Joy to the Wolves (Red Wolf #1) - Terry Spear Page 0,80
He said a woman named Daisy Fern hired him to kill Mike because he was becoming a problem for her,” Matson said. “There were others too.”
So Howie had known Daisy beforehand.
“Who hired the two of you to get the thumb drive?” Josh asked.
“Howie called and asked me about doing the job. I don’t know the name of the person who hired him.”
So Howie had played Josh and Adam. “What did he tell you?”
“That a guy hired him to get a thumb drive. No big deal. And it was at an old antique shop. A woman owned it, and that was it. I didn’t hear about the other two guys trying to break in before us until after we were arrested. Some cop questioned me about knowing the other men. I didn’t know either of them. Just Howie.”
“Okay.” Josh wondered now if the woman Howie was calling Daisy Fern had really hired him for this job. Or maybe he was trying to disguise the fact that a woman had hired him, so he told Matson a guy had hired him.
They didn’t get any further with Matson and finally left.
“Let’s return to the house,” Josh told Adam.
“We’ll get whoever it is,” Adam said as they drove back to the shop.
Chapter 19
Josh and Adam arrived at the shop just as Brooke was getting ready to leave for the house, having finished what she’d wanted to do.
“Thanks so much for protecting me,” Brooke said, Josh and Adam echoing the sentiment, and then Brad and Maverick took off in their vehicles.
Before Brooke, Josh, and Adam left the shop to have dinner, Adam got a call and glanced at Josh. “Yeah. Sure. We can talk. Just come to Cerise’s Antique and Gift Shop. Yes, where you dropped off the reindeer. I’m here right now, and one of the owners of the reindeer ranch is here. He and the owner of the antique shop are both wolves, too, so you’ll be in good company. See you soon.” He ended the call and smiled at Brooke and Josh. “That was Lucas. He’s coming to talk to us.”
“He admitted to stealing the reindeer?” Brooke asked, surprised.
“No. But coming to see us about being wolves is a start. He might come clean about the reindeer. In any event, he needs to know about the pack. I finally got the security videos from two of the shops you hadn’t managed to check out yet, Josh. We got the license tag, but the vehicle had been stolen just down the street from the shop. Not totally surprising,” Adam said. “The pickup was abandoned at a mall. We checked the videos there and saw one of the men getting into the car and driving off. It was so far out in the parking lot that we couldn’t really see what he looked like. So that was a dead end, no fingerprints left behind. Just a lot of blood in the truck matching the dead robber’s blood.”
“We’ll find the other robber,” Josh said.
They had to. She just hoped it would be soon.
About twenty minutes later, a black truck parked in front of the shop. Lucas got out of the driver’s seat, shaggy black hair framing his tanned face, blue eyes glued to the entrance of the shop, hands shoved in his jeans pockets. He twisted his head, looking one way and then the other as if he was making sure no one saw him coming to a secret meeting of the wolves.
He reached the shop door, and Adam opened it. “Thanks for coming to see us. Believe me, we’re as surprised to learn about you as I’m sure you were to learn about us.”
“How many are there of you?” Lucas asked, his hands still shoved in his pockets, his shoulders slumped a little, as they locked the shop. He looked like he was in trouble with a pack of wolves.
“Thirty-one wolves in all,” Josh said. “We’re scattered around the area, but we all belong to the pack an hour south of here.”
Lucas’s eyes widened; then he smiled, the tension seeming to ease out of his posture.
“We’ll go to my house and talk. I just want to grab a couple of things.” Brooke figured Lucas would be more comfortable talking at the house, and she could make dinner for them.
She returned to the office and picked up Josh’s sleigh bells and postcard and was about to leave the room when she glanced at the antique cabinet sitting against one of the walls. Her great-aunt had