by Liliana Hart
“And I don’t have a gun,” Jack added, standing up, holding his hands out to the side, and turning slowly around so the sheriff could see he wasn’t packing. He handed his leather jacket over, too, nodding his permission for the sheriff to search it. “As to why I’m here, I was hungry.”
The sheriff glanced down at the group of empty plates on the table. “So I see. And your name is familiar because?”
Jack sighed, but he didn’t see a way out of it. “You may have heard it on the news, associated with the rebellion.”
Chuck’s eyes widened a little bit. “You’re that Jack Shepherd.”
“Yeah, I guess I am. So you can see why I don’t need a gun, and that I don’t usually go around shooting Santas.”
Suspicion had changed to respect and a familiar sort of comradery on the sheriff’s face and in his body language. “Tiger shifter, right? You mind coming down to the scene and seeing if you can scent anything? I wouldn’t ask, but my deputy is on vacation with her family in Florida. She’s a wolf shifter and the best tracker I’ve got.”
Not my job, not my problem, ran through Jack’s mind, but he’d seen the look on Vanessa’s face and heard the pain in her voice. He caught himself nodding before he could stop himself.
He paid for his breakfast and left a hefty tip, as much for Donna standing up for him as for the service, pulled his jacket on, and followed the sheriff out into the cold.
The town hall was about a block farther down the street, and he would have known it was the scene by the milling crowd of people and low hum of anxiety, even if he hadn’t begun to smell the blood when they were still fifty feet or so from the door.
“That’s a lot of blood,” he said quietly.
The sheriff shot a quick look at him. “My deputy would have been able to smell it from farther out.”
Jack shrugged. “Tiger. We don’t use scent for hunting; wolves do. A wolf’s sense of smell is a dozen times stronger than a dog’s, and far, far superior to a human’s.”
They pushed through the small crowd and made it to the entrance of the blocky brick building, and the sheriff waved at a young deputy to move aside and let them in. Jack followed the sheriff into a lobby space that looked like the North Pole had thrown up on it. Colored lights and shiny tinsel competed with fragrant pine branches and sparkly fake snow in a visual cacophony of holiday cheer. The explosion of ornaments surrounded an oversized red leather chair that looked like the favorite throne of a power-mad king.
Vanessa stood by the chair, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I’ve called his phone, but it goes straight to voice mail,” she said in a shaking voice. “That’s…that’s a lot of blood.”
Jack walked a couple of paces closer and looked at the floor beside the chair. It probably did look like a lot of blood to the untrained eye, but Jack knew how much the human body held and this wasn’t even close to that amount.
“He should be fine if he gets medical attention soon,” Jack told her, before he remembered that she didn’t know who the hell he was or why he’d be weighing in on her missing father’s condition.
She whirled to face him, her dark eyes narrowed. “Who are you? Why are you here? Chuck, who is this and what are you doing to find my father?”
The sheriff put a hand on her arm and spoke in a calm and soothing voice, which Jack could tell did absolutely nothing to either calm or soothe the woman. “Now, Vanessa, I’ve known your daddy since we were boys. I’ll figure this out and find Ray. This is Jack Shepherd. He’s a, well, a sort of federal agent, and I thought maybe he could lend his expertise. He’s also a shifter—”
Jack resisted the urge to roll his eyes as the sheriff’s voice trailed off. He was definitely not a fed. The federal government had only claimed the rebellion when it suited them. And Chuck hadn’t wanted to mention what kind of shifter he was, had he? Nobody was ever comfortable around a tiger, even the people who wanted his help.
“So you can follow his trail?” Vanessa’s face was a twist of fear and hope. “You can help us?”
“I doubt it.”
Chapter Three
Seeing Vanessa’s anguished expression, Jack tried to explain. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m no wolf,” he said, but he should have saved his breath, because he could tell by her expression that she’d heard “Yes, I’ll find your dad right away.” It was Hope Springs, after all.
He bent down toward the chair and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, but mostly got the candy-cane-scented evidence of the hordes of little kids who’d been there to whisper secret wishes into Santa’s ear. When he knelt down next to the blood pooled on the floor, though, he caught a pungent scent that he followed to an artificial Christmas tree propped up in the corner of the room next to a table with a menorah on it.
Someone had been standing behind the tree—recently.
“Wolf,” he told the sheriff, who’d followed him over. “Stood here for a while, too. Behind this tree, in the corner, where he wouldn’t be seen by people in the room.”
“He?” Vanessa said. “It was a male wolf?”
Jack nodded. “Male wolf shifter.”
He headed back to Santa’s chair and followed the scent of the wounded man to a side door, but the sheriff clearly could have done that, since the blood trail led there, too.
“The blood stops in the alley, but there’s plenty of tire tracks in the snow. People cut through that alley all the time. Either Ray got in a car on his own—”
“Or somebody put him in a car,” Jack completed the thought.
“Can you follow his scent even if he’s in a car?” Vanessa asked, her dark eyes huge in her pale face.
He shook his head. “No, but I’ll go outside anyway, just in case.”
But there was nothing. The faint scent of blood vanished a couple of feet outside the door, where tire tracks from many different kinds of cars were stamped into the snow. Vanessa, who’d come out with him, read the answer in his face, and she caught her breath in a hitching gasp. “Nothing at all?”
“I’m sorry. He got in a car, whether voluntarily or forced, and I have no way to know which one. If the sheriff finds a witness who saw something, that’s probably your best bet.”
She nodded sharply and then turned around and went back inside. Jack followed her, although there was nothing else he could do.
She made a beeline for the sheriff, who was talking into his radio. “What do we do now, Chuck?”
The sheriff ended his communication and rubbed his forehead. “I need to go talk to some people. My deputies are canvassing the area to see if we have any witnesses.”
“Do you have wolves around here, Sheriff… uh, I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your last name?” Jack asked the sheriff, who clearly understood that he didn’t mean the four-legged kind of wolves.
He figured he didn’t know the man well enough to call him Chuck.
“McConnell. And we have one pack not too far away, near the Idaho border. The Bear Lake pack. Rogues wander in and out of the area, though, according to our Division of Wildlife guy,” the sheriff said. “In fact, there’s a half dozen or so camping down by the river a little bit west of here. They’ve started a few fights in the bars, but I haven’t heard about any guns. Probably the place to start. The Bear Lake pack is a law-abiding sort.”
Vanessa clenched her fists at her sides again, but when she spoke, it was with deadly calm. “I need to find my father, now. If he’s bleeding—if that’s his blood, then we need to get him to a hospital right away. And his heart…”
Jack had been thinking about heading out, now that this was solidly in the realm of “police work that was none of his business”, but he froze at Vanessa’s words. “His heart?”
She nodded, and blinked her eyes rapidly, as if she were holding back tears.
Damn it. Jeremiah had had a heart condition, too. Probably what had killed him, not that the letter the lawyers had sent Jack had given him any details.
Jack couldn’t walk out o
n the woman and her dad now. The man played Santa Claus, for God’s sake.
“If you don’t mind, Sheriff, I’d be happy to run up to Bear Lake and talk to the pack. As you say, they’re probably not involved, but alphas usually keep track of rogues in their territory. He or she might be willing to give us some information,” Jack offered, wondering how and when he’d become an “us” with law enforcement again, but willing to take the afternoon to possibly help out. He had good rapport with the various shifter groups he’d worked with over the past decade, so he could give the Bear Lake alpha references. Shifters weren’t usually as forthcoming with human law enforcement as they might be with Jack.
“I’m going with him,” Vanessa told the sheriff, pointing at Jack. “Because the Bear Lake pack and Dad have had a few arguments over the past couple of years about hunting territory.”
She looked at Jack with those dark, dark eyes. “Our ranch borders on their territory in the Bear Lake Valley, and we’ve had a cow or two go missing. Maybe they decided to take revenge or get rid of the problem.”
Sheriff McConnell blew out a sigh. “Yeah, sure. But we also need to find Maya and the ten thousand dollars.”
“The what?” Vanessa said.
“Ten thousand dollars?” Jack said, at pretty much the same time. “I think you’ve got a motive there. But who’s Maya?”
“And where the hell is she?” Vanessa demanded of the sheriff, before turning to look at Jack. “Maya’s the damned elf.”
Chapter Four
Ten minutes later, Jack was driving Vanessa’s truck north toward Bear Lake. She’d handed him her keys without protest when he offered to drive, and she’d been on the phone since the minute she got in the truck. When she finally hung up from her fifth or sixth call, she shook her head.
Jack glanced over at her. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. And I don’t understand it. None of this makes any sense. Chuck says Maya just got there. She’d forgotten her elf shoes or some stupid thing and had run home to get them. She was freaked out and started hyperventilating over the blood, plus she keeps crying, so he hasn’t been able to get much sense out of her.”
“And what about this ten thousand dollars?” He didn’t look at her this time, keeping his eyes carefully on the road in front of him instead, but he didn’t need to see her face to tell that her bafflement was sincere.
“I have no idea. Apparently, some celebrity I’ve never heard of—a reality TV star who owns a ranch near here—was supposed to do some kind of photo op donating ten grand to the community to help renovate the town playground. He wanted to give it in cash, because Hollywood people are too stupid to have checking accounts, I guess,” she said bitterly. “So his people found Dad and handed over the cash to be stowed somewhere until the film crew got there later today.”
“And now your dad and the money are both missing, and there’s evidence of foul play,” Jack said. “Could it be a PR stunt on the part of the celebrity?”
Vanessa snorted in dismissal, but then her eyes turned thoughtful. “That would actually make sense, if it weren’t for my dad being involved. Nobody could get Ray Clark to do something like that, though. Stubborn old curmudgeon,” she said fondly, before her breath hitched again.
Jack pretended not to notice and carefully didn’t look at her while she discreetly wiped her eyes and blew her nose. They drove in silence for a while, and he waited until he was pulling into Bear Lake State Park to speak again, after he took the clearly marked turn toward pack headquarters.
“So, I have a few questions,” he said.
“Shoot. Oh, damn. What a poor choice of words,” she said. “If I lose him—”
“You won’t,” Jack said confidently, on the basis of nothing but the desperate urge to keep her from crying. “Look, I need to know a few things. Did the sheriff tell you who else knew about the money? Do you trust this elf? Why were you so eager to come see the Bear Lake pack with me? And why do you wear shoes like that when it’s forty degrees and snowy outside?”
Because it was snowing, coming down lightly for now, but the radio weather guy had sternly warned of dangerous conditions overnight. Jack didn’t want to be caught out on his bike in another storm. He’d been through it before and it wasn’t any fun, and he was a Bengal, not a Siberian. Give him a warm pool over a snowy tundra any day of the week.
“That’s a lot of questions,” she said, looking out her window as the distinctive turquoise lake came into view. “You know, sometimes I forget how beautiful it is here.”
“It definitely is that,” he replied. The sky went on forever, casting its cloudy reflection in the shimmering water like an artist’s fever dream.
“God’s country, Dad calls it,” she said, so quietly it was nearly a whisper.
“Well, if not, I bet God at least has a summer cabin here,” he said, hoping to make her smile, or at least keep her from crying. He’d rather battle blood-crazed vampires than face a woman in tears, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it to himself.
Vanessa didn’t smile, but at least she didn’t cry, so he decided to count it as a win.
Jack parked in the Bear Lake pack’s visitor parking lot, shaking his head over how bureaucratic some shifter groups had become in the years since supernatural creatures came out to the world. Maybe, though, if he actually had a pack—or, as tigers called them, a streak—of his own, he would want a pack headquarters and visitor parking, too.
On second thought, probably not. Tigers were meant to be solitary. Or so he told himself when his solitude started feeling less like freedom and more like a boulder sitting on his chest.
He turned off the truck, but didn’t get out. Instead he turned to face Vanessa.
“Okay. Who else knew about the money?”
She counted them off on her fingers. “Chuck said everybody on the town council, Dad, of course, and everybody connected with the guy who donated it, plus any press his people informed. So, not really a small group.”
“And the elf?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “Maya works at the bar part-time, cleans houses part-time, and I guess is an elf part-time. She’s kind of flaky. I don’t know what she knew.”
Jack studied her face, with its elegant bone structure and beautiful eyes. “Why did you want to come see the pack with me?”
She tightened her lips. “Alec Vargas, the pack alpha, and my father have had a running feud going on about territory. Maybe he’s behind whatever happened to Dad.”
“Your ranch borders the park, right?”
“No, not the park itself. But pack lands designated by treaty extend beyond the state park. They border our ranch at the northern end of our property line.”
“Just how big is this ranch?” Jack was rapidly revising his estimate of how important ten grand would be to the missing rancher/Santa.
“Sixteen thousand acres,” she said.
Jack’s mouth fell open and then he whistled, long and low. “That’s not a ranch, it’s a small country. Ten grand is pocket change, then.”
“To my dad, yes. He donates far more than that to charity, both locally and internationally, every year. But to the person who shot him—”
“So, let’s go talk to the wolves.”
She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Thank you. I know this isn’t any of your business or your problem, but thank you. Dad is all I have left. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him.”
Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, and he blurted out the first thing that popped into his mind. “So what about the shoes?”
She smiled—just a little bit, but it was a real smile—and then she glanced down at her heels and back at him, and he saw a hint of the fire in her personality that had been obscured by the worry for her dad. “The shoes? I wear them just because I can.”
She held his arm on the way into pack headquarters, because the sidewalk was slick with the fresh snow, and he caught a scent of jasmine in her hair and briefly considered sticking around Hope
Springs, Utah, for a few days, if and when they recovered her dad. He hadn’t promised to be in Dead End on any specific date, after all, and the lawyers were probably out of the office for the holidays.
So, because he was speculating on what Vanessa would look like wearing a lot less clothing, instead of paying attention to his surroundings, naturally that’s when the three wolves jumped him.
Chapter Five
Jack managed to push Vanessa to the side of the door, out of the fray, before he went down, hard, with nearly a hundred pounds of gray wolf on his chest, snapping at his face. The other two wolves were standing back, snarling at him but not yet attacking. Jack blocked the attack with his forearms, but he was rapidly moving up the anger spectrum from pissed off to enraged, and he was about three seconds from showing the pup who was boss.
Figuring he’d make a different life choice for once, he tried to play peacemaker. “Hey, kid, I don’t know what you think I’m doing, but I’m not doing it. I’m not invading your territory, I’m entering your damn visitor center.”
Instead of backing down, however, the wolf puffed himself up and snarled, adding insult to injury by buffeting Jack with some seriously nasty breath, and that was way past the point where Jack’s patience ran out.
He bared his teeth and snarled at the wolf on his chest, and then hurled him a good six feet across the room, where the wolf crashed with a whimper. Jack sprang up and planted himself directly in front of Vanessa, and then, before the other cubs could decide to avenge their pack mate, he threw back his head and roared.
Fact one: A tiger’s roar can literally paralyze its prey with fear.
Fact two: Jack, in human form, could make a damn fine approximation of that sound.
All three wolves hit the floor and rolled onto their backs, showing their bellies in submission, and he could hear Vanessa’s breathing behind him, which was way too fast and a little bit choppy.