The boy nodded.
“But after you’re done exploring, it’s good to have a place to come home to,” he continued. “And, if you ask me, the thing that makes a place exciting is the people. That’s why I’m moving back. People like your mom and Jena. Ted and Ollie. Kids like you and Lowell. People are more exciting than places.”
“Yeah?”
Alex leaned over and put his hand on Kevin’s shoulder, pulling him closer. He spoke in a low, commanding voice, the voice he used on the younger wolves in the pack. Confident. Sure. Maybe a little scary if the pup had messed up. It was the voice his father had used with him, and if Alex knew anything about teenage boys, it worked.
“Kevin, do not ever think that your dad leaving had anything to do with you. That was his failing, not yours.”
He sounded like he wanted to speak, but didn’t say anything. Alex squeezed his shoulder again, letting his natural authority roll over the boy.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Uncle Alex.”
“And do not ever think his actions reflect on you. You are your mother’s son, and you will be a good man. You’re going to mess up sometimes, but in the end, you’ll make decisions in life that your mother will be proud of and that I’ll respect.”
Kevin nodded, sniffing back tears so Alex wouldn’t see. He nudged the boy up and out of the seat, saying, “I think there’s one more box in the back of my truck. Go get it and put it in the shed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then we’ll head to the house and get a beer.”
Kevin halted and turned. “Really?”
“Well, I get a beer. You get a root beer.”
A hint of a smile crossed Kevin’s face, then he ran back to the truck.
Alex caught Ted watching him from the corner of her eye over and over during dinner. It was Jena, Caleb, and their two boys. Allie and her three boys and one girl. Ted and Alex rounded out the group. They were taking shelter on the back porch while the kids played inside. Five boys under fifteen and one baby sister could make a hell of a lot of noise.
Allie nudged him. “I don’t know what you said to Kevin, but thanks.”
“Yeah?”
“He seemed a little better after he helped you out this afternoon.”
“Good.”
“You pull that alpha crap on my kid?”
He knew Allie was teasing, so he said, “Only when he needed his butt kicked. You got a problem with that?”
“Nope.” She shook her head before she grinned. “Just be prepared. He might be your shadow from now on. Ollie’ll have some competition.”
Nope. He wasn’t going to say anything. Biting his tongue.
Alex still hadn’t spoken more than a few words to his old friend since Allie’s husband had left. Had no idea what Ollie was doing with the knowledge that the feelings he’d been carrying for over fifteen years might actually stand a chance with Joe out of the way. He wouldn’t say he was happy that Allie’s husband left her…
Exactly.
“Might be better if he spends time with Ollie, don’t you think?” Ted offered. “After all, Alex works so much. And when—” She broke off, suddenly flustered.
“What?” Alex asked.
“Nothing.”
“No, what were you going to say? When what?”
He knew what she had been going to say before she thought twice. In the back of his mind, it twisted and burned. The nerve… Her distrust in his intentions had hurt him. Frustrated him. Now, she was just pissing him off.
At least she had the grace to look embarrassed.
“It’s nothing. Forget it.”
He didn’t want to let go. Months of frustration came to a head. “Tell me.”
Jena said, “Hey guys, let’s not—”
“No, Jena. I want to hear what Ted was going to say. I’m betting she was going to tell me that I should keep my distance, so that Kevin doesn’t get attached to another guy that leaves.”
Allie paled as silence fell over the table, and Alex saw Caleb put a hand on Jena’s shoulder.
“Alex,” Caleb warned. “Take care.”
The embarrassment had left Ted’s face. She was just as pissed off as he was. She raised her chin. “I’m just thinking about the kids.”
“Hey—” Allie tried to speak up, but Alex cut her off.
“No, you’re not. You’re thinking about yourself and insulting me, implying that I’d ever abandon anything that mattered that much.”
Caleb stood and ushered Jena and Allie into the house, leaving Ted and Alex alone on the porch.
Her face had paled. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Or I guess we didn’t matter as much as I thought we did. Good to know.”
Her whispered words almost knocked the breath out of him, but the anger was harder, stronger, and it took control of his tongue.
“You’re still dredging up history, but as far as I know, the only one in town still waiting for me to leave is you.”
“Just because you say—”
“When did I lie to you, Ted?”
A child’s shout came from the house. Laughter answered. A reminder of everything he’d given up. The life they could have had.
“I’m not doing this.” He stood up and left his beer on the table, walking toward the lit trailer in the distance. Ted followed him.
They weren’t halfway there before she said, “I’m looking out for my nephew, Alex. The last thing Kevin needs—”
“You are so full of shit!” He spun and gripped her arm. “This has nothing to do with Kevin. This is about you and me, so tell me: When did I lie to you? When?”
“You never—”
“I never told you my plans? Maybe that was because you didn’t listen.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
“Really?” He stood back and crossed his arms. “What did you think I was doing in LA? Following after you like a puppy? Working construction until you graduated?”
“We always planned to come back here. When school was done—”
“That was your plan.”
“And you never told me different!”
He stepped closer. “Maybe I tried and you didn’t listen. Maybe I realized that there was only one person whose dreams mattered in our relationship.”
She looked like he’d slapped her, and Alex immediately regretted the words, but his blood was boiling, and he couldn’t stop.
“I gave you everything I could, Ted. Everything. I put up with a hell of a lot of shit that I wouldn’t have from anyone else. And half the time, I thought I was invisible. But I never lied. Not once. You just didn’t listen.”
Her face was pale, but her jaw was set. “Actions speak louder than words.”
“And how did my actions lie to you? When we were living together? When we made love? There were two people there, Ted. You can’t put that on me.”
“No, you can just take off and lie about coming back ‘soon.’”
“I didn’t lie to you!” He threw his hands up and started walking toward the trailer again. He had to get away from her. Maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe he was an idiot for even looking back. “I have never broken a promise to you. Not once.”
“How I’m supposed to believe you’ll stay? That you won’t leave again when the job is done.”
“You left me!”
“And you were already gone!”
“I came back.”
“Sure you did. But not to stay! I thought you were back five years ago. When you came to me in Palm Springs—” She choked on the words as he turned.
“Ted.” Coming to her a year after their breakup had been a mistake. He’d known it even when he was driving to her house. Knew he couldn’t offer her what she needed from him. But he’d been weak and he’d missed her so damned much.
Making love to her had been like coming home. And they’d never talked about it. Alex’s guilt fell like a blanket over his anger.
That time, he had been the
one to leave, and he couldn’t deny it.
“I didn’t know what to believe,” she said. “You left. Again. And every time I tried to move on, you came back. Every time I met a guy I liked, you were there to mess things up. Just to remind me of what I couldn’t have.”
“I’m back now.”
“And how am I supposed to believe that?”
She stood in the light of the almost full moon, black eyes flashing. Dark hair slipping down around her face.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known in my life.”
She took a step back, surprised. “Alex—”
“And the hardest.”
“I have to be.”
How much of that was his fault?
Alex whispered, “You won’t believe a word I say, will you?”
“What does it matter? You said yourself we were done.”
“We’re not done.” He stepped closer, needing to touch her. “We’re never done. That was the lie.”
“Did it even hurt you?” He almost didn’t hear her. Her voice had gone from hard to painfully soft. “Giving me up? You keep telling me that I’m the one who left you, but you walked away from that apartment without a backward glance.”
It hit him like a punch to the chest. He took a step back. “How could you ask that?”
He’d been wrecked. Broken. A thin covering of man over a broken-hearted kid. It was Ted who had moved on. Ted who’d packed up their apartment and left him behind. She was the one who put up walls.
“You say you never broke a promise, Alex, but you did.”
“When—”
“You gave me your heart, then you took it away. And you took mine with it.” She blinked rapidly. “So don’t tell me I’m hard. I’m just protecting what’s left.”
Then she turned in the moonlight and walked away.
Hours later, Alex was still awake. Still watching her walk away.
“You walked away from that apartment without a backward glance.”
He’d had to. If he’d have looked back, Alex would have fallen to his knees and begged her to stay. Begged her to give up the residency that brought her back home, even when he knew she needed to go. Being tied to the city had started to affect her health. Her spirit was exhausted. She’d needed to come back. And he’d needed to stay.
“Don’t tell me I’m hard. I’m just protecting what’s left.”
Why didn’t he ever hear things when he needed to?
He’d cut her deep. Maybe he’d never realized quite how much. Ted was so good at putting up a strong front that he forgot she needed more from him. She needed to be his Tea, not just everyone else’s Ted. She’d needed to have a safe place to show that softness, and when they’d been together, she did.
Then he’d taken it away.
So she locked that part of herself down tight. “Protecting what was left.” Who could blame her?
He was an idiot.
Why had he let her walk away that night?
He rolled over and banged his head quietly against the headboard. Where was the bourbon when he needed it? Not that getting drunk was a good plan. He’d need to be clear headed if he had even a sliver of a chance of fixing this.
His phone fell to the floor just as it started ringing.
Alex grimaced. No one called for anything good at 3:11 in the morning. Squinting, he looked at the screen.
Caleb Gilbert.
Immediate thoughts of Jena and the baby rushed into his head, and he slid his thumb to answer.
“Caleb? What’s wrong? Is it Jena?”
“No, Jena’s fine, man. We’ve got another problem.”
He shook his head and sat up. “What? What other problem? It’s three in the morning.”
“Alex, this is shit news, but… Marcus Quinn is dead.”
“What?”
“His body was found on your job site.”
Chapter Five
“Come to the desert, they said. It’ll be quiet, they said.”
“Seriously, Caleb, shut up.”
“All we have are drunk and disorderlies. The occasional vandalism or theft. It’ll be so peaceful.”
Caleb stood over the body of what used to be Marcus Quinn while Ted took the liver temperature. The body was a mass of vicious bites, and pieces of the face and stomach were missing. Whatever had happened to him first, coyotes had happened second, and it wasn’t pretty. They’d eaten around his clothes, tearing pieces of his shirt and dragging it and other parts away from the corpse. It would take hours to collect all the evidence. They weren’t even starting until the sun rose.
“Who shifts to a coyote around here?” Caleb asked.
“This isn’t shifters,” Ted said. “He wasn’t killed by coyotes.”
“Tell that to the Quinns before we have a riot. Jeremy already has Old Quinn in his truck. Had to escort him home.”
“How’d the Quinns find out?”
“Who the hell knows? One of the wolves found the body and called me, but who knows who he told after that.”
She looked up. “Which wolf?”
“Patrick McCann. He’s only sixteen. Think he was cutting through here on the way back from his girlfriend’s house. Past his curfew.”
“That’ll teach him to sneak in more make-out time.”
“Yeah, no kidding. His dad called me as soon as the kid got home and told him. I asked him to keep things quiet, but…”
“Patrick’s dad called Robert McCann about a minute after you, if not before.” She looked back down and continued to work. “In case you were wondering. So all the clan leaders know by now.”
Caleb’s eyes got hard. “I kept my mouth shut when this town took care of Missy the way they did. Jena was bleeding in my arms and saving her life was more important than the law. But that shit isn’t happening again. Not on my watch. This town is not going to deal out justice by mob.”
Ted kept silent. She had her own issues with what had happened to Missy Marquez, but she wasn’t going to talk to Caleb about it. It was cat clan business.
Caleb shivered at a gust of wind, clad only in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and his hat, of course. Ted had thrown on a jacket as soon as she got the call from him. Nights were cold in the desert, and at crime scenes, there was a lot of standing around. Technically, she was just a consultant. But since all of the county’s deputy coroner investigators lived in the cities, Ted had been authorized to collect evidence at crime scenes and collect evidence in coordination with the newly formed Cambio Springs Police Department. Most of the time she simply confirmed natural deaths when older people died at home. As the town’s only doctor, the arrangement had worked well. And murders in Cambio Springs were rare.
Or they had been before Missy Marquez had killed Jena’s grandmother the year before, fearful of the old woman’s influence over the elders’ council. Crazed at the thought of having to leave the only place she felt safe. That fear had translated into Missy attacking and killing Alma Crowe to eliminate what she saw as the only obstacle to her husband’s plans to save Cambio Springs. Missy had been certifiable. And whatever Caleb thought, Ted knew the woman would have killed herself before she’d go to a human prison. It was twisted, but if Missy knew she was going to die, she’d have picked a shifter execution over suicide.
And now, less than a year later, there was another suspicious death.
“Coyotes are scavengers,” she said, still kneeling by the body, noting the lack of blood. Not only dead, but mostly bled out when the coyotes had started on him. Interesting. “Marcus was a big guy. He would have been dead before they started eating him.”
“Could this have been an accident? Marcus shifted and the coyotes went after him in snake form?”
“It’s a possibility. Coyotes will eat snakes if they find them. And if they killed him as a snake, then he shifted…”
They all shifted back to human when they died. Born human. Died human. It was only the sticky in-between part that got interesting at times.
/> Caleb nodded. “They’d have taken advantage of the corpse. Started eating. Makes sense.”
“It’s possible, but…”
“What are you thinking?”
Ted was thinking that reptile shifters liked the sun, not the cold moonlight. But she said nothing as she looked around Marcus Quinn’s mangled body. Caleb had hauled a couple work lights out from behind the trailer at the job site, but there still wasn’t enough light to take good pictures. She stood up and looked at the thermometer.
“I’m estimating he was killed between midnight and two o’clock. Some of that depended on what form he was in when he was attacked.”
Quinns were the only residents of Cambio Springs who shifted to a cold-blooded creature, which was one of the reasons Ted had a hard time imagining Marcus would be out in animal form in the middle of the night where coyotes could get him.
“You’re saying if he was a snake—”
“Reptile shifters have to warm up a bit when they get back into human form. They do this shivering thing. It’s not instant. And even a few degrees could throw off the estimate on time of death. So I’ll make my excuses to the county, but between you and I, it’s impossible to narrow down death any more than I have.”
“Great.”
“It’s the way it is.”
“Ted?” She saw Caleb’s eyes narrow and focus. “How likely was it that Marcus Quinn just happened to be hanging out in the desert—in snake form—and got accidentally killed by a pack of coyotes?”
“Honestly?” She looked up at the nearly full moon. Nearly full. Not completely. “It’s not a moon night, Caleb. He didn’t have to shift. And it’s cool enough at night right now that he wouldn’t have shifted unless he had to. Reptiles are different from the rest of us. If it’s not warm, they’re not comfortable.”
Ted looked down at the cheerful man who’d been such a hard worker. A husband. A dad. She hadn’t known him well, but from all accounts, he was a bright spot in an otherwise messed up family. She’d been laughing and joking with the man a couple days before, and now he was nothing more than a pile of meat for the scavengers. Of all the twisted, messed-up—