Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Then your little secret is going to be all over town, Caroline. And I don’t think I want to imagine what people will think and say about you then!”

  Titus suddenly felt as though he had no clue what was going on in his world. What secret did Hilary Allenwood have on Caroline? And was it really strong enough to make Caroline stay in a job she didn’t want to be in? It wasn’t like Caroline ever particularly loved her job. It was just a job. But the idea she was being forced to stay employed by Titus was a bit difficult to swallow.

  “You are not going to get away with this,” Caroline muttered.

  Hilary only laughed some more. “Oh, and who is going to stop me? Your boss? Not when he finds out how much you’ve been telling me about what goes on in his office.”

  Caroline seemed to have had enough. There was a rustle. The scent of money filled the air. It was strange how money had a distinctive scent. It was filthy. The lignin and fabric-based paper were always easy to distinguish from other things. The rustling noise was the purse and then the bills hitting the table.

  Caroline stood up. Titus made sure to turn away as she swept by him on her way out of the restaurant. Titus waited, but Hilary did not follow suit. The sound of silverware on a plate made him think Hilary was finishing her lunch. Perhaps she had another appointment. Maybe this was not such a private place to meet after all.

  Speaking of meeting, where was Detective Lowell anyway? Was this some indicator that the detective had been called to an emergency? He was a cop after all, but this was Branson. What kind of emergency would a detective get called to? Or had the detective been waylaid by other not so savory individuals within his own department and rank that might have a reason to keep Detective Lowell and Titus Holbrook away from each other? Or was it something else entirely? It could be that Detective Lowell had forgotten. It was scheduled at the last minute so, perhaps the detective was at his desk back at the police department wondering why he hadn’t brought his lunch to work.

  Or…

  “Hey.”

  Titus felt a little shell shocked at the moment thanks to his thick thoughts. Besides, it was a bit odd to see Kylie Overton there of all places. Titus was used to seeing her around the house because they were neighbors.

  That was probably the reason for his choice of words. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, because I should be where? Back on Hawthorn Street patrolling the roads in search of middle of the day prowlers?” At least she smiled even though he’d been rude.

  “Sorry,” Titus said quickly. “I don’t mean to be rude. I was just a bit surprised I think. You know, when you’re expecting to see one person and you see someone else instead and then that person isn’t someone you would expect in a certain environment.” Although there was a valid question here. He could just phrase it a little more nicely. “Why are you here?”

  “You mean what brings me to this lovely chain restaurant where you can get any number of fake and yet surprisingly convincing Italian dishes all at the same time in some combo plate paired with bottomless salad and breadsticks?”

  “Yes, exactly that.” Titus actually found himself smiling at Kylie.

  She was a surprising kind of woman. That was what he was figuring out. Titus was about the worst when it came to putting his foot in his mouth when Kylie was around, yet she seemed to take it all in stride as though she had gotten used to the idea that he was pretty much socially awkward when it came to her. There was a certain graciousness in her behavior that Titus greatly admired.

  “Well,” she began as she put her hands on the table and moved to swing herself into the other side of his booth. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve been on my feet all morning.”

  “No, please. Go ahead. My lunch meeting has apparently been postponed.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She didn’t even seem curious. “Well, I had to bring a couple of bottles of wine over from the winery to fulfill an anniversary request for a local man and his wife.”

  Titus frowned. “That seems unusual.”

  “Highly unusual,” Kylie agreed. “Only here will you find a local couple who goes to a chain restaurant so often that the manager will agree to buy them a good local wine instead of this cheap, knockoff, mass produced crap the restaurant offers on the corporate-approved menu.”

  Titus considered this. “That’s actually really nice of the manager.”

  “I would agree.” Kylie bobbed her head and pursed her lips. “But it means I had to hand deliver the bottles before tonight for the couple’s anniversary dinner. What is more, since they’re inviting something like fifty of their closest retirement age cronies, I had to bring a few cases of the stuff.”

  “Wow!” Titus could not even imagine having that many friends, much less having a party to celebrate an anniversary. “I suppose you have to be living that life to get it. Huh?”

  “And you’re not?” She looked curious. “No lovely lady in Titus’s future? You don’t want to settle down and raise a whole litter of puppies?”

  “Litter of puppies?” Titus felt the blood leave his face so quickly that he nearly felt lightheaded. Why that choice of words? Was it because she’d accidentally glimpsed him as a wolf? What was happening right now? Was he being outed? Good God, and with Hilary just a booth away probably listening?

  “It’s just a figure of speech, Titus,” Kylie said with amusement. “Obviously, you’re not going to be having a bunch of kids. That’s cool. I don’t actually want any myself. Kids just stress you out and make you spend your money on them. Look at what was going on at the Landing these last few months! Can you imagine? Those were someone’s kids. Someone has to look their neighbor in the face and pretend they aren’t embarrassed to hell that their kid is behaving badly.”

  For some reason, that phrase reminded Titus of Caroline. “Speaking of behaving badly, can I ask you a management question?”

  Kylie drew back and looked surprised. “I suppose so. Go ahead. Although, keep in mind that my biggest problem is the employees accidentally getting drunk while they’re on the clock.”

  Titus found that hilarious. He appreciated her sense of humor no matter what. Leaning forward, he kept his voice very low with respect to the possibility that Hilary might be listening in. “I’m actually talking about an employee who isn’t exactly an exemplary worker anyway, who then—as it turns out—has been selling bits and pieces of information about my office and the things that go on inside it with a certain newspaper reporter.”

  “Do you mean the reporter that is sitting right there?” Kylie thumbed in the direction of Hilary’s table. Her voice was barely audible. “I’d get rid of her.”

  Titus had thought that too. He was taking a breath to speak when Kylie changed her mind.

  “No,” Kylie said suddenly. “No, I wouldn’t. You know what? I think I might keep her and just keep an eye on her. Maybe even feed her bits and pieces that were wrong. It could be a way to make a certain person look incompetent, if you catch my drift.”

  What a diabolical idea! Titus found himself smiling at the notion. “Kylie, remind me never to get on your bad side.”

  “It isn’t me you have to worry about,” Kylie told him gravely. “It’s Ms. Wankenfurter. She’s truly afraid that you’re not taking this prowler threat and the neighborhood watch seriously enough. She was telling me about it last night for a good hour.”

  “An hour?” Titus groaned. “I’m sorry. I am. I can’t even imagine what someone might have to chat about with Ms. Wankenfurter for an hour. It would only be one topic. Or a million topics I guess.”

  “Exactly,” Kylie agreed. “Each one centering on an anecdote about Pugsley of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Titus found himself enjoying this time with Kylie. When the waiter arrived, Titus encouraged her to order something for lunch. She had to eat. He had to eat. His lunch meeting was evidently a bust, and he was finding Kylie’s company shockingly comfortable and fun.

  Perhaps this pretendin
g to be human thing was not all that bad after all. There were not a lot of wolf shifters he could think of that might be interested in having a lighthearted conversation with a neighbor over pasta and breadsticks. Perhaps humans had something to recommend to them after all.

  PART IV

  Chapter One

  Titus Holbrook sat back in his desk chair and waited. It was early. Six o’clock on a Friday morning. Not the sort of morning or time of day that anyone should be at work in the offices of Rock Wolf Investigations. Titus was the owner and operator of the business and he wasn’t usually one to worry about what time his employees arrived at work. This morning, however, Titus wanted very much to know what time his secretary slash receptionist slash administrative assistant Caroline Fry came into work. He had a feeling it was much earlier than anyone else. And thanks to Titus’s normally lackadaisical management style, nobody had ever noticed.

  Stretching his back until it popped, Titus settled down to wait with the patience of a wolf. Of course, that was because he was a wolf. Sort of. He was a wolf shifter. Not that anyone knew that. Titus lived a life in the shadows. Or, at least half in the shadows. His regular life as a business owner in the Branson area of Southern Missouri truly suggested Titus was just a regular guy. An easy-going and maybe even somewhat backwards sort of guy. Lately though, Titus had been getting the feeling that someone was trying to poke a bit far into his carefully constructed façade and it was time to figure out who and why.

  He had practically dozed off when he heard the key slip into the lock on the outside of the door. There was a soft click and the door swung open. Caroline appeared in the doorway with an armful of files and paperwork. She looked much the same as she always did, as in she looked far too put together to be coming to work at a distanced security firm where she was supposed to answer the phone and meet the very occasional and rather rare client who came into the office.

  Caroline Fry had a cascade of long blonde hair that was pale and perfect as though she had the color touched up at least once a week in order to minimize any sun damage she might get from laying out by the nearby lake. Her skin was bronzed and her makeup was absolutely perfect. Today she was wearing a short, flimsy skirt made of some kind of purple and blue fabric that whispered around her thighs. Her high-heeled sandals included some kind of shiny silver beads and lots of straps. What Titus could see of her top was tight and stretchy and purple and she had on a calf-length sweater thing that was such a wide weave that it looked absolutely pointless but was probably totally in style.

  Titus’s desk was in the back of the one-room building and Caroline hadn’t seen him just yet. That was probably because she came straight in with more industriousness and drive than Titus had ever seen her exhibit in her daily course of work. She set the enormous stack of files in her arms and set to work filing them even before she clocked in on her computer. She was working with such efficiency and competence to file one thing and immediately pull out another, that not only did she continue to not notice Titus, but she had yet to turn on the lights, start the coffee, or do anything else that was technically on her list of opening duties.

  That suggested something to Titus. It told him in no uncertain terms that she was there “before hours” and she had a specific task to accomplish before the work day actually began at seven in the morning.

  Titus continued to watch her. He’d deliberately left the door locked and the lights off. She had yet to actually unlock the door from the inside and she’d left the lights off as though she wanted it to seem like she wasn’t there. So, the big question was why? What was she doing that she wanted to pretend that she wasn’t doing?

  There was a certain point where he wasn’t exactly sure whether or not it was time to make his presence known or not. But once Caroline had exchanged the stack of files she’d brought in to the office for a smaller stack that she was evidently about to carry out of the office, she happened to turn around and start walking in the direction of Titus’s desk and filing cabinets. And that was when she saw him.

  Her scream could have woken the ghosts in the graveyard. The blood curdling cry was worthy of a black-and-white horror film. Her arms seemed to reflexively fly up towards the ceiling. As a result, the files she was carrying sailed up into the air where they seemed to expand as the contents briefly left their gravitational order and before gravity once again asserted itself and they all came slamming back down to earth in one huge pile.

  Titus waited. Caroline’s scream was still echoing in his ears. It was an awful sound. The sort of scream that made you want to clap your hands over your ears and hide. Caroline’s big blue eyes were staring accusingly at Titus as though she was about to blame him for something—the fact he had startled her, the fact she was there, something. And no doubt, she expected Titus to just smile and agree he was a horrible person for scaring poor, little Caroline. Because that was pretty much how Caroline thought life worked.

  “Good morning,” Titus said after a few moments had passed and Caroline still hadn’t said anything.

  Her elegantly made-up face contorted into an ugly look of disgust. “Good morning? Really? That’s what you have to say after you nearly scare me half to death by just lurking in the back of the office without even bothering to give a girl a warning that you’re here? Why would you do that? It’s rude, Titus! So rude. You could have given me a heart attack. Straight up. You could have killed me!”

  “Yeah, I highly doubt that.” He waved his hand to brush off her dramatic monologue. “You were distracted. I’ve been sitting here for an hour waiting for you. I hardly think you were in danger of cardiac arrest and death. You were just too focused on whatever task it is that you’ve set for yourself this morning.”

  That seemed pointed enough for Titus. Evidently, it was not pointed enough for Caroline. “Whatever task I’ve set for myself? Are you kidding me? I’m running your office. That’s what I’m doing. I’m making sure you and those morons you’ve hired as employees don’t run this place into the ground. You have no idea what sort of paperwork and bookkeeping I have to do in order to make sure that we are up to snuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Huh?”

  Titus lifted his eyebrows and crossed one leg over the other. He rested his right ankle on his left knee and straightened the lace of his combat boot. He had taken to wearing what the rest of his former law enforcement or military employees wore to work. Cargo fatigue pants in some dark, nondescript color but in a lovely breathable summer fabric, a nice cotton T-shirt that did not suffocate you in the horrible humid climate, and his comfy combat boots. If he couldn’t stick to being in his wolf body with an entirely breathable pelt covering his skin, this was the next best thing.

  Now he stared at Caroline for a very long moment as he adjusted the pantleg that was carefully gathered and tucked into the top of his boot. He watched her from the corner of his eye and was very satisfied to see she was starting to sweat. Not literally. Caroline had probably had her sweat glands removed because it wasn’t fashionable to perspire. But she was definitely on edge here.

  “Caroline, why are you here right now?” Titus asked calmly. His mind moved through its carefully concocted background story his neighbor Kylie had helped him come up with this just the day before. “An acquaintance mentioned to me in passing the other day that they were impressed by how industrious and dedicated my receptionist must be because they had seen a car at my office on a consistent basis nearly every single morning of the work week.”

  Caroline’s mouth opened into a little “O” of surprise.

  Titus kept going. “You’ll understand of course, why I was surprised. You don’t have the greatest reputation around the office for being industrious. That just isn’t a word I would apply to Caroline Fry.”

  “That’s so rude!” Caroline muttered. “Of course I’m industrious. Look at me.” As if to make sure that she looked busy and capable, she got down on her knees on the office floor and began sorting the files she had just dr
opped.

  Titus ignored her claim that he was being rude. She knew it would bother him. It was a calculated move on her part and in his mind, it showed him she was not as rattled as he would have liked her to be. She was calculating. Even now.

  “Caroline, you didn’t clock in,” Titus reminded her quietly.

  “Well, sometimes I forget. But I just leave it.” She gave him an arched look from her spot on the floor clearing away the mess she’d made. “But I don’t complain and I don’t charge you for it. That’s because I’m not nearly as lazy as the rest of your employees are. Look at them! They’re not even here. If you came back in an hour they still wouldn’t be around.”

  “That’s because there were two of them who were working until midnight last night on a case over in Branson. Another employee just finished working a case that kept him tied up nearly twenty-four hours a day doing surveillance. In my mind, it would be a little ridiculous to be pissed off because they aren’t in the office before eight in the morning.”

  Caroline made a huffy noise and kept picking up the files. Titus tilted his head sideways and got a look at the labels. The names on the folders were familiar. These were personnel files. What. The. Hell?

  “Caroline, why do you have personnel files for every single one of my employees but yourself?” Titus wanted to know. “I realize you have keys and access to these things, but I think you know full well that these files are private.”

  “I’m just…” She sat back on her heels and then stood up. “They needed some stuff added. That’s all.”

  “Oh, and you figured you are so industrious that you were going to take them home and work on them there?” Titus did not bother to tone down the sarcasm in his voice. “Let me ask you, how do you think the others would react to knowing you have access to their personal information? I run background checks. You know this. They’re in those files, but they are not for your eyes. You signed a document when you were first hired here that stated you realized you had access to personal information. Apparently, you are in violation of that document.”