcement career. They arrived early with their grim-faced FBI escort and sat quietly in the back of the courtroom, watching the chaotic morning calendar progress as they awaited their turn to be heard.

Looking around them, Ben felt somewhat overdressed in his thrift-store-supplied sport coat, neat white shirt, and tan slacks. Several other petitioners had obviously taken a liberal interpretation of 'business casual' dress. Beside him, Ray fidgeted with his cuffs and made an obvious effort not to provide a running commentary of the proceedings. On his other side, Nora sat chewing her lip and glancing nervously around the room. He gave her knee a reassuring pat and she responded with a tight-lipped hint of a smile.

The hearing itself, after all their anticipation and worry, was over before Ben knew it. He merely gave his preliminary statement, and answered a few straightforward questions. The judge asked Nora a few questions, which she answered, and then they were done.

Permission granted. Ben had been awarded full custody until Victoria was able to present herself to the court to petition to change the custody arrangement and was free to take Nora with him back to their home in Canada. The only caveats were that he would have to maintain a current address on file with the State of Nevada until Nora turned eighteen, and promise to appear if and when Victoria sought to restore her custodial rights.

-

Convincing the FBI to let him leave the state was another matter.

Eventually, they relented, and admitted that there’d been little sign that the men who’d been at the Mandalay Bay on Friday evening were even still in Las Vegas, let alone still looking for Ben or Nora. What evidence they did have seemed to point to them leaving the city to lie low until the police were no longer actively searching for them.

Victoria, they believed, had gone west into California, but they’d had no luck finding her there.

Ben was subjected to one final interview before they would let him go, though perhaps interrogation was a better word for it.

Halfway through their conversation, he felt it necessary to ask if he ought to have an attorney present. They’d skittered away from pressing too much further then. But he could tell that, in their desperation, they’d begun grasping at any plausible-sounding straws that presented themselves, and were testing a theory that he and Victoria had somehow conspired together—after more than a decade’s estrangement—to engineer her escape from Federal custody by creating a distraction and then later smuggling their daughter out of the country.

Ray’d been ready to charge back into the FBI’s offices to “knock Dowling’s block off” until Ben calmed him down by pointing out that they hadn’t, in fact, arrested him or forbidden him to leave the jurisdiction, so it would probably be for the best that they didn’t add assault of a federal officer to their list of complications just now.

Ben made as many of the arrangements as he could via telephone, and made an appointment for them at the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco for Friday morning.

On Thursday morning, they packed up Ray’s rental car and began the roughly nine-hour drive from Las Vegas to San Francisco.

As novel as the scenery passing them by was, only an hour into their trip Ben had to admit the views of the Mojave Desert offered from Interstate 15 were perhaps a bit dusty and underwhelming.

They stopped for lunch in Bakersfield, eating at a fast food restaurant Ray insisted had rave reviews on the internet. Ben failed to see what distinguished its burgers from any of the other options available to them, and found the molded plastic benches in the restaurant’s crowded dining room uncomfortable. He did agree that their fries were very good though.

At some point before they’d set out, Ray had purchased a couple disposable cameras and given them to Ben and Nora with instructions to take pictures to document “their first family road trip” together.

Over lunch, Nora embraced her role as official documentarian by snapping a photograph of Ray, mouth half-full of french fries, attempting to explain the finer points of fast food cuisine to Ben—“Animal Style Ray? While some species do eat onions, cheese and dressing are not part of their natural diet.”

From there, the scenery soon changed from desert to endless miles of farmland as they made their way north through the central valley of California. With nothing but mountains to their left and rolling fields to their right, Ray made Ben talk to him to keep him alert as he drove. Ben did his best to fill the time with some of his less frequently told stories.

“Frase,” Ray said a few hours later.

“Hm?”

“I realize I brought this on myself, asking you to talk, but could you maybe tell something that doesn’t involve the folks in the story getting hopelessly lost on their journeys? I’m not sure it’s setting the right mood.”

“Oh. Sorry, Ray. I can-”

“Actually, hold that thought. I feel like we gotta be coming up on our turn soon. Have a look at the map and tell me which highway it is we’re supposed to take next.”

Ben retrieved the map from the glove box and unfolded it on his lap and traced their route up Interstate 5 with his finger.

“Actually, it looks like we have our choice of possible routes. We can either continue on this interstate until it becomes 580 and head west through Livermore and Pleasanton, then north towards Oakland and take the bridge to cross over into San Francisco from there, or we can take 152 West at Los Banos into... Gilroy to connect with 101 and drive north through San Jose to arrive in the city without crossing the bay.”

“Second one sounds good. I don’t trust bridges.”

“Ray, thousands of people must use that bridge every day. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe.”

“Maybe it’s fine, maybe it isn’t. I’ve seen pictures of the Golden Gate, that thing’s really high up off the water.”

“We wouldn’t be crossing the Golden Gate, Ray, that’s over here I believe.” He pointed at the map, but Ray was driving so he couldn’t look over for very long.

“Not sure you’re helping your case here, Ben.” Ray pushed his glasses back up his nose. “That other bridge looks longer.”

The snap-click of a camera shutter came from the backseat.

-

When they finally arrived at their hotel in San Francisco that night, they were all too exhausted from the drive to do much more than stumble up to their room and drop onto the beds waiting there for them.

Ben allowed himself ten minutes to rest before levering himself upright and prodding Ray, who was lying face down next to him.

“What.” Ray didn’t bother to move his face away from the duvet.

“It’s still too early in the evening to sleep; you’ll thank me later.”

Ray groaned.

“Nora, we’re going to get something to eat,” he called over to the occupant of the other bed.

“Mmf,” the Nora-shaped lump under the blanket replied.

Ben looked between his daughter and his husband, neither of which seemed inclined to move any time soon, and sighed.

“Alright, I’m going to go out. I’ll bring something back to the room,” he conceded.

-

They’d selected the least expensive option near Chinatown for their lodgings, due to its proximity to the Canadian Consulate. This fortunately meant that they were also close to a considerable number of restaurants. Ben took advantage of the fact that he was alone and neither trapped in a moving automobile nor a dingy Las Vegas motel room, to do a bit of exploring.

After days of sweltering heat, the air was moist and refreshingly cool this close to the water, and he found himself almost wishing he’d worn a long sleeved shirt. Almost.

A few brief conversations with the more friendly proprietors of some of the souvenir shops along the street—he really ought to practice his Cantonese more often, he was getting appallingly rusty—provided him with a couple of restaurant recommendations and he set off to investigate his options.

The streets here were considerably hillier than Chicago, and the skyline notably different, but it reminded him of his former home nonetheless and it felt good to stretch his legs as he walked. There was still plenty of daylight remaining and Ray and Nora were unlikely to rouse from their beds to notice if he allowed himself a few minutes more to take in his surroundings properly.

When he returned to the hotel room more than an hour later, bearing fragrant bags filled with food, he was met with far more enthusiasm than when he’d left.

-

After rising early to find somewhere to have a passport photo for Nora taken on extremely short notice, they arrived at the Canadian Consulate only just in time for their 11:30 a.m. appointment, paperwork and photographs in hand.

Ben found the experience of entering a Canadian Consulate more than a decade after he’d last reported for duty in Chicago oddly unsettling, though it bore little resemblance to either location he’d served at.

This Consulate occupied the fourteenth floor of a twenty-story high rise and was nigh indistinguishable from the offices of a corporate law firm if one neglected to note the prominently displayed Canadian flags and signage at the reception desk.

The staff were perfectly polite when he explained the nature of their dilemma and equally polite when they explained, in detail, precisely how unpleasant a situation they’d found themselves in, from a legal and logistical perspective.

Much of this information was not news to Ben, as he’d helped citizens abroad with missing travel documentation for more than four years, although admittedly, he’d never encountered this particular scenario before, and the laws regarding border crossing between Canada and the United States had changed somewhat since then.

Namely, the difficulty was thus: in order for Nora to travel to Canada by air, she would need to have a valid Canadian passport. Said passport, since she’d never before had one issued, would need to be requested by mail and, even if they paid the additional fee for urgent processing, could take several weeks to be issued. Furthermore, since Nora had been born abroad, her passport application would need to include a copy of her Certificate of Citizenship, which the Consulate could assist them in requesting urgent processing for, although, again, there were no guarantees that it would be approved and issued in a timely fashion.

“Shit,” Ray said, and then grimaced apologetically at the Consular employee, “sorry, I know it’s not your fault.”

Ben quite agreed with his sentiment though.

There was one small crumb of hope in all of this, however. If instead, they attempted to return to Canada via a land port of entry, the combination of a valid Certificate of Citizenship, Nora’s birth certificate, and the custody decree they’d received from the Nevada judge should be sufficient to permit her to cross the border that way. This option would save the considerable amount of time they'd otherwise spend waiting for her passport application to process, provided they were able to at least get Nora’s citizenship certificate expeditiously, at the cost of a considerable amount of additional travel aggravation.

Their overall mood upon exiting the Consulate was much worse than it had been when they’d gone in.

Once they were outside, Ray grumpily announced that it was well past time they had lunch, and marched down the block determinedly in search of sustenance, leaving Ben and Nora to catch up.

This was how they all came to be sitting in a small booth in the back corner of a sandwich shop, discussing their available options for returning home, both legal and decidedly not.

“Okay, for starters we can’t just fly home, so there goes Plan A, that’s off the table entirely,” Ray said, ticking the suggestion off on his fingers.

“Well, we can’t all fly back, no, but we can’t just leave Charlie with Mrs. Suter indefinitely. One of us needs to get home soon, and since I’m Nora’s father and primary guardian, logically, it should be you.”

“Alright, say I book the next flight home; where does that leave you two?”

“Until we hear back from the Consulate and have the certificate we need, here, I would imagine.”

“For how long? We can’t afford to have you guys stay put indefinitely; this city’s expensive. Between the flights and everything, this trip’s already taken a good bite out of our emergency savings, and I know you got a lot of vacation time saved up, but you're gonna have to get back to work eventually. What if it takes months? You heard what that woman said, it might.”

“Yes, I know. But what choice do we have?”

“I dunno. We get creative. I’ve ended up in Canada without the right paperwork twice now without even trying!”

“Ray, those were extremely unusual circumstances.”

“And this,” Ray gestured between the three of them, “isn’t?”

“What if we shifted?” Nora asked suddenly, looking up from her sandwich. “We could just sneak across, couldn’t we? There’s not, like, a wall, or motion sensors, or trip wires across the whole thing, right?”

Ben rubbed at his left eyebrow. “No, there isn’t,” he admitted.

“Kid’s got a point.” Ray sensibly lowered his voice. “Could just find a quiet spot along the border and go for a stroll. Border Patrol doesn’t really care about wildlife, and people tend to forget about shifters if it isn’t the full moon.”

“Aside from the obvious objection that this would be highly illegal, it would also be extremely impractical to execute. We’d need to somehow get ourselves to a location remote enough as to be clear of the well-patrolled sections near any official ports of entry, without arousing any suspicion, and then cross an international border as wolves, without being seen or getting turned around, only to emerge in an equally remote wilderness area, without any of our clothing or supplies. You’d have to come meet us and hope that, once we’ve returned to the nearest highway, we’re not pulled over and questioned by the Canadian Border Service.”

“Well, at that point, we’re home-free, no? You and I got every right to be in Canada and technically so does she, it’s just that we can’t prove she’s allowed to come in through the front door. Once she’s actually in the country, we’ve already got all the paperwork we need.”

Ben rubbed his eyes. “I’m afraid that’s not exactly how it works.”

“Sure it is.” He pointed to Nora. “She’s already half Canadian, like me, and you’re a Mountie. You think a border jockey’s gonna give us shit if we tell them we’re just doing a family road trip through southern BC? Not a chance.”

“Alright, Ray,” Ben allowed, “assuming you’re correct, and we’d be able to successfully arrange a rendezvous at the border, there’s still the matter of us getting there and transporting our luggage as well. We can’t simply drive to Washington and then abandon the rental car in the woods. And as it’s late July, I’m afraid sledding across is out as well.”

“Yeah.” Ray tapped out a slow rhythm on the table as he thought. “Okay, what if…” Tap. Tap. Then he clapped his hand down suddenly, nearly overturning his drink. “How’s your Lassie impersonation?” he asked Nora.

“My what?”

“Ray!”

Ray laughed. “Just pulling your leg, Frase. It’d never work anyway; you’d have to lie to the border guards about your ‘dog’ and I know you’d never go for that.”

“Ray.”

Nora giggled.

“Hey, ‘least somebody in this family thinks I’m funny.” He winked at Nora.

Ben shook his head.

“Alright. Seriously. Plan B is I go back to the Yukon for Charlie-boy and you two hang out here until, say, Tuesday. See the sights, keep checking in with the Consulate for updates. If they cough up the goods by then, greatness. You can hop on a plane to Washington and take a bus or something to the border, go across nice and legal. Then we get you two on a flight out of Vancouver to head home.”

“It may be possible to find a rental company that allows one-way drop-off for travel into Canada. That would be the least onerous option, if it’s available.”

“Good thought.” Ray nodded and picked up half of his sandwich, using it to gesture at him to punctuate his words. “If they tell you no way you’re getting this fancy citizenship paperwork until the next Ice Age, we’ll have to try the other thing, but I got a good feeling about this.”

“I hope you’re right, Ray.”

“In the meantime, we’ve got a whole afternoon free. Nora, is there anything in particular you want to see while we’re in town?”

She finished chewing and swallowed the bite she’d just taken. “Can we go see the Golden Gate Bridge?”

Ray groaned theatrically and Ben laughed.

-

There was, it turned out, a park from which one could view the bridge in all its iconic glory from the safety of solid ground, which improved Ray’s opinion of the idea considerably.

-

Ray flew back home on Saturday morning, leaving Ben and Nora alone, after dropping him off at the airport, to entertain themselves in the unfamiliar city.

Without Ray there to serve as an intermediary between them, Ben felt a bit at sea. Nora seemed less unhappy than she’d been in the Las Vegas motel, and went along without objections to any of the suggestions he made, but without any particular enthusiasm either. The only hints of a more playful personality lurking beneath her reserved exterior had all surfaced thanks to Ray.

She’d perked up considerably the previous afternoon when Ray’d spotted a music store in a neighborhood he’d insisted, “used to be infamous back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, which you’d know, Ben, if you hadn’t been raised by wolves at the North Pole,” and insisted that they go in to look around. Ray and Nora both quickly dove into the frankly impressive rows of new and used cds and hadn’t emerged for over an hour.

They left with several additions to Ray’s already considerable music collection, a few selections from Nora, and even Ben ended up finding something in their extensive Classical section.

That had been the last genuine smile he’d seen from her.

He’d called Agent Dowling to see if there’d been any updates regarding the FBI’s search for Victoria that morning. He’d received a curt response that they would contact him if and when there was anything that he needed to know. Nora’s expression had fallen noticeably when he’d told her there wasn’t any news.

There wasn’t anything he could do about that situation, short of attempting to track down Victoria himself, and he’d already considered and decided against that. Nora was the best resource he had, if they wanted to find her mother, but when he’d asked her if she knew where her mother might go, she’d said no.

Ben didn’t entirely believe that, given how thoroughly Victoria had planned for contingencies and prearranged alternate meetup locations with her daughter, but this wasn’t a case he’d been asked to investigate and he wasn’t acting as a member of the RCMP here. Nora was his daughter, not a witness he was interviewing.

He wouldn’t betray what trust he’d managed to earn with her by pressing her for further information. If she knew more than she’d said, he’d wait for her to feel comfortable telling him.

So instead, he did his best to find things for them to do in the city to take her mind off worrying for her mother.

They started with some shopping to get Nora warmer clothes. San Francisco was much cooler than Las Vegas, even in the middle of summer, and the Yukon was even cooler still.

Even with the exchange rate between the Canadian and American dollars, it was less expensive to buy her things where they were than it would be up north, where the cost of shipping to such a remote location made food and many basic household goods much more costly. With this in mind, Ben added a few things for Charlie to their purchases as well.

Some things would have to be purchased back home anyway, as the stores in San Francisco were still largely stocked for summer weather, but they were able to get her some jeans and sweatshirts and a pair of hiking boots at least.

The rest of the weekend was spent in museums and exploring the various eclectic neighborhoods the city had to offer. Nora still had the camera Ray had given her and Ben saw her pull it out to snap a furtive photograph every now and then as they walked.

The California Academy of Sciences was by far his most successful suggestion. The museum had been recently renovated and managed to capture Nora’s attention enough that she was the one leading him through the exhibits.

Ben didn’t mind in the least, finding them all equally fascinating and feeling glad to have finally hit upon something that piqued her interest.

“The next planetarium show is at two,” he said, pausing to consult the pamphlet they’d been handed at the admission desk. “We should head over there now if we want seats.”

“Sure,” she said, turning to look at him and then grinning unexpectedly. “Don’t move, there’s a huge butterfly on your head. I’ve gotta get a picture. Ray’ll love it.”

Ben dutifully held still and let her snap the photograph, feeling slightly silly, but willing to go along with the request if it made her happy.

“Okay, you can move now,” she said, putting her camera back into her bag and striding cheerfully down the ramp toward the rainforest exhibit exit.

When he didn’t immediately follow her she turned around again and called out, “C’mon, Dad, we won’t get the best seats if we’re not in line early.”

Ben suddenly felt like he’d been struck between the shoulder blades with a two-by-four, which was unfortunately a sensation he had some firsthand experience with.

Nora must’ve noticed something change in his expression because she seemed to realize immediately what he’d reacted to. She came back over to him, biting her lip. “Oh. Um. Is it okay with you if I call you that? I mean, Ray calls you Ben. I could keep using that instead? It just seemed kinda weird to call you that now since...”

“If you’re comfortable with it,” Ben stumbled over his words to assure her, “it’s perfectly alright with me if you call me ‘Dad’. You just surprised me, that’s all.”

“Okay, good.” Nora gave him a relieved smile. “C’mon, we’re gonna miss the show.”

Ben returned the smile and followed her to the theater, feeling warm and strangely accomplished.

-

The Consular matters, as they so often did when you applied enough dogged determination and the right institutional pressures, eventually resolved themselves in their favor. Nora was issued a Certificate of Citizenship and the pair were able to fly to Seattle on Wednesday morning.

Ben was able to procure a rental car at the airport there and drove them north through the city on a surprisingly sunny summer day.

They’d arrived just after midday, so traffic was initially somewhat heavy, but began moving more swiftly once they’d cleared downtown and moved towards the Seattle suburbs. Eventually, they made their way into more sparsely occupied areas, past sections of lush evergreen forest, through Bellingham and continuing on northwest, parallel to the coast, to reach the US-Canadian border at a place called Peace Arch State Park.

(The arch in question was, according to Nora, a bit underwhelming given the name— “That’s it? Why’d they name a whole park after that?”— and Ben had to agree.)

Ben’s conversation with the CBSA agent at the port of entry inspection booth was, thankfully, not too prolonged. The officer looked over their documents, asked Nora to tell him her full name and birth date, and then, evidently satisfied with her answers, returned Ben’s passport and her papers with a stern admonition that they should make sure to have passports for everyone traveling across the border next time, and let them go.

Ben breathed a sigh of relief as he pulled away from the inspection plaza and continued down the highway toward Vancouver.

They arrived at their third airport of the day just under four hours after they’d left Seattle, which meant that they had roughly three hours until their evening flight to Whitehorse would be boarding.

Painfully aware that all either of them had eaten that day consisted of dry airline pretzels and a couple of hastily acquired hamburgers from somewhere near Everett, Washington, Ben selected the most promising-sounding of the Vancouver International Airport’s restaurant options from the directory and led them there. They settled wearily at an empty table near enormous floor to ceiling windows that overlooked the runway.

While they waited on their food to arrive, Nora pulled out the envelope of photos from their journey so far. Ben had taken the disposable cameras to a pharmacy the night before, and retrieved the prints in the morning before they left San Francisco. Neither of them had looked through them yet though.

Some of the photos were blurry or oddly framed, but most of them had turned out well. Nora had a remarkably good eye for composition, and had managed to capture both himself and Ray in a number of, not always strictly flattering, but human moments.

His favorite, unsurprisingly, ended up being the one of the three of them together, taken by a friendly tourist, with the copper span of the Golden Gate Bridge visible through the fog behind them. Nora’s hair was blowing wild in the wind, but they all looked happy, and Ben knew then that they’d be okay.

-

Ray was waiting for them in Whitehorse when their flight got in at 10:00 p.m. In his arms was a sleepy toddler up well past his bedtime, but Ben was delighted to see them both.

Wrapping his arms around Ray and Charlie, he inhaled their comforting scents of home and pack. It was good to be back.

Taking Charlie from Ray to free his arms, he let Ray hug Nora before attempting introductions.

“I’ve got someone for you to meet, Charlie,” he said. “This is your big sister, Nora. She’s going to be living with us now.” He pointed, and Nora waved.

Charlie blinked at her and then buried his face into Ben’s shoulder, clutching Ben’s shirt fiercely with his small fists. “Ah. Nora, this is Charlie.” He patted him on the back. “He’s usually a bit more talkative.”

“He’s just tired. He’ll be less shy in the morning,” Ray said, taking Nora’s bag from her. “Speaking of morning, if we want to be home by midnight, we should get on the road.”

-

“This is so weird,” Nora said, as they walked to the truck, marveling at the sun, still visible above the horizon after 10 p.m.

Ben had explained during their flight that in the summer days were longer this far north, but knowing something and experiencing it firsthand were admittedly quite different.

“You get used to it,” said Ray cheerfully. “Wait ‘til winter, that's even weirder.”

-

Winter in the Yukon was indeed a trying experience for the uninitiated, but so far, Nora had been adapting well.

They’d rearranged the cabin somewhat to give her the loft bedroom that had previously doubled as Ray’s office and a guest bedroom, moving Ray’s computer to a corner in the living room and building a privacy wall out of bookshelves in the loft, so that she could have her own space to retreat to if necessary.

They’d enrolled Nora at the local school in the fall and she was doing well there, well enough that Ben worried about making sure she was given challenging enough work as she got older, but that was a concern that could wait until later.

After his unexpected summer adventure, Ben had returned to his detachment to find his constables and the office staff had gotten him a cake with ‘Congrats, Dad!’ spelled out in pink frosting and left it waiting for him on his desk. (There’d also been an incident involving someone filling the glovebox of his patrol vehicle with condoms, but as the culprits had not repeated the prank, he’d elected to take the teasing in stride. And really, one could never have too many condoms.)

Ray was back to working shifts at the local garage three days a week fixing cars and, this time of year, snowmobiles.

Six months after that momentous week in July when Nora came into their lives, life had returned to normal, or what passed for normal when one had a three year old, a thirteen year old, and three dogs living in one modestly-sized cabin together, and three out of the four human members of the household turned into wolves once a month.

Which was why it was a surprise when Victoria turned up on his doorstep.

-

Ben had been in the garage fetching a fresh bag of food for the dogs when he heard the car. It was early evening and Ray and the kids were inside. Ray liked to have the stereo turned up while he cooked or he likely would’ve heard it too.

They hadn’t been expecting any visitors to drop by, but it was hardly unusual for someone local who didn’t necessarily want to make an official report to the RCMP to come speak to him about an issue they were having when he was off-duty.

So Ben came out of the garage to greet their visitor with a dog food bag slung over his shoulder and froze when the driver switched off the car’s headlights and he saw who was behind the wheel.

She opened her door slowly, and stepped out of the car with her hands kept carefully where he could see them, as if worried he might startle otherwise. He wasn’t entirely sure if he appreciated the gesture.

“Victoria.”

“Ben.” Her face looked pale and sharp in the harsh porchlight.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came for my daughter,” she said, zipping her heavy coat closed with a frown and shivering a little.

“Our daughter.”

Victoria just looked at him for a moment, chewing her lower lip. “Our daughter,” she finally agreed. “Is she inside?”

Ben bent to set down the bag of dog food on the porch and went over to stand between her and the front door, just out of reach. “She is.”

“Can I see her?” she asked, sounding irritated with him.

“That depends.”

“On what? She’s my daughter.”

“On what you intend to do after you see her.” Ben folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t take her with you when you leave.”

“You don’t get to just decide that. I raised her for the first thirteen years of her life. On my own. She and I did just fine without you,” she snarled, stepping closer to him.

“That isn’t fair. I wasn’t there because you never told me about Nora.”

“You sent me to prison for ten years for driving my boyfriend’s car to a bank robbery. After I saved your life. Was that fair, Ben?”

“No. And I’ve never claimed it was. This isn’t about what you and I have done to hurt each other in the past though. This is about Nora," he said.

“You were nearly killed in Las Vegas by men who then tried to kidnap her when their first attempt at your life didn’t succeed,” he pointed out. "Men who to this day haven’t all been arrested and may still be looking for you. You’re also wanted by both the FBI and the State of Illinois. How long do you think it will be until some of that catches up to you again? How certain are you that Nora will be safe, living a life on the run from both sides of the law?”

Victoria huffed but didn’t try to argue with his logic.

“I know you love her. Please consider what’s best for her. Ray and I can at least offer her a stable home.”

“Here? You think a small town in the middle of nowhere is a better life for a teenage girl? I grew up somewhere just like this, and look how I turned out.” Her words bled with the bitterness of old wounds that had never fully healed.

Victoria wasn’t the only one of them who had grown up in a small northern town, but presenting himself as a counterexample in this instance seemed unkind and a tad presumptuous. After all, he could hardly claim his own upbringing hadn’t left scars. But he’d sworn the day he and Ray had decided to become parents that he wouldn’t repeat those mistakes if he could help it.

“She seems happy here,” he said instead. “She’s making friends at school and has been wonderful with Charlie. Ray’s been teaching her how to rebuild an engine. And she's learned to control her shift faster than either of us did when we were first starting out.”

Victoria turned her head away from him and closed her eyes. “She’s my daughter, Ben.” Her voice had gotten hoarse, like she was fighting tears.

“I know.”

“I can’t lose her.”

“I’m not trying to take her away from you, Victoria. And I’m not saying that you can’t be a part of her life ever again. I’m only trying to do what you asked me to do for her—keep her safe.” He knew all too keenly how it felt to grow up without a parent and would never wish that pain for either of his children. But he wasn’t willing to put Nora in needless danger either.

She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out in one explosive plume that drifted up and over their heads.

Ben stepped forward and put a hand on her arm. She was trembling.

“Come inside. You can speak with Nora. She’ll be glad to see you; she’s been worried something had happened to you.”

Victoria wiped her eyes and looked at him again. “Are you going to arrest me afterwards?”

“No.”

She looked faintly surprised.

“You know why I can’t.”

“For Nora’s sake,” she said. “If it weren’t for her, you would.”

He didn’t deny it.

-

“Hey, what took you so long? I was beginning to wonder if I needed to send out a search party,” Ray called out over the music as Ben opened the door. He looked over at Ben with a grin that fell as soon as he saw that Ben wasn’t alone and figured out exactly who it was standing behind him. “Oh shit.”

“We have a visitor,” Ben said unnecessarily, setting down the dog food. He set about removing his coat and hanging it up by the door before holding out a hand to take Victoria’s from her as well. “Ray, this is Victoria. Victoria, my husband, Ray.”

“Uh. Hi,” Ray said, leaving the stove to turn down the stereo and then stood awkwardly beside the kitchen table, watching Ben for any cues that this was a more dangerous encounter than it appeared. Ben shook his head minutely and Ray’s posture relaxed slightly.

Mack and Sunny, highly observant guard dogs that they were, finally noticed that something unusual was happening and got up from the living room rug to bark a warning at the stranger in their midst from behind Ray’s legs. Ray shushed them.

“She’s here to see Nora. Where are the kids?”

“They’re in Charlie’s room. I made Nora come get him out from underfoot while I finished up dinner.”

“Nora, you have a visitor,” Ben called out and came over to stand next to Ray now that he’d gotten his snowy boots off.

“What?” Nora called back, opening the door to Charlie’s room to peer out. When she saw Victoria standing there, her eyes widened. “Mom?!” She came running.

Victoria met her with a tight hug and soon both of them were crying.

“I thought you were dead!”

“No, shhh…" Victoria wiped a tear from Nora's face. "I’m okay. I just had to lay low for a while. I’m sorry I couldn’t come find you sooner.”

“You could’ve at least called!”

Ben cleared his throat. “I’m going to go check on Charlie,” he said to Ray quietly.

-

Charlie was fine, busy constructing an elaborate structure out of wooden blocks over the very patient Franklin’s tail. Franklin wagged when he saw Ben, scattering blocks across the floor.

“No! No Frankie!” Charlie cried. “You sit still.”

Unrepentant, Franklin rolled onto his back and thumped his tail again, ignoring the wishes of the budding architect at his side.

Ben knelt beside his son. “Perhaps we could leave Franklin alone for a little while and come to the kitchen. It’s almost time to eat and we have company tonight.”

“Company?”

“Yes. Nora’s mother is visiting. Let’s go say hello.”

“Okay!” Charlie took his hand and they rejoined the others in the other room.

The scene had calmed somewhat in his absence. Nora and Victoria were sitting opposite one another at the table talking now. And Ray had resumed stirring the pot on the stove and looked like he was trying not to make it too obvious that he was listening to their conversation.

“Hello!” Charlie said brightly, entirely oblivious to any tension in the room.

“Victoria, this is Charlie,” Ben said. “Charlie, this is Nora’s mom, Victoria.”

Charlie let go of Ben’s hand to walk over to Victoria and thrust out his hand at her. “Pleased to meet you,” he said enthusiastically. When she bent down to greet him, he reached up with his other hand and stroked her curls. “Pretty hair … like Nora’s,” he said reverently.

Victoria shook his hand with a bemused smile on her face. “Thank you, Charlie. I’m pleased to meet you too.”

Ben went over to Ray and put a hand on his lower back. “How’s the stew? Almost ready?”

“Yeah. Should be good to eat. I’m just waiting on the biscuits.”

“Nora, would you set the table please?” Ben asked and went over to the fridge to get out the milk.

-

Somehow they all managed to share a meal without the conversation veering too far into uncomfortable territory.

Nora did most of the talking, telling her mother about everything that had happened to her since they’d last seen one another. Ben was somewhat gratified to hear that, in Nora’s retelling of events, he and Ray were portrayed as significantly more competent than he’d felt at the time.

Charlie’s presence helped keep the mood lighter as well. There were only so many suspicious glares Ray could shoot Victoria while balancing a toddler in his lap and attempting to ensure that most of his food ended up in his mouth and not the floor.

When the meal was over and they’d cleaned up, Ben seized his opportunity while Nora was in the bathroom to have a final word with her mother.

“Do you see now?” he asked.

Victoria shot him a dark look but nodded.

Ben retrieved a piece of paper from Ray’s desk and wrote on it. He handed it to her. “Telephone numbers for Ray and I, in case you need to contact us or speak with Nora.”

She nodded and took his pen from him as well, scribbled a number on the bottom of the sheet, and tore it off to hand back to him. “In case of emergency,” she said. “I may not always answer, but if you leave a message at that number, it’ll get to me.”

He read the number to commit it to memory and then tucked it into a drawer for safe keeping.

When Nora returned to the room, Victoria rose, saying, “I should be going. I’ve still got some driving to do tonight before I get to my motel.”

“Do you have to go?” Nora whined. “You only just got here.”

“I’m sorry sweetheart, I know, but I can’t stay. It’s safer for both of us if I keep moving for now. I’ll be in touch though, I promise.” Victoria hugged her. “I’m going to miss you so much.” She pulled back from the hug slightly to look her in the eyes. “Your Dad and Ray are looking out for you here, listen to them and try not to worry about me, okay? I’ll be alright.”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” Nora was sniffling again and Victoria hugged her tighter.

Ben walked Victoria to her car.

“Take care of her,” she said, gripping the door frame of the car tightly.

“I will. I promise.”

“I’ll be back to visit again when it’s safe.”

“Understood.”

“Goodnight, Ben.”

“Goodnight, Victoria.”

She got in the car then, and Ben watched as she drove away.

Ray came out and found him a few minutes later.

“Come inside, Ben, it’s freezing out here.” He put his arm around Ben’s shoulders and led him back into the cabin where his family was waiting.