Page 29 of More Than Meets the Eye

Isaid “I’ll keep it in mind,” a lot.

Through clenched teeth.

When we finished our lunch and left, I dropped a few paces behind Tess and stopped by the Frosts’ table on my way out.

“Thanks alot.”

Mrs. Frost tapped her hearing aid and blinked innocently up at me.

She made it until I was almost at the door before she started giggling.

Tess was so quiet on the ride home, I worried she’d overheard something. Finally, when we turned onto her road, she twisted in her seat and stared at me.

“It’s not like Iplanthese things! I didn’t start it, either! Why is it my fault?”

Ah.

“Eleanor’s wedding, again? Tess. Don’t worry about it. Eleanor and Bill were laughing so hard, I was afraid he’d end up peeing his tuxedo.”

She sighed. “I know. It’s just … everybody in Dead End is such a busybody. It’s lovely to live in a small town sometimes. But other times, I wish I could move to a huge city where nobody knew my name!”

“No, you don’t.” I parked and turned to look at her. “You love it here.”

“I do. Mostly. Anyway, I’m looking forward to a nice, quiet afternoon.”

I agreed, but my mind had been working on the problem of General Barstow and NACOS all day.

“It might be time to take this federal. Tess, we should call Alejandro.”

Her face lit up. And if I didn’t know the reaction was all about the babies and not about the overly handsome Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez, FBI Paranormal Operations division, I might have felt a twinge of jealousy.

“Let’s go inside and change clothes. Then we can call, and I can find out how my namesake is doing.”

When events had turned frantic during Rose and Alejandro’s visit to Dead End, Tess had wound up delivering one of their twin babies. They named the girl twin Jasmine Tess Cardinal Vasquez. Tess and I were also one set of godparents to the twins, which meant mostly that we send a lot of presents that Tess happily selects, shops for, and wraps, and that I happily take to the post office.

Perfect division of labor.

After the catching up part of the phone call, during which they promised to send more pictures, Rose rushed off to feed the twins, and we told Alejandro everything.

“That’s not good.”

Since we were on a video call, I could see by his face exactly how not good it was.

“This NACOS is bad news. Not that I think a national organization to protect shifter rights is a bad idea. I think it’s great, and maybe something you should get involved in, Jack.”

“Not me. I’m done with all that,” I said firmly. I’d told him the same thing on the many occasions that he’d asked me to consider joining P-Ops as his partner.

Definitely not.

“Anyway, I talked to Carlos last night and put our analysts here to work. To be honest, I don’t think Quark dying has anything to do with NACOS. There’s a pretty serious split in the Riverton wolf pack. Quark was about to challenge the alpha, a guy named Reynolds, for leadership. There’s a pretty good chance that this Reynolds killed Quark. Everything we found out points to him being a very dangerous guy.”

Tess and I stared at each other.

“That’s not good, Alejandro,” I said slowly. “Because our new Dead End deputy sheriff Lizzie Underhill, a currently non-shifting werewolf, and I are scheduled to go with the Riverton pack for the full moon run tonight.”

“We wanted to get Lizzie help, so she could learn to shift,” Tess said worriedly. “Alejandro, what do you think?”

“I think Reynolds may be a killer who’s going to take advantage of the situation. Be very careful, my friends.”

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