A Silver Wolf Christmas Read online

  Yeah, working with her was great…and dangerous. Not only because of what he was, but because he totally had the hots for her. And that was a no go in this business. He told himself it would be easy because partners didn’t date, normally. If he just kept it on a professional basis, he should have no problem.

  His focus turned to Paul’s phone call. He knew the situation wouldn’t be some minor issue. He was anxious to learn what the trouble was this time.

  Chapter 3

  Debbie really loved working with Allan, though he was…different. Maybe that’s why she loved working with him so much. She could tell he really wanted to see her after hours, and did sometimes—to talk more about a case.

  They would keep working on cases no matter the hour, have dinner together, work on them some more. Get up early, start on it again. They’d rescued four people who had fallen through ice while ice fishing, saved a baby moose that had fallen through ice, and rescued two accident victims due to icy road conditions this month. Not only that, but they’d been working on this murder case too, and though the vehicle and body had already been removed from the lake, they planned to see if they could find anything else in the water around the site of the accident.

  She glanced at him, trying to read his expression. He had one of those faces that made her think of a really nice guy, but she knew Allan could be all business when it came to taking someone in hand.

  He appreciated her training and often remarked on what a great partner she was. She knew he wasn’t saying it just to be nice. He truly meant what he said, and she really respected him for it. She felt the same way about him.

  “Are we still on for pizza?” she asked, wanting to check on the baby and mom at the clinic to see for herself they were okay, but she was also dying to have a pizza. She hadn’t had one in ages, and it was a nice way to take a break once she dried her wet clothes and her hair. At least the car heater was now warming her up.

  “You bet.” His eyes always lit up when his gaze caught hers. He was seriously sexy, muscular and in great shape and that appealed too.

  She’d always wanted to hear his SEAL stories, the ones that he could share with her. He’d told her about a couple of rescues he and his team had performed for private contracts. They’d been in the Amazon a number of times on dangerous missions. She found him to be the most fascinating man she’d ever met.

  Some of her fascination was because his family was so important to him. She was estranged from her own. Her father had been the town drunk, and her mother, the perfect enabler. Good thing Debbie was an only child so only she’d had to suffer the consequences of a dysfunctional family like theirs.

  “When you were getting Franny’s purse, she said a red car nearly hit hers, slid on the ice, and she turned to avoid it. That’s how she ended up careening down the hill and sailing into the culvert. She said he did it on purpose, but she doesn’t remember the SUV being upside down. Just that somehow she managed to get out and then couldn’t get to her baby. So I suspect she just imagined the driver had caused the accident on purpose.”

  “Hell, I thought she was mistaken. The driver didn’t stop to help? Call it in or anything?”

  “It wasn’t technically a hit and run, and he might have been afraid if he tried to brake on the ice he’d be where she was.”

  “If it was a woman or someone elderly, I’d give the driver the benefit of the doubt, but her baby could have died. And Franny could have also.”

  “Agreed. She said he was wearing a camo cap and his hair was cut short, but that’s all she could see before she swerved to avoid him. He was about our age.”

  “Then he should be strung up.”

  She wasn’t surprised at the way Allan felt. She had thought the same thing, though she had tried to see it from the other driver’s point of view too. But she had to agree with Allan.

  When he drove into her duplex driveway, he finally said, “Uh, about lunch, yeah. I’ll give you a call in just a bit.”

  Then he dropped her off, and she knew as distracted as he was, whatever was the matter had to be really important.

  He pulled out of her driveway, a frown marring his temple as he talked to someone on his cell. She wondered again just what the trouble was and if she would be going alone to the clinic.

  She realized she really wanted to be part of his life, to be there for him if he needed someone to talk to about family stuff. Not in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, particularly, but just as a friend. That had been something she had trouble with growing up. She had had no one to talk to about her parents. Better to just leave home and stay away. As a kid, that had meant spending hours at the library after school and immersing herself in books until the library closed for the night. Often a police officer would drive her home.

  She’d gotten to know nearly everyone on the police force that way. One of the officers had rescued her father from his submerged truck when he’d gotten drunk and crashed it through the bridge. The officer had only delayed the inevitable, though. Her dad killed himself a year later in another accident, one with a concrete bridge column. But the officer’s dedication as a diver, and her love of the water and subsequent scuba diving certification, had made the decision for her. She had become a contracted police diver just like Officer Hardy Monroe.

  She knew Allan had chosen to be one so he could work closer to home and spend more time with his family, though he had told her when he was needed for a mission, he would have to take a leave of absence and deal with it. She was surprised he would continue to do missions away from home as close as he was to his family. In the four and a half months he’d been working with her, he hadn’t gone on any assignments. She was glad because she really enjoyed working with him. Trying to train with a new diver would mean learning his or her idiosyncrasies all over again.

  Paul Cunningham was the same way as far as continuing to do contract work out of country, though he’d set aside that business because his wife was pregnant. Debbie had felt bad when he’d broken his leg and hoped it would mend just fine. He was out of the cast now, but he was still using a cane. When he was fully recovered, would he go back to being partnered with Allan?

  That made her feel a little blue.

  After washing up, getting dressed, and drying her hair, she was hopeful she could have lunch with Allan and head over to the clinic. When she checked her phone, Allan had texted his regrets: Need to deal with some family issues. Talk to you soon. Allan

  No “sorry for lunch.” No “wish I could see Franny and the baby.” Debbie knew whatever it had to do with had to be bad news or Allan would have said something more. He was always good about that. And he was always conscientious about personally seeing victims they’d rescued to learn how they were faring.

  She wished she could help in some way. She put in a call to the clinic as she headed over there, hoping when she saw Allan again, he’d feel comfortable sharing with her this time.

  * * *

  “We don’t know who she is?” Allan asked Paul, angered that a lupus garou had come into their territory, maybe looking for protection, and had been murdered.

  His countenance stormy, Paul stared out the window of his cabin overlooking the lake, his arms folded across his chest. “No. Since she was naked and one of our kind, we presume she was trapped and killed as a wolf. Your sister and my mate were out running as wolves before dawn’s first light and came across her body in the woods near the cabin. Whoever did it caught her in an animal trap and shot her. The ladies saw burn marks on the bullet wounds. Though ballistics haven’t come back to confirm it yet, the rounds had to have been silver. The ladies smelled the sweet, subtle scent of pure silver. She had lots of defensive wounds where she was trying to get loose from the trap and bite at her attacker.”

  “Did she bite him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about DNA samples from his blood? Skin?” Allan considered the ramifications further. “What if her bites transferred the lupus garou genetics into his bloodstrea
m and he turns into a wolf? He won’t have much control over it for some time. He won’t be able to shift for another week—not while it’s the phase of the new moon right now.”

  “The forensics lab is testing the blood and tissue samples. But you know it takes a while for the lab work results to come in. If he hasn’t committed any crimes, or even if he has, he might not be in the database. An autopsy is being done as we speak. If we find the bastard soon, he’ll be wearing some hefty bite marks and scratches. But if he’s been turned, that’s another story. That means we have a week to catch him before the half moon appears. What’s worse is someone anonymously reported the murder. If he was a wolf, we’d have to handle it on our own. But now the police are involved.”

  “The killer did?”

  “Possibly.” Paul let out his breath. “Probably. Neither Lori nor Rose saw, smelled, or heard anyone. Rowdy Sanderson is the homicide detective in charge of the investigation. Because the killer used silver rounds, whoever murdered the wolf had to have known she was a lupus garou.”

  “He didn’t try to remove her body to claim he’d killed a werewolf?”

  “No. I’m declaring that no one in the pack shifts until we can learn who did this and take him down.”

  “Good idea. Any clues?”

  Paul shook his head. “I suspect the woman was coming here to meet with us so she could join the pack. I want you to check out the crime scene. I’ve got Everett trying to track down who she was. I’ve asked Lori’s grandma to discover if the woman had any contact with any member of our pack, asking to join, since Emma and your mother have been involved the most in asking single female wolves to join the pack.”

  “Sounds like we have a werewolf hunter on our hands, don’t you agree?” In all the years of their existence, they had never had to deal with such an issue.

  “It sure as hell sounds like it. On the other hand, what if it is a lupus garou, and he covered his tracks by making it look like a werewolf hunter was after her? If that’s the case, his victim wouldn’t have turned him.”

  “Yeah, I was just thinking that too. And if he’s not recently turned, that can be good and bad. Good, because he won’t shift unexpectedly around humans and give our kind away. And bad because he’ll be harder to track down.”

  “Either way, we have to stop him. But if he hasn’t been turned, we need the police to handle this.” Paul headed into the kitchen and got them both a bottled water. Then they moved to the living room and took a seat on the couches.

  “Agreed.” Allan noticed Paul’s cane leaning next to the couch, but he wasn’t using it today. “How’s your leg?”

  “It’s fine. If one more person asks…”

  Allan nodded. He knew how much that had to bother Paul. “But you’re getting around without the cane, and I don’t see you limping.”

  “Inside buildings, I’m fine. Plowing through snowdrifts or walking on ice…” Paul shook his head. “Besides, I get enough coddling from Lori, Mom, Rose, and Grandma. I don’t need it from you also.”

  “Me coddle you? When have I ever done that? It’s not in my SEAL or wolf nature. Hell, any of us, broken leg or not, can have trouble on ice unless we’re in our wolf form and have better traction. It’ll get better.”

  Paul grunted, then took a swig from his water bottle. “There was a lupus garou pack that had to deal with a werewolf hunter group. They successfully turned one of the men, and he works for the pack. The others had to be put down. They couldn’t have the men arrested and tried for murder—they had to deal with the threat permanently, because the men wouldn’t give up their quest to destroy the wolves and to convert new wolf hunters. They hadn’t even been looking for werewolves initially. They were searching for Bigfoot, but saw a lupus garou shift. The same could have happened with this case. I could be mistaken, but I suspect the shooter is someone who possibly had prior military service or is a hunter. I can’t imagine the average man would take up a gun to hunt werewolves.”

  “All right, so that’s a possibility. That the hunter didn’t know about our kind until the woman shifted and he saw her. I would agree with you about being a hunter or prior military.” Allan set his bottle on the table.

  “Here’s another thought, though it’s even more farfetched,” Paul said. “After seeing the murdered woman, Rose told Lori that she had looked into one of those live action role-playing game, LARP, groups in southern Montana: werewolf versus villager werewolf hunters. She wanted to see if it was just a game or if any of the players were real wolves while we were away on a mission.”

  “Hell, Paul. Why would she even do that?”

  “She had been corresponding with one of the players online, thinking he was one of us. She had no one to date in the area, and she had discovered his website where he talked about werewolves and being one.”

  “Which should have clued her in that he wasn’t.”

  “I agree. But no lupus garous had passed through our area in months, and she was lonely. When she began to talk to him, she had convinced herself he really was a lupus garou. So she went down to see him. This was a month before she met Everett. Which shows we were right to stay here and take over the pack.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “When Rose arrived in Helena, she had lunch with the man, Guy Lamb, and discovered he really was a wolf.”

  Allan’s jaw dropped, then he shook his head. “I never would have believed it. And by the name of Lamb?”

  “Yeah, it was his parents’ idea. Everyone teased him about being a lamb when he was a kid, so he had fun with saying he was a werewolf on his website.”

  “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  “Right. Anyway, he liked Rose, but once she met him, she wasn’t interested in getting to know him further. She said he was too weird for her. Loved horror stories, music she didn’t care for, books she wouldn’t read. He was such a big horror fan that he loved to act in plays of that nature and visit horror conventions. They just didn’t have anything in common. But she did want to check out the game for curiosity sake, in case one of the other players was a real wolf also. Someone she might connect with more. Rose did manage to meet with the group: eight werewolf hunters, one seer, and two wolves. Though who was playing which roles was a mystery. She said no one smelled like wolves. But when she and Lori came across the woman’s body, Rose was pretty rattled and told us about the group, just in case it had any bearing on this situation.”

  “Okay. I can’t think of any other scenario offhand. The notion the killer saw the lupus garou shift and then eliminated her has my vote.”

  Paul finished his bottle of water and set the empty container on the coffee table. “After viewing the wounds inflicted on the woman, I really think something deeper was going on. The murderer attacked her in a rage. It wasn’t just a case of killing a random person—passion was involved—anger.”

  “Maybe he was a former lover and discovered what she was?”

  “Now that could be.”

  “Why would he leave her like that? Why not hide the body?”

  “Lori and Rose’s arrival might have stopped him.”

  “Why would he call the police to warn them about the killing, if he was the one who called in anonymously?” Allan asked.

  “Because he’s proud of the kill? Maybe he thought the coroner could prove she’s a werewolf through DNA. Then he could brag about killing a werewolf.”

  “Then he had to know or believe the woman was a werewolf. She had to know him, probably trusted him.” Thinking of an even worst-case scenario, Allan ran his hands through his hair. “What if he was watching when Rose and Lori arrived? And when they left, followed them?”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. The police were at the crime scene while you were at work this morning. And I’ve told the homicide detective in charge of this that you’ll be looking into it also since it was so close to our cabin and we might have more trouble because the two ladies found the victim.”

  “Good. What was said
about how Lori and Rose located her?”

  “They were taking a hike through the woods. There’s a trail near there. They were headed up to the lookout over the lake. Anyway, that’s the story. In truth, they smelled blood and lots of it. So they headed that way to locate the wounded wolf and help it, if they could. When they discovered the woman, smelled she was one of us, they hated to have to leave her body behind, but they didn’t have any choice. They went to the cabin, shifted, dressed, called me, and then headed back to the killing site to ‘find’ her as humans.”

  “They didn’t wait for you though?”

  “No. It would have taken me too long to get there. I was at Lori’s dojo, working out some of the stiffness in my leg. Lori called me to make sure she and Rose were doing the right thing. Of course, I didn’t want them returning to the scene in case the bastard was still in the area. But understandably, they wanted to call it in before the body happened to vanish, if the murderer decided to dispose of it.”

  “Hell. Which means if the killer was watching the women arrive as wolves and then return as humans, he could have put two and two together, tracked them back to your cabin, learned you’re Lori’s mate, and well, hell, just everyone related to them: Lori’s grandmother, Mom, Rose’s mate, and his mother and sister. And that’s just the few of us from the original pack.”

  “You and me. Yes, very possibly. Which means we have to catch this bastard pronto. Rose contacted everyone on the roster to let them know they need to avoid seeing any of us for the time being. We don’t know if this guy has any way to track the rest of the pack members, but if we cut off seeing them in person, that might help.” Paul pointed to a map on the wall showing the whole area: lakes, parks, trails, even elevations. “Here’s where the woman was found.”

  “I’ll let you know if I discover anything further.”

  His blood cold with anger, Allan left the cabin and drove to the logging road closest to the location of the crime scene.

  On the way to the site, Allan made a call to Debbie, wanting to know how she was doing and how Franny and her baby were faring. He had already called ahead to let the staff know that Debbie would be arriving to check on them on her own, but he learned from them that she had already called ahead. He felt bad that he hadn’t been able to go with Debbie to see to Franny and the baby, that he’d had to break his lunch engagement with Debbie, and that he hadn’t been able to discuss this other business with her. “How’s the baby and Franny doing?”