The Call

by Amber Lynn

  He spun around to face me. Being who I was, I tried not to make scenes in public, or draw attention to myself. With all the commotion coming from down the street, people hadn’t stopped to look at what was going on between us.

  “Look, don’t freak out. I’m not saying that’s why she’s doing it, it’s just something I could see her doing based on thoughts she’s shared with me.”

  “And that’s supposed to comfort me? I can understand a child wanting their parents to get along, but pushing us together isn’t the way to ensure that. She’s had a father who’s taken care of her just fine.”

  He held up one of his fingers to his lips. I hadn’t spoken loudly, but my words were meant to be private. If cops had cordoned off a street because of a murder, chances were the media vultures weren’t far away.

  “Everyone is busy, I just didn’t think you wanted to continue that line of conversation. Jack’s getting impatient. Apparently he’s seen your driving before and knows you should’ve been here two minutes ago.”

  I started walking again, not to appease Jack’s anxiousness, just to get whatever he called us there for out of the way so I could get on my way. If it was a dead guard, that would be interesting, but not enough to drag me away from my search.

  Jack met us a block later. He’d been talking to someone in a uniform as they took notes. The uniformed man looked like he was going to come after Jack, but when he saw where Jack was headed, he held back.

  Jack looked unofficial in his jeans and hunter green shirt. I didn’t know his schedule, but I assumed it was his day off.

  “I get that you don’t want to be here, but you don’t have to look like you just ate a lemon. I wanted you to see something before we go off looking for your missing items.”

  He raised his eyebrows, which I took as him letting me know others weren’t wise to what was really going on. I didn’t know how long that would last if people realized the guy they were staring at was supposed to be with the governor.

  “You’ve trained your partner well, Jack. He’s been on the job a day and he’s already keeping things from me.”

  “I’ll let you figure out those issues on your own. Barnes is the man down. I was on my way over to his place when I heard a call come through on the radio about a deceased man who appeared to be attacked by some kind of animal. We always make sure we take those calls,” Jack said with a slight nod towards his partner.

  “I hope you don’t get many calls with that description. It’s bad news for anyone trying to live a normal life here.”

  I didn’t think it was a common occurrence; I would’ve heard about it. I could only imagine the police phone line blowing up when a scary looking dog jumped a fence if rumors started circling about mutilated bodies.

  “Last I checked, you’re the only one trying to live what you classify as a normal life.”

  “It’s clear you two shouldn’t be allowed out in public. You’re both a little loose-lipped today. If you want to reveal to the world we’re different, I’m cool with that, but maybe we should wait until we have the situation under control.”

  I looked around to see if we were finally collecting unwanted ears, but I still didn’t see anyone close enough to hear unless they had super hearing. I didn’t know why the man to my right was so tense, but I could tell he didn’t like standing there in the middle of the street listening to Jack and me.

  “Good idea. The issue is that I checked out the body and it was most definitely the kind of animal attack we don’t want it to be. And just so you feel better about me not being involved, I wanted you to check it out and verify they aren’t my teeth.”

  It was funny that Jack was so worried about clearing his name. I expected there were multiple people, whether wolf or human, involved, so measuring teeth prints wasn’t going to convince me of anything.

  “Could you smell any of them? Maybe Barnes took them and whoever he delivered them to away from the house decided they wanted to make sure he didn’t run his mouth.”

  It made sense to me, which only made me upset that I didn’t have the ability to resurrect someone. I still didn’t think Barnes was the only one involved, but I doubted the wolf attack was random.

  Since he was the only one I had to blame, I wanted to wake Barnes up and kill him a few times, because I was fairly certain the first death was a little too quick. When someone messes with your family, there are times when there is only one retaliation.

  “That’s why I needed you here to verify what my nose is telling me. I’ve obviously met Paul, but you’ve kept the girls from me, so I can’t say for sure. I know I didn’t smell him.”

  “And how exactly do you expect to get me through the crime scene tape to figure that out? It’s not like you guys like to give civilians that kind of access.”

  My nose had been opened since we’d arrived, and I didn’t pick up anything. That didn’t mean anything if Selina was blocking me from smelling something. If that was even something she could do.

  “I’ve spent time with all of them, so I should be able to give a report, and they won’t even think it’s suspicious that I’m having a peek for myself.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better than taking Jack’s word. They both must have forgotten they were number one and two on my suspect list. Not being allowed to see the body, couldn’t rule either of them out in my eyes. Seeing and smelling the scene up close would give me the extra information I needed to at least concur that neither of them had been directly involved.

  I tried to see through the people standing in a group on the other side of the crime scene. They were staring at the ground, which I assumed meant they were looking at the body. The man who’d been interviewing Jack was with the group for a second while I watched, but he quickly ran off to some bushes to lose his lunch.

  I’d seen werewolf kills before, so I had a pretty good idea what he’d gotten an eyeful of. Sometimes in wolf form there isn’t a lick of humanity left to urge against ripping guts out and stringing them around a little.

  From experience, most wolves wouldn’t have a problem doing that whether they were aware or not. That was one of the key reasons why I always fought to remain in control. I knew I was strong long before all the talk of me being special. If I let loose and acted like the other wolves I knew, there’d be carnage in my wake.

  “I’d really like Nikki to see the scene,” Jack insisted. “I’ve cleared it that she can help identify the body, so we should be fine.”

  That was a little unexpected, but I wouldn’t turn down a chance to try to figure out my potential opponent. If I was lucky, maybe there was something left at the scene that would lead me right to Paul and the girls.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The streetlights had turned on, casting odd shadows with the red and blue lights from the cop cars nearby helping to highlight the scene. I’d seen dead bodies, more than a normal person should. I hadn’t seen one quite as mutilated as Barnes. Jack must have found a wallet on him, if he informed the other officers who it was.

  There was no way he’d be able to explain knowing the faceless man, who appeared to have been run through a meat grinder twice. I’d been right about guts ripped out and laying around the pavement around him. I hadn’t imagined someone ripping his face off, chewing for about ten seconds and then spitting it out in the general location it had once lived.

  I didn’t know why anyone bought that I’d be able to identify the body. The eyes still in their sockets I supposed could’ve been one of the guards, but that’s about all I had to go on.

  “I’d know those eyes anywhere. That’s Ben.”

  I managed to pull out his first name from the list I’d recently looked at. Without that list, I wouldn’t have any clue, and calling him Barnes seemed like an impersonal identification, and I was trying my best to make it appear like it was a personal moment.

  It wasn’t that hard when I thought about the fact that the monster who did it could have my husband and kids.

  “Th
anks, Mrs. Stevens. I’m sorry we had to call you down, but since your husband took your daughters on a camping trip, we couldn’t ask him for a positive ID. Barnes doesn’t have any family, so it worked out that you don’t enjoy roughing it in the outdoors.”

  Jack’s sense of humor for once almost made me laugh. It was a little ill-timed that he finally grew a funny bone. The way he’d worked in a reason for Paul and the girls to be missing was smooth on his part. It impressed me.

  “Partner, do you mind helping me get Mrs. Stevens back home? I’m afraid there’s going to be a crash before long. She’s not used to seeing this kind of thing, and as you know, I have no clue how to make a decent cup of tea, which I assume she’ll need.”

  Wow. The two of them were really good at deception. I’d wondered how Jack had maintained his cover for so many years with his hatred of humans. If there was any kind of wolf equivalent of an acting award, he’d win it hands down.

  “I think everyone in the department is aware of how awful your coffee-making skills are. I can only imagine what you do with tea. Let me just wrap up the scene here and I’ll meet you back at your vehicle.”

  Wolves didn’t need to drink caffeine, so we didn’t. Our bodies were already jacked up enough naturally that we didn’t need more chemicals interfering. That being said, I was a little curious to see how anyone could mess up steeping some tea.

  I understood coffee, to an extent, but putting a tea bag in a glass of water seemed easy enough a child could do it. I sincerely hoped he was joking about his total lack of skills.

  We took off back the way we came. The smell was starting to ripen, and I wanted to be as far away as I could before it started to make the need to vomit a priority.

  “I say you should go with them now,” I heard someone back at the scene say. The man had a gruff tone, like he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and I couldn’t immediately tell if that made him an authority on the scene. “This looks like a dog attack, but you said Ward was the only person covering your sister. We should probably call the governor and tell him to head back to town. I’m not sure the four guards you said were with him are enough.”

  After Jack had been formal with me, I was surprised to hear someone else call me his sister. He’d clearly invented an even better cover story than I thought, if most of the rest of the guards were accounted for on the camping trip. Using the familial tie, even though he had no idea what went on in my family life, made it sound more realistic.

  “That’s probably a good idea. There’s no way this could be anything more than a dog attack, but Nikki doesn’t see stuff like this every day. I called Paul shortly after I found Barnes to make sure everything was okay on his front. He said him and the girls were fishing, and expressed his sorrow at hearing Barnes was dead.”

  “How much time does he spend studying my day-to-day life?”

  We were far enough away that I didn’t think anyone else would hear the question. Jack hadn’t said anything extremely personal, but he easily sounded like he spent time with my family.

  “Vik’s the one who does all the studying. He just relays what he learns to me in case I need it. One of us has to actually work on closing our cases, and with his unique set of abilities, it’s a little easier for him to study you.”

  I hadn’t expected Jack to be on our heels that quickly. He was about ten feet behind us, but we could hear each other just fine.

  “How much do you share?”

  It was a legitimate question. I knew he was aware of a lot of intimate details around my life that I didn’t want anyone else to know.

  “Just normal updates that a brother would know if he was involved in your life. It’s hard for him to claim to be related to you if he knows absolutely nothing about your normal life.”

  I wanted to know more than that, but we were back at the car, and once I was sure others couldn’t hear us, I had more important subjects to discuss. Jack didn’t seem thrilled to have to sit in the back, but it wasn’t like the SUV had a bench front seat.

  “I wish we had time to stop for a shower, but I don’t want the trail to fade away,” Jack said as I started the car.

  The shower sounded nice, but I didn’t even think about washing away the death stench. It was a great motivator to hurry up and find my family.

  “Did the rest of the occupants of this vehicle forget to tell me something, again? You have some kind of trail we can follow?”

  As far as I knew, we were going to drive to the rest of the guards’ homes to see if anyone was around. No one had mentioned more dead bodies were waiting for a visit, so I assumed we were still at square one.

  “There may have been a few items Jack snatched from the scene before anyone else had a chance to see them.”

  Keeping my eyes on the road, I raised my right eyebrow, hoping someone would see it and continue to explain things to me. No one was quick to jump in, which was pretty stupid since someone needed to tell me where I was going.

  “You guys really suck at being detectives, especially when one of you can read my mind and knows I want more information.”

  “You’re headed the right way, and I imagine neither one of us want to tell you where you’re going until we get closer. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you hysterical, and I’m afraid this news would set you off.”

  “You’ve never seen me hysterical, Jack, so you’re going to have to come up with a better excuse.”

  I couldn’t think of anything in the immediate direction we were heading that would cause me to freak out. I didn’t venture to that side of town every day, but there wasn’t anything I’d found anywhere in the city that would worry me.

  “We won’t be staying in town. Barnes had a napkin in his pocket from Moonlight with a phone number on it.”

  I managed to not stomp on the brakes, which I took as a giant win for me. If everything else we’d seen wasn’t enough to tell us a werewolf was involved, which it obviously was after getting a look at Barnes, a tie back to Moonlight was icing on the cake.

  I doubted Barnes had actually been in the nightclub. If he had, things were worse than I thought they were, and I was to the point where things looked bleak.

  Moonlight was a werewolf hotspot, one of the only ones in the state. Humans weren’t allowed unless someone with a lot of juice wanted them there. I didn’t associate with anyone who frequented the club, but I got the general impression growing up that humans brought in were playthings, and playthings didn’t live to tell about their experiences.

  “I’m guessing you’ve called the number, or at least tried to trace it.”

  I’d already established that Jack seemed to be a decent cop. I didn’t know how long he’d had before people started showing up on the scene, so there was a chance he hadn’t followed the lead.

  “I didn’t think calling it right away was the best move. I’m sure the person who killed Barnes knew he had it, but maybe they didn’t and I don’t want them to know we’re on to them. I called in and asked for a lookup, but it came back with nothing.”

  “What could you tell from the handwriting? Is it anyone you know from the pack?”

  If I looked at the napkin, I was sure I wouldn’t recognize anything, but Jack spent more time with the other wolves. He’d at least know if it was any of the people he considered friends.

  “The pack’s changed a lot since you were last home, Nikki. With Vik coming in and cleaning things up, and after his fight with Dad, no one in the pack would go against his wishes. Trying to hurt you in any way would result in instant death, and everyone knows that.”

  “You’re sure about that? I know how the female wolf brain works, sadly I have one. He’s a catch, whether I ever admit that or not. It’s engrained in wolves to fight for things like that. I could totally see one of those bitches going after my family to get to me.”

  I didn’t often say words that were considered curses, but there wasn’t a better word for the female wolves I remembered. The fact that I’d put them all in th
eir places when I left would also leave a little bitterness.

  “In three years there’s never been a challenge for him, while there have been a mess of challenges for you. I hardly think one of the women in the pack decided it’s time to change that up.”

  The him in the equation was rather quiet. I looked over to see if he had any words to add, not that denying women often threw themselves on him would matter much in my mind.

  With his face scrunched in concentration, he was looking out the window next to him. I didn’t know what he was doing, but it seemed he was busy figuring something out.

  “Does he do that often?” I reckoned Jack spent a lot more time with him than anyone else.

  “Can’t say I’ve ever seen that much energy put into it, but he’s trying to reach out to someone. If Selina is blocking him, he’s going to need some extra juice to get through.”

  “What all has he told you about her?”

  It was clear that Jack knew, and maybe even believed, that his partner thought Selina was the chosen wolf. I deduced that from the fact that Jack actually believed she could block someone from finding her.

  “Not much, really. He’s told me about the two of you, and that’s all I needed to know to figure out she was special. It’s hard to find anything specific about the lupu magħżul.”

  “That’s because the chosen wolf and her parents are fairy tales. If they were real, there would be more than love stories written about the king and queen.”

  “Not if their love is the important part of the story. You know I’m not the sentimental type, but when Vik talks about what he’s learned, it’s always the love you two are supposed to have that is the showcase of the story.”

  I decided they were both a little delusional on the subject. I didn’t want to be forced to even like him, let alone love him. My issues with trusting other wolves made it next to impossible to believe that love would be in our future.