“Okay.”
He cleaned off quickly, always amazed at just how dusty his ears got when he shifted. Shaking off after he turned the water off, he stepped into the foggy bathroom and stopped at his cloudy reflection.
He didn’t look different, but he felt it.
Older. Stronger. Harder.
He’d taken Ollie down quickly that night, and he knew part of it was because the bear had been exhausted and distracted. But part of it wasn’t.
“Alex?”
Older. Stronger. Harder.
And happier.
Having that voice to come home to, that woman at his back? He’d never been happier in his life.
Reasonably dry, he walked to bed and collapsed onto it. Ted rolled to him immediately, checking a new gash on his shoulder.
“I can see you’re going to be a full time project, McCann.”
“Yep.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Bear claws.”
“So you found Ollie.”
Alex took a deep breath and focused on the soft feel of Ted’s fingers, not the pain of his body healing. They healed plenty fast, but it still hurt. Sometimes, it seemed like the healing hurt more than the wound, but that was probably only because it took longer.
“I found him. He was already exhausted and distracted when I did, so it only took a few hard bites to snap him out of it. He hadn’t found Joe. We looked after he’d calmed down. I tracked his scent to a burrow near Gerry Wash, but after that, he was gone. Once he goes underground…
“Yeah.”
She knew from tracking desert animals herself. The ground was the best fortress a small animal could have. And as long as you could avoid snakes…
“Should have taken Sean with us.”
Ted snickered. “I have a feeling he’d spend most of his time avoiding those big bear paws.”
“Yeah… Ollie doesn’t like him much right now.”
“He’ll get over it.” She paused. Took a deep breath. “What does he know?”
“Ollie?”
“Joe. He kept saying ‘he knows, he knows.’ Can we assume he’s talking about Avery?”
Alex thought. “Probably. Piece it together for me, baby. I’m wiped.”
“Joe and Avery knew each other. Gambled together. Maybe picked up women together, too.”
“Mmhmm.” He blinked hard, trying to keep awake. “Did Joe use drugs to pick up women? Did Avery do it, too? Is that the connection?”
“I don’t think so. Remember what he said. ‘I hadn’t used them in years.’”
Which meant that, at some point, Joe Russell had used the drugs for something, and the most likely scenario was on the women he met and possibly even with his own wife. He felt the skin on his neck prickle, despite his exhaustion.
Ted sensed it and put a hand on his chest.
“He’s gone,” she said. “Never getting to Allie again.”
Alex cleared his throat. “He hadn’t used them in years, but he kept them. The drugs. Maybe he said something to Avery when they were drinking. He remembers it, then goes to Joe when it becomes useful.”
“Joe gives him the drugs because…?”
“He owed him money? It seemed pretty clear that Joe didn’t know he was going to use them on Marcus.”
Ted asked, “Are we sure that Avery killed Marcus, though? The man is clearly an asshole, but there’s no evidence he was directly involved.”
“No. Nothing but what Joe said, and he’s underground.”
“So there’s no connection directly, but—”
“‘He knows. He knows.’” Alex repeated Joe’s panicked words. “What does Avery know, Ted?”
“About the payoffs? The investigation?”
“I do not think Joe Russell would be worried about a criminal investigation in Las Vegas that didn’t involve him.”
They both fell silent.
“He knows about the town,” Ted whispered. “He knows about us.”
“Avery, a minute?”
The man looked up from the bed of his truck, where plans were spread out on the tailgate. He lifted his chin at Alex before he said a few more words to his foreman and started walking toward the office trailer.
Alex took a seat, mindful that he needed information, but he’d have to tread carefully. He needed to know if Avery knew about the town. If he did…
He didn’t know how he’d handle it. In his grandfather’s day, someone like Avery would have just disappeared. But Alex was trying to bring the town into the modern age. Secrecy was important, but there had to be a better way to conceal who they were without violence.
Not that killing Chris Avery would cause Alex any sleepless nights if the man had drugged and killed Marcus Quinn.
The job was almost done, and according to Caleb, they didn’t have anything that tied Avery to Marcus’s death. Nothing that could warrant an arrest. The police in Vegas were drawing their own conclusions regarding the murder and its relationship to the bribery investigation, but they didn’t have enough either. There were still no eyewitnesses that put the two men together, and still no plausible reason that Avery would kill his brother-in-law when the man was keeping him on in the business and covering for him.
“Alex,” Avery said as he sat down in the chair across the desk. “How the hell you doing? Looking good, man. End of the week and we’re out of your hair.”
“Great.” He nodded. “That’s excellent news. Of course, you’ll be around as we’re building.”
“I’m already seeing your concrete guys come in. They have any issues, let me know. Crescent Construction will have crews in the area, and we’ll be parking some equipment on the project until you’re finished.”
“Appreciated.”
“Helps me out too. People coming in see our name, like our work, we get more.”
“True.” Why the hell was the man being so friendly?
“This job,” Avery continued, “it meant a lot to Marcus. Means a lot to me, too, now that Josie and the kids will be here. We’ll take care of you, Alex.”
Did he suspect they were looking at him? Or was he just that confident his tracks would never be found?”
It didn’t matter. Alex could bullshit with the best of them. “Well, we appreciate that, Chris. More than you can know. Josie’s a hell of a woman, and her kids are already making friends here. I hope they’re feeling right at home.”
A slight twitch at the corner of his eye before Avery secured his friendly expression again. “They are. Kasey talks about her new friends all the time.”
“They may not have been born here, but their dad was. So they’re some of our own now,” Alex said, noticing the twitch again. Chris Avery sure did not like his niece and nephews being considered part of the town.
Alex decided to push a little more.
“We take care of our own, you know? Marcus was like that, too. Kept a lot of guys from the Springs in work when things were slow.”
“It’s unfortunate that a lot of his crew has moved on.”
Alex cocked his head. “Is that so?”
Avery shrugged. “Guess he was just that kind of guy to work with. With him gone, a lot of his guys left, too.”
He forced himself to nod instead of growl. “Did that put you short-handed?”
There was the eye twitch again. Alex was betting the man didn’t know his own tell, which might be another reason he was such a bad gambler.
“We’re fine,” Avery said. “We had a lot of guys out for the season, so we just called them in. They were happy to be working.”
And Alex was betting those men were ones that Avery had hired, not Marcus.
Alex bared his teeth into a smile. “Well, I hope they’re the right sort.”
“I know they are.” His eyes were dead. How easy would it be to make the rest of him dead, too?
“I appreciate you keeping me up to speed,” Alex said, shuffling papers on his desk. “Your crew works hard. I’ll look forward to s
eeing them around when we have more building projects in town.”
“Appreciated, Alex. Take care.” Avery stood up and walked toward the door before he turned back to Alex. “McCann?”
“Yeah?” Alex was still making a show of shuffling papers on his desk, so he didn’t leap toward Chris Avery and tear his throat out.
“Good to know you take care of your own around here.”
He stopped and looked up, his eyes going cold at the gleam he saw in Avery’s.
Alex heard Frank Di Stefano’s voice in the back of his mind. Secret eyes…
Avery continued, “I’ll look forward to getting that call the next project that comes around.”
“Is that so?”
“Marcus always said the Springs people take care of their own.”
That gleam. That cocky gleam. Chris Avery actually thought he had something over Alex McCann. That he was a shoe-in for future contracts because he knew their secret.
The stupid bastard had just signed his own death warrant.
Alex leaned forward and let his hands come together.
“Marcus was right, Chris. This is Cambio Springs. We always take care of our own.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“He knows.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
Alex was pacing at the station house with Ted, Caleb, and Jeremy.
“Are you sure, boss?” Jeremy asked.
“I’m sure.”
Caleb sighed. “Do you have any proof that we can use to actually—”
“He knows, Caleb!” Alex leaned over the police chief’s desk. “He found out about the Springs. I don’t know how. But he used that to force Marcus to clean up after him. Not go to the police about the bribery thing.”
Ted said, “That was probably also self-preservation.”
“Self-preservation would be cleaning that shit up, keeping quiet, and making your criminal brother-in-law ride a desk until you could figure out a way to get him out of your business. Marcus was not doing that. Marcus was covering for Avery and keeping him in the business.”
Jeremy asked, “Because you think Avery knows about the Springs?”
“I know he does.”
Caleb looked between Ted and Alex. “Ted, you think—”
“If Alex says he knows about us, then he knows.” Ted answered Caleb’s unasked question. The Chief of Police had to start trusting the McCann alpha. “He’s is not going to read something like that wrong.”
“Thanks, baby.” The quiet words warmed her, despite the chill wind that had swept into the desert that afternoon, bringing rain and even a few flurries of quickly melting snow.
“So Avery knows,” Caleb leaned on his desk. “What the hell do we do about it, McCann?”
Jeremy and Alex exchanged glances, and Ted knew exactly what they were thinking. Once upon a time, human law wouldn’t have had much to do with how Chris Avery was handled.
It wasn’t that every human who found out the secret of the Springs disappeared. For most, they were trusted friends or family of the shifters who lived there, vested in keeping their secrets. And for strangers, wild stories were easy to brush off. Most humans didn’t want to see anything out of the ordinary. They had an excuse for the most bizarre signs. And if the town had gained a somewhat mysterious reputation over the years, that was just fine. It worked to their advantage, most of the time.
But this was different.
This wasn’t a shifter killing another shifter in a rage. This was a human who had killed a shifter, quite possibly because of what he was. It was cold-blooded murder, but Chris Avery was not a man who could just disappear without questions asked.
Caleb and Alex had their eyes locked. Ted wondered if Caleb understood just how much authority Alex was granting him to keep his eyes like that without tearing out the chief’s throat.
“We have to find something,” Alex said. “Something that will prove he murdered Marcus, so he can be arrested and tried. He’s a human; this is a human problem.”
Caleb sat back. “It’s not that easy.”
“There’s got to be something,” Jeremy said.
The weariness slipped into Caleb’s eyes. “Do you know how many murders happen in the state of California that are never solved?”
“No,” Alex said.
“Four in ten.”
Ted was shocked. She’d had no idea it was that high.
“More than four in ten, as a matter of fact. Over forty percent of murders are never solved. Never closed. And that’s not because the evidence is inadmissible in court. Sometimes, there is no evidence. Sometimes, people do cover their tracks. Sometimes, the bad guys are the ones with luck on their side.”
“We’ve got to find something, Caleb.”
“There might not be anything to find. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Alex. The autopsy didn’t reveal any trace evidence we can use because the remains were compromised by the coyotes. The body had been moved. The gun was a common caliber. There is no clear motive without the bribery investigation, and officially, I don’t know about that.”
“What?” Alex said. “So this is the perfect murder?”
“You don’t have to commit the perfect murder to not get caught. You just have to have luck on your side.”
Jeremy piped up from the corner. “We need to focus on finding Joe Smith.”
“Russell,” Ted said. “His name is Joe Russell. He doesn’t get to keep anything of Allie’s.”
“Whatever. We need to find him. He’s the only link between Avery and Marcus. We might even be able to get a warrant to search for the drugs if we bring Joe in.”
“You’re not going to bring him in,” Alex said. “He’s scared shitless.”
“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Of Ollie.”
“Of everything,” Ted corrected him. “He’s panicking, but he doesn’t have money. Not by the look of him the other night. He couldn’t get far. So we should look close.”
Caleb picked up the phone. “I’ll call Dev. See if anyone has spotted him near the river.”
Jeremy pushed off from the wall. “And I’ll start canvasing the cheap motels around the interstate. Those are probably going to be our best bet.”
Ted watched Alex. Saw him struggling to control his instincts. The instincts that told him Chris Avery was a threat, and threats to his people and his home should be eliminated.
“Come on,” she said, rising to her feet. “I have lunch stuff at home.”
“Ted—”
“Food, Alex. You need to step back for a little while. Let these guys do their work.”
Caleb mouthed, Thank you as she pulled Alex to the door. She felt for the chief. It couldn’t be easy trying to operate legitimately with a near-feral shifter breathing down your neck. Caleb was doing the best he could, but he was right. In the real world, sometimes luck was on the side of the bad guys.
Alex followed her back to the house, but he was still brooding. She started to make sandwiches as he stared out the window.
“How’s the clinic?” he finally said.
“Fine. Slow. No new strep epidemics to keep me on my toes. It was so slow this afternoon, I moved the one appointment I had to take the afternoon off.”
“Want to roll around in bed for a while?”
Her pulse spiked a second before her mouth turned up at the corner. “Need a distraction, do you?”
“You’re the best kind.”
“Are we really just going to roll around in bed, or are more elicit activities going to be indulged in.”
“Elicit.” He pulled her into the bedroom, and Ted forgot about the food. “Very elicit.”
Alex spent the next hour exploring the boundaries of what Ted considered ‘elicit’ and pushing them very close to ‘depraved.’ But she loved every second of it. And she laughed as much as she moaned. It had always been that way with Alex.
“It’ll all work out,” she whispered, fingers running through his thick hair as he la
y his head on her breast.
He lifted his head. “When did you get so relaxed?”
“Me?” She arched a haughty eyebrow. “I’m always relaxed.”
“Right.”
“You just irritate me more than most people.”
“Mmmm.” He pushed up and slid a hand behind her back. “That’s because I get under your skin.”
Her breath hitched, and she arched her back, bringing her body closer to his mouth. Never one to pass up an opportunity, he took it.
“You know what?” he whispered, his mouth trailing down to her belly-button.
“What?”
“I like being under your skin,” he said. “Makes it a little more fair you’re so far under mine.”
The phone rang in the middle of the night. Before she could lift her head, Alex was answering it.
“Hello?”
Silence. Then his voice growled.
“Tell me where you are.”
The motel in Barstow was on the edge of town, a run-down relic just off the interstate that still offered rooms for twenty dollars a night and had posted hourly rates. There were a few big rigs parked across the street, and a few more cars in the parking lot. The lights flickered as they walked across the cracked asphalt toward Room 10, a ground floor room at the very end of the building. Ted didn’t see any eyes in the night. No curtains flickered.
Some places, you chose not to pay attention.
There was a low light under the curtain when they stepped up to the door. A slight movement, as if a fan might be running inside. Alex tapped on the door with two fingers, the low sound still echoing loudly down the covered walkway.
It cracked open, and Joe was behind it.
“Is it just you?”
Alex didn’t answer, just walked in and Ted followed. She looked around the room, took everything in. The room had a queen bed with a sad comforter she wasn’t going to sit on. There were no lamps, just an overhead light that Joe had switched off. The only light came from the yellow glow of the bathroom fixture. It was enough to see, but not enough to see well, which was probably a good thing. The smell alone told her Joe had been smoking, but she could also see an overflowing coffee mug near the only chair in the room.