Loyal Wolf (10 page)

“It doesn't mean they were, either.” Tommy X's gray eyebrows knitted in a chastising frown. “I know you don't like or trust them. But don't let your opinions cloud your thinking.”

Good thing he didn't know about her trespassing the night before, Kathlene thought. Or how it had turned out.

“I won't,” she said. “See you tomorrow.”

* * *

Jock and Ralf were already seated at a table at the pizza joint when Kathlene walked in, still in her uniform as usual on a day she was on duty.

She made the outfit look almost beautiful—because she was beautiful.

She also looked tired, Jock thought. Being on duty in the middle of an overtly peaceful yet underlyingly antagonistic crowd must have been wearing on her.

The restaurant was only moderately crowded and smelled of a lot of tangy spices. Even regular humans would probably sense the sharp cheese, oregano, peppers and more.

Kathlene spotted them in the middle of the room nearly immediately, and Ralf waved toward her. As soon as she was near them, Jock rose to pull her chair out for her.

“Hi,” she said softly, looking up at him. He could imagine her sleepy blue eyes trained on him similarly in the dark after an exhausting, fulfilling bout of lovemaking.

His body reacted to the image, and he moved quickly to get her seated and resume his own chair.

Surprisingly, she ordered a beer. He'd have assumed that would put her right to sleep. But she seemed to perk up a bit as they started talking.

“What did you think of Tisal and the way he acted at the meeting?” she asked them. “I mean, he mostly just seemed so nice and low-key, like any other attendee. And yet—”

“And yet it didn't take anyone with psychic ability, if there is such a thing, to know what he was thinking,” Ralf said. He'd been dressed in a nice shirt and slacks at the meeting but they'd had time to return to their cabin and change. And check on Click. Now Ralf wore a Cliffordsville T-shirt that he had just bought.

Jock had stuck with a solid color navy knit shirt. “Or implying,” he added. “Threats? Who, him? He acted so innocent that it should have been obvious to anyone who knew there'd been some threats that they'd come from him or his gang.”

“Amen,” Kathlene said.

Their server brought their beers and they ordered a large pizza with a variety of toppings that they would all split. Kathlene also ordered a small salad.

For the rest of their time together, they discussed what should come next—in lowered voices and language couched in tourist kinds of planning.

Kathlene pushed for details, reminding him that he'd said they'd discuss plans over dinner. He kept things general, though, mostly talking about how Ralf and he were still determining their best approach to learn more about the men at that compound. For one thing, he told her, they'd already started acting interested in joining the group as hunters and would follow up on that.

Jock didn't mention how far along their intended process really was, or that their plans didn't really start the next day, but sooner. He had a feeling that there'd be some interesting discussions that night at the anarchists' hangout.

He wanted to listen to them. And the best way to do that would be to shift first.

That wasn't something Kathlene needed to know.

When they were all done eating, they squabbled a bit over the check but Jock remained adamant, hinting about their expense account. It wasn't really that generous, but, although he didn't want to admit it to himself, he did feel just a touch guilty about not letting Kathlene know more of the truth. Not that he wanted her to know he was a shapeshifter, of course, but he also wasn't telling her that the Alpha Force members at this table were again excluding her from their team for what they intended to do that night.

“No need to follow me home,” Kathlene told them when they were outside after eating. “I need to grab my car at the department lot. I'll just be heading back to my place. I almost got my second wind while eating with you, but I'll sleep well tonight.”

The look she aimed at him was almost challenging, as if she was hinting that she wouldn't mind company.

That was just wishful thinking, but he didn't hide his own lust from his eyes as he said, “Okay, then. Good night. We'll meet again for lunch tomorrow and let you know if our sightseeing in the morning in the areas of gun shops and all yields us anything useful.”

“Great,” she said. “Good night.”

He wished that he could turn that last smile of hers into a very different activity with those gorgeous, full lips.

* * *

She had gotten her second wind, fortunately.

Kathlene had also learned something about the Alpha Force guys who were supposed to treat her as a member of their team.

They did what they pleased when it came to making plans to surveil the presumed anarchists. She knew they weren't telling her everything. And after the events of today, when Tisal and others had shown up so unbelievably innocently at the meeting, she had no doubt something was about to happen.

And that her best buddy Jock and his friend Ralf thought the same thing. And intended to go check it out...without her.

That was why she broke speed limits getting back to her home and quickly changed clothes into a dark-colored, long-sleeved shirt and snug pants, along with black athletic shoes.

She was going into surreptitious mode.

Once more she hurried, driving her car toward the hovel where Jock and Ralf had hung out for the past couple of nights, sending Click to the anarchists' outpost to do whatever recon they had planned.

Best she could figure, as she'd considered before, the dog must somehow have a video camera that recorded what he came up against. Only, when she had been with Click that previous night, there'd been no indication of even a collar, let alone any electronic wonder toy attached to it or to the dog.

Well, she intended to hide in that house and see and listen to whatever transpired before the men took Click to the old ranch area to do his unexplained assignment there.

She again drove faster than she should. Once more, she parked some distance from her goal, hiding her car behind some trees near the crumbling roadway.

She walked quickly but quietly to the house—and was delighted to find that she was, in fact, there before the men had arrived.

Assuming they did show up there that night. And she had a feeling, a very strong feeling, that they would.

She'd have to play it all by ear...but she relished the thought of, tomorrow, telling all to an astonished Jock—that she had figured out what they were up to and showed up there to learn more. She would once again outmaneuver the hot and commanding man who had gotten her body to react in ways she hadn't felt in years. If ever.

And wouldn't she have fun laughing at him? Oh, yeah.

Her only fear was that Click would scent or hear her and give her away before he was taken out and about for his task for the night.

As a result, she maneuvered her way into the dilapidated house and, using a flashlight, looked around the foul-smelling place, knowing she had to be careful about where she ended up. And
up
was the operative word. She found an area above what had once been the living room where she could climb the wall thanks to some holes in the deteriorating plaster that revealed wooden framing strong enough to act as a ladder and also opened into her target area. It was up above the ceiling but below the roof. Even if Click smelled or heard her and started barking about something above them, they surely wouldn't suspect there was a person up there—let alone her.

She hoped.

She was glad her arms were strong from her training, as she had to mostly pull herself up since the footholds in the wall weren't plentiful, but eventually she was exactly where she had hoped.

She settled in as best she could into the uncomfortable and uneven area that consisted of broken slats above a partially plastered ceiling. And waited.

And hoped she had been right that the men would show up here for a third night in a row.

After maybe half an hour, she heard something outside—a car engine that was quickly cut off.

Good. Only...was it definitely the men she hoped it was?

Well, she would see.

And she wasn't stupid. She had brought her service weapon, just in case she ran into trouble.

Sure enough, though, she soon saw, through the hole in the ceiling that she had adopted as her viewing point, the faces of Jock and Ralf illuminated slightly by the flashlights they carried.

She held her breath, watching for Click, waiting for the dog to sense her and react.

But she didn't see him. Didn't hear him.

Had they left him back at the cabins that night? Had they dropped him off at the ranch by himself? Or were their plans to conduct some other kind of surveillance?

They didn't hide what they said, so she listened.

“You ready?” Ralf asked. He had put what she assumed, in the faint light, was a backpack on the floor and was digging in it. She couldn't tell what it was that he extracted.

“Sure am,” responded Jock.

Ralf handed him something that looked like a large bottle, and Jock drank from it. Kathlene wondered what it was. Did he need to fortify himself with alcohol to do whatever it was they had planned?

When he had apparently finished it, he sat down on the floor. “Okay,” he told Ralf. “It's time.”

“Yes, sir,” Ralf said, and laughed as he turned on some kind of bright light and shone it on Jock. He was nude! But why? Did it matter? Maybe not, but she wanted to learn more.

Lord, was his nude body gorgeous. As masculine and sexy as she'd imagined when he was fully clothed. She loved the view...at first.

But in a minute, Kathlene had to chomp on her hand to prevent herself from calling out. She couldn't believe what she thought she saw as Jock began to roll around on the floor. And moan. And change.

Oh, how he changed. His limbs seemed to tighten. His face grew longer. He grew fur all over his body.

And when it was all over, Kathlene could finally understand why she had seen Click around here but not Jock. Not at the same time. Not after Ralf and he had been at this house before.

Understand? No, not really.

But Jock Larabey had become the wolflike dog who had rescued her yesterday in the anarchists' compound.

Jock Larabey was a werewolf.

Chapter 10

A
werewolf? A shapeshifter? She didn't believe in such things. She was a peace officer. A realist. A... An incredulous fool.

For she had seen what she had seen. She couldn't deny that, even though everything inside her screamed that she was hallucinating.

But she knew she wasn't.

Kathlene attempted not to move. She knew she hadn't cried out; she'd stuck her fist in her mouth to prevent it, not an easy feat considering the cramped position she was in here, above the room.

Even so, once he had stabilized and stopped changing, the wolf—Jock—froze in place, then moved his head to stare straight up in her direction. He growled, but only for a second. And then he barked.

Ralf followed the canine's gaze, moving his head to look up toward her. Could he see her?

“What is it, Jock?” Ralf asked. “Something up there?”

The dog nodded, growled again, pawed the floor with one paw, then stopped right beneath her.

“You want me to check it out.” It wasn't a question but a statement. And why not? Kathlene figured that, if what she'd seen was true, Ralf had done something to help Jock change. He might be able to help him in other ways.

“I didn't see a ladder, but it looks like I can scale that messed-up wall. Maybe. I'll try to go up and...”

“No need,” Kathlene called down in a small, defeated tone. “He—whatever he is—knows I'm here.”

“Kathlene!” Ralf's voice was sharp and angry. Kathlene could only imagine what Jock would say, and how he would say it, if he could actually talk now. “What are you doing up there?”

“Right now, I don't know. I'm coming down.”

She hadn't really thought through how she would retreat from the area above the ceiling but figured she would just do as she'd done to climb here, only in reverse. It wasn't quite that easy, not with using flimsy handholds and places to stick her feet into the partly destroyed wall areas, but, with Ralf's help, she managed.

And when she was back down on the main level, she just stood there, staring. At the wolf, who stared right back at her.

She was anthropomorphizing, sure, but with good cause, when she read in the canine's gaze anger and frustration and a need to chew her out.

“Is this what your Alpha Force is about?” she finally demanded, looking first at the wolf, then at Ralf. “Why didn't you just tell me?”

“As if you'd have believed it,” Ralf countered. His dark eyes looked even darker now as he frowned at her, his thick arms crossed over his chest. “And now what are we going to do with you?”

The wolf gave a quick bark. He dashed toward the large bag that Ralf had carried into the house and pawed at it.

In moments, he dipped his muzzle in and extracted a leash.

“You want me to take you for another walk...Click?” Her hand raised to her mouth. “Not Click. It wasn't Click yesterday, either, at the ranch, was it?”

“Nope,” Ralf answered.

Jock brought the leash to Kathlene. But instead of holding it for her to take and try to attach it to him—without a collar—he took an end, dropped it on the floor, then held the other end in his mouth and, slowly circling her, wrapped it around her legs.

“You want to leash me?” she asked incredulously.

The canine looked at her, then at Ralf, and nodded his head.

“We've worked out some ways of communicating without talking,” Ralf said. “I'm interpreting this to mean that he wants you to stay here while he conducts the recon we already planned. He'll change back on his return, then we'll talk. Right, Jock?”

The wolf-dog gave one bark and nodded once more.

“And if I don't want to stay? If I want to just get out of here and digest what I just saw, and—”

Jock growled again, then sat down on her leashed feet.

Kathlene thought about how funny this situation could be if it were played out in a movie or TV show. But the reality?

It felt anything but funny to her.

Was she nuts? Were they all nuts? Had they somehow drugged her or... Well, she wasn't going to find out now.

She wouldn't find out until they had that conversation that Ralf had mentioned.

“Okay,” she finally said with a sigh. “I'll wait here with Ralf. But I expect you both to fill me in later. On everything.”

And if she could, she'd push for Ralf to tell all in Jock's absence.

But she had a feeling that lower-ranking members of this supersecret Alpha Force military unit wouldn't do anything without their superior officer's verbal, human-type, okay.

* * *

She had seen him shift
.

Jock loped through the woods now, toward the encampment that was his target. Again
.

He had to concentrate on his mission, what he needed to accomplish this night
.

How he needed to accomplish it
.

But his mind was filled with human thoughts other than those he had to focus on
.

She had seen him shift
.

She had seen him naked, and that somehow made him glad. He wanted her to return the favor. Soon
.

But she had also seen his fleeting but intense discomfort as he had changed from human form into wolfen
.

And then they had communicated somewhat. She had agreed to stay. To obey his command
.

But he knew better. If he had been in human form and gave her orders, she would never have agreed to do as he'd said
.

She was confused. Unsure what to do, so she was heeding him. For now
.

But later
...

Why hadn't he scented her before he shifted? He had caught her fragrant scent before when she had been where she wasn't supposed to be. The old house was filled with ugly smells, so why not pick out one good one from the rest?

His only excuse was that he had been focused on shifting. If he had smelled her, he might have sloughed it off, anyway, as a residual scent from yesterday
.

There. He had arrived at the area just outside the fence
.

Time to concentrate. Time to meander around and eavesdrop and see if those inside were discussing the meeting that had occurred today—and how their presence, even acting like interested bystanders, had changed the outcome
.

And if he were lucky, he would overhear how they intended next to levy their threats on the county commissioners who wanted to put further restrictions on their abilities to hunt and arm themselves...and hurt people
.

That was why he was here: to learn what they were actually up to
.

And to stop them
.

A good time for it, too. For the first time since he had started recon on this old ranch, he heard an explosion. Small and muffled, yes. But he needed to find out more about it—and the very slight scent of plastic, perhaps C-4 explosives, that accompanied it
.

* * *

Kathlene had gotten Ralf talking. Not a lot, and not comfortably.

But at least she knew a little more now than when Jock had stalked away toward the ranch site.

Rather than on the dilapidated chairs, they sat on the warped wood of the house's floor with the flashlight pointing toward the base of the wall to give off a minimum amount of illumination that could let them see around them. She leaned against the wall, her legs bent with her knees pointing toward the ceiling where she had been hiding before. Ralf had his legs crossed and looked highly uneasy.

But he had answered a few of her questions—
few
being the operative word. Some responses were interesting and hinted at even more fascinating data behind them. But none were in depth.

“So Alpha Force somehow recruits different kinds of shapeshifters—mostly wolves, but also lynxes and cougars and even hawks,” she repeated back to Ralf, trying to buy into the concept. But she'd seen a shift with her own eyes. If a man could change into a wolf, why not all the other kinds of animals, too?

“That's right,” Ralf said. “But I can't tell you anything about the recruitment process or how they're utilized on missions or anything else, really.”

“Are you a shifter, too?”

“No, but I was a member of Special Forces before I was recruited into Alpha Force. I'd gained the trust of my commanding officers so they must have figured I could handle this...different...kind of assignment.”

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, yeah. I always liked trying something new and outrageous, and you can't get much more outrageous than this.”

Kathlene pondered what else to ask that wouldn't trigger a refusal to answer. “What do you do as an aide?”

“Whatever's necessary—but some of it's classified so I can't answer any more of your questions about it.”

“Right.” She tried to sound perky and understanding and accepting of all he said. What else could she do? He could be lying about everything, but after what she had seen she might believe stuff that was even crazier than reality—like, was Ralf himself going to shapeshift in a few minutes into King Kong?

How could she be certain that he couldn't?

A noise sounded at the front door, like something scratching on it. A dog's paw?

Ralf must have heard it, too, since he stood quickly and dashed over then opened the door.

Sure enough, a silver-furred figure leaped inside, panting. A dog. A wolf.

Jock.

“All okay, sir?” Ralf asked, obviously trying to be funny. For her, or for his commanding officer, or both?

Kathlene had already figured out that, whatever happened to Jock when he shifted, he obviously maintained his ability to understand what people said, even if he couldn't respond in kind. Otherwise, how could he have helped her so much at the ranch compound last night?

And how could Ralf joke with him?

The sound Jock made in response was like a muted growl. Maybe he didn't find Ralf so funny after all. He barked again and loped over to Ralf's backpack that still lay on the floor. He pawed at it.

And then he stared at Kathlene.

“He wants to shift back right now,” Ralf said. “He could do it on his own in time, but I can help him do it faster with the light. But the thing is, when he shifts back he'll be...er...”

“Naked. I got a glimpse when he shifted into being a wolf before,” Kathlene reminded him. “No problem. I can just leave now.”

Jock barked again, giving a decisively negative shake of his head.

“He wants you to stay,” Ralf interpreted unnecessarily. “Maybe he saw or heard something that means danger if you go outside now. Tell you what. Why don't you just turn your back?”

“Sure,” she said, pivoting to face the wall that had been nearest her back in the house's main, and most decrepit, room.

But she couldn't help it. She turned just slightly, enough to see that Ralf had his back to her as he pulled the light from his backpack and aimed it at Jock.

Jock wasn't looking at her, either. Especially not when he growled, then moaned as his body started lengthening, the fur pelt receding into him, his muzzle and pointed ears retracting.

The process was fascinating. Kathlene couldn't have forced herself to turn away even if she'd wanted to.

Which she didn't.

The most intriguing part of the process was to see Jock's taut, all-masculine, human muscles forming and tightening once more.

Not to mention the nether part of his body. His sexual organs, before the evident but not so interesting form of a canine's, morphing into all human, large and erect and utterly enticing.

Why did he have an erection? Did he know she was staring at him or was this what always happened to him?

The process was nearly over now. Both men would be more aware of her presence very soon.

At least now Kathlene was able to force herself to turn back toward the wall.

And go over, in her mind, the miraculous change she had just witnessed.

How often did he do this? How much did it hurt?

Why did it seem so sexy to her?

She suddenly heard whispering behind her. It was so soft that she couldn't make out what the men were saying.

Too bad
she
didn't have any canine abilities. Dogs had excellent hearing. Did a werewolf?

She prepared to call out, ask if it was okay to turn around, if Jock was decent.

But before she could, someone touched her elbow, startling her. Why hadn't she heard movement on this irregular wood floor?

“Kathlene,” said Jock's voice. She turned to see him standing right behind her, tall, fully dressed and with an ominous look on his handsome, chiseled—and now all human—face.

“Oh, hi,” she said, making an attempt to act nonchalant and unaffected by the night's offbeat occurrences. “I'd really like for you to tell me more about what's going on.”

“Yeah, I will. I hope you're not tired tonight, because we have to talk—right now.”

* * *

Could they trust her?

They had to. Jock knew that. But he wanted to make sure she understood there would be consequences if she even unintentionally alluded to what she'd seen in front of any of her sheriff's department people, or anyone else, for that matter.

“Okay,” she said. “But could we go someplace more comfortable to have this conversation? Your cabin would be a whole lot better than this.”

“Fine,” Jock said. “I'll ride with you.”

He didn't really believe she'd try to drive off and ignore them, or, worse, shout what she had seen to the world, but just in case...

“Okay.”

Was it that easy? He'd anticipated some argument from her.

But on the other hand, she'd made it clear that she had a lot of questions. Maybe she thought he'd answer them more freely if they were one-on-one.