Baby, I'm Howling for You

by Christine Warren

  Renny was still cursing him when the bathroom door closed behind her.

  Mick whistled a happy tune on his way to Jaeger’s office. He’d dropped his mate off at her brand-new job, a bear shifter was on duty outside to ward off any trouble, and he’d gotten to start his day with some pretty phenomenal sex. All in all, it was a very good day to be him.

  The good mood helped him balance the lingering sense of discomfort he felt at leaving Renny’s side for an entire day. For two weeks, they had basically lived in each other’s pockets. She’d gone out a couple of times with Molly, once for coffee and “chocolate goodness,” as they called it, and once to browse the bookstore. Both had been brief trips to well-populated public places, and he’d extracted solemn vows from both women that they would remain on guard and wouldn’t even get out of their vehicle if they sensed a possibility of danger. Still, he could admit he might have done a little bit of pacing until his mate returned safely to his side.

  His intense feelings for his little she-wolf terrified him if he spent too much time thinking about them, so he did his best not to. He’d known Renny for such a short time, but already the strength of his attachment to her rivaled what he’d felt for Beth after a couple of years together. He hadn’t thought it possible for their bond to grow so strong so fast. If he had, he’d probably still be pushing her away.

  Turned out he was a fucking coward, he acknowledged, steering his truck toward the town hall. At his very core lived a primordial fear that he could lose another mate. If he did, he knew without a shred of doubt that this time, the pain would kill him.

  Death wasn’t what scared him, though. If it came to that, he knew that he’d welcome the oblivion, because he’d rather follow Renny into the darkness than live with the constant knife blade of grief stuck in his gut. He’d done that before, and he’d burned the fucking T-shirt.

  Mick parked and climbed out of the pickup, slamming the door behind him. This was why men didn’t dwell on their feelings, he noted. Not because they didn’t have them, but because they knew they had no control over them, and no man wanted to admit that kind of helplessness. Their Y chromosomes forbade it.

  He nodded to Vonnie at her desk in the foyer on his way up to Jaeger’s office. The badger shifter waved him by, not even pausing in her conversation with whoever was on the other side of her phone line. Mick took the stairs two at a time and knocked briefly before letting himself in to the mayor’s inner sanctum.

  Jaeger stood at the window behind his desk, but his eyes weren’t on the view. They were fixed on a large, movable bulletin board that had been positioned to be visible from almost any spot in the room. A map of Alpha and the surrounding area had been tacked in the center, with a series of photographs pinned around the outside. It looked like something from a television police drama. Mick was tempted to look around for Richard Belzer.

  Plus, he felt a sudden craving for doughnuts.

  “Come on in.” Jaeger waved him forward. Several other figures already occupied a variety of seats, most of them moved in from other rooms to accommodate the small crowd. “I thought about moving this to a conference room, but I want this operation based where I can keep an eye on it personally.”

  Zeke looked over his shoulder from where he stood adding index cards of information to the bulletin board. “And the sheriff wants it run from his office, so here I am, duplicating all my damned work word for word just to keep the muckety-mucks happy. A deputy’s work is never done, I tells ya.”

  Mick snorted and looked around at the others gathered. Three other officers from the sheriff’s department clustered in one corner and talked among themselves. He also recognized a couple of members of the local fire and rescue squad (sometimes co-workers of Molly) and a few of the town’s more colorful business owners, like Linus Russu, the tiger-shifter owner of the Twisted Shifter, Alpha’s favorite brew pub.

  Opposite the others, in one of the large chairs closest to the mayor’s desk, the real elite of Alpha society sprawled at his leisure, expensive suit and silk tie somehow not making him look like an overly gentrified fop.

  Recognizing the man who owned half of Alpha (and whose family used to own the rest), Mick crossed to him and extended a hand. “Jonas.”

  The bear shifter stood to greet him, all six feet and some odd inches of him unfolding itself with lazy grace. He smiled and nodded as he shook hands. “Mick. Good to see you again.”

  “You, too. Been a while.”

  “Been busy.”

  “Busy honeymooning.” Jaeger’s grin carried a mocking half leer. “How is the good doctor, by the way?”

  “Fantastic,” Browning rumbled, his expression taking on a rather satisfied smirk.

  Jonas Browning had given up his playboy ways just the year before, Mick recalled. The entrepreneurial grizzly had mated another newcomer to Alpha, a previously outcast wolf shifter with a series of letters after her name and an IQ that made half the town’s population look like drooling idiots. Annie Cryer now worked overseeing the lab at the Alpha Medical Center, in addition to pursuing her own research interests.

  “I’m sure she’ll want to meet your new mate, Mick. Annie misses having a pack around, in spite of the way her old one treated her.” Something violent flickered in the bear’s dark eyes but was quickly suppressed. “You should bring her over for dinner. What’s her name, again? Wendy?”

  “Renny,” Mick corrected.

  “Unusual.”

  “She’s named after her grandmother, who was French Canadian, I think.”

  A last group filed into the room and settled into the remaining chairs. Mick saw the mayor run his gaze over the assembly and give a small nod.

  Jaeger stepped up to his desk and rested his fingertips on the blotter. “If I could have everyone’s attention, please.”

  The background chatter subsided as Mick took a seat in the other chair next to the desk. All eyes now focused on the cougar in chief.

  “Thanks, everyone, for carving out the time to deal with this,” Jaeger said. “I’m sure most of you know the basics of our current situation, but just to make sure we’re all on the same page, let me sum it up for you.”

  Mick watched the faces of the group while Jaeger gave a succinct account of Renny’s arrival in Alpha and the events that had brought her to their community. He’d heard the story a handful of times already, and it still made his jaw clench and his lips curl when he listened to the history of Geoffrey Hilliard stalking, harassing, and attempting to kidnap his mate. Judging by the expressions of the other people in the room, they shared a similar distaste for the coyote’s actions.

  Good, Mick thought. They needed everyone in town to know what his mate had been through and what kind of risk Hilliard and his bully boys still posed to Renny’s safety. It would keep everyone alert and give them a stake in finding the coyotes before they could make another attempt to grab his mate.

  When Jaeger had finished his summary, he gestured to Zeke, still standing beside the bulletin board. “Zeke and Sheriff Lahern have worked the last few days to get us some real concrete information on this bunch, so I’m going to let him take it from here. Zeke?”

  The deputy shifted forward, tangibly focused and ready for action. “Right now, we’re aware of two main threats. Geoffrey Hilliard is, of course, number one, because he’s the one driving all this. Number two is the hunting party that works for him.” Zeke pointed to a photo at the top center of the board, above the map. “Get a good look. So far, we believe he’s been staying in California and running things remotely, but he’s been trying to get his paws on Renny Landry for months, and we can expect that sooner or later, he’ll decide to take matters into his own hands.”

  Mick almost wished Hilliard would. He’d pounded the little shit once over the way the coyote had treated his half sister; he wouldn’t mind doing it again. In fact, he’d damned well walk away from that righteous ass kicking with a smile on his face and a song in his fucking heart.

  “These fiv
e individuals made up the hunting party we believe is currently in the area.” Zeke had tacked photos of five men in a ring around the map. Mick recognized all of them, and he wanted all of them to pay for terrorizing his mate. “These four attempted to grab Renny from the parking lot outside the East Plaza Shopping Center on Saturday the seventeenth. She and my sister were both attacked, but Mick and I managed to intervene and drive three of them off. The fourth, this man—Jordan Heins—was taken into custody, but died later that night of a drug overdose.”

  “You’re shitting me.” Linus looked like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or spit. “An overdose? Of what? Stupidity?”

  “According to Dr. Kirby? Meth. He managed to smuggle it into the jail at the time he was booked, and ingested a fatal dose. It appears that he was a regular user, so we can’t determine if the OD was accidental or a deliberate move on his part.”

  “And this putz was a member of the coyote alpha’s elite hunting party?” The tiger snorted. “What the hell kind of a pack is this Hilliard running?”

  “A highly dysfunctional one.” Zeke moved to point out each of the other coyotes in turn. The photos he referenced looked like they’d been taken from official ID pictures or, in a couple of cases, from police mug shots. Somehow that didn’t surprise Mick.

  “These three are still at large and, we believe, still in the area. William and Thomas Molina. Cousins. Both have records in California, but our friend Will’s here is considerably more extensive, with charges ranging from petty vandalism, to assault with a weapon, to animal cruelty. Apparently, he didn’t restrict himself to hunting in his fur, and he didn’t always bother to make his kills clean before he tore them apart. That gets especially disturbing when you understand that Will is an expert marksman. As in, he’s won competitions and even got a serious look from the U.S. Olympic Committee. Presumably until they saw these.”

  Goddess. Mick felt a little sick when Zeke illustrated his point by adding a series of gory snapshots to the space beside Will Molina’s picture. They looked like a cross between crime scene photos and test shots for a slice-and-dice horror film. At one time, the subjects might have been rabbits or deer or even—fuck him sideways—someone’s poor Labrador retriever, but it was hard to tell with all the pieces scattered around like that.

  It wasn’t the blood that bothered Mick. Hell, he’d spilled more than his share of the stuff during his life, some in skin and some in fur. No, it was the wanton glee displayed in those photos that turned his stomach. They looked like some psychotic kid’s idea of finger painting gone horribly, horribly wrong.

  “The notes in William’s file make for some pretty interesting reading,” Zeke continued. His mouth firmed into a grim line. “At least two different police departments ordered that he undergo preliminary psychological testing after subsequent arrests. Both times, the doctors who spoke with him noted marked evidence of a sociopathic lack of empathy, violent aggressive tendencies, and possible delusional thought patterns. Both times they recommended further testing and possible involuntary commitment, but both times, Molina was released when his accuser either disappeared, or mysteriously dropped the charges, then disappeared.”

  One of the junior deputies piped up. “So, he’s a real people person, huh?”

  Several in the room chuckled.

  “If by ‘people person’ you mean person who targets other people for his own sadistic purposes, then yeah.” Zeke moved on to the next picture. “This is Will’s first cousin and closest companion, Thomas ‘Tommy’ Molina. His father and Will’s father are brothers. Tommy’s record is mostly straight-up violence, usually committed on behalf of his cousin. Sometimes it looks like he was backing his cousin up, sometimes he may have been trying to clean up Will’s messes. But in either case, Tommy can and will use his fists, his claws, or his fangs to take care of business. Both these guys should be considered dangerous.

  “Bachelor number three is Eric Ayala. From what I’ve been able to put together on him, I think he’s only recently earned a promotion from errand boy to evil henchman,” Zeke said, earning a few more chuckles. “His criminal record is pretty clean, other than a few minor dings here and there for typical stupid kid shit. Our sources think he’s a scab brought in to replace another member of Hilliard’s pack who got ideas above his station. There’s a missing persons report with Trinity County for a male, twenty-seven years old, six feet tall, two hundred pounds, resident of Sawmill, California, whose employer is listed as GH Holdings, also of Sawmill.”

  “You think he took out one of his own men?”

  Zeke shrugged. “No idea. But I think he’s unstable, and from what Renny told us, he runs his pack like a little rebel army, offing anyone who challenges him, no matter who they are.”

  “It fits what I know,” Mick said, scowling. “The Geoffrey Hilliard I know is a cowardly, treacherous, backstabbing little pissant who wouldn’t hesitate to knife the Goddess Herself if She tried to stop him from doing what he wanted.”

  Linus turned his head to look at Mick and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve met the charming gentleman?”

  Mick nodded brusquely.

  “Anything you’d like to share with the class?”

  Oh, about as much as he’d like to invite them all along on his next visit to the proctologist. He’d spent the last eight years not talking to anyone about his past, and that was the way he fucking liked it. What he’d gone through was no one’s business but his own.

  And maybe his mate’s.

  Maybe.

  Still, he was going to have to rely on these folks to help him keep Renny safe. Did that mean he owed them something? Shit, he was out of practice with all of this. Life had been so much easier when it was just him in his cabin, in his woods, drawing his pictures, and ignoring the rest of the town/world/universe.

  He weighed his sense of obligation against his loathing for giving out personal information and settled on a bare truth. “I grew up in Sawmill. It was before Hilliard took over. But I knew him, a bit.”

  The tiger’s gaze bored into him, eerie amber-gold eyes intent and unblinking. He’d never gotten a good read on Linus. The feline was on friendly terms with almost everyone in town, but close to no one. Like many of his kind, he tended toward solitary habits, something Mick was in no position to criticize.

  After a long moment, Linus nodded. “All right, then. Sounds like the kind of fellow who deserves a real Alphaville welcome.” When he smiled, it revealed a lot of teeth and little mercy.

  “As does his right-hand man.” Zeke tapped the last unidentified photo. “This is Bryce Landeskog, leader of the hunting party. Judging by the information I got from the Cali State Police, he might turn out to be half coyote, half Teflon—nothing sticks to him. Any arrests have been wiped, any charges dropped, any accusers gone silent. Might have something to do with Hilliard, might have to do with the fact that his father’s connected. Not to the Mafia, to the statehouse.”

  Jaeger explained, “Landeskog senior is a lawyer who left his practice to start a lobbying firm in Sacramento. Their Web site says they ‘seek to define and defend the rights of Others on a state and national level.’ Sources say their business has more to do with accumulating financial and political power and using it like a club to beat down anyone who opposes them.”

  One of the deputies snorted. “Talk about a bloodline breeding true.”

  “Yeah. Junior here does seem to take after daddy. We’re pretty certain he was injured in the initial attack on Renny Landry the night she arrived in Alpha. We assume that’s why he didn’t participate in the attempted kidnapping the next day, but he’s a shifter, so chances are that by now, whatever wound he sustained has healed. We need to expect that he’s back up to full strength and back in charge of the others.”

  Jaeger folded his arms over his chest, his usually good-humored expression gone serious. “But that still leaves us with four coyotes known to be in the area, with the potential that Hilliard himself will be joining them anytime.�
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  “More than potential,” Zeke said. “Based on the established pattern of his behavior and the rate of escalation, it’s a pretty sure bet that he’s not going to stay in California much longer. Stalking behavior like this always escalates, and even if he’s left it to his minions for this long without results, he’s going to take matters into his own hands one of these days. And in the meantime, it’s safe to assume he’ll be applying more and more pressure on the hunting party to get some results.”

  Jaeger nodded. “Then I’d say it’s time to have a face-to-face with our visitors and explain to them exactly why they might want to be moving along back south.”

  “First, we have to find them, and that’s why you’re all here.” Zeke picked up a highlighter marker and turned to the map that occupied the majority of the bulletin board’s surface. “We all know this area. There aren’t many population centers, so we’re assuming that, if they’re not roughing it, they’d have to set up a base in Cle Elum. If they want any chance of sailing below the radar, it’d have to be in Ellensburg. To really blend into the woodwork, we’re talking Renton, and that seems unlikely. That kind of distance would put them at a real disadvantage when it came to seizing an opportunity to get at Renny.”

  It made sense. This was a pretty sparsely populated area of the state. A lot of it consisted of state and national forest with the few towns that dotted the map being mostly small and remote. Alpha itself represented the biggest population center outside of the human towns Zeke had mentioned.

  “We’ve been checking around hotels in Cle Elum and Ellensburg with no results, so chances are the coyotes are staying away from towns. Camping out makes them harder to find and gives them a lot more options. If they stay in fur a lot, it means we won’t even have the general signs of temporary shelters and cooking sites to look for, so this search is going to take some doing.”

  Mick listened while his friend went on to outline the plan of action he and the sheriff had come up with. The bear hadn’t been happy to cut short his vacation, but Sheriff Lahern was good at his job. He and the deputy had identified how close to town the coyotes were likely to remain for their best chance at Renny and developed a search radius based on that. It was a big area of rough country, but they would assign small teams of volunteers to individual sections and suggest tracking techniques and search parameters.