Wild Embrace (24 page)

Garnet nodded. “One of our people is leading the containment effort, with backup from a mixed team, all trained to SnowDancer specifications.” She took a sip of coffee. “Weather forecast is also saying the rain might turn into a storm. If that happens, Indigo and Riaz will have to stay put until it's safe to drive up here.”

“Yeah, the winds were picking up the final half hour of my drive up.” Kenji drew in the scent of the coffee in a vain attempt to drown out the far more delicious scent that was Garnet. “I was in one of our gruntiest all-wheel drives and, with the mud and wind, it was having trouble gripping the road.”

The sheer amount of precipitation hitting the mountains meant the land was struggling to handle it. It didn't matter how far civilization advanced, Mother Nature still packed a punch—and that was exactly how changelings liked it. Wolf or leopard, deer or swan, it was about living in harmony with the world rather than beating it into submission.

So, once you left the cities, the roads up to their dens were less roads and more tracks. It meant occasional delays such as this, but it also meant they left no permanent scars through their surroundings. Should a pack disappear, nature would reclaim those tracks within mere months.

“I told them we can always reschedule if the weather goes on this way,” Garnet added.

“Sure.” Sitting his ass down on one of the two battered sofas, he grabbed a sandwich off the tray of lunch goodies on the coffee table in between. “You want to start without them?” he said after taking and swallowing a bite.

“Yes.” Her eyes flicked to his hair. “I didn't know we were meant to be in fancy dress.”

His wolf bared its teeth at the deadpan sarcasm, delighted by what it stubbornly took as play. “Simple daywear,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “I thought about pairing it with something black and blue, ran out of time.”

She scowled again at his reference to her punch, but he caught the shadow of that hidden dimple. “So,” he said, warmth rushing through him, “the routes into the city.”

They'd been talking things over for only about twenty minutes when Revel ran in, tall and with warm-toned skin of golden brown against a black tee he wore with black jeans and boots. The expression on the senior soldier's face had them both jerking to their feet. Though Kenji and Garnet occupied an equal position in the pack hierarchy, Garnet was the one who spoke. This was her den and Kenji's wolf understood the rules of behavior on an instinctive level.

Here, he was her backup.

“What is it?”

“Russ Carmichael is dead,” Revel said shortly, his skin flushed and his breathing fast enough that it was clear he'd run here full tilt. His next words made the reason for his urgency clear. “And it looks like Shane did it.”

“Has anyone touched
the body?” Garnet asked as she and Kenji followed Revel to the scene.

“Eloise found them in Russ's quarters and she stayed in the doorway while she called me, but I had to go in to check for signs of life. Shane's alive and needed medical help, so I sent for Lorenzo.” He glanced at her, dark eyes holding a question. “You weren't picking up your phone.”

Garnet reached into her back pocket, came up empty. “Damn, I must've left it in my quarters.” Dropping her hand, she said, “Doesn't matter—I'll grab it later. For now, can you get me a forensic kit from stores?” They had a couple of trained forensic techs in the den, but since the two were rarely needed for pack matters, both worked at external jobs and were currently away at an out-of-state conference.

That wasn't, however, a major handicap. All SnowDancer lieutenants and their most senior packmates underwent a rigorous training course to ensure they could handle such situations. Revel was still completing his training after his promotion, but Garnet had recently done a refresher course alongside Kenji and the other lieutenants.

“You have the updated codes?” she said to Revel before he broke off to grab the kit.

“Yep.” His gaze shifted to over her head. “Hey, Kenji,” he said, no hint of annoyance or tension in his tone at the sight of a lieutenant notorious for flirting with Garnet.

That Kenji outranked Revel had nothing to do with it. Neither did the current situation. Wolves had been known to growl and snarl at romantic rivals while working together to deal with an emergency.

No, it was Revel.

Garnet had always liked that about the senior soldier—that he was so confident, so centered, and so reliable. Part of her winced at that description even as it rolled through her mind. It hardly sounded exciting, and Revel
was
exciting. He was beautiful, for one, all quiet, intense eyes and fluid muscle; he was also a dominant and dangerous with it.

All the women, and yes, a few appreciative men, too, watched when Revel moved.

She had to remember that, not get caught up in the wild sexiness and wit and wickedness that was Kenji Tanaka, only to come out alone and hurt on the other side. She'd been there, done that, had the bruised knuckles to prove it.

“Good to see you, Rev,” Kenji replied, his own tone friendly, with no apparent undertone. “Despite the circumstances.”

“We'll catch up later.”

The two men bumped fists, and then Revel was gone.

Two minutes later, she and Kenji arrived in front of a room sternly guarded by a tall young packmate with a blunt fringe of mahogany hair against skin of dark cinnamon brown. “Lorenzo got here sixty seconds ago,” Eloise said before Garnet could speak, and though the junior soldier's voice was calm, her mouth was pinched, her eyes a stark wolf-yellow. “He's in there working on Shane.” The gleaming strands of her shoulder-length braid became apparent when she angled her head toward the door, her profile strong.

Garnet didn't immediately step inside the doorway. Instead, she turned a flinty gaze on the packmates buzzing about at the end of the corridor, and suddenly everyone had someplace else to be. Only when the corridor was clear did she move forward. “Lorenzo,” she said, looking into the room without entering, “what's the damage?”

Kenji put his back against the wall on the opposite side of the door from Eloise, close enough to listen without butting into Garnet's space. It caused a flicker of pleased surprise in her wolf. She and Kenji had worked together on pack business for the past three years, ever since she made lieutenant—at the same age at which he'd originally been promoted. However, given their different specialties, they'd never had reason to work side by side this closely.

Cocky as he was, part of her had been waiting for him to attempt to take charge.

“Shane's unconscious.” Lorenzo's familiar accented voice broke into her thoughts, the healer having lived in El Salvador until two years earlier. His birth pack was small and the only wolf one in the entire country—but, oddly, it had been gifted with the births of
two
highly talented healers of a similar age.

The situation had left neither one truly fulfilled: healers as strong as Lorenzo and his packmate needed their own group of people to nurture. The El Salvador pack was tight-knit and the two healers were best friends, but there was simply too much drive and energy between them and nowhere for it to go.

Meanwhile, before Lorenzo's SnowDancer mate snagged him, Garnet's den had been making do with three junior healers supervised remotely by SnowDancer's head healer, Lara. These days, a deeply contented Lorenzo acted as Lara's deputy in a number of matters, including training the younger crop of healers.

Garnet trusted him without question.

“He has a pretty big bump on the back of his head,” Lorenzo
continued. “He'll have to be carried out. Some facial bruising. Possible broken ribs, too.” A compact man with silvered black hair against skin of a honeyed brown, the den healer got up from his crouch beside Shane's sprawled form. “Stretcher's on its way, but you can have a quick look at the scene as it is. I'm going to take a few readings from Russ's body.”

Garnet glanced at Kenji. “Can you take some photos?” If she didn't have to worry about him attempting to pit his dominance against hers, she could use his support.

“No problem.” He slid out his phone as he entered the room with her, his shoulders fluidly muscled under the white of his shirt, the sleeves of which he'd rolled back to the elbows.

He wore the shirt untucked over jeans of dark blue denim, his only ornamentation—aside from his hair—a handcrafted pendant carved from black hardwood and polished until it gleamed like stone, which he wore at his throat on a rawhide tie. She was used to seeing that circular pendant with its simple spiral pattern. His maternal grandfather had made it for him, and Kenji wore it in remembrance after losing the other man to an unexpected lung ailment three years earlier.

Now he began to snap photos from beside her while she took in the scene; neither one of them would move any farther into the room at this point.

Death was a sticky, iron-rich scent in the air, but it wasn't old death. No, the iron was too bright, tasted “wet” to her senses, while Shane's breath was a living warmth. Russ, by contrast, was bleak white in death. The fifty-four-year-old lay on his side on the floor; he was facing Shane's feet, an improbably small red stain on the front of his white shirt, and his head resting against the oat-colored carpet that showed every drop of blood. There was no pool of dark red, just droplets. Russ's skin appeared plastic with lack of life even
from a distance, his head covered by sandy brown hair cut with military precision.

A delicate handkerchief lay half-crumpled and streaked with blood on the carpet beside his curled-up left hand, as if it had fallen from his fist. The dried blood Garnet could just glimpse on his palm seemed to support that theory.

Shane, meanwhile, lay on his front on the carpet not far from a display cabinet. He was facing the door, his hands flung out as if he'd tried to break a fall and his head turned to the side. Dark blond hair stuck to his tanned skin, and though he, too, was motionless, his skin held an undertone of pink.

Unlike Russ's starched shirt of crisp white and formal black pants, Shane was dressed in clean jeans and a simple button-down shirt in pale blue, the sleeves long. “That look like blood to you?” She pointed to a spot on the back of Shane's right forearm, the brownish red distinct against the blue of the shirt.

“Possible.” Kenji began to record the scene with snapshots and video both. “Can't see any on his hands from this angle.”

Neither could Garnet, but what struck her as an assassin's blade—the blade long and thin—lay below Shane's right hand. While the blade was bloody, the carved hilt was clean, so even if he had zero blood on his hands, the lack might not be significant. It would depend on the wound or wounds the blade had inflicted. To her untrained eye, it seemed as if Russ had only a single slice in his shirt.

“This couldn't have happened long ago.” Kenji slid away his phone just as Revel arrived with the forensics kit.

“Thanks.” Garnet frowned. “Athena,” she said, referring to Russ's ex and Shane's current lover.

“I'll take care of telling her,” Revel said, his eyes taking in the scene once more. “And I'll handle any other pack business that comes up in the interim.”

“After you speak to Athena, call Hawke, give him the heads-up.” The SnowDancer alpha needed to know about this situation. “Tell him I'll make a full report once I have anything new to share.”

“Consider it done.”

Giving him a small smile of thanks, this dark-eyed wolf who was so much better for her than the wild one who'd broken her heart, she returned to her conversation with Kenji. “I know Shane was working night shift this month on scheduled den maintenance.” Things it was easier to do while most packmates were asleep and the corridors clear. “He would've gone off shift around seven, seven thirty.”

She glanced at her watch. “It's only just past twelve thirty now, so, given his clean shirt and jeans, the aftershave I can smell under the blood, if we allow an hour for him to get to his quarters, shower, dress, maybe grab some breakfast, the earliest it could've happened was eight, eight thirty, give or take.” They'd have to verify all of that, of course, but it was a good place to start.

Moving into the corridor when Lorenzo's assistant arrived with a hover-stretcher, onto which Kenji helped them load Shane, Garnet noted the lack of blood on the front of Shane's shirt as well as the bruising on his face. His palms, fully visible now, also proved devoid of any traces of blood.

Kenji followed her gaze, took several more photographs with his phone.

“Once you stabilize Shane,” she said to Lorenzo, “take swabs for evidence, bag his clothes, do everything possible to preserve any evidence.” Inside a pack's territory, pack law
was
the law. And as the most senior member of SnowDancer in the region, Garnet was the final judge, the one who held Shane's life in her hands—because predatory changelings believed in merciless and deadly justice when it came to the crime of murder.

Garnet had to be damn sure of any decision she made.

“I'll take care to preserve everything I can,” Lorenzo assured her.

Having told his assistant to return to the infirmary to keep an eye on an elderly packmate in there for observation, Lorenzo then moved the stretcher into the corridor using the controls on one end. Eyes of an unusual, striking hazel-gray held Garnet's, tiny lines flaring out at the corners. “I'll call if I discover anything immediately important.”

Looking into the room again once Lorenzo left, Garnet forced herself to concentrate on Russ's lifeless body. She was so focused on the grim task that she jerked when Kenji ran the back of his hand, warm and a little rough, over her cheek. It sparked little lightning strikes through her unwary flesh, made her forget the cold engendered by this room, this death, to remember only a man with sinful green eyes.

Damn it
.

Glancing up, she went to tell Kenji to cut it out, but his solemn expression stopped her. He got it, understood the crushing weight on her shoulders, foresaw the pitiless sentence she might have to mete out—Russ's family would be given the final say, as was only right, but it was near certain that the family would expect her to act on their behalf.

“Ready to rock and roll?” Kenji asked, that pretty hair of his sliding forward as he shifted his attention to the body.

“Yes.” The contact with a packmate she respected regardless of the painful history between them, the skin privileges given and accepted in friendship, without any expectation of deeper intimacy, steadied her wolf. “My forensics people are in Dallas, so we're it.”

Opening the kit, they gloved up together, pulled on paper-thin and transparent plas coveralls, sealed their shoes in plas booties as fine, and tugged up transparent masks to reduce the risk of any further DNA contamination. Only then did they move into the room.

Kenji went to Russ's fallen form, but Garnet walked around to the back of the door. One thing was clear at first glance. “This dead bolt is still in a locked position.” It had been torn violently away from the wooden frame around the doorway but remained in one piece on the door itself.

•   •   •

Kenji
had crouched down by the handkerchief crumpled on the carpet, intending to examine it more closely, but Garnet's words had him rising to join her. He caught her scent as she moved back a step, the steel and strength of it an unmissable song even through all the ugliness in this room. “Like it's been forced.” Frowning, he said, “Eloise.” He didn't raise his voice, didn't have to, given the acute nature of changeling hearing.

The girl appeared in the doorway, her focus determinedly on Garnet and Kenji rather than the gruesome scene. “Yes, sir?”

“Did you force the door?”

Eloise's face crumpled. “I had to.”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” Garnet said at once, her tone calm but demanding the younger wolf's attention. “We just need to know the sequence of events.”

Swallowing, the junior soldier squared her shoulders and put her hands behind her back. “I smelled blood and when no one answered, I thought maybe Russ and Shane had hurt each other.” She bit down on her lower lip. “I could scent them around the door, like they'd both touched it not long ago. I swear I didn't touch anything after I saw them inside.”

Realizing he was missing something, Kenji decided to wait to ask Garnet, but she filled him in then and there. “Russ was in a long-term relationship with Athena. We're talking going on ten years. Five
months ago, she broke it off with him. A month ago, she moved in with Shane.”