I figured that our boss had it even worse than me. He’d found his mate, back when he was younger, but he’d lost her. Hadn’t even been there for the funeral, because he’d been serving overseas.
Peter Frost could maybe find another woman someday, even a shifter woman. But they wouldn’t be his true mate like the other guys had found, or he once had before. He could love her, marry her even, and spend the rest of his life at her side. But he would never feel the true bond with her like the other three felt with their partners. It boggled my mind to even think about the position he’d been in. After all, I’d joined the service right out of school, same as most of the other guys. But I hadn’t found my mate, then, unlike Peter, who left his behind to travel halfway across the world to serve.
Whoever had coined that old adage about loving and losing being better than nothing at all had clearly never seen the look Peter had on his face when he thought no one was paying him any attention.
Personally, I’d have taken the “never have loved at all” part.
But, still, he soldiered on. Even when Jake pulled out the bottle of bourbon from his own duffel after we’d pulled the steaks from the grill and dug the aluminum foiled potatoes from the coals.
“Just one,” Peter said, before taking a drink from his nearly full beer. “I got a few years on you boys, and I can’t put ‘em away like I used to.”
“Come on, Cap,” Jake said, passing the bottle over to him. “It’ll put some hair on your chest.”
“One of the benefits of being older,” Peter replied as he took the bottle from his subordinate’s hand, “is that I’ve already got plenty of hair on my chest. Get any more and you’ll never be able to tell if I’m a wolf or a man.” Still, he tipped the bottle back and gulped down a mouthful of fiery liquid, and passed the bottle over to me.
I made a face as I took the bottle from him. I’ve always been more of a gin and tequila kind of guy, not so much for the bourbons or scotches. “Man, I fuckin’ hate whiskey.”
“Still your turn, Matt,” Peter said, clapping me on the shoulder. “Bottom’s up.”
I rolled my eyes as I tipped the bottle back, the amber liquid burning my mouth and throat like a forest fire during a drought as I swallowed it down. The firewater left nothing but scorched tissue behind, heating me all the way through my chest and into my belly. I gasped as I pulled the bottle away, coughing slightly. I slammed half my beer down as a chaser and the guys roared with laughter, Richard clapping me on the back from other side for the amount I’d drank.
“Alright, men,” Peter said as he went to rise from his camping chair, “on that note, I’m going to call it a night.”
There was a chorus of disappointed calls from the guys, myself included. We liked our boss, and didn’t get much of a chance to pal around with him without his adopted seventeen-year-old daughter around. Not that we didn’t like the little shifter, Mary, but we still wanted to be able to cut loose with him every so often. Running and hunting as a pack was good fun, but it was hard to hold a beer when all you had were four paws. Hell, I think the last time we even hung out with him outside the office was at a dinner for her seventeenth birthday when we had some meal they’d been practicing cooking for months beforehand.
He shook his head, dismissing us. “Someone needs to get breakfast ready in the morning for you layabouts, and make sure we can still get the office opened up in the afternoon.”
Because of all our differing schedules and wrapping up of cases, we hadn’t been able to properly schedule this little bachelor party. Jake and Peter had been out of town on some top-secret project of theirs that they couldn’t let us in on yet, and Richard had been in Denver doing a deposition for a case. That had left just me and Frank to watch the shop. And, even though Frank was one of the guys getting married this coming weekend at their joint ceremony, two guys out in the woods together didn’t exactly make a stag party.
Peter bustled off to his tent, which he’d set up a ways from the campfire spot when we’d first arrived. He stopped about fifteen feet away from the ring of shifters assembled around the fire, though. “Matthew, can I talk to you for a minute?”
I perked up, looking in his direction. “Yeah, Peter, sure.” I climbed up from my chair as the others continued to pass the bottle around and egg each other on to do shots. I wasn’t sure what exactly he wanted to talk about, but figured it was somewhere along the lines of not getting so drunk that the fire didn’t get out of control and burn down the whole forest. I approached him in the darkness, the fire behind me casting a yellow glow onto just half his face.
“What’s up, boss?” I asked as I got close to him.
“Take a walk with me real quick,” he said, before lifting his now half-empty beer to his lips. “A short one.”
He didn’t need to cajole me, though. He was the boss, and my pack leader. My alpha. If he’d told me to walk into a hail of bullets or throw myself on a grenade, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat.
“What’s up?” I asked as we strolled out into the thick cluster of pines, firs, and spruce all around us, the needles and branches of the trees quickly muffling the other guys’ laughter and hooting until it was just a dull roar.
“Listen, I know you’re probably feeling a bit like shit, what with the guys pairing off and all. Just wanted to tell you to be patient. It’ll happen for you, too, someday.”
I shook my head. “What makes you say that?”
He gave me a look. “Matt, come on.”
I just shrugged. “Seriously, I’m fine. I’m okay with what I’ve got. You know I’m fine with the ladies. Might not have found a true mate, or anything, but I don’t exactly sleep in a cold bed every night.”
Peter looked at me long and hard, his eyes searching my face for some hint. Could he have been worried about me leaving the pack over this? Is that why he felt like he needed to give me some kind of encouragement or pep talk?
“Seriously,” I repeated, laughing a little. “I’m fine, Peter. Can’t miss what you never had.”
He winced a little, but nodded.
I immediately regretted my choice of words. “Sorry, Cap. That was a dick thing to say.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not planning on leaving or anything,” I said, trying to recover. “I like my job, and I love you guys. You’re closer than family to me.”
He just nodded, his eyes trained on mine. “Alright, Jones.” He clapped me on the shoulder again and gave me a shake. “Gonna hold you to that. You got it?”
“Got it, boss. I’m good to go.”
He gave me one more shake before letting me go. “One more thing. I don’t wanna see any empties when I wake up in the morning. You hear me? Make sure those boys are hurting tomorrow.” He gave me a ghost of a smile.
I snapped him an Air Force salute, trying to keep a straight face. “Yes, sir, Captain.”
He winked and turned away from me, then disappeared in the dark, blending into the inky shadows that seemed to be the only things populating the nighttime forest. Besides, of course, a squad of big, bad wolves.
The guys were still laughing and hollering, the bottle making its rounds, when I emerged from the darkness and took my seat by the fire. Another ember crackled and popped from the fire, traveling up like a reverse shooting star to join all its friends.
“Matt,” Frank called as he slapped the bourbon into my hand, “have a drink, man. It’s your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“What’s the stupidest thing a commanding officer ever told you? Jake already told us about the section leader who wanted him to move his platoon out of bunkers right after a bombardment had stopped. Your turn.”
“Not necessarily a commanding officer,” I said with a grin, before taking a small swig of whiskey. “But I have a good one about a pilot who’d gotten stuck in a tree on the way down.”
We spent the rest of the night just like old times, kicking back beers, talking about our time in the servi
ce. We might not have all been in the same branch or met one another before the joining Frost Security a couple years ago, but we were brothers in everything but blood.
Sure, the upcoming weddings were going to change things. And, sure, the guys all had their mates. But, I reminded myself, that just meant the pack was growing. Growth was good.
All I had to do was learn to grow with it.
And, I reminded myself, you can’t miss what you never had. That was something to be thankful for.
Chapter Two – Rebecca
Time seemed to stop when I saw Matthew Jones for the first time. I couldn’t explain it then, and I couldn’t explain it after the fact, but the world seemed to slowly grind to a halt the moment my eyes met his.
He’d been the last thing I was expecting from a fire investigator working for a security firm. He was handsome, rugged, and right about my age. I’d been thinking more along the lines of a pot-bellied fire chief who’d retired to consultant work after twenty years in the department.
“Ms. Stokes?” he asked for what I realized was the second or third time, a small smile on his lips. “I’m Matthew Jones. I’ll be working your case.”
I shook my head a little, trying to recollect some of the sense he’d knocked out of it as I went to stand. “Ms. Stokes is what my students call me. Please, just call me Rebecca.”
He grinned. And, boy, what a grin! A little sly, a little knowing, but genuine all the way through. “Rebecca it is, then.”
My toes tingled a little and almost curled as I smiled shyly. “Not your fault I was early.” I’d been sitting in the waiting area for a good ten or fifteen minutes, hoping my early arrival would mean the appointment would start earlier than scheduled. No such luck, I realized, as I watched one or two of the guys stumble in, dark sunglasses still on, their skin sallow and drawn.
Not Matthew, though. He looked fresh as a daisy compared to the other two. “Come on back to the conference room and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
I gathered up my purse and the file on my Uncle Zeke I’d brought along with me, and Matthew led me back through the office, down the glass and steel corridor that made up all the free-standing offices situated in the old historical saloon.
As I followed behind him, I struggled to not keep checking him out. He was built like a football player, but moved with the kind of grace you’d except from a dancer.
The whole way, he glanced back over his shoulder at me with that small smile on his lips. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he was checking me out. But what would a guy like that want with a high school English teacher? He could pick up a supermodel or a fitness instructor. Me? I was chopped liver compared to those girls.
Instead of watching him, I looked at anything and everything around me, trying to keep my eyes off his backside. Besides, the building we were in was actually pretty interesting. It had a certain history to it, a history of what the town used to be like.
I’d grown up in Enchanted Rock, and I could remember when the Frost Security office was still actually a bar. A gross, seedy dive of a bar, but still a functional watering hole for all the blue collar types that lived around here. I even remembered back to a few years ago when Frost Security had bought up the building and began to restore and remodel it. A few of the townspeople had been enraged that an outsider was taking it over, but as far as I could tell, they were worried about nothing.
If anything, the glass and metal offices, the redone floors, and the fixed wiring were improvements. At least we didn’t have a firetrap or a collapsing building on the outskirts of town anymore.
He opened the door to the small conference room and I took the seat closest to the door.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked, his voice low and velvety. “Tea or coffee, water maybe?”
I shook my head at first, but realized my mouth was dry. Was it from my nerves? Or was it just Matthew? I turned and looked back at him. “Water would be great, thank you.”
“Sure thing. Be right back.” He disappeared back to the front of the office.
I’d had a cup of tea that Genevieve Richter, their receptionist, had offered me when I first arrived. She and I sat and chatted for a few moments, really connecting and not discussing the agency or why I was visiting. Even though, of course, she knew full well why I was there. Everyone in town did.
Gen’s granddaughter, Lacy, had been in one of the English classes I taught a few years back while she was still a student at Enchanted Rock High School, and now I taught her niece Mary Waynescott. She’d been a troubled girl when she first transferred in at the beginning of the school year, but after a few months she seemed to settle into a groove with her schoolwork and social circle. I didn’t know if I’d helped with that at all, but it was still nice to see a young girl begin to blossom and mature. It was one of the aspects of my job as a teacher that really made it worthwhile.
The other aspect, though, was that I got summers off. Maybe I didn’t get quite as much vacation time as the students, but I still got a couple months’ break from the constant grading and lesson planning. I’d been planning on going down to South America for that trip with my Uncle Zeke, and would have been in Brazil right now if events hadn’t conspired against us just a few weeks prior.
Matt came back in a few moments later with a plastic water bottle and a small glass full of ice, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Wasn’t sure if you’d like it iced or not,” he said as he set them both down in front of me.
“Thanks,” I said, smiling a little as he went around the other side of the conference table and took a seat across from me.
“Now,” he said as he began flipping through the legal pad in front of him, “Gen tells me that you’re Zeke Rogers’ niece?” His short-sleeved polo didn’t do anything to cover up his massive biceps or his well-defined forearms.
I pulled my eyes away from his chiseled arms and nodded. “Yes. Well, no, not exactly. More like his goddaughter, but he’s always been my Uncle Zeke. He practically raised me from when I was ten or so, though, after my father passed away.”
Matthew nodded and smiled reassuringly. “And you’re here about him, correct?”
“Yes. They’re holding him without bail for setting the fire at the hardware store he owned. They’re calling it insurance fraud and arson.”
He flipped through the legal pad and went back to the beginning. “Yeah. I remember the company insuring it wanted us to look over the case, but they withdrew the request after Peter, my boss, told them he couldn’t imagine Zeke ever doing a thing like that, even if it was a suspicious scene.”
“They were pretty dead set on it being him,” I said, not being able to hide a small frown. “Now they’re holding him without bail.”
He glanced up at me, eyebrow raised, his dark eyes striking as they bore into mine. “Really? No bail at all?”
“He’d bought us tickets to Brazil as a surprise Christmas gift. A vacation for my summer holiday, you know? The prosecutor didn’t like that too much. Told the judge it was clear Uncle Zeke had an escape plan after collecting the insurance money.”
Matthew winced. “Have to admit, that certainly looks bad.”
“I know it looks bad, but Uncle Zeke wouldn’t ever burn his own business down. Why would he? He’d worked there for decades, even bought out the owner.”
“But the policy would have paid out more than he paid his partner. Sounds like the guy just wanted the money to add onto his retirement plan, and didn’t want to sell out to one of the other places in the area.”
“Well, I know it looks bad,” I said, my fingers twisted together on the table in front of me. “But I just know he’s not capable of something like this. He just loved that business so much. He’d been planning on expanding it, not setting it on fire. Uncle Zeke had even gotten a loan recently to increase the square footage. You should have seen him in the days after the fire; he was inconsolable. He put his whole life into that building, that store. And now he’s being
falsely accused of burning it down. He’s a wreck. And, on top of that, he’s not exactly a young man anymore. They want to put him away for almost five years for it—can you believe that? And that’s not even counting the insurance fraud charges they’ve indicted him on.”
Matthew frowned a little and went back to his legal pad. He didn’t reply for a moment.
My heart began to sink. And the longer the silence went, the greater the depth to which it sank. “You don’t believe me, though,” I finally said. “Do you?”
He glanced up at me with a concerned look on his face. He shook his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s not that at all!”
“What is it, then?” I asked. “If you don’t mind, of course?”
He looked up at me and leaned forward a little. “I was thinking about the why of all this. Have you looked at the evidence yet? Or have they shown it to you?”
“It’s all in here,” I said, sliding the manila folder across the table. “Everything his lawyer gave me. I admit, though, it doesn’t look good.”
I had seen some of what Sheriff Peak and Deputy Glick had laid out. They didn’t want to believe it, either, but the fire inspector they’d hired had been adamant about what he’d found, and it all pointed to arson.
“But Uncle Zeke had an alibi,” I said. “He was at The Elk all evening, singing karaoke.”
Matthew paused to look up from the file. “Well, with an arson, an alibi has to be really airtight. I mean, next state over airtight. I know what I’m about to say sounds weird, but I could probably burn this building down and be in Yellow Rose before anyone even noticed the smoke.”
I nodded and sighed. That’s what they had said, that it was time delayed. There was no telling how long it would have taken for the building to catch fire, but he could have been down at The Elk from open to close and it wouldn’t have made a difference with their timetable.
“What about enemies?” Matthew asked. “Does your Uncle Zeke have any?”
“Actually, yes—well, sort of. He says some guy came right around closing time a while back, told him he needed to buy an insurance policy.”
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