Protector Wolf

by Linda O. Johnston

How fun.

  “Then why—” she began, but he interrupted.

  “Look, this is neither the time nor place for me to answer your questions.”

  “Why not? We have a few minutes before we—”

  “I’m tired. What I do takes energy.”

  More likely, he simply didn’t want to discuss his shifting.

  But she wasn’t about to give up. Not completely, at least. “Okay, then. Go back to your room and get some sleep. But let’s set a time to meet tomorrow to talk about all this.”

  He didn’t respond right away. Was he trying to come up with some excuse why they shouldn’t ever talk about it?

  Somehow, that possibility nearly made her eyes tear up. Why was she so emotional about this?

  About him?

  Because she now associated him even more with wolves, the animals she particularly loved?

  “Okay,” he finally said, and instead of tears she felt a smile on her face. “It’ll have to be someplace with total privacy. And not first thing tomorrow. We can meet for breakfast, if you’d like, but I have some things I need to take care of in the morning right afterward so that won’t give us enough time. Let’s meet in the park later, find an area with just one bench where we can be alone and talk privately. That okay with you?”

  They’d reached the bottom of the trail, and the street was nearby, the parking lot just at its other side.

  “That sounds fine.” At least assuming he meant it.

  They walked together to her car, and she pushed the button to unlock it. There were a few lights hanging on poles in the parking lot so she could now actually see him.

  Ryan, the man. The handsome, attractive…and strange and mysterious man.

  Piers now stood behind him, clearly waiting.

  “See you back at the hotel,” she told the two men. “Although if you take much time to get there I’ll head up to my room.”

  “In that case,” Ryan said, “we’ll see you tomorrow.”

  As she opened her car door, she looked at him again, recalling how she had kissed him the other night—and how he’d seemed uncomfortable because of it.

  Well, heck, he’d certainly made her uncomfortable by more than a kiss that night. And though she had no idea at the moment what she thought of this man, and who and what he was, she leaned toward him, grabbed him again and kissed him once more on those sexy lips.

  He seemed to react this time as well, but before he could kiss her harder—or pull away—she was the one to back off and hurriedly plant herself in her car.

  “See ya,” she said, and pulled the door shut.

  *

  “I can’t wait till later,” Maya shot at Ryan first thing the next morning, when he reached the lobby with Piers and Rocky and found her standing not far from the registration desk. “Please—can we talk now?”

  “We figured that out last night,” he said calmly, hoping to soothe the clearly upset woman. He led her away from the busy area of the hotel where lots of people were in line to check out or check in. There was an empty corner nearby, not far from the single elevator. When Maya was situated there, he looked down again into her huge-eyed face. “Like we discussed, we’ll have breakfast now, then meet up again later at—”

  “At the park,” she finished, keeping her voice low as she shook her head. “I know. But I have so many questions and couldn’t sleep for the few hours I had left last night, and—”

  He needed to calm and quiet her. This wasn’t the right place or right time, but they were at least temporarily out of the main stream of people.

  He glanced toward where he had left Piers and Rocky and didn’t see them, so he figured his aide had taken his cover dog out for his morning walk while waiting for Maya and him. Good.

  “—and the thing is I’m not sure if—”

  Ryan bent down and placed his mouth over Maya’s. That shut her up.

  It also got him possibly as stirred up as she was, for different reasons.

  He had a sudden urge, while their kiss deepened and grew even hotter, to forget about breakfast and what else he had to do this morning and lead Maya back upstairs to his room.

  But what else he had to do this morning was critical. It might help him fulfill the mission he had been sent here to Fritts Corner to accomplish.

  And so, just as he’d been the one to start this encounter, he was the one to regretfully pull away.

  As he did, he looked down and saw that Maya’s hazel eyes regarded him with what appeared to be both lust…and suspicion.

  “Are you trying to distract me?” she asked in a normal tone, as if what they had done meant nothing to her. Except that, as he watched, she took a deep breath, clearly trying to calm herself.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Am I succeeding?”

  She let out a brief snort of laughter. “I guess so. Maybe it’s time for breakfast, after all.”

  She turned and preceded him out of the lobby.

  Chapter 15

  Surprisingly, their breakfast had worked out well.

  They again ate at the popular local restaurant Andy and Family’s. They sat in an area of the patio where Rocky was welcome.

  They ordered pretty much the same meals as they had before.

  And Ryan was relieved that Maya had gotten the message, that he wasn’t about to have the conversation she wanted until later that morning.

  So, instead of quizzing him about what she had seen, she instead got into a long discussion and Q&A session about wolves and where they were endangered in the United States, and what Fish and Wildlife was doing about it.

  Which suggested to him that she’d guessed he actually wasn’t employed by that federal department. But she didn’t press him—then—to explain what his connection was, or wasn’t, to it. Or to anything else.

  He felt certain she didn’t know about Alpha Force.

  When they were done eating, he had insisted on paying the bill, claiming once more that it was on Uncle Sam. In a way it was, though not via US Fish and Wildlife. Alpha Force was, after all, a US military unit—albeit a covert one.

  They had parted ways outside the restaurant. He hadn’t told Maya where he intended to go, but he’d already requested that Piers and Rocky accompany her back to the hotel.

  He didn’t know what she might do to occupy her time until their planned eleven-thirty meeting in the park, but being with him was definitely not on the agenda.

  He’d walked the other direction—and was just approaching the Corner Grocery Store. He had called in advance, so the Sharans were expecting him.

  Whether they wanted to talk with him was another matter. But he would definitely talk to them—and he had also told them he wanted their son, Pete, to be present.

  And in fact he was present—in the store. As Ryan walked in, he noticed Pete taking cash at one of the registers, the line extending quite a ways in the busy establishment. Hopefully, someone else would take his place soon.

  Otherwise, Ryan would need to insist on it, and he believed that what he was going to approach Pete’s parents with would cause them to ensure their son joined their private conversation.

  Scanning the crowd, he soon saw Kathie Sharan talking to someone in the produce aisle. She might have been watching for him, since she immediately caught his gaze, then smiled at the customer she’d been talking to and walked in Ryan’s direction.

  Her smile disappeared. She soon joined him at the front of the place and looked up at him. “Come into our office. I’ll get Burt and Pete.” Her voice was cool, but her expression appeared troubled.

  Kathie was short and wore a lacy white top that extended over the waist of her jeans. Her multishade brown hair appeared rumpled, giving her the appearance of an anxious woman, and perhaps hinting about the possibility of her shifting background.

  She easily led Ryan between patrons to a door near the rear corner of the store, opened it and said, “Go on in. We’ll be right there.” She left the door open as she hurried into the crowd they had just lef
t.

  The office was a small, enclosed square with a plain wooden desk in the middle, a few chairs and a file cabinet. A laptop computer sat on the desk, and nothing else. There were no pictures on the pale yellow walls, no other decoration in the room. It was functional, Ryan supposed, and maybe it hadn’t had time yet to accumulate extra paperwork or memorabilia since the Sharans were relative newcomers to town and new owners of this store.

  In any event, nothing there stood out to prove or disprove Ryan’s suspicions of who the Sharans were.

  But he knew.

  He walked over to look out the small window near the rear corner. It fronted on the building next door—an ice cream shop, Ryan believed, though from the back portion he couldn’t view any signage.

  He heard a noise and turned back toward the door. All three Sharans had just entered, and Burt closed the door behind him.

  “So why are you here?” Burt’s voice was sharp and clearly uninviting. His arms were at his sides, hands fisted, and his expression belligerent—not merely a kindly local grocery seller.

  Without responding at first, Ryan walked over to the desk chair and sat, assuming they would recognize that he was the alpha at this meeting. Maybe beyond it, as well.

  “Why don’t you all sit down, too?” he asked, his tone congenial for the moment.

  “Why don’t you answer me?” Burt countered.

  “Tell you what. I’d like you all to sit down first, then take a very deep breath. I’m going to, right now.” And he did. In doing so, he inhaled a lot of scents, some emanating from food in the store outside the office, aromas he had smelled here before. But the strongest were right in here, with him.

  He’d smelled them before, at different times and each in two different incarnations—as they were here, and otherwise.

  They hinted of shifters. True? Ryan believed so, and he hoped to confirm it right now.

  And get some of his questions answered…

  Maya’s face popped into his mind. He’d be meeting with her later, too, and it would be her questions they’d discuss. Would he let her in on anything he learned here?

  Meanwhile, he watched the others crammed into this small office with him. Burt just eyed him warily, but he did sit on one of the chairs, and his wife and son took seats, as well. They all tilted their chins upward then, and Ryan watched their heads move and their chests expand as they obeyed and also took deep breaths.

  Pete wasn’t as beefy as his father, but his nose was as long, and Ryan allowed his mind to imagine them as wolves right now.

  All three stared at him, suspicion on their faces.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, tell me what you smell.”

  “Tell me what you think we should smell,” countered Pete. His parents looked at him and nodded.

  “Here’s where this conversation will get interesting,” Ryan said. “I could continue to dissemble, address what I’m driving at only tangentially and keep up the mystery. But let me try this another way. I’m going to get all woo-woo as a human here—or maybe not.”

  “A human?” That was Kathie, whose deep brown eyes were huge.

  “That’s right. As we all are at this moment. But otherwise?”

  “Otherwise what?” That was Pete, and although his tone was sharp, the younger man appeared both wary and nervous.

  Good. He was the one on whom Ryan had intended to levy the brunt of his initial inquisition, focusing on last night.

  And Ryan’s own plentiful questions.

  “Otherwise—well, first of all, consider what you smelled as you took that deep breath. Some would be familiar, since you’re always around together. But then there’s me.”

  Pete nodded. “Then you’re—”

  “Wait a second,” his father broke in, and Pete grew silent again though the look on his face was pensive.

  “Okay,” Ryan continued, “let’s do a bit of pretending but also make some promises. I’m going to approach some pretty offbeat things, or at least they’d seem offbeat to a regular…human.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pete demanded. He looked anxious and curious, and glanced at his father for approval.

  Burt nodded, and Pete appeared to relax, but only for a moment—till Ryan began speaking again.

  “Oh, let’s go back to last night, shall we? Did you happen to be in the woods up behind the park? If so, I saw you there—and I’m going to assume that neither of us looked…human.”

  Pete’s eyes grew huge, and he looked away from Ryan to his father’s face once more, then his mother’s.

  “Don’t let him goad you, son,” Burt said. “This conversation is weird. Stupid.” He turned from Pete to stare at Ryan, and his expression appeared as if he was trying to look skeptical and scornful.

  “Maybe so,” Ryan said. “But if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.” A little, at least. He wasn’t about to reveal all. “I happened to see a wolf up in that area last night, and communicated with him. And that wolf also saw me and responded.” His wry smile was levied now on Pete. “Right?”

  Instead of appearing frantic now, Pete appeared thoughtful. “Right. Then that was you? I mean—well, tell me what you know.”

  And Ryan did…somewhat.

  The rest of the conversation in that office went pretty much as Ryan hoped. The Sharans did admit they had come to Fritts Corner about ten months earlier with some other people like them when things in the part of Idaho where they’d lived became stressful, and they’d heard that wolves were being seen in the area around here. Wild wolves.

  And they had something in common with them. They were obviously reluctant, but when Ryan asked again about what they had smelled, and gestured toward himself, they mentioned that what they had in common with those wolves was that they were like them, a bit. Shifters.

  When they admitted it, Burt appeared challenging, as if expecting Ryan to back off the position he had taken before and tell them what fools they were.

  But he didn’t. And when appropriate, he admitted he was a shifter, too.

  “Most shifters only change under a full moon, though,” he said to Pete. “You were shifted last night. How?”

  “I’m a scientist,” he asserted defensively, as if expecting an argument. “I’ve always been interested in what we are and all its angles. I came up with a formula that allows us to shift outside a full moon. It’s pretty new and raw right now and I hope to perfect it soon. But what about you?”

  “Oh, I have access to a formula that I think is a lot more perfected than yours. I’m not going to get into detail now, but my bosses—not Fish and Wildlife, by the way—are going to want to hear about this conversation and probably want to hold more talks with you. If all goes as I think it might, you at least, Pete, might get access to that formula one of these days.”

  After all, part of Ryan’s assignment was to see not only if there were shifters around here, but also if any could be recruited into Alpha Force. This young, smart, eager shifter might be one excellent addition to the unit.

  “Now tell me,” Ryan said. “Why did you shift last night? And why weren’t you more quiet about it?”

  Pete appeared a little sheepish. “I made a small modification to my formula and, with all that’s been going on around here lately, I wanted to try it. It didn’t really make much difference, though, and I shifted back right after you and I saw each other. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have been howling—especially since those admitted wolf-haters are around. But I still can’t always control myself… Believe me, I’m glad you’re the one who showed up—and I’ll be more careful next time.”

  “Good,” Ryan said. “Okay now, I think our conversation today is over—but we’ll talk again. And just like you’ll deny admitting to anything that came out here if things go wrong or the wrong people ask questions, so will I—and one thing I can assure you of is that I do have some pretty official backing, though it’s premature to get into any detail now.”

  “Really?” Pete sounded impress
ed. “Like, the government? Someone there actually believes in shifters?”

  “Like I said, I can’t get into detail now, so believe what you want.” But Ryan grinned in partial assurance to the young man. “Anyway, I’ll let you know when it’s time to talk again, but I can tell you it’ll be soon.”

  Their goodbyes, though somewhat wary, were a lot more congenial than when Ryan first came into the office this day.

  He felt good that things had gone as well as they had.

  He just hoped they would continue to get better.

  *

  Maya sat in her room fuming. Hanging around. Playing with her computer.

  Looking up shapeshifters.

  But it all appeared unreal, legendary, part of the lore from which fiction books and movies were created.

  Somehow the reality had escaped general notice. Or real shapeshifters had been able to hide it, make it all appear like fiction.

  Real shapeshifters like Ryan.

  She wanted the truth. She wanted more. But how could she just wait here—

  Her room phone rang. It was unlikely to be Ryan, who now had her cell phone number. Trev?

  “Hi, Maya,” said that geeky male voice that she recognized. “Could we get coffee together again now? I’d really like to talk to you.”

  About shapeshifters? Did he know?

  “What about?” she asked.

  “Did you hear those wolves howling last night?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I did.” But what did he think about them? “Sure,” she told him. “I have a few minutes. I’ll meet you downstairs right away.”

  Which she did. His button-down shirt that day was beige, and his small, dark eyes seemed hidden in shadows.

  Had he been awake last night? Had he been on the hillside, too?

  She shouldn’t want, shouldn’t need, to protect Ryan—and yet, she felt compelled to learn what Trev knew. Or maybe she simply wasn’t ready to talk about it, let alone accept it.

  “So how are you doing this morning?” she asked as they exited the Washington Inn lobby into the adjoining coffee shop.

  “Okay,” he said. “But tired.”

  They placed their orders—basically the same as last time, a frothy latte for Trev and plain, ordinary coffee for Maya. The place was a bit less crowded than before, and this time they chose a different small table, near one of the front windows.