Wolf Instinct

by Paige Tyler

  “That’s the part I’m hoping you can help with.” He picked up a handful of fries from her plate, careful not to cross-contaminate. And who said chivalry was dead? “We’ve been following Stefan, hoping he’d lead us to his uncle, but he doesn’t do much beside hang out in clubs, gambling joints, and strip clubs, staring at attractive women and looking like a bloody pervert.”

  Stefan’s behavior tonight, along with the criminal background Zane mentioned, painted this particular pervert as a good suspect in the recent disappearances she was investigating. And maybe the other ones Christine had been tracking as well. Alyssa had no idea how the body in the landfill drained of blood or the Curtis family–slash–Black Swan Enterprises angle played into this yet.

  “This is the part where you share what you know,” Zane pointed out. “Since I’m being so friendly and all.”

  Alyssa considered pulling the it’s complicated card but decided against it. The Dallas cop had done his part. She had a name to work with now. She knew how to play nice when she had to—even if she couldn’t tell him everything.

  “Three attractive young women disappeared about a month ago.” She pulled out her phone and flipped through the photos she had of the girls. “Lindsay Carr, Stacie Bryant, and Georgie Sparks. Over the past few years, other people have gone missing in this part of LA, all fitting the same profile. All attractive and young. All the kind of people who can disappear without anyone noticing.”

  Zane grimaced at that. She knew the feeling. It sucked they still lived in a world where some people were invisible and didn’t seem to matter. She considered telling him about the blood-drained body in the landfill but checked herself. That piece of info was too valuable to let go of right now.

  “Something tells me the twins at the club tonight fit your profile, too. Girls that wouldn’t be missed.”

  “That’s my thought,” she said. “Christine will look into it once she gets them IDed.”

  “What brought you to the club tonight?” he asked.

  She shrugged and sipped her Diet Coke. “A rumor. Some street kids suggested the three girls might have been in there the night they disappeared.”

  “Not much to go on.”

  “I’ve made do with less.”

  Zane gestured at the remaining few fries on her plate. She nodded, watching as he devoured them.

  “You ever notice how food from someone else’s plate always seems to taste better than the stuff on yours?” he asked.

  “Really? Huh.” She considered that. “Maybe next time, you’ll let me try something from your plate, so I can see what I think.”

  That charming smile curved his sensual mouth again, his expression suggesting he was still hungry even after everything he’d already eaten. She wasn’t sure if it was food he was hungry for, though.

  “Is that your way of saying you’d like there to be a next time?” he asked.

  She hadn’t been thinking anything like that. Are you sure? a little voice scoffed. Regardless, she didn’t bother to respond to the subtle nudge.

  “So, is the LA field office so overloaded with missing persons cases they’ve started sending agents out completely on their own?” He picked up his tea, gazing at her over the rim of the cup. “Or is there something I’m missing?”

  Alyssa hesitated. How could she explain she had nothing to do with the LA field office and that all the agents in her division worked alone until they had something concrete enough to justify calling in for backup? That’s how things worked when there were only eight agents covering these kinds of cases for the entire United States.

  But Zane was regarding her expectantly, so it wasn’t like she could completely ignore the question. Especially since she blew off his barely disguised dinner invite.

  “Just a matter of too much work and not enough people to do it,” she said.

  Zane regarded her thoughtfully, his right hand coming up to rub the slight scruff covering his jawline as his gaze drifted from her eyes, down her neck, then centered on her chest for a while. Okay, he was seriously gawking at her boobs. She’d expected him to look at some point, because, hello…men and boobs! But she had to admit, she hadn’t thought he’d choose this moment to do it.

  “What were you planning to do with those men who were kidnapping those girls?” he asked, lifting his gaze to hers again.

  “I was planning to follow them, hoping they’d lead me back to the other three missing girls,” she said, knowing even as she said the words that her answer wouldn’t be well received.

  His eyes narrowed. “You were going to let them kidnap the girls?”

  She didn’t need to hear him say the words out loud to make her feel like crap. She already had that covered. “It’s not a scheme I’m proud of, but I need to do something to find those three missing girls—maybe even find out something about the other people who’ve disappeared. I was going to stay right on their tail.”

  “And if you’d lost them in this charming LA traffic?” he asked in a flat tone. “Then you’d have five missing girls, not three.”

  “Like I said, it wasn’t my preferred plan. Trust me, I know what it’s like to get grabbed by a bunch of lowlifes.” She also knew what it was like to be afraid for her life, terrified those lowlifes were going to kill her. She shook off the memory. “But those girls have been missing since December. I had to do something or accept that the next time I saw them would be in a morgue in a condition no one should have to deal with.”

  Alyssa silently cursed herself for letting him get to her. Since when did she lose her cool so easily? And when the hell did she start allowing personal history to slip into a conversation she was having with a man she’d met a few hours ago? Especially a man she had no reason to trust.

  She was still trying to breathe through the anger bubbling up inside her when Zane leaned forward and rested his right hand on top of her left. His was much bigger than hers. Warm and strong, too. Alyssa almost shook off the contact, but then his gaze caught hers and she stopped herself. Those eyes of his made it damn near impossible to think.

  “I’m sorry I second-guessed you,” he said. “I’ve had people do that a few times and never thought much of it. You were in an impossible situation. If you stopped those guys and had them arrested, Stefan would have hired some fancy lawyers to get them out within a few hours. They’d never tell you anything about those other girls, and worse, Stefan would know the FBI was looking at him. It was a no-win. You had to act on your feet and make the call. You did what you had to do. I get it.”

  Alyssa had no idea why she cared what a SWAT cop from Dallas thought, but for whatever reason, she did. “Thanks.”

  Amy chose that moment to stop by the table with the checks. Zane pulled his hand away from hers, giving Alyssa a chance to get her bearings back. By the time she did, she realized he’d grabbed her bill and was slipping a couple twenties into the cheap plastic folder to cover everything.

  “You don’t need to do that,” she said, reaching across the table.

  Zane put a single finger on it and slowly moved it farther away from her. Wow, that single-finger thing was sexy. In a tempting I-could-be-running-this-same-finger-all-over-your-body kind of way.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You can cover it next time.”

  She lifted a brow. “What makes you think there’ll be a next time? I understand what you’re trying to do here, I really do. But this is an FBI case. You and your two friends from Dallas don’t have any jurisdiction out here.”

  Alyssa expected something witty and charming out of Zane. Instead, he stood up, reminding her just how tall he was. “It’s obvious there’s some kind of overlap between the missing girls and our missing police chief. It’s also obvious we can help each other, regardless of our lack of jurisdiction. But if that’s not something you’re interested in, fine. You do your thing. We’ll do ours.”

  “You know that if I see you again in an official capacity, I’m not going to be able to ignore the whole juri
sdiction thing. I can’t.”

  She felt crappy for going down that road. But the truth was, Alyssa had no idea if she could trust Zane. Even if she could, there was no way she could let him get involved in this case. Not when her instincts were screaming this thing was going to get freaky. He was a cop from Texas. He wasn’t ready to deal with her world. Unless he was freaky himself. In which case, she definitely didn’t want him involved.

  Zane’s mouth quirked. “What makes you think you’ll ever see me again if I don’t want you to?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but he was already pushing open the glass door of the diner with its tinkling bell and stepping out, leaving Alyssa with the craziest sensation that he was right about her never seeing him again if he didn’t want her to. For some crazy reason, that left her feeling disappointed.

  Alyssa didn’t know she was up and moving until the two waitresses behind the cash register caught her eye, making her slow.

  “Damn, girl,” Edna said. “Don’t walk after that man. Run!”

  Alyssa tried to stop herself, knowing it was a stupid idea, but her feet refused to listen. Before she knew it, she was running across the diner parking lot. Then she did stupid one better and jumped in front of his SUV to force him to stop.

  “I’m staying at the Westin near the airport, off West Century Boulevard. Room 381,” she said, breathing harder than the limited exertion dictated as Zane opened his window. “You should stop by in the morning, so we can figure out how we can make this work.”

  He was silent for a moment, then smiled. And just like that, her breathing suddenly seemed easier. “See you in the morning, then. If you want, you can pay for breakfast.”

  Alyssa nodded and watched him drive away, wondering why she was disappointed she hadn’t gotten a first-date kiss. Then she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned back to find the two waitresses, the short-order cook, and half a dozen customers standing there with big smiles on their faces and their thumbs up in the air.

  Yeah, she should have gotten that kiss.

  * * *

  Alyssa was so tired by the time she got back to her room she almost skipped the mandatory check-in with her boss. But she did the right thing and yanked out her phone to send him a text, asking if he wanted to Skype. If she didn’t, he’d be calling her nonstop for the rest of the night, interrupting what little sleep she hoped to get.

  Pulling out her agency-issued laptop from the bag she kept it in, she clicked on the Skype icon and waited for her boss to connect. Her computer buzzed less than a minute later. She opened the call to see her oh-so-chipper boss staring back at her. Damn, it was like four o’clock in the morning in DC. She could see kitchen cabinets behind him, so she knew he was still at home, but sheesh, did the man ever sleep?

  Obviously, he did. Just not when his agents were about to go into unknown situations completely on their own. Which was frequently.

  Alyssa pretended not to notice the sigh of relief he let out when he saw her in one piece. Within the agency, Special Agent in Charge Nathan McKay had the reputation of being a tough man to work for, even bordering on scary. When it came to the standards he set for his team and the effort he expected from each of them, it was probably a well-earned reputation. But when it came to caring about his agents and doing anything and everything necessary to protect them, there was no one she’d rather work for. He was one of the senior federal agents in charge of the joint FBI-CIA task force she worked on known as the Special Threat Assessment Team—aka STAT—and he’d hand selected every member of the team. He’d gone to the mat for each of them on more than one occasion. He treated them as more than just people who worked for him. He treated them like family.

  “Everything go okay tonight?” he asked, moving his head a little to the side like he could somehow get a better view through the laptop camera that way. “Did you find anything worthwhile?”

  “Yeah. I think I might have gotten lucky.”

  Alyssa had to hold in the laugh threatening to slip out. Talk about a Freudian slip.

  Nathan stood at his kitchen counter, looking at her expectantly from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “And?”

  Crap, she’d been so busy thinking about Zane and that kiss she didn’t get she’d zoned out for a second. But hell, she’d chased him down like some woman in a romantic comedy. The least he could have done was lean forward with an offer. It’s not like she would have actually accepted.

  “Alyssa?” Nathan prompted. “Everything okay?”

  “Sorry.” She gave him a small smile. “I was just trying to get my thoughts in order. Anywho, tonight was…different. I was at the club and saw this extremely rich, extremely creepy guy blatantly setting up two girls for an abduction. He had four Neanderthals with him, and it was obvious they’d done this before. Everything was matching the profile for the other abductions, so when Mr. Creepy split with one of his Neanderthals, I was all set to follow the other three out the back with the girls when things got interesting.”

  Nathan picked up his coffee mug and took a sip. “Define interesting.”

  “It turns out I wasn’t the only one watching Mr. Creepy. There were three SWAT cops there, and while two of them stuck with Mr. Creepy, the other one took it upon himself to rescue the girls.”

  “By himself?”

  Alyssa shrugged. “I ended up helping, but I’m not sure if it was necessary. This guy was impressive. And maybe a little different. He put two of the Neanderthals down without breaking a sweat.”

  Nathan’s blue eyes narrowed. “You think he’s special?”

  She considered that, hesitant to say it out loud. But she finally nodded. “I think so. He’s a big man, but still, no human could be that strong. He growled, too. And I’m pretty sure I saw a flash of yellow coming from his eyes at one point.”

  Alyssa considered mentioning he ate food like it was going out of style but decided against it. That admission would invariably lead to questions about her having dinner with him, and she didn’t want to get into that with her boss.

  “Any idea exactly what we’re dealing with?”

  “None,” she admitted. “But for what it’s worth, we talked, and while he’s definitely dangerous, he doesn’t strike me as a threat. In fact, I think he can help with this case. There’s definitely something strange going on here with these disappearances.”

  Nathan regarded her for a few moments. “I trust your instincts, Alyssa, but I think you need to start from the top, maybe without skimping on the details this time.”

  She sighed, then did as he asked, trying to make logical sense out of everything that had happened that night…minus most of the diner stuff. She couldn’t say why she didn’t want to tell her boss about that part, other than the fact that breaking bread with a possible supernatural creature wasn’t normal protocol. In some ways, it felt like she was lying to her dad, but her instincts told her to stick a sock in it, so she did.

  Nathan frowned throughout a good portion of the conversation, but he did that most of the time anyway. He interrupted frequently with pointed questions, and more than once, he gave her a look suggesting he knew she was keeping stuff from him. But in the end, he promised he’d do complete background checks on Zane, Stefan, ex-police chief Randy Curtis, and Black Swan Enterprises. Though he said he’d have to tread carefully around Black Swan.

  “They’re a big organization with a lot of lawyers and IT security types on the payroll,” her boss said. “We have to do this the right way or risk tipping them off we’re looking at them.”

  Alyssa knew Nathan was right about that. A company like Black Swan was savvy enough to pay attention to every little ripple in the web that concerned them. But still, she chafed at the idea of going slowly on something like this.

  “I understand. Do what you can. And while you’re busy digging, see what you can find out about the Dallas SWAT team, too,” she suggested. “Something tells me you’re going to find a whole bunch of weird around anything they’r
e involved in.”

  Nathan nodded and added a few more lines of scribble to the notes he’d been taking. When he was done, he looked up with a worried expression on his face. “You going to be okay handling this one on your own for a while longer, or should I get some backup out there?”

  Alyssa smiled. “Do you really have anyone free to send?”

  Another frown. “Not really. But I’ll pull someone off another case if I have to.”

  She’d known that was what Nathan was going to say before the words were even out of his mouth. There were never enough people to do the job. Hence, the unwritten rule of you’re on your own until you confirmed there was a reason to send in other members of the team.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I got this.”

  Nathan hung up a few minutes later, leaving Alyssa sitting on her bed, tired, thinking about tomorrow’s meeting with Zane, and wondering if she really did have this.

  Chapter 3

  Zane stood outside Room 381 in the Westin with his eyes closed, no doubt in his mind he had the right room. The scent slipping from beneath the door in front of him was obviously Alyssa’s. There was no other woman in the world with pheromones that amazing. He let the incredible flowery, chocolatey, cinnamony aroma wash over him. He refused to consider why she smelled so damn nice when other women simply smelled…normal. But it would be a lie to say the thought of Alyssa being The One for him hadn’t intruded on his thoughts as he lay in bed at the motel last night. An appealing, impossible-to-ignore scent had been how all the other guys in the Pack had described the smell emanating from their soul mates.

  But Alyssa wasn’t his soul mate. Zane was certain of that. For one thing, he had no damn time to be thinking about anything other than finding Curtis and putting an end to the bloody hunters trying to kill everyone he cared about. For another, it was a safe assumption a person had to have a soul to have a soul mate. His had been burned out long ago.