by Zoe Chant
The wolf snarled, gathering itself to leap.
The woman took a deep breath, centering herself to shoot. She clearly wasn’t going to run, even though there was absolutely no guarantee she was going to be able to stop the wolf before it hit her, not with a handgun like that. And if he went for her throat—
No, Ty’s jaguar snarled.
No, Ty agreed, and sprang out from the underbrush to flank the woman.
She spun immediately, pointing her gun at him, and he took the opportunity to come forward so he was between the woman and the wolf.
The wolf, who was suddenly much less sure he wanted to attack.
Ty snarled. The wolf paced backwards a few steps.
The woman had apparently decided to go with Ty as an ally, because she shouted, “You better not run, Eli! I’m not alone out here, and you won’t get far. Come quietly, and no one else has to get hurt.”
The wolf hesitated. Ty took a step forward and snarled again, even more confident that he was on the right side. The woman could easily have shot the wolf again, even killed him, without any argument against self-defense. But instead she’d twice demanded that he surrender without further violence.
Besides, Ty felt—something about her. There was a ring of truth to her voice, a sense of rightness to her body language. She was on the side of good here, he knew it in his heart.
His gut feelings were hardly ever wrong, and he’d never had one as strong as this. It was almost like his center of gravity had shifted, focused on the woman next to him instead of the earth beneath his feet.
The wolf, meanwhile, had apparently decided that she meant business, because he shivered, blurred, and shifted. In the wolf’s place stood a haggard middle-aged man bleeding from his side, who raised his hands and spat out, “Fine. You caught me. You and your friend.”
“I’m the one you’re going to be dealing with from here on out, Eli,” the woman said, coming forward with handcuffs in one hand, her gun still in the other.
That was smart: even wounded, the man was a shifter. He could still have a trick or two up his sleeve. Ty paced slowly behind her, still in jaguar form, his eyes fixed on the man’s hands in case he tried anything else.
But the woman was able to handcuff him without incident. She hauled him over to her vehicle and put him in the backseat, then hurried back to check over the fallen man—her deputy, it must be.
Ty wanted to shift back, ask her if her deputy was all right, if she needed any further help, but he was too aware of the fact that she now had her back to a hostile man, handcuffed or not. He stayed by the Jeep to keep watch.
And by the look she shot over her shoulder at him, she knew exactly what he was doing.
Ty kept his eyes on Eli as she checked her friend over, apparently decided he wasn’t in need of emergency care, and called back to her dispatch with a brief report of the incident. She classified Ty as unexpected local aid, which he found kind of amusing. It was hard to get less local than he was, around here.
“What—” the deputy was saying as he woke up. “Crap. What happened?”
“You got jumped by a wolf, is what happened,” the sheriff responded. “How’re you feeling?”
“Ugh. Sore.”
“He must not have been trying to kill you,” she said thoughtfully. “Probably didn’t want to go away for murdering a cop. You’re lucky, Gene.”
“Don’t feel like it right now.”
“Give it a couple of days. You got smacked around, and you should get that claw gash checked out just in case, but you’ll be fine. Can you stand?”
“Help me,” he grunted, and a minute later, the two of them came into view, the deputy’s arm around the sheriff’s shoulders. The deputy was older than Ty had realized, maybe as much as sixty. How short-staffed was the sheriff’s department around here, that these two were all the available personnel to come after a dangerous shifter like this?
Not, Ty supposed, that you could make an official requisition for a SWAT team based on the fact that your target was a mythical shapeshifting creature. This town was rife with them, from what everyone had told him, but that didn’t mean the rest of the world knew what hid in the remote forests of Montana.
The sheriff got her deputy almost to the car before the man let out a sudden yell. “Good God, Misty, who’s that?”
“That’s our unexpected aid,” said the woman. Misty, Ty supposed. Beautiful name. Misty settled her deputy in the passenger seat of the Jeep, then turned to face him. “You got a name?”
Ty shifted. He watched her look him up—and up; Ty’s human head was a lot higher than his jaguar’s head—and down. “Ty Neal,” he said, keeping his tone light and unthreatening. “Just passing by on my way to visit friends. Heard the gunshots, thought someone might need some help. Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you?”
She gave him a long, assessing stare. Her eyes were a captivating hazel, he couldn’t help but notice, with golden flecks. Her hair was dark brown, pulled back into a severe bun that was clearly designed not to get in the way. It only emphasized the clean lines of her face, a sharp beauty that didn’t depend on makeup or jewelry.
“Sheriff Misty Dale,” she said finally, holding out her hand for a shake. “I’m fine. And I appreciate the help. Mind if I ask who the friends are that you’re visiting?”
Her voice had a suspicious edge to it, and Ty supposed it might be natural to find that offensive, after he’d just helped her out.
But he didn’t: he had to imagine that for a sheriff of a small town, having a total stranger appear from nowhere during a gunfight had to be suspicious as all get-out, no matter whose side the stranger was one.
“I don’t mind at all,” he said easily. “My friends live just down the road: Ken Turner and Nate Sanders. Also well-acquainted with Carlos Gonzalez, Wilson Hanes, and Cal Westland, who’s the head ranger up at Glacier Park.”
Understanding dawned on the woman’s face. “You must be one of their Marine friends.”
“That’s right. Another reason I wanted to help—I have experience with situations like this.”
“Huh.” Her eyes were still assessing, but the suspicion was draining away. She must know the rest of the men—in fact, she had to, given what Ty had heard about the happenings up here lately. Nate and Carlos had both had run-ins with a local wolf pack, full of troublemakers, and Ty knew the law had gotten involved. Ty eyed the wolf in the backseat. Was he one of them?
“Do you want me to come back to the station?” Ty volunteered. “Give a statement?”
Surprise bloomed on her face. She probably didn’t get a lot of people volunteering to come down to the station. “That would make my life easier.”
“Then it’ll be my pleasure.”
That had come out more flirtatious than he’d meant it to—he should put a lid on that. Surely a sheriff wouldn’t appreciate a man hitting on her while she was working at her job.
But she didn’t look angry. Just...a little unmoored.
“Do you need a ride?” she said finally.
Ty shook his head. “My car’s just back there. I can follow you back.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate this. Mr. Neal.”
“Ty,” he said immediately.
The corner of her mouth quirked up. “Ty.”
***
Misty
Well, the day had certainly taken a weird turn.
There had been several moments there where she hadn’t known whether she and Gene were going to make it through the day alive. She’d been kicking herself for not bringing something heavier-duty than a handgun, sure that Eli was about to make a bid to tear her throat out.
And then a jaguar had melted out of the woods to save her.
Misty didn’t believe in fairy tales, but for a second she’d wondered if it had been some kind of crazy apparition, rather than a real live shifter. It had seemed so impossible.
And then the jaguar had shifted into a huge, gorgeous man who had willingly
volunteered to come make a statement at the station, which seemed even more impossible.
Misty didn’t know what to make of it at all.
She drove carefully back, not wanting to jar Gene, and keeping a weather eye on Eli, handcuffed in the backseat, in case he decided that he wanted to try something else after all.
She’d been so sure that the biggest risk was that he’d run. He was demonstrably a coward—he’d run away from the fight at Pauline’s house. But she supposed that he’d felt cornered enough to be desperate.
Although God knew what his endgame had been. Fight the sheriff and her deputy to a standstill, and then...what? Kill them? Run away to Canada?
She supposed if Eli had been better at long-term planning, he probably wouldn’t have ended up in this situation in the first place, though.
Fortunately for everyone, Eli didn’t decide to make a last-minute break during the drive. He stayed slumped in the backseat, looking defeated. Misty might even have felt sorry for him, if he hadn’t attacked an innocent woman and children in their home a couple of months back.
As it was, she had a hard time mustering any sympathy.
Ty Neal followed them all the way back to the station. Misty had half-expected him to disappear on the way—either to realize that he wasn’t actually interested in spending hours detailing every minute detail of an incident he had no personal investment in, or to disappear in a puff of smoke like the benevolent spirit he still half-seemed to her.
But no, he pulled in right behind the Jeep on the street outside of the station, and got out with that same friendly, helpful air around him that he’d had back in the woods. Somehow, it was even more incongruous here in town than it had been at the scene of the crime.
“Hi,” he said to her.
“Hi,” she repeated, feeling a little stupid. “Thanks for coming along.”
His smile broadened. “Happy to help.”
He sounded genuine. In a world of surly, I-didn’t-do-nothing-I-didn’t-see-nothing constituents, Misty almost didn’t know what to do with that.
“Come on, Misty,” Gene said behind her, and she jumped. Somehow, looking at Ty Neal’s smiling face, she’d forgotten all about Gene and Eli in the Jeep behind her.
She cleared her throat. “Right. Follow me.”
Waiting just inside the doors was Betty, a haven of all-business in a sea of weird feelings. Betty didn’t stand for anything coming in the way of proper paperwork and procedure, and Misty blessed her for being there to get everything sorted out, with forty years of administrative police work under her belt.
The procedure was reassuringly boring. Misty sent Gene off to get medical attention, processed Eli, and left Ty with Betty to give his statement.
Though not before she assured him, “I’ll be back when I’ve taken care of all of this,” waving her hand awkwardly to take in Eli and all of his consequences.
Why she felt the need to reassure him, she didn’t know. Maybe because she didn’t like the idea that she might head into the depths of the station to do all the necessary things, and come back to find he had disappeared as mysteriously as he’d come.
But he smiled at her and said, “I’m counting on it.” She left him with a growing warm feeling in her chest, and a strange, solid confidence that he’d be right there waiting for her when she was done.
***
When she had a second, between bouts of paperwork, she picked up her cell phone, hesitated, and then called Pauline Gonzalez.
Pauline was married to Carlos Gonzalez, one of the several Marine veterans who’d moved here recently. Misty had watched the influx with some bemusement, wondering at this enclave of capable over-forty men who’d drifted into town, found something captivating here, and settled down with local mates.
They’d been the ones who had tangled with Eli’s pack, more than once. Misty would’ve been inclined to mark them as troublemakers, but it had been too obviously clear that Eli, Ryan, and their gang had been the ones causing the trouble. These men had just been stepping in the way, between the wolves and innocent women and children, and Misty had to admire them for that.
Even if she was occasionally irritated at what seemed to be a tendency to take the law into their own hands.
Pauline picked up with a friendly, “Misty! Hello, what can I do for you?”
Misty had helped Pauline when Ryan’s pack had attacked her and her family a couple of months ago, and had cooperated in helping her and her mate Carlos get custody of her cousin’s children. Pauline had responded with a level of gratitude that Misty wasn’t sure she deserved for doing her job.
Pauline kept inviting Misty to potlucks and barbecues and family gatherings, too. Generally, Misty was too busy with work to attend, but the invitations kept coming. She’d gone to a quick dinner with just Pauline’s family once, and had been a bit bewildered at the friendly acceptance that Pauline, Carlos, and their three kids had extended.
As sheriff of a town where most people had the mistrustful, insular instincts that shifter packs tended to instill, she wasn’t used to locals being happy to see her. It made her suspicious, even though she knew there wasn’t any reason to be.
“I just wanted to ask you about a witness I’ve got here at the station,” Misty said. “A Ty Neal? He says he’s a friend of yours and Carlos’.”
Pauline drew in an audible breath. “Ty’s at the station? All he said was that he’d been held up and he’d be late! What happened?”
Well, that answered the question of whether Ty was on the level about being Carlos’ friend, Misty supposed.
Not that she’d suspected he was lying. She’d been sure he was telling the truth, in fact, which was strange all by itself. Misty wasn’t a naturally trusting person; her father had raised her to be skeptical of everyone and everything, and she’d taken those lessons to heart.
“He—happened to be driving by while I was arresting a suspect. He stopped to lend a hand, and offered to come back and give a statement,” Misty said, unwilling to tell Pauline exactly who the suspect had been. She probably didn’t want to be reminded of the attack.
Once Eli was safely convicted, maybe then she’d make a point of telling Pauline that he wouldn’t be able to bother her again.
“Oh,” Pauline said, sounding relieved. “Oh, good. I was afraid there’d been some kind of trouble.”
“Not to speak of,” Misty sort-of lied. “Thanks to his being there.”
That was the truth. She was going to have to find a way to thank him. What sort of fruit basket did you send someone for putting himself between you and a charging wolf?
“Well, good. I’ll tell Carlos not to give him a hard time for being late. Thanks for letting us know, Misty.”
Pauline hung up with a cheerful goodbye, leaving Misty looking at the phone bemusedly. She hadn’t really meant the call as a courtesy—she’d been checking up on Ty’s story. But Pauline was too goodhearted to have thought of that.
And anyway, the corroboration hadn’t been necessary. It had only been because she felt such an instinctive trust in the man.
It was just weird.
***
Ty was waiting for her when she came out, just like he’d said he would.
And he wasn’t just waiting for her, he was chatting with Betty, which basically no one ever managed to do. And Betty was smiling. It was uncanny.
When Misty came in, he looked up, his own smile broadening until it threatened to take over his face. “All done?”
“Just about,” she said, trying to keep her tone businesslike. What was it about this man? “I’ll need to read over your statement, just to be sure that our accounts match up.”
“Right here,” Betty said, handing it over.
Misty scanned down the statement, finding to her pleasant non-surprise that it was detailed, coherent, and absolutely accurate as far as she remembered. “Thanks,” she told Ty when she was finished. “We don’t usually get witness statements this thorough.”
; “I’m a social worker,” he said. “Trained to observe and report.”
That was a surprise—although, looking at his cheerful, friendly manner, Misty thought it made sense. He seemed like the kind of man who’d be comfortable talking to anyone, no matter where they were in their life, or what struggles they might be dealing with.
“And you’re in town visiting your friends? On vacation?”
He hesitated. “That’s right.”
It was the first time he’d pinged her as less than completely honest. She frowned, and he noticed.
“It’s a sort of a mandatory vacation,” he said, with an air of confession. “My boss kicked me out to get some R and R.”
Misty couldn’t imagine not wanting this smiling, capable man working for you. Maybe his job had some kind of prescribed vacation policy. “A good place for it,” she said finally.
Ty nodded. “It’s beautiful up here. I was here once before, for my friend Cal’s wedding, and I’d never seen scenery like that before.”
“Where are you from?”
“LA. Born and raised.”
Los Angeles might’ve been a foreign country, as far as Misty was concerned. In fact, as close as they were to the Canadian border up here, Los Angeles was probably more foreign than a foreign country.
“Biggest city I’ve ever been to is Missoula,” Misty admitted.
Ty sighed. “Maybe not a bad decision, all around.”
There—she could a see a hint of what he might’ve been showing his boss. There was an air of frustration, of weariness, just barely peeking through.
Then he focused on her again, and it disappeared. “I haven’t spent much time in small towns. Is there a good place to eat around here? I remember there was a diner or something, last time—”
“Oliver’s,” Misty finished. “Yeah, Oliver’s is good. It’s the best place for locals, hardly any tourists.”
“Can we continue this conversation there?” Ty asked, with another one of those compelling grins.
Misty looked over her shoulder. “I’m still on shift—” Which was her only real objection, she realized. She wanted to keep talking.
He waved a hand. “And I’ve got to go tell the guys I didn’t run into a ditch on the way to their house. After you’re done?”