Page 40 of More Than Meets the Eye

Jack bounded off in gigantic leaps. He’d catch up to the wolves in no time. I went back to the truck and picked up my book, but I locked the doors.

Just in case.

When a woman banged on my window twenty minutes later, I shrieked.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said loudly, to be heard through the glass. “I’m with Sheriff Reynolds. I thought maybe we could wait for them together.”

“Oh! Whew. You startled me.” I unlocked the door and stepped out of the truck. “I’m Tess. Tess Callahan. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Kay. Nice to meet you, too.” She was medium-tall, with black hair and dark brown eyes, and she was pretty in jeans and a T-shirt. She smiled at me until I closed the truck door, and then she leaned close, her smile changing into a scowl.

“Stay away from Paul,” she spat. “I know your type, hanging on the powerful men like a groupie. He’s taken. Stay away, or I’ll hurt you.”

“I don’t want Sheriff Reynolds,” I tried to explain, shocked. “I?—”

“Don’t make me warn you again!”

Before I could even think of how to respond, she raced off into the woods in the direction everybody else had gone.

It was at least five minutes before I remembered the signal.

“Hey, Carlos!”

When Jack and the wolves returned, most of them were wary when they saw the vampire. But Sheriff Reynolds immediately shifted, pulled on his clothes, and then crossed over to where Carlos, Jack, and I stood.

“What happened?”

I didn’t know how to talk about this. I could feel my face heat, and I was hideously embarrassed for both of us. Nothing I’d heard from friends in Riverton had made me expect Mrs. Reynolds would act like that.

“Sheriff, I am so sorry, but will you please tell your wife I don’t have any … um … romantic intentions toward you?”

“What?” Jack said.

“What?” Reynolds said.

“I didn’t really have time to explain before she shifted into her wolf form and followed you guys. I’m so sorry if I ever gave the impression?—”

“Wait.” Reynolds held up a hand. His face was a study in consternation. “Did you say shifted? Vicki isn’t a shapeshifter.”

I blinked. “Who’s Vicki? She said her name was Kay.”

15

Tess

On Monday morning, I was happy to get back to the relatively safe and normal environment of my shop. Before I walked in, I listened for the disco ball, but all I heard was silence. Jack had promised to take the thing down when he got here, but he had errands to run all morning. He was still trying to learn more about NACOS and General Barstow, so we could figure out a plan there, even though we were now pretty sure we knew who’d killed poor Quark.

After I’d inadvertently dropped the bombshell about Kay, Reynolds told us the whole ugly story. She was a female wolf shifter he’d only dated twice several years ago, before he met Vicki, his actual wife. Kay had acted like a normal person, but a little needy, and hadn’t seemed to be very hurt when he broke things off.

Then, a couple of years ago, something in Kay’s life must have changed, because she came roaring out of the woodwork with a vengeance. She started calling him to tell him he “deserved” a shifter wife, and that nobody else could really love him.

She wrote him long, passionate letters about their glowing future together. After tearing up the first few, he put the new ones, unopened, in a file folder in his desk at work labeled “In case I disappear.”

Worse, though, was when she’d started going after Vicki.

Reynolds’ fists had been clenched tight when he told us this. “I had to get a restraining order. Let me tell you, that was fun. Big, strong shifter who’s also a sheriff getting a piece of paper telling a bitty woman she had to leave me alone. I took some teasing for it, but it was important to get on record.”

It hadn’t helped, though. She’d kept up the barrage of contact until Reynolds had driven to Alabama and confronted her at her job. This was maybe six months ago.

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