“He’ll be all right. Took a hell of a beating, but he’ll pull through. We don’t have the story yet, but I get the idea Tyler put up a fight that distracted the Ferals at the right moment. They had to deal with him and couldn’t finish the job with Levi.” He looked down at his hands but didn’t see them. Visions of Tyler on his motorcycle, driving away with Levi at his side plagued him instead.
Silence lingered for a heartbeat before Erin spoke again. “Speaking of ineffective phrases, ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ ranks right up there with ‘thank you for what you did today’ and ‘I’m sorry we failed you, even if we didn’t fail you and I was being an idiot when I thought that.’”
That earned a chuckle from him. “Pretty sure I didn’t say that last bit.”
“It was an oversight. I fixed it for you.” She hesitated, then laid her hand on his forearm. “Death sucks. I know. Losing people sucks. Please let me know if I can do anything to help while you mourn your friend.”
Earnest care warmed her eyes and her expression. The urge to bleed out all the grief and loss that festered in his heart almost overwhelmed him. She doesn’t need that. Not today. Maybe not ever. Today’s been shit enough for her without awkwardly comforting a total stranger, too.
So he laid his hand over hers and said, “Thank you. I mean it. There’s been too many tears lately as it is. How about we do something for you instead? This has been the worst fucking welcome in memory, and I’d like to fix that.”
Erin winced. “Let’s not call it the ‘worst’ welcome. Let’s call it the ‘most unintentionally exciting welcome’. Or maybe the ‘shootiest welcome’. Or the ‘welcome most likely to literally eat you’.”
“It was the worst welcome.”
“It was pretty bad.”
He nodded. “Tomorrow night. Dinner and drinks on the Bully Boys. We’d love to get to know you better.”
I’d love to get to know you better. You killed three Ferals, saved one of my pack, and still had enough to ask me how you could help after I lost my friend. Give me any excuse at all so I don’t have to admit it.
“I’d love to,” she said, with one of her quirky, wry smiles. “I don’t have a way to get anywhere, though. I’m waiting for a ride as it is. The woman with her hair tied back in a kerchief texted Anita for me.”
“That was Kerri. Tell you what, though. I’ll come get you tomorrow. The bike has room for two. It’s the least I can do, so don’t say anything about not wanting me to go to the trouble.” He raised an eyebrow at her.
Her nose wrinkled. “I’m that obvious, huh.”
“A little. You’re staying at the garage, right?” I should ask her to stay in the guest room. It’s got to be better than the tiny room in the back of that shop.
“I think so. Right now, I’d stay in a shed if it had a shower. Or even a sink. I’d take a sink. I stink worse than when I got off the bus, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“I’ve smelled worse.” Ask her, you idiot. Didn’t you just tell Anita yesterday that one of the pack might take her in to stay? Why not you?
“Given what you do for a living, I don’t think that’s comforting.” Erin chuckled wryly. “All right. Tomorrow night, then, and thank you. Though if you wanted to beg off because you didn’t feel like going out, I’d understand. Tonight’s been a special kind of hell.”
“Life is too short not to grab happiness where we find it. Or make it where we can. The pack needs to come together and remember that.” He started to reach for her, then realized he hadn’t moved his hand from where she had put hers on his arm. So he squeezed her hand beneath his instead.
She smiled without shadows behind her eyes. “Then I’ll look forward to it. Today has been so damn long. A night out would go a long way towards putting it behind me.”
Don’t make her go back to that shop alone. “You know, you—”
A familiar engine rumble drowned out his words. Moments after, Anita’s truck rolled up the road to stop in front of them. “Shane! Thank God you’re all right. How’s Levi?”
Now Anita’s all the way out here and I’d look like an ass to offer my place when she’s already arrived. Just as well, I guess. She would have driven out here either way. Or so he told himself. It didn’t help.
“He’ll be all right, thanks to Erin here.” Shane tried to look casual as he took his hand off Erin’s. Maybe Anita wouldn’t notice.
Anita arched an eyebrow. She noticed. “Erin, I am so sorry about what happened today. Tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. Shit happens when you’re out in the Wild, Wild West, I hear.” Erin unfolded herself from the rock. Only when she reached down behind it did Shane notice the bags sitting on the other side.
He stood and reached down to pick them up for her. “You hop in. Let me throw these in the back for you.”
“I’m just tired enough to let you.” Erin flashed him a grateful smile.
Anita leaned over to pull up the door lock on the passenger side. “You know, after today, I’d understand if you decided you’d rather pass on the job. There weren’t so many Ferals where you came from.”
“That means you need me more than Saint Louis did, doesn’t it,” Erin said as she climbed into the cab. “Besides, there are worse things than Ferals.”
“What in the world could be worse than Ferals?”
Shane settled the bags in the truck bed and patted the side to indicate they were ready. “Ghosts,” he said. “Sleep well, Erin. And welcome to Coyote Trail.”
“Thanks, Shane. See you tomorrow night. Try to get some rest, okay?” Erin waved at him from the passenger seat.
Anita gave him an amused look that indicated they’d have a conversation sooner rather than later. “Call me if you need anything, Shane. Anytime of night, it doesn’t matter.”
“Will do, Anita. I’ll be all right. You go try to rest yourself. Jake will be fine on patrol tonight.” Shane had tried to talk Jake into trading nights, but the other wolf wouldn’t hear of it.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried, but they’re all double alert tonight. That makes me feel a little better.” Anita reached down to put the truck in gear. “Catch you tomorrow, Shane.”
He knew better than to think she’d let that go. “I can hardly wait.”
She smirked at him and drove off down the darkened street.
Goodnight, Erin. Shane didn’t move until the truck turned down another road and out of sight. Only when the silence grew heavy with the whispers of his own ghosts did he turn to walk back into the hospital. One more chat with the werewolf-savvy doctor about Levi’s condition, then home, where the haunts always had too much to say.
The chime of the phone startled Shane out of his thoughts. He laid the wooden picture frame face down on the mantel again before he answered. “What is it, Jake?”
“It’s a damn mystery, is what it is.” Jake’s voice sounded irritated. “We ran into a pack of Ferals not long after we rode out of town. Not real bright, but fast as shit. Took us more than an hour to chase ‘em down.”
“You take care of them?” Shane crossed the room to lean his backside against the arm of the couch.
“Not yet. A bunch of them went to ground. Holly and Rigo are looking for them now. The rest of us rode out to where those Ferals hit Tyler and Levi.” A pause on the line, then, “We found what’s left of Levi’s bike, but nothing else.”
Shane frowned. “There should have been two bodies and a semi.”
“Should have been, but they weren’t there. We combed the desert on both sides of the highway. No Tyler. We followed the scent as best we could, but that trail got lost in a whole mess of skunk smell. It’s like they deliberately obscured it, but I’ve never heard of Ferals killing a trail before.”
“Me, either. That’s not good news. And the truck?”
“As far as we can tell, it’s been hauled out of there. It’s hard to say how without more light. There’s tire tracks and
drag marks, but that truck is as gone as Tuesday.” A howl sounded in the distance. It sounded like Holly. “Gotta go, boss. I’ll call you again when I know more.”
“Thanks, Jake.” The call disconnected. Shane scowled at the phone. “Why would the Ferals want a truck so bad that they’d haul it into the desert?”
The phone had no answer. Unfortunately, neither did Shane.
5
Music in the Distant Night
Anita held out the business card. “When I think of alpha werewolves watching over their pack, I admit, I don’t usually think about them asking for a referral to a probate attorney.”
“Me, either. But here we are.” Shane slipped the card into his wallet, then tucked the wallet away. “The truth is, the legal system doesn’t think about it, either. Having your last will and testament state that the ‘current alpha of the Bully Boys werewolf pack’ is the executor of your estate is kind of a grey area. So is, ‘I leave all my worldly possessions to the pack’. Having no body for confirmation? We have found the werewolf legal triple threat. I would have called the lawyer I used before, but he moved to Atlanta.”
Before. When the estate had belonged to his brother instead of a packmate and settling it had come with a unique scourge of complications. Legalities had yet to catch up with the crisis that threatened the world. Insurance companies didn’t care to pay out for a technical suicide, even one that prevented further danger and spread of a virulent disease.
“Safer there,” Anita agreed as she perched herself on the edge of her desk. “Even with all the talk about the Feral strain in the panhandle now. That attorney’s the one who’s done so much for me lately. Loves the Bullies. He’ll treat you right.”
“Thanks, Anita.”
“My pleasure.” She fixed him with the look he’d known was coming since he arrived at the garage. “With all that out of the way, you want to tell me what all that hand-holding with Erin was last night?”
Erin. A name that flirted at the edges of his thoughts since she’d driven away the night before, never willing to disappear entirely. He’d dreamed he rode his bike down a stretch of lonely highway with the sun at his back, racing the sun towards the horizon, and the shadow cast by the light showed two shapes on the motorcycle’s seat. Then he had realized the heat on his back wasn’t sunlight, but her, pressed to him as they chased the place where night would fall so the darkness would never catch them out again.
He’d seen her in the maintenance bays when he arrived. She looked tired, but so did he. Exhaustion didn’t keep her from what to Shane looked like an engaged tour of the shop led by one of the other mechanics. Her notepad appeared to hold copious notes, and the set of her lips promised change in the very near future. Guess someone else doesn’t like how Lou ran the place, either.
Cleaned up and in the daylight, she was still as beautiful as the first time he’d seen her. Differently beautiful, with the rich tones in her brown hair deepened in the ambient sunlight and the lovely lines of her face unobscured by the aftermath of a fight. Adhesive bandages covered the battle scars he knew she had to carry. In one night, she’d bled more in service to the pack than both Lou and Nicole had over the years Shane had known them.
“Just two people looking for a little comfort after a long night, Anita,” Shane said, aware the silence had stretched on a beat too long. “Nothing more than that.”
“Nothing more,” she echoed with amused dubiousness in her tone. “So you and my mechanic weren’t having a tender moment?”
He snorted. “We were, but not of the variety you’re hinting at. I just met her last night. Didn’t we just talk about how women don’t need to carry around my baggage? How the pack’s always around and I’m always in danger? Erin saw plenty of that last night. I don’t think she wants any more of my kind of trouble.”
“Neither of us get to speak for her. You’d have to ask her about that.”
“And I’m fairly sure we talked about how I’m not looking for trouble.”
Anita pursed her lips. “What if trouble comes to you?”
“Last time it did that, its name was ‘Nicole’ and I should have closed the door in its face.”
Anita’s gaze flickered to the office door then back to him. “Shane. She’s not Nicole.”
“No, she isn’t. She’s not Lou, either. And I’d like to keep it that way. The last thing I need is-” To open myself up for another person to stab me in the back or die and break my heart. “-someone else to worry about,” he finished instead.
“I’m not saying you should go declare she’s your one true mate and everlasting love,” Anita said. “All I think is that you shouldn’t close yourself off to possibility.”
Shane sighed. “Not everyone calls that ‘closing themselves off’. They call it ‘armoring up for protection’. I’ve already left myself open too many times. Right now, I can’t afford that. My pack needs me.”
“Your pack needs—”
Whatever the pack needed would remain a mystery. Shane’s phone rang to drown out Anita’s words. He held up a finger to ask her to wait as he glanced at the readout. “Hey, Holly, what do you have for me?”
Holly’s voice sounded like she’d put her cell phone into an old, metal coffee can to shout at. “Shane? Can you hear me?”
“Barely. This connection is shit.” He put his finger in his opposite ear to better isolate what Holly said.
“—been trying to call or text for half an hour. Nothing is getting through.”
“You need a new phone?”
“Same thing was happening to Rigo. We found something you need to see. You and maybe Erin.”
He blinked. “Why Erin?”
“Because we think we found the missing truck. She’s the only one who’d know. I’ve been trying to send pictures to Anita so she could ask, but—”
“Nothing’s getting through. How important is it for her to see?”
“Hard to say for sure, bossman, but I think it’s worth the trouble.”
“Understood.” Shane took a deep breath and let it out again. “I’m at the garage right now. Tell me where you are. I’ll ask Erin if she’d be willing to come along, then I’ll head out there.”
“Sounds good. We’re at the Flying V Truck Stop between Muncy and Casa Verde. See you in a bit, oh fearless leader.”
“Catch you in a few, smartass.” He killed the connection, which was already trying to die.
Anita raised an eyebrow at him. “What was that about trouble coming to you?”
“To be fair, we had to chase this trouble hard. Holly and Rigo may have found the truck that disappeared last night.”
Anita frowned. “You really did have to chase that trouble. They’ve been at it all night. When Jake got home, he said they were still on the trail.”
“Neither of them knows how to give up. They’re all the way out at the Flying V Truck Stop. No one saw that truck except Erin, and phone service is squirrely today. Holly can’t send pictures. It’d be nice to have confirmation we found what we were looking for. You mind if I borrow your head mechanic?”
“I don’t if she doesn’t.”
“Then I’ll have a word and see if she’d like to take a drive.”
Anita pushed off from where she leaned on the desk. “A nice, romantic drive.”
“In the summer heat. In the desert. Which is full of Ferals. You know, this may answer why I’m so bad with dating, Anita. Do you suppose I’m doing it wrong?”
Anita laughed and led the way out of her office.
Sleep had come at last, but it hadn’t come alone.
Anita had offered more than once to let Erin crash on the couch in the one-bedroom apartment she rented with Jake, or to call around to see if any of the pack had space for an overnight visitor. Erin had thanked her but waved off the attempts. A night alone to process what had happened sounded nice. Not feeling beholden to another person today sounded even better.
The office bedroom’s tiny shower stall didn’t have to
rrential water pressure. She had to scrub to remove all the grime from her skin. One of the cuts on her arm didn’t appreciate the aggravation. It burned an angry red and throbbed its protest long after she turned the water off. Wonder if there’s any wound ointment in the first aid kit here. Bet that thing’s going to infect.
She expected sleep to claim her fast. Exhaustion already had. Her limbs weighed four times what they should, and her eyelids kept finding excuses to slide closed. Yet even as her body sank into the mattress, a restlessness built deep at the core of her. She longed to move, to pace the room or go outside and run laps around the garage just to sate the agitation, but she couldn’t. Her body weighed too much to lift herself from the sheets.
Trapped in a nervous twilight between sleep and a surrender to the inevitable case of insomnia, she listened to the sounds in her new home. Crickets. Gusts of dry wind through the palo verde trees. In the distance, a throaty howl, then another. Wolves. Is Shane out there tonight? I hope not. He looked so tired. As tired as I feel. I’m so done. Why can’t I sleep? Even my bones are tired.
Coyotes joined the song of wolves, higher and lighter in their song. And they did sound like singing, much as she wished she could forget Andy’s words. I can hear them singing. Can you hear them? No. They’re just yapping. Rabbits, maybe. Barking. Hunting. Not singing.
Yet it sounded like a song tonight. One she’d heard in passing, details forgotten but the melody a familiar line. Or one she’d heard long ago and buried in her mind, only to hum snatches of it in idle moments when true thought had faded. The sound rose and fell, and she found herself lost in the ebb and flow of the strange, bestial hymn.
A vision of the night drifted through her mind with the melody. Stars twinkled overhead as she ran across the hard-packed soil. The world came alive with smells both unfamiliar and known. Earthy scents, plants that smelled of moisture and long-fallen rain, prey animals that had once scurried by. Scents made by two-legged beasts, metal and machine oil and the dangerous smell of gasoline.
Brave the Night: A Bully Boys Novel Page 4
