Linda O. Johnston

by Alpha Wolf

  “Undoubtedly,” Drew agreed. If only everyone around here was as skeptical as she was, life would be a lot easier for him. But even so, the questions this sexy vet was asking could be damned hard for him to deal with.

  “So Patrick reports to you?” Melanie said, regarding Drew with apparent interest in his answer. “What do you do at the base, Major?”

  “Classified,” he said with a shrug.

  “Secret stuff,” Ellenbogen said at the same time, his tone indicating his displeasure. “Maybe if they came clean about it, there wouldn’t be so many rumors. One of these days—”

  A cell phone rang. The chief reached down to a case attached to his utility belt and extracted his phone. “Ellenbogen,” he said. His wizened face grew even more pinched. “Yeah? Where?” He listened for another few seconds. “I’m on my way.” But instead of dashing out the door, he turned to Melanie. “That dog—any indication of blood on him last night?”

  Melanie looked puzzled. Drew, on the other hand, felt a sense of dread. He was afraid he knew what was coming. And however it had happened, it could only harm him and the work he was doing.

  “There was a lot of blood on him,” the vet said. “He’d been shot.”

  “No, no, I mean around his mouth. Like he bit someone.”

  “No! None at all. He was the one who was injured. I didn’t see any indication he’d hurt anyone or anything else.”

  “Maybe not. But I want a full report about the dogs you keep on your damned military base, Major. If there’s any sign they chewed on anything they shouldn’t have, I’m going to insist on sending a crime scene team there, security or no security, to take some samples. Got it?” The chief’s face was even redder than usual, and his stare clearly dared Drew to disagree.

  “I’ll do a preliminary investigation, Chief. Believe me.” That part was true. “And if there’s anything to report, I’ll tell you.” That part wasn’t.

  “Yeah, as if I trust you.”

  “Sorry you feel that way,” Drew retorted. He understood why the chief of police had an attitude that wasn’t exactly favorable about what went on at Ft. Lukman.

  If he only knew the truth…But that would never happen.

  “What’s going on, Chief Ellenbogen?” Melanie asked. “Did something else happen besides Grunge getting shot?”

  “Yeah. Something else happened. One of our tourists was mauled, and it apparently looks like she was chewed by a damned big dog—or maybe a werewolf,” he added with a snort as he rushed out the door.

  Chapter 3

  M elanie followed the chief to the clinic’s front door. She watched him drive away in his marked car in a huge hurry, lights flashing.

  “What’s going on?” Carla asked, peering outside through the open slats of the mini blinds on the nearby window.

  “Nothing good, I’m afraid.” Melanie glanced around the small but cheerful reception area, glad that for once there were no other people with their pets waiting to be seen by her. The six metal and red plastic chairs at one side of the compact reception desk were empty. All the balls and other toys to amuse dogs while they were waiting still sat in the large wicker basket on the floor’s indoor-outdoor carpeting.

  Major Drew Connell had been right behind her. She had continually been aware of his presence. Now, he edged toward the exit, as well, his posture rigid. He didn’t look happy.

  Neither was she, at the idea of his leaving…

  No! Better that he get out of here so she could assimilate and assess all that had happened.

  “You’re going to check to see if any of the other dogs at the base may have been involved in last night’s…incidents?” Melanie asked him neutrally, using a euphemism of sorts. Something like the attack Angus Ellenbogen had described was unlikely to be kept secret, but Melanie didn’t want to be the one to start spreading rumors.

  Especially since those rumors were likely to fan the already out-of-control flames of gossip about alleged werewolves around here.

  “Yeah, I said I’d do that.” Drew’s golden eyes were hard as he glared down at her, and she shivered. Was that a warning she saw in them? About what? To keep her mouth closed?

  “That’s what you told Chief Ellenbogen.” Melanie knew her tone was icy. Better that than hurt at his change of attitude. “His reasons are different from mine. I was only asking because, if it turns out any of the other animals were injured, I’ll be glad to treat them.” She didn’t like being accused even tacitly of speaking out of turn—or anything else.

  She loved being a veterinarian. She was crazy about her patients. But she could do without having to deal with some of their owners.

  She’d initially thought that wouldn’t include Drew. She had believed they were on the same side. Both wanted Grunge to heal fast and well. Neither liked the absurdity of the werewolf rumors that may have resulted in a dog unfortunately loose at night under the full moon being shot with a damnable silver bullet.

  Then there had been that amazing sexual attraction she had felt—still felt—for Drew. Not something she wanted to encourage, but the look in his eyes suggested he’d felt it, too.

  “Do you know who was attacked by the werewolf?” Carla asked excitedly, stepping closer to Drew. “Were other dogs shot with silver bullets besides Grunge?” She was shorter than Melanie, and her ash blond hair was a mass of curls around an elfin face. At Melanie’s sharp look she said, “I couldn’t help hearing your conversation with Chief Ellenbogen.” She looked so soulfully up into Drew’s face that Melanie wanted to throw up. No, strangle her. She felt mortified that her employee would come on so obviously to a patient’s owner.

  “Of course you could have helped it,” Melanie spat back. “The door was closed. And what you heard through it goes no further.”

  “Good luck on that one,” Drew said, casting an almost amused look toward Carla. “I’ll call you later, Doctor, about when I can pick up Grunge.”

  “Say hi to Patrick for me,” Carla said with a sweet and beseeching smile. Lt. Patrick Worley? The youthful receptionist apparently had a thing for military men.

  “Right,” Drew said, then met Melanie’s gaze. “See you this afternoon.” And then he, too, left.

  Melanie stared after him for a long moment, glad somehow for the connection that would bring him back to retrieve his injured dog. But what had he meant?

  She turned to her clinic’s receptionist, whom she had inherited, like some of the furniture she might not have chosen, with the practice. “Carla, I know you’ve been here longer than I have. And I want to keep you on. But if you’re—”

  “I know. Discretion and patient confidentiality and all that.” The youthful receptionist looked abashed at last. “But, Melanie, the news is already out. It’s on Nolan Smith’s Mary Glen Werewolf Web site.”

  “There’s a Mary Glen werewolf Web site?” Shaking her head, Melanie crossed the room and lowered herself into a chair. Obviously Drew was aware of it, and he also knew that Carla knew of it. That had to be what his ironic wish to Melanie—good luck keeping Carla quiet—must have meant.

  “Sure.” Carla joined her. Her hazel eyes were glowing with obvious excitement. “Nolan’s an expert. He was two years ahead of me in high school and was a tech whiz even then. He loved researching urban legends and started a Web site about them. And his new Web site specializing in werewolves is turning Mary Glen into a mecca for everyone who’s even a teeny bit interested in shapeshifters. Only a few people hung around in winter when you first moved here—who can blame them?—but now that it’s spring again, the tourists are back. Our motels are getting booked up, and whatever happened last night will keep ’em that way. Nolan just hinted about it this morning, but by tomorrow he’ll have a lot more details.”

  Oh, great. No wonder the rumors of werewolves around here were so rampant—much more than she’d understood when she first considered buying this practice and researched the area.

  “That’s why I was a little late this morning,” Carla continu
ed. “I had to check out Nolan’s site. There was a full moon last night, so I knew he’d put something up—and he did. Awesome! And he’s holding a meeting for everyone in Mary Glen who’s interested in the werewolves tomorrow night, at City Hall. I’m heading there right after work. You should come.”

  “I don’t know,” Melanie said uneasily. She didn’t want anyone to think she believed in such nonsense.

  “But you’re the town vet now,” Carla said. “You should learn all you can. Dr. Worley always used to go to the meetings and talk to everyone, calm them down and warn them not to start shooting at anything they think could be a shapeshifter, silver bullets or not. He treated quite a few animals hurt by the tourists.”

  “Until one of them shot him. Unless it was someone local.”

  “Do you really think someone from Mary Glen shot Dr. Worley?” Carla’s arched eyebrows, darker than her hair, soared even higher in obvious incredulity. “No way! Everyone loved him.”

  Someone obviously didn’t—although the shooting could have been accidental. In any event, the shooter hadn’t been identified yet. Or at least not publicly, even if authorities had a lead.

  “So you’ll come?” Carla asked as the door opened and Keeley Janes came in with her basketful of Yorkie puppies.

  “We’ll see,” Melanie said. It was only when she became immersed in examining the pups that she realized she hadn’t asked Chief Ellenbogen to double-check the security of her doors. She still felt sure she hadn’t left the front door unlocked. But that was how Drew Connell said he’d gotten in. Why would he lie about it?

  And why didn’t she feel more nervous about it than she did?

  “It’s started again, damn it, sir,” Major Drew Connell said to General Greg Yarrow, the commanding officer of Ft. Lukman. He stood at attention in the general’s office, holding his salute.

  “You waiting for an At ease, Drew?” Greg said with a grin. “You got it.” Because of the nature of their very special ops work here, they tended toward informality among themselves, returning to military protocol mostly when others were around. The general was dressed, like Drew, in his usual on-duty army combat uniform, consisting of pale green and beige camouflage fatigues. “Sit down and tell me about it.”

  Drew did as he was told. The general’s office was sumptuous for a military command, especially a base as small and informal as this one, mostly because Greg subsidized it himself. The wooden desk was mahogany, and the U.S. flag behind it hung from a gleaming brass pole. Bookshelves lined the walls, some filled with standard volumes of military regulations and history, and others containing first editions of, arguably, some of the world’s most imaginative fiction: Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and, of course, an original script from the movie The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney, Jr.

  He had another office at the Pentagon, which wasn’t far from Maryland’s Eastern Shore but seemed a world away. That office was standard issue and looked like everyone else’s. Drew had been there often, especially before he was selected to head up the Alpha Force here at Ft. Lukman.

  “I want to hear first about Grunge and what happened last night,” the general said. He was in his early sixties but his short hair was still coal-black, receding considerably at his temples. His features were solemn, his face long and wrinkled from scowling as much as from advancing age.

  “Despite all standard precautions, considering the timing, someone apparently left the gate open, and he got out. Made it quite a distance. I saw him get shot, sir, and couldn’t do a damned thing about it. Not last night. Not with the full moon.”

  “I understand.” The general leaned forward, clasping his work-hardened hands on the desk. “What about Captain Truro? Was he observing you, as ordered, while you were vulnerable?”

  “Yes, sir. After the shot was fired, Jonas drew his own weapon and went after the source. Unfortunately, the shooter got away. In the meantime, I couldn’t let Grunge stay there. He was wounded. Bleeding. I was able to drag him to where he would receive assistance.”

  “While in wolf form yourself?”

  Drew nodded. “It was a full moon,” he said again, almost angrily—not at the general, but at himself. For being helpless. “None of the medications that allow shapeshifting at will work during a full moon, on me or on any of the others. Not yet. I’m still working on that, but I’ve had no success, and I’m damned frustrated about—”

  “I’m aware of all of that, Drew. I was just about to comment on how difficult that must have been, dragging a being of approximately your own size and shape—how far was it?”

  “Maybe a mile, sir.”

  “Through the woods? And I take it you got him there fast, since you obviously saved his life.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s when Jonas caught up with me and got me back here—after I’d watched to be sure that the new vet found Grunge. No one saw anything so far from base, damn it all. None of the others even knew what happened. And if it hadn’t been for me and this whole damned situation—”

  “Grunge wouldn’t have gotten shot? We can’t know that for sure.”

  “Sure we can,” Drew stormed. “Whoever did it was probably one of the crazies who’re returning to Mary Glen in droves, now that winter’s over and the snow is gone. He—or she, of course—undoubtedly wanted to bag a werewolf and shot at the first thing that looked like one.”

  “Or someone may have wanted it to look that way,” the general contradicted. “Maybe an ordinary dog like Grunge was the intended target, and we were supposed to learn something from it.”

  “Like what, sir?”

  “That’s what we’ll have to find out. That, and the other angle: the civilian who was allegedly mauled. Do any of our group know anything about that?”

  “No, sir. But we’ll get the answers. Soon. You can count on it.”

  “I do, Drew. Because if we don’t, our entire, extremely critical operation is screwed.”

  But Drew was no closer to finding any answers a few hours later, when he headed his military-issue dark sedan to the vet’s office to pick up Grunge.

  He had spent a lot of the time with Capt. Jonas Truro, who had been his ostensible nursemaid last night. Each special operative in Alpha was assigned both a canine—or other pertinent animal—as a partner, and an officer or enlisted man, depending on the operative’s rank, as an aide.

  Which meant observer and, when needed, nursemaid and caretaker on nights with full moons.

  By now, everyone on base was fully briefed on what had happened last night.

  But despite what Drew had promised General Yarrow, no one had any answers, or any real clues that could lead to them. Not even Lt. Patrick Worley, who had grown up here. Whose father had been a veterinarian who had attempted to find some of the answers his unit now sought.

  Who, like Drew, was a medical doctor and very much ensconced in the program.

  Very ensconced. As in shapeshifter extraordinaire, too.

  Drew put on his signal and made a sharp right turn.

  Ft. Lukman had been aptly named for retired General Maxwell Lukman, a vocal advocate of the idea of using all resources to reach a goal—even the extraordinary and incredible. It was only about five miles by road from downtown Mary Glen but could have been a universe away. Most of those roads were two-lane and obscure, surrounded by the woodlands that made this area so ideal for the covert operations being performed at the facility. And the fact that werewolf rumors had abounded around here for years helped them maintain their cover.

  Only, right now, those rumors were getting too much publicity. Too many nut cases were flocking here to check them out. Animals—and people—were getting hurt.

  That had to stop.

  Before leaving the base, Drew had called Melanie Harding to check on Grunge’s progress. His dog was ready to go home, the vet had said. He smiled ruefully at himself now. He’d kept asking her questions—out of conce
rn for his pet, he’d told himself. Only he realized even then that he simply wanted to hear her talk. Her husky, soft voice had ignited his desire almost as if she were there, stroking him.

  And now he was going to see her in person.

  He accelerated more—as much as he could on this awful road.

  Soon, he was on what passed for a highway in this area—straighter, better paved, four lanes, and peppered by traffic lights. Also surrounded by woods. Actually a very appealing part of the world, was Maryland’s Eastern Shore—especially for the likes of him. He had the radio on a station out of Baltimore that played mostly current rock music. Kept it on low. He had too much thinking to do to waste even this time.

  His plans were already underway for investigating Grunge’s shooting. The tourist’s mauling, too, even though the army had no jurisdiction over a crime that didn’t occur on federal property.

  But that mauling was surely related to Grunge’s injury. It was only logical that he would investigate them jointly. Not even the bright, and territorial, Chief Angus Ellenbogen could argue with that, as long as Drew cooperated with him—or at least appeared to—and didn’t step on his toes.

  He finally reached the turnoff for Mary Glen, drove down the main street past the civic center—such as it was—and shopping district, and turned onto Choptank Lane, his heart starting to race as he got nearer to the vet who had so affected him earlier.

  He slowed, and stopped suddenly. The street was lined with large vans with satellite dishes sticking out the top.

  No big surprise. The media had learned about the lurid goings-on here last night.

  Damn it.

  He parked on the first block and strode angrily and purposefully toward the veterinary clinic.

  The media vultures crowded around the front door. The farthest rows were filled with denim-clad people with hefty cameras aimed at the door. The nearest to the building, better dressed, thrust microphones toward the entry.