by Angela Foxxe
Her back was to Ty as she drank the water a few sips at a time and left it more than half full. She didn’t know how long they would be in the woods, and she wasn’t sure if he would need some, too.
“I hope you have a plan for getting out of here or we’re going to be dead by morn-” she turned, then stopped, her mouth dropping open. “Why are you naked?”
“My clothes ripped when I shifted. I didn’t exactly have time to undress and neatly fold them beforehand.”
His tone was wry, his face in a half-smile.
“I can tell you’re really upset about it,” she said. “I’ll walk in front, and you can tell me which way to go.”
“I don’t mind leading.”
“I mind,” she shot back.
“You didn’t look like you minded, but maybe I misread that look in your eyes.”
She felt her face flush, and she cursed him under her breath for making her feel this way. He was right; the view was nice. More than nice, his body was chiseled perfection. But that didn’t mean that she wanted to spend the rest of the day staring at his naked backside or trying to keep her gaze level when he turned to her. It was tempting to look, and even more so since she’d gotten a glimpse of his entire body and she already knew that every inch of him was beautiful.
“Maybe you can shift again, and we can enjoy peace and quiet.”
“You get so snippy when you’re the only clothed person in the forest,” he chuckled. “Come on, now. We’re out of harm’s way, but we’re still vulnerable here. We have another mile or so to go before we get to the den.”
“What’s at the den?”
“Food, clothes, shelter, safety. Any number of things you could want when you’re running from murderous enemies.”
“Is that what you call your house in the woods?” she asked.
He started walking, ignoring her request to let her lead and leaving her following him with a clear view of his backside. She focused on a spot between his shoulder blades, but every now and again, her eyes traveled south and she let herself enjoy the view as his muscles bunched and stretched with each long stride.
They walked in silence for what seemed like an eternity, and already, Senora’s clothes were bone dry and sweat trickled down her back. Each step was torture, the air so thick and hot that she felt like she was walking through water. She stopped and bent at the waist, trying to catch her breath.
Senora pulled the hem of her shirt up and wiped the sweat from her face. The heat in the forest was oppressive, despite the shade and the gentle breeze that blew through the trees every now and again. The fresh air and the birds in the trees did nothing to lift her mood. She was tired, she was hot, and her mouth was bone dry.
Grabbing the water bottle from her backpack, she took a drink before offering it to Ty. He waved her offer away with a smile.
“I’m fine.”
She nodded.
“How much further?”
Ty gave her a soft smile.
“Are you alright?” he asked. “I know you weren’t prepared to go traipsing through the woods all day. We’re almost there, and then you can rest and eat.”
“It’s not that,” she said.
“Then, what is it?”
“I need to get somewhere with a signal so I can talk to J and let him know what’s going on.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“Why?”
“What information do you have to give him at this point? And what if he calls you back to D.C.? Then what?”
He was right. J would call her right back to the office to protect her. He would leave the locals to deal with this mess, perhaps getting State Troopers involved, but either way, Senora would be off the case. In all the corruption and mess of the Sheriff’s office, Addie’s kidnapping and murder would get pushed to the wayside and possibly left unsolved. Plus, there was the kidnapping in her childhood that still hadn’t been solved. No one was going to advocate for Addie, and Senora knew that this would eat her up. There was nothing worse than an unsolved case, and Addie’s would bother her for years to come. She couldn’t let Addie down when so many others had failed her.
She just couldn’t do that.
Addie deserved better than that, and so did Mabel. Senora wasn’t giving up on Addie until she knew the truth, even if it meant keeping things from J for just a little while.
“You’re right,” she finally admitted. “But where do we even start, and how are we going to find out anything with the Sheriff and his men on our trail?”
“You leave that to me. This county is huge, and Dale can’t be everywhere. We’ll start in Granbury where she last faked her own disappearance. I’m sure someone saw something. But first, we need to go through those files from Robin’s office. Something in that file was worth dying over, and I want to know what it was.”
Something in his words struck her, and she realized in that moment that there was so much more to this than Ty had shared.
“Did you know Robin?” Senora asked. “I didn’t even ask you if you’re alright after witnessing that.”
“I knew her well enough to be surprised. It’s a small town. We pretty much know everyone, even those of us who are considered outsiders.”
“And you’re an outsider?”
He nodded.
“Not that I cared about it, but it came up a lot in school. You’d be surprised how many kids want to try their hand at bullying the Lycan children.”
“That seems dangerous. Couldn’t you just shift and win any fight?”
“It’s not that simple. We weren’t allowed to shift within the city limits, and never in front of a human. Breaking the rule caused huge problems for our tribe, and we couldn’t risk it. For the most part, we coexisted without issue, but there were always problems.”
“Where does Robin fit into the picture?”
“She’s the school counselor, too. When children are troubled, they get sent to her for therapy, and that keeps them from getting kicked out of school.”
“Did a lot of children get sent for extra therapy? That seems rather odd for a small town like this.”
“Mostly just Lycan children. They get sent there to deal with their ‘anger issues.’ But no one takes into consideration that they’re angry because they’re being bullied. It’s been such an issue that a few of our young adults have come back from college ready to teach, and we’re starting our own school on the preserve.”
“Won’t that keep them from being able to integrate into society later on?”
“Not as much as having a juvenile record will. Our children were being disciplined more harshly and more often than the others without any proof of poor behavior. There have been a couple times that the town has voted on whether we should be allowed off the preserve at all and our freedom has been a few votes away from being taken away.”
“Yet the Sheriff has no problem calling you in for a consult when he needs you.”
“That’s only because some of the wolves in that enclosure are endangered, and he wasn’t allowed to shoot them. He knew I could get in and get out without getting injured. Sending you in with me was just to amuse himself.”
“See, that doesn’t make sense to me. He sent you in when he could have left her there for the wolves to finish off. Wouldn’t that have made more sense?”
“Not really. The wolves had already destroyed most of the evidence, if not all of it, by then. If he had delayed removal of her body, that would have raised suspicions. Not that I think he killed her, because that’s not how he works. He doesn’t get his hands dirty, and he maintains plausible deniability throughout. He’s not an idiot, and he’s not going to put himself in the position of getting caught. If I hadn’t been able to help him, then he would have called a vet to tranquilize the wolves, and the end results would’ve been the same.”
“It sounds like there’s no love lost between you two. Why did you help him?”
“Because I knew you would be here. Your reputation in the fie
ld is well-known, and I wanted to get a look at you for myself.”
Senora could feel herself blushing, and she was glad that he was still walking slightly ahead of her on the wide trail and couldn’t see her face.
“I had no idea that anyone outside of D.C. knew who I was.”
“You’ve been a household name since you did that job in Little Elm. The news replayed the video of you pulling that girl out of the shipping container over and over for weeks. I’m sure the Sheriff wasn’t happy when he found out that Mabel had called you.”
“Is Mabel going to be safe?” she wondered suddenly. “I doubt the Sheriff is happy with her.”
“Mabel will be fine. She’s not even on the Sheriff’s radar,” he said, but Senora wasn’t convinced.
“What if she keeps asking questions and pressing the issue? Mabel doesn’t seem like the kind of parent that’s just going to let this go.”
“I spoke to her as we were walking out, and she agreed not to mention it to anyone else. She’s going to play the part of a mom too stuck in her grief to want to pursue an investigation.”
“That makes sense since Addie is already gone. I’ve had a few parents give up in their grief. I can’t blame them for just wanting the nightmare to be over.”
“Mabel is not the kind of woman to just let it go. She may be heartbroken, but she’s also enraged, and that’s going to keep her going long after most would give up. She’s going to keep her thoughts to herself for now, but she’ll get us anything we need to find out who did this to Addie.”
Ty stopped, looking at Senora and sighing.
“We’re almost there. I just want you to be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” she asked, her stomach clenching.
“We live life differently than you’re used to.”
“Am I in danger?” she asked, hand instinctively twitching for her gun.
“No,” he said, and there was a twinkle in his eye as he bit back laughter. “But I can guarantee you’re going to see a lot more nudity.”
Senora shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“I didn’t say that I have a problem with nudity. I said I didn’t want to see you naked,” she teased him.
But that was a lie. He laughed as he led her around the corner and out of the tree line. Her last thought was that she wouldn’t mind if he never put on clothes again, but that thought was cut short when she saw the magical scene before her eyes. What she saw took her breath away, and she realized then that Ty wasn’t exaggerating when he said that his people lived differently than anything she’d ever seen before.
CHAPTER NINE
The Sheriff’s phone rang as he sat in his vehicle outside the nursing home. Smiling when he saw that it was his Deputy, Keith, calling, he answered it, elated. It was about time that things started going right and his town got back to normal. He had product to move, and he was falling behind.
“This is Dale,” he said, the air conditioning blowing so hard on his face that it pushed the hair off his forehead. “Did you get them?”
The silence stretched between them.
“What the hell happened?” Dale asked, trying to keep his temper under control.
A woman walked out of the nursing home, noticing the Sheriff’s vehicle and waving. He forced a smile and waved back, still waiting for Keith to explain what had happened.
“We went after them like you said, but we couldn’t catch up.”
“How is that possible?” Dale said through his plastered smile. “The rain would have made the cliff impassable, so they had to go all the way around to get to the river. That should have taken them at least an hour, and you were on four-wheelers.” He stopped and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You had one job, and you had the upper hand.”
“He shifted,” Keith said.
“How can you be sure? Were you close enough to see him do it? Was he on our side of the territory line when it happened?”
“I didn’t see him do it, but I’m sure he was on our side. There’s nothing like a werewolf print, and they went all the way to the river. And we found his clothes.”
“Are you sure they were his? Did you pick them up?”
“I’m sure that they were his, but I didn’t see them until one of the other Deputies ran them over.”
Dale held his anger in and managed to whisper the curse when he wanted to scream. Ty was becoming a thorn in his side, and he was tempted to take him out, treaties be damned. Ty had been a problem for as long as Dale could remember, and he was done playing by the rules. There had to be a way to get rid of him and the girl so he could go back to running his business and his town the way he saw fit.
“What about the footprints?” Dale asked as he let a long, slow breath of air out.
“Those were run over, too.”
“Any reason you didn’t take a picture?”
“I didn’t have my phone on me. I had to wait until I got back to the car to even call you and let you know that they slipped away.”
The more Keith talked, the angrier Dale was getting. Was there anything that his men could do right without his help?
“Why would you leave your phone in the car?” he asked, then thought better of it. “You know what? Never mind. I’m assuming that they’re in the preserve now and untouchable?”
“They are.”
“That’s fine. We’ll deal with them later. As long as they are there, at least I can get things running again. I’m falling behind, and the man in charge is getting antsy. If this goes on much longer, I’ll have to tell him that we’re having issues, and he’s not going to like that.”
“Of course not,” Keith said, and Dale could hear the weak man cowering on the other side of the phone.
Dale sneered, disgusted by Keith’s complete lack of backbone. Maybe he would kill the little weasel for fun, just for being the biggest pansy he’d ever met. The thought made Dale smile. He imagined Keith on the ground, begging for his life in a puddle of his own vomit, and he almost laughed outright. He bit back his good humor, then noticed that someone was standing outside the door of the nursing home, trying to get his attention. He waved back, then drove around to the side of the building while he waited for Keith to get ahold of himself.
He parked in the little carport, tucked away behind the building and between the trees that were planted close together to grant a measure of privacy at the back door. This was the door that was used to remove those residents who died in-house, and every bit of care was taken to make sure that the transfer of the body from the facility to the waiting vehicle went completely unnoticed. It made people feel better, and it kept the residents from having to accept that they were on the downswing on their long lives and on the way to meeting their Maker much sooner than anyone wanted to.
He stepped out of the heavily tinted SUV and through the door that was held open by the man who had waved him in earlier.
“I’ll talk to you later,” he said to Keith.
He hung up before the man could say another word. It was just as well. He was beyond irritated with Keith and the rest of the men, and he was having a tough time being rational about how he should deal with their failures. He couldn’t really afford to kill everyone who pissed him off, and despite his flaws, Keith was one of his best and most loyal men. They were in deep. Together. And Dale couldn’t just kill Keith because the man had a bad day. He needed Keith.
He sighed.
“Long day?” Mark said lightly.
“The longest,” Dale said.
“Well, it’s about to get better.”
“That’s what I heard.”
They rounded the corner and walked into a quiet room at the end of a long hall. The lights were off, and a slender woman with long blonde hair sat beside the bed, crying softly in the darkness.
“Hannah?” Dale said as he gently touched her shoulder, then walked around to crouch in front of her.
“Hi, Sheriff,” she said, swiping at her tears and smiling.
“
I understand that you need a ride to the hospital so you can make a tough decision, and I’d like to take you if that’s okay.”
Hannah nodded.
“Thanks. I just got my license, and my dad was all I had left. I don’t think I can drive all the way to Fort Worth right now. I’m just really-” Her face crumpled, and she burst into fresh tears. “Am I even old enough to decide to pull the plug? Do they know that I’m only sixteen?”
“They know,” Dale said softly. “They’re expecting you.”
“I just wish I had someone to go through this with me. I can’t make this decision alone.”
“You have us, Hannah. We’re family in this town, and we take care of our own.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Hannah said, taking his outstretched hand and standing from the chair. “I didn’t know if I would like it here when Daddy moved us here two years ago, but now I can’t imagine my life anywhere else. I’m just glad that we were here when Daddy had his accident and not in Dallas. Y’all have been like family, and I can’t thank you enough.”
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about a thing,” Dale said with a roguish smile that drew a smile from the teen. “We’ll help you get through this.”
“Thank you.”
“Let’s go. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can start to heal.”
“Are you sure he’s already gone?”
Dale nodded.
“Eric- I mean, your father - has been declared brain dead. But they can’t take him off life-support without your approval, and they want to talk to you about organ donation.”
Hannah nodded.
“They can take whatever they want. Daddy’s gone, and he doesn’t need his body where he’s going.”
“That’s a very mature and compassionate choice you’re making, Hannah. I would say you are wise beyond your years.”
Hannah laughed and got into the passenger side of the SUV, buckling her seatbelt and sitting back for the long ride ahead. Dale got into his seat and looked at the young girl sitting there, seat back, eyes closed, completely trusting.