“Sounds good.” David and the rest of his surveillance team headed out to his vehicle. When they arrived at the cabin, they found the same cars parked there that had been sitting in the agency’s parking lot.

  “I’ll make sure it’s them.” David stripped and shifted in the vehicle, and Elizabeth opened the car door for him.

  He lifted his head, checking to see which way the wind was blowing, and moved as close to the log cabin as he could without being seen. His nose immediately caught the scents of Kintail, Hans, and Bentley, and the other two men Kintail had with him. Fresh scents.

  They were definitely still around.

  He slipped back through the woods to the car, shifted and dressed, then stayed out of sight while they observed the cabin. He gave a call to Cameron. “Kintail and his men are at the rental cabin. The cars are still parked there, and I heard voices. Kintail is mad at Hans and Bentley. I couldn’t make out what they were saying exactly, but the tone was clear enough.”

  “Okay, good job. Keep me posted.”

  A few minutes later, they watched as Hans came out of the cabin and ran his hands through his hair, looking totally pissed off.

  Then a vehicle drove up and Hans got into it. Now what? Should they follow him to see where he was going? Or continue to watch the cabin?

  “We should stay with the pack leader,” Sheri said, reaffirming what David thought. “He’s calling the shots. I’m sure my parents told my brother off, and he’s probably on the outs with Kintail now too. He wouldn’t like my brother to show any weakness when it comes to doing his bidding.”

  “Okay, we stick with them,” David said.

  Splitting forces might have made sense in a different scenario, but no way was he putting Sheri or Elizabeth at risk. Plus Sheri was right. Kintail was the real threat.

  They’d been there for about a half hour when Cameron called them. They were far enough away that David felt comfortable putting it on speakerphone. “Hey, Hans is here at the office looking to speak with his sister.”

  Sheri’s mouth gaped. “No.”

  “Yeah, apparently his dad gave him a dressing-down about lying to you about being disowned. So Hans is upset about that, and the pack leader is doubly upset with him for not standing up to his parents. Hans wants to talk to you in person. I’m coming to get you, if everyone else is busy with surveillance.”

  A couple of new cars pulled up to the cabin. David tensed. That couldn’t be good.

  “Uh, yeah, Cameron? Ask Hans if Kintail called in reinforcements to get more of his people down here,” he said.

  They heard Cameron ask the question, his voice muffled.

  Hans got on the phone. “Listen, Kintail left me out of what is going on. I’m on the outs with him now. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he called for backup.”

  “What do you plan to do?” Sheri sounded irritated with her brother for being mixed up in all this in the first place.

  “I don’t know, but I want to talk to you in person,” Hans said.

  ***

  Elizabeth and Sheri wrote down the names of the men they saw leaving the cars and entering Kintail’s cabin. They were definitely called in by Kintail.

  “They’re some of the men who were on the bear hunt with you and Owen, David,” Elizabeth said.

  “I recognize some of them. Though some of them were wolves at the time,” David said.

  “Yeah, I recognize them too,” Owen said. “So they’ve come to use brute force. Not surprising. They did the first time they tried to return us to the pack.”

  Sheri called her parents and put it on speakerphone. “Hey, Mom, Kintail has called up the troops to try and force me to go home.”

  Her dad got on the phone. “We’re flying up there from Cancun.”

  “I don’t want you to get mixed up in this.”

  “We are anyway. It’s not right that Kintail thinks he can dictate whether anyone leaves the pack. Your mother is already getting a flight booked for us to come out right away.”

  “Thanks,” Sheri said. “I hope it doesn’t hurt your standing with the pack.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll be there soon, I promise,” her dad said.

  “Okay, thanks, Dad.” Sheri ended the call. “This is awful. I didn’t want my parents to get in the middle of it.” Sheri called her brother and put the call on speakerphone. “Thanks to you, my ex-boyfriend, and our pack leader, we’ve got a real crisis here. And Mom and Dad are going to be in the middle of it. You have a choice to stand with us or against us, but our parents are on my side.”

  “Hell, Sheri.”

  “Hey, if you all had left well enough alone, everything would have been fine.”

  “All right, damn it. I’m with you. I can’t believe this. All because you followed your friend here.”

  “And you followed us here!”

  “Fine. I know. Geez,” Hans said. They heard a deep sigh, then he asked: “What can I do, Cameron?”

  “Not screw this up!” Sheri suggested, as only a sister could, then hung up the phone.

  David was glad she hadn’t backed down. She was just like Elizabeth in that way. It probably didn’t hurt that her parents were coming. He just hoped they wouldn’t regret throwing their support behind him and his pack.

  He also wondered if maybe they wanted to check out the new pack while they were at it. He suspected the way Kintail was, he would be as pissed off at them when they returned to the pack, which might increase the chances of them moving here too. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to the rest of the pack yet, but he knew they would be welcome.

  He just wasn’t sure where that left Hans. But that was a problem for another day.

  The phone rang again, another call from Cameron.

  “We’re going to switch out with you,” Cameron said. “We don’t want the women there now that Kintail has called in reinforcements.”

  “All right. We’ll wait for you to arrive. They’re all still inside. I’m sure Kintail has something planned.”

  “Okay,” Cameron said. “We’re on our way. Hans is coming with us.”

  “Can you trust him?” David asked.

  “I think he’s being sincere.”

  “Okay, gotcha. We don’t want to hurt him and undo all the goodwill we have with his parents.” David could just imagine that backfiring on them.

  Not long after, Cameron and Gavin arrived with Hans. Sheri didn’t want to speak with him, and he was just as irritated with her. But again, that was a problem for another day. Sheri’s problem, not his.

  David said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

  “No, you and Owen watch over everyone else. We’ll let you know when the men leave the cabin. I doubt they’ll want to try anything until tonight though.”

  “Which is just what Kintail will think you’ll believe,” Hans warned.

  David shared a look with Cameron.

  Hans saw it and interpreted it correctly. “I’m on your side. Maybe not by choice,” he said, “but I’m trying to do the right thing now.” He ran a hand through his hair, the strands sticking up in every direction. “I thought I was doing the right thing before, what my parents would have wanted even, but they made it clear I was dead wrong.” He turned toward Sheri. “It may not mean much now, but I’m sorry.”

  Sheri didn’t seem quite ready to forgive and forget, and David suspected Hans’s about-face was more that he was afraid his parents would disown him if he didn’t come around, but if that’s what it took, then fine.

  And maybe the older couple could convince Kintail he was making a mistake. Unfortunately, it sounded like it might be a little while before Sheri’s parents arrived, and all signs were pointing to the fact Kintail was putting a dangerous plan into motion as they spoke.

  Chapter 26

  David drove his surveillance team—Elizabeth, Sheri, and Owen—to the office. He’d barely sat down when he got a call from Gavin.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “Nothing with Kincaid. It’s about the Moore case. The signature signing over the loan to the partner is a forgery. The handwriting expert reviewing it says it’s definitely not Mr. Moore’s signature. Seems Mr. Moore was savvy enough to understand something was up, medicated or not. Unfortunately, that might have been what caused his death.”

  “What do you mean?” David said. “His death wasn’t natural?”

  “Well, there is growing evidence that someone tampered with the dosage of his medication, and all signs point to the partner. I’d say yeah, we are looking at a murder case.”

  “Ah, damn it.” David closed his eyes. He hated cases that took a turn like this.

  “Yeah,” Gavin said. “It looked like Mr. Moore wasn’t dying fast enough to suit Cooper. I’m turning over everything we’ve found to Ms. Moore, and she’s passing it along to the police.”

  “Okay, good.” When they ended the call, David let Elizabeth and Sheri know what’d happened.

  “Oh, wow,” Sheri said. “Poor Ms. Moore.”

  “Poor Mr. Moore,” Elizabeth added. “I guess you never know what you might dig up when investigating a case.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “Sometimes it’s really straightforward. Sometimes it’s a shot in the dark. Then we see the light.”

  Candice came out of Owen’s office smiling. “Heads up! Uncle Strom is arriving here in about fifteen minutes with old friends of ours, the Andersons, and some other jaguars in the United Shifter Force, and one human, Rowdy Sanderson, who was dying to meet us. They are bringing camping supplies if we don’t have enough room for them.”

  Corey ran up the stairs to join them. “Granddaddy and Grandma are coming!” he shouted on repeat, making sure the whole office heard.

  Faith and the other kids soon followed, and she ran her hand over Corey’s hair. “My dad and mom and Leidolf and some of his men are arriving in a few minutes. He said they ran into the jaguars at the airport, and Leidolf, being the red pack leader, asked what Uncle Strom and the others were doing there.”

  “Had they not met before?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Nope. Which is why Uncle Strom asked them what the hell they were doing there. And if they were Kintail’s men, they’d better think twice about being there,” Faith said.

  “That’s all we need: a big cat-and-wolf fight between our rescuers,” Gavin said.

  “Well, they figured it out, so it’s all good,” Faith said.

  “So they’re all coming in at the same time. Good show,” David said. “We will probably need to pick up some more groceries when we can. Or pool what we have if we can’t do that.”

  “And plan for sleeping arrangements,” Faith said. “I’ll begin working on that.”

  Faith and the kids went back downstairs, Candice returned to Cameron’s office—since he was still with Gavin watching Kintail’s cabin—and David and Owen took some time to review their other open cases.

  A short time later, several cars pulled up into the parking lot of the agency. Everyone went still, and it was clear they shared the same concern: Were the jaguars and red wolves joining them? Or had Kintail and his men decided to come to the agency to force the issue with Sheri leaving them and not waiting until dark, like Cameron and the others thought they might?

  Candice answered those unasked questions almost as soon as the first car door opened. “It’s Uncle Strom,” she said, coming out of the office. David and Owen hurried outside, smiling widely at Uncle Strom—everyone called him that—and Everett and Demetria Anderson, and Rowdy Sanderson—who David recognized from the search Elizabeth had pulled together to find him—and six other jaguars he didn’t know.

  As promised, Leidolf was there too. David recognized him right off the bat. He was joined by Faith’s father and her mother, and five more of Leidolf’s brawny red wolf men. Eighteen able-bodied jaguars and wolves, though Candice’s mom and dad and Everett and Demetria would be better suited to helping Faith with the kids than fighting a wolf battle.

  Faith and the kids hurried up the stairs from the basement and joined Candice as they all came outside to greet everyone. It was a huge extended family of jaguars and wolves, both white and red.

  “Thanks so much for coming,” Candice said, hugging her uncle.

  Hugs were going around all over the place, except for Elizabeth and Sheri, who stood off to the side, smiling but not getting in on all the rest of it. They didn’t know any of these people, yet they were the reason everyone had made the emergency trips here to help out the Cameron pack. David could see how the two women might feel awkward.

  He stepped in to quickly remedy that, introducing each of their guests to both Elizabeth and Sheri, Elizabeth being his mate after all, and Sheri her best friend. They were as important to the pack as any of them.

  David’s phone rang and he stepped away to take a call from Cameron. “Kintail and his men—ten in number—are on their way to the agency. We’re following them, but they don’t know they have a tail. We’ll slip around the back way so we’re there when they arrive.”

  “The red wolf crew and the jaguar crew are here and ready to go.”

  “Great news. I know Faith and the kids must be so excited to see their family. If you would let them know to go into the basement for a time, I would be forever grateful,” Cameron said.

  “Doing it now.” David hung up and announced Kintail and his men would be there in a few minutes. “Cameron wants his family waiting in the basement, if that works for you all.”

  “Yeah,” Faith’s dad said. “Let’s go.” He and his mate, Faith and the kids all headed inside.

  “I’m going inside,” Candice said before Owen or her Uncle Strom told her to.

  David kissed Elizabeth and gave Sheri a hug, and they went inside too.

  Cameron roared up in his car, and he and Gavin got out.

  There were handshakes all around and more introductions. David smiled. Man, he felt good.

  A few of the men headed inside to get familiar with the office, while Leidolf and some of his men and Uncle Strom and most of his jaguar friends waited with Cameron, David, and Owen outside.

  It wasn’t long before Kintail’s car and two others were pulling up into the parking area. Kintail got out of his car, his gaze jumping from Hans to Leidolf. Kintail’s head ticked to the side, sniffing, shifting his eyes to the other red wolves and the jaguars.

  He had to understand, in that moment, exactly what he was up against: Hans siding with the enemy, David and his partners, all newly turned, standing as one with the established red wolf pack.

  Kintail let his gaze return to Leidolf. He inclined his head in deference. “So we meet again. Still fighting Cameron and his friends’ battles, I see.”

  “We’re united by family, if you didn’t know. Faith’s father is one of my kind and mated to one of my wolves. Though even if we hadn’t been united by family, I would have been here as their friend. Sometimes being friends with other packs is the only way to go. Isolationist packs are on their own when it comes to encroaching packs.”

  David was glad Leidolf had said so. There was a time when Leidolf—being royal—hadn’t wanted David and his friends in his own pack. But in the end, they had been united with bonds that went beyond just friendship.

  “So in other words,” Leidolf said, in case he had to spell it out to the Canadian Arctic wolf pack leader, “we have their back in the event other wolf packs are giving them trouble.”

  “But not when they wanted to return to Seattle, I understand. A gray wolf pack wouldn’t let them stay in the city, their home,” Kintail said.

  “No. The gray wolf pack had established roots there for centuries. Cameron and his friends were humans when they had grown up there. So it’s not the same. Here, this is their pack territory, their rules,” Leidolf said.

  “You really don’t want to get involved in this,” Kintail said.

  “Yeah, I do. Wolf pack boundaries are clear.”

  Bentley moved forward, all eyes turning on him because of his aggressive stance. “Sheri is my wolf.”

  Leidolf raised a brow.

  David stepped forward, mirroring Bentley’s aggressive stance. “Sheri came here of her own free will. She has plans to stay with us and is finished with you, as she has told you already. She’s not interested in mating you. We don’t want a fight over this. She’s free to come and go as she pleases.” He turned from Bentley, knowing who called the shots. “You can’t force her to stay in your pack, Kintail. Think how this could impact your pack if Sheri is forced to return and she’s unhappy. How do you think her family would feel?”

  “They’ve disowned her. But if she returns, they’ll accept her back,” Bentley said, casting Hans a glower as he moved to stand beside David.

  “But they haven’t disowned her,” David said, giving Hans a smile. “We know the truth. Sheri has talked to her parents and they’re proud of her for taking a stand to do something she really wants to do with her life.”

  “We should never have turned you,” Bentley said, growling the words.

  Leidolf said, “But you did.”

  And now look, David thought. Now they’d lost two more of their people to Cameron’s pack. And maybe even Sheri’s parents and her brother, too, if they decided to join them.

  “You don’t want a fight on your hands,” Kintail said finally, not backing down—surely a show for his pack to prove he was still the alpha—though he did glance in Uncle Strom’s direction.

  The jaguar leaned against one of the rental cars, his arms folded across his chest, looking relaxed and not like he would enjoy taking a bite out of Kintail.

  It was a losing battle for Kintail; they all knew it. David just hoped Kintail knew it too. He needed to lick his wounds and return home before anyone got hurt. There were times to fight and times to give up the battle and live for another day.