Touch the Sky

by Kari Cole

  She sucked in a deep breath and gave herself another mental slap. “Sorry, sorry. I’m babbling. Vaughn’s okay, right? He didn’t seem too happy to see that guy, now that I think about it.”

  Talk about freaked out.

  Dean blinked, no doubt at her verbal explosion. “Uh, I don’t know, actually, about the agent’s assignment. He wouldn’t tell me even after I explained that I’m the pack Beta. Guy insisted on speaking with the sheriff himself. Like you, I got the impression that there was some personal business between Agent Moreno and Vaughn.”

  Agent Moreno. Diego, Vaughn had called him. Raze would need to know that name.

  She took another centering breath. He would have texted her if she needed to run right now. Maybe it was stupid of her to place all her faith on his omnipotence, but he’d been one step ahead of IA and Apex’s hunters so far. No reason to think he’d failed her now. She’d already checked her cell phone for texts or messages, but there weren’t any. So, probably nothing to worry about. This was just a coincidence. There were tons of shifters in this territory thanks to the holiday. Still, she’d check in with him as soon as she got back to Jessie’s.

  “So, um, you’re the Beta, but you’re Vaughn’s deputy,” Hannah said.

  Dean sighed, long and loud. “Yeah. I’d intended to be sheriff one day when Vaughn’s uncle retired—he was our former sheriff, and Beta, too. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” he sighed. “Darren died—was killed, actually, along with our Alpha, my sister, and Rissa’s sister.”

  “Oh my God! I’m so sorry. Vaughn mentioned something, but I had no idea you’d lost family.”

  Dean patted her leg. “Of course you didn’t. We had traitors in the pack working with rogues from outside. It was bad. The pack needed my full attention. Vaughn was a detective in Seattle then. I knew from his uncle that he wasn’t too happy there. Maybe it was shitty of me, but I took advantage of that and Vaughn’s need for justice for Darren. We brought him home so I could focus on the pack while Vaughn dealt with the sheriff’s department.

  “Honestly, we were lucky. He has a lot more investigative experience than I do. He knows all the latest forensic techniques, and he’s made contacts that I just don’t have. What could be a better solution than bringing home one of our own, even if he makes me nuts? At the time, Luke and I thought we were pretty clever. We got a seasoned cop who has every reason to be on our side.”

  Hannah stared at him, unsure what to say or ask. To lose your pack, your family...for a wolf it was the worst thing imaginable. She knew from experience. Tears burned her eyes and her wolf whimpered for them all. She wished Vaughn were with them so she could hug him. Luke and Rissa, too. They were all so nice. No one should have to suffer those kinds of losses. She wouldn’t wish it on her enemies.

  It was awkward in the truck, but she leaned over and hugged Dean’s arm. “I’m so sorry. Did you—were you able to stop all the—the...” Her throat seized and she dragged in a breath.

  Like the dominant wolf he was, Dean nuzzled the top of her head, offering her comfort. “The ones here, yes. We’re still working on some things.”

  He was quiet for a while, and she moved back over to her own side of the cab. Finally he said, “I wish you hadn’t been the one to bear the brunt of the new shit hitting the fan, but I am so glad you were here this morning. I don’t know what I would have done if Sarah or my boys—well, thank you. You’re a hero.”

  “What? Oh, no.” She was no one’s hero. She could barely take care of herself. Just look at how badly she’d screwed up in Atlanta. Breaking into the safe in her father’s office had seemed like the right thing at the time, but now everything was a disaster. She was on the freaking run and her family—no, she couldn’t think about that now. Maybe not ever. “Please don’t call me that. I did what anyone would have done. I was protecting myself.”

  “Okay. I get it,” Dean said. “Not a bit of that is true, but we can play it that way if you want. Just know that despite everything I’ve told you, this is a good pack, Cassandra. We’ve been through tough times, we’re a little wary, but the people here are good. If you want to confide in us whatever it is that’s got you so skittish, we’ll listen. Maybe we can help.”

  Hannah shook her head. He had no idea what he was offering. And it was precisely because they were so wonderful that she wouldn’t tell them anything. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—be responsible for bringing Apex down on anyone else.

  The illuminated sign for Mills Nursery & Florist appeared ahead. Hannah let out a breath.

  Dean chuckled. “No need to sound so relieved. I won’t press. But the offer stands.”

  “Thank you.”

  They turned onto the driveway that led around the back of Jessie’s business to the house. Her cousin’s red Jeep was parked alongside the house, behind a dark sedan.

  Dean pulled to a stop next to the front walk. “I’ll walk you in.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Hannah said. “I’m sure you have tons to do. I appreciate the lift.”

  “All right. I’m sorry about interrupting tonight.”

  Hannah’s cheeks warmed. “Not a problem. I understand. Duty calls and all that.”

  “Right. Take care. Sarah will want to check your wound again tomorrow. Make sure everything is okay after the run.”

  “That’s not necessary either. I’m fine. Feels great. Tell her I’ll come in if something’s wrong. Promise.” She flung open the door and jumped out before he could say anything more. She’d spent more than enough time with the pack already. “Thanks again.”

  She shut the door and waved, almost running up the path. She’d held it together as long as she could. Her nerves were shot. She needed to see Frost, make sure he was okay, and contact Raze, to make sure they were all okay.

  The porch light was on. She smelled Frost before she saw him lying on the cushion of the porch swing, calm as could be, looking for all the world like he should have a mint julep and a paddle fan swirling above his head. Well, he should. She never got a chance to pamper him.

  “What are you doing out here, Frost? You could have waited for me inside.”

  The SUV shifted into gear, and its tires crunched on the gravel in the driveway as Dean drove off to enforce the law somewhere else.

  Frost hopped off the swing and sniffed her. He came to attention and gave her a look.

  “It’s been an eventful evening. I need to touch base,” she said, using the phrase that meant she needed to message Raze. “Come on, I’ll tell you about it inside.” She’d learned the hard way you could never be too careful.

  Not one to waste time, Frost stepped up to the front door. As soon as she cracked the door open, she caught the scent of another female werewolf. A frisson of fear sparked in her chest, but her common sense kicked in almost as quickly. If anything was wrong, Frost wouldn’t have placidly hung out on the porch swing.

  She opened the door all the way and stepped inside. Jessie had left a table lamp on in the living room. Otherwise the front of the house was dark. She was halfway down the hall to the kitchen when she heard a clatter and a woman moan.

  “Jessie!” Hannah darted into the kitchen, fists raised, and skidded to a stop. Across the room, her cousin was pressed up against the counter, topless, her arms coiled around the neck of another person. A woman. Hannah sniffed. No, the female werewolf.

  “Uh, oh—oh, my.” Hannah clapped a hand over her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

  Someone snorted. Then there was a laugh.

  A wicked blush burned Hannah from the tips of her ears, all the way down to her chest. Good Lord, it’d be a miracle if her face ever returned to its normal color after this evening.

  “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon,” Jessie said.

  “Obviously,” she muttered, backing away. She’d find the doorway. Eventuall
y, right? “I’ll—uh, just...um—”

  “You can open your eyes. I’m decent now.”

  Hannah cracked one eyelid open, and confirmed that her cousin was indeed clothed and not clutching another woman’s head to her breasts. “Uh, hi?”

  The female, a few inches shorter than Hannah, had dark hair cut in a chic pixie style, with long bangs swept to the side. Her dark eyes crinkled in amusement. “Hello. You must be Cassandra. I’m Becca Johnson.”

  With a rueful smile, Hannah accepted the female’s outstretched hand. “Hi. Sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “It’s all right,” Becca said at the same time that Jessie said, “Great. Go away.”

  Hannah made a wide-eyed face at her cousin. “Got it. You ladies just go back to—uh—whatever you were—uh—doing. Frost and I will get out of your hair.”

  “Awesome,” Jessie said.

  “Good night,” Becca called as Hannah rushed out of the room, dragging Frost with her by his studded collar. She rushed them into the guest room, kicked the door shut, and fell back on it, twisting the lock.

  Frost huffed at her.

  “Sorry. I’m”—she made a face and lowered her voice to a whisper—“I’m all flustered. I had no idea that Jessie—well, doesn’t matter, but no one wants to walk in on their family members in flagrante.”

  Frost shook his head and hopped up on the bed.

  “I know, you think I’m silly. I’m human enough to be a bit prudish.” Another lupine snort. “Fine. You win. I’m absurd.”

  He gave her a regal look and laid his head on his paws.

  Hannah pulled her backpack out from under the bed and withdrew the laptop. “Don’t get too comfortable. We may have to skedaddle any minute.”

  As soon as she logged in, she messaged Raze. It took almost thirty-five minutes for him to respond, much longer than ever before. While they waited, Hannah whispered to Frost about the IA agent, packed all of their meager belongings, paced, sat on the bed until Frost grumbled at her twitching, moved to the wooden chair in the corner and crossed and uncrossed her legs, paced some more, checked the internet and Wi-Fi connections, paced again.

  Mostly she pretended she couldn’t hear Jessie and her friend having an excellent time and that she wasn’t at all jealous because it wasn’t her and Vaughn making that racket.

  Just when she was about to say to hell with it and hightail it out of town, her computer pinged with an incoming message.

  Stay, it said.

  Under normal circumstances, she would have replied with an Arf arf! or something equally smart-assy. She’d bypassed normal months ago. IA agent, she repeated instead.

  Not 4 u.

  Hannah squinted at that. Agent Moreno wasn’t there about her? Before she could ask for clarification, because—hello?—her life was at risk, Raze added, On a different assignment.

  Oh. Well, that was good but still—

  Stay out of his way, Raze ordered. Don’t b obvious.

  Her right eyebrow began to twitch. She pressed a finger over it. How am I supposed to do that? Aren’t I on a Most Wanted list or something? He could recognize me.

  A risk ur going 2 have 2 take.

  Gee, thanks. Glad to know he was willing to risk her life. Are you sure you couldn’t hack the memory card? You manage everything else. Well, she assumed he did. She wasn’t really sure how he knew everything he did and he refused to tell her. This plan depends on something that might not even be possible.

  No choice. 3 strikes we’re out. U whiffed twice already. If we try 2 hack it & fail, we lose everything. Not just abt u.

  Crap. This was how she always lost their arguments. When everything in her life had first gone to hell, she’d tried to access the information she needed to save herself. She’d had no clue what she was doing—as Raze had not-so-tactfully pointed out on several prior occasions. The encryption program only allowed three failed login attempts before it destroyed the data. In her blind panic, she’d tried to guess the password. And flunked.

  Another message flashed on the screen, and she broke out into a sweat at the reminder.

  Everything depends on accessing the data on that memory card.

  Chapter Twenty

  Vaughn was a male who enjoyed silence. He wasn’t given to long bouts of exposition on any subject, nor did he feel the need to fill a conversational void. Unlike Dean, he liked to keep the chatter to a minimum. This trait didn’t always work in his favor with females. They tended to say he was boring or dour. He never understood why they were mad. He didn’t tell them they couldn’t talk.

  Still, if he had to spend one more silent minute in his truck with Diego Moreno, he wasn’t sure he could be held responsible for his actions. The male may not have opened his mouth, but his presence and sneers spoke volumes.

  “Who are you tracking?” Vaughn asked him.

  “A female by the name of Sharon Beck. If you kept up on the RFIAs, you’d have seen her listed.”

  He held in a sigh. “I went through them this morning. I don’t remember there being an APB for murder on her.”

  Diego shrugged. “The details are need-to-know.”

  So, IA was hunting someone and making it look like she was a missing persons case rather than letting law enforcement know she could be dangerous. Nice.

  “Do you know?” When Diego didn’t respond, he pressed on. “Who did she kill? What was the motive?”

  The tight set of Diego’s jaw and his refusal to respond were answer enough. The male didn’t even know why he was tracking Sharon Beck. The details that his former friend didn’t seem to care about mattered. They were the difference between locating an abused wife or uncovering a hardened killer. The details kept you and your suspect alive.

  Interclan Authority did a lot of shady things, in Vaughn’s opinion. He wasn’t sure if it was arrogance or incompetence, or something worse. But the secrecy around the hunt for Sharon Beck was just another example of them being closed-lipped dicks.

  Vaughn signaled a left-hand turn back into town. The sheriff’s department wasn’t far now. “Why do you think she’s here?”

  Diego shrugged again. “We’ve had some intel.”

  “That says she’s here?”

  “Possibly.”

  The ambient light in the truck cab grew brighter as they drove into the heart of Black Robe. It was enough to reflect Diego’s annoyed image on the interior of the windshield as they passed stores and businesses.

  “Right,” Vaughn said.

  Several civilian cars were parked in the lot in front of the station. Next to Vaughn’s department-issued Ford Expedition, two cruisers were in the staff section of the lot on the side of the building.

  Vaughn sighed. If he were a different kind of male, he’d tell Diego to shove it and deal with the deputies on duty. Sometimes, he wished he could step back, let things go. That impulse usually lasted about three seconds before his instinct to make sure everything was done right kicked him in the teeth. Still, his control freak nature didn’t change the fact that he’d rather be hidden deep in the woods on a bed of soft grass with an even softer Cassandra.

  He parked his pickup in a staff-only spot and turned off the engine. He didn’t bother waiting for Diego. The male could either follow or sit in the damn truck all night. Vaughn wasn’t issuing the guy an engraved invitation.

  As he walked to the station’s side entrance, one of his truck doors opened and closed. Diego’s scent grew stronger and Vaughn threw open the building’s door. As soon as he stepped inside, he was once again assaulted by noise and activity.

  BJ nodded his dark head as he hunted and pecked one-handed on his computer keyboard, a phone receiver held to an ear by the other hand. A rumpled man who stank of beer and sweat slumped in the metal chair he was handcuffed to next to BJ’s desk. Mary Jo Shortbull, another human deputy
, had her curly hair pulled back into a wild ponytail. She was wearing a pair of blue nitrile medical gloves as she cleaned and bandaged a cut on the man’s forehead. Back on duty, Ted Hubbard sat at his desk taking a statement from two human women. Phones rang, the printer hummed, and the florescent lights buzzed. Over the din Donna, his part-time receptionist and office assistant, spoke to someone calling in a traffic accident by the Golden Claw. Why people insisted on calling the station directly rather than 911, Vaughn would never understand. The regional emergency was so much more efficient.

  Donna saw him watching her and waved away his concern. Fender bender, she mouthed. No injuries.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. Dean? he mouthed back, and she pointed to the phone, meaning she’d sent him to check it out. DUIs were a problem any time of the year, but during the Thunder Moon, when the county was bursting at the seams? The potential for tragedy increased exponentially.

  The holding cells along the back wall were empty, but judging from the activity tonight, they wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  He was about to lead Diego back to his office when the man Mary Jo had been taking care of shouted, “Ow!” and batted her hands away.

  “Damn it! Leave it, will ya?” the man said. “This is ridiculous. I told you, I want to talk to the sheriff. When is he getting here?”

  “What’s the problem?” Vaughn asked.

  The man turned and flicked a quick glance at Vaughn. “No offense, chief, but I’m looking for the sheriff.”

  Seriously? It took Vaughn several seconds longer than normal to tamp down the rage that comment elicited. After the bear attack and dealing with the pack’s attitude toward him tonight, his patience had worn to the nub. And he didn’t have time for this racist human shit now. “Well, pal, this is the sheriff’s department, and I’m the sheriff, not the police chief,” Vaughn said, deliberately misunderstanding the dumbass.

  The man did a double take, looking from Vaughn to Diego. Then, seeming to realize his mistake, he looked around the bullpen as if a solution to inconveniently flaunting his bigotry in public might miraculously appear.