Page 26 of Fire on the Moon

Chapter Nine

Zane climbed out of her bed and went back to his own. He didn’t turn his head, but he felt her staring at him. Closing his eyes, he tried to get back to sleep, but that was impossible.

When light seeped in at the edge of the blackout curtain, he got up.

Seeing her looking at him, he said, “ I need to check my mail.” It was true but it was also a way to cut off personal conversation.

“Sure. I’ll get dressed.”

She got up, opened the suitcase and took out some clothes, then disappeared into the bathroom. As he heard the water running in the shower, he pictured her naked and stepping under the water. When he started getting turned on again, he ruthlessly switched his attention to his e-mail and found a communication from Teddy Granada at Decorah.

Using FBI and local law enforcement databases, Teddy had been able to identify one of the men in the pictures. He was Conrad Tuckerman, called Connie for short, and he’d been in and out of trouble with the law for years. He was suspected of a couple of murders although there had never been enough evidence to arrest him. He was also known to hang out at a local bar in town called the Tin Man, which took its name from a nearby shopping mall called Tin City. The buildings of the rambling downscale mall were all made of corrugated tin.

Zane figured his best bet was to check out the bar, but first he wanted to switch cars, since Tuckerman and his friends were very familiar with his current rental.

Francesca came out of the bathroom, dressed in her short pants and another tee shirt they’d bought the day before.

“I’ll get ready, and we can go to breakfast,” he said.

She nodded, and he noted from her expression that she seemed to be back in the mode where she was pretending they were just friends sharing this room. Well, that’s what he’d said he wanted. Still, he couldn’t help feeling the sting of her indifference.

As he gathered up his own clothes and stepped into the bathroom, he wished he’d talked to his brother or some of his cousins about how they’d handled things when they’d bonded with their mates.

But that wasn’t something that werewolves talked about. In the wild, a wolf pack was led by an alpha male and all the other wolves were subservient to him. It was different with werewolves, who had all descended from one man who had begged the ancient gods for powers beyond the human. In getting his wish, he’d acquired the ability to shape-shift, and his male descendants carried a gene for lycanthropy.

But unlike with wolves in the wild, shape-shifters were all alpha males, each one the leader of his own pack. Before he bonded, it was a pack of one. When he had a wife and family, they were the members of his pack. Zane knew that in generations past, the alpha werewolf lorded it over his family. Modern guys were more enlightened. Also, not so long ago, the alpha males didn’t get along with each other. But in this case, Frank Decorah had helped them learn how to work together—although there were still challenges when one wolf thought another had stepped over the line.

This history meant that the Marshall men didn’t share a lot of personal information with each other. He’d seen a transformation in his brother, Knox, when he’d come home from Western Maryland with a mate. But Zane had sensed his brother didn’t want to talk about the bonding process, partly because some very bad guys had put him into a drugged stupor before he’d met Maggie. And Zane wasn’t going to call him up now for advice. That wasn’t the way of the alpha male.

He finished showering and dressing and came out of the bathroom. For a moment of panic, he didn’t see Francesca in the room. Then he realized that she was on the balcony, leaning on the railing and staring out at the Gulf. There were other hotel guests also enjoying the Florida morning, and his first thought was to rush outside and herd her back inside. But he curtailed the impulse. Instead he opened the sliding glass door and asked,

“Ready for some breakfast.”

“I guess.” She stepped back into the room and closed the door behind her.

“I want to make a stop on the way.”

“Where?”

“There’s a car rental office off the hallway that leads to the restaurant. If I get a different car, the bad guys will have less chance of spotting us driving around town.”

“Are we driving around town?”

He cursed himself for having voiced part of his plans. “I have a lead on one of the men who showed up at my rental yesterday. I need to check it out.”

“Not by yourself.”

He gave her a hard look. “I’m not putting you at risk again—not when you’re safe here.”

“You don’t have a choice, because you’re not going to leave me hiding in a posh hotel while you go out and do your detective work.”

He struggled not to clench his teeth. He should have kept his mouth shut, but there was no point in arguing with her now.

After he’d reserved a car, they headed for the dining room where the woman at the hostess station greeted them like old friends. And as they took a table against a wall, he saw a fair number of the same faces as the night before.

He didn’t like it. And he didn’t like that the woman who’d given them their menus was now talking to the hostess. They both glanced in his and Francesca’s direction then quickly away when they saw he’d noticed the attention.

Shit. What was that about? Were they speculating on their marital status or what? The Ritz-Carlton might be an upscale little enclave at the water’s edge in Naples, but anyone could mention the couple they had seen there. That might have been a paranoid thought, but he wasn’t going to dismiss paranoia when it might keep Francesca alive.

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