*
All week long they’d slipped in some meals out and late-night movies, but every minute of the day had been spent searching for Otis’s hideaway. Vaughn had stuck close to Franny and the baby while Gary worked, so they felt she was safe enough for the time being. Paul had a couple of men assigned to watch Gary at the restaurant, in case Otis tried to do anything to him.
What took the longest for Debbie and Allan to search were all the places that either had been abandoned or were privately owned and unoccupied during the winter. They had started with a ten-mile radius and now were up to a twenty-mile radius.
Early that morning, Debbie got a surprise call from Rowdy. He’d been working a triple homicide all week and she knew he’d been ultra-busy, so she really was surprised to hear from him.
“I’ve heard you’ve been checking out dozens of places—storage facilities, cottages. What’s up?”
“We just had a hunch Otis might have left some of his stuff behind when he vanished from the area,” she said, being perfectly honest with him.
“Is he back in the area?”
“We haven’t been able to locate anything that might have belonged to him or any sign that he’s been in the area.” Again, she hadn’t lied. She realized this business of being a wolf made it difficult to be perfectly honest with human friends, and she could see Allan’s dilemma when he was so interested in her but had to cool it with her.
“Is Otis a wolf now?”
How could she answer that? She glanced at Allan. He was listening, but he wasn’t offering advice. She realized he trusted her to be one of them, to say the right things.
She took a deep breath. “He might be.”
“I imagine he is. I assume newly turned wolves can’t hold their human shape. Am I right?”
“You could be right.”
“Okay. So if I arrest the guy, then it’s going to be real trouble for…their kind. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“So what do you want me to do about this? It’s my case. My murder investigation. I have one of the best success rates for solving murders, resulting in successful trials that land the criminals behind bars.”
“Maybe he’ll just die of a heart attack and save all the taxpayers lots of money?” she asked.
“That doesn’t help me with solving the cases.”
“If we learn where he is, we’ll give you a call.”
“After the fact.”
She hesitated to say. “Well…”
“I understand. Allan’s with you, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no hope for me, is there?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Thought so.” He let out his breath. “Okay, I’ll give you forty-eight hours to locate him and let me know where he is.”
“What if he’s a…wolf?”
Rowdy didn’t say anything for a moment. “Full moon? Gotcha. I just hope if he has difficulty living, he’s not naked when I find him.”
“I’ve got to go, Rowdy. Allan’s wondering what in the world we’re talking about.”
“I just bet he is. Tell him I said hello and I’m ready for our next pizza outing. Take care and be safe, Debbie.”
“You too.” She ended the call and tucked away her phone. “Thanks for letting me deal with Rowdy the way I saw fit.”
Allan smiled at her. “Only you could pull that off and not get us into a lot of hot water.”
*
Allan and Debbie had been tromping through the snow for days now, thinking they were never going to locate the place where Otis had stashed his stuff. Maybe Vaughn was wrong and Otis hadn’t kept his things here locally while he ran off as a wolf. Maybe he’d come during the phase of the new moon, packed up his things, and left. Or maybe they’d been searching in all the wrong places.
“We’re approaching the full moon like the first time you shifted,” Allan warned her. He was carrying a mostly empty backpack, with only a few medical supplies, because he wanted to be ready if she shifted and he needed to carry her clothes for her. “Are you feeling the shift coming on?”
He worried about her. She’d been awfully quiet while they’d been hiking to a hunting cabin, the trail impassable for vehicles in the winter. The owner lived in Florida and came up here to hunt on occasion in the winter, but he said he’d already been up there and wasn’t planning to return for another month. It was twenty-two miles from Van Lake, so beyond their search area, but they were starting to expand their search another ten miles out.
“Debbie?”
“Yes, yes. Let’s just get to the cabin.”
But would he be hiking with her while she was running as a wolf? As aggravated as she sounded, he thought so.
“Damn it,” she suddenly said and stopped.
As soon as she started to pull off her parka, he asked, “Do you want me to help?”
She loved when he helped remove her clothes for sex, and vice versa. When she was turning into her growly wolf, sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. So he always asked.