Page 37 of More Than Meets the Eye

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Great. I’ll text you directions. Sheriff. Tess.”

After he left, Tess and Susan both started to talk, but Tess gestured at Susan to go first.

“Called a lot of law enforcement I know. Sheriff Reynolds has a reputation as a good man, good cop, and person of integrity on all sides. Even from people who love to dish the dirt.”

“I found out there’s been some pack strife, but nowhere near the level of a battle for alpha. Quark was relatively new, and not that many of the pack would have backed him for the top spot,” I told them. “He was only beta because the old beta moved away, like Reynolds said.”

“People in town like Mrs. Reynolds, quite a lot,” Tess reported. “She’s active in their kids’ school and with the Friends of the Riverton Library. Plus, she works at the diner next to the sheriff’s office, so a lot of people know her from going in for coffee. She always has a friendly word. This doesn’t seem like a couple who are running around killing people.”

“Nobody accusedherof killing anybody,” I pointed out.

Tess shrugged. “I read a lot about true crime. Except in the cases of psychopath serial killers, who are experts in covering their tracks, spouses generally know when their partners are out committing murder. Even if Sheriff Reynolds somehow got past all our radars and he really killed Quark, he doesn’t strike me as a psychopath.”

The logic felt convoluted but also made sense, so I nodded. “I’ll watch him really closely tonight when Lizzie and I are out there.”

Susan shot out of her chair. “You don’t really mean to take her out there after all this, do you ?”

“I have to. Shifters have to shift. It’s the most basic fact of our nature. If we can’t help Lizzie do it the right way, she could wake up one night with half her body human and half wolf, and not in a cool comic book superhero way, but in a ‘help, my liver is outside my skin’ kind of way.”

The sheriff pressed her lips together but didn’t argue with me, which I appreciated, since I was the only shifter in the room.

“I have some other news.” I held my phone up and pressed a few buttons. “I listened to the voicemails I thought were spam after what happened with the mail.”

The harsh female voice thundered into the room in a series of messages:

Jack Shepherd, you need to back off Sheriff Reynolds, or you’ll be dead.

Beep.

Jack Shepherd, you’ll never be the top shifter in Florida. You should move out of state. Now.

Beep.

Jack Shepherd, don’t make me warn you again, or your pretty girlfriend might be in danger.

“That’s all of them. I may have deleted some a couple of weeks ago, but I can’t figure out how to access deleted voicemail. I’m going to ask the Fox twins if they can.”

“If they can’t, I may have somebody official,” Susan said, but she didn’t offer to take over the task from the brothers. She knew their capabilities.

“You should have played the messages for Reynolds. He might have recognized the caller,” Tess said. “It’s not necessarily a woman. He or she is using a voice-disguising app. But the phrasing in the messages might be familiar to him.”

“Whoever it was isn’t attacking him, though. The opposite. You’re sure about the wife being good people, Tess?” Susan looked thoughtful when Tess nodded. “Jack, should I come with you tonight?”

I shook my head. “You don’t have jurisdiction, and they won’t want you there. This is a shifter thing. I’ll call you if anything happens.”

“Okay.” Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down. “That’s my contact with the Highway Patrol. There was, in fact, a nasty accident involving high school kids in Riverton an hour ago, so Sheriff Reynolds wasn’t lying to us to get away.”

Tess shivered. “That’s some heavy-duty suspicious nature, Sheriff.”

Susan sighed. “Learned the hard way, I can assure you. I need to get going. But here’s news that won’t surprise you: Quark’s throat was torn out with claws, and there was wolf DNA in the wound.”

“Somebody didn’t want Quark talking to you, Jack,” Tess says slowly.

“Or it was a crime of opportunity,” I said.

“I guess we’ll see. Jack, remember. Call me if anything—anything—happens with Lizzie or with Reynolds.”

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