Pack Justice (Nature of the Beast Book 1) (28 page)

It would probably involve her teeth and not in a way I’d enjoy. I’d deserve it, too.

Chapter Twenty

It took the better part of an hour for my hearing to return, and I spent most of it flopped on the warehouse floor while the real police dogs searched the place from top to bottom. I managed to escape the watchful eye of my Fenerec babysitters twice, and both times I barked until someone came to document the location and retrieve the plastic-wrapped drugs.

My peace offerings didn’t earn me much, although Alice limited her disapproval to glares and a few choice curses.

The third time I started to get up to to locate the drugs annoying me with their putrid stench, Alice’s partner stepped on my neck and held me down. The pressure didn’t hurt or choke off my breath, but I closed my eyes and trembled.

“Vince, off,” Alice snapped. “Jab your toe into the gunshot wound if you want, but leave his throat alone.”

Vince moved his foot to my shoulder, although the Fenerec didn’t put any weight where I’d been shot. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Sir Spots needs to remember the stay command,” Alice grumbled, nudging my side with her shoe. “I hope you’re happy. You’re going to get us all in trouble.”

“You haven’t told the captain yet, have you?”

“Damn fucking straight I haven’t told the captain yet. Think if we take the time to do a few extra sweeps of the place, he’ll have healed enough she won’t notice?”

“His fur is matted with blood, Alice. Maybe we could run him through a car wash and get it all out, but then she’d wonder why we were bringing him back extra soggy with a new limp.”

Running away and hiding from Captain Ramirez’s wrath was sounding better and better. While I didn’t know where Andrea lived, I did know the location of her firm.

I consoled myself with the thought of trying to hide while waiting for the defense attorney to finish her work for the day. The first time someone saw me off leash, animal control would hunt me down as a risk to the public.

“We could say he rolled in some mud?”

“Here? Where do you propose we find some mud for him? It hasn’t rained in over a month.”

“Freak rain storm?”

“Nice try. There is no way the captain is going to buy that.”

Alice sighed. “Dry him off really, really well? Come on, Vince. She’s going to kill us all when she finds out he got shot. Forget his mate. Captain Ramirez is going to skin us all. I know. Let’s sneak in a replacement. We’ll stash him in Marcello’s SUV for the rest of the day, dye some other oversized canine black, and pretend we have no idea what she’s talking about when she asks where Sir Spots is and what we think we’re doing.”

“I think an honest confession would go over better. At least we can tell her we’re pretty sure he’s not submissive. He
did
do a good job even though he did manage to get shot.”

Snorting, Alice crouched beside me and rubbed my ears. “Sorry, Sir Spots. We should have done a better sweep of the place before letting you strut your stuff.”

“You did a damned good job, Sir Spots.” Vince removed his foot from my shoulder, hunted down my leash from the pile of equipment, and clipped it to my collar. “Give the pup some credit, Alice. It wasn’t much more than a graze, and he got them at a two for one special. The captain will probably forgive us.”

“The keyword here is probably. While we called in shots fired, we neglected to mention Sir Spots got in the way of one.”

“Hey, at least we don’t have to worry about the body cam recordings. All the audio is going to pick up are a few growls, shouts, and the gunfire.” Vince shook his head. “Speaking of which, we better turn the audio back on and do a really good job pretending there was a malfunction.”

Alice snorted, but both of the cops adjusted the electronics attached to them, and a hand signal warned the others to watch what they said.

I had to admit I found the dual lives the Fenerec led interesting.

Standing hurt, but I couldn’t smell any fresh blood, which I took as a good sign. My shoulder didn’t bother me after a few tentative steps, and I shook, sending a cloud of black fur rising up around me.

I was grateful looks couldn’t kill, because Alice’s glare promised death and misery. “Oh, look. He’s shedding. Wonderful. Could you not do that, Sir Spots? You’re supposed to be growing your winter coat, not leaving it all over a crime scene!”

“Hey, be nice, Alice. They sang like canaries for the cameras, as soon as we told our devil dog to back off. This case will last all of ten minutes in court and we all know it. They’ll settle with a plea bargain to avoid the charge for shooting one of our dogs.” Vince snorted and gave my leash a tug. “I vote we find a car wash, hose him down, and claim he played in a busted hydrant.”

“Really? We’re going with the busted hydrant? She won’t buy it.”

“What are you betting on that?”

“Ten bucks,” Alice declared, holding out her hand.

The two cops shook while I sighed and wondered about the sanity of Fenerec. Then again, I couldn’t talk. I had thought jumping at two armed men was a good idea, which ranked right up there with dive bombing a cop killer and rapist from a tree.

Sanity, apparently, wasn’t one of my virtues.

As they had threatened, Alice and her partner took me to a car wash and hosed me down. Both of them stopped laughing when the black dyed fur came out in clumps, revealing the shorter undercoat covered with my cheetah’s iconic spots.

“Fuck,” Alice growled, shutting off the water with a slap of her hand. “Now what?”

Vince ran his hand through his hair and scratched his scalp. “Now would be the time to call the captain and confess. Maybe his dark, thick winter coat would have hidden the hole in his hide, but it’s pretty obvious right now. At least it’s not bleeding anymore?”

“Dye. We’ll buy dye and get rid of the spots again. She won’t notice.”

“Alice, you’re delusional. He’s gone from a massive, fluffy dog to a sleek beauty. It’s like we’re bringing back a totally different animal.”

“We could say we left him at the warehouse and exchanged him for a new one.”

Vince laughed, shook his head, and dug out a towel from the trunk of the cruiser. “I don’t think Captain Ramirez would be happy with us if we did that. Come on, Sir Spots. Shake and I’ll try to get the rest of your fur dry.”

“We should dye him again.”

“How long does it take to dye a two hundred and fifty pound dog?”

“Too long,” Alice muttered.

I sighed, braced, and shook the water out of my coat, earning dismayed cries from both of the police officers. When I no longer dripped all over the place, I hopped into the cruiser and made myself comfortable on the back seat.

“You were supposed to wait until I toweled you off,” Vince complained.

Alice huffed and slid behind the wheel. “I give up. Let’s sneak him back into the station through the back door. I’ll just tell Captain Ramirez we went to the shelter and dumped the idiot for a saner animal.”

“Whatever you want, Alice. Whatever you want.”

Alice had a death wish, although trading me for one of the other drug dogs was a stroke of brilliance. My nose informed me my new pair of handlers were also Fenerec. The two men glared at each other until the shorter of them claimed my leash.

“Nice to meet you, Sir Spots. I’m Matthew. My partner’s Justin. I guess we’ll be your keepers until Captain Ramirez gets tired of Alice’s shit and demands an explanation.” Matthew shook his head and laughed. “You’re keeping things lively around here. You’re gonna give us a collective heart attack at the rate you’re going. Hungry?”

Stretching made my shoulder ache. A yawn slipped out, and I shook myself in an effort to stay awake.

“I think he wants his well-earned nap,” Justin said, his tone light with laughter. “Never thought you had it in you, Sir Spots. I’m impressed.”

I flicked an ear, wondering how I’d ever be able to visit the station as a human again. I’d step through the door and die of embarrassment. I was glad I was still a wolf when every head turned in our direction as we came in through the back entrance.

Marcello burst into laughter. “Alice claimed she had enough of Sir Spots Senior and exchanged him for Sir Spots Junior. I didn’t think she was being serious. I can’t believe you let her take Twister.”

Matthew tossed my leash to Marcello. “It’s Alice’s head on the block, not mine. We’re passing Sir Spots around to see who has him when Captain Ramirez finally decides to come hunting him.”

“Andrea called Ramirez in a panic. What’s going on?”

Matthew pointed at my shoulder. Marcello crouched at my side. I turned my head and stared at the wall. My wolf and my cheetah were worried about what the defense attorney would do when she found out what had happened. Flattening my ears to my skull, I growled a warning.

“I could swear that’s a gunshot wound, Matt.”

“We fucked up, sir. The tip said the warehouse was empty. We failed to clear the building. Sir Spots found two armed perps and had a dance with them. He got hit with a round before he took them both down. Nothing serious. Alice popped the bullet out no problem, and he’s healing well. It stopped bleeding within five minutes.”

“Fuck. No wonder Andrea was freaking out. Captain Ramirez called me into her office to ask what the fuck we were doing; she could sense something was wrong. It took twenty minutes to convince Andrea to stay at work.” Marcello jabbed me with his toe. “Can’t you stay out of trouble for a single day? Just one?”

“He did. Yesterday,” Matthew replied before filling Marcello in on what had happened at the warehouse from start to finish.

Marcello sighed. “I’ll try to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. You’re a dead dog, Sir Spots. I just thought you should know.”

I echoed my friend’s sigh and hung my head.

“So much for a smooth transition. But hey, think about it this way, Marcello. If he was going to snap and eat people, he would have.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

The instant Marcello dragged me into Captain Ramirez’s office, the conversation ceased. The woman was on the phone, and cradling it between her ear and shoulder, she pointed at Alice and Vince. “Get back to work.”

The two cops fled with Twister, who gave me a wide berth, leaving me and Marcello to face Ramirez alone.