Betting on Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 2) (13 page)

“Well, you’re both canines, right?” she said.

Jack leaned over her, putting his face against her hair, and grinned at Houston.

“I think she wants us to show her the difference between dogs and wolves,” he said.

“I don’t think she’s given us a choice,” said Houston.

Kirsten giggled quietly between the two of them.

“Worse, she knows
exactly
what she’s doing,” said Jack, grinning.

In a flash, he was on his feet, pulling Kirsten up and then lifting her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to the bedroom. Houston and Katie both followed, but Houston closed the door before the dog could come in. Then he leaned against it, watching for a moment.

Jack tossed Kirsten on the bed, listening to her laugh, then knelt behind her, pulling her up in front of him, both kneeling and facing the end of the bed. He bent his head and nipped her on the neck as Houston sauntered over.

Kirsten grabbed Houston by the belt, letting one thumb wander over the dark trail of hair leading from his navel downward, getting a quiet growl from him.

“What’s the difference, then?” she asked. “Dogs do as they’re told?”

It had been five days since they’d seen her, and Jack could feel his control slipping away with every moment that their bodies were pressed together, every fiber of his being aching with pure
need
.

“The difference is,” Jack said, his lips against Kirsten’s ear, “wolves will make you howl.”

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Or, keep turning pages for a sneak peek at Fighting for Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves #3)...

Everyone fights for something.

Grey Macauley is in t-r-o-u-b-l-e. She’s new to Rustvale, but she’s already found a body in a dark alleyway -- and landed herself right in the middle of a shocking small-town murder investigation. Circumstances implicate Grey herself in the crime, and the sexy wolf shifter investigating the case isn’t fooled by Grey’s innocent good-girl facade.
 

Dane Sorenson is taking on the first homicide investigation Rustvale’s seen in thirty years, and the complications are piling up fast. The gorgeous girl who found the body isn’t telling him the truth, and Dane’s own mate Issac is definitely hiding something -- but Dane’s damned if he can figure out what. In the meantime, he needs answers... from his own mate, and the sexy woman he just can’t seem to leave alone.
 

Issac Yates has his own connection with Grey -- he found the fierce, curvy girl in an underground gambling den where they were both up to no good. A former champion wolf fighter, Issac is going to step into the ring one last time -- and Dane can’t find out. But when he meets Grey he knows instinctively that she’s the perfect woman to complete their triad... and all Issac’s carefully laid plans scatter with the wind.

Murder, lies, and lust will test their newfound connection... but will it bond them fast, or shatter them forever?
 

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Or turn the page for a sneak peek at Chapter 1...

Fighting for Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves #3)

CHAPTER ONE

Dane

It was seven at night when Dane got the call. He was just clearing off his desk, getting ready to head home, and then his phone rang.

Don’t answer it
, he thought, even as he reached for the receiver.
The world will still have problems in the morning, and when was the last time you actually ate dinner with Isaac?

“Sorenson,” he said into the receiver.

“Hey there,” said the voice on the other end. “Don’t leave just yet.”

Dane could hear loud voices in the background of the phone call, along with shouting, the sound of tires, and sirens.

“What’s going on, Ramirez?” he said. “It sounds like you’ve got the National Guard out there.”

“Homicide,” said the other voice.

Dane straightened his back in surprise.

Now
he was fully alert.

“Homicide?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yup,” said Ramirez. “Unless our victim managed to fall on a large knife several times.”

“Shit,” breathed Dane. “Where is it? What happened?”

He could practically hear Ramirez shrug over the phone.
 

“Nice young girl found him in the alleyway between Main and First,” he said. “Says she was taking a shortcut home from a friend’s house. Guy got stabbed at least three times, maybe more. As for what happened, I think that one’s your job, detective. Get out here.”

They hung up the phone, and Dane sat back down.

Rustvale wasn’t the sort of place where this happened. It was a small town, and even though the wolves could get violent sometimes — last year, his own brother had set a car on fire and Dane had been the one to arrest him — there weren’t
murders
.

Not in
Rustvale
. At most, they’d have vehicular homicides, hit-and-runs, or just accidents. This was beyond the pale.

The phone rang again, and reluctantly, Dane picked it up, praying it wasn’t Ramirez with another body.

“Sorenson,” he said.

“Looks like a long night, so we’re getting pizza,” said Patty, the woman who worked the front desk. “What do you want?”

“Pepperoni?” Dane said, his mind elsewhere. “Thanks, Patty.”

I have to call the coroner
, he thought.
I don’t even remember his name. Are we still using half the morgue as file storage?
We should get those out of there.

Dane started pacing.

When was the last time we had a murder?
He wondered.
Ten years? Twenty?
 

He’d only made detective last year, when the previous guy had retired. There wasn’t much need for more than one on the Rustvale police squad. Dane managed to keep busy, but there certainly wasn’t enough work for two of him. Most of his job was investigating robberies, break-ins, and vehicle thefts.

A couple of years ago, there had been a kidnapping case that had nearly paralyzed the town for a day. Then it turned out to be part of a custody battle in a divorce, and the kid was just with her mom, who’d taken her without the dad knowing.

People didn’t get murdered in Rustvale, and they certainly didn’t get stabbed in alleys and left like a pile of trash.

Snap to it, Sorenson
, he told himself.

With a sigh, he sat back down at his desk and turned his computer back on so he could look up the number of the coroner that Rustvale shared with the surrounding counties.

We don’t even have enough problems for our own coroner
, he thought.

Dane shook his head and dialed the number.

Ten minutes later, he grabbed his jacket and his badge and headed out the front door of the police station.

“Hey,” said Patty. “Where you going? The pizza will be here any minute.”

Dane half-smiled at Patty. She was an older human, the sort of receptionist who excelled at a few tasks, but hadn’t learned any new skills in about ten years.

“Sorry,” he said. “I should’ve taken a raincheck, I gotta go to the scene.”

Patty’s eyebrows arched upward, and her frosted pink lips thinned into a line.

“Can you believe it?” she whispered. “A murder in Rustvale? You know, just last week I saw a couple of young men — up-to-no-good types — just take off
racing
down the highway on the loudest motorcycles. I bet they might have something to do with it.”

Dane just nodded. It was impossible to ever tell Patty that she was wrong about something, and he’d given up long ago.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Just trying to help,” she said, looking pleased.
 

Dane walked down the steps of the police station, getting into his unmarked car. It was early April, and a few scraps of snow were still just clinging to the ground, only in places that stood in deep shadow all day long. Pretty soon, all the trees would start getting their leaves back, the flowers would start blooming, and Rustvale would blossom to life once more.

He could practically smell it in the air. Wolves didn’t hibernate — they weren’t
bears
— but the winter always felt especially long to them, and when the days got warmer and longer, everyone seemed to get a little stir crazy.

Stir crazy enough to murder?
He wondered, getting into the car. He could feel it himself, a deep itch in his bones, the urge to run through the forests and fields, leaping into streams and chasing after rabbits in pure canine joy.

Please, let this not have been a wolf shifter
, Dane thought as he pulled the car out of the police station parking lot.
We’ve got a bad enough reputation already
.

It seemed like he was the last person to get to the crime scene, since the small back alleyway was completely mobbed. Most of the people there were just onlookers, gawking at the most serious crime that Rustvale had seen in years. Scattered among them were reporters for the local news station, jockeying along with their cameras to get the best possible view. The crime scene tape blocked the path, and uniformed deputies stood in front of it, doing their best to control the crowd.

“Detective Sorenson!” one of the reporters shouted. In the glare of the lights, he could just barely make out the reporter’s face.

“Any idea who might do this?” she asked.

He raised both hands into the air.

“I just got here,” he said. “No comment just yet.”

“Can you confirm or deny rumors that a vicious motorcycle gang has been seen in the area?” she asked, shoving through the crowd and presenting him with a large microphone.

Deep down, his wolf snapped at the woman, but Dane held it back. He had
plenty
of practice in holding it back.

Gingerly, he put a hand on the foam sphere at the end of the microphone and pushed it back.

“I haven’t heard those rumors,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get to work.”

She shouted something else, but Dane lifted the police tape and walked underneath it, then over to where Ramirez, the police chief, stood looking down at a long knobby lump underneath a black plastic sheet.

It was the body, of course. Dane took a deep breath and lifted the plastic sheet from the face, bracing himself for the worst.

“Shit,” he said when he saw the victim.

“You know this kid?” asked Ramirez.

“Yeah,” said Dane reluctantly. “Not well. But I know him.”

Ramirez just let out a long, low whistle, shaking his head.

“Sorry about that, man,” he said.

“It’s Nicky Grant,” Dane said, still staring at the kid’s face. It was true what they said about dead people: they really
did
look like they were just sleeping. “You know my fuck-up little brother?”

“Zeke?” said Ramirez.

“Yeah,” said Dane.

Zeke was across the state, closer to the coast, doing a couple of years in the state prison outside Eureka for setting someone’s car on fire. The moron hadn’t even run.

“Nicky sort of hung around with Zeke and his friends, though he was a couple of years younger,” Dane said. “I didn’t know him well, but he seemed like he was always getting into trouble, pissing people off. He thought he was a big-time gangster, but I don’t think he ever did more than smoke pot and talk a big game.”

“Looks like he pissed off the wrong person,” Ramirez said. “Six stab wounds.”

“You said three on the phone.”

“I got a better look,” said Ramirez.

“Well, I called the coroner,” said Dane. “Sounds like we know cause of death, but it wouldn’t hurt to do things by the book. We got the weapon?”

Ramirez shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said. “But I’ll have some of the guys go through the dumpster here and I bet we’ll find it.”

Dane eyed the overflowing dumpster, glad he’d gotten a promotion. Once upon a time, he’d been the guy whose job it was to go through the dumpster.

“Signs of a struggle, anything? Witnesses?”

They both crouched down by the body, and Ramirez lifted the sheet the rest of the way off. In the background, Dane could hear cameras clicking away.

Disgusting
, he thought.
This man is dead
.

Nicky’s hands had two long gashes in them, like he’d grabbed a knife blade.

“Looks like he didn’t get much of a chance,” Dane said. “Might have grabbed the blade when it was already too late.”

“Something like that,” said Ramirez. “Hard to say.”

“Nobody heard anything?”

Ramirez just shook his head.
 

“No residences this end of the street,” he said. “The boutique out front closes at six, the other storefront is empty right now, and the Chinese takeout place is closed Mondays.”

Damn
, thought Dane.

“I wonder if that’s by design or coincidence,” he said out loud.

Ramirez shrugged.

“Who found him?” Dane asked. “I should talk to them.”