There was a community dock nearby. For a fee, people were allotted a place to park their boat and use of the private deck where they could swim or enjoy a barbeque on one of the shaded picnic tables. There was nobody out there now though. The long, narrow walkway protected by sturdy railings to get out to the dock bobbed gently in the waves swelling towards shore.
Titus padded around the dock and around the water’s edge. He stared across the lake and wondered who else was out and about this time of night. The moon was high. A light breeze caressed the fur on his face. As he lifted his nose to the wind, he thought about the events of the past few weeks with no considerable amount of alarm. There was only one conclusion he could draw considering everything that had happened in the Branson area of late.
It was time for Titus to go.
Turning away from the lake, he padded carefully and nearly silently back up toward Hawthorne Street. This was the place where Titus lived. The spot he had chosen to set up his life after fleeing Montana ten years ago. Not that Titus had been in this area for ten years. He’d been around for perhaps six or seven. Before that, he’d been in Colorado and then Texas as he struggled to find a place with enough room to spread out. A place where he would not have to run afoul of humans. Where they would not be poking and prying endlessly into his business.
Of course, this wasn’t actually possible. There was no such place. Titus had finally settled here in the Branson area of Southern Missouri because at least there was terrain. It was still crowded and urban, but different from a place like Colorado. In Colorado, Titus had been dealing with not only the human population, but a generations old shifter population that wasn’t too keen on an outsider invading their tight knit community. Plus, in Texas there were almost no public lands for running. There were fences everywhere and nothing but dried out ground covered in stinging ants or cotton.
Titus emerged from the thickest part of the trees at the bottom of the area that had been cleared for building. Grass grew here, the land steeply rising toward the houses on the lake side of the street that were perched on the ridge and anchored by their deeply dug walk-out basements. The basements were often just as elaborately finished and furnished as the rest of the house above ground.
The lights were off in each of the houses, as they should have been. Most of the residents were elderly. Some, though were not. In the last five years there had been far more younger families moving into the area than ever before. It was an interesting change, but not one Titus felt he was happy about. Younger families meant kids. Kids ran around at all hours of the day and night, poking their noses into things that were distinctly not their business. Considering he was a man who could shift into a wolf and needed to regularly stretch his legs, he did not like kids poking about risking a confrontation.
Titus eased his way up between two houses and then padded up to Hawthorne Street itself right in a spot guaranteed to be free of light from the sparse street lights along the blacktop pavement. Out there was sidewalk-free, just slabs of road laid down in a lane between two rows of houses and flanked by culverts. No curbs or other nonsense to get in a wolf’s way.
Crossing the street at a lope, Titus shot between two houses and headed down the other slope that left the natural ridge formed by construction engineers into Hawthorne Street. It was his regular route, the way he always went in order to see if he could spot the intruders and prowlers that had been plaguing their neighborhood of late. Titus considered it his unofficial extra duty for the Hawthorne Street Neighborhood Watch. Not that any of them would probably appreciate the knowledge that there was a hundred and fifty pound black wolf running around in their woods. But Titus figured he just wouldn’t tell them that part. Ever.
The houses on this side of the street were not considered lakeside. Not that the others really were considering the fifty yards of Army Corps of Engineers controlled mess between Titus’s house and the water. But this side of the street was where Kylie Overton lived.
Kylie’s house wasn’t dark like the others. There was a single light on in the lower level living room. Titus crept closer, his paws leaving the raw brush and dead leaves for the smooth manicured green of her back lawn as he was drawn almost against his will to take a peek inside the house.
It was a small house. Much like Titus’s own place. These had probably once been vacation homes. With their A-frame rooflines and open floor plans, they were welcoming and spacious even though there wasn’t a whole lot of square footage to work with. Kylie’s house had cheery yellow siding and white trim and she kept the place up nicely for a single woman with a busy full-time job at a winery in Branson.
Titus stopped short as he spotted someone in the living room. It was Kylie. He pivoted a bit and sidestepped. The deep shadows of the deck above him offered a protective way to stay out of the light. But right now, Titus was so far beyond noticing if he was exposing himself or not that he wasn’t sure he cared.
Kylie was slumped in a cozy wingback chair. There was an open book face down on her chest and her chin was tucked as though she had just fallen asleep reading hours and hours ago. Even through the slatted blinds of the big picture window, Titus could make out her nightgown and wrap. They were both a pretty mango and lime green color that flattered her tanned complexion and dark hair.
There was just something about Kylie that appealed to Titus in a way that had never made a damned bit of sense to him. She wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense. She was more of your girl next door type. Her build was athletic, but still thicker than current fashion dictated. She always wore her dark brown hair long and kept it piled atop her head in a messy kind of bun. Tonight though, it was long and loose, hanging over her shoulder and the arm of the chair. Titus wanted to touch it, to stroke that silky softness and lift it to his nose so he could memorize her scent. Kylie’s entire manner was artless grace. No real effort involved as though she could not be bothered to put any more effort into her appearance or manner than absolutely necessary for politeness. But Titus didn’t think she needed to try harder. The woman was absolutely perfect according to him.
He had no idea how long he’d been staring at her through the window. The clock on the fireplace mantel in her basement said 4:45. It was time for Titus to get moving, yet he wasn’t sure he could make himself go. There was a strange intimacy to watching her sleep. It was a stolen intimacy, however, and Titus couldn’t stop himself from wanting more of it.
Stolen or not, it was all he was going to get. He refused to breed. He rejected taking a mate and further his line. There was just no way to guarantee that what had happened to his family wasn’t going to happen again in this place. Titus’s line was tainted and he could never force that on an innocent woman like Kylie Overton.
It was not his own mettle that got Titus turned around and heading in the right direction. It was a noise. A very specific noise. The crinkle of paper. The click of a camera. Titus quickly backed away from Kylie’s window and turned to plunge into the darkness. He knew where it was going. He knew where the prowlers were headed. He just needed to find a way to discover the identity of the person poking around Hawthorne Street for the last several months.
Titus made the round of the side of the street, streaking through the yards as the first hazy light of dawn touched the sky. He had no time. He could not be out this late in the morning. People were beginning to stir. Soon, they would be up and about and perfectly lucid enough to notice a big black wolf running around.
Up between the last two houses on the end of the street, Titus followed a familiar path. He lifted his nose and caught a hint of a strangely familiar scent. It gave him pause, making him slow down a moment to assess his situation. There was someone bumbling its way through the brush about twenty yards from his position. They were beside Ursuline Wankenfurter’s home. But then why wouldn’t they be? The intruder had surprised the old lady the other day inside her home trying to steal from her collection of personal files. Ursuline had wound up in the hospital, and now the
house was empty.
Bait.
That’s what it was. Bait that Titus had left vulnerable by not setting the alarm system. Now he crouched down beneath the low hanging branch of a gnarled cedar tree and watched as a person dressed in black fumbled with the lock on the back door tucked beneath Mrs. Wankenfurter’s deck. A click. Another click. If this individual had taken this long to break into Ursuline Wankenfurter’s house the first time, there was no way the old lady’s pug wouldn’t have noticed. Even fat old Pugsley was apt to hear and sniff out someone who smelled this obvious and was making enough noise to wake the neighborhood.
And that’s when Titus spotted the second figure dressed in black. He froze beneath the cedar bough. What the hell? There had never been a second prowler before. There had only ever been one person. Titus had seen them before. That first person, the one bungling the break in. Titus had come face to face—more or less—with that individual at least once before and probably more. He had been hiding up a tree behind Kylie’s backyard at the time. Not that he’d been spying on Kylie so to speak. Well, not really. It had been a desperate attempt to hide. But that was neither here nor there.
Who was the second intruder? Hell, who was the first? Titus had his suspicions, but they’d never been confirmed. And yet right now he watched the second intruder and felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
“Shove over. You’re totally doing it wrong.” The second one whispered to the first.
“Shh!” came the hasty reply.
It was the voice that did it. At least for Titus. He knew that person. He knew her snide, supercilious tone of voice and her ridiculously rude manner. Caroline. The woman he had just fired from the office of Rock Wolf Investigations. The one who had been caught colluding with Hilary Allenwood from the Branson Register.
They were the who, But the why still eluded Titus. If the two women had been breaking into Titus’s house, he would have understood. Hilary had been investigating Titus for months now and she had dragged Caroline into the mess with her. But Mrs. Wankenfurter? Why? Or did Hilary Allenwood believe Ursuline Wankenfurter was a shifter too? Perhaps a bear.
“Stop it!” Hilary seemed to lose patience with Caroline’s attempt to take over and shoved her out of the way.
A pushing match ensued, followed by a total girl fight full of waving hands doing nothing but moving air currents and creating a plethora of floral smells that assaulted Titus from twenty yards away. If wolves could roll their eyes, Titus would have been doing that and more. As it was, he decided to give them something else to think about.
Growling low in his throat, Titus filled the sound with enough menace to make anyone take pause. The girl fight stopped immediately and then they were both trying to shove each other in front as though Titus were attacking and neither of them wanted to take the brunt of the claws and teeth.
“Get away!” Caroline said in a high-pitched whisper that wasn’t really a whisper anymore. “Get away. Bad dog!”
“That’s not a dog, dumbass!” Finally, Hilary’s sarcasm seemed to penetrate Caroline’s panic. “That’s him!”
Him, of course, referred to Titus. The big bad wolf. But it didn’t seem to make a difference to either Caroline or Hilary that they potentially knew the identity of their attacker. They both erupted from their break-in as though they’d just heard sirens approaching and were running from the cops.
Titus watched them go. He knew he shouldn’t have made his presence known like that. It had been a calculated risk. But the truth was he didn’t have the luxury of anonymity anymore. He needed to establish he wasn’t afraid of them and he could hurt them if they continued this ridiculous crusade to—well, Titus wasn’t entirely sure what their crusade was about.
The first streaks of pink and purple were in the sky by the time Titus managed to get back to his own home. He was ready to collapse with exhaustion from this ridiculous pattern of sleeping four hours in twenty-four, but that’s what it was going to take to get rid of the intruder problem. It was either that or he could just move.
As Titus changed from wolf to man down in the thick trees at the bottom of his property and began the long, trudging walk up to the back door, he could not help but think the better option would be to just leave the area and start over somewhere else. No attachments. No friends. Maybe take work in a factory or something. And of course, he could not leave any information behind on where he had gone or why. He would just pack up one night and go.
Chapter Two
Kylie’s neck hurt. But then that’s what you got for sleeping in your chair all night because you had totally fallen asleep while reading the night before. The book hadn’t even been that good. She’d just been so sleepy! But when Kylie came to at five in the morning, she could not shake the feeling she had just missed something.
Maybe it was Mrs. Wankenfurter’s prowler. Perhaps he’d been in Kylie’s backyard. If that was the case, having the light on wasn’t a bad idea. The fact the prowler had been bold enough to break into Mrs. Wankenfurter’s house in the middle of the day in order to steal files from her file cabinet was more than a little concerning in Kylie’s opinion.
Kylie rolled her neck and waited for the smell of coffee to wake her up. The hazelnut brew was one of the best for making her feel awake and alert. But right now, her eyes seemed to prefer the closed position. She groped on the shelf for a mug and when the beep went off, Kylie poured her coffee and lifted it to her lips as though she could actually inhale energy instead of just the smell.
The kitchen window overlooked the front of her property. It was a quiet day on Hawthorne Street. Of course, who was she kidding? It was quiet every day on Hawthorne Street. Kylie was already showered and dressed for work at the Oak Barrel Hill Winery. Her khaki capris, white-fitted dress shirt, and leather sandals were casual, yet neat.
Managing the hospitality room was probably one of the better paying jobs she’d managed to land in her lifetime, but it was also mind-numbingly repetitive. The people were always different, of course. Diverse tourists, tour groups, family reunions—because the family that drank together stayed together—and any number of wine aficionados who would stand around sipping for an hour without actually being able to tell you anything about the wine they were sipping.
As she stared out her kitchen window and tried to infuse her body with enough energy to go from the house to the car, Kylie could not help but look directly across the street to Titus Holbrook’s little house. It was much the same style as hers. In fact, she was pretty sure they’d been built by the same builder and designed by the same architect. That was the way of it around here. Someone bought land, built vacation homes, and then rented them out until that was no longer profitable. Then they sold and moved on.
The house was quiet today. Usually, Kylie and Titus left for work at the same time. It was a regular thing. She wouldn’t have admitted that to anyone, although she had let it slip to him not long ago. The guy had made some asinine comment about her stalking him. Not that Kylie was per se, but in a place where nothing exciting ever really happened, Titus Holbrook was rather interesting in his own right.
Where was he? Kylie was running late already. The clock was pushing its way past straight up nine o’clock. Usually, she would have been out for a run already this morning before she took her shower. Not today. But Titus’s paper was still on his front walk and that was super unusual. The guy was crazy about his paper.
Maybe he was ill.
Kylie bit her lip. No, she was practically gnawing on it as though she was going to rip it off. So many thoughts were spinning through her head. Of course, the most horrid one was the memory of finding her mother dead in her bed one morning when Kylie had gone to check on her. She couldn’t handle that again. Still, what if something was wrong with Titus? He lived by himself, which she knew what that was like. To be sick and alone and stuck trying to take care of yourself was miserable.
Grabbing her phone, Kylie left her nearly full coffee mug on her kitchen counter
and headed out the front door. She marched across the street to Titus’s recently repaired front gate, which he claimed protected his newspaper from Mrs. Wankenfurter’s pug. Pugsley liked to pee on Titus’s morning paper.
That gate opened easily and Kylie continued up to the front door. She paused a moment, gathered her wits, and then knocked. Then she waited with enough anxiety to sink her right then and there and send her scurrying back to her house across the street. Except, when she’d knocked, the door had opened slightly.
What the hell?
Kylie fidgeted on the porch. What should she do? There was no way that Titus would leave the place open to intruders. Maybe he was in there and he’d been clocked on the head or something by Mrs. Wankenfurter’s prowler!
Without thinking, Kylie burst through the front door. She paused in the entryway. The kitchen was on the right and not the left. That meant the bedrooms were on the left. Kylie wasted no time sprinting for the big master bedroom in the left rear corner of the house.
Her mind was barely even registering the masculine odor of this house. The dark colors, heavy woods, and oversized furniture that looked as though it was used by a giant, were quite suiting to the man of the house. She pushed open the double door entry of the bedroom and then searched for the bed in the near dark created by a set of blackout curtains on the big sliding glass door.
“Titus!” She was whispering. Why was she whispering? Kylie cleared her throat and spoke louder. “Titus! Wake up. Where are you? Are you in here?”
She couldn’t see him in the bed. He was there though. He had to be there. The air conditioning made the room nearly frigid; Kylie could have sworn she could see her breath frosting in the air. She fumbled her way to the bed and tripped over something on the floor. She stumbled forward and her hands hit the side of the mattress. Probing the sheets and blankets piled on the enormous king-sized bed, Kylie came up empty. He wasn’t there.
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 96
