She leaned over, smiled, and kissed him. “I knew you were the one for me. Do you want to swim in the lake now?”

  “Yeah, I sure do. And we can run as wolves in the other direction from where we went for our hike today.”

  “Absolutely. Unless—”

  He raised his brows.

  “You want to learn more about what happened. And we can go together to see if we can find any scent trail the killer might have left behind. Even bullet casings.”

  Nate laughed. “No. I mean, yeah, if Peter needs my help investigating this, but not while we’re here on vacation.”

  “Okay, just making sure because I’d be fine with it. I just want to call Roxie in case she learned anything.”

  Smiling, Nate shook his head. “You’re as bad as me.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re right for each other.” Kayla called Roxie and put the call on speakerphone.

  Before she could say anything, her sister said, “You are on vacation with Nate. You’re not supposed to be investigating murders.”

  Nate smiled since Kayla hadn’t spoken a word yet, though Roxie knew her too well.

  “Yeah, so we stumbled on a dead body. It wasn’t part of our planned fun excursion, believe me.”

  Roxie laughed. “The news has spread through the pack like wildfire. Of course, mostly everyone was warned we might have a murderer on the loose in Silver Town, though Peter believes whoever killed the man probably didn’t stick around. Even so, Peter’s deputized a bunch of men and a few women to look for trespassers on pack lands because of all the ones you’ve encountered during your stay at the cabin.”

  “That’s good news,” Kayla said. “The key card, Roxie? Who did it belong to?”

  “I’m not finished.”

  Kayla looked at Nate and rolled her eyes. He smiled and rubbed Kayla’s back.

  “Did you or did you not mate Nate?” Roxie continued.

  Kayla laughed. “What do you think?”

  “Yes! You did it. Ohmigod, Kayla’s mated,” Roxie said to someone.

  “Are you surprised?” Landon asked in the background. “We all knew they would. And congratulations to both of you.”

  “I’m surprised. And yes, we’re thrilled for you.”

  Blake said, “Congratulations! Now, Roxie, you’re the only holdout.”

  Roxie just laughed. “Okay, about the key card. Remember the guy who left his keys in the room safe?”

  “Are you kidding?” Kayla asked, sounding like she couldn’t believe it.

  “The armed robber? That would explain maybe why he was wearing a black ski mask when he died.” Still, Nate was surprised that it was him too.

  “Yeah, Peter said they’re running his… Hold on.” Roxie said to someone else, “What’s Peter got to say?”

  Landon said, “It will be a while before they can learn the identity through the DNA. But the key card had fingerprints on it, and they’re running it through the system to identify whose prints were on it.”

  Frowning, Kayla glanced at Nate.

  “I used a leaf to pull it partially out of his pocket and then saw it was one of your lodge’s key cards. It won’t have my fingerprints on it.”

  “Once the coroner removed the ski mask, they were able to see his long, black curly hair and beard, matching the hair and beard in the photo of Durham Manning. They’re also searching for dental records to match, but they’re pretty sure it’s him,” Landon said.

  Kayla patted Nate’s shoulder and kissed his cheek to comfort him, since she knew he wanted to be the one who was involved in searching for all that information.

  “What about security videos?” Nate asked.

  “Blake is still going over them for all the time we figure the guy was here at the lodge,” Roxie said.

  “Wait,” Blake said. “I’ve got this man checking in at eight in the morning at the registration desk. After comparing the video with the picture Nate sent us, I’d say this is the same man who reserved that room. Or at least stayed there. Peter’s sending a team to go over the room, searching for any fingerprints or anything else that might help identify who all was in the room. I’m still looking to see if I can identify anyone who might have spoken to him in the lobby. No luck so far. I’ve seen him on video a few times, coming and going, but no one with him. The other guests who were staying in Manning’s former room were moved to an upgraded room—no additional cost to them—so Peter and his men can do a thorough examination of the room.”

  “Okay, good,” Kayla said. They sure didn’t want to spook other guests while Peter was conducting a criminal investigation nor oust someone from their room when they’d paid good money for it and were here trying to enjoy their vacation.

  Roxie said, “Hey and, um, we’ve been talking about the living situation and—”

  “I think we’ve got it figured out if it works for you,” Kayla said. “Sometimes we’ll be staying in the guest room at our house, and sometimes I’ll stay in town with Nate. And then we’ll build a home on the other side of Blake and Nicole’s house.”

  “Are you sure?” Roxie asked. “I was thinking I could give you the house since we all know how you are about being uprooted.”

  “Thanks, Roxie.” Kayla glanced at Nate, probably realizing he might want to have some input too.

  “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.” Building a new home could stress anyone out, and Kayla did love the home, but he also knew she didn’t want to make her sister move when they’d had the plan to leave it to whichever sibling was mated last. “We can build the house just the way you want it. And it will be brand-new.”

  Roxie laughed. “This one is only two years old. Just think on it. Everyone will pitch in to help me build a home on the other side of Blake and Nicole’s place, so don’t worry about that. Or they’ll do the same thing for you, just like they did with Blake and Nicole’s home. You have time to decide since everyone has accommodations for now. You two have fun and don’t worry about this murder business. We—well, Peter—has it all covered. And congratulations again! We couldn’t be any happier.”

  Then Landon and Blake added their congratulations again, and they ended the call.

  Kayla sighed. “Now that my siblings know about us, we need to tell Nicole and your parents.”

  “Then we’ll swim.” Nate pulled out his phone and called his parents first. “Hey, Kayla and I are mated.” He put it on speakerphone.

  “Good, we knew you would finally come to your senses.” His mother said it in a lighthearted, fun way. “When are you getting married?”

  He knew that was coming next. “We haven’t gotten that far with any wedding plans.”

  “I’ll say. Not with finding a dead body on your vacation,” his dad said.

  Nate should have known that word would have reached his parents, too, via the pack grapevine. “Yeah, that was all a little unexpected.”

  “Well, you and your siblings are already part of our family, but we’re so glad you mated our son, Kayla,” his dad said. “We didn’t think Nate would ever settle down and give us grandkids.”

  Kayla blushed.

  Nate wrapped his arm around her and hugged her.

  “First comes the wedding,” his mother said. “I know, you don’t need a wedding, but you do want one, don’t you, Kayla?”

  Kayla smiled. “I sure do. We’ll have it at the lodge. We’ll just have to schedule a time when I can’t shift.”

  “Right. We’ll help you with everything, dear. Just don’t you worry,” his mother said.

  “Okay, well, we know you two are on your vacation, so we’ll let you go, or your mother will be making all the arrangements for the wedding with you before you know it and you’ll never get back to your vacation activities,” his dad said.

  Then Nate’s parents congratulated them again, but before they could call Nicole, she was ringing Kayla. “I know you had to be on the phone to Mom and Dad so I called you instead of my brother. Blake told me the great news.”

  “Thanks, Nicole. Now we’re even more like sisters,” Kayla said.

  “Yes, we are, and I can’t be more thrilled. I’m going to let you go because I’m helping Peter with the investigation into Durham Manning, the murdered guy. Boy, the two of you have all the fun.”

  Laughing, Nate shook his head. “I knew you didn’t have enough on your plate.”

  They finished up the call, and before anyone else called—like their pack leaders—Nate and Kayla grabbed their beach towels and raced out to the lake to swim.

  Chapter 18

  After dropping their beach towels on the shore, Kayla and Nate ran into the lake, splashing and having a ball. They swam out a way until they could tread water. He loved spending time with her like this when they both could be carefree and enjoy life, though he suspected she was thinking about this business with the murdered man like he was. He was trying not to think about it though.

  “Do you want to go fishing after this? We could try our luck at fishing with poles while it’s still light out, and if we’re unsuccessful, we could fish as wolves when it gets dark out,” she said.

  He pulled her into his arms as they treaded water. “I think that sounds like a winning plan.”

  “You know, Durham Manning was an armed robber. I was thinking about the jewelry store robbery in Green Valley again.” She licked the dripping water off Nate’s chin.

  He smiled. He’d known she was thinking about the case. She’d make a great PI, though he knew she loved the work she did now. She was so creative. “I figured you might be thinking about that.” Nate tilted his head down and nibbled on her ear.

  She giggled. “That tickles.” She nibbled his chin. “Yes, and remember the robberies Ryan mentioned that had occurred in other towns nearby?”

  “Yes. So would Manning have put some of the stolen jewelry in a couple of the safe deposit boxes? And the guy who was after his keys wanted to get into those safe deposit boxes?” Nate asked.

  She wrapped her legs around Nate’s hips, and that felt damn good. “Possibly. Or he might have sold them and put the cash in there. Then again, safe deposit boxes aren’t insured, so if anyone got into them—”

  “Like—”

  “Like the shaved-headed man who most likely stole the key from the FBI agents when he escaped. Now, if he had access to the safe deposit boxes, he could have stolen the cash and/or jewelry inside them, and no one could do a thing about it. No one would even know what had been inside them.”

  “If either the jewelry or the cash hadn’t been in the safe deposit boxes, then he could have stashed… Wait, what if that’s the reason he was murdered? He kept all the jewelry or the money from the sale of them and didn’t share them with his partners in crime,” Nate said, his legs treading water while his hands cupped her buttocks. He was thinking he’d sure like to make love to her.

  “Then the murderer would have wanted to keep him alive, not kill him. Unless he got the truth out of him about where the money or jewelry or both were stashed before he shot him. Manning must have gotten away, and then the shooter couldn’t find him in the dark and left him for dead. But why would the shaved-headed man come looking for Manning’s keys at the lodge then unless the keys gave him something he needed? A home could easily be broken into. A car, the same thing. He wouldn’t have to have the keys to either the house or car. It wouldn’t be as easy to break into a safe deposit box without the keys though.”

  “Exactly. Since the FBI agents lost him, there’s been no sign of him either. But with a name and a picture of the deceased man being widely circulated, maybe the personnel at some bank will recognize he had banked with them. Or someone else will come forth saying they even know who might have wanted him dead. The man who came for his keys could be the murderer, and since the FBI lost not only him but also the keys, he might have managed to get into the safe deposit boxes and emptied them.” It gave him chills to think Kayla and her family had spoken to the man when he could have been armed and dangerous.

  “But he’d have to have signed Manning’s signature on a sign-in sheet to get in.”

  “That’s true,” Nate said. “Maybe he knew him well enough to copy his handwriting.”

  “Yeah, that could be.” She shivered. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little chilly.”

  The temperature was starting to drop. “Are you ready for a hot shower and a nap?” he asked.

  “Just what I had in mind. Let’s go in,” she said.

  Then he released her, and they swam toward the shore. Once they got out, they dried off, then raced each other to the cabin, but a van pulled into the drive, and they realized right away that reporters from Green Valley had arrived because of the logo on their vehicle.

  “Oh, great. The story of the murder must be on the news,” Kayla said, and they entered the cabin and shut and locked the door before anyone could question them about anything. “Okay, here’s another scenario. What if Manning buried the jewelry out here?”

  “That could be bad news, and if that’s the case, a bunch of people could begin trespassing on pack land to try to find it.” He grabbed his phone and called Peter. “Hey, we’ve got reporters from Green Valley out here at the cabin.”

  “We’ll get right on it. Sorry, the story got out, and we couldn’t stop it at that point.”

  “I figured it wouldn’t be long before that happened. Thanks, Peter.”

  “But I have an idea. Brett could come out and get an exclusive interview with you, since he’s one of our wolves, and that will stop the human reporters from bothering you. We’ll make sure we don’t reveal any crime details we shouldn’t during the interview.”

  Since Brett Silver was one of the pack leader’s cousins and a reporter for their local newspaper, Nate figured that would work. “Yeah, we can do that. I need to talk to Kayla about it, but I think she’ll be fine with it. We’ll make sure we say only what we need to.”

  Saying they had found the dead body was fine. Even humans could smell one that was that pungent.

  “Okay, I’ll have Brett call you in a little bit,” Peter said.

  “Make it a couple of hours.” Nate had every intention of making love to Kayla first and then napping with her.

  “Yeah, sure, sorry about all this.”

  “It’s not your fault that we found a dead body. Talk to you later, Peter.” Then Nate realized Kayla was already in the bathroom showering. He hurried for the bathroom and quickly slid his board shorts off and put them on the tub next to her wet bathing suit. He walked into the shower, pulling the glass door closed, and enveloped her soapy body in his arms.

  “Is Peter sending someone to get rid of these reporters?” she asked, rubbing her soapy skin against his, his erection already growing with desire.

  “Yeah, but Brett’s going to come and interview us.”

  Kayla didn’t appear pleased with the notion.

  “We’ll rehearse what we’re going to say, and it’ll be based on the truth. At least we weren’t running in our wolf coats, and anyone could have smelled the dead body as a human, so we should be fine.”

  “Okay, and then it can be exclusive to him and no one else will bother us.”

  “Hopefully.”

  They dried off and ended up in bed and began making love, so glad they hadn’t waited to mate any further, and then slept.

  When they both woke, they dressed and checked to see if the reporters were gone, and they were. Before they gathered their gear to fish, Brett called. “Hey, is this a good time to for me to get that interview?”

  “Yeah, sure. Come on out. We’re going fishing afterward.”

  “That sounds like fun. I’ll be there soon. Peter said he sent CJ to get rid of the news reporters who were trespassing.”

  “Good. We noticed they were gone, but I figured they would have needed some persuading.”

  “CJ can be persuasive, that’s for sure,” Brett said.

  After a quarter of an hour, Brett arrived in his truck with Jake, who was taking the pictures.

  Nate explained how they had smelled the dead body and then had swum across the river to locate the victim after Kayla called the sheriff’s department.

  “Okay, we know we can’t give any details on the crime scene. But what were you both thinking when you swam across the river?” Brett asked.

  “That if the person who had died wasn’t alone and that someone else who might have been with him had been injured, we might save him or her. We didn’t have any idea what could have happened. But it wasn’t to be the case,” Nate said.

  “What about the situation with you rescuing the men at the Silver Falls?” Brett asked.

  “I didn’t think this news story would be about that,” Nate said.

  “Brett hadn’t planned on it being any more than the case of the murdered man. Before we got here,” Jake said, “we heard the news about the waterfall incident on TV though.”

  “No,” Kayla said.

  “Yep,” Brett said. “The men you rescued told the news about it as soon as they could, once they learned you had found the dead man. I think they wanted to be part of all the news, and they took this opportunity to go to the press.”

  Nate shook his head.

  “Hey, it makes for great press,” Brett said. “Our own hero and heroine, and you were both human the whole time. Thankfully, they didn’t mention the diamond necklace. Peter said Eric read them the riot act and said if they mentioned anything about the jewelry, whoever stole it might want to eliminate them. So that must have convinced them not to speak of it.”

  “That’s good,” Kayla said, “or we could find a bunch of treasure seekers out here, along with the jewelry store robbers.”

  “Exactly,” CJ said.

  Then they talked about the rescue, and Brett read over the interview questions and answers to make sure they all were in agreement, and then Jake took a few pictures of Kayla and Nate.

  “We will be out of your hair then,” Brett said. “Have a good time.”

  “And congratulations are in order,” Jake said.