Uncaging Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 4)

by Noir, Roxie

  Impossibly stupid, and not even helpful. People just getting out of prison and trying to land on their feet didn’t need to be told that that their rock star dreams were still alive. They needed an employer willing to look past a criminal record and a couple of hand tattoos.

  Gavin had a single picture on his desk: Chase, standing on a trail in the middle of the Sierras. He’d looked over at Gavin at the last moment and smiled, and Gavin had gotten that moment, that expression of I’m happy to see you. Right there, in that smile, was everything Gavin loved about his mate: his easygoing nature, his adventurous spirit, and most of all, his sincere joy in life.

  That morning, even Chase had been down, even though Gavin knew he was trying not to show it.

  When he’d started as a parole officer, his coworkers had told him not to put anything relating to his personal life up in his office. They’d all told third-hand stories of parolees who hunted down spouses, friends, kids, that sort of thing. But after a while Gavin had realized two things: one, that most people sincerely wanted to try; and two, he and Chase could handle pretty much anything.

  He didn’t advertise the fact that he was a wolf. It wasn’t a secret, but he’d found that non-wolves, and especially humans, got squirmy when they found out, so he didn’t mention it. If they knew, they knew. If not, no harm.

  Gavin had twenty-three unread emails, but with a glance at his open office door, he quietly minimized Outlook and pulled up the internet, then sat there, head in hands.

  A search had been completely useless. There were thousands of Sarahs in the surrounding area, and while he was pretty sure he and Chase were willing to call every single one of them if they had to, it probably wasn’t the best place to start.

  The phone book had been useless, of course. Who the hell had a land line anymore?

  Staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, Gavin wondered if he had access to census records as a state employee. Even though the last one had been a couple of years ago, she was probably on it, unless she’d recently moved to the area.

  It was better than nothing, though.

  You’re not supposed to use census records for that sort of thing, he reminded himself. That stuff is private.

  What if she doesn’t want you to find her?

  His skin went cold, and he clenched his jaw.

  She’d have to tell him that, face-to-face.

  Gavin logged into the shared server, found the FAQ that looked like it had been made in 1995, and started trying to figure out how to access census records.

  Forty-five minutes later, a reminder popped up on his computer screen.

  Scarlet Reynolds, 10 a.m.

  “Shit,” muttered Gavin. He’d totally forgotten that he was getting a new parolee that day. For a brief moment, he wondered if it was too late to reschedule the meeting, but she was probably already on her way.

  Well, hopefully. Gavin hated it when new parolees just didn’t show up. Was there a worse way to start your post-jail life?

  He scribbled a note to himself, stuck it in a drawer, and closed all the open windows on his computer. The program that the census data used was so old that it barely worked on his computer, and he had a hell of a task ahead of him.

  Gavin stood, stretched, and then pulled out Scarlet Reynolds’s folder.

  His eyes widened.

  He’d forgotten the name, but he sure as hell knew who Scarlet Reynolds was. Everyone in Cascadia did: the militia daughter, the one who’d been sent away for treason. Gavin himself was in the Rustvale pack, but when the arrests happened, the Ponderosa pack had essentially imploded. It was all that anyone had talked about for months.

  There was no photo in her file, but that wasn’t very strange; sometimes they fell out or, more often, the people doing the paperwork at the prison just forgot to put it in. As Betty had been finding out earlier, working with the prison system could be frustrating at best and impossible at worst.

  Gavin remembered seeing her on the news, though: a sulky girl who looked like a teenager, her hair always in her face, constantly scowling at the camera. When she’d taken the stand she’d spewed invective about anyone who wasn’t a wolf, parroting her father, and they’d put her away for treason, just like him.

  How the hell did she get out? He wondered, flipping through her prison records. The first year had pages and pages of records: unauthorized shifting, fights, more fights, joining a gang in prison. At one point she’d spat in a guard’s face, and as a former prison guard himself, Gavin’s stomach turned over at the thought.

  She was a real piece of work.

  He glanced at the clock: three more minutes. Gavin flipped through, noting that the records got thinner and thinner as time wore on until, in the past two years, there were commendations for good behavior.

  His eyebrows went up, but he was skeptical; while he always wanted to believe that people could change in prison, he didn’t see it happen all that often. Especially people like her, who were going right back into the environment she’d come from.

  On his desk, his phone rang.

  “Your ten o’clock is here,” Betty’s voice said.

  “Thanks,” Gavin said, and put the receiver back on the cradle.

  At least she showed up, he thought.

  He closed her folder and stood, straightening the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down shirt.

  She was sitting in the lobby, in a gray upholstered chair opposite Betty, intently reading a National Geographic. Her long, almost-black hair covered most of her face, and all he could see was the curve of her neck, the way she held her head.

  There was something strangely familiar about it, and for a moment, Gavin stopped dead in his tracks.

  Then Scarlet Reynolds looked up at him, and Gavin felt like he’d been hit with a brick.

  It was Sarah.

  Gavin’s heart rose and sank all at once, so he just stood there, staring at her, his mouth slightly open. He’d found her, true, but she was the last person he wanted her to be.

  Sitting at her desk, Betty cleared her throat, knocking Gavin from his reverie, and he let habit take over.

  “Hi,” he said, striding over to her, holding out his hand. “I’m Gavin Demoya, your parole officer.”

  She stood, carefully placing the magazine on a side table, and put her hand in his, her gray eyes locking onto his.

  “Scarlet Reynolds,” she said, and swallowed hard.

  Gavin wanted to make some remark about her name, say you really look like a Sarah for some reason, but he bit it back. He was at work, and here, he needed to be a professional and not goad on his clients.

  What I need is to not have had sex with Scarlet Reynolds, he thought. His hand still tingled warmly where she’d shaken it a moment ago, and he clenched and unclenched it, willing the sensation to go away.

  “My office is this way,” he said.

  You made a mistake, he told himself. That’s all. She’s nothing special.

  Gavin wished he believed himself.

  He held the door to his office open for her, then closed it behind himself. Automatically, he noticed that she’d dressed nicely for the meeting: a cardigan over her shirt, gray slacks, and flats. It was wildly different from what she’d been wearing the night before last, but it was a good sign. A sign that she meant to really try life on the outside, instead of fall right back into what had gotten her into trouble in the first place.

  Scarlet crossed her legs nervously in her chair, her gray eyes tracking Gavin’s every movement as he sat behind his desk and laced his fingers together on top of her file.

  “So, is Sarah your middle name?” he asked.

  Shit. He hadn’t meant to ask that, but it had just come out, totally unbidden.

  “No,” she said evenly. “It was the first name I could think of.”

  “Why’d you lie about it?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be my parole officer.”

  She did have a point.

  “I guess I know why you hightaile
d it after...”

  Gavin swallowed. He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud in his office

  “After the show,” he finished.

  “I went there on an impulse,” she said, keeping her voice low. Her gray eyes locked onto him, and Gavin could already feel himself drifting. “It was my first night out of jail, I just wanted to be regular again, go out, have a drink—”

  “Get laid?” Gavin said.

  Something occurred to him, and he opened her file, glanced at a page.

  “That’s why you wouldn’t take your shirt off,” he said. “You’ve got two prison tattoos and you didn’t want us to see them.”

  Self-consciously, Scarlet tugged her cardigan sleeve down over her forearm and held her hand against it, like maybe the tattoo wouldn’t exist if Gavin couldn’t see it.

  “At least you brought condoms,” he muttered. “Have you been tested lately?”

  “I’m clean,” she said. “The tats are a couple of years old.”

  I went looking for you, he thought. I misused government data to find you.

  “Look,” she said, her gray eyes flashing. “You got what you wanted. Nobody got hurt. I’m sorry I lied and then ran, but what was I going to say, that I just got out of jail?”

  “Forget it,” Gavin said, looking down at the file again. “Just forget it. Let’s discuss the terms of your parole.”

  Scarlet nodded once, curtly.

  Chapter Eight

  Scarlet

  Scarlet felt trapped. Gavin’s office was a decent size, but with the two of them in there, it felt utterly stifling, like she couldn’t breathe or escape.

  He looked down, reading aloud from a sheet of paper, refusing to look at her.

  I can’t believe he’s my parole officer, she thought. Of all the luck.

  The worst part was the way she’d felt in the moment that she’d seen him: utterly elated, even after a full day of convincing herself that what had happened meant nothing. Her heart skipped, and then come crashing down.

  Not only was she caught in a lie, she’d slept with her parole officer. How was it even possible for her to fuck up so soon after getting released?

  “I understand you’re living with your brother, Trevor, and his spouses?” Gavin asked. He looked down at the desk instead of up at her.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  I wish I didn’t still want him, she thought, watching his forearms against the desk.

  “And you’ve found part-time employment?”

  “At the Sweet Dreams Bakery,” she said.

  “That’s human-run,” Gavin said. He still wouldn’t look at her.

  “Sure is,” she said. She knew that she was being bratty, but he wouldn’t even look at her. What was she supposed to do?

  “You don’t have a problem with working for humans?”

  “No,” she said, starting to get exasperated. “I live with one. A bear, too, and I haven’t tried to murder either of them yet.”

  Finally he looked up at her, his blue eyes dangerous.

  “You came very, very close to a life sentence for murdering a federal agent,” he said. “You remember that, right? When you shot a kid in the neck with a dart?”

  “He was bait,” Scarlet snapped back. “The Women’s Penitentiary gets the news, you know. That FBI director who got disgraced, what was his name —”

  “Brown,” offered Gavin.

  “Right. He sent that kid out to get shot, and I’m the unlucky one who did it.”

  “You’re still the one who did it.”

  Scarlet leaned back into her chair, forcing herself to stay calm, or at least sort of calm. She looked out the window and counted to ten slowly, watching the rain drip down the outside of the glass pane.

  “What does this have to do with right now?” she finally asked, making her voice as soft as possible.

  Gavin looked at her for a long time, then finally looked away.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Nothing.”

  “I know I did bad shit,” she said. “But it was a long time ago. I’ve been in prison for four years, Gavin, and I ratted on my family to get out, and now I’m here and I’m trying to be a good person for once.”

  They looked at each other again, and Scarlet’s heart lurched as Gavin’s blue eyes searched hers again.

  “I’m sorry I lied,” she said. “I wanted to be a regular person for once, not an ex-con trying to get her life together. Can we get past that to the part where I get a life back?”

  Even Scarlet was astonished that she sounded so reasonable. For some reason, she thought again of the tiny bird that morning on her window, three eggs in its nest, and she felt her throat close a little.

  We all just want our normal lives, she thought.

  Gavin said nothing, but he held her gaze, flipping a pen around in his right hand.

  “Okay,” he finally said.

  Then he looked down at the desk, at the stack of paperwork on it.

  “We still have to go through all of this, though.”

  Scarlet nodded, and he handed her a pen so she could start signing paperwork.

  It felt like it took ages, but when Scarlet looked at the clock again, her hand cramping from signing again and again, it was only eleven thirty.

  “All right,” he said. “That’s everything. Any questions.”

  Is that really all? Scarlet wondered.

  I won’t say anything if he doesn’t, she thought.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, curling her fingers together again. “Stay out of trouble. Don’t leave the state. Call you every Monday at three.”

  He just nodded. Scarlet held her breath.

  Say something, she thought at him. I apologized, now it’s your turn.

  Silence. Gavin’s jaw worked below his skin, the muscles tensing and softening, and Scarlet couldn’t help but think of how it had felt when he’d grabbed her wrist and held her against him, how his mouth had felt against her neck...

  A shiver went down her spine, and she forced herself to stop thinking about it.

  Purely professional from here on out, she promised herself.

  “I’ll see you in a month,” he said, standing. Scarlet stood as well, and Gavin held out his hand. She shook it.

  “I hope things work out for you,” he said.

  Is that all I get? Scarlet thought, pausing for a moment at the door.

  Gavin didn’t say anything else, so she opened the door and walked through it, down the hall, through the lobby, nodding once at the receptionist before the tears blurred her vision too much for her to see anymore.

  Scarlet barely made it to the car before she burst into tears.

  Chapter Nine

  Chase

  “All right, thanks,” said Chase.

  “You got it,” said the voice on the other end of the phone, and Chase hung up.

  He’d been trying to get the head ranger of the upper eastern Sierra district on the phone for weeks, and he’d finally spent nearly an hour and a half talking to the man. For someone who spent most of his time alone in the woods, he sure did love to talk.

  Maybe he loves to talk because he spends all that time alone, Chase thought.

  Whatever the truth was, he finally had the full set of reports that he needed, and he’d discussed them thoroughly with their author. Now he knew the current status of every mountain pass, road, holler, and gully in that district, knew what was likely to flood, to avalanche, that sort of thing.

  He spun around in his desk chair, his arms over his head, and stretched. Being in charge of coordinating the search and rescue operations of Eastern Cascadia involved way more spreadsheets and expense reports than actually looking for lost people, but it had turned out that Chase was good at it. Besides, as the only person coordinating search and rescue for Eastern Cascadia, his boss was technically the governor, and the governor was never going to stop by just to check on what Chase was doing that day.

  The only problem was that he still hadn’t
found Sarah. After searching for her online and going through the phone book, Chase wasn’t really sure what to do next. Sure, he could just call every Sarah he could find and hopefully turn something up soon, but there had to be a better option.

  He’d left the tab with the band’s email account open all day, on the off-chance that she looked up Leather Chain, found the website, and then contacted them. It hadn’t happened yet, though.

  During work breaks, he’d brainstormed a list of ways to find her: Triangle, the dating app. The ‘Missed Connections’ section of the newspaper. Asking around at The Den.

  It wasn’t a great list.

  The clock said 4:50, and Chase had literally never met his boss, so he shut down his computer, grabbed his jacket, and headed out, nonchalantly waving goodbye to the woman at the front desk.

  By nature, Chase knew he was more of an optimist than Gavin. His mate could brood sometimes, get into a funk if he really put his mind to it. Gavin seemed to have already decided that they’d never find her, but Chase knew they’d only been looking for one day.

  Once, he’d found a teenage girl huddled in a rotted-out oak tree after a four-day blizzard. Alive. Barely alive, but alive, and it was stories like that that Chase preferred to think about. Not the ones where they found frozen skeletons.

  He pushed the front door of their house open, then paused, just like always.

  From the darkness, a meow.

  “Hey, Piney,” said Gavin.

  Another meow.

  “Not yet,” he said, flipping on the hall light.

  Pinecone chirped, then turned around, leading Chase toward the living room.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” he told the cat. “You think you could share us with another woman?”

  The cat jumped onto a chair, and Chase lifted the enormous, fluffy black cat up and held her. She put one paw on his face and started licking at his jaw.