Red Sole Clues

by Liliana Hart

  Before he could turn around to check on her, slow clapping sounded from the hallway. Jack looked over to see a tall, muscular man dressed in jeans and a black shirt leaning against the wall.

  “Congratulations, my friend. You scared the cubs,” the man said, sarcasm dripping from his words. “Do you do children’s parties, too, cat?”

  “You should house train your cubs, Mr. Vargas,” Vanessa snapped, walking up to stand next to Jack. “We’re here at your official headquarters to talk to you, and your wolves launched an unprovoked attack on my friend. You’ll be lucky if we don’t press charges.”

  Jack glanced at her in surprise, as much for the “press charges” thing as for the “my friend” part.

  Vargas’s eyes lit up, changing from brown to gold, and he prowled forward toward Vanessa. “Ah. Miss Clark. How pleasant to see you again.”

  “I can’t say the same,” she said. “I suggest you apologize to Mr. Shepherd.”

  Vargas raised an eyebrow when he heard Jack’s name. “Shepherd? I should have known. I don’t think I’ve heard of another tiger shifter in the United States.”

  Jack decided to pretend he didn’t hear Vanessa’s gasp. Not many people would be calm when they found out that they’d been alone in a truck with a man who turned into a quarter-ton killing machine. He probably should have mentioned it.

  “No apologies necessary. Kids need to learn a lesson now and then,” Jack said pleasantly. “I was the same.”

  “I wonder who was big enough to teach you a lesson,” Vargas said, grinning, and Jack decided he liked the man.

  “My uncle,” Jack admitted. “And he was only a human.”

  The wolf alpha laughed. “Must have been one tough S.O.B.”

  “Really? Your wolves attacked Jack, and now there’s male bonding going on?” Vanessa scowled at both of them. “Look, I don’t care what you two talk about on your own time, but I need to ask you about my father right now, Alec.”

  Vargas instantly dropped the jesting and led them back to his office, which was a fairly large room, but neat and uncluttered. The only thing on the walls was a very good painting of Bear Lake at sunrise. He gestured to the chairs placed around a small table, and took the one next to Vanessa.

  “How can I help you?” The wolf’s gaze fastened on her with the fierce intensity of a man for whom nothing else in the world was important, and Jack wondered if she knew she’d caught the attention of an unmated alpha wolf.

  No mated alpha would look at a woman like that.

  Vanessa didn’t seem aware of the alpha’s interest, though, or more likely she was too worried about her father to care. She laid out the facts of his disappearance, and Jack filled in any details he thought she missed. When she was done, she stared into Vargas’s eyes, which was pretty damn impressive, since most humans had a hard time meeting an alpha’s gaze.

  “Do you know anything about this?”

  Vargas’s face hardened. “Are you asking me if I harmed your father?”

  “I guess I am, Alec,” she said evenly, although her lips trembled a little.

  “I certainly did not. In fact, we paid your father a premium price for the missing livestock, and I gave him my word that it wouldn’t happen again. We have no fight between our families, beautiful one.”

  That got her attention, and Jack could see that she was just now realizing that Vargas was interested in her, but that she didn’t have time to deal with it. The woman’s face was so expressive he could only hope for her sake that she never played poker.

  The wolf stood and crossed to his desk, sorted through some files, and then brought a sheet of paper back with him to the table and handed it to Vanessa.

  “This is the email Ray sent me last night, confirming that he’d received my check and graciously accepting my apology. You’ll see that everything is amicable between us.”

  She scanned it and nodded. “I see. He probably would have mentioned it to me this morning, but we were talking about Christmas and didn’t talk business, for a change.”

  “We’ll find him,” Jack said, but again, he had nothing to back that up. Their one lead had just fizzled. The email could have been a fake, but Jack doubted it. The wolf didn’t smell like he was lying, and Vargas couldn’t have been more obvious about his interest in Vanessa.

  “Exactly why are you involved in this matter, Shepherd?” Vargas said, doing a great human impression of a wolf flattening his ears and baring his teeth.

  “Jack was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all,” Vanessa said. “Thanks for your time, Alec. I’m sorry, but I had to ask. I need to get back to town and…and…I don’t know. Wait. Call hospitals.”

  “What about the rogue wolves that Sheriff McConnell mentioned?” Jack asked Vargas. “Do you know anything about them?”

  The alpha nodded. “I know the location of every wolf who’s not affiliated with my pack when they’re on Bear Lake pack land. I think now is a good time to go and make my presence known,” he said with silky menace.

  “Want company?” Jack stood up. “I could use a run.”

  Vargas smiled. “I’ve never run with a jungle animal. Might be fun. Give me ten minutes?”

  He showed them back to the lobby, which was now empty of adolescent wolves with something to prove, and excused himself to make a few quick calls. Jack pulled the truck keys out of his pocket.

  “Are you okay to drive back to town? The snow seems to have let up, so the roads should be fine,” he said.

  Vanessa nodded, clearly distracted and in a hurry to get moving. “Yeah. I’m good. I’ve got snow tires. I want to get back into town and talk to Maya. The missing ten grand might have more to do with this than some random wolf scent. Maybe she heard something or saw something.”

  “Money is a powerful motive, and ten thousand dollars is quite a lot for most people,” Jack said.

  “I’m fully aware of that, Mr. Shepherd,” she said coldly. “I didn’t grow up sitting on a golden pillow while the butler brought me chocolates. I’ve been working on the ranch since I was old enough to walk.”

  It took a few seconds for what she said to register in Jack’s brain, because Vanessa was living proof of that old “she’s beautiful when she’s angry” saying. The flush in her cheeks, the fire in her eyes—Jack was suddenly entertaining thoughts of sticking around and giving Alec Vargas a little competition.

  Bad idea, Jack. Bad, bad idea.

  He held up a hand. “Time out. I didn’t say or think any of that about you. Just that following this money trail might be the way to find your dad. You go talk to the elf, and I’ll go for a run with the wolf.”

  Vanessa blinked, and then she started to smile. “The elf and the wolf. That’s maybe the strangest thing anybody has ever said to me.”

  Jack grinned at her. “You think that was strange? Watch this.”

  And he took a deep breath and melted into the shift. Seconds later, he was standing in front of her in all five hundred pounds of his black, orange, and white-striped glory.

  “Wolves and tigers and elves, oh my,” she said, and then she burst into tears.

  Chapter Six

  Vargas watched Vanessa drive out of the parking lot before he spoke. “You’re lucky I don’t think you’re the reason she was crying, tiger.”

  Jack yawned and nonchalantly examined one dinner-plate-sized paw, being sure to extend his claws.

  The wolf laughed. “Yeah, I get it. You’re the big bad kitty. Well, this should be an interesting run. Try not to frighten the elk.”

  Vargas stripped down and entered the shift. It took him longer than it had Jack, but he was faster than most wolves Jack had known, even faster than most of the alphas.

  Vargas was a big wolf. Taller, broader, and heavier than a natural wolf, the alpha was easily close to two hundred pounds as a wolf, which was probably what he weighed in human form. His coat was beautiful in rippled dark shades of gray, with black tipped ears and tail.

  Jack loo
ked down at the wolf, pointedly, being more than twice Vargas’s size, but the recognition of smugness probably crossed species, because the wolf bared his teeth and faked a snap at Jack’s face before he took off running down the hill. Jack rolled his head and then stretched his body for a long, luxurious moment—it had been a long week on the bike, with no time to run—and then he leapt down the hill and followed the wolf.

  After they left pack HQ, they kept to paths and areas that were virtually empty of humans, and when they did see someone, Jack faded back into the trees to avoid detection. It would make a tourist’s day to see one of the mysterious gray wolves roaming free—at least at a safe distance.

  It would give a tourist nightmares to see a Bengal tiger.

  The run wasn’t entirely free of encounters, though. After turning a blind corner on a wooded path, Jack managed to startle the hell out of a bull moose. He bounded past it in a series of giant leaps and sailed right over Vargas’s head, landing next to a copse of Rocky Mountain maple trees. The wolf snarled at him, but then tilted his head toward the other side of the trees. Jack could hear it now, though; he didn’t need to smell it. He shifted back to human shape and slipped silently through the trees until he could see, while staying hidden from the group below.

  The rogue wolves had set up an almost-certainly illegal campsite in the clearing at the bottom of the hill, next to a small stream. There were six of them, unless there were more in the three ratty-looking mud-brown tents, and they were already drunk.

  Vargas, human and dressed, quietly moved up next to him and stared down at the group. “These, I have not had the pleasure of meeting yet.”

  Jack nodded, but then realized something was odd, and he looked back at Vargas, who was now wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, in spite of the cold. “How did you do that? Do you have clothes all over the forest?”

  Vargas grinned. “No. I can pull clothes into the shift. I just don’t know how to dematerialize them yet, so I have to undress or I get tangled in my pants. These clothes are easy to shred in the throes of the shift.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Wolves. TMI, man. Okay, so you don’t know any of these rogues? Aren’t unaffiliated wolves supposed to check in when they’re in your territory?”

  “Yes. They are. These have not. Why don’t we go have a little chat with them about it?”

  “And about Mr. Clark,” Jack added grimly. “What a great idea.”

  The rogues were drunk enough that Jack and Vargas made it to within thirty feet of their camp before being spotted. One of the men reached for the hunting knife at his belt, but another one elbowed Knife Boy in the gut, hard.

  The one who did the elbowing ambled over to Jack and Vargas, pasting a wildly insincere grin on his face that didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were cold black holes that hadn’t smiled in forever, Jack was guessing.

  “Howdy, howdy. What’s shaking, gents? I’m afraid we don’t have dinner going yet, but we can offer you a beer.” The man jerked his head at one of his buddies, who rushed to open a cooler.

  Jack folded his arms over his chest and said nothing, since this wasn’t his show. He figured even wolves this stupid would realize that Vargas was an alpha, and a powerful one, in about five seconds. Vargas said nothing, but stared at each of them in turn.

  Five, four, three, two—

  “We’re sorry, man, uh, sir,” the guy who’d gotten the beers babbled. “We didn’t realize you were an alpha, um, the alpha. I shoulda gotten you the good beers.”

  Jack had to clench his jaw shut to keep from laughing at the idiot.

  Vargas shot the babbler a single look that reduced him to speechlessness, and then he focused on the apparent leader who’d welcomed them. “You are aware of the pack law that requires you to check in with the alpha when you enter a pack-owned territory?”

  The babbler cringed. “Frank, I told you we should have checked in, I told you—”

  “Shut up, you moron,” Frank snapped.

  Jack glanced between the two and caught the family resemblance. Brothers. Or cousins, at least. The other four didn’t look anything like Frank and the moron, but they were doing a pretty good job of forming a loose half-circle behind Jack and Vargas.

  But none of them smelled like the wolf he’d scented at the town hall, or like fresh blood, either. It didn’t conclusively rule them out for the attack on Vanessa’s dad, but it didn’t help the odds that they were involved, either.

  Jack couldn’t hear anybody else in the clearing, but he went ahead and asked the question anyway. “Are there more of you in the tents?”

  “Who’s asking?” Frank said belligerently.

  “You’re stupider than you look, evidently,” Vargas said in a pleasant tone of voice. “You insult me on my territory by not checking in with me, and then you are rude to my friend.”

  Jack gave the rogues his best impassive face instead of rolling his eyes at all this friendship talk. All he’d wanted was a second breakfast. Instead, he’d gotten involved in an abduction and gained himself two shiny new friends that he’d never wanted.

  To hell with diners. He was going to eat at Wendy’s from now on. Nobody ever got caught up in a Santa shooting at Wendy’s, and they had good fries.

  The moron started whining, but Frank gave them an unpleasant smile and two middle fingers.

  Jack couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. “So, this is what? Wolf Junior High?”

  Thanks to tiger hearing, he knew that more company was bearing down on the party before the newcomers attacked. “Vargas. These idiots have got a couple of friends who are already in wolf form, and they’re closing on us, fast.”

  “The odds are unfair,” Vargas said calmly.

  Frank sneered. “Too bad for you we don’t give a shit about fairness.”

  Vargas laughed and then whirled around and slashed one hand—now shifted into a paw with deadly sharp claws—across the throat of the wolf flying at him. The wolf was dead on the ground almost before Jack had the chance to club the skull of the other one.

  Almost before, but not quite.

  “I’m pretty sure he meant that the odds are unfair to you, asshole,” Jack told Frank. “You’re in trouble now.”

  Seconds later, Jack was a tiger, thoroughly enjoying the drop-jawed shock on the rogues’ faces. He swatted Frank across the side of the head with one massive paw, knocking him several feet through the air. The moron—Frank’s brother—took one look at Jack and pissed himself, before rolling up in a fetal position on the ground and starting to weep.

  Vargas, now in wolf form, moved so fast that the rest of the shifters looked like they were performing a bumbling, slow-motion ballet. A kick here met a slash there. A hand clutching a hunting knife met claws. Only one of the rogues was fast enough to shift by the time Vargas had taken the rest down. That wolf looked around, saw all seven of his companions on the ground, turned tail—literally—and ran.

  Vargas shifted back to human, and Jack followed suit. “That’s five to two, my orange friend,” Vargas said smugly.

  Jack shrugged. “Your territory, your justice. I just wanted to find the wolf who was hiding in the place Mr. Clark disappeared.”

  “Check the tents?”

  “Yeah.” Jack unzipped the first tent, but smelled nothing but stale beer and wet wolf—either Frank or the moron, or both, slept in that one.

  The second tent yielded nothing.

  The third, though…maybe. Jack bit the bullet, stuck his head in through the tent flap, and inhaled deeply, in spite of the unwelcome aroma of dirty sock.

  Bingo.

  “He was here. The wolf from the town hall,” Jack said, striding over to where the moron huddled on the ground. “Where is the wolf who slept in that tent? The one who wasn’t here today.”

  The man snuffled and cried, and Jack lost patience and yanked him up. “Your brother isn’t dead, he’s just unconscious. You can go forth and do bad things together when he wakes up.”

  “If I don’t kill
them all,” Vargas pointed out, making the moron cry even harder.

  “Fair enough,” Jack said, shrugging. “But first, I need to know who was in that tent.” He lifted the sobbing man off the ground by the throat.

  “Marvin,” the moron cried out, choking and gasping. “It was Marvin, but he stayed at his girlfriend’s last night and he hasn’t come back yet. Let me down.”

  Jack dropped him, and the man curled up in a pathetic ball again. “I’ll leave you alone as soon as you tell me how I can get in touch with Marvin. What’s his phone number?”

  “He ain’t got no phone,” the moron said, with a touch of defiance. “He’s broke, like the rest of us.”

  Jack reached for his throat again, and the man collapsed back in a heap.

  “You can find him at his girlfriend’s, I bet. Go see her, already. Leave us alone,” he blubbered.

  Vargas sighed. “This is what you get when you allow rogue wolves to run freely. No pack discipline, no training, no courage. This man is a pathetic coward, and his brother is a vicious criminal.”

  “Yeah, pack discipline, great, fine,” Jack said impatiently. “But I need the moron to tell me how to find Marvin’s girlfriend first.”

  The man sat up and glared at Jack. “My name is Fred, not moron.”

  Jack crouched down, getting right in Fred’s face. “Okay, Fred. You’re not a moron. You’re a perfectly intelligent guy who realizes that if you don’t give me Marvin’s girlfriend’s location within the next ten seconds, I’m going to reach into your chest, rip your heart out, and eat it right here in front of you.”

  Fred’s face turned red, then white. “You’d do that?”

  Jack bared his teeth. “Tigers love to eat hearts. It’s our favorite dish.”

  The man nearly passed out, and Jack realized he might have overdone it with the heart thing. He grabbed Fred by the shoulders and shook him. “The girlfriend, Fred.”

  “I don’t know where she lives,” Fred shrieked. “I only know her name.”

  “Then. Give. Me. Her. Name,” Jack said, biting off each word.