Born To Be Wild

by Unknown

  Josie nearly broke out in a hallelujah chorus.

  She rushed forward and immediately began probing at Eli’s shoulder. “Ben, get me some saline in an irrigation bottle and some clean dressings. I want to flush this out right away. I’m not about to risk infection here.”

  The muscles under her fingers shifted, and suddenly she was touching not fur but smooth, warm skin. Her gaze shot up and she found herself looking into a slightly bemused expression on the face of a very human Eli.

  “Sorry about that,” he rumbled, his voice sounding lower than usual with an intimate note that made her stomach clench. “I was going to give you until the third date before I took my clothes off. I didn’t want you to think I was cheap.”

  Reflexively, Josie looked down and saw that the sheriff wore that bemused expression along with precisely nothing else. His clothing had ripped to pieces in the haste of his transformation.

  Her cheeks flamed, and she snatched her hand back from his now uninjured shoulder as if it, too, were on fire. Apparently, that “shifting heals” thing really worked.

  “Uh, why don’t I see if I have a pair of sweats or something in the break room that I can lend you, Sheriff?” Ben offered, his lips suspiciously pursed below madly twinkling eyes. “You know, to protect your reputation.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” Eli nodded to the vet tech then turned back to Josie, seemingly unconcerned with his nudity. Even though Daisy’s eyes were currently fixed on his ass like it was spread across the pages of Playgirl. “What did you give him?”

  “Huh?”

  “What did you give Bill?” he asked, clearly fighting back a grin. “To knock him out. I saw that needle you had.”

  Josie’s blush deepened, and she cleared her throat. “Oh, um, succinylcholine. It’s a tranquilizer. Well, a paralytic, really. It’s mainly used for short-term muscle relaxation, like when we have to insert a breathing tube or get X-rays on a fractious patient. Some people have used it as an anesthesia induction agent, too.”

  As always, talking about her work calmed her, and her hands were only mildly unsteady as she reached for her stethoscope.

  “I had to totally guess on the dosage for a Lupine, though, and it has been used as a poison in the past.” She knelt down beside the unmoving Lupine and pressed the instrument against his side. “Thank God, he’s still got a heartbeat. Daisy, can you go get me a trach tube? Better safe than sorry. His breathing does seem a little shallow.”

  When she heard nothing but silence, Josie looked up to see her assistant still frozen in place, her eyes glued to the sheriff’s admittedly fine and thoroughly naked ass.

  “Daisy!”

  The woman jumped about a foot in the air, turned beet red, and rushed over to a cabinet against the wall. “Trach tube,” she babbled. “Right. I’m on it.”

  Josie shook her head and looked up at Eli, her eyes deliberately avoiding all the things he wasn’t trying to hide. Seriously, did the man have no shame?

  “Sheriff, I appreciate the help here, but I have to say it: You’re bad for my business.”

  “And I have to say, Dr. Barrett, that you’re about to become bad for my image.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Take a listen.”

  Josie stood still and listened intently, but it was several more seconds before she heard the sound of a siren coming closer. She cocked an eyebrow. “When you were growing up, did any of the other kids ever call you Radar?”

  His grin was a bold slash of teeth. “Never more than once.”

  Josie humphed.

  Ben trotted back into the room carrying a wad of folded cloth, which he tossed in Eli’s direction. “Here you go. They’re going to be tight, but at least you should be able to get them on. I thought about just handing you a pair of scrubs, but we don’t stock them in the ‘lion-slash-imposing-giant’ size.”

  Eli just nodded and bent to step into the navy sweatpants. “No shirt?”

  “Not unless you have a thing for looking like a cheap, gay hooker. Dude, you’re like three or four sizes bigger than me. At least. And I’ve never gone for the ghetto baggy look.”

  “Right. Well, thanks for the bare minimum, then. It doesn’t do for the sheriff to be caught by his own deputies breaking the public indecency statutes.”

  Josie accepted the handful of sealed packages of sterile equipment that Daisy handed her and stood. “Since you boys are firm friends now, would you mind lifting Bill here onto an exam table? Ben, I want to get him trached, put a few stitches in his side. And then we’re going to want to dose him with a milder—but hopefully long-acting—sedative. At least until we decide what to do with him.”

  “I vote we neuter him while he’s under,” Ben grumbled as he bent down to grab the wolf’s front paws. “It’s supposed to help prevent aggression, right?”

  Eli frowned, his eyes dropping to the sullenly bleeding wound on the Lupine’s side. He helped Ben deposit him on the surgical-steel exam table, then leaned in for a closer look.

  “That looks like it just happened.”

  “It did.” Josie shouldered him out of the way and began to flush the wound with a squirt bottle full of sterile saline. “Don’t you remember? You’re the one who did it.”

  “I know, but that was during the fight, and he’s been out for almost five minutes. Resting. It should at least have stopped bleeding by now, if not started to scab over on the ends.”

  She pressed a thick, absorbent pad against the wolf’s side to catch the dripping saline and continued to clean the gash. “Really? You guys can heal that fast?”

  “You saw my shoulder.”

  “Well, yeah, but you shifted. I thought it was the shifting that made you heal so fast.”

  Eli shook his head. “Only part of it. Some of it’s metabolism. And the rate we heal at depends on other factors, just like a human. It goes faster when we’re relaxed and not doing anything to strain the injury.”

  The subject fascinated Josie, but she didn’t have time to pump him for information on it right now. First, because the sirens had reached a crescendo directly outside the back door and then gone silent, signaling the arrival of the cavalry. Better late than never, after all. And second, because the real implication of what he’d just said had begun to sink in.

  Josie looked from the Lupine on the table to the door of the kennel area, as if she’d be able to see Rosemary’s cage through the door and walls separating them. Her lips parted, and she ducked her chin in disbelief. “You don’t think . . . you can’t mean that this is related to Rosemary?”

  “Why can’t I? Something is keeping Rosemary from recovering from her injuries, and keeping her from shifting. What if it’s some kind of infection? And what if it’s contagious? Have you seen Bill in human form since he got in the cage with her last night?”

  “No, but—”

  “And there’s something else you need to know,” he said. The grim tone in his voice made her breath catch in her throat. “When I spoke to Rick Cobb, the Stone Creek Alpha, last night, the reason he was too busy to come see Rosemary himself was that he was busy cremating another pack member who’d been found dead in the forest near where I found Rosemary. The kid they were burning had been found in his wolf form as well.”

  A rush of dread rolled through Josie like sickness. “Why did you wait until now to tell me this?”

  “Because until just now, there was no reason to think the Paulson case and Rosemary’s were related in any way. Rosemary’s injuries could all have been due to being shot—

  “Theoretically,” he stressed, when she tried to interrupt.

  She gave a reluctant nod.

  “And there wasn’t so much as a mark on Paulson’s body, from what Rick told me. Until Bill started showing symptoms similar to Rosemary’s, there was no reason to think that whatever she had might be contagious, and those symptoms only showed up just now. But our patient count just jumped from one to two, and possibly three. That gives me a lot more
faith in the contagious disease theory than I had yesterday.”

  Josie shook her head, but her brain whirled as she struggled to process the possibilities. She probably looked like a moron to the deputy, who cautiously peered into the room through the back door.

  “Sheriff’s department!” the man called. “Everybody okay in here?”

  “We’re fine, Jim,” Eli replied, stepping forward and waving his co-worker inside. “Dr. Barrett had a little incident, but we’ve got it under control.”

  “Well, what kind of incident?” Jim Cooper asked as he stepped over the threshold. He didn’t seem fazed by the sheriff’s shirtless state, but he looked confused as his gaze traveled around the rest of the room. “I don’t mind admitting I’m pretty curious. Did you hear that call on the radio? One of those codes was for loose livestock!”

  “Yeah. We might need to update that, so there’s a separate code for wildlife.”

  “Wildlife?” Jim caught sight of the injured animal on the exam table and his eyes went as wide as dinner plates. “Is that a wolf? Is that what this is all about? A wolf got into the vet clinic! How the hell did that happen?”

  “It’s a long story, Deputy Cooper,” Josie said, setting aside the saline and ripping open the packaging around the endotracheal tube. “And frankly, we don’t have a lot of time at the moment to tell it.”

  Eli put a hand on Jim’s shoulder and guided him diplomatically toward the exit. “I’ve got things under control here, and I witnessed the event, so why don’t I write up the report for you? You’re on call for another eight hours. You don’t need to waste any time here.”

  “You sure, Sheriff? I know this was supposed to be your day off—?”

  “It’s fine. This won’t take long, and then I’ll still have the rest of the day.”

  “All right, then. I appreciate it. I’ve already responded to two reckless driving calls from folks who live out on Seven, so it looks like it’s going to be a pretty busy day.”

  “Have fun with it.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff.” He nodded to the others. “Dr. Barrett. Folks. You all have a good day.”

  Ben placed a roll of tape in the wolf’s mouth to keep it from closing around the trach tube Josie had just positioned, and began wrapping his muzzle with tape to secure it.

  “Right,” he muttered, just loud enough to be overheard. “Because it’s been a peach so far!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Despite all evidence to the contrary, Josie did have a practice to run and other patients waiting to see her, so she had to veto Eli’s suggestion that they meet with Rick Cobb over lunch to talk about the situation regarding Bill and Rosemary. And possibly Sammy Paulson.

  From what Eli had said, it sounded like Rick Cobb had intended to show up at the clinic first thing this morning to see his packmates for himself. Eli had insisted that he wait to talk to Josie first. If this little problem of Rosemary’s was contagious, as Josie now had no choice but to suspect, she couldn’t let any other Lupines into the clinic and risk exposing them. Bringing the local Alpha into the site of a possible infection wouldn’t do anyone any good.

  Meeting at Josie’s apartment for dinner was a better idea all around. The middle of the day was when Josie normally caught up on her charting and returned phone calls, and she couldn’t spare the time. Besides, there had been no change in Rosemary’s condition, and Josie had pumped Bill full of enough sedatives to keep an elephant unconscious. In fact, she’d be happy to keep the Lupine tranquilized into the next decade if he planned to act like a rabid wolverine when left to his own devices.

  Yes, she probably would be holding a grudge for a while over this morning’s incident.

  Either way, she had to tell Eli she couldn’t spare any time for anything until after the clinic closed at six. And that really meant seven. At the earliest. So he suggested he bring Rick to her apartment upstairs, along with a pizza, at seven thirty.

  She stepped out of the shower at precisely seven twenty-four, dried herself hurriedly, scraped her hair back into a soggy ponytail, and was pulling a UC Davis T-shirt on over her yoga pants when her doorbell sounded at exactly seven thirty, sending Bruce into a fit of barking. Breathless, she jogged across the apartment to answer the door.

  She grabbed the pizza boxes first. Bruce, clearly no fool, shot one last disgruntled glance at the intruders, then followed the pizza.

  “Come on in,” Josie invited over her shoulder, already halfway to the living room. She’d laid out plates and napkins on the coffee table before her shower.

  “Hungry?” a male voice drawled, and since Josie didn’t recognize it, she figured that would have to be Rick Cobb.

  Had he been holding the pizzas when she snatched them out of his hands? She hadn’t really bothered to check.

  “Starved.” She dropped the boxes on the end of the coffee table, flipped open the lid of the one on top, snagged a slice of what looked to be topped with half a farmyard, and took a huge bite. A pointed glare at Bruce had him settling himself like a sphinx on the floor directly in front of the warm, fragrant boxes. Taking a minute, she chewed, swallowed, uttered a happy sigh, and then looked up at her guests. “So, you guys want something to drink? I’ve got diet soda, milk, juice, wine, or beer.”

  Both men eyed her with respect.

  “Beer,” they chorused.

  “Coming right up. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  Josie continued to munch as she padded into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. She knew her mother would keel over dead if she could see this display of bad manners, but Josie had missed lunch. Too many phone calls and an emergency involving a six-month-old basset hound, a porcupine, and a lesson well learned. She really had been starving.

  She snagged three bottles of beer by the necks and balanced them against her hip so she could continue to devour pizza on her way back to the living room. When she got there, she saw that Eli and the man she assumed to be Rick had taken her at her word. They each sprawled in a corner of her chocolate microfiber sofa—which meant they took up the whole thing—with their mouths stuffed full of pizza. Neither had bothered to take a plate, and the stack of napkins appeared untouched. She really had set a bad example.

  Figuring it was never too late to remember the social niceties, Josie passed out the beer and took both a plate and a napkin for herself before sinking into the overstuffed armchair across from Eli. “Thank you, guys, for bringing dinner.”

  Like a professional waitress, it appeared she’d caught both of them mid-chew. Amused, she twisted the cap off her beer and took a sip while they exercised their jaw muscles.

  “You’re welcome,” Eli said, finally grabbing a napkin as a dribble of olive oil snaked down his chin. “Thanks for letting us share and not running away with both pies.”

  “My mother raised me better than that. I wouldn’t have run; strolling is more lady-like.” She ignored the flutter in her belly caused by his quick grin and turned to the other man. “I’m Josie Barrett, by the way. Since the sheriff hasn’t seen fit to introduce us.”

  Rick Cobb wiped his fingers on a napkin as he extended his hand across the table toward her. “You can’t rely on him. Cats never think about anything but themselves. I’m Rick. I think we’ve run into each other before, but this is the first time we’ve actually met, which seems like a shame to me.”

  The grin he flashed was both charming and wicked, and Josie liked him even more when he took the napkin he’d soiled with him on his hand’s trip back to the sofa.

  “I’m thinking about something other than myself right now,” Eli grumbled, but the Lupine just grinned and took a swallow of beer.

  “I think you’re right.” Josie ignored Eli completely and flicked her denuded pizza crust through the air toward Bruce. The dog snapped it up with the grace of a ballet dancer and the ferocity of a starving crocodile.

  Reaching for a second slice, Josie blinked when she realized that in the time she’d been in the kitchen grabbing beer, each o
f the men had apparently inhaled one slice and gone for a second. Either that, or they’d started eating in the car on the way over.

  “It’s amazing in a little town like Stone Creek how you can still not get to know everyone,” she continued, settling back into her chair. “You didn’t go to school here. I’m sure I’d remember if you had.”

  “My parents sent me to private school in Portland. For all the good it did them. I still turned up back here, like a bad penny.” Rick grinned. “But even if I had gone to the local schools, I’d have been years ahead of you, sweetheart. I’m sure you wouldn’t have even known I was alive.”

  “Oh, you’re not that old,” she said, laughing. “You’re . . . what? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight?”

  “Good guess. Thirty-seven.”

  “And you won’t make thirty-eight if you don’t cool it,” Eli snapped.

  Josie raised a brow in his direction. The sheriff sounded almost jealous. Of a little flirting? Because it was clear to her that flirting was Rick Cobb’s stock in trade. He had that air about him, like a man who had never met a woman he didn’t like. Josie knew better than to take a guy like that seriously. And besides, she and Eli hadn’t even been on a real date yet. He had no right acting jealous.

  Which was why she stomped hard on the tiny little part of herself that tingled over the fact that he had.

  She took another sip of beer. “I’ve only been back in town a few years, so forgive my ignorance, but when did you take over the Clan? When I was growing up, the Alpha was Ed Tarbridge.”

  Rick nodded. “My uncle. He died about ten years ago now. A heart attack. I stepped in for him right away.”