Smoke

MY WOLF WANTED OUT. Hell, I wanted out. I’ve never liked cities and the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex was a big one. Still, I wasn’t about to let Sergeant Leigh Daniels out of my sight. Figuratively speaking. She’d been inside the cinder-block building masquerading as the arson squad HQ since I’d dropped her off about 6:30 a.m. I’d found a spot where I could watch both the front and the back.

Squinting up at the sun, I figured noon wasn’t too far off. My stomach grumbled. Wolves have fast metabolisms and the animal needs to be fed. Often. My wolf agreed, but he was hungry for the woman. Me too. There was something about her that drew both sides of my nature. My wolf side was embedded in my DNA. Literally. Wolves carry a little extra somethin-somethin on our Y chromosome. The scientific types call it the lupi versi pellis gene. Wolf shifters, not werewolves. We have better senses, can heal a bit faster but scars stay and bullets can kill. They don’t have to be silver.

We aren’t magic. We’re just…preternatural. And we tend to be adrenaline junkies. Goes with the territory. My wolf abruptly stopped pacing and came to attention. We both focused on the rear exit door across the street. Leigh came out, talking to a couple of guys and a girl who looked about twenty. Co-workers but the wolf didn’t like males anywhere near her. He wanted to go to her. I needed to wait, tucked back here in the mid-day shadows of the alley.

Playing my hand too early was a bad idea. I reminded the wolf of that. He wasn’t happy but he settled down so I could concentrate. The males got into separate shit-red vehicles while Leigh and the kid kept walking. Evidently, the department hadn’t replaced her duty vehicle. But who was the girl?

They cut around the chain-link fence and headed toward the busy street fronting the building. I made a snap decision and stripped. I called up my wolf and gritted my teeth against the twisting-tearing that signified the change. It hurt like a sumbitch. Even so, I had an easier time with the change than a lot of Wolves. Few could do it as quickly and seamlessly as I could, despite the pain.

Trying to look like a shaggy German Shepherd, I trotted across the street and tracked Leigh. I turned the corner and found the two women a block ahead of me, walking steadily toward a bus stop. I ducked behind a delivery truck when Leigh glanced back over her shoulder. I waited until the bus came and the women boarded. I’d be able to track it.

Five minutes later, I was idling half a block behind the bus. A couple of young guys admired the bike. An old dude snarled. I snarled back. He slunk down in the seat of his car.

Start and stop. People on. People off. Leigh and the girl were sitting four seats back from the driver. The bus wove through Dallas, steadily heading north and east. The girl got off close to SMU. College student, I decided. Probably an intern. She walked about a block and ducked into the coffee shop on the corner.

The riders thinned out and the bus traveled steadily now. Where the hell did Leigh live? We crossed under I-635, still going north. The bus started stopping again, people getting off. Three stops in, Leigh emerged. She slung her backpack and trudged up the street as the bus groaned away in a puff of noxious diesel smoke.

I circled around then hung back. As long as she was on foot, I’d be able to track her. Even with all the car exhaust, shops and people, I could pick out her scent—earthy geranium and sharp clove. My belly tightened at the scent and my damn dick went stiff as a rod. I considered ditching the bike, shifting, and following her on paws then she swung through the gates of a townhouse development. I parked behind a nearby strip shopping center and prowled the fence until I found her scent again.

Going over the wall was easy. I paced her, staying out of sight using the landscaping, parked cars, and a building. She lived at the very back of the place. I watched her key into one of the one-story units on the end of the building. Good. Time to wait.

 

 

Leigh

I SHUT THE DOOR and locked it—including the deadbolt. I didn’t often do that until I went to bed but the hair on my neck had been standing on end since I walked out of the arson office. It was like someone had been watching. I tried to check people out, without being obvious, but never caught anyone who seemed all that interested. Weird. I normally didn’t get all hinky like that. Of course, I’d been without sleep for over 24 hours and there was that whole “wreck my car then get rescued by the sexy biker” episode.

My palms itched with just the thought of him. Which walked right out of weird and slammed head-first into crazy. There was something so familiar about him and I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that I’d never seen him before, much less met him. He was sexy trouble and I didn’t have time for any sort of distraction. If I was right, this morning’s fire was just the latest in a string.

I stripped out of my clothes and stumbled into the bathroom. I wanted a hot shower and at least eight hours of sleep. And food. I hadn’t had any more sustenance than I’d had sleep. Granted, coffee was it’s own food group but it didn’t exactly fill the tummy. I changed up my plans because I could be flexible. Shower, food, bed. Awesome.

As steaming water poured over my head, I thought about that morning’s scene. The warehouse was located in a run-down area of southeast Dallas. I’d tracked down a couple of witnesses who complained about motorcycles and loud trucks coming and going in the past few days. And wasn’t that interesting…since a guy on a bike just happened to show up and stuck to me like a cockle burr.

There’d been two other suspicious fires—one at a known drug house. The occupants had been driven out, then the place was torched. The second fire was in one of those self-storage places. Whatever was in the unit where the fire started had gone up like a roman candle. The place was a total loss, like the warehouse. I made mental note to call a cop buddy who was on DPD’s gang unit.

The water was trickling lukewarm. Time to get out. Food. Bed. Yippee. I was more than ready. Hopefully, by letting my hamster wheel of a brain twirl in the shower, it would shut down and let me actually sleep. Drying off, I wrapped the towel around my wet hair and shrugged into my ratty old robe. It was fleece. And soft. I opened the bathroom door—and screamed!