Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  Another minute. Another. Still another.

  And then, there she was!

  Snow flew through the air as she erupted from the white powder, her nose guiding her as she arced through the air like a furred missile. She plummeted to the earth without a sound, only growling as her jaws locked tight around the rabbit’s neck, cracking it with a swift bite and twist. Thumper only had a moment to whimper before its life was gone, snuffed out by our little orphan from Oklahoma.

  When Mary had come to us, she’d been a poor hunter, unsure of her skills or her size. She hadn’t even wanted to run with us or to even meet us in our wolf form, which was understandable. When the only shifters you knew were your family, and they were suddenly taken from you with no warning or reason, you might be a little touchy about sharing that side of your life.

  I could understand where she was coming from. I was still uncertain of my own wolf form. The other guys all seemed to be able to control themselves while they were in their wolf forms, but sometimes it took me every ounce of will I had to keep my instincts in check. I never really had problems with humans, but something about the smell of wild game and prey just lit up my predator’s brain like the Griswold house on Christmas.

  Eventually, though, Peter was able to coax Mary from her shell and get her to come run with us.

  And now she’d done it! She made her first kill of the winter!

  All around her, we yipped and yelped in excitement, and went bounding through the heavy snow as we went to congratulate her on her prize.

  She whimpered excitedly, holding it up by the ears for all to see—a dark form of brownish, gray fur, dripping fat crimson drops onto the snow as she shook it happily like a puppy with a new toy.

  She turned and dropped the rabbit’s corpse in front of Peter’s, its body still warm and blood still flowing. She nosed it towards him, pushing it through the accumulated powder. It was his right to take the first bite of his pack’s kill.

  He turned and looked at all of us, his face solemn. Then he broke into one of his rare wolf-grins, his eyes gleaming with pride, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. He took a perfunctory bite, just a nibble, then nosed it back to her. It was her kill. She deserved it, not him.

  Mary panted back, looking around at all of us, her eyes human beneath twitching brows. We all nodded and whimpered in agreement with Peter. This was her first of the season. She could share on the next one.

  She tore into it, and all of us, all of her surrogate brothers-slash-uncles, looked on with pride as she ripped meat and sinew from bone, tore fur from flesh, and swallowed her big bites in a rush.

  This pack was different from the one I’d first been with. This one respected each other. Frost Security was a unit, not a way to flex our own egos or push our own agendas. We focused on the mission, on the individual cases, on the hunt. On supporting each other.

  After Mary finished devouring her fallen prey, we headed back through the woods to the two cars we’d parked off one of the roads. Mary and Peter were in front, blazing the trail, Frank and Matt followed behind, and Richard and I brought up the end.

  Even as I trekked back through the snow with them, though, I found myself thinking back to the desert of my youth, of the hot summer days and stark landscape. It was so unlike this place. Sure, both were unforgiving and indifferent. But one wasn’t covered in snow for almost half the year.

  And then there were the people, too. A throng of the masses, all pushing and pulling and striving every which way possible. From the wealthiest of the wealthy up in the hills of LA, to the poorest of the poorest of the poor living on Skid Row. Everyone wanted something different, even if it was really the same in the end: acceptance, a chance to live, power over their own lives.

  Here, it wasn’t too different, either. That was part of why you moved to the middle of nowhere. To be on your own, to not see a soul. To know that when you hear a noise outside your window, it’s because of a wild animal or just a falling branch. But, still, to have a community when you went into town. Because with just a few thousand people living in the area, you couldn’t be too picky on who your friends were.

  Behind a stand of trees where we’d hung our clothes, we all shook our fur free of ice and slush and began to change back. Mary, of course, had her own secluded stand off to the side. The rest of us had all been in the military, though. If you couldn’t handle group showers, you weren’t going to last through even basic.

  Shifting was a painful process. The slower you took it, the easier the remolding of muscular and skeletal structures was on your body. I took it slow tonight, not wanting to make myself any more uncomfortable than I was going to be with the colder-than-ice snow that I was in up to my ankles.

  The wind changed direction as my pack mates and I began to shift.

  And that was when I smelled something. Something like the desert on those hot summer days. Spicy, dry, the scent of flowering succulents as they tried to absorb enough water to last them over months and months of drought.

  Before my nose shifted its structure, before my teeth had begun to retract into my jaw, before my ears had begun to shorten and shift around to the sides of my head, I smelled it from somewhere south, from down towards Enchanted Rock.

  Pausing my shift, the cold biting into my now naked flesh, I whipped my head that way. I breathed deep, taking in more of that fragrance, and whimpered through half-man and half-wolf vocal cords. Sand, rock, the open vistas and arid wind filled my nose, and pushed away all my other thoughts. Rather than causing my blood to rise, though, something else happened. I began to calm, began to settle into myself. The desire to run, unchecked through the woods, seemed to recede.

  “Jake?” Richard asked from behind me. “You okay, man? You stopped shifting.”

  The wind shifted again, now blowing away the scent.

  I whimpered again, the urge to hunt rising in me. No, I wanted it back!

  “Jake?” he asked again.

  I turned back to look at him and realized my whole pack was watching me as I sat there like some deformed wolf-creature, hairless, my legs twisted, the pain throbbing through my whole body. Shifters weren’t meant to stay in this form. We were meant to be wolf or man. Nothing more, nothing less.

  At least, that’s what Alex had always said.

  But I couldn’t help that I’d stopped. That scent had just been too overpowering. Like it had reached in through my nasal cavity, grabbed hold of my brain, and gave it as good a shake as Mary earlier gave to Thumper.

  “Wayne?” Peter, already buttoning up his flannel over his thermal underwear, barked like a drill sergeant. “Finish up. Let’s go.”

  I whimpered again and nodded, forcing myself to complete the transformation. Before I was done, Peter and Richard had already gone off to start the cars and get them warmed up for the drive home. I scrambled and began to pull on my clothes I’d hung from a low branch before I’d shifted, my feet freezing in the snow. “Sorry, guys,” I mumbled. “I just—I smelled something. When the wind shifted.”

  Matt and Frank just exchanged a look, eyebrows raised. “Ain’t smelled like nothing to me, pardner,” Frank said, his words practically dripping with his Texan drawl. “Just pines and spruce, same as everywhere else out here.”

  I shook my head and looked at Matt as I shivered in the cold.

  “Don’t look at me, Jake,” he said as I pulled on my thermal undershirt. “I didn’t smell fire or anything. Maybe it’s just the cold getting to you? It happens.”

  I shrugged and finished buttoning my flannel. Seemed like neither of them would believe me if I’d told them what I’d picked up on the wind. And why should they? Our noses were almost better than our eyes at picking up details. I put my socks and boots back on.

  Finally dressed against the cold, I pulled my heavy Carhartt coat on and stomped after Matt and Frank and the rest of my pack. I shook my head again, trying to free the memory of that strange fragrance from my mind. But, try as I might, I still couldn’t get
rid of it, even during the hour-long trek back down the highway to the Frost Security office on the edge of Enchanted Rock. It was like an itch at the back of your brain that you just couldn’t scratch.

  I jumped out of the back of Peter’s old Bronco when we pulled up to the gravel lot outside the office. I took a deep breath, hoping to catch another whiff of the elusive scent and get some clue, see if it had come from here.

  Nothing.

  Maybe it had all been in my head?

  “Alright, gentlemen,” Peter called from where he was standing beside his Bronco. Mary was still in the passenger seat, buckled up and shivering against the cold even in the heated cab. “See you tomorrow morning, oh-nine-hundred. Bright and early.”

  “Roger,” I said as I fished my keys from my pocket and went over to my old Chevy I’d picked up for when my bike was in bad weather storage. “Oh-nine.”

  I climbed into the cab of my truck and cranked the engine. It was sluggish at first, but the engine finally turned over on the second try. My mind began to wander as I sat there in the freezing cold, hugging myself to stay warm as the pickup heated and the oil got circulating.

  Back when I was on the force, I’d sometimes catch a case and it just wouldn’t let go. A husband clearly murdered in the course of a breaking and entering. A wife forced off the road in a hit-and-run. A man who tried to eat his own gun one bullet at a time. On the surface, they all looked like accidents or suicides. No foul play. But then I’d catch a stray scent that just didn’t belong. Another man’s cologne that I’d smelled on the newly minted widow. A husband who smelled like fresh roses hours after he’d been told of his wife’s death. The smell of too many different kinds of gun lubricant, when there should have been only one on a suicide.

  Or the stray scent of flowery succulents in the icy pine forests of the Rocky Mountains.

  I was going to find out where that smell had come from. No matter what.

  Chapter Two - Elise

  Damn, Colorado was cold.

  I stood on Enchanted Rock’s Main Street, looking both ways, not sure where I should even start to look for my little sister. The raucous mess I called my hair never stayed put, no matter how much I tried to contain it, and I had to tuck a stray black curl back beneath my beanie to keep it out of my eyes as I tried to weigh my options.

  The Curious Turtle? What kind of weird name was that? Probably an art gallery, the kind of place that sold local and regional schtick to the rich tourists. Back home, outside Santa Fe, it was all turquoise and silver jewelry and Navajo sand art. Here it was probably some Pueblo pottery and paintings of deer and mountains. Maybe a bear or wolf thrown in for good measure. The east coasters always went wild for the southwestern crap my parents’ friends had peddled, and the Texas oil money loved anything with mountains in it. Probably because half their state looked like the top of a mesa.

  It just went to show that, even if you haven’t been outside your home state, you’ve still come pretty close to seeing it all. The grass isn’t always greener. It’s just a different shade.

  Down at the corner of the nearest intersection was a coffee shop, and, a little past that, a small diner named Dixie’s. The desk clerk at the motel I’d stayed in the night before, after the Greyhound had dropped me in the freezing cold, had pointed me that way when I’d asked about places to eat. Said it was cheap and good—both words magic to my ears. And my rapidly shrinking pocketbook.

  I cursed Eve under my breath as I shivered against the cold. It was her fault I was all alone in this damn place. Back home would have been cold right now, too, but at least I’d be indoors. Not that that would have fixed any of my loneliness. Not with Pops gone.

  Nope. This was Eve’s fault. If I’d gone after her right away, as soon as she’d left home, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I probably could have caught her before she even hopped on the bus up here. But, like he’d pointed out, she was technically an adult since she was over eighteen. She wasn’t a little girl, even if she acted like one half the time. Bringing her back against her will would have been kidnapping.

  I could still remember him telling me he didn’t like to see his two daughters fight. It was the worst thing in the world to him, and he’d rather just let the cancer eat his lungs and bones than see me drag her home by her ear to his bedside.

  “Stupid old man.” Immediately, I frowned. “Sorry, Pops,” I said to his spirit. “Didn’t mean it. You know I love you.”

  I stripped my gloves off and pulled a postcard from Eve out of my pocket. We’d received it a few months ago, and it was already starting to fall apart. Carrying it around in my hip pocket like that probably hadn’t helped things.

  The card was a picture of the Rocky Mountains from a plane flying low. Peaks covered in pine trees stretched back, covering the valleys. A little ribbon of asphalt threaded down the middle, clinging for dear life to the sides of the mountains as it wove its way through. It was beautiful. All blues and greens, the sky stretching out until it hit the snow-covered tops. “COLORADO!” was printed in orange on the bottom right, giving you a clear view of all the state had to offer.

  Eve had sent her postcard from this little town in the middle of the mountains, but that was all I really had to go on. I flipped it over, frowning more deeply as I ran a chipped nail with flecks of red polish still coming off beneath the inked words.

  Sorry, Elise. I couldn’t watch.

  Which meant I’d had to. Alone. I sighed and stuffed the card back into my pocket.

  A post office was across the way, one of those little rent-your-own-box mailing services that you could still find in some small towns. It was the kind of place a girl could pick up a postcard and mail it off, all in one go.

  I stepped out into the slush-filled road, looking both ways for traffic. It was still early in the morning, not much later than eight, and there were a few cars on the road. I stepped between the cars, and gave a wave of appreciation to an old Jeep that had slowed enough to let me cross. I peered through the postal shop’s window, hands cupped to cut the glare.

  A young woman, maybe Eve’s age or so, with bright red hair and black highlights stood at the counter. She and a teenage boy that looked about the same age giggled together over paper to-go coffee cups.

  I pulled open the front door, the bell jingling over the top as it opened, and stepped inside.

  Neither glanced my way as I looked around, my eyes still adjusting to the change in light. There, in one of the corners, stood a spinner rack that was loaded with postcards, all containing different pictures and colors.

  “We going over to Sammy’s house tonight still?” the boy asked in a low tenor, like he’d just hit puberty a couple years before. “His parents are out of town, and he’s having that get-together.”

  The girl sighed. “Yeah, if Peter doesn’t have me working late again.” Her voice was high, almost musical.

  “Come on, you promised. We haven’t really hung out all week.”

  “I know, I know, I get it. Why do you think I brought you a coffee this morning?”

  “I see how it is.”

  One ear barely following the conversation, I moved around the rack and thumbed through the cards, trying to find a match. Nothing. I growled in frustration. “Excuse me?” I asked loudly, looking at the couple.

  “Just trying to butter me up so you can stand me up.”

  “Oh, it’s not–”

  “Excuse me?”

  The kids both stopped and looked at each other, the girl’s face a little shocked I’d intruded, the boy’s chagrined that he was falling so flat at his job. It was then that I realized they were both holding hands on top of the counter. “Sorry, ma’am.” He winced. “What can I help you with?”

  I frowned at myself, remembering what it was like to have been all unicorns and rainbows about a cute guy. They were young and in puppy love. I sighed and pulled out the wrinkled postcard and stepped over to them.

  “I’m not from around here, and I was wondering if you coul
d help me. Someone I’m looking for, my little sister actually, mailed this to me from Enchanted Rock a few months back, and I was wondering if you might have seen her?”

  The young man looked it over, flipped it, and read the back. “Well, it looks like it was mailed from here. But I don’t remember us ever carrying this card before.” He showed it to his girlfriend. “Lacy?”

  She took it, her eyes searching over the image longer, her lips pursed tightly. I thought she might have recognized the image, but finally she flipped the card back to the front and shook her head.

  I reached into my back pocket and grabbed my old cellphone, pulling up my pictures and searching until I found one of me and Eve at our father’s last birthday. Both of us smiled brightly into the cell phone’s camera, our long black curls cascading around our faces, and both sets of eyes the same vibrant hazel. That was back when we were happy enough, before we knew the king had come to live in our father’s lungs.

  “Seen her, maybe?” I asked hopefully as I handed them the phone.

  Both looked at the image intently. “No,” the boy said, shaking his head. “She’s pretty, though. You two could be twins.” His face immediately flushed red and he glanced up at his frowning girlfriend.

  “No,” said the girl, Lacy, passing the postcard back to me. “Might check down at Dixie’s, though. People pass through here a lot, but most end up there for a quick bite to eat. The waitresses remember people sometimes. A lot of locals eat breakfast or lunch there, too. Maybe someone else saw her?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I bit my lip in thought. “Any idea where else they might have sold this postcard? Where she might have bought it, I mean?”

  The clerk blew out a sigh. “Gee, I dunno, ma’am. I mean, the Rock is a tourist trap, you know? Probably easier to say what place doesn’t have postcards around here.”

  I laughed a little despite the sort-of dead end. “Yeah, I get it. I’m from outside Santa Fe.”

  They both giggled a little.