“I’m so sorry, honey,” Allan said, dragging her into his arms and covering them with the comforter. “It won’t happen again until you’re ready to have kids.”
As long as it might take for her to get the shifting under control, that could be never.
* * *
All week long they’d slipped in some meals out and late-night movies, but every minute of the day had been spent searching for Otis’s hideaway. Vaughn had stuck close to Franny and the baby while Gary worked, so they felt she was safe enough for the time being. Paul had a couple of men assigned to watch Gary at the restaurant, in case Otis tried to do anything to him.
What took the longest for Debbie and Allan to search were all the places that either had been abandoned or were privately owned and unoccupied during the winter. They had started with a ten-mile radius and now were up to a twenty-mile radius.
Early that morning, Debbie got a surprise call from Rowdy. He’d been working a triple homicide all week and she knew he’d been ultra-busy, so she really was surprised to hear from him.
“I’ve heard you’ve been checking out dozens of places—storage facilities, cottages. What’s up?”
“We just had a hunch Otis might have left some of his stuff behind when he vanished from the area,” she said, being perfectly honest with him.
“Is he back in the area?”
“We haven’t been able to locate anything that might have belonged to him or any sign that he’s been in the area.” Again, she hadn’t lied. She realized this business of being a wolf made it difficult to be perfectly honest with human friends, and she could see Allan’s dilemma when he was so interested in her but had to cool it with her.
“Is Otis a wolf now?”
How could she answer that? She glanced at Allan. He was listening, but he wasn’t offering advice. She realized he trusted her to be one of them, to say the right things.
She took a deep breath. “He might be.”
“I imagine he is. I assume newly turned wolves can’t hold their human shape. Am I right?”
“You could be right.”
“Okay. So if I arrest the guy, then it’s going to be real trouble for…their kind. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“So what do you want me to do about this? It’s my case. My murder investigation. I have one of the best success rates for solving murders, resulting in successful trials that land the criminals behind bars.”
“Maybe he’ll just die of a heart attack and save all the taxpayers lots of money?” she asked.
“That doesn’t help me with solving the cases.”
“If we learn where he is, we’ll give you a call.”
“After the fact.”
She hesitated to say. “Well…”
“I understand. Allan’s with you, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no hope for me, is there?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Thought so.” He let out his breath. “Okay, I’ll give you forty-eight hours to locate him and let me know where he is.”
“What if he’s a…wolf?”
Rowdy didn’t say anything for a moment. “Full moon? Gotcha. I just hope if he has difficulty living, he’s not naked when I find him.”
“I’ve got to go, Rowdy. Allan’s wondering what in the world we’re talking about.”
“I just bet he is. Tell him I said hello and I’m ready for our next pizza outing. Take care and be safe, Debbie.”
“You too.” She ended the call and tucked away her phone. “Thanks for letting me deal with Rowdy the way I saw fit.”
Allan smiled at her. “Only you could pull that off and not get us into a lot of hot water.”
* * *
Allan and Debbie had been tromping through the snow for days now, thinking they were never going to locate the place where Otis had stashed his stuff. Maybe Vaughn was wrong and Otis hadn’t kept his things here locally while he ran off as a wolf. Maybe he’d come during the phase of the new moon, packed up his things, and left. Or maybe they’d been searching in all the wrong places.
“We’re approaching the full moon like the first time you shifted,” Allan warned her. He was carrying a mostly empty backpack, with only a few medical supplies, because he wanted to be ready if she shifted and he needed to carry her clothes for her. “Are you feeling the shift coming on?”
He worried about her. She’d been awfully quiet while they’d been hiking to a hunting cabin, the trail impassable for vehicles in the winter. The owner lived in Florida and came up here to hunt on occasion in the winter, but he said he’d already been up there and wasn’t planning to return for another month. It was twenty-two miles from Van Lake, so beyond their search area, but they were starting to expand their search another ten miles out.
“Debbie?”
“Yes, yes. Let’s just get to the cabin.”
But would he be hiking with her while she was running as a wolf? As aggravated as she sounded, he thought so.
“Damn it,” she suddenly said and stopped.
As soon as she started to pull off her parka, he asked, “Do you want me to help?”
She loved when he helped remove her clothes for sex, and vice versa. When she was turning into her growly wolf, sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. So he always asked.
“Yes!”
He knew she wasn’t mad at him but panicked, fearing that she would soon be a wolf half dressed in clothes.
He began pulling off her hat and then crouched to unzip her boots. The sun was setting, washing the sky in pink and purple, and reflecting off the snow.
“We still have three more cottages on our list to check tonight after this one. We’re not going home until we do,” she said, her voice ferocious.
“All right.”
They still had another mile hike to this cottage.
If they located Otis, they didn’t know how this was going to end. Unless the guy had a heart condition, forcing him to have a heart attack wasn’t going to happen. They wanted to turn his body over to Rowdy but make sure it looked like an accident. They didn’t want to kill him as a wolf, which could provoke a wolf hunt.
Then Allan’s phone buzzed. He finished helping Debbie undress, and she shifted almost immediately. He yanked out his phone and saw that it was Vaughn calling. Figuring the PI must have some news, Allan answered, “Yeah.”
“I’ve found Otis’s stash in a storage unit in Bigfork.”
“Everything?”
“Hard to tell. Clothes—mostly the camo kind, ammo, a rifle and a Glock, personal stuff. Possibly the gun used in Sarah’s murder.”
“Anything that might clue us in to where he is now?”
“No, but he’s been here recently and he wasn’t wearing hunter’s camo scent. So I’ve got his scent. And I’m taking some of his T-shirts to share his scent with the pack.”
“Good. What about security cameras?”
“Yeah. Sending the pictures now. He was driving a black Jeep. We got a partial tag. Problem is we don’t want the police to run him down.”
“Yeah, gotcha.”
“So we’re having one of Hunter’s police officers do the trick. Any progress there?”
“Just checking out four more cottages situated around twenty-two to twenty-five miles out from Van Lake.”
“How’s Debbie doing?”
“She’s a wolf.” Allan gathered up her clothes and tucked them in his backpack.
“Okay. Now that I’ve found his scent and that he was staying in Bigfork, I’ll drop these off with Lori and Paul, and then I’m going to start checking into the places where he might be staying.”
“You don’t think he’s taken off?”
“Nope. Not when he’s left so much of his weaponry here.”
“What abo
ut Franny?”
“Paul and Lori are there, providing additional protection.”
“All right. If you locate him, let me know.”
“Will do.”
As Allan and Debbie drew closer to the cabin, he noted no lights were on, but he smelled the faint odor of wood smoke. He didn’t have to tell Debbie. She lifted her nose and took a whiff of the air and huffed a little, her body tense.
“Stay close,” he warned, his voice hushed.
Without warning, shots rang out from the direction of the cabin. Allan dove behind a tree as the rounds pelted the snow inches away. He glanced in Debbie’s direction, but she had run off in a wide arc—and then headed toward the shooter.
Damn it to hell and back. He didn’t want her shot. What if the resident was just a hunter? Using the cabin illegally, true, but not their killer?
“Police!” Allan called out to let him know what kind of trouble he could be in if he shot and killed him or his dive partner.
More shots were fired in his direction.
Screw this. He made a wide arc through the trees and around to avoid being shot. Either the shooter had night-vision goggles, or he was a wolf and could see well at dusk. He just hoped Debbie wouldn’t get herself shot.
He wanted to yank out his phone and tell Paul they were going in to grab what could be their suspect, but he figured they were on their own right now. Certainly with Debbie up to who knew what, he had to act quickly to protect her and himself.
A screen door slammed and he assumed the shooter had left the cabin, not wanting to be caught inside.
As soon as he did and Allan bore down on the door, a wild growling—Debbie’s wild growling—made Allan’s blood run cold. It turned to ice when he heard a much larger wolf growl back.
The full moon of January—appropriately, the wolf moon—illuminated the trees and snow, some snowflakes sprinkling from the trees as the branches stirred in the breeze.
Then he saw them—a large tan wolf snarling at Debbie a short distance from the dark cabin, only the tiny glow of a fire inside.
He wanted to kill the bastard quickly with a well-aimed shot, but he couldn’t, not with the way Debbie was tearing into the guy and the way he was tearing into her. Allan had to stop and strip, then shift. It was the only way to protect Debbie, who was attacking and not backing off. The wolf saw Allan then and tried to run, but Debbie pursued him, biting his tail, and he turned around to tackle her again. By then, Allan had shifted and was running full-out, because right this instant, Allan was in a killing mood. Nothing would stop him now.
He bit at the wolf in a vicious way, distracting him. He smelled Debbie’s blood on him, and that incensed Allan all the more. His phone was vibrating in the pocket of his pants nearby, while Debbie bit again at the wolf’s tail. Was the wolf Otis? They had no way of knowing at the moment.
What he did know was the wolf wasn’t calling a truce. He’d tried to run as a wolf. He had something to hide. Paul suspected the wolf was their man.
Debbie was still snarling and growling, and Allan prayed she hadn’t been injured too badly.
The wolf he was tackling was growling just as ferociously as Debbie, but he wasn’t able to overpower or outthink Allan. Not as a new wolf.
Instinctively, the wolf knew to go for the throat, but Allan kept indicating he was going one way and then sweeping back to tackle him another. That was why it was so important for wolves to learn to read body language. This wolf was still clueless. He hadn’t played with another lupus garou, hadn’t learned the techniques to use. But Debbie had. She knew what Allan was going to do and complemented his actions, move for move.
He couldn’t have been more proud of her. Suddenly, as if the wolf figured he wasn’t going to make it out of this alive and he would kill the easier prey, he swerved around to attack Debbie. She read the signs before he lunged. And so did Allan.
She yipped and bolted away from the wolf. Allan charged into him, his teeth sinking into the wolf’s neck, breaking it with one killing bite.
The wolf sank into the snow, tree branch shadows cutting across him and weaving a web of darkness.
Allan and Debbie stood panting and watching him. They saw that he was no longer breathing and heard his heart stop beating. The wolf shifted to human, and though a beard covered his jaw, it was him—Otis, the man they’d tried to locate forever. Allan joined Debbie, smelling her blood and checking her over. She licked his muzzle, then motioned to the cabin with her head. He nodded and ran off to get to the field pack and his clothes resting on top of the snow. He shifted, dressed, and slung the bag over his shoulders, then headed for the cabin. She paced in front of the screen door. The man had cleared the step recently, or the door wouldn’t have opened.
Allan opened the door for her, and she ran inside, smelling the scents like he was. She didn’t seem to be injured badly, if the way she was moving about was any indication.
They found Otis’s rifle, more silver rounds, camo, another Glock, hunter’s spray, and enough canned food to last a couple of weeks. The cot had been slept on, the sheets and blankets not having been washed, from the smell of it, for eons.
Debbie paced, her wolf nails clicking on the wooden floor. Allan pulled out his phone, saw a missed call from Paul, and quickly called him back.
“We got him.” Allan gave Paul the coordinates. “Cliffs are nearby. Should we take him there and drop him off them? He died, a wolf checked him out, bit into him, and left him?”
“Yeah. Sounds good. If we don’t report finding him, animals will feast off him. Vultures, what have you. How’s Debbie?”
She was curled up by the fire, licking her leg.
“She’s still a wolf, a few bites, but nothing serious. She’s one hell of a wolf partner.”
She lifted her head and howled.
Paul laughed. “Good. You?”
“Same here. He’s got more ammo, rifle, guns. Let’s report the find in the storage facility, then we’ll dump his body off the cliff. Maybe we can let someone find the rest of this stuff in another month when the owner comes for another hunting trip. Maybe at spring thaw someone will discover his remains down the mountainside. Or not.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Okay, well, I’m out of here with the body. I’ll call back in when that’s done and let you know when we’re on our way home.”
“Okay. I’ll let everyone know the killer has been caught and his killing spree has ended.”
“Thanks. Out here.”
Allan looked down at Debbie. “Did you want to stay here, and when I’m done, I’ll come back for you?”
She woofed and rose to her feet, then ran over to him. He took that as a no. They were in this together.
Chapter 23
Never in a million years would Debbie have believed she’d be running alongside Allan as a wolf while he was carrying a dead, naked body. She hated that they couldn’t tell Rowdy the case wasn’t cold. That they’d solved it for him. She couldn’t believe she had a mad-wolf self, but when the guy began shooting at her and Allan, and continued after Allan identified himself as with the police, she knew she had to help take him down in any way that she could. Since using a gun hadn’t been an option, she had to use her wolf teeth.
He was too big, too powerful for her, but she’d hoped Allan could shoot him and that would be the end of it. He returned fire in self-defense. There were enough rounds fired at Allan and her to support their case. But killing him as a wolf screwed everything up. At one point, she had thought real wolves wouldn’t matter to the lupus garous. But she could see they treasured them as much as they did their own wolf packs and would protect them at all costs by covering up a wolf killing.
She was glad she had turned into the wolf because she had managed to stop Otis in his flight from justice. She wouldn’t have if she’d been running as a human.
> Even though the bad guy was a bad guy, she still hated knowing he would be left for the scavengers to feed off instead of being turned in to the police. She realized it was for the best though.
After leaving Otis in the wilderness, Allan and Debbie headed back to where they had left their vehicle. Allan was quiet, and she wished he’d talk to her—not that she could respond much as a wolf. She finally woofed at him.
He smiled down at her and ran his gloved hand over her head.
“Sorry, gathering wool again. I hope that what we did worked. That if anyone’s up here, either the snow will have fallen again and covered up the fight and our walk toward the cliff, or everything will have melted off and left no trails behind.”
She woofed in agreement.
“You did a hell of a job back there.”
She growled a little. She’d do it again in a heartbeat to protect her…mate. She’d mated with him, sure, but this was the first time she’d actually thought of him as her mate and not her lover, her friend, confidant, dive partner, and the one she dearly loved.
Her phone vibrated in the field pack. He pulled it off his shoulders as they continued to trudge through the snow, keeping to the same path they had used to get there. He found her phone in her pants pocket and said, “Hell, it’s Rowdy.”
She nodded.
“I wonder if he’s been told already about the find at the storage unit.”
When they reached the car, Allan unlocked the door and opened it for her, but as soon as she jumped in, she bit at the field pack as he tried to drop it on the floor. She was ready to shift again. She sighed. She hoped she would have better control over this soon.
Allan closed her door and got in on the driver’s side while he watched her shift and begin to get dressed. “Ready?”
“Yeah, I can dress while you drive.”
“What are you going to say to Rowdy?”
“Depends on what he says first.” She sighed again and pulled her sweater over her head.
He glanced at her again. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I could snuggle with you in bed, as a wolf if I have to, for a week. But only until I have more control over the shifting for the rest of the month.”