by Lyn Brittan
Someplace like the refrigerated van they were in right now.
She looked at him and then back out the window. He wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t have to. They were out of options. She turned around in the middle of the street and made a frenzied beeline to one of the busiest strip malls in town.
Baron scrambled into his seatbelt with one hand and braced the dashboard with the other. “Something come to mind?”
“Yeah. This.”
“This?”
She swirled her finger in the air. “This.”
“Don’t look so proud baby. It’s creepy as hell. You’re right, though. This thing has a standby mode. She’ll stay cool for a couple of days. Why are these words coming out of my mouth?”
She smiled at her genius, but guilt ran that off her face real fast. “We need to take care of this today. She deserves better.”
“We go back to the restaurant, scrub the place clean, change and then follow that scent. This guy’s dead by nighttime.”
Chapter Fourteen
He’d come to this town to blend in and start over. Now he had a girl, her crazy sister and her dead boss in a glorified ice cream truck.
“Maybe we should call Kate,” Johanna said, still on her hands and knees wiping up blood.
“I can’t deal with her now.”
“But she has connections.”
“Dead body hiding connections?”
Johanna went to the sink for an un-red bucket of water. “Probably not.”
“Let’s hope.”
It took nonstop work, but they had the place scrubbed and cleaned by the first employee’s knock. It wouldn’t fool a wolf or a dragon, or even a human cop with a can of luminal, but no one else would notice a thing.
They left a skeleton crew of three behind to finish setup and slipped out under the guise of running last minute errands.
“You ready to go hunting, baby?”
“No. You?”
His first inclination was to make a joke, but there was nothing funny about this. His life hung in the balance and he didn’t have nearly as good a hand as he’d hoped. “No. But we’ll do what we need to.”
The trail wasn’t fresh, but consistent. Heat, plus exertions of murder, made following the killer easy. Pockets of his scent collected in the weirdest of places. Food stalls. Drug stores. Day care centers. He’d been near the clerk’s office and the parking lot too. The crime could have taken place in the former, but they weren’t so bold as to go inside and sniff around.
Johanna’s weird state of ‘technically still employed, but on medical leave after being shot’ put her in a precarious situation. If this whole thing went sideways, he didn’t want anyone linking Belinda’s first sign of disappearance with an unexpected reemergence of Johanna at the office.
Baron kept his head down and sprinted for Johanna’s car waiting two blocks away.
“He’s been outside, but their scents didn’t intermingle. Like two cars passing,” he said, sliding one hand near, but not touching, the other.
She tossed over Belinda’s phone. “The last app she had open was linked to her dating profile. She had something on the night of the murder.”
“With?”
She shrugged and pulled out into traffic. “Don’t know. I clicked on the account of the person she was talking to, but the profile’s been removed.”
“So we’re back to square one.”
“Not quite. The messages are still there. They had an evening picnic scheduled at Founder’s Park. It’s small, just a dozen or so eating areas. It totally makes sense. He needed a place where he could see everything around him. Let’s go.”
The woman, skittish of him when they’d first met and nearly destroyed by fate’s hand, now moved with composed, thoughtful purpose. They’d reversed roles somewhere along the way. Now here she was, bringing a calming spirit on the craziest day of his life. “You’re amazing, Johanna.”
“Huh? Oh, look.” She pointed out the window. “There’s the playground.”
The small, congested park buzzed with midmorning workout groups and mothers jogging behind baby strollers. They pulled in, got out and he pointed her off to the right of the circle while he hit the left. He hated to separate and kept an eye on her the entire time, but they needed to cover a lot of ground.
His senses analyzed everything else. The sound of his shoes sliding on the still slick walking track, ladies laughing as they walked and the acrid smells of burnt commercial coffee.
Then the wind shifted.
He turned to signal Johanna, but she was already running, cutting across the center of the paved walking circle. Baron nodded toward a roped off trail, but tried once more to get her to safety. “If I ask you to wait in the car…”
“I go where you go.”
“Will you at least promise to stay behind me?”
“No.”
Damn her, but he chuckled and he knew that this was right where she was meant to be, standing by his side. “I will never forgive you if you get yourself hurt.” There was no rush in the kiss he planted on her lips. He enjoyed her as if they had all the time in the world. She pulled away, but probably because she must have known he couldn’t.
“Stop acting like this’ll be the last time you get to do that.”
“I know it won’t be. When this is over, I’m going to give you a good life, Johanna.”
“That sounds kinda permanent.”
“It should sound very permanent. I’m not letting anyone take our future away. We are moments from beginning the rest of our lives. I go into this knowing that you’re my reward.” Then he took her hand and ducked into the brush.
They passed a series of tents that some unlucky few called home. Among their number were people who’d made the best of things. The areas outside their makeshift and lean-to homes were organized and neat. Freshly washed laundry hung on handmade lines. Dishes lay neatly stacked.
He kept his head down. It wasn’t just an issue of following his nose, but he didn’t want to make eye contact, nor give away any distinguishing features, beyond his size.
The trail led further back still, but he pulled Johanna off to the side as more and more people left for temporary work and panhandling. They sat, enclosed by bushes and young trees for at least an hour. As silence descended, they got up and continued deeper into the woods.
The bastard was smart. He’d chosen a remote place, but one where an influx of cops would have caused enough ruckus for him to escape. But why hang around? A smarter man would have killed and disappeared.
What more did he want? Revenge? Why? What had Baron done to anyone? He’d lived a good life, no enemies…at least not the type to try to pin two murders on him.
Maybe the former owner of the restaurant? Plausible, until you considered Wyoming.
Nothing made sense.
“We’re close.”
“Yeah.” The stench thickened here, mingling with the residue of Belinda’s blood. They weren’t just approaching a hideout. This was Belinda’s murder scene.
“How could he get a dead woman past those people,” Johanna asked. “There’s a whole community back there.”
“This isn’t the kind of place where you ask a lot of questions. People learn to ignore things. It’s easier. Society blames these folks – they for damned sure don’t help them or listen to what they have to say.”
“I don’t care. If I see a woman being dragged by some man—”
“They’ll assume she’s drunk or high. That’s as true here as it is downtown. Maybe you don’t remember, but I carried you while you were passed the hell out down Main Street, and not single person stopped me. People don’t care. They see what they want.”
“Yeah but…BARON!”
His name gave way to screams that churned his heart into tangled threads. “Johanna!”
She fell to the ground in a ball and replaced screaming with quick huffs of air. Her blood mingled with the wildflowers and distant campfires muddying his senses.
A snare of triple wire barbed rope wrapped around her leg. Its steel teeth bit out chunks of flesh each time she moved. He bent for a closer inspection. Shit! Not barbed wire. Razor wire. They sliced her delicate skin like a million tiny, vicious knives. “Baby?”
“I’m fine. Do you hear that?” She angled her head northeast. “Someone’s running and I know it’s him. He must have set this up. You can’t let him get away,” she huffed through gritted teeth. He reached for her leg, but she kicked him away with the unhindered one. “Go. What are you going to do – take it off? You’d destroy your hands and I’d be no better off. I have to stay and heal. You go.”
“Don’t ask me to leave you here.”
“I’m asking you to get the man trying to ruin us. Find the man who hurt me. You promised. This is your shot to make good on it. Take him down.”
“I love you,” was the last thing his human mouth said. Then he started running, ripping off his clothes and shifting into his wolf form midstride. He thought he heard her response of, “I love you too,” but that could have been nothing more than his mind giving voice to his hope. If he had any chance of having that belief realized, he needed to track the bastard down.
That stupid nose of his tried to act up again. He slowed as mind and emotions went to war with each other.
No!
Not today. This was too important. A single image of Johanna got his legs on track. He’d rip apart the man who hurt his Mate.
Rage grew as prey sweated with fear. Something caught the light out the corner of his eyes and he jumped, barely escaping a snare. He didn’t slow.
The man’s back came into view. The bastard turned.
Baron didn’t miss the glint of a gun. His powerful legs skidded, putting his forearms to the ground. The shot whizzed between his ears, grazing his withers. It hurt like hell, but thoughts of Johanna writhing in agony put it in perspective.
Panic tainted the air, but it wasn’t Baron’s.
The man turned and aimed again. Baron centered all his strength into his hind legs and soared, landing on the man’s chest yards away. Powerful jaws crushed the wrist that held the weapon until it went limp.
The man cried out for help. Baron’s shifting back to human form shut him up.
Well…it changed the tone of the conversation, at least.
“You’re a…a….what….”
Naked and bleeding, Baron kept his place over the supine and crying man. He felt no sympathy. “Did they cry? Nikki and Belinda? Who are you?”
“Werewolf!”
“I’m not the monster here. Who the fuck are you and why did you do it?” Baron sent a bone-shattering fist into the man’s jaw to loosen him up.
His eyes watered at impact and he smelled the murderer’s piss oozing through this pants.
“My…I’m Zed Corlin.”
“If that name’s supposed to mean something to me, try again.”
Zed’s face went red and his nostrils flared. With new energy, he struggled against the hands that held his shoulders down. Ordinarily Baron would have let the man tire himself out, but Johanna didn’t have time for that. He put a stop to the squirming with a crushing knee to the ribcage. “Try again.”
“That rich bitch deserved it. My mother slaved for her year after year…her whole damned life. That family took her away from her own children. They used her up.” The man lifted his head and slammed it back into the ground over and over again. Baron wasn’t going to stop him. He eased up and rocked onto his bare heels, content to watch the man self-destruct.
Johanna!
She was on the move. He scented her approach, but how had she freed herself? Baron tilted his head to better gauge her distance. In that split second of inattentiveness, the man made his move, producing a small caliber weapon from a front pocket. The shot ripped straight into his back. He shifted to his wolf once more and pounced, closing his lupine jaws around the man’s neck, making sure that Zed Corlin would never get a chance to hurt anyone ever again.
Weak, hurt and heart-heavy, Baron dragged the corpse further away from civilization, leaving nature to handle the rest.
*****
“I couldn’t possibly love you anymore than I do right now.”
Johanna smiled through her tears as he wound another layer of razor wire around a fallen tree branch. She bit into the stick in her mouth as he rolled the steel, popping it out of her flesh bit by bit. She hadn’t asked what happened. The killer’s blood hovered around Baron as dark as storm clouds.
It wasn’t the only scent on him. Gunpowder and wolf’s blood were in the air too. Had he healed already? Or were the wounds somewhere she couldn’t see? Before she could think more on it, Baron turned the wire again, unleashing another round of teeth-rattling pain.
The torture didn’t finish when he did. They needed to get out of the area without being noticed and that meant walking on her own once they got within eyeshot of the park patrons. Worse, she couldn’t even amble out here on four legs. Here she was in the perfect place to shift, and she didn’t have the energy to do it. Every speck of strength she had, had to go to healing and not screaming. “We need to come back here when this is over. Maybe not exactly here. Our wolves should run together every week. Sans bear traps.”
Baron scooped her up and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “There are plenty of places for us to go. Maybe around Christmas we can leave the restaurant for a few days and head out to Montana to see my folks. We might have to leave out this part of our courtship. Baby, that man…I…”
“Whatever you did back there, I know it was because you had to.”
“Me too. It still doesn’t make sense. Zed Corlin, that’s his name. Was. It doesn’t ring any bells.”
“He was crazy. There’s no accounting for his behavior. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just take me home.”
When they reached the outer ring of the tents, she started the stinging, throbbing task of walking on her own. If anyone noticed the torn pants or the strips of cloth wrapped around it and coated in red, they gave no indication.
The park itself was a different story. While parents talked and typed, their children were quick to notice her injuries. There was more laughter than screaming and Baron’s quick pointing to a group of birds nearby distracted the kids enough that they could jog ahead to the car.
The pounding pavement sent nails up her legs, but she was alive and so was Baron. Nothing mattered more than that.
“I’m going to take you home then deal with Belinda.”
“We’ll finish this together. Someone should be with her at the end.”
“Johanna, you can’t. No one can. She’s gone. We’ll find a place for her. And—”
“No. We’ll take her to the police or the fire department or—”
He sat her down in the car and kneeled next to the passenger’s seat, slowly lifting her legs into the vehicle. “We can’t do that.”
“We have to. I don’t think many people cared about her in life. I won’t do the same in her death.”
“This?”
“Yeah?”
He dropped a kiss on her forehead and closed her door, not answering until he got in on the other side. “This is why I love you.”
He knuckled away the tears running down her cheeks and she knew beyond any shadow of doubt, that she loved him too.
Chapter Fifteen
They’d settled on a compromise that night and called Jack in to help sort the situation. Despite Baron’s objections over owing dragons anything, she opened the door to Jack’s knock.
“How’s my favorite wolf couple? Is it here,” Jack asked.
“It?”
“Your sister.”
“What could you possibly…never mind.” She took a seat on the couch next to Baron and waited for Jack to join them.
The tall man sat on the arm of the loveseat, eyes shifting from her to Baron. “What’s wrong?”
“Where to begin?”
“The beginning. Wait. Am
I Hero Jack or Officer Jack right now?”
That sooooo depends. She cleared her throat and started talking. Halfway through the story, Baron wound up in handcuffs. Fair enough, it was right about the time they mentioned possessing the frozen corpse of a woman not yet reported missing.
“Is this really necessary?”
Jack shoved the pinioned Baron onto the couch before answering her. “Is that a serious question? I’ll put it to you this way. It’s as necessary as hiding a corpse. How’s that?”
“I can explain everything,” she said.
“Somebody better.”
“It’s just that Baron’s ex-girlfriend was killed too.”
Okay, not the best thing to say. Jack’s eyes went yellow and his fingers lengthened to claws. This proved too much for Baron, who broke free of his cuffs pretty freaking easily.
He shifted.
Then Jack shifted.
Wolves are big. Dragons, however, take up whole rooms.
Wolves have teeth. Dragons, have purple veined wings with spikes at the end. Never mind the eyes as big as her head. Shit.Shit.Shit.Shit.
“Guys, please stop. Just listen, Jack. Please. Baron’s been framed and we know the guy who did it. We killed him.”
Oh damn.
The huge, green head swiveled to her corner of the room. Golden scales of Jack’s underbelly shivered and quaked.
Well, them and the floor. It wasn’t built to sustain this kind of weight. She had to stop this right now or give her downstairs neighbors a hell of surprise.
“It’s the last robber, Jack. The man who shot me. You know his scent. All you have to do is go and see for—”
The door burst open and every head in the room, reptilian and mammalian, whirled to the sound of a cocking handgun.
“Kate?”
Her sister’s stilettos rapped across the floor. “Just tell me who to kill, sweetie. Both?”
“Neither.”
The shaggy wolf shook with such force that spit flung out the sides of his mouth.
Ditto for the dragon-lizard thing, now burping sulfur and coating her walls with slime.
“Damn. Care to tell me what all this is about?”
