“Alex, don’t let anyone near my office. It’s up to you to close tonight.” Rob ushered Becky away and Alex nodded, wide-eyed at the change in her leader. “Right boss.” Alex turned from sweet country bartender to a general on a battlefield. Becky didn’t get to see much of it, as they headed for his office. Rob sat her in a chair and pulled up to face her. The office looked a lot better. Becky hadn’t expected much maybe a few mismatched chairs, and a dinged up filing cabinet and desk. But the office was neat and tasteful. The office even had a rug and an electric fireplace. She must have looked too long at the fireplace, because Rob commented on it. “It gets cold in here sometimes in the winter, so it’s there for warmth.” “Oh…” “Are you okay?” Becky nodded. She still shook over what happened. “What did he say?” “Oh, uh… He wanted me to tell him my name. When he put his hand on my knee, I think I froze. I’m sorry. I didn’t mea

Rob knew this was foolish, but Old Man Jacobs was a staple personality in town. His store would be hard enough to lose, his death would destroy people deep down. But he wouldn’t go in blindly. That would be foolhardy, to say the least. No, he used his nose for this. Not an easy feat with this smoke. But a wolf’s sense of smell was far different that a human’s. Rob threw his clothes in some brush behind the hardware store. He needed to work quickly before the fire department got there. It was one group of emergency services that wolves hadn’t infiltrated in the area. The fire wasn’t burning as quickly as he’d expected. Whoever set this, didn’t use all that much accelerant, if any. That would be something obvious to even a human investigator. Rob didn’t stand about long. The back door was open, and he knew it led up to the apartment above. In his wolf form, the old hollow-core door of the apartment didn’t stand a chance. He just went into it shoulder first through it l

Bart watched the wolves, and their mates return to the Wolf’s Den bar with a cat. He’d enjoy thinking about the insanity that will ensure from that later. Now he needed to get his head in the game. The evidence collection was going well, but that’s because there wasn’t much to process. Jon claimed there was a scent trail from the people that broke into the vet clinic. He needed to study that to find a fresh start point where he could pick it up later after the human investigation cleared out of there. He wanted that point found before the trail got too mangled for him to identify it. Bart wanted to know if it led to one or more of the hunters or the rogues. For all the proof he had right now, the trail could lead to a bunch of hired goons from some land developer. Bart couldn’t see the lab doing this to wolf shifters knowingly, so either they didn’t know, or they now had a way to identify a wolf shifter from a human. That scared him. With his notebo

Bart was investigating the scent as best as he could in this form. No point in terrifying the innocent, mundane people around here. With the hunter-types and the guys he worked with around, he was more likely to get shot. It’s not like the provincial park where a wolf or wolf-dog could be explained away. So, there he was sniffing around when he hears a voice behind him. “What are you doing?” A familiar feminine voice asked. He would swear later that he could hear her raise a questioning eyebrow in the very tone of her voice. Crap. His stomach and heart nearly fell out of his body when he heard it. Grace was standing right behind him. What did she notice? Would she say something? How did he explain this? He felt like a guy who’d been caught by his girlfriend kissing another woman. “Hey, uh… you’ll not believe me if I told you.” All that ran through his head was ‘Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t ask.’ “Try me slugger.” Ohhh…he knew without turning around to loo

“Rob, we need to do something. If the hunters didn’t set those fires, then it’s the rogues. We’re running out of guilty parties. When you found Old Man Jacobs, there wasn’t any fire around him, so he’s ruled out.” Jon washed the floors as Rob organized the bar. “The door to the backstairs wasn’t locked, but the door to the shop was forced open. My guess, he left the backdoor unlocked, and locked the shop door. Hiding the break-in to witnesses. We know about the recent appearances of the rogues. The supposed hunters spending a lot of time in town.” The old building had two back doors. One door led to stairs going to the apartment and a second door leading into the store. “Yeah, for hunting on the off-season, they’re very conspicuous. The rogues, there’s been another seven sightings, two were physical. One may explain the break-in at the clinic. They were looking for medical supplies and medicines that work on wolf shifters.” Jon now finished with the floors,