Uncaging Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 4) (7 page)

“This is the shifting shed,” he said. “For decency and such.”

“You don’t just shift in the house?” she asked.

“Sloane gets annoyed if it smells like wet dog in there,” he said. “Or wet bear. Which smells a
lot
like wet dog.”

“She has a point,” Scarlet admitted.

In theory, you could tell your wolf what not to do, and for the most part, it worked: shifters rarely shifted among human company, didn’t murder people, didn’t get hit by cars.

But it was nearly impossible to walk into a warm, dry house after a rainy run and
not
shake the water off.

The shed was small and unimpressive, just a wooden building with a shower curtain running down the center and two bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling.

“This is civilized,” Scarlet said, stepping in. Trevor closed the door behind them, then pulled the curtain through the middle.

“We’ve got all the finest creature comforts,” Trevor said, half-joking, then she could hear him pause. Scarlet pulled her shirt over her head, then put it and her bra on a small wooden shelf.

“Lizzie started shifting while you were gone,” he went on. “And Tim will start, any day now. We wanted to give them a safe space, where they could go and not be vulnerable in public.”

Once more, Scarlet felt a knot in her stomach. Despite herself, she thought about the bird in her window again, fiercely guarding its eggs against an enemy a hundred times its size.

“That’s really nice of you,” she said, quietly.

In the next stall, she heard the sound of cloth hitting the floor.

“Well, I had to do something,” Trevor said. His quiet voice had a hard edge to it.

Scarlet knew why. She’d been eleven the first time Trevor had shifted. He’d been thirteen. The ability to shift came with puberty, and one day, Trevor had been digging a fence hole in the back yard, before he’d suddenly doubled over, screamed, and then turned into a wolf, shredding off all his clothes.

He’d run off immediately, and the men working with him had just straightened up and watched him go. They knew he’d come back.

When he did, he was human and naked. It took a couple of months to get shifting under control, and Scarlet still remembered seeing him, naked, on the edge of their property.

She also remembered their father forcing Trevor to walk all the way into the house totally nude, admonishing him to be proud of his first shift, to display himself proudly. After all, Trevor was a
man
now.

Standing in the shed, not at all far from the hole Trevor had been digging when he first shifted, Scarlet realized that Trevor had never forgiven his father for that, or for a thousand other things.

I’m not sure he needs to
, she thought, looking down at the ground.
 

Does everyone deserve forgiveness?

She didn’t want to get to the next part of that question. A single tear made its way down her cheek, and she brushed it off impatiently.

You just got out of jail. It’s okay to be a mess
, she told herself.

“You ready?” Trevor asked from the other side of the curtain.

Scarlet swallowed, trying to find her voice.

“Let’s do this,” she responded, hoping that she didn’t sound too shaky.

Not that it mattered. Scarlet let her wolf take over, completely over, for the first time in years.

Chapter Seven

Gavin

The Ponderosa County office of the Cascadia Department of Corrections was a low, squat building just off of Main Street, covered in ugly wooden shingles. The shingles hadn’t been the Department’s idea. They had just rented the building, ugly shingles and all, because they needed an outpost in that corner of the state.

Just like every morning, Gavin considered the shingles as he walked to the front door of the building.

Definitely growing moss
, he thought to himself, looking at the green shadow running along the top edges.
That can’t be good. This building is literally rotting with us inside.

He and Chase had already had a full day of trying to find Sarah with no results whatsoever. She hadn’t tracked them down, either, and Gavin was in a
mood
.

He reached the glass front door, adjusted his briefcase on his shoulder, and pulled it open.

Rotting with us inside is probably a metaphor for something
, he thought, then made himself smile at the receptionist.

“Morning, Betty,” he said.

“Morning, Gavin,” she said. Betty was just over sixty, a fact that had surprised Gavin when he found out — but then again, maybe it shouldn’t have. After all, she ran the office with an iron fist, equally up to the tasks of unjamming the copier, catering a lunch, and informing violent felons that they needed to leave
, now
.

“How’s my favorite secretary?” he asked, checking his mailbox.

“I wouldn’t know about her,” Betty said dryly. “But your favorite
highly skilled office manager
is going to strangle everyone at the transportation department who cannot schedule a simple bus ride for felons.”

She looked at Gavin, raising one eyebrow above her thick-framed reading glasses.

“Remind me never to carpool with you,” Gavin teased.

“I’ve seen how you drive,” she said. A single wrinkle appeared in the corner of her eye, the sole sign that she was teasing him, otherwise totally straight-faced. “I won’t be asking for a ride anytime soon.”

Gavin grinned.

“I’m just efficient,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “If anyone ever breaks the land speed record in a Toyota Camry, it’ll be you.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment,” Gavin said, shuffling through his mail: memo, memo, memo, notice, memo. “Anything good happening today?”

“Not unless Charlene brings donuts again,” Betty said.

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” said Gavin, as he walked toward his office.

It wasn’t big or fancy, but it
did
have a window onto Main Street, and from it, Gavin could sometimes watch people as they looked in. His favorite was when people looked into what they probably thought was an accounting firm, only to see some huge, tattoo-covered shifter looking back. It didn’t happen often, but Gavin enjoyed those moments.

On the walls he’d hung big landscape photos: the ocean on the wall opposite him, the mountains on the wall behind him. When he’d first moved into the office years ago, those awful inspirational posters had been all over the walls. The one he’d hated the most had a picture of a sunset, and underneath the words PERSEVERANCE: DON’T GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS.

Impossibly stupid, and not even helpful. People just getting out of prison and trying to land on their feet didn’t need to be told that that their rock star dreams were still alive. They needed an employer willing to look past a criminal record and a couple of hand tattoos.

Gavin had a single picture on his desk: Chase, standing on a trail in the middle of the Sierras. He’d looked over at Gavin at the last moment and smiled, and Gavin had gotten that moment, that expression of
I’m happy to see you
. Right there, in that smile, was everything Gavin loved about his mate: his easygoing nature, his adventurous spirit, and most of all, his sincere
joy
in life.

That morning, even Chase had been down, even though Gavin knew he was trying not to show it.

When he’d started as a parole officer, his coworkers had told him not to put
anything
relating to his personal life up in his office. They’d all told third-hand stories of parolees who hunted down spouses, friends, kids, that sort of thing. But after a while Gavin had realized two things: one, that most people sincerely wanted to try; and two, he and Chase could handle pretty much anything.

He didn’t advertise the fact that he was a wolf. It wasn’t a secret, but he’d found that non-wolves, and
especially
humans, got squirmy when they found out, so he didn’t mention it. If they knew, they knew. If not, no harm.

Gavin had twenty-three unread emails, but with a glance at his open office door, he quietly minimized Outlook and pulled up the internet, then sat there, head in hands.

A search had been completely useless. There were thousands of Sarahs in the surrounding area, and while he was pretty sure he and Chase were willing to call every single one of them if they had to, it probably wasn’t the best place to start.

The phone book had been useless, of course. Who the hell had a land line anymore?

Staring at the blinking cursor on the screen, Gavin wondered if he had access to census records as a state employee. Even though the last one had been a couple of years ago, she was probably on it, unless she’d recently moved to the area.

It was better than nothing, though.

You’re not supposed to use census records for that sort of thing,
he reminded himself.
That stuff is private
.

What if she doesn’t want you to find her?

His skin went cold, and he clenched his jaw.

She’d have to tell him that, face-to-face.
 

Gavin logged into the shared server, found the FAQ that looked like it had been made in 1995, and started trying to figure out how to access census records.

Forty-five minutes later, a reminder popped up on his computer screen.

Scarlet Reynolds, 10 a.m.

“Shit,” muttered Gavin. He’d totally forgotten that he was getting a new parolee that day. For a brief moment, he wondered if it was too late to reschedule the meeting, but she was probably already on her way.

Well, hopefully. Gavin
hated
it when new parolees just didn’t show up. Was there a worse way to start your post-jail life?

He scribbled a note to himself, stuck it in a drawer, and closed all the open windows on his computer. The program that the census data used was so old that it barely worked on his computer, and he had a hell of a task ahead of him.

Gavin stood, stretched, and then pulled out Scarlet Reynolds’s folder.

His eyes widened.

He’d forgotten the name, but he sure as
hell
knew who Scarlet Reynolds was. Everyone in Cascadia did: the militia daughter, the one who’d been sent away for
treason
. Gavin himself was in the Rustvale pack, but when the arrests happened, the Ponderosa pack had essentially imploded. It was all that anyone had talked about for months.

There was no photo in her file, but that wasn’t very strange; sometimes they fell out or, more often, the people doing the paperwork at the prison just forgot to put it in. As Betty had been finding out earlier, working with the prison system could be frustrating at best and impossible at worst.

Gavin remembered seeing her on the news, though: a sulky girl who looked like a teenager, her hair always in her face, constantly scowling at the camera. When she’d taken the stand she’d spewed invective about anyone who wasn’t a wolf, parroting her father, and they’d put her away for treason, just like him.

How the hell did she get out?
He wondered, flipping through her prison records. The first year had pages and pages of records: unauthorized shifting, fights, more fights, joining a gang in prison. At one point she’d spat in a guard’s face, and as a former prison guard himself, Gavin’s stomach turned over at the thought.

She was a real piece of work.

He glanced at the clock: three more minutes. Gavin flipped through, noting that the records got thinner and thinner as time wore on until, in the past two years, there were commendations for good behavior.

His eyebrows went up, but he was skeptical; while he always wanted to believe that people could change in prison, he didn’t see it happen all that often. Especially people like her, who were going right back into the environment she’d come from.

On his desk, his phone rang.

“Your ten o’clock is here,” Betty’s voice said.

“Thanks,” Gavin said, and put the receiver back on the cradle.

At least she showed up
, he thought.

He closed her folder and stood, straightening the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down shirt.

She was sitting in the lobby, in a gray upholstered chair opposite Betty, intently reading a National Geographic. Her long, almost-black hair covered most of her face, and all he could see was the curve of her neck, the way she held her head.

There was something strangely familiar about it, and for a moment, Gavin stopped dead in his tracks.

Then Scarlet Reynolds looked up at him, and Gavin felt like he’d been hit with a brick.

It was Sarah.

Gavin’s heart rose and sank all at once, so he just stood there, staring at her, his mouth slightly open. He’d found her, true, but she was the
last
person he wanted her to be.

Sitting at her desk, Betty cleared her throat, knocking Gavin from his reverie, and he let habit take over.

“Hi,” he said, striding over to her, holding out his hand. “I’m Gavin Demoya, your parole officer.”

She stood, carefully placing the magazine on a side table, and put her hand in his, her gray eyes locking onto his.

“Scarlet Reynolds,” she said, and swallowed hard.

Gavin wanted to make some remark about her name, say
you really look like a Sarah for some reason
, but he bit it back. He was at work, and here, he needed to be a professional and not goad on his clients.

What I need is to not have had sex with Scarlet Reynolds
, he thought. His hand still tingled warmly where she’d shaken it a moment ago, and he clenched and unclenched it, willing the sensation to go away.

“My office is this way,” he said.

You made a mistake
, he told himself.
That’s all. She’s nothing special.

Gavin wished he believed himself.

He held the door to his office open for her, then closed it behind himself. Automatically, he noticed that she’d dressed nicely for the meeting: a cardigan over her shirt, gray slacks, and flats. It was wildly different from what she’d been wearing the night before last, but it was a good sign. A sign that she meant to really try life on the outside, instead of fall right back into what had gotten her into trouble in the first place.