Both of them got his voice mail.
“Okay. I’m going to drive to the sheriff’s office and see if he’s in. If he’s not there, I’ll call him and let him know about the professor not coming home last night,” she said.
When she went back downstairs, Marigold gave her a quizzical look. “Everything all right? Not working today?”
“Can I borrow Imogen’s truck to go to town? The professor went to the dig last night to get something he forgot, and he never came home.”
“Oh. Good heavens. Yeah, go ahead. And if sheriff jerk-wad hurt your feelings, I’m going to punch the fuck out of him,” Marigold added. “Of course he’ll probably kill me afterwards, but it’ll feel really good while I’m doing it.”
“I thought he was Sheriff Sexy-ass?”
“If he upset you, he’s Sheriff Jerkwad.”
Ginger forced a smile. “Everything’s fine. No punching. No name-calling. I’ll call you from the sheriff’s office.”
As she drove to the office, her phone rang, and she grabbed it quickly. Her heart sank when she saw that it was her Alpha’s number.
“Ginger? How is everything going there? You haven’t caused any more trouble, have you?” Reynaldo’s tone was aggrieved.
“Everything is going fine,” she said brightly.
“Are you sure? You sound strange. What have you done now?”
“Nothing! Everything is going really, really well. Oh, gotta go! Another call’s coming in.” She hung up quickly.
When she pulled up out front, she saw that the sheriff’s patrol car wasn’t there yet. Now unease rippled through her stomach, warring with anger and hurt.
She walked inside and saw Jax sitting at his desk. He glanced up at her, his expression neutral. “Do you know what time the sheriff is coming in?” she asked.
“No. He called and said he’d be in a little late.” He went back to his computer.
Oh. So he’d called Jax, not her. So at least he was all right…he was just making it quite clear that he wanted nothing to do with Ginger.
Her heart thumped painfully in her chest. First Ashmont, then Loch. Rejection was becoming painfully familiar these days.
Should she turn around and go back to the boarding house? But that would make it too obvious to everyone there that something was wrong. And it might make Loch look bad, as if she’d disobeyed his orders and was ditching her assistant duties.
Portia, sitting at a nearby desk, flashed a cold smile that dripped with malice. “Oh, trouble in paradise?” she asked sweetly.
“Cut it out,” Lola snapped.
“Or what?” Portia’s eyes glowed.
Lola leaped up from her desk and whirled to face her. “Or, get up off your bony ass and you’ll find out what-“
“Lola! I need help finding a file on my computer! Could you show me?” Ginger said desperately. The last thing she needed was to be accused of starting a fight right in the middle of the sheriff’s station.
Grumbling, Lola followed her, shooting dirty looks over her shoulder at Portia, who bared her fangs and let out a long, low growl.
Jax was sitting at his desk, typing away on his computer.
Ginger sighed, took a deep breath, and walked over to him.
“The professor never came home from his dig last night,” she told him. She hated to tell Jax, because she didn’t want to stir up trouble between the wolves and the panthers, but she had the feeling that the sheriff didn’t want to hear from her.
It surprised her how much that hurt. It hurt far worse than when Ashmont had texted her to tell her it was over. This was like a bruise that spread all through her insides, deep and aching.
“What do you mean?” Jax looked up, his brow furrowing.
“He didn’t come down to breakfast this morning, so we went and checked his room. It was empty and his bed hadn’t been slept in. One of his students told me that she saw him after dinner last night, and he said that he was going to head out to the dig to get something he forgot. And apparently, he never came home.”
“Which student?”
“Her name is Tallulah.”
Jax waved one of the other deputies over. “All right. We’ll head out to the dig right now. Thanks,” he said, and headed for the door, muttering “Freaking panthers.”
Ginger felt unease ripple over her. There was no way Jax would approach this situation with any diplomacy – but after the way the sheriff had flipped out last night, she doubted he was in any better mood to deal with it either.
She walked back to the filing room to resume her filing. It was nearly impossible for her to concentrate; she could barely remember the alphabet.
A little while later, Portia came and knocked on the door.
“The sheriff wants you at a scene,” Portia said, her expression neutral.
“What kind of scene?”
“Death that was just reported this morning. It appears that the body’s been moved. We want to find out what happened during his final moments. Come with me.”
Portia turned and walked out of the room without looking back.
Ginger scrambled to follow her, head whirling. The sheriff wanted her to go with Portia? That was hard to believe. Then again, it was also hard to believe that the punctual sheriff had never showed up to pick her up this morning, and hadn’t even bothered to call her to explain what was going on.
Her heart sank. He really didn’t care what happened to her.
Silently, she climbed in the car with Portia. “Where are we going?” she asked as she shut the door.
“You’ll see when we get there,” Portia said coldly, and took off with a lurch as Ginger was buckling her seatbelt, so fast that Ginger slammed into the dashboard in front of her and then was slammed back into her seat.
Portia’s lips curled into a small, cold smile as they headed out of town.
After several minutes of driving, Portia suddenly took a turn down a narrow country road that was shaded by trees.
Ginger’s unease grew, and she wondered how much longer she should put up with this silent treatment before demanding answers. Could she even demand answers? Would this get back to her pack somehow, and get her in even worse trouble?
Frustration curled inside her, and she folded her arms across her chest, scowling.
“What’s the matter?” Portia asked snidely. “Don’t like the country? Then you’re in the wrong place, sweetheart. You should get back to the city where you belong.”
“I agreed to serve as the sheriff’s assistant for two weeks. I intend to keep my word,” Ginger said, in a cool but neutral tone.
“I should think it would be fairly clear by now that the sheriff has already lost interest in you. You could leave town right now and he wouldn’t even notice.” Icicles dripped from Portia’s words. “In fact, you should. You’re just embarrassing yourself, panting after him like a lovesick pup.”
Was that true? Ginger wondered. She knew that Portia was bitterly jealous of her – but still, after the way the sheriff had vanished, Portia’s words stabbed at her.
“You know, it’s obvious to everyone that you’re incredibly out of place here,” Portia continued. “A red wolf in a gray wolf’s territory. A half-breed running with an Alpha. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s dangerous to leave the safety of your pack?”
The car slowed. Suddenly Portia’s eyes were glowing amber, and the bones of her face began to shift and lengthen. Thick black claws shot from her finger tips.
And that was that.
Ginger had had it.
She’d grown up being bullied, taunted for being different, for being fat, for being weird, for talking to people only she could see. And, back in middle school, she’d finally gotten tired of it. She was never the type to start anything – but she’d sure as hell finish it.
Her foot shot out and slammed on top of Portia’s foot, jamming on the brake so hard that the car skidded and bounced on the road before screeching to a halt.
“What the hell
was that?” Portia shrieked, as Ginger’s fangs sprang out and hair sprouted on her face.
“That was me saying I’ve had enough. You’re obviously counting on the fact that a typical red wolf is half the size of a gray wolf. Well, I’m not a typical red wolf, in case you hadn’t notice.” Her voice came out in a snarl.
Portia stared at her, frozen in shock, her eyes widening.
“I’ve got a good eighty pounds on you in human form. You want to find out how big I am when I turn? You want to find out how we deal with bullies in New York? Step outside of the car and let’s settle this.” Ginger opened her door and gestured at the road.
Portia just kept staring, breathing hard, and finally she turned back to the road, started up the car again, and said in a cold, quiet voice “Please close your door.”
Ginger slammed the door shut, hard.
“You and I are done speaking to each other,” Ginger snapped. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you while we’re in the car. Drive me to this scene, if there even is a scene, and let’s get this over with.”
Portia’s face darkened with anger, but she didn’t say a word. She made a u-turn, drove back to town, and soon they were in a high end subdivision, driving past mini mansions surrounded by massive sprawling lawns.
They pulled up in front of a Tudor style home, with a steeply pitched roof, rubblework masonry and decorative half-timbering. There was an ambulance parked out front, a deputy’s car, and a hearse.
They walked up the flagstone path and climbed the steps in silence. Two life sized statues of stone wolves sat on either side of the doorway, signifying that these were wolf shifters. Wealthy wolf shifters.
Inside, in a spacious living room, a small crowd had gathered. A woman in a two piece Chanel suit and shiny black pumps sat on the couch, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. A young man was holding her hand. Several well dressed couples who were probably her neighbors sat on the overstuffed leather sectional, murmuring words of support.
There was a deputy sitting in a chair with a laptop on his lap, tapping away as he wrote his report. They all glanced up when Ginger walked in.
“This is Ginger Colby, sheriff’s office liaison. She’s a certified post-death communications expert,” Portia announced loudly. “She’ll be able to communicate with the deceased about his final moments.”
The woman in the Chanel suit blanched.
“Well, I really don’t think that’s necessary…” she protested.
“After everything that she’s just been through!” one of the other women on the couch said indignantly.
“It’s routine.” Portia threw a glance at Ginger. Everyone was staring at Ginger with open hostility, and Ginger glanced back at Portia, to see that cold little smile playing across Portia’s lips again. The smile vanished as soon as Ginger’s eyes were on Portia, and her face went carefully neutral.
“Follow me, please,” Portia said, and lead Ginger down a hallway and into the couple’s master bedroom. It was a large room decorated in dark gray and black tones, with black lacquer furniture.
A corpse lay on the bed with a sheet pulled over him.
“The rigor mortis and livor mortis in the body shows us that he didn’t die in the position that we found him. He’d been dead for several hours, and then somebody moved him. But the wife is insisting she came home from her garden club meeting this morning and found him in exactly that position,” Portia said.
Ginger sighed, taking a deep breath.
She closed her eyes, letting the world disintegrate around her, and when she opened her eyes she could see a man with curly silver hair on the bed – and he wasn’t alone.
The silver haired man was mostly naked, on his hands and knees, facing the edge of the bed. He wore a leather harness held together with metal rings.
Standing by the bed was another man – a muscular young man who had pulled his pants down around his ankles. The silver haired man had the younger man’s cock in his mouth, and was enthusiastically fellating him – when suddenly, he collapsed, face down and buttocks in the air, still in the kneeling position.
The younger man jumped back in shock. Then, grimacing, he reached out tentatively and shook the older man by the shoulder, and shouted his name several times. When he couldn’t rouse him, he quickly pulled his clothes on and fled without a backward glance.
The silver haired man abruptly sat up and looked straight at Ginger. Sometimes the dead did that. Sometimes they just played out the scenes of their death, again and again.
“My wife can’t know,” he said. His eyes were huge and hollow.
Ginger shook her head, clearing her thoughts, and the room returned to normal. No ghosts, no final death scene.
Her hands were shaking. She turned and walked quickly out of the room, with Portia following at her footsteps.
“Well?” Portia said loudly, glancing around the room. Everyone stared at Ginger with a mixture of anger and fear.
It was likely they all knew about this man’s double life, or at least suspected. And Ginger would lay odds that the body on the sheet had been stripped of the leather harness and repositioned before the police were called.
Ginger took a deep breath. Portia knew exactly what had happened, and she’d set Ginger up to be the bad guy.
If it were necessary, Ginger would have announced the truth, but there was no need to humiliate this man’s family. The man hadn’t been murdered; he’d died in the middle of sex.
“Death by natural causes,” Ginger said coolly. “He appears to have collapsed and died from a heart attack.” She turned to the widow. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
There were audible sighs of relief from the widow and several of the people sitting with her.
“What?” Portia’s voice cracked angrily through the room. “Remember…you’re certified! You are sworn to tell the truth!”
“I am telling the truth,” Ginger said coldly. And she was. It appeared that the man had died of a heart attack. She didn’t need to mention what activity he was indulging in when he had that heart attack.
“If you lie during an investigation, you will lose your certification!”
“You think that the coroner’s office is going to find some other cause of death besides a heart attack? He wasn’t shot, stabbed, strangled, or poisoned…he collapsed,” Ginger said firmly. “I’m not a doctor, but I know what I saw. He collapsed. And never regained consciousness.”
Suddenly Portia looked around the room and realized that all eyes were now on her. All the people in the room who’d been glaring at Ginger were now glaring at her.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she shot Ginger a dirty look.
“We’ll just see about that,” she mumbled angrily.
“Portia Sinclair, what the heck is going on here?” Loch Armstrong’s voice rang through the air.
Chapter Nine
Loch had come into the house un-noticed, and was standing in the arched entryway to the living room, his face dark with anger.
Portia’s face went pale.
“Outside. Now,” he snapped.
Portia swallowed hard, then turned and stalked out of the house without a word.
The sheriff nodded at the widow. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Timmons,” he said, and turned and walked out, and Ginger followed him, her heart frozen in her chest. What the hell was happening here?
Portia was quickly climbing into her patrol car when the sheriff barked at her “Get back here, now!” She froze and sat there for a second as if contemplating the idea of ignoring him, then she slowly climbed out and walked over to where he stood, her face sullen.
He glanced at Ginger. “What are you doing here?”
“Portia said that you wanted me to investigate…” she saw Portia frantically gesturing at her as if begging her to be quiet. Obviously Portia had lied when she’d said the sheriff wanted Ginger at the scene.
The sheriff turned to Portia. “Are you crazy? You thought you’d get away
with going behind my back like that?”
Portia didn’t answer, staring sullenly at the ground.
“We all know what happened with Mr. Timmons. There was absolutely no need to humiliate that woman and her family like that. You brought Ginger here to stir up trouble and make her look like the bad guy – at that family’s expense.”
“I didn’t say anything to the family,” Ginger said hastily. “I just said that it appears that he collapsed and died of a heart attack. Which is true. Mostly. I mean, there was a young man in the room with him when he collapsed, and they were, uh…”
“I can imagine,” the sheriff said darkly.
He turned back to Portia. “I should be out dealing with a missing professor, and preventing Jax from starting a war with the Panther Nation. Instead I’m here dealing with your childish and completely unacceptable behavior.”
“Unacceptable!” Portia hissed. “I’ll tell you what’s unacceptable! She’s a red wolf, you’re grey! You can’t-”
The sheriff let out a low, warning growl, and his eyes glowed amber with rage.
Portia wilted, shrinking back. “You can’t treat me like this. You know who my aunt is,” she muttered weakly. “I’ll quit, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Resignation accepted. Ginger, come with me.” He turned on his heel and walked away, with Ginger quickly following him.
Portia’s wails of protest filled the air. “You can’t do this! You’ll hear from my aunt! You’ll hear from the council!” she shouted.
Ginger and the sheriff climbed into the patrol car. Ginger had to hug herself to keep her hands from shaking.
The sheriff pulled out of the parking lot. “I apologize for that. And for this morning. I owe you an explanation,” he said. “Portia…her family has been trying to arrange a marriage between us for ages, for political reasons. Their family is very wealthy, mine has a lot of connections and influence in this area of the state. I made it very clear to them that she wasn’t my fated mate, but they kept pushing . A year ago I took her out on a couple of dates, and then I broke it off. She didn’t take it well. She managed to get herself hired at the sheriff’s department by having her aunt pressure the mayor, and she’s constantly trying to meddle in my personal life.”
Fated Mates: The Alpha Shifter Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle) (Insatiable Reads) Page 146