Chapter 20

FBI agents streamed past us into the house the second Hunter and I stepped outside to sound the all-clear, but I grabbed Robert’s wrist before my partner could join his co-workers. “Wait. I need to talk to you.”

For the first time in months, my one-time friend twitched away from my touch, and I dropped his arm like a hot potato. Now I knew how Hunter felt when he first joined our pack—being treated like a monster definitely didn’t do the ego any favors.

But Robert followed my lead anyway, his acrid scent the only evidence of roiling emotions as we exited the mass of scurrying bodies and headed in the opposite direction. “I need to talk to you as well,” he said as we rounded the corner and left the other officers behind. “It looks like this isn’t a werewolf-related case after all, so I believe you can enjoy your holiday in peace. Thank you for your assistance.”

His words were stiffly cordial but were equally clearly an effort to brush off an unwanted companion. Immediately, my inner wolf’s hackles rose despite my efforts to rein her in.

“Enjoy my holiday?” I countered. I knew I should instead be talking about the fact that Robert and I were currently working at cross purposes—his confidence that Goodpasture was the killer clashing with the evidence I’d found to point the finger in the opposite direction. Still, Robert’s words hurt and I couldn’t let them pass by unchallenged.

“Yes, enjoy the vacation time you made a point of asking for weeks ago,” he said, his cheeks beginning to redden with the effort of repressing his emotions. And when he continued, his words had bite. “I’m sure your holiday is unrelated to the shifters who waylaid us in that train tunnel. After all partners have each others’ backs. They don’t keep their own counsel about secrets that could potentially lead to a cold slab in the local morgue.”

“You’ve always known there were some things I couldn’t tell you.” For a moment, I lost track of whether the heated words popping out of my mouth originated with me or with my wolf. Either way, I forced myself to stop and take a deep breath. And when I spoke again, my tone was every bit as cool as Robert’s had initially been.

“Look,” I told him. “This isn’t what we need to be discussing. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree with this case. Goodpasture is obviously related to the killings somehow, but recent evidence suggests that the perpetrator is actually a shifter. Grey kidnapped those babies from Wolf Landing last night. He’s been using charcoal to shield his footsteps from shifter noses, and there was a used grill at the second crime scene. We can’t afford to chase our tails and give him time to kill again.”

I almost thought I caught a hint of a smile on Robert’s face at my second dog reference—he liked to tease me about my wolf brain’s animal focus from time to time. But then his eyes clouded back over and I knew I was losing the tentative bond I’d worked so hard to create.

So I dug a little deeper to spit out the apology I knew he was owed. “I’m really sorry about leaving you out of the loop,” I offered after a pause. “But the stuff I’m dealing with didn’t relate to your case....”

“It didn’t relate to my case?” The one-body raised an eyebrow and I flushed, realizing I’d made two errors of judgment in a single sentence. Because it turned out Grey did very much relate to Robert’s case.

Worse, though, I’d labeled it “his” instead of “ours.” Great job on the partnership front, I berated myself silently.

“I didn’t think it related to the case...to our case,” I corrected. “But I’m going to do a better job collaborating in the future. I’ll give you the information you need when you need it. You have to trust me on that.”

My words came out as a plea and I winced away from the rawness of my own emotions. I hadn’t meant to make it so obvious that I was wounded by Robert’s newfound disdain. And now that I peered into his grim face, I saw that baring my soul had done little good for the sake of my cause.

“You’ll give me all of the relevant information...like cluing me in about why you’re running scared from other shifters? Like telling me what ‘vacation’ is so important that you absolutely can’t be involved in any case for the week beginning tomorrow?”

The air quotes were vicious now and Robert forgot himself sufficiently to step forward into my personal space, his angry visage ending up only inches away from my own. Deep down in my belly, my wolf growled her unhappiness at the intrusion...and then Robert was flying through the air to land hard against the side of the house.

“Don’t touch her,” Hunter growled, his inner wolf bristling. I’d thought his protective streak had been soothed by our continued proximity, but apparently I was kidding myself. Instead, as the uber-alpha paced toward the downed human, I wasn’t entirely sure whether my mate even realized that further violence was a terrible idea.

Before I could fling myself between the two males, though, a very familiar voice stopped us all in our tracks. “Boys, boys, boys,” Ginger called cheerfully from the far end of the block. She walked toward us as she spoke, flicking long tresses back over one shoulder to join the trailing ends of her colorful scarf.

“No fisticuffs allowed so close to the holidays,” the trouble twin admonished. Then, more seriously, “It’s time to focus, folks. Because Wolfie finally managed to track Grey’s car. And All-Pack starts earlier than we thought. I’m stealing Fen, so it looks like the two of you are partners. Better figure out how to get along.”

***

As best I could tell via telephone, my work partner and my life partner hadn’t killed each other by the time I reached the first in the string of barrier islands skirting North Carolina’s eastern coast the next day shortly before dawn. In fact, the duo seemed to have reached a rather gentlemanly truce once I stepped out of the picture and stopped riling everyone up.

Unfortunately, the case of the slashing serial killer only grew murkier by the hour. After finding the house empty, FBI agents had scoured the neighborhood more thoroughly, turning up an eyewitness account confirming that our not-so-friendly enforcer and the supposed killer were different people after all. The two were traveling together, though, and Grey appeared to have been in the lead when he’d forced the older man into his rental vehicle over twenty-four hours in the past.

I’d chewed on my fingernails as I listened to the pursuit play out over the course of the night. Wolfie’s GPS data led Robert and my mate west for several hours before they stumbled across the enforcer’s rental car abandoned by the side of the road. But there the trail disappeared as quickly as it had arisen, no visible or olfactory trails leading away from the empty vehicle...just another portable charcoal grill smoldering in the nearly melted snow.

Worse, there were, as yet, no signs of Nina’s twins. At over twenty-four hours since they’d been wrested out of their mother’s loving arms, all of us knew that time was running out for the one-body infants.

But: “He’s close,” Hunter had told me during his final call two hours earlier. Since we’d spoken last, a helpful gas-station attendant had pointed Robert toward a remote cabin high in the North Carolina mountains. My mate was checking in to let me know that phones were going off and unlikely partners were going in. The moment of truth had arrived.

“Be careful,” I admonished, wishing I could be in two places at once. No, make that three—the Arborville town meeting as much as my own time at All-Pack would decide once and for all whether our pack really had a home to return to.

Still, I wasn’t quite as concerned about that particular showdown as I was with the idea of my mate hunting a powerful uber-alpha with only a single one-body agent by his side. After all, Amanda Sellers was unlikely to use her teeth for anything other than backbiting commentary. Grey, on the other hand, would be intent upon tearing out throats.

“Win us a territory,” Hunter had countered, his voice warm and certain in my ear.

And then the call had ended and I fell back into the interior of a car lit only by gently glowing dials and digits on the dashboard. Ginger was driving while our final companion slept in the back seat, the quiet breathing of both pack mates creating an oasis of serenity in my otherwise muddled life.

“Want to swap?” I asked the twin after repositioning ten times then finally giving up on joining Sinsa in slumber. But Ginger only glanced over with mischievous eyes, pushed the gas pedal down a little harder, and shook her head.

Because we were late. We were very, very late. And as I mentally mapped out the day to come, I could only hope that three young females were able to stand up against the strongest warriors all seven Coastal clans had to offer.