Rock Wolf Investigations
D E E B R I D G N O R T H
Copyright © 2019
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
PART I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
PART II
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
PART III
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
PART IV
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
PART V
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
PART I
Chapter One
The day was beautiful. Well, at least it appeared beautiful as long as you were inside looking out. The sky was a brilliant blue, with only a few white fully clouds floating lazily over the rolling hills covered in lush green trees and leafy bushes studded with brilliant flowers in every color of the rainbow. The quiet street in front of the small stone house looked like something from a painting, like one of those campy reprints that old ladies like to hang in their living rooms featuring a thatched roof cottage covered in roses.
Titus Holbrook peered out the front windows and waited. The clock on the fireplace mantel read 6:55 precisely. In less than thirty seconds, a paper would land at the end of his front walk. Titus wanted that paper. He had been thinking about it all night. Mostly how to achieve his ultimate goal of getting his hands on that paper before… well, just before.
He could have waited outside, except he had only showered twenty minutes ago and being outdoors for any period of time would totally negate that shower. Titus put his hand on the doorknob and waited. Three. Two. One.
A gray van pulled onto Ozark Jubilee Lane. Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. Rolled up newspapers wrapped in plastic were ejected from the windows and landed with absolute precision on the front sidewalk of each house like sausages put on a plate. The van was followed by a cloud of foul-smelling diesel exhaust as it zoomed down the street on its way to the next leg of its route.
Titus turned the doorknob and bolted outside. The door slammed closed behind him in a futile effort to preserve the refrigerated air inside the house. It was like walking into a wall of swampy atmosphere punctuated with the thick odor of decaying plant matter and who knew what else. This was the Midwest. Everything was in one stage or another of rotting away to nothing.
Thick beads of sweat appeared on Titus’s skin. He was sweating from pores that should never be activated in any reasonable climate. His shaggy brown hair almost instantly felt lank against his neck and shoulders. His T-shirt went from crisp and dry to heavy and sticky with the amount of hum
id air it absorbed. Even his shoes felt as though they were squelching along.
But none of that mattered. Not when he was so close to that paper. The plastic was probably already gathering moisture and he anticipated the damp feel of the thing in his hand. The satisfaction of removing the wrapper and seeing that first headline. A real paper. The local news spread out before him.
“Yoo-hoo! Why good morning to you, Mr. Holbrook!”
The voice stopped Titus in his tracks. He almost could not breathe. And then he spotted them. Mrs. Ursuline Wankenfurter and Pugsley. The lady had on one of her best muumuus, the voluminous red dress with the white tropical flowers, a splash of hideous color against the thick greenery growing on the fence. The little aptly named black pug was snorting and snuffling around the bushes at the end of Titus’s front walk. There was a fence around the yard for a reason, but that gate wouldn’t stay latched and Titus hadn’t yet gotten around to fixing it.
“Aren’t you up awfully early?” Mrs. Wankenfurter exclaimed. “I’m so glad to find you here, Mr. Holbrook. I was just saying to Wanda the other day that I needed to speak with my lovely neighbor about a security issue that I’ve been having in my yard.”
Titus inched forward. He kept his eye on the pug. The wrinkly little creature with his prickly black fur was eyeing the thick vines draped over Titus’s front fence. Titus hated dogs. Not because there was anything particularly wrong with them, but mostly because they hated him.
Pugsley glanced up at Titus. The elderly pug with the graying facial hair did not seem to be paying any more attention to his mistress’s prattle than Titus was. Then the creature looked Titus directly in the eyes and lifted his leg on the vines.
Hot urine sprayed the vegetation and splashed onto the concrete walkway. The wildly spraying drops spattered Titus’s precious morning paper and left his inner wolf howling and rattling its cage as it demanded to be let loose in order to make the pug pay for its blatant disrespect.
“Mr. Holbrook?”
Titus ripped his gaze away from Pugsley in order to stare at Mrs. Wankenfurter. “Huh?”
“Are you paying any attention to me at all?”
The old lady looked annoyed. He noticed she was wearing sandals. Her feet had likely just gotten sprayed by the same horrible substance that had violated his morning paper and she didn’t even seem to notice.
“I just told you that I’ve had prowlers in my yard the last two nights. They’ve knocked over some trashcans and made a bit of a mess in my begonias.”
Titus wanted to suggest she let her dog pee on the begonias in order to keep away any decent-minded creatures but refrained because the old lady wouldn’t get the insult.
“I’m sorry?”
“You run a security firm!” Mrs. Wankenfurter often seemed very keen to remind Titus of this fact, as if he regularly forgot the business he was in. “Can’t you do something about it?”
Titus bent over and used his thumb and index finger to pick up the very edge of the paper’s wrapper. At least the news print itself wasn’t damaged. But the scent of the dog urine was like acid burning in Titus’s nose. He felt his eyes beginning to water.
“Mr. Holbrook?”
Right. Mrs. Wankenfurter’s supposed prowler. “I would suggest one of those game cameras that are motion sensitive,” Titus told the old lady through clenched teeth. “It sounds like you’ve got a raccoon.”
“A coon?” Mrs. Wankenfurter looked mystified. “Do you really think so? In town?”
Titus barely managed to keep himself from making wild and probably rude gestures to the acres upon acres of wild tangled trees, brush, vines, and other vegetation growing between Branson West and the shores of Tablerock Lake.
“This is a pretty rural area in a raccoon’s opinion, Mrs. Wankenfurter. People have trouble with them in proper cities like Springfield. I cannot imagine it would be a stretch for us to have raccoons here in Branson West.”
“Oh, my word!” It was immediately evident that Titus had said something to truly spook Mrs. Wankenfurter. “I’ve got to go and call my veterinarian right away!”
Titus watched in amusement as the old woman hustled off. Pugsley was looking rather disgruntled as he struggled to keep up with his mistress’s energetic steps using his short, fat little legs. His tail curled even tighter and he threw Titus a baleful look over his plump little shoulder.
Serves you right, you domestic canine disaster.
“Great. Nice job there, Titus.”
Titus turned to his left and spotted another neighbor standing across the street. The streets in Branson West were narrow, only about one and a half car width’s wide. That meant neighbors across the street were about as in your face as the ones living right on either side of you. That meant everyone knew everybody else and all of them seemed determined to feel entitled to be up in everyone else’s business as well.
“Good morning, Kylie.” Titus nodded his head at the young woman.
She stared at him for a moment. “You realize that Mrs. Wankenfurter will now be paranoid that Pugsley is going to catch rabies from a vicious raccoon wildlife terrorist?”
Titus had not actually thought about Mrs. Wankenfurter’s propensity for overreacting to any given situation. He was too busy trying like hell not to stare at Kylie Overton. There was just something about her that appealed to Titus on a cellular level that he had yet to figure out. She wasn’t beautiful. Not in the traditional sense. She was more of your girl-next-door type. Her build was thick, athletic, but still thicker than current fashion dictated. She kept her dark brown hair long and usually piled it atop her head in a messy kind of bun that rather defined everything else about her. Kylie’s entire manner was careless, as though she could not be bothered to put any more effort into her appearance or manner than absolutely necessary for politeness.
“Hello?”
Titus tilted his head. She smelled good. He had always thought that, but then Titus was a wolf shifter. His sense of smell was highly developed, which was why the urine- spattered newspaper currently hanging from his right hand was such a grave offense. That, and the fact Pugsley knew full well what Titus was and pissed on the morning paper every damned day on purpose just to make a point for domestic canines everywhere. It was a conspiracy really.
“Titus!”
“Huh?”
“I swear. You’re a security expert, right?” Kylie’s tone was nearing exasperation and even from across the street Titus could tell that that her blue eyes were shooting sparks of irritation. “I hope those big brown eyes of yours are paying attention to what’s going on around you because I swear it seems like your brain never is.”
“That’s harsh,” Titus observed.
He wondered what Kylie thought about him. He was a good-looking guy, for a man. He was a stellar example of a wolf, but that wasn’t something Kylie could be expected to realize since she didn’t know he was one. Nobody did. But did she think he was an attractive man? It was an interesting question. What did human women really look for in a guy? Most of them seemed attracted to men who treated them like crap. Titus wasn’t into that. His mother would have skinned him alive had he treated her with anything less than the respect that an alpha pack female deserved. But that was long ago and far away.
“Ugh!” Kylie finally rolled her eyes and slammed her mailbox closed. She waved the pile of mail in her hand at him with such ferocity that a few pieces dropped to the pavement and she had to bend over to pick them up. She had a very attractive backside. “Are you learning disabled? I have to say, Titus. That would make me like you a lot more.”
His mind latched onto what she’d said. “Meaning that you don’t like me if I don’t have a learning disability?”
“Oh! He speaks.” Kylie shook her head. “No, Titus. It’s not that I don’t like you, all right? I don’t really know you. And I don’t actually want to know you. We live in this neighborhood and my house is right across the street from yours and that kind of means that I’m stuck playing n
ice and smiling and saying hi, but other than that? You do your thing and I’ll do mine. End of story.”
Titus frowned. “You manage a winery, right? Over in Branson?”
“Oak Barrel Hill Winery. Yes.” She did not look as though she was all that excited to discuss her career with him. “And I don’t manage the winery. I manage the retail store. It’s not the same thing. Trust me. I don’t know how to grow grapes or make wine. Not my thing. I don’t even drink wine.”
Titus found this tidbit of information about his neighbor fascinating. “What is that like?”
“What is what like?”
“Being around people who live, eat, and breathe wine every single day while you smile and nod and sell them baubles to go with their wine enthusiast bumper stickers?” Titus could actually picture this in his head.
It would have been amusing for sure. But for how long? Branson was full of tourists and Missouri was wine country. No doubt there were as many faux wine experts visiting the area every single day as there were “up and coming” country and western music stars singing on street corners and working as servers in restaurants and bars.
Two lines appeared between Kylie’s elegantly arched brows. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s like any other job really. You just go to work and smile and try to sell shit to the customers and then clock out and come home and hope you have enough energy left to do your own thing and enjoy it.”
“I appreciate your point of view,” Titus murmured. The paper wrapper in his hand was feeling as sticky as his skin was thanks to the humidity and the sun slowly broiling him alive. “And yes. I spend more time observing in my line of work than I do describing what it is that I see. So, perhaps I’m not all that great with words. I’m sorry if you believe that I’ve made Mrs. Wankenfurter paranoid about rabies. As often as she takes that dog to the vet, I’m entirely certain he’s well covered from any potential danger associated with the condition. But still, if you think I’ve caused stress to the rest of my neighbors, I’m sorry.”
“She’s right, you know?”
“Excuse me?” Titus wasn’t entirely sure he understood what Kylie was getting at.
“About the prowlers.”
This was a surprise. Titus had figured that Mrs. Wankenfurter was catching sight of some nighttime wandering wildlife and painting it into the boogeyman in her mind.
Kylie pursed her lips and looked thoughtful. “I’ve seen someone too. The last few nights. Just a dark outline, but human and definitely not raccoon. I figured it was just the local kids getting themselves into trouble. You know how it is during summer break, they’re bored and probably daring each other to do something stupid.”
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 1
