by Terry Spear
“Right. He was concerned when a friend hadn’t gotten ahold of him. He knows I look into missing person cases and had just finished one in southern Oregon. So I wasn’t all that far away. I texted him back to tell him I was coming and learn more about what was going on. He didn’t respond. I was headed up there anyway, so I kept driving, then got another text about forty-five minutes later saying that his friend had gotten in touch with him and it was a case of miscommunication. By then, I was so close that I figured I’d just drop by and visit for a bit. But when I texted to tell him I was coming anyway, no response again.”
“Was Miles the friend he was looking to see? Since he didn’t say in the text?”
“Did he text Miles? Is that how he got ahold of him?” Vaughn asked.
“No. There was no text in between the one he sent you and then the one in which he said he’d talked to the friend. Either he reached him by phone, or the friend arrived to see him.”
“Hell, then the so-called friend could have been the person who tore into him.”
“And my brother, another friend, showed up later.”
“Could be. Before I arrived, I wondered if I should let Douglas know I was almost there.”
“Or slip in like a wolf in case there was trouble brewing,” Jillian said. “So which approach did you use? Forget it. I already know. You didn’t let him know you were coming. You’re a SEAL wolf after all.”
“Exactly. When I arrived, I didn’t see any vehicles. So had Douglas run out? The front door was standing wide open, and I immediately grew alarmed. Nothing felt right. I smelled Douglas’s blood. I had my gun out, but I hadn’t expected to see a bloodied wolf standing next to the bloodied floor.”
“The door was closed when we left. Miles would have used the wolf door. Wait, you had your gun out and you didn’t just shoot Miles?”
“Someone must have opened the door.” Vaughn hadn’t planned to tell anyone the next part of the story. “As for shooting Miles, do you think I’d shoot a person for just standing there? Despite what it looked like?”
Appearing as though she didn’t believe him, she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Okay, he jumped on me.” Vaughn really hadn’t wanted to tell her that her brother had actually knocked him down and taken off. So startled to see a wolf there in the first place, he hadn’t been prepared for the wolf’s lunge. The wolf was heavy and tall while standing on his hind legs, so his front paws had slammed against Vaughn’s shoulders, and he’d gone down, losing his gun and cursing at the same time.
Jillian’s lips parted. Then she frowned again. “And you didn’t shoot him?”
Vaughn took a drink of his coffee. He wasn’t going to tell her he’d lost his blasted gun under the couch and had to retrieve it! But also, when Miles didn’t bite him, Vaughn figured he’d had issues with Douglas, not with him.
She smiled. “He knocked you down! Well, not that I’m glad about it, except that you couldn’t shoot him.”
“Yeah, you are.” Vaughn smiled. He really liked her. “Can you get ahold of your brother?”
“Most likely, he’s still running as a wolf.” She gave Vaughn an annoyed look, as if he should know that already.
“Where would he be headed? How would you know where to find him?”
“We were staying at a cabin, and that’s where some of his stuff is. His car too. I’ve been looking into…” Jillian paused.
Vaughn knew that look on her face. She hadn’t meant to tell him whatever she had been about to say.
“Looking into Miles’s business here?”
“Okay, listen. My brother was shot a week ago. He’d been staying at the cabin, but was out on a run. He made it back to the cabin and called me. I was already on my way down to visit with him and would have been there earlier, but I was still wrapping up a couple of cases. I called Leidolf and asked him to get some people out to the cabin to take Miles to the ranch. Dr. Wilders took care of him.
“After a couple days of recuperating, and against my better judgment, Miles wanted to stay at the cabin again, like he’d planned. He said a friend had texted him that he was coming to the area and wanted to get together with him. That Douglas had rented the same cabin he usually did when they came out here.”
“Douglas Wendish.”
“Yes.”
“So you’re looking for the person who shot Miles too.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s connected with Douglas’s attack?” Vaughn leaned against the couch, feeling weary, but he wanted to discuss this tonight so he could begin to process it.
“Maybe not. But what if it is? Right after the shooting, I asked Miles what he’d been doing…job-wise, girlfriend-wise, if he’d run into anyone who had a vendetta against him. Nothing seemed to be relevant. He thought it was just a random hunter. Not anyone out to get him. I didn’t know about Douglas’s injury until after Miles left our cabin, or I would have questioned him more.”
Vaughn couldn’t see the connection considering the methods used to attempt to kill people—shooting, biting. But the fact that both Miles and Douglas had been targeted still made him suspicious. “Okay, so we have one animal attack. And the shooting of a jaguar and then a wolf, your brother. Did you find the shell casings for when Miles was shot?”
“No. I spent hours going over the area. So did Leidolf’s men. Either we missed the right area, or whoever did it was extra careful and picked them up. But Dr. Wilders did remove the round.”
“In the other case, Leidolf’s men have the shell casings. Which could mean a number of things. He’s not the same shooter. He’s the same shooter and was too busy trying to avoid getting caught on Leidolf’s land, so he left the casings behind. In Miles’s case, he didn’t have to worry, because no one was looking for him, so he had more time to grab any evidence.”
“True.”
Vaughn hadn’t found anything in the rest of the box. He glanced over to see what Jillian was doing. She was looking meticulously through the tons of photos.
His shoulder hurting again, Vaughn settled back against the couch. “How did you end up at Douglas’s cabin and find him like that?”
“Miles said he was going to meet Douglas at the cabin near us. He told me they usually share a cabin when they get together, but Douglas couldn’t get away from work, so Miles asked if I was free, and invited me to take off and visit with him instead. Then Douglas managed to get away and rented his own cabin. I hadn’t planned to stay so the guys could visit, but with all the attacks, I decided to help investigate. I didn’t know Miles was planning on going over to Douglas’s place as a wolf. I couldn’t get ahold of him, and I needed to tell him I was going to be working with the jaguar shifter team so he wouldn’t worry about me not being at the cabin with any regularity. When I discovered Douglas had been attacked and was bleeding badly, I asked if he knew who attacked him, but he was pretty out of it. He shook his head. I wasn’t able to get a description of what the shifter looked like, if he could have even offered one, before the EMTs arrived and sedated him.
“My brother hadn’t been to Douglas’s cabin yet. I would have smelled his scent. I went to the clinic again to see if Douglas could tell us anything about who had bitten him, but the doctor had given him drugs to induce a coma. While Leidolf’s police officers were gathering evidence at the cabin, I returned to Miles’s and my cabin to look for him. He must have ended up at Douglas’s place right before you arrived.”
“But you’d actually met up with the jaguar agents beforehand?”
“Yeah. I was staying with Miles and investigating what had happened to him when Leidolf asked me to help some jaguar shifters on a case they were working as a favor to him. He said he’d never had this much trouble in the area, and he hoped I could help. When I arrived there, I had lunch with the jaguar shifters, and we talked about what was going on with their kind, and I told them what had happened with Miles.
“At the time, none of us believed the jaguar case and Miles’s cas
e were connected. Except that they were both shootings. And the locations are only about a half hour apart, both on Leidolf’s property. I wanted to learn if Miles thought there might be a connection we couldn’t see. When I was at our cabin, I heard Miles howl for help. Immediately, I worried that the person who shot him was after him again. Instead, I saw a wolf chasing him.”
“The rest I know.”
She scooted over closer to Vaughn, and he raised his brows. She wasn’t getting friendly. She touched his forehead, checking to make sure he wasn’t running a fever. He looked tired, and as much as she’d love to continue this discussion, she knew he should be in bed. “You were chasing my brother with a hunter’s need to take down his prey. I’m sure if the roles were reversed, you would have reacted in the same way.”
“If I had seen a female wolf chasing a bigger male?” He smiled.
Thankfully, he had no fever. She pulled her hand away. “A wolf chasing your brother, if you had one.”
“A she-wolf chasing my brother, Brock? He’s a Navy SEAL wolf like me, but a total pain in the butt. I would have laughed and encouraged you.”
“Okay, so it’s not the same with you and your brother. My brother isn’t a SEAL. He’s always getting himself into…” She abruptly stopped speaking and began looking through Douglas’s huge photo album on his cell again.
“Trouble?”
She didn’t say, not when it could put her brother in a bad light. Even the fact he had been shot could have, if Vaughn thought her brother was up to no good and someone shot him for it.
“Bad trouble, or just stupid kinds of stuff?” Vaughn asked.
“He’s a good guy, all right? He just…” She couldn’t help thinking of all the dumb things he’d pulled over the years.
* * *
Vaughn reached over, lifted Jillian’s chin, turned her head gently so he could see her eyes, and released her. Her soft-green eyes were misty with tears, and he felt like she’d sucker punched him. He hoped that her reaction didn’t mean her brother was really up to bad stuff.
He went for a little lighthearted humor. “Why do you think my brother and I went into the navy? So they’d knock some sense into us.”
She smiled a little at that, and he was glad he seemed to have cheered her up a bit.
“Not anything really bad, though enough to be a problem for our kind,” she admitted.
“Okay, so like what, for instance?”
“Riding a snowmobile when the rental place was closed for the night.”
“So breaking and entering, and stealing a snowmobile.”
“He returned it filled with gas, and the owner never knew about it.”
“But he told you about it?”
“Not exactly. I needed to find him and discovered him returning the snowmobile.”
“Okay, been there, done that.”
Jillian raised her brows at him.
“I told you why my brother and I joined the navy. What else has he done?”
She let out her breath and set the phone on the coffee table. “He borrowed a friend’s sled, with his permission this time, to run in a race…with his friends pulling the sled as wolves. He pretended they were part husky.”
Vaughn laughed. He could just imagine doing something that dumb.
“Thankfully, my father caught up with him and stopped him before he showed up at the race to participate. Can you imagine what would have happened? The judge and others might have suspected they were all wolves, and then how could Miles have explained that?”
“True.” Vaughn was still smiling.
Jillian looked furious with him. “What if he’d been caught?”
“He wasn’t.”
“Right. But he could have been.”
“Anything worse than that?” Vaughn asked, getting serious again.
“What’s worse than that? What if they had taken the wolves away from him and put them in a wolf reserve?”
“Okay, agreed.”
“Nothing worse than that. Just the same old stuff. One time, he and some of his friends were painting wolves on a freight boxcar. A train employee tried to arrest them, but they got away. I mean, painting graffiti on private property is illegal! It doesn’t matter that some people get away with it.”
“Were the wolves well-painted?” Vaughn thought anything that pictured wolves was a good thing. However, from the look of disbelief on Jillian’s face, she didn’t agree.
“It doesn’t matter!”
It did to Vaughn. If they couldn’t paint wolves well, they had no business doing it.
“Okay, then he and his friends taped wolf doors shut one year. Talk about a lot of pissed-off wolves.”
Vaughn tried to hide a smile on that one. “Anything more recent?”
“He just never stays with a job very long.”
“All right. I’ll give your brother a chance to explain himself. We just need to get in touch with him.”
“Okay.”
He didn’t think Jillian believed he felt her brother was blameless, as far as the attack went. To Vaughn’s thinking, he wasn’t. Anything could lead a man to fight someone, if he was pushed hard enough.
“I’m calling it a night.” Howard was finishing up an apple in the kitchen. Vaughn had forgotten he was in there. Howard had his phone in hand, and Vaughn wondered if he’d been catching up on emails.
Looking exhausted herself, Jillian sighed, closed her laptop, and set Douglas’s phone on the table. “Come on, Vaughn. Let’s get some sleep. We can start this again tomorrow.”
“All right. Are you worried about me?” Vaughn pulled off the gloves and set them on the coffee table, then stood up from the couch, took her hand, and pulled her up.
“No. I figure you’re too cantankerous to die on us tonight. Though if you’d like some more of that sleepy-time juice to help you rest, I’ll drive you back to the clinic.”
“Having no one disturb my sleep all evening will be the best thing for me. If you want to stay with me for the night to ensure I don’t run a fever or anything, I wouldn’t object. Too strenuously.”
Howard chuckled.
“I bet not. Howard can stay with you if you’re worried.” Jillian headed for the hallway to the bedrooms.
Vaughn laughed. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
“Your room is next to mine and across the hall from Howard’s.” Jillian walked down the hall toward the three bedrooms. “If anyone needs to use the bathroom, go ahead. I want to take a shower after that.”
“Does putting the toilet seat down go for him too?” Vaughn jerked his thumb in Howard’s direction.
“I wasn’t born in no barn.” Howard smirked.
“Just checking, because I wouldn’t want Jillian to accuse the wrong man if the seat is left up.”
She smiled and walked into her bedroom and closed the door.
“Hey, for what it’s worth, welcome to the team,” Howard said. “I never thought I’d be saying that to a couple of wolves.”
“I usually work alone in my PI business, though on the SEAL team, I was one hundred percent there for the guys. I’ve definitely never worked with jaguars before. As long as we get our man, or men, or”—Vaughn paused—“woman, we’re good.”
“Works for me.”
Vaughn checked out his room. His bags were sitting neatly on the floor next to the wall. A queen-size bed, a dresser, two end tables, a small writing desk, and a chair furnished the room. Huge chess pieces sat on shelves on one wall, and the decor was all black and white with touches of red. A picture of a black wolf and a white wolf standing in a field of red poppies took center stage on one of the walls.
He appreciated that they’d moved him in as if he was already part of the team, and he was glad to be working with them too.
Howard closed his bedroom door, and Vaughn grabbed his toiletry bag to brush his teeth and take care of any other business he needed to. He wondered how working with the she-wolf would turn out when he finally caught up with her brother.
If the guy hadn’t been involved in the attack on Douglas, why had he run?
Vaughn had to quit thinking about it and go to bed and get some rest. Tomorrow, after they checked on Douglas, he was planning to get on the road again and head to Jillian’s cabin. He retired to his room and took off all his clothes, then climbed into bed. He closed his eyes, but listened to Howard use the bathroom next, then shut his door across the hall. Then Vaughn heard the shower running, and the thought of Jillian washing up ran through his mind.
Hell, in no way did he want to think of her naked in the shower, the water running down every inch of her toned skin. He still couldn’t believe she’d grabbed him in the front doorway. He’d just leaned his hand against the doorjamb, feeling a little unsteady on his feet but nowhere near ready to collapse at any moment.
When she’d thrown her arms around him, he’d thought for a second she meant to tell him how sorry she was that she had wounded him, and was giving him a big hug for it. She was all soft curves and sweet-scented female wolf. Then he realized she had been worried he was going to drop to the floor in a dead faint. As if the petite wolf could have kept him off the floor!
He loved her sexy fragrance—she-wolf and the soft scent of jasmine—still clinging to his chest. He thought again about the Kitty Cat Club, and about how much he had wished she’d been there the second night he, Douglas, and his brother had gone. He hadn’t even taken a date, hoping he could ask the dark-haired beauty to dance, even if the muscled guy had brought her there again. Though she’d reminded him of a wolf—wishful thinking probably on his part—he hadn’t believed she truly was one. Just another big-time, cat-loving human.
Trying to get his mind off her, again, Vaughn turned on his side. A dull ache throbbed in his shoulder. He rolled over again onto his back. He always slept on his stomach. At this rate, he’d never get to sleep. After some time, he heard Jillian leave the bathroom, enter her bedroom, and shut the door.
He let out his breath and stared at the ceiling. Maybe they had some chocolate in the kitchen. That would make him feel better. He got up, nearly killed his shoulder trying to pull on a pair of black boxer briefs—which he wouldn’t have bothered with if there wasn’t a houseful of people—and left the bedroom. The place was quiet except for the ticking of a grandfather clock in the living room and the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.