Guard Wolf (Shifter Agents Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  She knocked on the door of Avery's apartment. She had to knock several times—one thing about being a social worker: it had inured her to embarrassment about bothering people—before there was some thumping around from inside, and the lock snicked back. Avery opened the door wearing nothing but jeans.

  "Oh," she said, her carefully rehearsed speech flying straight out of her head. Shifters were generally more relaxed about nudity than most people; she was probably lucky he wasn't completely naked. And that thought did absolutely nothing to help get her mind back on track.

  Avery squinted at her blearily. His dark hair was sleep-tousled, flopping over his forehead. He was trim, with a lean muscular build; it wasn't a gym-rat sort of body, but rather the body of someone who kept fit through physical activity. His jeans rested low on his narrow hips, and she could just glimpse a latticework of scarring above his hipbone, vanishing beneath the waistband. "Dr. Yates," he said at last.

  "Nicole," she corrected him. "Not a doctor, remember? I brought coffee. Black; I wasn't sure how you take it. There are sugars and a cream in my pocket if you'd like them."

  He started to take the cup, and then lashed out with lightning-fast reflexes, catching something on his bare toes, which turned out to be the ginger-colored puppy making a break for the hallway. His face contorted in pain, as he twisted at the hip from his bad leg.

  "Thanks," he said, a little tightly. "C'mon in and shut the door."

  Nicole did as asked. The floor was alive with puppies, awake and toddling about as they explored their new environment with the lively curiosity common to all young mammals. Her quick, automatic safety check found nothing immediately wrong. The remains of a late-night or early-morning puppy feeding were scattered across the countertop: bottles, dish towels, open cans of formula. Other than that, the apartment was clean. Almost too clean, she thought, looking around; it hardly felt lived in. A few magazines scattered on the coffee table, a cup in the sink, a couple of loose items of clothing and a small set of handheld free weights in the corner were the only personal touches she saw. There were no pictures on the blank white walls, no items of furniture that didn't look like they'd either come with the place or had been picked up cheap at IKEA for purely utilitarian purposes.

  "Have a seat," Avery said. "Uh, sorry." He moved his jacket off the couch, hanging it on the back of a chair. "They're not ready to go. I wasn't expecting you so soon."

  "Oh, no, I'm not here to take them! I'm just ..." And then she trailed off, flustered and tongue-tied—which was ridiculous, because she'd done hundreds of home visits, and she'd dealt with everything from threats of violence to literally having to rip children from the arms of their screaming parents. This should have been simple and easy. In and out. Five minutes.

  It would help if he'd put his damn shirt on.

  "Checking up on me?" Avery asked. He leaned his good hip against the counter, taking the weight off the bad leg, and popped the lid off the coffee to add a dose of hazelnut creamer from a bottle in the fridge. Nicole caught herself making a mental note for next time. And why on earth do I need to know how he takes his coffee? This isn't going to become a habit, is it?

  "Yes, I'm checking up on you," she said, opting for honesty over tact. One of the brown puppies came up to sniff her leg, and she picked him up. He seemed to be clean and well fed.

  "Good," Avery said, sounding satisfied. "These kids are lucky to have you looking out for them."

  "Oh. Thanks." The compliment shouldn't have warmed her as much as it did. Well, she thought, people didn't compliment social workers very often. "I'm glad they have you too—I mean, you and your team. They could have fallen into much worse hands."

  This made him scowl, and she regretted it; she'd only been trying to compliment him back. "Yeah," he said. "Like the bastards who put them out in the rain. Speaking of which, I found something last night that you need to know about."

  He scooped up the brown puppy and flipped it over onto its back in the crook of his arm. He was already handling them with a casual ease Nicole wondered if he was aware of. The puppy also didn't seem especially bothered; it kicked a bit and then settled down. Avery lifted one of the fat little legs. "Look at this."

  Nicole looked, and her eyes widened.

  "Looks like it was shaved, doesn't it?" Avery's voice had a raw tinge of anger. When she looked up, his blue-gray eyes glinted like steel.

  "Yes," she said, touching the soft skin where the fur was starting to grow back. "Vets do that when they have to put in an IV. And yes, I know they aren't actually dogs, but that's exactly what it looks like to me."

  "Sons of bitches were experimenting on them."

  "We don't know that for sure," she said. "Still, we need to take them in for a medical checkup immediately. We can also see, at the same time, if it's possible to determine their ages and whether they have birth certificates."

  We? she thought as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

  "Yeah. Of course." Avery smiled faintly. "Can't keep calling them 'it' and 'hey you'."

  "No," she agreed. "It would be simpler if they could tell us themselves, of course."

  The brown puppy yawned, folding back its small ears and displaying a pink mouth with teeth just breaking through the gums. In every way, it seemed like a perfectly normal wolf or dog puppy, with no were to it at all.

  But the subtle instincts she trusted said it was not.

  "Hey, what do you shift into, anyway?" Avery asked. "If you don't mind me asking. I know it might be a rude question, but I just realized I have no idea. All I know is, you're not a wolf."

  "How do you know that?" she asked, curious despite herself. "I can tell when other people are shifters, but nothing beyond that."

  "Werewolves can recognize each other. It's the same thing as being able to tell when other people are shifters, but, uh ... a little different." He looked slightly flustered, embarrassed by his inability to explain. "Sorry about asking. You don't have to answer if it's personal."

  "No, I don't mind at all. I'm a koala."

  "Oh! Really?" His embarrassment turned to interest. "I never met one before. Actually, I never heard of one before."

  Nicole smiled. "That's because the only koala shifters in existence are me and my family. At least, the only ones I've ever heard of. And yes, as an Australian koala shifter, I'm a terrible cliché."

  "Cool." His quick, beautiful smile flashed across his face. "I'm happy to meet you, then. Just don't let the science division get hold of you."

  Nicole laughed. "I've had my fair share of trouble with that, believe me! My sister and brother-in-law are both scientists researching the very question you're thinking of. What makes us what we are? And the answer, at least the short answer, is that no one knows. My brother-in-law Tim thinks—"

  She was saved from launching into a bastardized version of Tim's favorite hobby horse by a knock on the door.

  "Seriously?" Avery said, with a glance at the microwave clock. "When did it turn into Grand Central Station in here?"

  He limped over to open the door. The new arrival was a young woman of Asian ancestry with a light spray of freckles on her nose, tucked into a short fawn-colored trenchcoat and carrying two enormous cardboard coffee cups, venti size at least.

  "Hey, Hollen, I thought we could—" She stopped, seeing Nicole. Then she looked back at Avery, taking in his half-dressed state. Then a puppy bounced off her leg and she looked down at that. "And now I'm confused. Hi, Nicole. I'm Agent Jennifer Cho. I've stopped by your office before on other cases, remember me?"

  "I do," Nicole said, recognizing her belatedly. "Hello."

  "I came over to pick up this underdressed doof and go check out the case of the spontaneously generating puppies, which I was not expecting to spontaneously generate in his apartment. Oh, and I brought coffee." She pushed a steaming cup at Avery.

  "Already got some." Avery raised the cup Nicole had given him. "Shut the door before the puppies get out, please."

  "Oh,
fine, then. More for me." She kicked the door shut. "Your apartment is full of puppies, Avery. This poses an issue."

  "What issue?" Avery said.

  "The fact that you have to work?"

  "Ah," Avery said. From the look of his face, this had not occurred to him.

  "The problem is with me," Nicole said quickly. "All our hot line placements are full, so Avery kindly took the children last night. Before you ask, Avery, I'm still working on getting them into a foster situation."

  "They need to be taken for a checkup too," Avery put in.

  "By you?" Cho asked Nicole.

  "Not if I can help it," Nicole admitted. "I have a busy morning ahead of me." Actually, she should be gone already. This visit wasn't supposed to turn into a half hour, and she still had to drive to the office in rush-hour traffic.

  "Great! Sounds like a perfect job for an intern. They'll love it." Cho stacked the coffee cups to free up a hand and, as they teetered precariously, whipped out her phone.

  "Not Mayhew," Avery said quickly.

  "Of course not Mayhew, what do I look like? I'll send Veliz. She hates getting stuck on paperwork duty and she's good with puppies."

  "They're kids," Avery said, his jaw tightening.

  "I know that, Avery, but at the moment they are puppies, so stop arguing. Nia! Hi! It's Cho. Do I ever have a job that's right up your alley."

  Nicole took advantage of the opportunity to stand and retrieve her coffee cup. "I have to go. I have appointments this morning."

  "Wait!" Avery made a sort of lunge in her direction, pulling himself up short. "Is that all? Don't you have to—Is there paperwork? Or anything? For the SCB, there's always paperwork."

  "Oh, trust me, if you were going to be an official foster home for these kids, there would be so much paperwork you'd be in danger of getting paper cuts on your eyeballs. There's an approval process, a mandatory training course, and so forth. But this isn't official. I cannot place these children in a human foster home, for obvious reasons, and I cannot send them to an animal rescue, for moral reasons. Even if they have birth certificates, no judge in the world would recognize them as the children on the certificates."

  "And so their fate is dependent upon the kindness of strangers," Avery said, his voice grim.

  "Good thing they fell into the hands of kind strangers, then, isn't it? Avery, I'm about to pour a lot of trust on you, the kind of trust that could cost me my job if it's misplaced. I need you to see that they receive a medical assessment and any care they need, and that they are supervised and cared for and otherwise treated as the young children that they are. Can I trust you for that?"

  "Yes," Avery said quietly. He looked directly at her, his eyes a piercing blue-gray: unassuming like the rest of him, but arresting when the full force of them was turned on her.

  So much so that she had to break eye contact, weak-kneed. She retreated behind a barricade of professionalism. "I'll check back with you this evening and let you know if I've found a placement, all right?"

  "Okay," Avery said, and a smile flickered briefly. "That'll be nice. Thank you."

  "No, Avery. Thank you."

  And on that, Nicole marched herself out of his apartment before they managed to end up trapped in an endless loop of thank-yous. Behind her, she heard Cho say, "Okay, Nia Veliz is on her way—" and then the door shut it off.

  All right. Morning mission accomplished. She ran her hand over her face and tried to clear her head of Avery, his eyes, and his smile, in order to focus on the rest of her day.

  But the idea that she'd get to see him again this evening lightened her step, and she practically ran down the stairs to her car.

  Chapter Five

  Yesenia Veliz had, as Cho predicted, reacted with delight to the idea of spending her morning as a surrogate puppy-mom. They waited until she arrived, did the hand-off, and then Cho drove herself and Avery to Pike Place Market.

  The Market itself was still closed when they got there, but bakeries in the adjoining streets were open for the early crowd, and warm baking smells curled out into the damp, cold air. The slanting, cobbled sidewalk glistened from last night's rain. This early on a weekday morning, there was almost no one around, just a handful of locals seeking breakfast or coffee, and an occasional intrepid tourist looking lost as they wandered past rows of dark shop fronts.

  Yesterday afternoon it would have been bustling, even in the bad weather. Avery had wondered how it was possible for a person with a large box of puppies to walk around unnoticed, but now he thought about the chaos of the crowded marketplace, especially on a dreary, drizzling day with everyone outside the covered section of the Market huddled under umbrellas. Who looked at the people around them in a crowd?

  Cho escorted him to a lamppost with an attached trash receptacle, a short walk from the official entrance to the covered Market. "The box was here."

  "Did you ask around?"

  "Of course I did." She rocked back on her heels to drain the second of the two coffee cups—she'd polished off the first one in the car—and then used the trash container for its intended purpose. "Maybe if I'd been able to do it when I first arrived on the scene, it would've made some difference, but what was I going to do, lock a bunch of wet, hungry kids in my car while I interviewed baristas? It was the end of the day by the time I got back down here. People were busy and tired. Nobody remembered seeing anything."

  Avery looked down at the sidewalk and nudged the base of the lamppost with his cane. "It's close to the street. All they had to do was walk in and drop it off. Was it in front? Behind?"

  "No clue. I didn't see. One of the local merchants was the one who called it in."

  "As lost puppies?"

  "No," Cho said. "She's one of us. Over here."

  She took him into one of the open businesses, a bakery selling Mediterranean desserts, and waved until she caught the eye of a tall North African woman in a bright headscarf who was picking out pieces of baklava and date cake from the brightly lit glass cases. The woman flashed Cho a beaming smile. Cho stepped to the side, out of the way of the line of customers, and she and Avery waited a few minutes until the woman finished waiting on her current batch of customers. Then she said something to a young man who looked like a relative, and then came around from behind the counter, peeling off plastic gloves.

  She had such a quiet voice Avery had to lean forward to hear her. "How are the children?"

  "The children are safe now," Cho said. "Joy, this is Avery. He's the same kind of police as me. He's helping me find out who put the children out in the rain."

  "You're the one who found them?" Avery asked her.

  No, Joy explained; some teenagers had been walking around with the box of puppies, trying to give them away. "Then I saw them. I knew right away they are wolf children. I called the police lady to come and get them."

  Avery was impressed. Apparently Cho had been doing a lot more than just looking out for shoplifters at the Market. She'd also been networking with the local shifters.

  "Did you talk to the kids that found the box?" he asked Cho.

  "I did. They're just regular kids." Human, she meant; although the customers seemed to be paying no attention, this place was far too public to speak openly. "The kids found it where I showed you, and they don't know who left it there."

  A horrible thought occurred to him. "Joy, do you know if they did manage to give away any of them?"

  "I think they don't have time," Joy said. "My shop was third, maybe fourth they came into."

  Which wasn't quite the same as a no. Avery exchanged a worried glance with Cho. They were going to have to check.

  "I wanted to help more," Joy added in her whisper of a voice.

  "No, no, you did wonderfully." Cho squeezed her hand. "Call me if you hear anything else, okay? Or if you have any problems. Problems of the sort that my kind of police—our kind of police—can help with."

  "Here, my number too." Avery wrote his cell on the back of one of the bakery's business
cards, and took another for himself. "And some of those?" He pointed to the sugar-dusted cookies and squares of basbousa in the display case, and reached for his wallet.

  They left with a paper bag of treats, and ate date-filled cookies with sugary fingers as they wandered the nearly empty Market, now beginning to wake up. Salmon, halibut, and cod were laid out on their beds of ice at the stalls of fish vendors; produce waited for customers in baskets in front of farmer's stands. The morning's sharp chill was starting to freshen into warmth.

  "Notice I haven't asked you why I found Nicole Yates in your apartment at eight in the morning." Cho waggled her brows at him.

  "If this is you not asking, then please don't ask a little harder," Avery said dryly. "It was a professional visit. She stopped by to check on the kids."

  "Bringing coffee. Very professional."

  "Very," Avery said. "She is a very professional woman."

  "Also kind of a fox, but I probably don't have to tell you that."

  "Oh my God," Avery appealed to no one in particular. "This is my karmic payback for trying to play matchmaker with Jack and Casey, isn't it?"

  "Hey, I'm not matchmaking. I'm just observating."

  "Is that a word?"

  "It is now." She smiled and nodded to a fish merchant opening his booth, who nodded back at her.

  "Shifter?" Avery asked quietly.

  "Mmm-hmm. Orca. Part of Eva Kemp's pod."

  Avery smiled to himself. "I'm glad you're doing this."

  "Doing what? My job? Gee, thanks, Hollen."

  "Community outreach. We really should do more of it, but it's so easy to get caught up in our caseload and forget the small stuff. And it's the small stuff that matters."

  "Also the large stuff," Cho pointed out. "I know, though. The shifter community is close-knit here, just like anywhere, and most of us at the SCB are transplants from elsewhere. We know them professionally, but not personally."

  "I wonder if some kind of organized outreach is possible," Avery mused. "Frankly I'd love to see Noah's department repurposed to doing something like that than running cover-up." Noah Easton was their PR director, which in practice meant finding ways to explain away public shifter sightings or instances in which they'd been caught on camera. "Don't you think it's ridiculous to have an entire department dedicated to keeping our existence under wraps?"