Chapter 17

17

W hile still questioning Royce at the Yuma Town sheriff's office, Fisher could understand why a she-wolf—who had been alone and threatened by three drunk men—had to react in any way that she could to save herself. He reached over and took hold of Kira's hand on her lap and squeezed, hoping that she wasn't feeling bad about her own experience as a child.

She smiled at him and squeezed his hand in response.

He wondered what had happened to the she-wolf who had bitten the kidnappers. Was she a lone wolf? Maybe that's why she hadn't done anything about the men she had turned. He could see why she would have had difficulty dealing with them further if she didn't have a pack to back her up. Though they still couldn't allow the men to be on the loose. They had to resolve the situation.

"Reggie yanked off his clothes and then?" Fisher asked Royce.

"I thought maybe the dog that had bitten my cousin and Reggie was rabid. But Reggie wasn't foaming at the mouth. Then he turned into a dog. Or a wolf, we later realized. So that gave us a whole different perspective on the situation. I was in the front passenger seat when all this was happening. I jerked off my seatbelt and grabbed the door handle. But the door was locked. Then I heard a low growl coming from the backseat. My heart was beating so hard that I felt it was going to jump right out of my chest and I was sweating up a storm. I glanced at the back seat. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Oscar's clothes were on the back seat, a dog was sitting on top of them, and Oscar was gone. The only explanation was that he was now the dog, just like what had happened to Reggie."

"Then Oscar bit you?" Kira asked.

"He was still growling at me. I mean, I was drunk so I wondered if I might be hallucinating. Maybe someone had even slipped something into my drink at the bar. I was in a panic to leave the vehicle, hallucinations or not. Then the dog in the backseat climbed over the console and bit my arm as if to tell me to stay in the vehicle. I cried out. Hell, that hurt, and he broke the skin. I was bleeding and I was angry and terrified. I fumbled with the door again, but I swear my brain was all mush. I did have the thought that we couldn't return to the same clinic so that I could get patched up this time. I mean, how could I explain that this time I was bitten by a new dog if the same medical staff that saw to Reggie and Oscar took care of my bite? But then it began healing on its own."

"When did you figure out that you were wolves?" Fisher asked.

"About an hour later, I felt the change and I had to take off my clothes and turn into a wolf. I kept thinking that we couldn't turn into dogs. Then I thought of werewolves and that we really were bigger, like the one who had bitten my cousin and Reggie. I couldn't see what I looked like, except my legs and feet, and my bushy tail. Then Oscar howled. Reggie joined him. It took me a minute before I was willing to give it a try. I howled and realized how easy it was. It made me think about every werewolf movie I had ever seen. That's when I saw the full moon on the clear black night. Once Reggie was able to turn back into a human, he dressed and drove us to his home. At least he was pretty much sober by then. I was sitting there as a wolf and couldn't change back. My cousin was human again and was stretched out on the back seat, naked, snoring loudly."

"Then you realized you couldn't deal with the issue of being wolf shifters," Kira said. "And left Denver."

"Hell, we couldn't control the shifting. One minute, we were eating breakfast at Reggie's house, and the next, he was shifting, growling, mad over his loss of control. But also what was worrisome was we thought someone had been prowling around the outside of his house."

"The she-wolf?" Fisher asked, thinking she had some unfinished business and maybe she had planned to do something about the men after all.

"Yeah. I mean, we didn't believe one female wolf could take on all three of us, but we knew we couldn't go back to our jobs or even see our families. We finally left the area because we knew we couldn't be around our families when we couldn't control the shifting. We thought it would only happen during the full moon, but it happens any time except during the new moon. We never paid any attention to the moon phases until this happened. We can only plan to do any work when it's the time of the new moon now."

"Well, truthfully, I'm sorry this happened to you and that no one was there to teach you how to be one of us," Fisher said.

Kira glanced at Fisher, her jaw dropping.

"That said, the reason you are wolves was because you threatened the she-wolf, and she had no other recourse but to protect herself. But if she was trying to undo her mistake, that was also the only way she could take care of the mess that you had forced on her." Fisher could tell Kira finally got the point that he wasn't excusing the men one bit. If they hadn't cornered the she-wolf, none of this would have happened.

"Who had the stupid idea of kidnapping kids to get easy payouts as your new choice of job?" Kira asked.

"Reggie. Oscar is his best friend, and he always goes along with Reggie's schemes. The plan was to gather enough money and then we would go to Alaska and figure out something from there," Royce said.

"You never thought of the kids you traumatized? Their families?" Fisher knew the truth of it. At least with Reggie and Oscar, they hadn't given a damn. But he thought Royce had more empathy for the kids they'd kidnapped, at least for Billy as far as Fisher had witnessed. "Or that one of the kids, like Billy, whom you had left in the woods by himself, might not have even survived?"

Royce put his elbows on the table and held his forehead. "I didn't want to leave Billy in the woods. We always took the kids to somewhere safe like the library or a clinic, hotel, or a church even once. Leaving him in the woods hadn't been a safe bet. It was supposed to be our last job and Reggie was getting nervous about getting caught."

"So he planned to just leave Billy out in the wild." Fisher shook his head. "If we hadn't been there to protect him, he could have died."

Royce rubbed his face. "I didn't want to do it."

"But you didn't stop it either," Fisher said.

Kira let out her breath. "Do you think your cousin and Reggie will try to come here and rescue you?"

"They would be making a mistake in trying to—especially since you are all shifters too. I'm sure they don't know anything about how you're born shifters though and you would have the upper hand on how to deal with them," Royce said.

"You better believe it," Fisher said.

"I don't believe they will. I'm not sure they realized I've been arrested, for one thing," Royce said.

Ricky suddenly opened the door to the interrogation room. "Can I speak with you, Kira, Fisher, Bridget?"

"Yeah, sure," Fisher said.

They left the interrogation room while Royce and the lawyer remained behind.

"What's up?" Fisher asked Ricky.

"A guy came to see if Royce is here," Ricky said.

"Who did he say he was?" Fisher asked.

"Bertrand Johnstone. He's human. I asked him how he is related to Royce, and he said he's his brother-in-law."

"Does he know where Oscar or Reggie are?" Kira asked.

"No, he didn't."

"How did he know Royce is here?" Fisher asked.

"I suspect that Oscar or Reggie told him to see if Royce is here so they could maybe break him out."

"What did you tell him?" Kira asked.

"That I needed to let him speak to the people in charge," Ricky said and smiled.

"Okay, for anyone's information, if they ask, Royce isn't here," Kira said. "Let's go talk to Bertrand."

Then they went into the office and found Dan had returned to watch over things in case they suddenly had trouble. He inclined his head to the others in greeting.

Kira offered her hand to shake Bertrand's. "I'm Kira Westwood. This is my colleague, Fisher Greystoke. We don't have Royce Farmington here. What made you think he is?"

"My brother-in-law called me and said he believed Royce might have trespassed on private property and was arrested. Though I can't believe he would be in jail for just trespassing, unless he did something graver and Oscar didn't want to tell me about it," Bertrand said.

"Why wouldn't Oscar come himself to check to see if Royce was here?" Kira asked.

"I don't know where Oscar is. He just called me to ask me to bail out his cousin. He said he would pay me back," Bertrand said.

"So Royce is missing." Kira glanced at Bridget, so did Fisher, to see if Bertrand was telling the truth.

Bridget gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

Bertrand shook his head. "Hell. I don't know. I live in Colorado City so that's why I came. It is closer than Denver where our other relatives live."

"Maybe you could call Oscar and ask him why he believed Royce was in jail here," Fisher said.

Bertrand stuck his hands in his pockets. "I'll just tell Oscar that Royce wasn't here. I don't know why he thought Royce would be."

"Because Reggie and Oscar had been with Royce and the family knew that," Bridget said. "And because they were all trespassing on private property."

Bertrand frowned. "How do you know that if Royce isn't here?"

Whoops.

"They've done more than just trespass on private property," Kira said.

"What?"

"It's all under investigation," Fisher said. "It's nothing we can really discuss."

"Do you want to file a missing person's report for Royce?" Kira asked.

"You know what, the three of them have dropped the whole family and have lied to us about going to Alaska. If they're involved in criminal acts, that's on them. They're not involving us in any of this. We don't have any idea what they've been up to. I just want to make that clear," Bertrand said.

"Thanks. We appreciate you talking with us," Kira said.

Nobody had anything further to ask of him and so he shook everyone's hands and left the building.

"I feel bad for him," Bridget said. "From what I could read, his wife is Royce's older sister, and she just had a baby. So that's why Bertrand made the effort to see if her brother was here. When you were speaking to him, he immediately thought about Oscar saying that he, Reggie, and Royce had been trespassing on private property. Oscar didn't know for sure, but he thought Royce might have been picked up and was in the jail here because he wasn't answering his phone. Bertrand suspected that was the reason neither Oscar nor Reggie wanted to check with us because they were afraid that they would be incarcerated also for trespassing."

"Bertrand thought he could bail him out," Fisher said.

"Yeah, because the charge against Royce, Bertrand thought, couldn't have been that bad," Bridget said. "But when Kira said it was more than that, Bertrand realized he didn't want any part of what the three men had been up to."

"So do you think Oscar and Reggie are still in the area?" Kira asked.

"I do. I think once Bertrand had paid for Royce's release, they would have picked Royce up from Bertrand and then might have decided it was time to go to Alaska," Bridget said.

"Do you believe Oscar and Reggie will think we don't have Royce?" Dan asked.

"They couldn't find him. They would have smelled all our scents out there by the broken-down building," Kira said. "I would say that when Bertrand tells Oscar that we don't have Royce, he won't believe we're telling the truth. I believe we need to send Royce with Everett and Demetria to Houston. And then we'll go back to searching for the other two."

Then she got a call from Leyton and put it on speaker. "Hey, we learned at the bar that a woman who had left it had encountered trouble with three men. You could see them on the security video stalking her until she was at a point where no one could see anything," Leyton said.

"Which is good because she shifted into her wolf," Fisher said.

"Exactly. The woman's name is Judi Jacobson. We tracked her down and she gave us the whole story—how they accosted her, tore at her clothes. She'd only had one drink, but the three of them were drunk. She tossed the rest of her clothes, which suited the three men fine, figuring they were going to get some willing action. And they did. Except not the kind they were expecting. She wasn't from the area, didn't know any wolves, was at a hotel, and just wanted to go out for a drink. What a mistake that had been. She bit two of the men who had come at her with a knife. Once they were in their car, they drove off, but she got their license plate number, and eventually caught up to them at a clinic where she had to receive treatment for a knife wound also. She followed them to Reggie's house, she later learned. She knew she either had to take the two men under her wing and turn the other, or she had to kill them. Since they had tried to rape her, and then attempted to kill her, she knew her only real choice was to take them down—permanently."

"But she didn't kill them," Kira said.

"She was planning to, but she wanted to make sure no would ever discover who had done it. Then the men all left, and she didn't know where they had gone. So she prayed they wouldn't cause problems for our kind. She's a lone wolf, so she's used to having to take care of herself, though she knows better than to leave men like that turned and not do something about it. She just didn't have the resources to locate them," Leyton said. "She is grateful that we're on the case and she said if you wanted her to join you and eliminate these guys since it's her mistake, she would gladly do it."

"No. We'll handle it. She has been through enough already," Kira said.

Fisher was feeling the same way.

"Okay, we'll let her know that and then we're headed home."

Kira told him about the relative coming to try and bail Royce out. "So we feel the other two men are still in the area."

"We need to be there then if you need us."

Then Leyton and Kira ended the call and Kira called Everett. "We're ready for you to take Royce to Houston." She told him about Bertrand. "We don't want any family members—human types—to learn he truly is here and want to know what the real charges are for. We just need to get him out of here before word gets back to the rest of the family in Denver and they want to know what's going on."

"We're on our way over. Demetria and I have been combing the area in search of Reggie's vehicle. We couldn't find any sign of it though. Tell Dan we'll be there in a few minutes to take the wolf off his hands."

"I will. Thanks, Everett." Then they finished the call and Kira said, "Everett and Demetria are coming to pick up Royce. Fisher and I are going to ride as backup for a while."

"My brothers and cousin can also, watching to see if anyone is coming for him," Fisher said.

"Some of our people will head out that way for an hour or two also," Dan said. "So if anyone tries to grab him, they'll pay for it."

"Great," Kira said. "I'm going to tell Royce the good news."

Fisher went with her, and they both walked into the interview room.

"That took you long enough," Royce said, sounding arrogant and highly annoyed.

"We're releasing you," Kira said.

Royce smiled and rose from the table. "I knew you couldn't hold me on those flimsy charges."

Frowning, Larry stood. "Seriously?" He appeared a little pale, like he was afraid he'd done or said the wrong thing and Royce was going to get away with his criminal pursuits.

"It's a good thing that I retained you as my lawyer after all." Royce slapped Larry on the back, thinking he had one over on them.

"You'll get a new one where you're going," Kira said.

"What?" This time Royce paled.

Then they heard newcomers at the sheriff's office and footfalls headed in their direction.

"USF Special Agents Demetria and Everett Anderson will be escorting you to your new facilities in Houston," Kira said.

Ricky came in and handcuffed Royce. "Bon Voyage."

Royce looked frantically at Larry as if the lawyer could change their mind. "What about my lawyer?"

"Oh, you'll have a new one appointed to you in Houston, most likely a highly experienced jaguar attorney," Demetria said, pulling Royce through the hall to the outer office.

"Several of us are following you," Kira said, "to help with an escort."

"We've called ahead. We have some other jaguars coming to meet up with us also," Everett said. "They're flying into Amarillo and then renting a vehicle and heading our way."

"Oh, great," Fisher said.

Royce glanced back at Larry. "You're supposed to be my lawyer. You can't let them take me from here. Don't they have to file paperwork to extradite me? And if it isn't approved, then I get to stay here?"

Larry smiled. "You are part of the world of shifters now. It's not the same as the laws of the strictly human world."

"We'll probably stay in Houston for Thanksgiving since it will be so close to the holiday, and then when that's over, we'll catch back up with you on the case," Demetria said.

"Okay, sure, thanks," Kira said.

Fisher figured they would have Thanksgiving with family too, unless they ended up getting more of a lead on where Royce's buddies were.

Then the groups who were headed out, left the station and started the long drive to Houston. It was a sixteen hour drive all the way there, so Fisher was glad they weren't going all that way.