by Lori Drake
Joey and Ben exchanged a glance, after which Joey took a step toward the man. “Are you okay?”
The vendor stepped back, knocking a stool over behind him. He spun to right it, but his hands were shaking. “Yes, fine. Sorry… I collect pieces from all over and recycle it. The old is made new again.” His words had a rote sound to them, a sales pitch he wasn’t putting much into just then.
“Have we met?” Maria asked, studying him with slightly narrowed eyes.
The man still hadn’t turned back, clutching the stool with a white-knuckled grip. “Excuse me, I need to…” He set the stool down and bolted for the space between two nearby buildings.
Joey’s wolf perked up. She loved a good chase. “Wait!”
When he didn’t stop, she dropped her shopping bag and took off after him, with Maria and Ben hot on her heels. Joey didn’t hesitate to follow him into the narrow alley between the buildings, but the brick walls rising up on either side of her sent a chill down her spine. She pushed the discomfort aside and embraced her wolf’s laser focus. A hunter on the heels of its prey wasn’t bothered by silly things like enclosed spaces.
Sprinting at full tilt, Joey was both surprised and exasperated that she wasn’t gaining ground on the guy. She was fast. Faster than all of her brothers, faster than Chris, faster than just about anyone she’d ever run with. But this guy wasn’t just keeping up with her… he was leaving her behind. He took a hard right at the end of the alley and kept running down the next street over. Joey followed and had a front-row view as the vendor ran into a cross street without looking. A horn blared and tires squealed on the pavement as a delivery truck laid on the brakes. The runner made it out of the truck’s way, barely, but the driver stopped, blocking the road as he honked a little more and yelled out the window.
Joey knew better than to run around the front of the truck. She skidded to a halt and banged on the side of it. “Move!”
The truck driver glared at her but got going again. By the time the truck had cleared the crosswalk, the fleeing man had vanished.
“Dammit!” Joey punched the air.
Ben was the first to draw up behind her, panting as he bent over to clutch his knees. “Where’d he go?”
Joey slid her fingers into her hair and gave it a frustrated tug. “Probably down the next side street. I couldn’t catch up. He’s too fast.” She glanced at Ben, frowning as she took in his winded posture. “I think you need to add more running to your workout routine.” She was breathing heavily herself, but wasn’t nearly as winded as he was.
“I was running full tilt. Give me a break.”
Joey looked behind her as Maria jogged up. “He got away. You didn’t recognize him at all?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“He sure recognized you,” Ben said, eyeing her.
Joey took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go back to the festival. He has to come back for his stuff, right?”
Maria and Ben agreed, so they walked back to the furniture stall. Joey collected her bag, relieved that the jars inside hadn’t broken when she dropped it, and flopped into a rocker with a turquoise cushion to wait.
Chris stood at the head of the kitchen table, looking down the row of wolves assembled at either side. He’d sent word to everyone the previous night before hitting the sack about a pack meeting the next morning, and here they all were. He still forgot at times the power he wielded as Alpha. It wasn’t just their agreeable nature that made his surrogate family comply with his wishes. It was more primal. Lycanthropes—especially betas—were instinctively inclined to obey their Alpha. Even Joey had felt that urge with their mother, though she was a strong enough alpha that she didn’t have to work too hard to fight it.
Chris wasn’t sure how strong an alpha Lucy was. She was good at hiding it. Itsuo was strong enough to blow him off, but he usually didn’t. The others, well, if he said jump, they wouldn’t even ask how high. It was something a lesser Alpha might exploit. Eric certainly had.
Pushing thoughts of his predecessor out of his mind, Chris turned his attention to the matter at hand.
“I know you all have shit to do today, so I’ll keep this brief. For those who hadn’t heard, yesterday the police paid us a visit to check up on Kate at her daughter’s request. Obviously, we didn’t tell them what really happened to her. Colt told them she moved out after they broke up. That’s our story, okay? If the police turn up again and I’m not here, tell them that. You don’t know where Kate went. You haven’t heard from her since then.”
He looked up and down the table. Adam and Lucy nodded solemnly. Jenny shifted anxiously in her seat, and beside her, Itsuo put a calming hand on her back. She leaned toward her grandfather, while Colt stared at the table in silence.
“I need a couple of volunteers to get Kate’s stuff out of the attic today, in the possible but unlikely event that the police show back up with a warrant to search the house. I don’t want to just toss it in a dumpster somewhere. If we can find Kate’s daughter and somehow manage to explain the situation to her, she might want some of it. I know her birth certificate is in there, for one. I worked out a deal with Sam. He’s going to store her stuff temporarily.”
Adam and Lucy raised their hands, but Chris shook his head. “Adam, I want you to focus on looking for Leta.”
“I will assist,” Itsuo said. “Unless there is something else you wish of me.”
“That’d be great, thanks.” Chris steeled himself for the next bit, drumming his fingers against his leg. “There’s something else. I also decided it’d be best if Kate’s body was moved, but when Itsuo and I”—he left Cathy and Dawn out of it for now—“went to dig her up last night, we discovered her grave was empty.”
Around the table, gasps and wide eyes abounded. Colt continued staring at the table, not reacting.
“What the hell happened to her?” Lucy asked.
“I’d like to know that myself,” Chris said. “Obviously, someone moved her body. It wasn’t me or Joey. Everyone else who knew where she was buried is sitting around this table.”
His pack exchanged glances among themselves. Eventually, all eyes settled on Colt. An uncomfortable silence stretched.
Finally, Colt looked up and realized he was the center of attention. “What?”
“Colt, did you move Kate’s body?” Chris asked.
Colt didn’t answer, not verbally. His expression turned pained, and he looked down at the table again, shoulders slumped.
“Your Alpha asked you a question,” Itsuo said in his quiet but authoritative manner.
Colt sighed. “Yeah, I did.”
“What the hell… Why?” Lucy asked, leaning forward. “And why didn’t you tell us?”
Adam glanced sideways at his sister, brow furrowed faintly. Her wolf had stirred in response to her anger, and her alpha was showing a little bit. An uncharacteristic slip-up.
“Because it was wrong, her being buried out there like she was. She deserved better.” Colt glanced up briefly, looking at Chris. “And you don’t have to worry much about her possessions. Other than Leta’s birth certificate, anyway. Traditionally, her people destroy the personal possessions of their departed.”
“Good to know,” Chris said. “And I don’t disagree. She did deserve better. I don’t object to you feeling a need to do something about that, but why did you hide it? We would’ve helped you if we’d known it was important to you. You know that, right?”
Colt fidgeted under the weight of Chris’s gaze. When he answered, his voice was soft, almost a whisper. “I know.”
The fact that Colt hadn’t answered the question of why he’d hidden his actions wasn’t lost on Chris. He studied the beta thoughtfully for a moment, not taking his eyes off him as he said, “Give us the room, please.”
The others vacated without hesitation or comment. Chris stepped over the bench and sat opposite Colt at the table, leaning forward with his arms resting on the tabletop. “Talk to me, buddy. Why so
secretive?”
Still, Colt hesitated. He licked his lips nervously and darted a glance up at Chris before lowering his eyes again. “It’s complicated.”
Chris chuckled. “Welcome to my world. I’m the king of complicated.”
Colt scratched at the stubble on his jaw and sighed. “I can’t tell you why without telling you where. I think it’s best you don’t know that.”
“Why?” Chris frowned and tilted his head, thinking it through. “Plausible deniability?”
“In part.”
“What’s the other part?”
Colt hesitated again, grimacing. “Because you’re not going to like it.”
“Is it on my property?”
“No.”
Tension eased from Chris’s shoulders. “I already like it. But now I’m really curious.”
Colt resumed his silent study of the table. Chris debated how much he wanted to know versus needed to know. As an alpha, he could compel Colt to tell him. But Chris didn’t want to resort to that. It wasn’t the kind of person he wanted to be.
He sat there a little longer, studying Colt in silence, then rose. “Alright. I’m going to help sort through Kate’s stuff. If you change your mind, you know how to find me.”
Chris was halfway to the door when Colt’s quiet words stopped him in his tracks.
“I took her home.”
Chris turned back to find Colt looking at him, but the beta didn’t quite meet his gaze. “Home?”
Colt nodded. “She used to talk about going back someday. Reuniting with her daughter. Asking for forgiveness. Walking the land of her ancestors. It was important to her. I thought being there would help her soul find peace.”
The image of another framed document from Kate’s wall flashed in Chris’s mind. A certificate of graduation from the Quinault Tribal Police Academy. He groaned and rubbed his face as the pieces clicked together. “You buried her on the reservation.”
“Yeah.”
Chris walked back to the table and leaned over, palms flat on its smooth surface as he pinned Colt beneath his gaze. “You snuck on the Quinault reservation with a dead tribe member’s body.”
“Yeah.” Colt’s shoulders slumped further, like he was trying to make himself smaller.
“Are you crazy?” Chris slapped the table, and Colt jumped. But Chris was only getting started. “Do you have any idea how reckless that was? How much trouble you could’ve gotten into if you were caught on tribal lands with her body in your trunk? How much trouble you could still be in, if they find the body?” As hard as Colt had taken Kate’s death, he couldn’t really be surprised that Colt had been willing to go to such an extreme in the depths of his grief.
Colt sighed. “Not really. But I assume a lot. I knew it was risky, but I thought it was worth the risk at the time. Anyway, she’s not here if the cops come looking for her. That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. But at the same time, if someone stumbles across the grave on the res… Did you at least get rid of the tarp with all our fingerprints on it?”
Colt’s eyes flew wide. “Uh…”
Of course he hadn’t. Because there simply was no such thing as a silver lining in the gray cloud hanging over Chris’s week.
11
Joey glanced at the time on her phone and grumbled to herself. They couldn’t put off leaving for the ranch much longer, or they’d be late. Staking out the furniture stall had proved fruitless. After the first hour, they’d split up, positioning themselves at various points around the area to keep an eye out for the mysterious vendor’s return. None of them had caught so much as a glimpse of him in the crowd. Surely, he had to return for his wares at some point, but he hadn’t yet, and they were just about out of time to wait.
From across the street, Ben caught her eye and pointed at his wrist. She knew full well what time it was, but kept hoping that if only they waited another thirty seconds, the guy would appear. With her luck, as soon as they left, he’d turn up.
Sighing, Joey pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against and wound her way through the crowd to get to Ben. Maria followed suit from where she was hanging out, arriving about the same time.
“Time’s up,” Joey said. “Maybe he’ll be here tomorrow. We can come back.”
“Why don’t you two go to dinner and I can stay here?” Ben said.
Joey considered the suggestion, rubbing her arm absently. “I dunno…”
“He has to come back for his shit sometime. I don’t mind missing out on dinner.”
“We could bring you a doggie bag,” Maria said.
Ben smirked. “I can find something here.”
“I hate to split up in unfamiliar territory,” Joey said, frowning. “But maybe that’s a good idea. Check in with me once an hour, okay?”
Ben agreed, so Joey set off for the car with Maria. Forty-five minutes later, they stood on the porch outside the ranch house, two minutes late. Their tardiness irked the punctual-to-a-fault Joey, but when Lewis answered the door, he didn’t seem offended in the slightest.
“Come on in,” he said, holding the door open. “Wait, weren’t there three of you yesterday?”
“Ben sends his apologies. Something he ate didn’t agree with him,” Joey said, not wanting to get into the details of why they’d been staking out a furniture vendor at the festival all afternoon.
“That’s a damn shame. Heidi and Caroline put on quite a spread. You’ll see.” He led them into the living room but paused there. “Actually, it’s going to be another half hour or so until dinner. How about I give you ladies a tour while we wait?”
“Sure, sounds great,” Joey said.
They followed him through the kitchen, where Heidi and two other women—one of whom Joey assumed was Caroline—were bustling about, and out the back door.
Behind the house, wide-open land stretched as far as the eye could see. A small vegetable garden in raised beds sat to the right of the back door, the lush greenery a stark comparison to the arid landscape.
“How much land do you own, if you don’t mind me asking?” Joey said.
“Twenty-five acres,” Lewis said. “It’s a nice area.”
“Aside from the locals wanting to shoot wolves, anyway,” Joey said.
Lewis chuckled and nodded. “Heidi’s got a little garden going back here, as you can see. It’s not enough to subsist on entirely, but there's nothing quite like homegrown vegetables.”
“My sister-in-law loves to garden. I’ve got a black thumb, I’m afraid. I can’t even keep houseplants alive.”
“Plants are easy, compared to people,” Lewis said as they began walking across the way toward the barn. “All they need is sunlight and water.”
“I don’t grow people, either,” Joey said.
Maria laughed, but Lewis snorted softly. “Maybe not, but tending a pack isn’t unlike tending a garden. But I wouldn’t expect you to know much about that.”
Joey bit down on her tongue, hard, and reminded herself that she needed to play nice if she was going to get any information on this visit.
“Joey is a good leader,” Maria said. “She works hard and cares about her people.”
Maria’s praise both warmed and surprised Joey. She glanced at Maria and smiled, but Maria kept her eyes on the ground. Joey got a better idea of why when something squished underfoot, and she looked down to find she’d stepped in a pile of manure. Cow? Horse? Either way, it was disgusting. She grimaced and wiped her foot on the dry ground, smearing the dirt and brown grass with shit. Then she hurried to catch back up again, having fallen a few steps behind.
By then, Lewis had moved on from discussion of leadership qualities. “I’ve got a mixture of human and wolf ranch hands working for me, so you’ll want to be careful what you say around folks until you get to know who is pack and who isn’t.”
“Understood,” Joey said. They followed him into the barn, and Joey immediately wished she’d brought nose plugs. The smell of hay, horse, and horse manure assaulted h
er sensitive nose, and they hadn’t gone more than two steps before she sneezed.
“God bless you,” Maria said.
“Thank you,” Joey murmured, sniffling.
“We keep the horses and feed here,” Lewis said. “There’s a bigger barn elsewhere for the cows, but we usually keep them in the field unless there’s inclement weather.”
They walked through an open space at the front of the barn, where various ranching implements hung from the walls and the floors were stacked with bales of hay. From there, a ten-foot-wide corridor ran the rest of the length of the barn, with four stalls on each side. As they walked down the corridor, one or two of the horses peeked out curiously while the others retreated into the backs of their stalls, pawing nervously at the ground.
Joey scanned the area but didn’t see or hear any signs of anyone else present other than the three of them and the horses. “Ranching must be a difficult business for you. I know horses don’t usually care for us. What about cows?”
“Cows don’t give a shit,” Lewis said, offering a hand to one of the bolder horses. Its nostrils flared, and it backed away. “Horses, on the other hand, yeah. That’s one reason I employ humans. We also have sedatives we use from time to time to calm them, but I like to avoid that when I can. You dull a creature’s instincts too much, and it forgets what it is.”
“I know of a breeder in Georgia who specializes in wolf-tolerant horses. If you’re interested, I could get you in touch with him.” As much as it pained Joey to send business to Lucas’s family, she really needed an in with this guy.
Lewis glanced at her, surprise lifting his brows. “I’d be very interested in that. Thank you.”
Joey smiled. “No problem.”
The tour took them out the side door of the barn and over to the garage. The wide metal door was open, and a car was elevated on ramps. Joey scanned the garage, taking in the various workbenches and rows of tidy equipment. The sound of roller wheels on concrete drew her attention back to the car, and she looked back in time to see someone in coveralls roll out from under it on a roller board. His sleeves were rolled up, and his hands were covered in grease from the tips of his fingers up his forearms.