by Tegan Maher
"We ran into you here later, or at least Roy did. Somebody broke into our barn three times and killed some of our chickens. Et 'em. He reckoned it was a fox."
Ah. That rang a bell. "It was a fox. A shifter."
She shot an accusing glance at me. "You didn't do nothin' about it. We had to buy more chickens."
I furrowed my brow. "I did do somethin' about it. I worked with the local fox den and found out it was a couple kids. They were supposed to make restitution. Promised they did. Said they fixed up your barn and made your coop more secure."
She drew in a deep breath and let it out again. "They never said that's what they was doin. They brought peach and blackberry pies their mama made, and helped fix some stuff up around the house when they saw what condition it was in, too. Wouldn't take no money for it. We just thought they was bein' neighborly."
That was my fault. I'd followed up with the kids, but had forgotten to check in with the Jameses.
"They mostly were," I told her. "All they were ordered to do was fix the barn. I know the family, and they're good kids for the most part. They were just bein' stupid that night."
"Well Roy thought you blew us off cause we ain't from here and ain't got no money or pull. Or maybe you just didn't have as much control over the region as you claimed to. It stuck in his craw, and to be fair, mine too," she said.
I sighed—proof that a simple misstep could cause hard feelings when you were in a position of power. I'd dropped the ball, but not in the way she thought. I just hadn't followed up.
"I'm sorry. I shoulda made more of an effort to communicate with you," I said. I took the kids at their word, and assumed they'd confessed what they did."
She waved it off. "Makes no nevermind now. What matters is what's in that bag, and who's in your morgue. I reckon I know the answer to the first. Now what about the second?"
All I had were the pictures I'd taken at the scene. Far as I knew, Colleen hadn't processed the body yet, so the pictures may be the least traumatizing. I pulled them up on my phone and handed them to her.
She didn't take the phone. Just glanced at them and nodded, then put her hands over her face and started sobbing.
We gave her a couple of minutes, and when her sobs turned to hiccups, Alex put his hand on her shoulder again. "This is important, Maryellen. What color wolf was your husband?"
She looked at him, confused. "Red," she said. "Why?"
Alex glanced at me; he was giving me the option of going into detail, or not.
"I'll get to that in just a minute," I said. "You mentioned he's been agitated lately. Any clue why?"
"None," she said, shaking her head. "Now what does it matter what color Roy was?"
"Because," I said, weary. "We don't know for a fact whether he was the murderer or not. There was proof of a fight. With a black wolf. We'd assumed your husband was a victim, but ..." I glanced at the bag she'd brought.
"But Roy had possessions from the victims." She dropped her head into her hands.
"Yeah," Alex said. "But first we need to figure out who the other wolf is."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AS SOON AS SHE LEFT, Alex picked up the bag and pulled the necklace out. Closing his fist around it, he shut his eyes, and concentrated. He flinched a few times, then opened his eyes.
"Anything useful?" I asked.
"Maybe." He paused, then picked up Victoria's phone and did the same thing.
He furrowed his brow. "That's odd. From the necklace, all I got was fear, pain, thoughts of a cat, weirdly enough."
"What about the phone?"
"I didn't get much of anything off of it. Exhilaration, I assume from the run, then a brief flash of fear. My guess is she dropped it at that point, or it fell off her body. If it wasn't in contact with her, it likely didn't absorb any of her energy after that."
I leaned back in my chair, then leaned forward again when pain shot through my butt cheek. So we have nothing."
"Not really. I don't know what to make of it. Do you have anything else of Tabbie's?"
"Yup. Down in lockup."
We were almost to the evidence room when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number.
"Sheriff Sloane."
"Sheriff? This is Alice Ketterling. I told you I'd call if Billy came back. Well, he's back."
As usual, Alex heard, and followed when I pivoted on my heel and headed for a side door a few feet to our right that led to the lot. It was an emergency door, but I waved my hand over it to silence the alarm before we got to it, then reset it when we were outside.
"Mrs. Ketterling. About ... what you know about him."
"What about it?" she said, a little suspicious.
Alex hit the key fob and unlocked the doors, and I jumped in, despite the pain.
"What color is he?"
She paused for a few seconds. "Black. Why?"
"Because I have reason to believe the murderer is a black wolf."
"Oh. In that case then, gotta go," she said, and the line went dead.
I held my phone away from my face and looked at it; she'd hung up.
Alex hit the gas and we made it to the trailer in six minutes rather than the ten it would have usually taken.
Deciding it wouldn't make any difference whether he saw us coming or not, we pulled up in front of the trailer and bolted toward the front door.
A voice stopped us in our tracks. "Over here, sheriff!"
I turned, and Mrs. Ketterling was sitting in her chair on the porch, her bright pink curlers matching her pink, flowered sundress. However, both were in stark contrast to the blued steel of the shotgun she had leveled at Billy Braxton.
"Holy shit," Alex said under his breath as we loped across the lawn. Well, he loped, I kind of trotted like a horse with one leg shorter than the other. "Even the little old ladies around here pack."
I smiled as we reached the porch. "Not all of 'em, but the ones who do are harmless as long as you don't cross them."
Billy was sitting on the edge of the porch, his hands behind his head.
"Understand, son, it ain't personal. I think you're a good kid, but so was Tabbie," she said to him.
For his part, I expected hostility, but was surprised when a tear trickled down his cheek.
Glancing toward Alice, I said, "Thank you, Mrs. Ketterling. We've got it from here."
"I think I'll keep him pinned 'til you get the cuffs on him," she said. "Just in case."
"How 'bout we talk to him first," Alex said. "Billy. Care to explain what's going on?"
"Yeah," he said. "I do." He peeked over his shoulder at the shotgun still pointed in his direction. "But I'd feel a whole lot better about it if I wasn't worried about her accidentally shootin' me."
Alice scowled. "Don't you worry none about that," she said. "I don't accidentally shoot anything."
"Said the last person who accidentally shot somebody," Billy grumbled.
"We got him," I told her. "I promise."
She narrowed her eyes and looked between me and Alex. He gave her that thousand-watt smile and she hmphed. "Ain't no need to turn on the charm with me, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome. I been around long enough I'm immune." She lowered the shotgun. "I caught him for ya, against my better judgment, I might add. If you let him loose before you get your answers, it's on you."
He nodded, moving his gaze back to Billy. "Understood. And thank you."
I hadn't taken my eyes off Billy, but he didn't show any signs of going anywhere. He just sat, shoulders slumped and swinging his feet, looking miserable.
"So, Mr. Braxton," I said. "Or at least we'll call you that for now, but you're going to tell me your real name before we're done talking. We had a date at my office a few days ago. Mind tellin' me why you didn't show up?"
"My dad's sick," he said. "I had to go home."
"And where might home be?" Alex asked.
He took a big breath through his nose and puffed it out through his cheeks. "Just outside of Savannah."
"That'
s outside of our territory," I said.
Mrs. Ketterling cut in. "Which, unless I miss my guess, is why he moved here, and why he didn't come clean with his name," she said.
I'd forgotten she was sitting there, and panic flushed through me.
She rolled her fingers, telling us to get on with it. "My best friend, way back when, was a wolf," she said. "You're not talking about anything I don't already know."
Alex stared at her for a long moment, then at me. I made the call.
"Go on, Billy."
"She's right," he said. "It's why I moved here. I'm tired of all the fighting, and I met Tabbie at the diner when I was passing through." He looked me in the eye. "It's time I introduced myself. My name really is Billy. Well, William. But my last name is Arrington."
Alex sucked in a breath, and I let my head fall back on my shoulders when he said the name. The Arringtons were the isolationist pack leaders of a sliver of territory that ran up the coast of Georgia. They were hold-outs to uniting the region, refusing to even negotiate even though being part of the regional pack would offer many more protections and opportunities than staying apart would.
"Yeah," Billy said, huffing a self-deprecating laugh out his nose. "Now you understand why I wouldn't tell you who I was."
I glanced at Alex, confused. He just raised his brows in a don't ask me expression and shrugged.
"No," I said. "I really don't."
He scowled at me. "Don't tell me you wouldn't have ripped me to shreds the first chance you got. I'm the heir to the alpha."
"I don't know what you've been told, but we don't go around ripping people to shreds, though we're concerned that you do," Alex said.
"Me?" he said, his voice higher than usual. "I tried to warn you, but you tried to kill me. Then I saved your ass when that Tracker almost had you."
"Wait. What?" I frowned, trying to figure out what he was talking about.
"I came to see you the other night, to tell you what was going on. I'd just came back from the coast, in wolf form. I kept to the woods so I came through the back way, planning to shift back and come talk to you."
"It was the middle of the night," I said.
He lifted a shoulder. "It's when I got back, and I wanted to clear the air right off the bat. I didn't want to wait until morning."
"Okay," I said, "then why didn't you?"
"Because you came out the back gate before I got there. Then when I tried to turn around and shift, you started chasing me, and all I could think was that you were going to kill me, like my parents said you would."
I heaved a big sigh. In retrospect, considering my behavior and the misinformation his parents were apparently spreading, I understood why he ran.
"But then I circled back around. I figured you were looking for whoever killed Tabbie, and if you found him, I wanted to make sure you had backup." His cheeks turned red and anger lit his eyes. "And get a piece of him, myself, if I could. Then I saw the Tracker, and before I could warn you, he shot at you."
Glancing toward my leg, he said, "I assume he got you, based on the way you're favoring that hip."
I dipped my head. "He did."
"Why didn't you help her?" Alex demanded.
Mrs. Ketterling spoke up. "What? And get himself killed in the process?"
Alex scowled at her.
"She's right," Billy said. "I didn't wanna die, but I did run down a mile and howl, to draw him away from her."
Everything clicked into place in my mind, except for one thing.
"Okay, then. Why didn't you come this morning?"
"I did, but the Tracker's car was there. I recognized it from the parking lot in the park last night. It was the only vehicle there. So I came here instead, to try to figure out what to do."
"Okay, so you're the black wolf, and we have another wolf, a red one, dead. If you didn't kill anybody"—I studied his face—"you didn't kill him, right? There were signs of a fight in the woods, and we found patches of both black and red fur. And I was attacked the other night in the woods by a black wolf."
He shook his head. "It wasn't me, either time."
"Okay then," Alex said, "If you didn't kill him, then we have another wolf on the loose. We're no closer than we were."
I let everything roll around in my head for a minute.
"We still have the clothes," I said. "You didn't get anything off her phone, but you didn't get a chance to check her clothes. There's still a chance, there."
"What phone?" Billy asked. "Tabbie wasn't carrying her phone when she was killed. Her phone's at the house." He motioned to the trailer.
Alex and I glanced at each other. The phone. There was a chance it belonged to Victoria, but if not ... we rushed back toward his car.
"Hey! What about me?" Billy called, and I paused.
"Come on," I yelled over my shoulder. I didn't trust him to run off half-cocked and do something stupid to prove himself, or to avenge Tabbie. He beat me to the car and was in the backseat before as I slid as quickly as my injuries would allow into the passenger side, and we were off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MY PHONE RANG ON THE way there, and Dani's number popped up on the screen.
"Hey, Dani. Shoot. You're on speaker." It's not like everybody in the car didn't have super hearing anyway.
"Probably not the best choice of words," she said, "but okay. Aaron Shephard checks out. He's been a Tracker for the last twenty-three years, and his daddy was one before him. He only partnered up with Zach a year or so ago, though. Both parents are dead. No siblings."
"Wait, twenty years? The guy we met this morning is, at most, in his mid-thirties. How old was he when he started?"
Maybe they started training young. I heard the clacking of keys.
"Says here he became a full-fledged member when he was twenty," she said. "Lemme send you a pic."
My phone blipped, notifying me of an incoming image, and when I pulled it up, a bearded man with a stern expression popped up. And it was definitely not the Shep we'd met that morning.
"Yeah," I said into the phone. "That's definitely not the same guy. We'll get back to you."
"Wait," she said, "Before you hang up. I decided to run a first-name search on all the wolves in the state who would be in the age range of your Billy Braxton. The only one who matched the search probably isn't your kid. He's one of the Arringtons. The heir to be exact."
"Then I'm gonna surprise you," I said. "He's exactly our kid. He's with me now, and it's a long story, but I'd appreciate it if you kept it to yourself for now."
"Of course," she said. "Lips are sealed. But Cori?"
"Yeah?"
"Be careful. The last thing we need is a pack war, and they've been threatening a revolution over the past few months. The only thing that's stopped them is the old man's not doin' too well."
I glanced over my shoulder to Billy in the backseat. He was studying his hands, which were folded in his lap.
"Somehow I get the feeling the picture my family's painted of your pack isn't exactly dead-on," he said.
"Yeah," Alex said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. I get the feeling you're right."
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"SO," I SAID, "IF ZACH's partner isn't Shep, then who is he?"
"You're the cops, plus you're connected to one of the biggest packs in the country. Don't y'all have some sort of facial recognition software or somethin'?" Billy asked.
I thought about that for a second. It seemed only logical that we would, but I know I didn't have access to it as sheriff. "We're small-town. I don't have that kind of equipment."
"What about Dani, though?" Alex asked.
Shrugging, I replied, "I guess she probably does. I mean, if she has pictures to match with names, then knowing her, she has some kind of reverse program to match names with faces."
"Yeah, Alex said, "but we don't have a picture, and it's not like we're going to be able to just go up to your admirer and ask for a photo op."
"True."
I pinched my lips together. "The best bet we have is that phone. If Roy wasn't the killer, he was hanging onto it for some reason."
My phone rang, and I picked it up from my lap. It was the number Zach had given me, or at least I thought it was. I'd only glanced at it.
"Sheriff Sloane."
"I just got notification from my boss that my permits have been pulled and this entire area has been declared state land, in your control. Care to explain?" He was not a happy camper.
"Sounds pretty self-explanatory to me," I said, wondering if Sean had known they were Trackers when he pulled the strings. Likely not—Trackers were a vampire thing, and I'd just mentioned that I needed him out of my hair.
"Sounds fishy to me," he said. "I tried to work with you Cori, but all bets are off."
"Yeah," I said. "You did, but you weren't exactly straight up with me, were you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said, though his tone was wary.
Now he was just pissing me off. "You think because we're a podunk little town that I don't have resources, but I do. You're not some wildlife specialist. You're a member of some crack-pot vigilante group out hunting fairytale creatures. I hardly call that competent behavior, and I won't have somebody who believes that people turn into wolves wandering around my jurisdiction shooting at things."
He was silent, for a minute, then the line went dead.
"Well," I said. "That could have gone better."
Billy smothered a laugh. "Yeah, but you sure sounded convincing. And it was a much better excuse for pulling his permits than saying you didn't want him killing you or other fairytale creatures in your jurisdiction. I mean, you gotta protect the unicorn population."
I rolled my eyes, but when he put it like that, the nugget of guilt I'd felt at calling Zach a crackpot melted away. We may not have any unicorns, but it would have been my job to protect them if we did. And I'd do whatever was necessary to make it happen.
WE DECIDED TO SKIP the whole psychic thing with Tabbie's clothes until we got a look at the cell phone. As soon as we made it back to my office, I pulled it out of the drawer and plugged it in. Luckily, my charger fit it. Within just a few seconds, I had it on and running, and I opened the photo gallery, mentally crossing my fingers that we'd find something.
