Jake pulled a gun from his glove box, and Alicia’s eyes widened. He patted her leg. “I said I didn’t have a gun with me when I first saw you in Breckenridge. But it seems prudent that I take a gun with me anytime I go out with you now.” He pulled out a lock pick set and helped her out of the truck.
She frowned at him. “Lock picks? I’ve got my keys.” She patted her purse. “Why do you have lock picks?”
He was so accustomed to using lock picks to get into places that weren’t family owned that he hadn’t even thought about her keys. “Most of us carry these in case we have an urgent need to get inside a building and hide ourselves. If there’s a wolf on the premises, I’ll have to shift quickly and deal with it.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised.
Her response reminded him how newly turned she was and how difficult it had to be for her to think in terms of being a werewolf or that others might also be werewolves and had to be dealt with differently.
Peter and Tom joined them at Alicia’s apartment door and hovered close as Jake said quietly, “Tom, I want you to stay with Alicia until Peter and I make sure the place is all clear.”
Using her key, Jake unlocked the door, and with guns drawn, he and Peter stepped inside the house. The place was quiet, and Tom and Alicia remained in the entryway watching their progress.
Jake lifted his nose and took a good strong whiff, just like the others did. He smelled the telltale scents of several men who had been here recently. Pungent colognes, primarily. The odor of male testosterone and sweat. And the faint odor of wolf. Male wolf.
He and Peter quickly scanned the small living room, which was filled with a blue floral couch and two solid-blue love seats, a light-oak coffee table and a couple of end tables, leaving nowhere for anyone to hide. A cheerful yellow kitchen was just beyond the living area, and in an open dining room were a glass table and wrought-iron chairs but nothing else. The bar divided the kitchen from the living room, however, and anyone could be crouching behind it.
Jake motioned for Peter to follow him and they quietly strode to the kitchen, but he shook his head at Alicia and Tom when they found no one there.
A creaking noise in the bedroom floor upstairs caught everyone’s attention. No one said a word as Jake and Peter quietly stalked up the carpeted stairs, Jake leading the way. He wasn’t sure what he would face—a wolf or a man. But he smelled the scent of a wolf and a man on the way up the stairs. If the man was in his human form, he’d be armed and dangerous. If he was a wolf, Jake would take care of the problem once and for all.
When they reached the landing, a short wall half-protected a suited man with his gun aimed for a kill, but Jake saw the man before he could fire the shots. Jake ducked into a crouch behind the wall. Three pops rang in the air. Three bullets slammed into the wall behind Jake with a thunk, thunk, thunk.
Peter whipped around the low wall at a crouch and fired, hitting the man twice in the arm and making him drop his weapon. The man collapsed on the floor and passed out. Jake cursed under his breath and then rushed forward to feel the injured man’s pulse. His pulse was thready, but the man was alive.
“He’s alive,” Jake called out, loud enough for Alicia and Tom to know that everyone was all right.
The injured man wasn’t a wolf. Someone else had been here, though, who was a male werewolf.
Jake kicked the gun away from the gunman and then rummaged through his pockets, looking for any ID. None. Not that he’d expected to find any.
Peter stalked into the bathroom. “No one in the laundry room or bathroom,” he said.
“Call the local police, Peter. We’ll have him hauled off and then take care of our business here.”
Surprisingly, nothing seemed to be out of place. Jake assumed that was an attempt by Mario’s man to give the appearance that no one had been there. Then if Alicia had arrived, she would have felt safe as she entered her apartment. The man would have waited like a venomous snake until she reached the bedroom and then would have pounced on her.
The bedcovers were tousled where the gunman appeared to have been lying down, waiting for Alicia to show up. He must have heard them downstairs, thinking Alicia had come home. Jake wondered just how long the man had been here waiting for her. Maybe only since the night before because the men seemed to have been tailing her before they lost her at the Crestview Motel.
Mario might have thought she’d finally return here with no place else to go.
Jake headed back down the stairs as Peter watched the man while calling the shooting in to the police. “This is Sheriff Peter Jorgenson of Silver Town, calling about a shooting incident at 452 Sunnybrook Apartments.”
Jake caught Alicia’s pale features as he hurried to join her at the front door. “The man’s passed out but just wounded. He won’t be firing another gun for a good long while.” He took her in his arms and gave her a heartfelt embrace. “If you’re up to it, do you want to look at him and see if he’s anyone you recognize?”
“Yes, of… course.” Even though her speech was hesitant, she seemed resolute about getting this over and done with.
He rubbed her back. “The police will be here soon. They’ll have more questions to ask you, I’m afraid. But at least Peter shot the man, who had fired his weapon first. Although I am licensed to carry a gun. All of us are, just in case we need to be. He’s human, Alicia. But a wolf has been on the premises.”
“I smelled the wolf, but I wouldn’t know who he is.” She looked toward the stairs. “My mother’s things are upstairs in a linen closet.”
He took her cold hand and led her up the stairs. She took a steadying breath at the top of the stairs and moved closer to the man, who was stirring now as Peter stood over him. Peter shoved his cell phone into his pocket. “Police are on their way.”
The man’s eyes suddenly popped opened. He groaned and grabbed his bloodied arm. He saw Peter first, wearing the forest-green shirt and khaki trousers and the gold seven-point star badge identifying him as a sheriff. At that sight, the man grew very still, his dark eyes round.
“Why did Mario send you?” Jake asked, his voice low and cold, which had the man jerking his head around to see Jake standing with Alicia, his hand at her stiff spine.
His gaze quickly shot to Alicia’s. She said, “This man was a friend of the guy my mother was seeing. So much for being anyone’s friend in their organization.”
The man narrowed his eyes at Alicia. “Friends take care of friends. If they turn traitorous, you stick with the guy with the most firepower.”
“So why did Mario have your friend killed? Was Tony trying to take over the business?” Jake asked.
Sirens sounded in the distance, and when the man wouldn’t answer, Jake urged again, “What about Alicia? Why does Mario want her dead?”
The gunman’s gaze again swung to her. “He doesn’t want her dead.”
She was barely breathing now. Jake rubbed her back. “Then what?”
The guy gave a half shrug with his good arm and groaned again. “Hell, he wants her. I dunno why. But despite her killing one of our guys and shooting another, Mario wants her. Alive. Frankly, none of us gets it.” He cast an evil half smirk at Alicia, as if to say Mario would get his way, then she’d pay.
Tom shouted up the stairs, “Police and paramedics are here.”
The sirens cut out in the parking lot.
“Send them up, Tom.” Then Jake growled at the injured man, “If you see Mario, tell him Alicia’s off-limits.”
“And who should I say said so?” The guy gritted his teeth and squeezed his bloodied arm tighter as they heard the front door open and Tom telling them the man was upstairs, wounded but disarmed.
“Jake Silver,” Jake said. “Of Silver Town.”
Might as well give Mario an invitation to visit the pack. See if he had the fortitude to try and grab Alicia there. If he was a wolf, and Jake was beginning to think so, they’d have to take him down in their own territory where they could handle the matter much more discreetly.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “If I see him, I’ll pass along the word. He likes dealing with a guy with steel balls. More of a challenge that way.”
Men rushed up the stairs, four officers and two paramedics. The place was swarming with people, and with the crowd in her small bedroom, Alicia went back downstairs since she hadn’t witnessed the shooting. Jake and Peter stayed to explain what had happened. Jake only hoped she wouldn’t falter when the police interrogated her about the connection between this incident and the one the night before. He would have given anything to keep her from having to deal with this again.
As soon as he could return to her, he headed back downstairs to see her sitting on the blue floral couch, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap as Tom stood beside the couch in protective mode. This time, she was armed with a glass of water.
Jake joined her on the couch and held her hand to fortify her before two of the officers came downstairs to take her statement. He felt her tense, her heart beating rapidly, as she barely breathed. He squeezed her hand to reassure her, hoping to hell this would be the last case of anything like this happening.
Tom looked just as tense, and Jake knew his brother was in protective wolf mode in the event anything went wrong with the police questioning.
Alicia swallowed hard and tried to settle her raw nerves. She was afraid she’d be in for even more of the third degree, considering her connection with the incident the night before. What were her ties to a mobster? She couldn’t let them know about her mother’s possessions in case she and Jake could uncover anything about what was going on.
One of the police detectives, a redhead with bright-green eyes and a stern look, said, “I’m Detective Hanover, and this is my partner, Detective Brumley.” Then they both showed their badges. Detective Hanover sat down on her wide-winged armchair and opened a notebook. “Okay, first can I see some ID from everyone?”
Alicia dug around in her purse and swore she needed to clean it out as her fingers searched for her wallet and instead ran into a tube of lipstick, a package of tissues, a ton of receipts for motel bills, a brush, a comb, keys, and nail scissors that she managed to stab herself with in her frantic search. Finally, she grasped her leather wallet and pulled it out. Searching each of the pockets she found: credit card, library card, car insurance card, health insurance card, dental insurance card, store-points cards…