I could tell by the change in his scent that he recognized the two males who were killed—and the one killed by a human didn’t surprise him.>
Spotting
Jacob Gott heading toward them, Virgil turned and walked away. Human pup or Wolf pup, the solution was the same: when an adult got tired of playing with a puppy, he walked away.
The humor in Tolya’s voice made Virgil growl. And she was third in the police pack. Third.
But the wolverine was the dominant female in their pack.
Virgil sighed. Mixed-species packs were harder to handle than Wolves.
He stopped at the sheriff’s office and took Rusty across the street to her piddle spot. When he brought her back to her crate and the pup looked at him with sad eyes, he gave her a scritch. “You and I will go out on the square and have a good run before your mom takes you home.”
The office door opened. Rusty tried to rush past him to welcome the person standing in the doorway.
“I took her out,” he said, holding the pup. He heard boots moving across the floor, and he felt her at his back. The wolverine walked quietly for a human—except when she didn’t, and that, he suspected, was deliberate. “She should have a good run. Been in the den too much lately.”
The wolverine sighed and crouched to give pats and accept licks. “I know. I wish I could take her with me when I ride Mel.”
“Why don’t you? The horse that is not meat wouldn’t fear a puppy.”
She looked like she was going to argue with him about the horse, but she didn’t. A passive wolverine? Should that worry him?
“You think she would be okay, would be safe, off the leash? There isn’t that much traffic on the square, but there are the buses and taxis and some personal vehicles.”
“Pups follow the adults. That’s how they learn.” Virgil shrugged. “You ride. She and I will run. And she’ll learn.”
Jana nodded. “Okay.” She nudged Rusty back into the crate and closed the door. “The person who killed the man we found the other day …”
“Is nearby. So is the Blackstone called the Gambler.”
“The Blackstones are Abby’s family.”
Virgil nodded. “She needs to hide.”
Jana looked at her watch. “I’ll call Barb and see if she knows where Abby is working this afternoon. But if someone spots her before I find her and follows her back to her house …”
“Kane is watching the Maddie pup. If a stranger appears on the street, he’ll howl for us.”
Virgil waited a minute after Jana left. Then he walked across the square to the jewelry store to see if he could flush out his prey.
* * *
* * *
Heart racing, Abigail ducked around the corner and pressed her back against the wall.
Oh gods, oh gods, he was already here. Her father was at the registration desk, checking into the hotel.
It had been so easy to talk the young man who had been assigned to clean the transient guest rooms into letting her help. He usually did other kinds of maintenance in the hotel, but they were short staffed today because two of the girls had called in sick. One girl really was sick and had been at the doctor’s office when Anya had called to confirm there was actual illness. The other girl hadn’t wanted to come in that day and was now scrambling to find some other employment before she was put on a train heading for an arbitrary destination.
The young man told her this in a voice filled with hushed awe. What had seemed like a harmless fib to have an extra day off had become a hard lesson in how the terra indigene differed from human employers.
Abigail made sympathetic noises, but she wondered how many times the girl had played the “I’m sick” card to get out of