Page 5 of Wolf Reborn

Linger

The evening shift was surprisingly dead for a full moon. No streakers in town square, no more drunken holiday partygoers since New Year’s was over, and thankfully, nothing violent.

Kismet didn’t get a lot of violent crime; it was too small and too upscale to really support that sort of thing. Their usual problems involved entitled rich boys who thought they should be allowed to get away with things like drinking and driving.

The Christmas vacation crowd had filtered out for the year, and for the time being, things were slow. It helped—the police, not the resort’s financial wellbeing—that it hadn’t snowed in a while.

He spent most of his evening writing up a report on a missing dog and consoling a family over the probable loss of their pet.

He finally signed off just after two and headed for home. It had been a productive day, at least, and Brown owed him a shift. Not that he thought he’d get it. Brown was on his way out, and it was a wonder he’d managed to make it through the academy at all.

But hey, maybe if Gavin followed through on making a date, he could use it to take a night off for that. That was a sweet fantasy, and both things were equally likely to happen. Maybe Gavin would invite him into his home and propose marriage too.

The light turned green, and he’d just started forward again when his radio crackled to life.

“Security company reported a perimeter breach at one-eleven Morningside,” said the bored night operator. So bored she couldn’t be bothered to do her job correctly, he mused, before his mind and heart stuttered.

One-eleven Morningside Drive was Gavin’s address.

He checked traffic all around him, flipped on his lights, and made a U-turn to head back in the direction of the neighborhood where Gavin lived.

It wasn’t a big deal, he promised himself. Kismet didn’t get that much violent crime. He’d just been thinking that very thing, hadn’t he? Besides, Gavin and two of the people who lived with him were ex-army. They’d been Green Berets, for fuck’s sake. They could handle anything that might happen.

Most of those security-company alerts ended up being wild animals anyway. This wouldn’t be any different. Just a deer somehow jumping an eight-foot stone wall and setting off motion sensors on the inside.

The tepid reassurance didn’t stop him from heading to a possible crime scene while technically not on duty.

No one who was on duty had arrived by the time he did, and there was no answer when he knocked on the front door—no surprise since it was two in the morning—so he headed around the back of the house. The lights on the back deck were still on, so maybe someone was up.

Heck, maybe they’d accidentally set off the alarm themselves. People awake past their bedtimes sometimes did wild things. Maybe he’d get that streaker after all, though if it were on private property, there was nothing illegal about it.

“Hello?” he called out, but didn’t get an answer. There was noise from up the slope, though, so he headed out into the woods.

The snow was old and deeply tracked by shoe prints, and oddly enough, what looked like dogs. Gavin had never mentioned having dogs, and Miles didn’t think he’d seen any in the house from his permanent position on the stoop. There was definitely growling from somewhere ahead, though, so maybe they did, and the dog, or dogs, had found whoever jumped the wall.

He trudged upward through the remains of snow on the ground, trying to keep an eye out for any people, but he didn’t see much other than snow, shadows, and pine trees. When he found the wall, and the man dressed like a cat burglar, he wasn’t beset by dogs.

He was surrounded by wolves.

Miles’s hand immediately fell to his gun, but what the hell was he going to do with that? There were at least four wolves, not to mention the probable thief.

The thief looked like he was rethinking his whole life, and was likely to make a run for it at the first opportunity, and that opportunity was too damn likely to be the wolves killing Miles instead of him.

Thankfully, while they glanced over at him, the wolves didn’t change targets.

“Help a guy out,” the burglar pled. “You gotta shoot these things.”

Miles considered his options.

First of all, there had been few, if any, wolves in their area in many years. Secondly, he was pretty sure conservationists were pro-wolf these days. Something about predators being good for the ecosystem.

If he could avoid it, he would definitely prefer not to kill the wolves.

On the other hand, why the hell were they inside the wall around Gavin’s home? They should be on the other side. Had they possibly hurt the people living in the compound? No, that didn’t seem likely. He hadn’t seen blood, or any sign of attack.

In fact, given the plethora of paw prints, Miles had to guess that the wolves were living inside the wall. Gavin’s family were probably keeping them as exotic pets. No wonder they didn’t want a cop visiting their home if they had wolves living in it.

He held back his frustrated sigh. He really didn’t want to have to throw the book at Gavin’s people, dammit.

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