A sudden burst of noise from the kitchen drowned out her reply and, tucking the phone under one arm, he moved to the door to close it. Then he stopped. And he listened.
And he knew.
Good cops don't ever laugh at intuition, too often a life hangs in the balance.
"The situation's changed." He cut Vicki off, not hearing what she said. "You'll have to make it back here on your own. Peter's missing."
Storm crept across the open twenty meters from the fence bottom to the barn crouched so low the fur on his stomach brushed the ground. When he reached the stone foundation of the barn wall, he froze.
The boards were old and warped and most had a line of light running between them. He changed - to get his muzzle out of the way, not because one form had better vision than the other - and placed one eye up against a crack.
A kerosene lantern burned on one end of a long table, illuminating the profile of the man from the jeep as he stood, back to the door, fiddling with something Peter couldn't see. A shotgun leaned against the table edge, in easy reach.
Under the man-scent, the smell of the lantern, and the lingering odor of the animals the barn had once held there was a strong scent of oiled steel, more than the gun alone could possibly account for. Peter frowned, changed, and padded silently around to the big front doors. One stood slightly ajar, wide enough for him to slip through in either form but angled so that he couldn't charge straight into the barn and attack the man at the table. His lips curled his teeth and his throat vibrated with an unvoiced growl. The human underestimated him; a wer that didn't want to be heard, wasn't. He could get in, turn, and attack before the human could reach the gun, let alone aim and fire it.
He moved forward. The scent of oiled steel grew stronger. The dirt floor shifted under his front paw and he froze. Then he saw the traps. Three of them, set in the opening angle of the door, in hollows dug out of the floor then covered with something too light to set them off or hinder their movement when the jaws snapped shut. He couldn't be sure, but it smelled like the moss stuff Aunt Nadine put in the garden.
He could jump them easily, but the floor beyond had been disturbed as well and he couldn't tell for certain where safe footing began. Nor could he change and spring the traps without becoming a target for the shotgun.
Nose to the walls, he circled the building. Every possible entry had the same scent.
Every possible entry but one.
High on the east wall, almost hidden behind the branches of a young horse-chestnut tree was a small square opening used, back when the barn had held cattle, for passing hay bales into the loft. As a rule, the wer didn't climb trees, but that didn't mean they couldn't and callused fingers and toes found grips that mere human hands and feet might not have been able to use.
Moving carefully along a dangerously narrow limb, Peter checked out the hole, found no traps, and slipped silently through, congratulating himself on outwitting his enemy.
The old loft smelled only of stale hay and dust. Crouched low, Peter padded along a huge square cut beam until he could see down into the barn. He was almost directly over the table which contained, besides the lantern, a brown paper package, a notebook, and a heavy canvas apron.
The man from the jeep checked his watch and stood, head cocked, listening.
The whole setup was a trap and a trap set specifically for fur-form.
There could no longer be any question about it, this was the man who was killing his family. A man who knew them well enough to judge correctly what form he'd wear tonight.
Peter grinned and his eyes gleamed in the lantern light. He'd never felt so alive. His entire body thrummed. He had no intention of disappointing the human; he wanted fur-form, he'd get it. Tooth and claw would take him down. Moving to the edge of the beam, he changed and launched himself snarling through the air, landing with all four feet on the back of the human below.
Together, they crashed to the ground.
For one brief instant, Mark Williams had been pleased to see the shape that dropped out