by Diane Leyne
This left Ginger as the only single one of her social circle. All her life, she’d very adamantly announced that she didn’t want to be Mated with a bunch of dominating wolves. She wanted a human, someone who would see her as an equal. And she wanted a single mate not a pack, something that rarely happened in the wolf world. Lena had three Mates and Samantha and Penelope both had five.
The truth was, she’d always known that there were no wolves in Harmony for her. There weren’t that many to choose from in the first place. It wasn’t like the human world where a person dated various guys until they found the right one. In the wolf world, a person knew, sometimes on first meeting. That didn’t mean they didn’t want to take time to get to know one another, and often Mating was put off for a number of years even after family packs had acknowledged they were destined to be together. This was because once the Mating was complete, they had a compulsion to be close together at all times, which wasn’t possible if one or more wanted to go away to university, for example, so generally wolves waited until they were older to carry out the Ceremony.
Ginger drummed her fingers again on the steering wheel. Her clients were late. Why did that always happen? Did no one respect a real estate agent’s time? She should just start arriving fifteen minutes later than the agreed on time. Of course, then they’d be on time. She couldn’t win. She wished they’d get there soon so she could stop wallowing in retrospection. She had no Mates in Harmony. She’d always known it. All the wolves in her age range were attached. In fact, the last unmated family pack were her own cousins who’d Mated Sam, not that they were an option for her. She snorted out a laugh. Even if they hadn’t been her cousins, she didn’t think they’d be compatible. Most wolves tended to be dominating, but her Alpha cousin Gabe took it to new heights. God knew how Sam could handle that much testosterone, but she could. Gabe became putty in her hands, although a person risked their life if they said that to him. Their mayor was pretty damned touchy when it came to his Mate. Protective, too, like all wolves.
So Ginger dated humans, but she hadn’t found the right one for her. Hell, who was she kidding, besides herself? She wanted her own wolves and a Mating Ceremony and the whole nine yards. She wanted to love and be loved and to have a family of her own, a whole bunch of pups running around. But because that wasn’t possible in Harmony and she didn’t want to move, she tried to convince herself that she wanted a human husband. But deep down, she knew the reason that she had reached thirty without finding one was that she didn’t really want one. She was of shifter blood. She didn’t actually shift. She was female. She grimaced. That had never seemed fair to her. She’d watch the males go on runs in their wolf-dog form and play and race through the forest, and she wanted so badly to join them.
But even without shifting, the females of the line were stronger and faster and longer lived than their human contemporaries. Their bodies and their minds were strong and their wills stronger. They needed all three traits to deal with their multiple demanding Mates. But they were definite disadvantages when dating humans.
And now she was approaching her thirty-first birthday. Even shifter females weren’t fertile forever. She wanted a mate, or better yet mates, and she wanted babies. And she had no idea how to get them.
So, for now, she threw herself into her job and…Was that the sound of a car engine? Finally!
* * * *
Florida, at the offices of Lupo Security
“Good job, guys, in taking down that paramilitary nutbar who was targeting shifter and shifter-friendly businesses. Luckily the authorities have dismissed his ramblings about wolves among us as delusions, maybe some kind of mental illness, and it looks like he’s going away for a very long time, one way or another. And luckily, since your team got to him before the authorities, Hutch’s tech boys were able to get copies of his computer files and erase anything that might lead human authorities to think that there might be something to his ravings.”
Judd Reeves, head of Lupo Security, was an ex-cop who’d founded the company after realizing that retirement wasn’t for him. He was fifty and still in great shape due to his wolf DNA, but he was also big and burly and made people think of a bear rather than a wolf. He was the Alpha of his family pack and shared a Mate with his three brothers. They had four grown pups in university and two newborns who’d surprised everyone, especially their Mate.
He looked at the three men who were sitting across from him in the conference room at their Florida-based Head Office. They were almost like sons to him most of the time, which meant they drove him crazy. But they were also the best operatives he had. Sullivan “Sully” Anderson was the oldest of the triplet wolf-shifters who were the best agents Lupo Security had. They were identical triplets with the same dark eyes and hair and tall muscular bodies. Nate, having just returned from an undercover assignment, now had hair long enough for a ponytail, and Sully retained his beard from the same job. Only Ben, the baby by almost an hour, retained their usual short-haired, clean-shaven look and was teased unmercifully by his older brothers for it.
They were also single even though they were thirty-four, an age when most shifters had already Mated. It was hard to retain good shifter security investigators. Once they Mated, they were only able to travel one at a time while the others stayed home with their Mates, and only for a few nights at a time. Their ties to their Mates overrode everything else.
Working for Lupo could be tough. Operatives had to do a very delicate balancing act. Firstly, and maybe less importantly, Lupo and the staff had to pay the bills, so they took traditional security jobs, both physical security, guarding VIPs of various sorts, and information security, as Lupo employed a number of experts in the field. But their lesser-known mandate was to handle matters of hate crimes against shifters. Lupo was able to make connections that human authorities couldn’t and gather evidence, which they turned over to the police so the perps could be prosecuted. Luckily, there was little of this type of crime, but lately there had been a spike, one on the East Coast and one on the West.
The East Coast anti-shifter crime wave had been poorly planned, aggressive, and it was easy for even the human authorities to link the crimes together even if they didn’t understand the underlying cause. The west coast crimes were much more subtle and well planned. And these incidents seemed to come in clusters. There were a couple of incidents in an eighteen-month period and then a gap and then a few more and another gap. But now, they’d been coming closer together and there was no sign of a gap. And there were a lot fewer clues left behind. In fact, until recently, they hadn’t even been sure the crimes were linked or that shifters were targeted. Often a robbery or assault had nothing to do with the fact that the victim was a shifter. Hell, the perps generally didn’t even know this fact. But the West Coast perp had been escalating recently, the crimes coming closer together.
Nate smirked. “Thanks, boss. Does this mean that we can take some time off? We’ve been working back-to-back assignments and haven’t even been able to get out to see our baby sister and her new Mates. We have to check them out, you know. Make sure they are worthy of her.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe she made it official with a bunch of wolves we haven’t even met, without getting us to vet them, so to speak.” Ben grinned at his brothers.
Of the three brothers, only Sully didn’t respond immediately. Judd wasn’t surprised. All the brothers were smart or they wouldn’t be working for him, but Sully was something special. And he could read Judd and, hell, most people like a book.
“I think that would be an excellent suggestion, Nate. Why don’t you, the three of you, take a few days and head out to see your sister. Hell, take some extra time and check out the area, and the people.”
“And?”
“And check out something Hutch’s tech boys found. It looks like our perp has been communicating to some like-minded individuals. Authorities are writing it off as a bunch of conspiracy nuts with the emphasis on nut. But we know the truth.
&nb
sp; “Anyway, each of the East Coast jobs we figured him for were definitely him. He hit seven businesses in all over a six-month period, but the reason we had such trouble tracking him down was that a few of the incidents we had him figured for, he couldn’t have done. They were all in the northwest, and he had an alibi for at least two of the incidents.
“So I had Hutch’s boy do some digging, and it turns out that our guy definitely didn’t do the jobs in Washington, Oregon, and now Idaho. Seems he has a friend, someone who has been egging him on. Until six months ago, he was all talk and no action, but once he meets this online buddy, all of a sudden he’s taking action.
“And this friend is a lot smarter than the guy we collared. We don’t have a single direct lead, but we do know a few things. He or she definitely lives in the northwest. He—I’ll use he for ease, but it could possibly be a female as no great strength was required—he is targeting shifter-owned or shifter-friendly business. He’s hitting less frequently and his jobs are better planned than his buddy back east. Or I should say they were. He was hitting on average twice a year, but he’s done two attacks in the last two months. And now with the vet’s office. He’s also getting more violent. His original attacks were all on property, but it is almost as if seeing shifters hurt by his eastern buddy flipped a switch inside. He’s sent two shifters to the hospital this year as a result of his fires, and a third was assaulted when they walked in on him unexpectedly. And now a human almost died in the vet arson.”
“Do we know anything about this guy? Any witnesses at all?”
“We don’t have much. He’s most likely male. White. Average height and weight. Possibly early thirties. Based on evidence found at the scene, he may have learned his arson skills in some sort of official capacity, maybe army, maybe even firefighter.
Judd pulled a paper out of a file and laid it out on the table, pointing. “The eleven red Xs represent the fires and assaults we are close to one hundred percent confident trace back to this one guy, going back seven years. We have another seven yellow that we are about fifty-fifty on. As you can see”—Judd pointed to the big black X on the map—“Harmony’s right in the thick of things.”
“Harmony? Where our sister lives?” Ben exclaimed. “That all you got, Judd? Lots of possible locations that are…”
Nate interrupted. “Why’s there also a red X by Harmony? Has the town been hit? Surely whoever is doing these things wouldn’t be stupid enough to hit his own town? Who got hit? No one connected to our sister…You would have told us if there was, right, no matter what assignment we were on, right?”
“Your sister is fine, but a friend of hers was the target. They hit the clinic of a vet, a female, of shifter descent. She treated actual pets, but she also treats shifters. A couple of months ago, she did a surgery that got a lot of publicity in the shifter world, and in Harmony. The guy was a veteran, and regular doctors weren’t helping him because of his shifting. I don’t understand the details, but she brought in this human doctor who also treated shifters, an ortho specialist, and apparently, thanks to them, this guy is almost as good as new. And he’s pretty prominent in the community. He and his brothers own the local shifter watering hole, Lupo’s. And yes, I know, shifters have no imagination.
“The clinic was hit last month. You guys were on a job and your sister was fine, and at the time, it just appeared to be a random attack and not part of a series of hate crimes against our people. But now we know better. And something else you might notice. As the time between crimes drops, the closer the crimes are to Harmony.
“The vet and her Mates were out of town on a belated Mating-moon, and a human, the doctor in fact who helped her with the veteran, was looking after the place while she was gone and was sleeping on site while looking after a sick dog, a real dog, not a shifter, and could have died in the fire. Luckily both he and the pooch got out safely, but the building had to be demolished. The success of the joint surgery let Dr. McKay to think about relocating his practice to Harmony, which would mean even more shifters coming to town and that could have triggered a rash attack on the perp’s home turf.
“The case is quickly going cold. This guy’s good, and local law enforcement’s moved on, especially with no one being hurt.”
“Have you talked to local law enforcement in Harmony? Since shifters live pretty openly there, can the local cops help?”
“From what we’ve been able to learn, the local chief of police isn’t exactly shifter friendly. He tolerates them, but not one member of his force is a shifter. And considering the level of professionalism on these jobs, including knowledge of explosives, we can’t rule out someone in law enforcement.
“Fire department’s the opposite. It’s full of shifters. Their strength and stamina are damned useful when fighting a fire, and it’s appreciated by a chief whose human daughter is Mated to three shifters on the squad. But again, it only takes one, and who knows better how to start a fire than someone who fights them for a living?
“It’s a small town, guys. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be easy for me to send someone in.”
“So you expect us to go in and use our sister as cover?” Sully stated flatly.
“Got a problem with that?”
“Nope. Just wanted to get things clear. You want us to use our family to track down someone who’s burning down businesses owned by or servicing shifters, someone who is escalating, attacking more and more frequently, and who may now have gotten a taste for the kill?”
“Yup. As far as we can tell, no one else has put it together that one guy is doing all the jobs. He varies his MO enough and never strikes in the same jurisdiction, so no one else can see the pattern, and we can’t exactly point it out to them, so it’s up to us. And your alibi is perfect, really. No one will suspect anything. Weren’t you just telling me that you were getting grief from your family because you hadn’t taken the time to go up and visit your sister and her new Mates? I’d say it was time for you all to go out and check them out, and maybe stay a while. Take in the local scene in a way Hutch and his team can’t. But they will be nearby to provide support if you need it.”
Sully took the lead as usual.
“We’ve been talking about visiting Harmony, but we’ve been so damned busy for the past six months working back-to-back assignments, we haven’t even had a day off thanks to our slave-driving boss. We’ve earned a break.”
Judd shrugged. “Is it my fault that every time my operatives hit their thirties, they end up Mating and then they can’t travel anymore for assignments?”
“You could hire some more humans,” Sully offered dryly. “Integrate the workplace and all.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. As for this assignment, even if I had some of agents available, who else has such a perfect reason for visiting for a few weeks or month? Harmony’s a small town. Sending agents in cold without a good cover? They’d stick out like a sore thumb. You three, on the other hand, have the perfect excuse for visiting Harmony. You are visiting your sister and scoping out your new brothers-in-law. Taking some time to relax and enjoy the Northwest. Maybe you are thinking of relocating. Hang out at the local watering holes. If you end up being there for a while, maybe get jobs. Possibly one of you gets a job with the police force. It’s time it was integrated.”
“I thought the chief of police didn’t like our kind?”
“Yeah, but the mayor is now your brother-in-law. Give you a little pull.”
Chapter Two
One week later
Ginger was driving out to the Daniels place when she noticed movement to the right of the roadway. There it was again. Wolves. That was unusual. The wolves of Harmony rarely ran during the daytime. She slowed down to get a better look. Yup. Wolves. Three of them, and they didn’t look familiar.
Wolves were territorial. They rarely strayed into another pack’s territory. If they did, they usually came in their human form. She’d keep her eyes open and maybe ask around. They’d never had trouble with
other wolves, not that there were any packs nearby. There was Oliver’s family’s pack down in Oregon, but no other pack in Washington State that she was aware of.
She quickly lost sight of them as they veered away from the main road, so she hit the gas again and continued on to her destination after making a mental note to tell her cousin Gabe, who was mayor of Harmony, of the sighting.
A few minutes later, Ginger pulled up the long driveway that gave the property such great privacy. It had originally been owned by Arthur Daniels, one of the original wolves of Harmony. For decades it had been rented out. Then Arthur’s granddaughter Samantha Anderson had come to town and lived there, but she now lived with her Mates, Ginger’s cousins, at their place.
Then, most recently, Dr. Oliver McKay had rented it, but now that he and his cousins were Mated with Penelope, this place was too far out of town. Penelope owned the Sunshine Café, which was located in downtown Harmony. She served breakfast and lunch, which meant she had to be at work no later than five a.m.
Samantha wanted to rent it out again, and Ginger was out to give it the once-over. Oliver had moved his things out, and Ginger didn’t expect there would be much to do, but she was good at her job and she couldn’t, in good conscience, handle the property unless she’d inspected it first. She had meant to get out here a few days ago, but first there had been problems with a closing and then with the plans for the rebuilding and expansion of Lena and Oliver’s clinic. Ginger was overseeing that, too. She was a full-service real estate agent.