Page 13

13

J ack

I made quite a few phone calls on the way back from Orlando. Not a single person I called had a good thing to say about Barstow.

Not one.

I called Alejandro back. He was still stuck on the Riverton sheriff.

“You still think Reynolds might be the killer? I’ve got to tell you; I don’t get that feeling from him. He worked with me on that situation this spring when you were down here, and he was a good guy and a good cop,” I said.

“Good cops can go rogue in their personal lives. You know that as well as I do,” he said.

“I know. I’ll keep an eye on him, but I’m more worried about NACOS and Barstow. I may have to make a trip to D.C.”

“If you do, let me know. I’ll go with you and express our agency’s … unhappiness … should anything happen to you or Tess.”

Despite everything going on, I grinned. “Aw. So nice to know you care.”

“Don’t push it, kitten.”

After a little trash talk, Alejandro hung up to go write reports—yet another reason I’ll never join a government agency—and I kept driving. When the phone rang again, I almost ignored it, but glanced down and saw it was Tess.

“Hey, cupcake.”

“No,” she said firmly. “No food words. Not pumpkin, peaches, or cupcake.”

“Not sweetie pie ?”

“Do you want me to call you Brussels sprouts?”

I shuddered. “Fine. No food. I’m almost there. Sorry I didn’t call sooner, but I was on the phone with Alejandro. He still thinks?—”

“Jack, I’m so glad you’re almost here,” she said in a completely artificial voice. I called it her shop voice; the cheerfully polite voice she only used with especially difficult customers.

“What’s wrong?” I put my foot down harder on the accelerator. Risking a speeding ticket was nothing if Tess was in danger.

“Yes, you’re right,” she said brightly. “Sheriff Reynolds is here. No, just him. We’re going to have some coffee and chat until you get here. Yes, let Susan know. What’s that?”

I heard a deep male voice rumble in the background.

“He says we don’t need to involve Susan, but you know how she gets, so please let her know. Yes, thanks, honey! I’ll see you soon.”

Now I was seriously worried. Tess didn’t call me honey. She considered it a food word.

I made the rest of the half-hour drive in fifteen minutes, but Susan beat me there.

When I raced up the stairs and into the house, the sight of Susan, Reynolds, and Tess calmly sitting in the family room drinking coffee helped take my blood pressure down to a manageable level.

“We were just chatting about sports memorabilia,” Tess told me, her smile still a bit off, no matter that Susan was there. “Paul says he has an entire collection of Miami Dolphins memorabilia. He’ll show us sometime.”

“You could come for dinner. My wife is a superb cook, and I’ve got a mean hand with a grill, if I say so myself.” Reynolds grinned, evidently unaware of the tense undercurrents in the room.

“Sounds good,” I said noncommittally. “Tess, is there any coffee left?”

She jumped up. “Let me go see.”

“No, I’ve got it,” I protested, knowing she’d ignore me so I could corner her in the kitchen and find out what was going on. “Anyone need a refill?”

Susan and Reynolds shook their heads, so I followed Tess down the hall and then took her hand and pulled her out the door to the back porch. “Why were you so scared? Did you talk to Alejandro?”

She hugged me, and I realized she was shaking. “No. Carlos called. He’s convinced Reynolds is the killer, too, so when he showed up alone, I got scared. He seems so nice!”

“I’ve got some calls in to some people to see what I can find out. Let’s go back inside and get rid of him. Then we can find out what Susan knows.”

We made coffee, and I carried my mug down the hall.

Reynolds was on the phone, his face grim, but he ended the call a moment later. “I need to go. Kids in a traffic accident in town. One girl, a high school senior, might not make it. I hate when it’s kids.”

Susan and I nodded. We both had experience with that.

“Listen, I just stopped by to chat about tonight. Are you going to still bring Deputy Underhill? I think she’d be more comfortable with somebody she knows there.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Great. I’ll text you directions. Sheriff. Tess.”

After he left, Tess and Susan both started to talk, but Tess gestured at Susan to go first.

“Called a lot of law enforcement I know. Sheriff Reynolds has a reputation as a good man, good cop, and person of integrity on all sides. Even from people who love to dish the dirt.”

“I found out there’s been some pack strife, but nowhere near the level of a battle for alpha. Quark was relatively new, and not that many of the pack would have backed him for the top spot,” I told them. “He was only beta because the old beta moved away, like Reynolds said.”

“People in town like Mrs. Reynolds, quite a lot,” Tess reported. “She’s active in their kids’ school and with the Friends of the Riverton Library. Plus, she works at the diner next to the sheriff’s office, so a lot of people know her from going in for coffee. She always has a friendly word. This doesn’t seem like a couple who are running around killing people.”

“Nobody accused her of killing anybody,” I pointed out.

Tess shrugged. “I read a lot about true crime. Except in the cases of psychopath serial killers, who are experts in covering their tracks, spouses generally know when their partners are out committing murder. Even if Sheriff Reynolds somehow got past all our radars and he really killed Quark, he doesn’t strike me as a psychopath.”

The logic felt convoluted but also made sense, so I nodded. “I’ll watch him really closely tonight when Lizzie and I are out there.”

Susan shot out of her chair. “You don’t really mean to take her out there after all this, do you ?”

“I have to. Shifters have to shift. It’s the most basic fact of our nature. If we can’t help Lizzie do it the right way, she could wake up one night with half her body human and half wolf, and not in a cool comic book superhero way, but in a ‘help, my liver is outside my skin’ kind of way.”

The sheriff pressed her lips together but didn’t argue with me, which I appreciated, since I was the only shifter in the room.

“I have some other news.” I held my phone up and pressed a few buttons. “I listened to the voicemails I thought were spam after what happened with the mail.”

The harsh female voice thundered into the room in a series of messages:

Jack Shepherd, you need to back off Sheriff Reynolds, or you’ll be dead.

Beep.

Jack Shepherd, you’ll never be the top shifter in Florida. You should move out of state. Now.

Beep.

Jack Shepherd, don’t make me warn you again, or your pretty girlfriend might be in danger.

“That’s all of them. I may have deleted some a couple of weeks ago, but I can’t figure out how to access deleted voicemail. I’m going to ask the Fox twins if they can.”

“If they can’t, I may have somebody official,” Susan said, but she didn’t offer to take over the task from the brothers. She knew their capabilities.

“You should have played the messages for Reynolds. He might have recognized the caller,” Tess said. “It’s not necessarily a woman. He or she is using a voice-disguising app. But the phrasing in the messages might be familiar to him.”

“Whoever it was isn’t attacking him, though. The opposite. You’re sure about the wife being good people, Tess?” Susan looked thoughtful when Tess nodded. “Jack, should I come with you tonight?”

I shook my head. “You don’t have jurisdiction, and they won’t want you there. This is a shifter thing. I’ll call you if anything happens.”

“Okay.” Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down. “That’s my contact with the Highway Patrol. There was, in fact, a nasty accident involving high school kids in Riverton an hour ago, so Sheriff Reynolds wasn’t lying to us to get away.”

Tess shivered. “That’s some heavy-duty suspicious nature, Sheriff.”

Susan sighed. “Learned the hard way, I can assure you. I need to get going. But here’s news that won’t surprise you: Quark’s throat was torn out with claws, and there was wolf DNA in the wound.”

“Somebody didn’t want Quark talking to you, Jack,” Tess says slowly.

“Or it was a crime of opportunity,” I said.

“I guess we’ll see. Jack, remember. Call me if anything— anything —happens with Lizzie or with Reynolds.”

I promised. After she drove off, I looked at Tess. “So, any thoughts about dinner? Lizzie and I don’t have to go out there until well after dark. Probably around ten.”

“Okay, good, because Carlos is coming over for dinner. I’m going to go make him a pecan pie.”

“Why does he get pecan pie?” I definitely did not sound sulky.

She laughed and kissed me. “You absolutely get pecan pie. Oh, and I’m going with you tonight.”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” I growled. “And, before you say it, I don’t care if you threaten me with not getting any pie. Your safety is more important than any baked goods.”

“Wow. You really must love me.” Tess walked into the kitchen and put her rifle back in the closet. “But I’m still going with you.”

“Absolutely not.”

I was still arguing in the truck when we went to pick up Lizzie three hours later.