by Amy Green
It didn’t get any easier, interviewing the Bryants yet again. They were good people, grieving and sometimes angry. There was no joy in telling them yet again that there was no news on their son’s killer, but Nadine made herself look them in the eye when she said it, made herself remember that this was why she did this. So that good people like the Bryants would be safe from whoever was out there.
Still, she was drained when she got back to Pierce Point. She stopped at a drive through, picked up a sandwich and a cup of coffee—thinking briefly about the good food at the Four Spot Diner in Shifter Falls—and sat in her car in the parking lot for ten minutes of quiet, eating and drinking and thinking.
It was three days since she’d made her visit to the mountains and Shifter Falls, and the case was still deadlocked. Nadine hadn’t been sleeping, the details threading through her brain all night long. The silver. The silver had to be the key—finding where the Silverman got his precious metal.
Or, as she sometimes thought at three in the morning during a sleepless night, maybe a wolf had done this after all, and she was on the wrong track entirely. Maybe her daddy was right.
She sighed and rubbed her eyes, bunching up her empty sandwich wrapper and tossing it in the back seat with all the other wrappers. It was six o’clock at night, the hour when most people went home. Maybe she should do that, too. Except she didn’t really want to go home.
She had a neat little apartment downtown, a one-bedroom just the right size for a single working woman. It had decent furniture in it, a nice set of dishes and silverware from her parents. She had lived there for six years, and she’d never had a single complaint. But now the thought of going home, of putting on her pajamas and sitting on the sofa and surfing Netflix alone, just seemed… unsatisfying. Like a thousand other nights in her life.
What did werewolves do in the evenings, she wondered? They didn’t work nine to five. They didn’t have jobs the way humans did—they lived in a pack, usually doing odd jobs or services for the humans in town, and trading or borrowing among themselves. That was why most humans, including her daddy, thought of them like stray dogs; shifters didn’t work in banks or insurance companies. They didn’t buy houses, just shared or rented living space. They didn’t go to college, but educated themselves and each other. They didn’t use hospitals, because they had perfect healing powers and couldn’t get disease. They didn’t have Facebook accounts or retirement savings. They could vote, but their population was so miniscule that their votes didn’t count for much if they bothered.
Shifters were off the grid, unknown, untrustworthy. Nadine only knew as much as she did because Shifter Falls was the next county over; most people knew nothing about them at all. Nadine herself only knew a few things that had filtered into her consciousness over the course of her police career. When she’d arrested Devon Donovan five years ago, she’d known much less than she did now. She’d seen a dead body, and heard that a werewolf was in a bar two blocks over, and put two and two together. She’d barely even thought about it until she had Devon in a cell, looking at her with those dark, unfathomable eyes while at least a dozen people gave him a rock-solid alibi, attesting that he hadn’t left his bar stool all night.
He hadn’t said much to her that night. Barely anything, really. He hadn’t protested, or loudly proclaimed his innocence, or shouted for a lawyer or a phone call. He had just sat there, his big body hunched as he sat on the bench in his cell, watching. When she’d released him, he’d simply stood and walked out the door into the night without a word.
That was when it had first hit her that she didn’t know as much as she thought she did. She didn’t know much of anything at all.
Still, after she’d let Devon go, she hadn’t pursued any knowledge of shifters. She had a job to do, a human jurisdiction to take care of. Drunk teenagers, men beating their wives, traffic accidents, Fourth of July fistfights. It was steady work, and most days she went home at least moderately pleased with the job she’d done.
Shifters were just part of the backdrop, the scenery. They didn’t come to Grant County often, or at all, and God knew she never went to the Falls. She never thought about Devon. She never wondered what kind of life he led, whether he’d gone home to happiness or despair.
Or at least she’d tried to keep it out of her mind. Those were the days of Charlie Donovan’s leadership, and everyone knew of Charlie Donovan, especially the cops. There were rumors he was a dirty wolf—drugs, hookers, God knew what else. The Donovan pack was the scum of the earth in those days, and rumor had it Charlie’s enemies disappeared regularly. Those disappearances were courtesy of his chief enforcer and one of his many sons, Devon. The man she’d had in a prison cell, hunched and quiet, looking at her with dark eyes and never once raising his voice in anger.
Something had been wrong with that situation five years ago. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but even as a relative rookie she’d sensed it. They’d never found the real killer, and the case was unsolved. Devon shouldn’t have been in Pierce Point at all—he’d never been there before that night, and he’d never been there since. Shifters never came over the county line, yet on that exact night, Devon Donovan had sat on a bar stool in Pierce Point for hours, never to be seen in town again.
He was supposed to be a bloodthirsty killer, but he’d submitted to arrest and never defended himself. His powerful father, the alpha, should have moved mountains to get his son out of jail, but they’d never had a word from him, just from the witnesses who had given Devon an alibi. And shifters, especially the Donovans, were supposed to be filth and hardened criminals, but Devon had never treated her with anything but respect.
“Damn it,” Nadine said softly to herself, sipping her coffee in the driver’s seat of her parked car. She shouldn’t be thinking about a five-year-old unsolved case. She shouldn’t be thinking about the Donovans at all, and Heath Donovan saying No gods. No lawyers. The sun and the sky and the water. And you and her, if she lets you touch her, for as long as you breathe…
The passenger door opened, letting in a shocking breath of chilled air, and a huge, muscled body slid into the seat.
“Sheriff,” Devon Donovan said.
Nadine could only stare at him for a second. It was uncanny, as if she’d conjured him out of her brain. He was wearing jeans, a flannel button-down shirt over a t-shirt, and boots. His expression was as inscrutable as ever. Her car nearly sagged sideways with the unequal distribution of weight.
“What are you doing here?” she finally managed.
“Right now?” Devon said. “Nothing. Just sitting.”
“No, here,” she sputtered. “Here. Pierce Point. Have you even been to Pierce Point in the last five years?”
“I’ve been in Pierce Point since noon,” Devon said. “Looking for you.”
She had to put her coffee down before she dumped it in shock. “What?”
“I watched your office for a while, and then your apartment,” he said in his rough voice. “I saw your cruiser by accident. I’ve been watching you sit parked here for at least ten minutes, but you never figured it out. You really need to be more observant. Someone could follow you and you’d never know.”
“You’ve been looking me?” Her mind raced. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I need to talk to you.”
“You could have just called me.”
“I hate phones,” he said. “The signal messes with my wolf senses. Face to face is better.”
Nadine was jumbled up, disconcerted. He was so close, and she’d just been thinking about him. He filled the passenger seat of her small cruiser, his knees bumping the glove box, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He was sexy and bearded—and younger than you! she tried to remind herself—but most of all, he was mysterious. She’d just been wondering about his evenings, his life, his past with Charlie, that strange night five years ago. And now here he was, with all the answers to her questions in his handsome, silent, stubborn head.
She didn’t even bother asking how he knew where her apartment was. She didn’t want to know.
He was looking at her with those inscrutable brown eyes, patiently waiting for her to say something. So she tried her best not to sound like an idiot. “All right, fine. So you hate phones. What do you want to talk about?”
“We’ve found a mine,” Devon said. “A silver mine.”
That made Nadine sit up. “What mine?”
“About fifty miles up in the mountains,” Devon said. “A small silver seam was found in the fifties. They mined it until the seventies, when they shut it down. It hasn’t been used since.”
“And you found this?”
He gave her a look that said Don’t be so surprised. “Anna found it,” he said. Anna was Ian’s mate. “She’s the scholar, the researcher. She’s better at digging through old papers than we are. But if the Silverman knows about this mine, then he has a source of silver here in Colorado. And my bet is that he’s been there at least once, if he isn’t there still.”
She was all action now, her blood pumping. “We have to go.”
“Not in the dark,” Devon said. “Sun’s going down. But in the morning, yes, I’m going. If you want to come with me, be packed for at least an overnight, because we can’t drive the whole way. Too far off-road. A good part of it will be walking.”
Nadine stared at him. They were so close in this small car that she could smell his scent. Devon Donovan smelled like any other man—sweat, laundry—and yet he didn’t. There was some other scent underlying that, something tricky and tantalizing. Her mind worked, trying to ignore how that scent tugged at her.
If he’d been in Pierce Point since noon, then he’d learned about the mine this morning. Which meant he’d come all this way and followed her for hours, waiting for a chance to talk to her, when he could have simply struck off by himself into the mountains.
He wanted revenge on the Silverman. He’d spent weeks hunting the man. Nadine had no illusions that an animal like Devon’s wolf needed to wait for daylight—he could leave right now and travel in the dark, swift and silent, perfectly able to see. The delay until morning was for her benefit.
Instead of taking his revenge, he was waiting.
For her.
Why?
His brown eyes fixed on her, and he seemed to read her thoughts, because he said, “I promised you your arrest, Sheriff. I always mean my promises.”
She made herself peel her gaze from him and look away. “I can’t do it publicly,” she said. “Take assistance from a werewolf. I’ll have to tell the office I’m alone. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t because of you.”
Devon laughed softly. “You think I care? Human politics, you said. Nothing to do with me.” He paused, and she knew he was looking at her, though she kept her own gaze fixed out the window. “We take down the Silverman, Sheriff. That’s all that matters to me.”
He was right. But she was right, too. She couldn’t publicly take a werewolf on a criminal investigation with her, not when most people thought a werewolf was the murderer in the first place. She couldn’t lose her job, not least because these murders needed to be solved, justice served. Everything she was doing was for the greater good, for getting the Bryants and the Kraemers closure for their murdered sons.
Then why did she feel so uneasy, like she was doing something really, really shitty?
“If we make an arrest, I’ll make sure you have credit,” she said in a lame attempt to feel better.
He just laughed again. “Keep your human credit,” he said easily. “If I can’t rip the Silverman’s throat out and taste his blood, I can at least watch him go to prison.”
Nadine swallowed. “I’ll owe you,” she said.
“You don’t owe me anything yet,” Devon Donovan said. “Not until we’ve done this. But if it comes to that, and you’d feel better feeling like you’re in my debt, then I’ll think of something you can give me in return.”
And just like that, her blood spiked hot. No. That isn’t what he meant at all. Besides, that would be barbaric. He just meant money, or something.
But Devon didn’t elaborate. “I’ll be at your door at six tomorrow, Sheriff,” he said in his near growl, pushing open the passenger door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
10
Devon didn’t know why he’d done it. Why he’d gone to Nadine, waited for her, made his plans around her. The Silverman needed to be killed swiftly and quietly, like a rogue wolf. Instead of doing that, he’d brought in the cops.
It made no sense, and yet his wolf was pleased. His wolf, who had been driven to hunt for weeks alone in the mountains, was happy to be sitting in a police cruiser with Nadine Walker, in a parking lot in the middle of Pierce Point, making plans to go into the mountains with a human—at a human’s pace, with a human’s dulled senses—to arrest his mortal enemy. It was like the entire world had gone crazy.
When he left her he found a spot just outside of town and turned. His wolf hunted, ate, and then found a quiet place to rest, waiting for dawn. He slept very little, but he didn’t need much sleep. Instead he simply waited, half dozing, impervious to cold and discomfort, his wolf senses awake to any potential danger. His human thoughts slowed when he was a wolf. They didn’t shut down, but they became thick as molasses, not sharp and urgent. The wolf stopped thinking and simply was. It was the state that was half of any shifter, be he wolf, bear, fox, or eagle. The state that centered him and kept him whole. It was why a shifter who could not shift—like, say, the year his brother Ian had spent in a human prison—became increasingly miserable and panicked. Being a wolf made every shifter remember what was important, made all of the human complications fall away.
As the sky turned gray he shifted back and put on his clothes. He’d brought a small pack with supplies, mostly food and fire tools. He cleaned up in a nearby stream, because he didn’t want her to think he smelled bad again. Then he walked back into town and made his way to her apartment.
It hadn’t been hard to learn where she lived. That was where Ian’s mate, Anna, had come in again. She was good with things like internet searches and databases and passwords, and Pierce Point wasn’t very big. “Try not to scare the hell out of her,” she’d advised him when she’d given him the address, which he’d memorized in his head. “Human women prefer it when you knock. It gives a better impression.”
She’d been laughing, probably because, like Heath, she was on to him. Those who were mated seemed to know every damn thing. But Devon didn’t care. He should have taken her advice, though, instead of just jumping into Nadine’s car. Maybe if he wanted a chance at his mate, he should listen to the women in his life now and then.
Now there was a thought. Two thoughts, actually. A chance at his mate—he’d never considered that he had one. And the women in his life—he’d never had that either. He liked both Anna and Tessa. It was a change for the better. Charlie hadn’t had many women around, and the ones he did—Devon didn’t like to think about that. He’d rather not think about that ever again.
He didn’t really have a chance with Nadine, he thought as he entered her apartment building and climbed the stairs. Not yet. But yesterday, sitting in the cruiser with her, he’d caught the faintest whiff of something. A scent, coming from her. Subtle, but most definitely there.
Arousal.
His wolf had recognized it instantly. She was aroused by him, or at least she had been yesterday. It would take time, and perhaps it would never happen—but if his wolf couldn’t have Nadine as a mate, he’d gladly go to bed with her instead. As many times as she wanted, as many ways as she wanted. If she was willing, he’d take her until she begged him to stop.
Yes, he’d gladly do that. But today was not that day.
He knocked on her apartment door—see, he really had listened to Anna—and she opened it immediately. She was out of uniform, wearing dark cargo pants, a t-shirt, a zip-up jacket. She had hiking boots on, her b
rown hair was pulled back in its braid, and she wore no makeup. He fought the urge to pick her up, carry her to her bed, and strip her of every stitch. Instead he stood in the doorway, silent as always, not daring to come over the threshold.
“I’m ready,” she said, and he forced his gaze away, up to the ceiling as he caught his breath.
She didn’t seem to notice. She grabbed a light backpack with a bedroll attached to it, swung it up, and came into the hall, locking the door behind her. He’d only had time to see that she had a small and tidy place, with a neat sofa and TV, a kitchen table big enough for one. His wolf senses didn’t detect the smell of a man here—not now, and not recently, if at all. His wolf was very pleased.
“We’ll take my SUV,” she said, which was fine with him, since he didn’t even own a car. He almost never left Shifter Falls, and if he needed to travel longer distances, he did it as a wolf, though travel with his injured leg was slower than it used to be.
He headed for the front door of her lobby, but she gripped his wrist, stopping him in his tracks. “Side door,” she said. “Closer to the parking lot.” Her eyes told him the truth: she wanted no chance that anyone would see the sheriff of Grant County leaving her apartment with a werewolf. Human politics again, but with her hand on his wrist, Devon could not disobey. He followed as she led him to the side door.
“Here’s where we’re going,” he said when they were in her SUV, pulling a hand-drawn map from his pocket and unfolding it. Nadine’s gaze traveled over the lines Anna had drawn on the page, first in bemusement and then in comprehension. “I know where this is,” she said. “I haven’t been there before, though. You’re right, the roads will only take us here.” She pointed to one of the lines on the edge of the map. “The original roads fell into disuse decades ago, and are probably gone.”
“We walk from there,” Devon said. He realized he hadn’t spoken yet. His manners, maybe, were one of the reasons he’d never landed his mate. “There’s water here, and deadfall of rock in this valley”—he pointed, his arm brushing hers—“but we should get there by afternoon. The walk will be a good four hours in tricky terrain. Not enough time to get back before dark.”
