When Wyatt heard the women talking in the ice cream shop, he knew it was crucial information to the investigation. Why the woman hadn’t come forward to the sheriff was anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was a sense of loyalty to her friend. Perhaps it was simple cluelessness. What mattered was that Wyatt now had a missing piece of the puzzle.

Tim Lawson was Reginald Lawson’s son. If Reginald was a shifter hater, there was a good chance his son was, too. Not to mention the fact that the woman, Bethany, had left him for Colin. Questioning Reginald had come to a dead end. The man had an alibi for the day of the murder, and the murder weapon still hadn’t been found.

When Wyatt got Candice home and safely in bed, he told her he had to go back to the station to do some work on the case. Candice was disappointed, covering him in hot kisses before he left. That didn’t make it exactly easy for Wyatt to pull away from the curvy sex kitten in his bed.

Wyatt had an important job to do, no matter how much he wanted to stay with Candice and feel her sexy curves moving under his hands. He arrived at the sheriff’s department and filed a quick report on what he had heard at the ice cream shop. Nobody else was there this late at night except the night dispatcher, who did dispatch for late night highway patrol.

With the new information, Wyatt didn’t want to wait until morning. He had the sinking suspicion that Tim Lawson was his man, and he wanted to be sure of it before the rest of the team came back in in the morning.

He looked up Lawson’s place on the computer and then went back out to his truck. If he parked far off on one of the service roads and trekked in towards Tim’s place in bear form, he could use his bear senses to sniff out the identity of the killer.

He drove up the back country road and parked at the edge of the forest. Beside the truck, he removed his clothing, neatly folding them up in the passenger seat. With a low rumble, he changed. His body contorted and shifted, growing in every direction as his spine bent and his legs twisted into shape. Fur sprouted from his skin, and ferocious canines erupted from his mouth. When he had completed his shift, he let out a low, rumbling roar.

He dove into the forest, galloping at top speed through the trees. His amplified senses filled his mind. Rich scents drifted past his nose––the smell of berries, pine, rotting leaves. The light of the moon glowed down over the underbrush, shining supernaturally before his eyes.

He could feel the breeze on his hide and hear the faint hooting of an owl in the distance. Wyatt loved to run in bear form. He loved to hunt and fish and feel the world around him as he communed with his animal. But it wasn’t always practical to shift, especially knowing what he did about all the rules human hunters broke every single day. It was dangerous for a bear in the wild, even if you didn’t have an angry ex-boyfriend after you.

He approached the edge of Tim Lawson’s property and could see the glow of his porch lights shining over a collection of cars in the driveway. Wyatt didn’t feel comfortable going any closer. But he could hear the men speaking as he opened his senses.

The back door of the porch was open, and two men were sitting around a table, drinking beer. Wyatt smelled the familiar scent, the same as the scent he’d picked up out in the woods the day he met Candice.

“That woman’s a damn shifter lover,” one of the men said. “She deserves to be taught a lesson.”

They must be talking about Bethany. He needed to find her so that he could protect her from whatever Tim and his gang were planning to do.

“I say we take her down tonight.”

Wyatt didn’t need to hear any more. He needed to get back to the station and find out who Bethany was and where she was staying so that he could make sure she was safe. She was in danger, and he needed to help her.

Wyatt turned around and ran swiftly through the woods back to his truck. He threw his clothes on and drove as quickly as he could to the station. The morning crew was arriving, and Wyatt would have help tracking down Bethany.

He found Deputy Sheriff Morris in his office and told him what he’d discovered.

“We didn’t know that Chase had a girlfriend,” Morris said. “We need to find this woman and make sure she’s safe. If Lawson was willing to murder the boyfriend, he’d be willing to hurt his ex.”

Wyatt went to his office to do more research on the girlfriend until Morris came back and said he got a lead. Morris had officers in her town already going out to inform her that she was in danger. Morris had a search warrant for Lawson’s place drawn up, and several officers went out to search his property. There wasn’t anything else Wyatt could do.

Worried about Candice alone at home, he gave her a call on the walkie-talkie. She didn’t answer after several tries. Then he called her on her cell phone to no avail. Anxiety sank like a stone in his gut. He had to get home.