“Reprehensible,” I countered before carefully closing the door behind me and following in their wake.
To my further dismay, by the time I caught up with the duo Robert was seated at a spotlessly clean kitchen table, quaffing a tall glass of cold milk. A trail of cookie crumbs suggested he’d already consumed one of the homemade gobs of chocolaty goodness that graced his plate. Meanwhile, across from him, his witness was enthusiastically spilling her guts in between sips from a mug of hot tea.
“...right in front of the old hardware store!” she confided, leaning in closer. I was pretty sure our witness hadn’t even noticed I was present, so I found a spot along the wall where I’d be out of sight and proceeded to lean in silence. No need to mess with my partner’s power of hypnosis.
Still, I couldn’t help eying the plate of cookies as the duo talked. As best I could tell, Robert had already swallowed two of the massive treats and was now biting into the third. Surely he would manage to save at least one morsel to salve my growling stomach when the questioning was over?
Unfortunately for the sake of my future nourishment, the FBI agent’s appetite was voracious. Still, he didn’t take his attention away from our hostess for an instant. Instead, after chewing for a long moment, he prodded the potential witness to move on from emoting to educating. “Did you hear strange sounds last night?” he asked finally. “A gunshot? Dogs barking? Anything at all out of the ordinary?”
“I missed it all,” she said, her words much less animated than they had been previously. “I slept through the whole thing.”
Our potential witness sounded so disappointed that I had to stifle another laugh. Such a hardship, sleeping through a murder.
Robert didn’t appear to share my amusement, though. Instead, he furrowed his brow seriously, pushing the plate—now half empty—toward the old lady. “You’d better have one of these cookies before I eat them all up, ma’am. They’re the best dessert my sweet tooth has tasted in months.”
She colored with pleasure, carefully picking the smallest offering off the plate. “I don’t mind if I do,” she said. “These were always Roger’s favorite. They’re homemade, you know.”
“I can tell,” my partner answered, plucking up the second-to-last cookie and dashing my hopes for titillating my own taste buds in the process. “So you didn’t see or hear anything. Do you have any idea who might have witnessed the crime?”
“Maybe those old hobos.” Our witness’s final word had bite, as if she was personally offended by the possibility of homeless people living in her little town. “They’re always camping out on my doorstep, leaving trash behind. I think someone cooked there last night.”
The display in front of her apartment suddenly took on new meaning. The scarecrow and Christmas lights, I was willing to bet, belonged to the little old lady in front of me. But the grill? Perhaps the used charcoal was a sign of yet another witness who needed to be tracked down.
Robert and I exchanged a quick glance, then he got to his feet, leaving the final cookie behind on the plate. “Where do you think we’d find the ‘hobos’ at this time of day?” he asked, his mouth twisting a bit at the insulting word. Despite being a dessert devourer, his attention was still very much attuned to the job.
“Under the bridge, drinking, most likely,” the old lady replied, beginning to push at the arms of her chair in an attempt to rise to her feet. “I don’t see why this town doesn’t clean them out....”
“Please, don’t get up,” Robert interjected, gently pressing down on our companion’s shoulder with one hand as he slid the final cookie toward her with his other. Apparently the woman was old enough to provoke his inherent chivalry despite her show of prejudice. “We can see ourselves out.”
So we left without allowing me to enjoy a single cookie. But the loss was more than worth it since our minds were satiated with the satisfaction of a solid clue.
***
There turned out to be five bridges in Starling Point...and no homeless people beneath any of them. Instead, we found a very different sort of surprise hidden in the dim recesses where the railroad tracks turned into an extended cavern cutting beneath one of the encircling hillsides.
“Oh shit,” I said, startled into speaking aloud by the scent that belatedly reached my nostrils. Robert and I had walked twenty feet into the tunnel by that point, far enough so the already dim winter illumination faded to twilight in front of our eyes. Only then did I pick up on a very important aroma that had been muffled by the damp stonework cupping us on all sides.
Flinging a straight arm out in front of my human partner like a parent preventing her kid from flying through the windshield, I hoped against hope that Robert would have the sense to retreat back to the safety of his vehicle. Unfortunately, I had a sinking suspicion that curiosity would win out over his common sense.
Here’s hoping curiosity doesn’t also manage to get him killed.
“You’re a hard woman to catch alone.” The rich baritone echoed in the confined space as a dark figure paced toward me, waves of alpha dominance rolling off his hulking form. Despite the low light, he easily dodged the drips of frigid water trickling out of the cracked stonework above our heads, the pattern turning his steady approach into a stately dance.
Sleep, now, I commanded my animal half. Not that I wanted to face this unknown male without lupine backup, but I’d be even worse off if the stranger in front of me used my weak wolf to compel me to do his bidding.
“Alone?” Robert asked, coming up beside me and speaking before I was done prodding at my wolf. Just what I needed—to have two disobedient partners to deal with rather than one. Because my inner beast wasn’t keen on retreating in the face of danger either, every attempt I made at pushing her down into my belly failing miserably.
Well, at least I’m not entirely defenseless. Wolfie’s sword rang like a bell as it rasped out of its scabbard, making me glad I’d taken advantage of the winter chill to conceal weaponry beneath my trench coat. Then, stepping in front of the defenseless one-body yet again, I growled out words intended to feign alpha aggression. “How clever of you to turn yourself in.”
“Turn myself in?” The male sounded mildly confused this time, but he continued pacing toward us anyway. His immense size became even more apparent as he approached the dim light filtering in from the entrance behind my back, and I found myself retreating one unconscious step after another before gritting my teeth and planting my feet with an effort.
I was accustomed to facing bloodling werewolves’ broad shoulders and tall frames, but our current opponent left even my own mate’s height and breadth in the dust. I was pretty sure I could have fit two of me inside the stranger’s massive torso, and I knew the thin blade of steel I held between us would do little to protect my skin if our opponent possessed even a quarter of Hunter’s fighting prowess.
“For the murder,” I clarified, playing for time and hoping my voice sounded braver than I felt. “The only thing I want to know is, how did you cover up your scent?”
As I spoke, I reached out as unobtrusively as I could with my free hand and nudged at Robert’s ribs. Go! I tried to tell him with the poke...but there was no pack bond connecting me to the human and he continued to stand like a statue by my side.
Glancing over, in fact, I noticed that Robert must have drawn his handgun at the same moment I was releasing my sword. Because now he stood with arms outstretched, apparently intent upon taking down the suspected murderer despite the latter’s barely concealed fur and fangs.
Robert was intrepid, I’d say that much for him. But I could smell his acrid fear as a bitter tang coating the inside of my mouth, and I knew that the dark figure in front of us could scent the agent’s emotion just as readily.
The time for good decisions was rapidly ticking away with each of our opponent’s calculated footsteps. So, in desperation, I chose the only avenue open to me—attack first and ask questions later.
Maybe the element of surprise will be enough t
o let Robert flee from a fight that doesn’t belong to him, I thought, tensing muscles in preparation for an attack.
Whether or not my partner managed to escape, though, I had no illusions that I would survive the upcoming encounter unscathed. So I reached into my pocket and felt around for my cell phone, pressing a button that I hoped would dial my mate.
Then, without giving further notice of my intentions, I leapt into the fray.
Chapter 12
Or, rather, I attempted to leap into the fray. But before I could take more than a single step, a hard hand came around from behind and knocked the sword out of my grasp to clatter uselessly against the nearest wall.
Meanwhile, and far too belatedly, I smelled a second werewolf. His scent was vaguely familiar as his arm clamped itself around my neck just tightly enough to restrain without cutting off all access to air. But I didn’t have the time or space to analyze his identify further at the present moment.
“Call off your dog,” my assailant whispered into my ear, forcibly turning my entire body so I stood between him and my armed human partner. Using me as a shield was a smart move, I had to admit, because Robert’s eyes were wide and his breathing echoed loudly off the rounded walls. Just as my captor must have surmised, my friend was a hair’s breadth away from shooting to kill without worrying which werewolf was within his sights.
Robert wasn’t mine to call off, but I found myself abruptly relaxing against my captor’s chest anyway. Because I now knew who this was and I was pretty sure he didn’t want me dead.
I hadn’t managed to catch a single glimpse of either opponent’s face, but my inner wolf had been busy putting two and two together even as my human brain frantically attempted to think up a way out of the thorny situation we found ourselves in. And the wolf had been more efficient than the human, coming up with an answer much more palatable than the one I’d initially suspected.
If our olfactory memory served, the shifter restraining me with a firm yet gentle chokehold was one of two alphas from our region’s All-Pack that I’d met previously. Not Stormwinder, of course—I would have recognized the head honcho’s scent immediately. In contrast, this male’s aroma took some digging to track down, our one and only meeting having occurred at the height of the summer when my much smaller pack and I had returned his dead son’s body to his clan’s unwelcoming gates.
“Slate Franklin,” I guessed, my voice warmer than I meant for it to be. The alpha hadn’t been particularly friendly in the past, but his status within shifter society did make one thing clear—he hadn’t violently murdered a one-body in outpack territory either.
And whether he was willing to admit it or not, Franklin owed me one. So I wasn’t surprised when the alpha allowed me to shrug my way out of his enfolding arms so I could step up beside my gun-happy partner.
“I’m okay,” I told Robert, even though I still hadn’t managed to identify the much larger shifter whose body continued to hide in the enveloping shadows. I’d simply have to assume that whoever Franklin chose to bring along on this ambush had similar reasons to keep me alive and kicking. “It’d probably be a good idea if you gave us some space though,” I added.
Predictably, my partner snorted. “No way. I’ll call in backup.”
I cringed even as two male shifters growled in tandem, their ire so intense that the walls of the tunnel seemed to vibrate around us. The tremble shook a water droplet loose from the ceiling in the process and it fell directly into my hair, the sudden chill making me jump. So much for acting brave and unaffected by current events.
“Not a good idea,” I said quickly, pushing Robert’s gun hand down so the barrel pointed at the gravel-lined ground rather than at a living, breathing shifter. “I’ve already called the only backup we’ll need. This isn’t human business.”
For the first time, the shadowy figure appeared both intensely interested and mildly shaken by current events. “The one-body knows about us?” he asked, stepping forward out of the shadows at last so he could peer into Robert’s rigid face.
The stranger’s move finally gave me a glimpse that went beyond a menacing silhouette in the distance. And while I had to admit that his size was even more daunting up close, the proximity also allowed me to guess who I was talking to.
The massive shifter was black—the only African-American werewolf I’d ever met. Which meant....
“Bill Byrd,” I greeted him, piecing together bits and pieces of data that I’d crammed into my brain in recent weeks to prep for All-Pack. Unlike Franklin, I’d never set eyes on this particular alpha before. But while one pack leader was unlikely to break the law, two together were almost certain to keep their noses clean. Why let your enemy know the easiest way to metaphorically stab you in the back?
Relaxing, I graced Byrd with a welcoming smile even as his broad shoulders relaxed ever so slightly at the greeting. In fact, I got the distinct impression that the large male had been hovering in the background out of a chivalrous urge not to scare me away.
Now that I’d correctly surmised Byrd’s identity, though, he scooped up Wolfie’s sword in one massive fist while holding out the other hand for me to shake. “I’d be honored,” he offered, “if you’d call me Little Bill.”
***
“Little Bill? Seriously?” I asked half an hour later once the four of us were settled into a booth in Sterling Point’s one and only restaurant. My feeble joke was an attempt at breaking the ice. I just hoped the resulting splinters didn’t drive themselves into my skin and draw blood.
Because, despite the lowering of my guard previously, the air still hummed with antagonism. The discord just happened to focus on a different person this time around—Robert.
As soon as I understood who I was facing, I’d done my best to send my human partner packing with reassurances that Hunter was on his way to pick me up. Unfortunately, Robert had adamantly refused to abandon me to the tender mercies of two unknown shifters.
And I could understand his reasoning. He was being a good guy, as usual, his inherent chivalry rebelling against the notion of leaving me alone with two unknowns. Unfortunately, the FBI agent’s male posturing had also set off Franklin’s need to dominate everyone within his vicinity.
In the end, Little Bill and I seemed to be the only rational people present. So I figured I’d turn the conversation around in the former’s direction in hopes of defusing the FBI/shifter pissing contest before we were once again inches away from an Old West style gun battle.
“My father’s Big Bill,” Byrd rumbled by way of reply, his tone gentler than either of our other companions’ had been. In fact, Bill’s southern twang gave his voice a melodic cadence that I could have sat and listened to all day.
Plus, the large male wasn’t glaring at anyone, which was a major relief to my frazzled nerves.
“But you lead your own pack now,” I countered, dredging up some of the information I’d carefully collated so I wouldn’t end up treading water entirely in the dark when I met up with the other alphas in four days’ time. “Surely that makes you old enough to drop the ‘Little.’ Exactly how big is your father?”
For the first time since I’d met him, Franklin’s mask of alpha competence cracked as he chuckled. “Big Bill’s about yeah high,” he offered, holding his hand up around the level of the table top. I sincerely doubted Bill Byrd senior was only three feet tall, but I got the picture.
Little Bill merely shrugged at my raised eyebrows, then he focused his attention on what must have been the tenth packet of sugar he’d meticulously poured into his glass of iced tea. Apparently when you’re from the Deep South, sweet tea was meant to be sweet.
“Big Bill couldn’t come along today, but I speak for both of our clans,” the younger Byrd continued, attempting to stir the additional crystals into his drink with a long-handled spoon. Since he’d exceeded the saturation point about two packets back, though, the sugar merely settled into a sludge at the bottom of the glass. Smiling, he took a sip of a concoction that s
urely should have been undrinkable then sighed with pleasure.
“Which means this table represents half of the full weight of All-Pack,” I said, hoping I was on the right track and that Franklin was willing to let his beef with Robert slide at long last now that we were nibbling around the edges of the point. Because Franklin and Byrd had gone to a lot of time and effort in order to track down Wolf Landing’s supposed leader. Surely, after several rounds of intimidation and pleasantries, we were finally ready to embark upon the subject at hand.
“Not quite half,” Franklin disagreed. His voice was terse, but he did seem willing to ignore the FBI agent and deal with me at last. “We represent three of the seven clans—your Wolf Wharf doesn’t have an official voice and won’t unless four alphas vote in your favor.”
I opened my mouth to correct the naming error, then decided against it. I had a feeling the older male was merely trying to get a rise out of me, and I didn’t see any reason to give him that satisfaction. So, instead, I picked up a French fry and dredged it through the ketchup on the edge of my plate before popping it into my mouth. “Hmmm,” I said noncommittally. You’re the one who wanted to talk to me, I added grimly inside my own head alone. So talk.
I got the impression that Franklin was oblivious to my impatience, but a faint smile flickered across Little Bill’s face. He’d hung back from talking business previously, presenting the illusion that the balance of power tilted in the other alpha’s favor. But I had a sneaking suspicion that Byrd rather than Franklin possessed the upper hand when the rubber hit the road.
My hunch was confirmed when the older male’s eyes flicked ever so briefly in his companion’s direction prior to continuing. “Before we can talk about your territorial rights, though,” Franklin said after a moment, warily checking out the other diners rather than focusing on my face, “we have to discuss Stormwinder. The male is a problem.”
Wolf Landing (Alpha Underground Book 3) Page 8
