by Michelle Fox
Going back to the dining room, she located Dad’s latest bank statement and gasped as she saw the steady increase in withdrawals, all of which matched the amounts on the receipts she’d found. “Holy crap. This Axel guy is bleeding my dad dry.” The latest statement showed only a couple thousand in the account, nowhere near enough to pay off her dad’s debt to this Axel guy.
Taking all the paperwork with her, she rushed to her dad’s room. “Dad? Are you awake?”
His eyes blinked open. “I am now.”
She turned on a light and sat next to him. “Who is Axel Sharpe?”
“Axel who?” He started to rub his forehead, but stopped when he ran into the bandage.
“His name is right here.” She showed him a receipt and he peered at it.
“I didn’t sign that.”
“Are you sure? It looks like your signature.” Gretchen bit her lip, concerned about her dad’s foggy memory.
He shook his head. “I would remember if I was giving someone that much money.”
Her heart sank. Maybe Marie had been right. Maybe her dad was losing it. Crap. In her mind’s eye, even her wolf looked worried. “Okay. Sorry to have woken you up. Do you want some water? Or more broth?”
“No, I’m fine, little pup. I just need more rest.” He patted her arm as she tucked him back in. “I’ll be better tomorrow and you can get back to cooking.”
“I hope you’re right.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.” She turned off the light and left him to sleep.
Back in the living room, she paced the worn carpet as she dialed Jackson. When he didn’t pick up, she left him a message and then sank into the couch. She tried to watch something on TV, but a sense of urgency possessed her. This Axel Sharpe had to be the asshole threatening her and beating up her dad. She wanted to do something. Immediately. But what?
A knock at the door startled her, as if the universe had read her mind and sent out a special delivery. But then she remembered the pizza. With a sigh, she grabbed some money from her wallet and opened the door.
Pete stood there, tall and thin. He’d been delivering the pack’s pizzas for the last several years. “Hi, Miss Halbmond. I’ve got your pizza.”
“Thanks, Pete.” She took the pizza box, her mouth watering at the scent of melted cheese and hot tomato sauce. “What have you been up to?”
He lifted one bony shoulder in an awkward shrug. “I’m graduating high school in June.”
“Congrats.” She smiled at him. “Are you going to college?”
The boy shook his head. “Naw. I don’t want to leave the pack. I’m going to stick with pizza delivery and help my dad out with his construction business.” He looked at her, curiosity gleaming in his eyes. “What about you? Are you home for good now?”
“I don’t know. My dad needs some help. I guess we’ll see.”
“Yeah, I heard what happened. How is he?” Pete’s gaze went to the inside of the house, searching, no doubt, for some sign of her father.
“Recovering, thanks for asking.” She kept her answer simple, knowing anything she said would be repeated at least fifty times. The less she said, the less the gossip would spin out of control. She handed him a twenty. “Here. Keep the change.”
He smiled, tucking the bill into his pocket. “Thanks.”
As he turned to walk away, another car pulled into the drive, headlights flashing in the dusk. The bar of lights on the roof marked it as a police vehicle. Gretchen waited in the doorway as Pete navigated around the cruiser and drove off.
“Chief Mueller,” she greeted as the police chief stepped out of his car.
He tipped his hat. “Gretchen.”
“Any news?” She gripped the pizza box tight, wondering what the chief had come to tell her.
“Yes and no. I also wanted to check on Hank, see how he was doing.” He ambled up to the porch and followed her into the house.
“Dad’s asleep, but I found some information you might be interested in.” She set the pizza on the kitchen counter and pulled down some plates. Without asking, she served the police chief two slices. Wolves didn’t eat in front of other wolves without sharing. That was a good way to start a fight.
Leading him to the dining room, she gestured to a chair. “Have a seat. Did you get anything on the phone number?”
Chief Mueller shook his head. “No. It was a burner.”
She passed out some napkins from the holder on the table. “A what?”
“A single use phone. Prepaid and tied to no name or address.” He took off his hat and set it aside.
“Oh. Well, I have a name, but my dad doesn’t recognize it.” Gretchen retrieved the stack of receipts she’d found earlier and thrust them toward the chief.
He ate his pizza as he looked at everything and gave a low whistle as the money added up. “Damn. Hank’s lost a lot of money to Axel Sharpe.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, but we’ll run his name through our database. If he’s a shifter, we’ll know everything down to his shoe size in about two seconds.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Here, let me text it into the station and have them run the search now.”
“And there’s one more thing,” she said. “This Axel guy called a bit ago and told me to meet him tomorrow at midnight with the money Dad owes him.”
“Where at?”
She gave him the information she had and he put it into his phone. “The map here shows this is down by Hudson.”
“There’s no pack in Hudson, is there?” As far as Gretchen knew, Hudson was too much city for shifters to want to live there. Shifters liked the outdoors, and excepting situations like hers where they wanted to learn a specific skill, they avoided urban areas as a general rule.
He frowned. “No, there’s no pack there. He might just want to do the exchange on neutral ground. Any pack alpha worth his wolf wouldn’t let this kind of deal go down on pack land.” A chirp on his phone indicated an incoming message. The chief rubbed his jaw as he reviewed the information.
“What is it?” Gretchen asked, barely able to keep herself from snatching the phone from him so she could see the message.
“I know why he’s down by Hudson. He’s a stray. That’s probably where he lives.”
Her jaw dropped. Strays were criminals or misfits who’d been banned from their packs. Shifters didn’t have prisons like humans did. Bad behavior resulted in either death or excommunication from the pack, and if you hung out with a stray, you were likely to get pulled into their mess. “What the hell was my dad doing with a stray?”
The chief shrugged and finished the last of his pizza. “I don’t know, but one way to find out is to talk to Sheriff Garde. He oversees the strays in this area. If anyone knows what Axel is up to, he will, and if he doesn’t, you can bet he’ll find out. Garde doesn’t mess around.”
“Oh, well, that’s some good news then,” she said with relief.
“As good as we’ll get tonight,” he said. Then, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, he passed it to Gretchen. “Before I forget, I brought you this.”
She opened the paper and frowned at the ‘Power of Attorney’ written across the top in flowing script. “What’s this?”
“It doesn’t sound like your dad’s all there. If he’s entering into debts he can’t remember, it might be time for you to take over his financial affairs.”
“He’s not losing it,” Gretchen said, her voice sharp. The wolf inside her jumped up, ready to fight and she had to think soothing thoughts at her beast to calm her down.
The chief held up his hands. “Okay, maybe he’s fine, but something you should consider is, if your father’s declared incompetent, Axel won’t have any legal grounds to take his money.”
“I don’t think what’s happening is legal.” She leaned forward, staring at the chief intently. “Do you?”
“Probably not. We won’t know until we talk to Garde.” Chief Mueller stood and put his hat
back on his balding head. “Keep the power of attorney handy. You might change your mind. Thanks for the pizza.”
Gretchen followed him as he made for the door. “When are you going to contact Garde?”
“I’ll put together a report tonight and give it to Cal. Then he’ll get in touch with Garde. That’s the chain-of-command set by the Pack Council for these situations.”
“And then what happens?”
“We arrange a meet down in Hudson. He operates out of a bar called The Crescent.” He stepped out on the porch and started down the steps.
“We don’t have much time, Chief Mueller,” she said. “Axel wants his money tomorrow or else.” All this talk of chain-of-command sounded like it would take a long time to work through, which made her nervous.
“We’ll handle it, Gretchen. Don’t worry. You just focus on taking care of your dad.” He tipped his hat. “G’night.”
“Night, Chief,” she said, deflated. Things were moving too slow, like making caramel on low heat. She always knew when the caramel wasn’t going to turn out and she had that same sinking feeling now. They had their first real lead and the sheriff was going to sleep on it. She retrieved her cell phone and looked at it, debating whether she should make a plea to her alpha to speed things up.
Or…what if she went to see this Sheriff Garde herself? She would be headed to Hudson anyway to buy some new clothes in the morning. Might as well pop in and see if she could push the investigation along despite the chain-of-command thing. If there was one thing Gretchen had learned about life from cooking, it was that one should never leave a pot alone on a hot stove for too long. Volatile things needed attention, whether it was transforming sugar into candy or making sure some stray asshole didn’t beat the snot out of her and her dad.
Chapter Four
~Talon~
Sheriff Talon Garde propped his elbows up on his desk and scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to wipe away the fatigue. His wolf had ditched him for dreamland hours ago, tucking himself into a quiet ball in the recesses of his mind. He’d wanted to be a sheriff since he was a kid, but his home pack didn’t have any openings causing him to venture out and accept his current position. If anyone had warned him how little sleep came with the job and how much coffee he would have to drink to function, he might have reconsidered his career choice.
Across from Talon’s desk sat the latest reason for his lack of sleep. Mitch was a stray and the current pain in the sheriff’s ass. It was three a.m. and nothing had gone right all night.
Mitch slumped in his chair, the expression on his thin face surly and full of contempt. He was a bird shifter, his other half taking the form of a hawk and it showed in his long arms and the angular boniness of his frame. The only thing keeping him contained was the silver chain binding him to the chair. Silver weakened shifters and kept their animals from taking over. It also stung like a hive of pissed off bees, but as Talon had learned from handling it on a frequent basis, it was possible to get used to the pain.
Keira, his deputy, fidgeted and crossed her arms as she leaned her lithe frame against the wall behind Mitch. Her buzz cut highlighted her delicate features and the shadows under her eyes. She looked just as tired as Talon felt. It had been a hell of a week. There’d been too many problems stacking up; all urgent, all requiring attention right now.
There was a human who’d caught someone shifting on video that had to be dealt with—that was half way through being resolved, thank the moon. Then he’d found out some of the strays had decided to start a drug ring.
While shifter metabolism wasn’t as susceptible as humans to drugs, that didn’t mean the entrepreneurial shifter couldn’t make a quick buck. Not to mention even shifters could be addicts, but the highs from human drugs weren’t very good. Some took that as a sign they should try to design their own, something Talon had no doubt the strays involved in this latest ring had on their agenda.
The drug ring had kept Talon and his crew running in all directions for the better part of a week, tracking down exactly which strays were involved and where they were dealing. Talon had almost called in back-up from the other stray territories, but luckily Mitch, the stray masterminding everything, had been stupid enough to stumble into The Crescent, the bar Talon ran and used as his headquarters. Being a sheriff assigned by the Pack Council to oversee strays, meant he lived in the city and outside of pack lands, same as the strays he supervised.
Strays didn’t have packs. Not anymore. Their crimes sentenced them to live their lives alone, loosely supervised by sheriffs like Talon. His job was to make sure they didn’t cause trouble, and, if they did, to stop it by any means necessary. Thankfully, that didn’t mean he ran around executing strays willy-nilly as the human imagination liked to picture in their movies and books. He had a full complement of non-lethal resources and tools to deal with unruly strays.
Mitch was about to experience some of those first hand.
The hawk had already been on Talon’s radar, and the second he started flashing the impressive collection of pills in his pocket at the patrons of The Crescent, they’d taken him into custody. A good thing too, because the pills he had on him were roofies. They didn’t do much to shifters other than make them extra drunk, which meant the intended use was on humans and shifters drugging humans was a big no-no.
Talon pulled out the paperwork and started to fill in all the required information, using Mitch’s driver’s license for details like last name and birthday. The stray had been relieved of his wallet per usual procedure. He hadn’t liked it, but policing shifters like Mitch wasn’t about making them happy. “So, Mitch Collins, this is your third offense since you hit the streets last year. We had shifting in public, which we luckily convinced everyone was a prank. You got drunk and started biting humans.”
“I was just looking for a mate, “ Mitch said, almost whining.
Talon shook his head. “Biting humans is not how that works, champ.” He continued ticking off Mitch’s offenses. “And now you’re dealing, if not also making, drugs.”
“Which you’re stealing from me,” the shifter spit out, his eyes flashing yellow.
Talon sighed. Some of the bullshit strays spewed in an effort to duck any consequences for their behavior used to amaze him when he first started. Now, he just found it annoying and a waste of time. “Your drugs will be disposed of…just like you as a matter of fact. You’re both going somewhere you can’t bother anyone ever again.”
“Not if I get to you first,” Mitch snarled as he strained to break free from the chains.
Keira stepped forward, ready to cuff the man if he got physical. Talon waved her back, trusting the silver chain. No one had broken it yet, not even the four-hundred-pound horse shifter he’d caught trying to knock up the mares on a human horse farm…and the farmer’s daughter at the same time.
“Sorry, you’re not my type, Mitch. I don’t do skanky, regardless of gender.” Talon focused on filling out the form that would get Mitch out of his hair and make the shifter someone else’s problem. He appreciated the Pack Council’s support, but why it had to come with so much damn paperwork, he didn’t understand.
“Shall I make the call?” Keira asked. “That might speed things up.”
“Yeah, sure. Tell them we’ll be there in about an hour.” Which meant it would be past five a.m. before he got any sleep. Talon scrubbed his eyes again. There was nothing for it except to suck it up and make some disgustingly strong coffee.
“Are we tranqing him?”
Talon looked at Mitch who glowered with repressed violence and nodded. “Yeah, why not? Don’t want him to cause any problems for the pilot.”
“What are you going to do to me?” For the first time, fear shone in Mitch’s eyes.
Talon held his pen like a microphone, so tired he was unable to keep himself from getting punchy. “You, sir, are the winner of an all exclusive paid vacation to the middle of nowhere from which you will never return.”
Distress furrowed
the stray’s forehead. “But my ma is ailing. I send her money. Who will take care of her if I can’t?”
“Your pack or clutch or whatever groups of hawks call themselves, I expect.” Talon held up a finger before Mitch could complain about that. While he felt a pang of sympathy for the innocent family members who also paid for the criminal choices of their relatives, he wouldn’t let it sway him. He’d lose his job if he did. Mercy wasn’t for strays as far gone as Mitch, it was for the shifters who showed a glimmer of change that meant maybe someday they could win their way back into their pack. Those were the shifters Talon made exceptions for, not lowlifes like Mitch. “You don’t like that? Well, too bad. You should’ve kept yourself straight. You don’t get a choice anymore.”
“I’ll go get the tranq ready.” Keira headed for the door.
“Tell the rest of the crew to search Mitch’s place and dispose of any drugs they find. Then they can go home and get some shut-eye. And make some coffee, too. Triple strength please,” Talon called after her.
“You won’t be able to sleep,” she called back.
He smiled. A few years older than him, and with two cubs back in her home pack, Keira instinctively mothered him. Sometimes he found it annoying, but more often than not, she was helpful. Too bad she was a stray as well. She only saw her cubs once a month, and given what she’d done, he doubted she would ever earn her way back into her home pack. “Sleep isn’t happening for me tonight,” he said.
“Your loss.”
“Yep. That’s pretty much how it goes.” Her footsteps faded into the bar, now closed, outside his office where he knew she would brew the coffee and retrieve the tranquilizer they kept in the kitchen fridge. He fixed his gaze on Mitch. “How come you assholes never get into trouble at a reasonable hour? Why is it always the middle of the fucking night?”
Mitch opened his mouth to respond but Talon raised a hand to cut him off. “Rhetorical question. If you knew how to do anything at a reasonable hour, you wouldn’t be a stray.”
Keira returned just as Talon finished up his paperwork, a mug of coffee in her hand and a syringe in the other. “We’re all set. The pilot’s ready to go, just waiting on our package here.” She nodded to Mitch as she set the coffee at Talon’s elbow.
