Forbidden (4 page)

Morgan huddled on the leeward side of the evergreen, rubbing his hands together. Elena and Clay had left without even commenting on his man-eater crack, as if he’d been seriously reassuring them. He shook his head. They really didn’t get it. To them, considering all “mutts” potential man-eaters seemed to be a simple case of caution. Like not leaving cash lying around the house when you had contractors over. But it wasn’t like that at all. It was like presuming all men lusted after thirteen-year-old girls until they proved they didn’t. Insulting on a deep moral and personal level.

Morgan shivered, hunched against the cold and shoved his bare hands under his armpits. Maybe he’d made a mistake, coming to see the Pack. They weren’t werewolves in the way he was, or his father and brother were. The three of them had grown up isolated from the very culture of being werewolf. His father and brother viewed it as an affliction. A genetic condition that you learned to live with. Morgan didn’t agree, which was why he’d lived among wolves, to get in touch with that side of his nature. But to the Pack, being a werewolf wasn’t just about being partly wolf. It really was an all-encompassing way of life.

Still, that did have an appeal, which was why he’d come. He’d found something in that Alaskan wolf pack that he’d never experienced before. A sense of community. He wasn’t ever going to get that back home, where it was just the three of them, mingling with the outside world as little as possible.

Of course, the problem with the wolf pack was, well, they were wolves. Intellectually, it was a little stifling. So, from that perspective, the werewolf Pack seemed intriguing. Community and brotherhood complete with intelligent conversation, poker games and movie nights. Like a frat. Only without the stupid pranks and rituals and codes of behavior.

Except the Pack did have its own codes of behavior. And its own way of looking at the outside world, which included condescendingly referring to other werewolves as “mutts” and suspecting them all of being too stupid or too weak to avoid the temptation to hunt humans. In that way they were, he suspected, a little too frat-like for him. A little too elitist.

A twig cracked somewhere in the forest. He peered out, but saw only snow and trees.

Oh, sure, Elena, I’ll stay out here, alone, after you thought you sensed someone watching us.

Still, if there
was
anyone there, it was probably just the moron who’d slashed their tires. Or a deer. Most likely a deer. In Alaska, he’d noticed that the Pack werewolves could be a little paranoid. Of course, up there, that suspicious nature had saved their lives. Maybe his, too.

He walked around the evergreen, watching, listening and sniffing the air. When a faint scent wafted past, he stiffened. Yep, there was definitely someone out there. It wasn’t strong enough for him to tell whether it was the vandal they’d chased, but it was clearly human.

Damn.

Morgan wasn’t confrontational by nature. That’s how he’d been raised. Avoid contact and avoid trouble. It had served him well in Alaska, where he’d managed to avoid the notice of a group of werewolf-like evolutionary throwbacks called Shifters. More importantly, he’d avoided a group of werewolves who might have claimed to be fully evolved, but it was questionable, given their behavior. They’d been exactly the kind of murdering, raping thugs people expected of werewolves.

He’d known what kind of men they were, and he’d done nothing about it. He felt the guilt—and the shame—of that. Sure, he’d had plenty of excuses. There were half a dozen of them, all career criminals in their prime, never going anywhere alone. If they’d found him, they would have killed him. When Elena and Clay showed up, he’d helped them find and stop them. But he should have done more, done something, done it sooner.

So maybe lying low wasn’t always such a good plan. Excellent for self-preservation. Not so good for the conscience.

He squinted into the growing shadows and sniffed again. Yep, there was definitely someone out there. And if he did entertain thoughts of joining the Pack, he couldn’t let Clayton Danvers come back and discover that Morgan had hidden and waited for a potential threat to go away. He’d be branded a coward, and if that got out to the werewolf community at large, he might as well high-tail it back to Alaska and hide there.

The scent had vanished, but Morgan knew where it had come from. He headed in that direction, head high, gaze fixed forward, ready to—

Something pressed against the back of his neck. Cold metal. Then he heard the distinct click of a rifle. 

So I reported the dead body. I explained that our tires had been slashed and we’d pursued the vandal into the forest. Then I fudged the truth and said we got hit by snow-blindness and ended up farther in than we expected. We were looking for the way out when we thought we spotted someone crouched under an evergreen. We investigated and found a corpse.

Chief Dales rounded up the older officer we’d seen earlier—a guy named Jaggerman—and a younger one named Kent. Then she had to call one of the night shift in to cover the station while we were gone. Apparently, a dead body warranted full departmental support. I’d asked her when was the last time they’d had one—just making conversation on the walk. She hadn’t answered. Seemed she meant it when she’d told us to get out of town, and she wasn’t too happy that we hadn’t listened, even if we had a good excuse.

Contrary to what I’d told her, Clay and I both have a very good sense of direction…aided by a very good sense of smell. So we were able to escort the police right to where we’d left Morgan and the body.

The clearing was empty.

“Morgan?” I called.

Clay shouted louder, voice edged with annoyance. “Morgan!”

No answer. I looked around. I could faintly make out his footsteps, but they’d already filled with falling snow.

Beside me, Clay muttered, “Better not have bolted.” He said it too low for the cops to hear. I nodded and motioned for him to subtly start searching. When Morgan had offered to stay behind, I should have considered the possibility he’d decided to bolt. But he’d had a chance to do that while we were all tromping separately through the woods. Maybe being alone just gave him time to think. Or maybe he decided that reporting a dead body was more trouble than he bargained for.

I bent to pull back the branches. “I don’t know where he went, but the body is—”

I swore under my breath. The body was gone, too.

“Looks like you’ve got the wrong spot,” Chief Dales said. “Time to tell your friend to invest in a cell phone.”

“No, I can definitely smell decomp. This is the place.”

“How do you know what decomp smells like?” Jaggerman asked, eyes narrowing.

“We live in the country. There are enough dead things around to recognize the smell.”

The officers nodded. That excuse wouldn’t fly with someone from the city, but living out here, so close to nature, they knew it was true.

Chief Dales gazed out into the empty forest. “Then I guess we need to go back and organize a search party. For a living guy and a dead one. Though how the hell they went missing together is a mystery I’m not sure I want to solve.”

I started to move off, my gaze fixed on Clay, a hundred feet away, waiting for me to come find Morgan. He may have bolted, but he wasn’t getting far without a working car. I doubted Westwood even had a cab company.

“We’ll look for our friend,” I said.

“No, you reported a dead body. You’re coming back to the station. You can join the hunt for your friend after you make your statement.”

•

As we walked, we kept our eyes and noses open for any sign of Morgan. I thought I caught a faint whiff of him once, but the scent vanished before I could snag it. I glanced over at Clay. He hadn’t detected it—my nose is slightly better. I considered asking if I could handle the statement while Clay went hunting, but Chief Dales didn’t exactly seem open to reasonable suggestions. Once again, we made the trek in silence. The younger officer—Kent—tried to start conversation a few times, but glowers from his chief were seconded by Jaggerman’s.

Was this just your typically insular village? Either you belong here or they’d rather you kept moving? Not every small community is like that, but I’ve come across a few, and this region seemed to have more than its share. Clay and I could wear old, casual clothes without a scrap of bling beyond our wedding rings, but there was something about us that screamed “from the city.” Maybe it was the luxury SUV we’d rolled into town with. Maybe it was the fact that our clothing didn’t bear department store labels. We had money—or, I should say, Jeremy did—and I suppose it shows whether we intend it to or not.

You’d think that wouldn’t affect someone like Jessica Dales. She was young, which usually helps alleviate xenophobia. Also, she wasn’t local herself, given a casual comment Kent had made. And she didn’t quite fit in either, looking more like a TV version of a small town police chief.

Still, she was obviously annoyed that we hadn’t followed orders and left town. Maybe it was because we’d gone on to find a dead body, which was missing, totally screwing up her day—and probably her week.

When we walked into the station, I caught a whiff of perspiration strong enough to wipe out everything else. A thirty-something officer behind the desk looked distressed. I presumed the smell came from the guy standing in front of him, a heavy, middle-aged guy in a camouflage jacket, his bald head shining with sweat. A rifle rested across
the counter.

“Uh, Chief,” the officer said. “Mac here—”

“Got something for you, Jess.”

Mac beamed over at Chief Dales, then motioned with a flourish at his trophy. It was Morgan, hands bound behind his back.

“Found this vagrant walking away from a murder scene,” Mac said.

Morgan’s brows shot up. “Vagrant?”

“Oh, sorry,” Mac said sarcastically. “Homeless. Or do we have to say domicile-challenged these days? This ain’t Syracuse, boy. You’re a vagrant or a drifter. And you should count yourself lucky, because you’re about to get three squares a day and a warm cell to sleep in.”

As Morgan sputtered, Mac turned back to Chief Dales. “Like I said, found him leaving the scene of a crime. A murder, no less. So I brought him in for you.” An almost sheepish look, like a boy presenting a cute girl with a bouquet of wild flowers. “Even brought you the body.”

He waved toward an office door to the side. I stepped forward and looked through into what seemed to be the chief’s office. There was the decomposing body, in several pieces, atop a garbage bag.

•

To Chief Dales’ credit, she remained calm when she saw a corpse on her desk. Also to her credit, she obviously realized this was a problem—that removing the remains had irrevocably tainted the crime scene. She resisted the urge to explode at Mac, which I’m sure wasn’t easy. Instead, she thanked him and nicely explained that, should he find more corpses in the forest, it was really best to just make a note of them for the police. Then she grabbed Kent, with a camera and crime-scene kit, and headed back out, pausing only long enough to make sure Jaggerman knew to call the coroner.

We were forgotten. Which would have been a pleasant surprise, except that we had no place to go. We asked the night duty officer about a garage for our tires, and he said the only mechanic—with the only tow-truck—was currently out on calls. He’d have the guy phone us when he could, but given the weather it would likely be “a while.”

“Did I hear you right?” Morgan said as we left. “You
volunteered
to stick around?”

“Doesn’t mean
you
need to,” Clay said. “Better for us if we don’t have to worry about rescuing you a third time.”

Morgan’s face darkened. Before he could respond, I cut in.

“If you’d rather push on, we understand. But I doubt anyone is getting out of town tonight, and we can always use the extra help.”

Morgan ignored him. “Help with what? Why are we staying?”

“Because we can’t leave and because we have a dead body with chew marks. As long as we’re stuck here, we should investigate.” I waved at a wall mural of a wolf-man howling at the moon. “Just in case you’re not the only werewolf who thought it’d be funny to hang out in Westwood.” 

Part of the Pack’s job is to police outside werewolves. You could call it an ethical responsibility to the human world. I do think of it that way. If they don’t know what we are, then they can’t be prepared to face man-eating mutts. Their law enforcement can’t be prepared to find and punish werewolf offenders. Sure, they can treat them as regular murderers, but most man-eaters are at least as savvy as an experienced serial killer. They know where to hunt and how to avoid detection, culling those who won’t be missed. Even if they don’t, they’re leaving partially-eaten bodies, with canine fur and paw-prints. Your typical homicide detective won’t look at that and say, “We have a serial killer.”

Considering that the favored target of mutts is prostitutes—one of those key “won’t be missed” groups—I feel an extra duty to stop man-eaters. Being a woman and a journalist, it’s one of my hot-button issues. If the average person vanishes, you get articles and special alerts. If a hooker does, most police departments attribute it to transient living. I know that attitude comes from experience, but it still pisses me off. So if I find an area reporting a lot of missing sex-trade workers, I’ll investigate for evidence of a man-eater.

Yet the Pack doesn’t hunt man-eaters because it’s their civic duty. We do it for the same reason we busted our asses getting to Westwood. Defending the Pack against an exposure threat. I’m constantly scouring the Internet for crimes that could suggest a mutt with a taste for human flesh—or just a taste for killing. I find about a half-dozen possibilities a year. Maybe one will turn up a werewolf culprit. Sometimes none do. There aren’t that many of us in North America, so the chance of real trouble is low, but we do check it out.

If I’d found this case on the Internet, would I investigate? Not if it wasn’t so close to home. Even then, I wouldn’t rush. A corpse with evidence of predation was hardly a sign of werewolves. While we were extra paranoid about potential killings on our own territory, this would have gotten little more than a cursory closer look. But as I’d said to Morgan, we were stuck here anyway. And, admittedly, while I was quite certain a months-old murder had nothing to do with our tires being slashed—or my feelings of being watched—it did bother me enough to decide we shouldn’t hurry to leave town.

The first thing I wanted to do was get a really good look at that body. If we were considering a werewolf diner, we needed more than Clay’s casual observation. I’d tried to get a better look at the body in the police station, but Chief Dales had closed and locked her office as soon as she realized she had a corpse on display.

Before we’d left, I’d listened in on Officer Jaggerman’s phone call to the coroner. He wouldn’t be able to get to it right away—he was the town doctor, too, with more appointments before his day ended. He also didn’t particularly want a decomposed body in his office, which doubled as his home. They’d decided to temporarily take it to the high school. Whether he planned to work on it there or just keep it there temporarily, I had no idea. Apparently, in Westwood, storing a decomposing body in the school science lab was a perfectly fine solution.

So we needed to pay a visit to the school. Preferably after all the kids were gone. It was nearly five now. I figured we had another hour, to be sure.

We checked in at the local motel. Morgan followed us down the sidewalk. His room was the one past ours, so I thought he would just keep going. He didn’t.

When I opened our door and he was still standing there, Clay turned to give him a look.

“You said we were doing this case together,” Morgan said.

“Yeah,” Clay said. “The case. Not—”

I cut him off. “We’re waiting for the school to empty out.”

“So we have time to kill.”

“Yes,” I said, stepping into our room. “Yes, we do.”

“You want to grab something at the diner? Food’s good.”

“Why don’t you do that. We’re going take a nap.”

“He’s not five, darling.” Clay turned to Morgan. “You need to get lost so we can have sex.”

Morgan backed away fast, muttering that he’d return at dusk.

“Subtle,” I said to Clay as Morgan hurried off.

“Subtle wasn’t working.”

He glanced along the row of motel doors, and out at the empty parking lot. Then he hailed Morgan and called, “Looks like we’re the only guests checked in. How about you go on over to the diner. Get an early meal.”

Morgan seemed ready to protest, caught Clay’s look and headed into the parking lot, looking confused.

“See?” Clay said. “Subtle doesn’t work.”

“He did as you asked.”

“Yeah, because he’s scared of me. Not because he has the faintest clue why we might not want him in the next room while we’re having sex.”

“Not because he’s slow—because he’s young. He’s not yet reached that wonderful stage in life where there’s no greater gift your roommate can give than offering to take your kids out for an hour.”

“I seem to recall we were pretty damned happy when Jeremy left
before
the kids came.”

I laughed. “True.”

That was the problem with having a permanent housemate. It’s not that we’d shock him. Werewolves aren’t high on privacy. We run and hunt together whenever we can, and I’d long passed the stage of scrambling for my clothing as soon as I Changed back. And Jeremy has long since stopped opening a closed door—any closed door—without knocking first. The problem is that keeping the door shut doesn’t mean he’s not going to
hear
what’s going on. It’s that pesky enhanced hearing. Clay and I aren’t particularly loud in bed, but there is…noise. So we need to be careful not to do or say anything that might be a little awkward to recall when sitting across from Jeremy at dinner. Or I’m careful. Clay doesn’t care.

But now we had the room—and the motel—to ourselves, with no need to worry how thin the walls were.

As the door closed, Clay tried to grab me around the waist. I danced out of his reach.

“You know what?” I said. “We have an hour, and we’re used to making do with a lot less. I should probably do some research first.”

I waited for Clay’s inevitable growl and pounce.

“You’re right.” He waved at the bed. “You do that; I’ll take a nap.”

When I hesitated, he looked over at me.

“What?” he said. “You did want to work, right?”

“Umm…”

“You weren’t just saying that to tease me, were you? Expecting me to jump you because I’m a guy, so naturally I want sex a lot more than you do.”

Damn.

“Well?” he said. “Do you want to work? Or were you engaging in some highly sexist teasing?”

Damn.

“I…should do some research,” I said. “That’d be the responsible, Alpha-elect way to spend a free hour.”

“Absolutely.”

He strolled to the bed, plunked down and stretched out on his back, eyes closing. “Wake me up if you change your mind.”

Damn.

As I started for my laptop, Clay sat up and stripped off his T-shirt.

“Hey,” I said.

“What? It’s warm in here.” He slanted a look my way. “It doesn’t bother you, does it?”

I’ve been seeing him naked for twenty years. Watching him take off his shirt should hardly put my hormones in a tizzy. So I should deny it. Which I would, if I could without so blatantly lying that I feared my nose might grow.

When I didn’t answer, Clay chuckled. He undid his belt and slid it out of the loops, then popped the button on
his jeans.

“Hey!” I said. “It’s not that hot in here.”

“Not yet.” He glanced over. “Unless you’re interested in changing that.”

“I’m fine,” I growled.

“Well, if that changes at any point, you know where to find me.”

He stretched out on the bed again. I admired. I knew I shouldn’t, but it was such a nice view, that muscled chest, that faint line of golden hair leading down to—

I turned away. Clay laughed. I continued heading for my laptop. As I walked, I undid my own jeans. I slid them down and kicked them aside. Then I bent down to pick up my laptop, taking my time, giving him a view of his own.

He let out a soft growl. “When did you have time to change into
that
?”

I was wearing my thong. I only own one—bought when I found panty lines showing on a new dress. Of course, I don’t wear dresses very often. I didn’t wear the thong that often either, despite the fact that I knew Clay liked it. If you’ve been together long enough you learn that, despite the temptation to wear something your partner likes every day, it’ll quickly lose its allure if it becomes everyday wear.

“We were getting low on clean laundry,” I said.

“Not that low,” he said. “You didn’t have time to change before we left, so you must have put it on this morning. What were you planning to do? Strip down tonight and tease me, knowing no way in hell we’d get Jeremy to take the kids out in a snowstorm?”

“No, I thought
we
could go out in a snowstorm.”

He rose on his elbows.

“I was planning to ask if you wanted to go for a run after the kids were in bed. Or, if this”—I plucked the thong—“made you decide you weren’t so keen on the running part, I’d stashed a sleeping bag and some blankets out there. Cold snow. Warm blankets. Hot sex. I seem to recall you like that.”

A growl answered. I turned and bent again. As I did, I unbuttoned my shirt and shrugged it off. Then I picked up the laptop, straightened and turned.

His gaze dropped to my bare breasts. “I see we’re
really
low on clean clothes.”

“We are.”

I could feel him watching as I lay down on the bed and propped myself up on the pillows.

“You go ahead and sleep,” I said. “It looks like you could use the rest. In the meantime, since you’re obviously not that into it, I’ll see if I can find something to amuse me on the Internet. Maybe hot werewolf sex. I hear they have that.”

“I’ve got that right here, too.”

I looked over. “Do you?”

“Yep. Just gotta ask.” He stretched out, jeans riding down his hips, zipper parting to show what was on offer. “Or take.”

Damn.

I glanced at the clock. I could hold out, but time was ticking. One thing you learn in marriage is the art of give and take.

This time, I took.