by Terry Spear
His cop training made him aware of changes in a person’s reactions, but with his wolf senses, he could even smell them now. “Why would you be worried that I’d seen you before?” All he could think of was that she had committed a crime and he had been a cop.
She didn’t say anything.
“Hell, the guy you were with? He…he was…” Gavin sat up on the sleeping bag and stared at Amelia, who was sitting up now too, waiting for him to finish what he was going to say. “He was the leader of the men who had committed the jewelry-store heist. And they had a female pilot. She disappeared. They never found her. Damn it, Amelia, you were the pilot? Why didn’t you tell me the truth? You were an accessory to the crime.”
“You pretend to be the innocent in all that. You knew him too. You could have given yourself up as a hostage to join your crew and get away with the stash, looking like the hero—cop offers to take the place of the pregnant store clerk—when you were in on it all along.”
“What? So that’s what you thought?”
“They didn’t tie you up or gag you or blindfold you.”
“Which had me damn worried. When that happens, they kill the hostage. Besides, the two men sitting in back with me were armed with guns. I just hadn’t found the right moment to take them down.”
“Right.”
“That’s right. I knew two of the men had rap sheets. One man always wore a mask. I never saw anything about the other man, Clayton Drummer. No rap sheet at all.”
“Clayton Drummer?”
“Yeah, the mastermind, though since he didn’t have any arrest record, some thought there might have been someone else who actually paid for this to be done. But Clayton was responsible for coordinating the team to do the heist.”
“But how would he have met a crew if he’d never been in prison?”
“He might have been associated with criminals, done crimes but never got caught himself.”
Because he was a wolf. And because he was a cop!
“He was a Seattle cop!” She stood and folded her arms, looking down at Gavin with scorn, her brows knitted together.
“A cop? No. We would have known. There wasn’t any way that he was. His fingerprints showed he was Clayton Drummer. No criminal record.”
Her frown deepened.
“You were dating the guy, and you thought he was a cop?”
She let out her breath in obvious irritation. “Jeez, he played me for such a fool. I guess he pretended to be a cop so I’d think he was a decent guy.”
Gavin didn’t know what to think. Had she really thought the guy was a cop? But it didn’t change the fact that Gavin was certain she had piloted the plane.
“What were you going to get out of it? A pretty good damn cut? But you missed it all when the others got caught. Except for the one who got away. Did you and he escape together? That’s how you made it out?”
“I don’t know who the man was who got away. He didn’t have any scent I could smell, and he wore a ski mask the whole time.”
“Hell. You were a wolf! That’s how you didn’t get caught. You ran out of there as a wolf. Every man for himself. You left your injured boyfriend behind and headed for the hills.”
“I was a hostage every bit as much as you were, if you truly were,” she growled at Gavin. “He was a wolf too and said he was a cop. He had a badge and the uniform and everything. I’d dated him for two months! Bastard. We were supposed to be going on a date. The next thing I know, he’s threatening to shoot me, forcing me to pilot a plane that wasn’t one of our company’s. And his men dragged you on board as a hostage. A cop hostage. So the two of you had to know each other. You never reported he was a cop when you were rescued.”
“That’s because he wasn’t.” Gavin stood. “But you left him for dead. Even if he’d lied to you and you’d been taken hostage, why didn’t you stay with me and your injured boyfriend? Why run off? It would have all been sorted out then. Your name would have been cleared.”
“Do you know why that plane crashed? I did it! On purpose!”
Gavin stared at her in disbelief. Did she have a death wish? Or did she think because of her healing genetics, she would have made it out alive? The rest of them could have easily been killed. Her wolf boyfriend hadn’t been so lucky.
She poked her finger at Gavin’s chest. “I saved your life!”
He arched his brows. “How? You could have killed us all.”
She laughed bitterly. “You were a dead man. Clayton had ordered his men to kill you. I took that opportunity to crash the plane. And I didn’t do it all just for you either. I knew my life would be over once I was no longer useful. Even if Clayton thought he’d keep me around, I wouldn’t have gone along with the plan, so he would have had to kill me. I didn’t have any choice. I didn’t know if you were innocent or part of the team. Both of you were cops, or at least I thought he was one too. And I figured he might have used you, then planned to kill you to cover his tracks so he wouldn’t have to share the profits with you.”
“You ran off,” Gavin reminded her. “If you were innocent, you would’ve stayed with me. Taken care of me even, if you had been one of the good guys. You can’t tell me you were afraid to testify because you are a wolf. You’re a royal. You don’t have any trouble shifting at any time. You could have gone to trial for weeks, and it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“I saved your ass twice more. Clayton was in bad shape, but he must have believed he was still going to walk out of there and join his buddies, who had conveniently run off with all the jewelry. He wasn’t leaving you behind as a witness. He was going to kill you. He had his gun readied, and I grabbed a sturdy branch and hit him on the head with it.”
“Blunt-force trauma,” Gavin said, surprised as hell. “The coroner attributed it to the crash.”
“Yeah, well, he had a bullet chambered just for you. But he heard me coming up behind him and fired the shot at me! If anyone bothered to really look, they would have found the bullet in a tree trunk nearby. Searchers would never have found you in time if I hadn’t shifted and run home. It took me two days to reach home, and believe me, running as an Arctic wolf meant I had enough trouble trying to slip into the neighborhood without making anyone go for their rifles and start shooting. Not to mention I’d been hurt in the crash too. Not as badly as you, obviously, but muscle strains and cuts and bruises.”
Okay, so yeah, she couldn’t have survived that crash and come out of it unscathed. “You lived in Seattle.”
“The countryside outside Seattle. My parents were frantic. I’d just disappeared, and there’d been no word from me. Except they knew I’d had a date with Clayton. We were supposed to meet at a café, but he changed his mind at the last minute and said to meet him at the hangar. He wanted to get some photos of me standing next to my plane. And then we were going out to eat.”
“You weren’t suspicious?”
“Why should I have been? He’d talked about doing it before because he loved that I could fly. No wonder! But after the accident, I had to reach my dad and tell him where to look for the wreckage and that the cop who’d been taken hostage was injured and needed to be rescued.”
“Then you left food and water for me and a couple of blankets and a pillow.”
“Yeah, I did. I left all the food and drink that I could find—candy bars, granola bars, bottles of water and beer—in case I didn’t make it back home to get help for you. I mean, I could have been shot. I hoped your injuries wouldn’t kill you, and you’d have enough food and water to see you through. I guess the men who left had what they thought would be enough supplies to keep them going and didn’t take all the food and water. Or maybe they’d left it for Clayton in case he managed to get on his way.”
“Thanks. I…was surprised they’d left me anything to drink or eat. It made me believe they hadn’t meant to kill me.”
“Clayton d
id. Believe me. Once I told my dad what had happened, he and Slade took off in their planes and located the wreckage first, then relayed the message to the searchers of just where they could find you. If I hadn’t told my dad, and he hadn’t directed the rescue teams to that location, you would have been a pile of bones.”
“You’ve saved my ass three times, then?” She was a firecracker.
“How do you think I could have explained that I ran all the way back to the outskirts of Seattle to tell my dad where the plane wreckage was because the location was so remote? Where you were? Do you think anyone would have believed a human could run that distance? Hell, even as a wolf, I nearly killed myself trying to get home fast enough so they could search for you. Not only that, but my dad said there was no way I was going to tell anyone I had piloted the plane. If someone had identified me, we would have come up with a story. My family would have been my alibi. No matter what, I couldn’t have told anyone what had really happened. And you weren’t a wolf at the time. So, I couldn’t have let you in on the secret, now could I?”
“You were living in the Seattle area for a time.”
“My mother worried about us flying so many rescue missions by seaplane in the dark in Alaska. It was the same reason we ended up moving to Minnesota. Dad had a minor accident landing in the water at night one time. Even though it was minor, he was put at big risk—an ice floe tore up a float, and he had to abandon the plane and was taken in by some of the natives there. That’s when we moved to Seattle, to try it out there. We had only lived there for a couple of months, and everything was working out well for us. I had begun fostering dogs again. We lived in two separate homes out in the country. We were flying tourists to sites all over the state and beyond.”
“And then the heist happened.”
“Right. My parents were afraid I’d run into you at some time or another after that.” She snorted. “So there I was back in Alaska, and who barges into my house but you.”
“Saying I thought I knew you from Seattle.” It all made sense now. “You thought I had come to arrest you.”
“I had considered the possibility.”
“I was only there to find the dogs.”
“I didn’t know that when I first saw you.”
“Then you moved to Minnesota. Not to avoid me though.”
“No. We were in Alaska until two months ago.”
“You didn’t think I knew you piloted the plane.”
She shook her head. “I was worried when I saw you again, ready to take a plane ride. I guess that means I’m the one who caused you to have a phobia of flying.” It was still pouring rain out, but she said, “Why don’t you go look for someone on the island?”
“It’s still too stormy out. If you were going to save me all those times, seems a waste to send me out in an electrical storm. Come on. Why don’t we lie down and take a nap like we’d planned?”
“All right.” But she said it in a hostile way. She grabbed the sleeping bags and unzipped them to separate them, then shoved one of them into his chest.
He smiled. He couldn’t help himself. She was a real wolf. “Did London know about your plane crash?”
“Yeah. We told him we were moving back to Alaska, and he put us up until we could get places of our own.”
“He didn’t suggest you clear your name?”
She frowned at Gavin.
“All right. You’re wolves. I’m still thinking with my cop brain,” he said.
“You know, insurance can really go up once we’ve crashed a plane. Not to mention the possibility of losing a license.”
“Extenuating circumstances were beyond your control,” Gavin said.
She made Winston lie down between them, as if he were the wall she needed to separate them. Gavin sighed. So much for her being his PI assistant and the possibility of courting the she-wolf right away. If ever.
* * *
After ending the relationship with Clayton, then Heaton, Amelia believed she might never be interested in another wolf. She couldn’t believe Clayton hadn’t even been a cop!
She believed Gavin hadn’t been on the take, at least. That he’d truly been a hero when he took the clerk’s place as a hostage. She wasn’t sure what he was feeling about her now, but she figured they needed the distance between them so they could sort out how they felt about each other’s involvement in the heist. Her family still could use his services as a PI, and she still wanted to learn the truth about the plane crash, but she was thinking she should pack up Winston and paddle the raft to the bay and wait there until someone, anyone, came to pick up or drop off paddlers.
She still couldn’t believe an Arctic wolf pack lived nearby. Or that the human she had tased would turn up in her life again, this time as a wolf. He’d seemed really interested in her, and she had to admit she was feeling the same way about him. She didn’t have a great track record with boyfriends.
“For what it’s worth, I believe you,” he said. He was turned toward her, and she had her back to him. He didn’t speak for a while, and she didn’t say anything. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me you had nothing to do with the heist. Not back then. Not when I’d seen you with him in the café as girlfriend and boyfriend. Not when you were flying the plane willingly. As far as I could tell. And then you took off after it crashed. What was I supposed to think?”
That she was guilty? Which is why she couldn’t tell him before.
“But I’m a wolf too now. And I understand. Even about killing Clayton.”
“I didn’t do it out of revenge.”
“I wouldn’t blame you for that either.”
“Yeah, you would. You’re a cop. Former cop.”
“And a wolf. You did it to save me. We couldn’t understand why there were signs he had fired a round. Not when the assumption was that he’d died shortly after the crash. The gun was resting beside him. He must have had it holstered, or he would have lost it when we crashed. It all fits. Him pulling the gun out, then I guess you whacked him on the head, and he dropped the gun and fell back.”
“You must have been unconscious. At least you appeared that way to me. You were breathing, heart rate normal.”
“I heard something. He was close to some of the plane’s wreckage, and you must have slipped around it to avoid me seeing you.”
“I had been wearing heels and a dress, but I lost the heels in the crash. I had to locate them, strip out of the clothes far away from the wreckage, and bury them. I didn’t want to lose precious time.”
“And you left blankets and food and water for me.”
“You’d passed out. I knew approximately where we’d crashed and that it would take me at least two days to reach home. I didn’t want you expiring before I could get help for you.”
“Even if I was a crooked cop.”
“I didn’t know for sure one way or another. All I knew was you weren’t a wolf, so if you were one of the bad guys, your rescuers could sort it out when they got to you. If you were one of the bad guys, you could go to jail.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but thanks for crashing the plane to save my life.”
She smiled a little, glad this was out in the open between them and that he seemed to have taken it pretty well, which surprised her.
* * *
When they woke after taking a nap, Amelia discovered her wall in the form of a Saint Bernard had moved to lie behind Gavin, and Gavin was sleeping in his other bag at her back, keeping her warm, when she’d thought it had been the dog.
She’d been lying there, stewing about the man who had refused to fly with her and how he seemed so familiar. And then it came back to her. “Omigod, I know why that man refused to fly with me.”
Gavin opened his eyes and raised a brow. “He had a bad experience with a female pilot.”
“With me! He w
as one of the men on the jewelry heist.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes! He’s probably served his time and is out on parole. I recognized his scent, but I couldn’t place the face. It was over seven years ago. They were wearing masks most of the time, and he was clean-shaven then and bearded this time.”
“He probably worried you might mention he was a felon to his friends. He may have turned over a new leaf, and nobody he associates with knows what he’d done in the past.”
“Or he was afraid I would just crash the plane again, as if I was in the habit of doing that.”
He smiled a little at her.
She frowned back at him. “I can’t believe it. Don’t you think it’s odd that three of the people who were on that plane—you, me, and the robber—all end up in the same place?”
“Yeah, it does seem like too much of a coincidence. Do you recall his name?”
“Red. That’s all I knew.”
“That was Ralph Winton. He went by Red because of his red hair. He’s been in and out of prison for years. He’s about forty now.”
“That would be about right. Why would he be here, then? Refusing to fly with me?”
“To ensure you flew your father’s plane? But who would know your father and you would switch?”
“Heaton. We had a similar scenario, only someone didn’t like my father and we switched planes.”
“Because the gear was already loaded up.”
“Yeah.”
“And Heaton knew.”
“Yeah. He was watching the whole scenario and later said he was surprised we didn’t just tell the passenger to fly with another company. But we’re not a big company, and we can’t afford to have a lot of bad reviews. Several of the people scheduled for the flight were his family members, and they would have all canceled on us.”