Maybe he was howling to let others of the wolf pack know they were out there again, giving their location. And probably to scare the men off so they would leave and she wouldn’t be hurt. But she wanted them here so Peter could catch them out here again.

  “Shit, we got to get out of here,” Randy said.

  “You go, but if Phil’s got the jewelry, we’re not sharing it with you,” Everest said.

  “You didn’t have wolves chasing you the last time. So where the hell is Phil then?” Randy and the others moved off, and Kayla heard something heading in her direction.

  When she saw Nate moving toward her in the underbrush, quiet as a mouse, she smiled. It was her loving wolf. He brushed up against her, licked her face, and nipped her ear. She suspected he wished she had gone to the cabin with him, but she wanted to make sure their people found these men and took them into custody.

  But then she realized she had a problem. She was feeling the urge to shift. No, no, no!

  She wanted to hurry back to the cabin now! She needed to make sure she didn’t run into Phil or any of his friends when she shifted, though they might not be able to see her in the dark. Not unless they moved their flashlights in her direction.

  She licked Nate’s face and then began to lope for the cabin, listening to the sounds of anyone moving about in the woods. Nate was running with her, sticking close to her to protect her.

  Phil was the unknown quantity, as far as where he was located right now. Though Randy and Everest’s girlfriends might be out here too. But Kayla didn’t figure they would be out here on their own. They would most likely have come with the guys.

  The urge to shift hit Kayla again, and this time she couldn’t stop it. She felt the heat filling her, and she wanted to hold off so badly, but she couldn’t. The next thing she knew, she was a naked human, trying to get to the cabin as fast as she could.

  “Don’t you dare shift,” she whispered in warning to Nate. If she ran into someone and she was naked, wandering through the brush, she wanted Nate to be a wolf and he could protect her.

  He woofed at her. She loved how he was so agreeable when she wanted to do this her way.

  She still wanted to tell Nate right away that Phil was in on all of this and the whole gang of his friends were armed robbers and that Phil had killed Manning. But for now, she just had to get back to the cabin without running into any of these men.

  She was running as fast as she could without hurting herself and trying to watch out for the men when they grew quiet. She didn’t like the silence. Except for the cicadas making their noisy tune, frogs riveting, and crickets singing that filled the night with song—those were welcome sounds. The ones the humans who were a danger to her were making? Those were eerily silent.

  Nate ran ahead of her and to the sides, circling her, making sure no one was getting close to her. She so loved her wolf. She heard a twig snap, and she whipped around, saw a flashlight, and ducked down behind a fallen tree.

  Nate quickly joined her and nuzzled against her, her hero, keeping her warm, telling her he would keep her safe. But the person moved toward her as if he knew she was there and he would soon see her. He was getting too close. She moved down lower. But Nate stood up, and she knew that when the flashlight hit his eyes, they would be fluorescent, a glow that could be scary to a human. But she also worried the man would most likely be armed.

  She couldn’t look. She was leaning down on her hands and knees, her head down, hiding behind the tree trunk. She didn’t know if it was Phil or one of the other men. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction to share his scent with her.

  Then Nate growled softly. No, no, no! She knew he was going to attack the man. She didn’t want him getting shot. But Nate leapt over the tree, and she looked. She had to. She had to rescue her mate if the man shot Nate.

  Nate ran so fast the man didn’t have time to get a shot off. Nate lunged at him, knocking him down, and the shot went wild, hitting a tree nearby. Then Nate grabbed the gun in his teeth and raced to rejoin Kayla, but she was naked, for heaven’s sake, and she knew he wanted her to run with him back to the cabin. But the guy would see her!

  Then she looked more closely at the figure, and he wasn’t moving. Either playing dead, just knocked out, or really dead?

  She made her move to run to the cabin with her wolf, so proud of him. But the gunshot had made the others head in that direction, and she was afraid they’d run into them.

  She had hoped everyone would take off the other way. That’s normally what she would do, but of course as a wolf, gunfire wasn’t something she took lightly. She wished she was a wolf with all her being so she could run faster, lower to the ground, unseen in the dark.

  She couldn’t let them find her. She just couldn’t. She didn’t want Nate to be put in the position of rescuing her against all the others. She didn’t think he’d win. Together, if they were both wolves, the two of them could take care of the robbers, though they didn’t want to kill anyone. But if they were given no choice…

  The cabin was finally in sight, and she heard the men calling out, “Damn, it’s Phil! Over here, Randy! He’s been knocked out.” Their voices traveled through the woods because they were talking so loudly, and her enhanced wolf hearing certainly helped her hear them.

  “Where’s his gun?” Everest asked.

  “He doesn’t have one, but the other guy sure did. Hell, if I had known someone else was out here shooting, I would have gone the other way,” Gerald said.

  “Hell, you always run the other way. I don’t know why you’re even part of this,” Everest said.

  “Because we’ve always been friends. Damn it. And I’m the best getaway driver there is. Besides, I’m the one who actually got Durham Manning to agree to go along with this after Phil tried to convince him because Manning liked my uncle and me. He didn’t trust all of you. Now I can see why. Well, I mean—” Gerald stopped speaking, as if he realized he had said too much. That maybe Phil would want to get rid of him next. He changed the subject. “Whoever it was really knocked Phil out cold.”

  Good news on Phil being knocked out though. Maybe it would give the sheriff enough time to reach them before the men got out of there. Unfortunately, Phil and his friends weren’t too far from the cabin—which meant they might end up there again.

  Someone groaned, and she suspected Phil was coming to. Too bad. At least no one was coming after her and Nate, who was sticking close to her, keeping her safe in case anyone else tried to shoot at her.

  “Hey, Phil, who shot at you?” Randy asked.

  “What? Hell, I shot at a wolf. It attacked me. Oh, God, my head hurts.” Then Phil didn’t say anything for a moment. “Where’s my gun?” He sounded panicked, like he could be all tough when he was carrying a gun, but without it? He was a coward. But the bad news was that he was probably alert enough to leave the area now.

  “We didn’t find any,” Randy said. “Don’t tell me it’s the one you used on Manning.”

  “Look for it, damn it. It’s got to be around here somewhere.” Phil didn’t deny he’d killed their friend with it.

  Kayla realized then that when Peter had checked Everest’s and the other friends’ guns out, they hadn’t been the ones used to kill Manning. She thought about the glass windows being shot out at the jewelry stores. Bullets and shell casings would have been left at the scenes. So the guns must not have been used at those crime scenes or ballistics would have proven they had been.

  “I don’t understand. Did the wolf bite you? Why did it run off?” Everest asked.

  “No, damn it. I mean, yeah, it knocked me down and ran off. It didn’t bite me.”

  “Good thing for you,” Randy said. “Those wolves are big and scary-looking.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? Its eyes glowed in the dark. Scared me shitless. Where’s my gun?” Phil asked again.

  “We looked, Phil. We thought you were carrying, but you didn’t have a gun on you. Do you know where the goods are?” Everest asked.

  “No. I thought we’d find them, but you got here too late to help me look for them.”

  “Yeah, like it’s all our damn fault. You’re the one who killed Manning. And, damn it, he hid the damn jewelry,” Everest said.

  “It was a case of self-defense. I told you that already. Manning was going to kill me, and I killed him first. So deal with it. Stop whining about it. We just need to get the jewelry and go. But we’ll have to come back before sunrise. Somebody help me up, damn it. We gotta find my gun.”

  Kayla finally reached the cabin, but before she could crawl through the wolf door as a human, Nate ran though the wolf door, shifted, and unlocked the door for her. She ran into the cabin, rubbing her arms because she was so cold.

  Nate quickly locked the door and pulled her into his arms. “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  “Oh, you have nothing to be sorry for. I shouldn’t have stayed out so long, but I had to learn what I could about this, and now we know Phil killed Manning for sure. We’ve got to call Peter with all the news.”

  “Yeah. I’m right on it.”

  “Good. I’m taking a shower to wash off the mud and warm up.”

  “Be there in a couple of minutes.” Then Nate called Peter, and once he finished the call, he joined Kayla in the bathroom to shower too. “You know they’ll deny everything that was said tonight in the woods.”

  She was so muddy, brown water mixed with the soapsuds as they ran down the drain. “I know. But we both were witnesses to it. We’ll have to testify. Come join me in the shower.”

  “Without real evidence, just our witness statements won’t put them behind bars, I’m afraid.”

  “Unless Phil’s gun was the same one used to kill Manning,” she said.

  Nate joined her in the shower, and she soaped him up too while he pulled her into a slippery hug and kissed her thoroughly. “I sure as hell hope it is. I’m ready to testify against them.”

  “Everest’s dad will have a high-powered lawyer to defend Everest and maybe the others involved in this so that none of them turn on each other, don’t you think?” She rubbed her soapy body against Nate’s, so glad he hadn’t been shot, so glad they’d made it safely back to the cabin.

  “Right.” He ran her hands over her slippery breasts. “We should be going to bed and making love.”

  “We’re going to have to talk to Peter about all this tonight, won’t we?”

  “Yeah. But it shouldn’t take long.”

  “God, I was so scared Phil might have shot you.”

  “I was so afraid he’d see you and kill you. He was too rattled when I ran at him to make his mark.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that he would be so shaken and not be able to aim and hit you.”

  Nate smiled at her and kissed her nose. “I had to take the risk. If he had moved much closer to the tree trunk where you were hiding, he would have seen you. I couldn’t chance him targeting you.”

  Then they heard a knock at the cabin’s front door.

  “I figured the police would try to find Phil and his friends first, and we’d have a little longer at”—he smiled and kissed her—“this. I’ll go get the door. Peter will need to gather up the jewelry and take it with him.” Nate quickly rinsed off and left the shower, while Kayla continued rinsing the soap from her hair.

  Chapter 24

  Nate wanted to kill Phil and all his friends who were involved in the robbery. They owed him a tire. Hell, they owed him his van tires too. And Phil sure as hell needed to pay for shooting at Kayla and him. He’d about had a heart attack when Phil had fired at him.

  Nate threw on some clothes and hurried to the front door, wondering why Peter didn’t just come in since he had a key to the place.

  Looking through the security peephole, Nate made sure it was Peter and not Phil or any of his accomplices. When he saw it was the sheriff and Jake, Nate unlocked the door and let them in, glad it was just them.

  “Hey,” Peter said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, we’re so sorry we had to come here like this,” Jake said, locking the door behind him.

  “Bothering you again. A dozen men are out searching for them. Have you got the jewelry?” Peter asked.

  “Yes,” Kayla said, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, bringing the bag of jewelry out to him. “Take it with our deepest gratitude. We might have missed some. A ring had fallen out of the bag, which helped us to find the rest of it.”

  “Kayla found it,” Nate said, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. Then they took their seats in the living room.

  Peter got a call and said, “Okay, thanks.” He ended the call. “That was CJ calling; they were too late in coming and weren’t able to catch them. They didn’t find any vehicles in the area, so they assumed they’d gotten away,” Peter said. “Nate wasn’t able to say a whole lot to us about what had happened before we got here, except Phil had killed Manning and you’d found the jewelry. But I understand there’s more to the story than that.”

  They both told him what they had heard while Peter recorded their testimony. Then he had them write up witness statements so that could be used to help build the case against the men.

  “But it’s only our word against theirs,” Kayla said.

  “Right, but we can try to lift prints off the jewelry and the bag,” Peter said.

  “The problem with that is that they were probably wearing gloves when they committed the robbery,” Kayla said, getting everyone some water to drink.

  “True. But you never know. We’ll attempt to lift fingerprints, just in case one of them did finger the jewelry afterward, figuring they’d never get caught,” Peter said. “Oh, and in other news—we searched Phil’s parents’ property and discovered a black pickup truck, the same model and make as the one the two of you identified that had run you off the road in Green Valley. Manning’s luggage, cell phone, wallet, and ID were all in the back seat. The tires were gone, windshield and sides of vehicle bashed up good, the license plates removed, probably trying to make it look like it had been there forever. All kinds of old rusted farm equipment was out there and an old truck and car rusting away. A strand of trees hid the area from the farmhouses and the road.”

  “So maybe Phil drove it there after he killed Manning,” Kayla said.

  “I’d say so. A forensics team is going over it now, looking for fingerprints,” Peter said.

  “What other evidence do we have against them?” Kayla asked, sounding disheartened that they hadn’t found any of the men in the area. At least they could have gotten them for trespassing again and then taken them in for questioning. “Anything?”

  Nate smiled and slapped his thigh, remembering the gun. “Phil’s gun.” He motioned to the floor where he’d dropped it when he’d rushed through the wolf door so he could open the back door for Kayla. “Phil fired a shot using that gun. From what they said in the woods, it was the same gun Phil used to kill Manning. It will have a little wolf saliva on it though.”

  Peter smiled. “Now that is just the evidence we need to put Phil away. The gun, of course. Not the wolf saliva.” He retrieved the gun and put it in an evidence bag. “Any other surprises?”

  Nate laughed. “No, sorry. I had forgotten about it. I was just trying to get Kayla safely in the house, and then we needed to call you and wash off all the mud we’d been in.”

  “No problem. As a sheriff, I love those kinds of surprises. Since Phil was shooting in the woods, we should be able to find a shell casing and a bullet.”

  Their sense of smell was so sensitive that they could smell for the scent of gunfire and they should be able to locate the casing and bullet.

  “Yeah, we sure will. And we’ll help you look for it in the morning,” Kayla said. “I shouldn’t have an issue with shifting, and I want to help.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Nate said.

  “The other thing was Phil said he was the one who solicited Manning to do the job with him and the rest of their friends. I’m sure Phil is the guy Roxie and I saw in the woods talking to Manning about a job while trespassing on our land. We were running as wolves at the time. One of them said they were doing it for Gerald’s uncle, so if Gerald only came for Manning’s keys at the lodge, his uncle is overall responsible. The man who came for the keys had a shaved head and face, but Gerald has red fuzzy hair now and he’s growing a beard. I recognized his voice though from when he was at the lodge,” Kayla said. “And I smelled his scent.”

  “He shaved off his beard and hair before he went to the lodge,” Peter said, nodding. “And that can make someone look really different.”

  “Gerald’s hair was long, tied back in a ponytail, and he had a mustache and beard when Nicole and I spoke with him at his apartment about Phil going missing,” Nate said. “When I questioned him about what had happened to Phil, he was afraid he would be considered an accomplice. I thought it meant with respect to Phil’s disappearance. But now it seems he meant regarding soliciting Manning to do the heist with them when Phil’s attempt had failed.”

  “If Gerald is on social media, you can probably see pictures of him with the old hairstyle and beard,” Kayla said.

  Jake was already on his phone.

  “They said they wondered if the jewelry had been hidden somewhere else,” Kayla said.

  “The police have found some of it that the robbers sold at a pawn shop in one of the towns north of Green Valley,” Peter said. “That jewelry belonged to one of the shops at a town south of Green Valley. The police haven’t uncovered any of the rest of it, and we’ll need to identify which store these pieces are from. Then you’ll get your reward.” He smiled. “After all you’ve been through on your vacation, I’d say that you’re past due for it.”

  “Yeah, you can always use it to take a vacation away from here,” Jake said.

  “We’ll put it toward our new house,” Kayla said, and Nate was proud of her for sounding so eager to get started on the project.

  He knew it would be stressful. It would be for anyone taking on the venture, but he wanted to be there with her every step of the way, fully invested in the process of building a home for them.