Chapter 5

Tanner stared out the windshield at the posters on the store’s big front windows advertising discount camping gear and cheap tickets for local kayaking adventures and scenic cruises on Lake Chelan. “You bought your camping supplies here?”

In the passenger seat, Zarina looked at him, then at the store before swinging her gaze his way again. “Is there something wrong with it?”

Tanner almost laughed but stopped himself. Zarina was a scientist. She wasn’t used to shopping for outdoor gear. He gestured to the signs plastered all over the place. “Would you buy your lab equipment from a store that advertised their stuff as cheap and discounted?”

“No, of course not. But what does that have to do with camping supplies?” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, now I see. I shouldn’t buy camping gear from a place I wouldn’t buy lab equipment from.”

“Something like that,” he muttered. “If nothing else, we can return the crappy flashlight they sold you. The sleeping bag, too. It’s a summer-weight model they never should have given to someone heading up the mountain at this time of year.”

Zarina looked at him sharply. “Is this another trick? Are you trying to get me to give up my sleeping bag as a way to get me to leave?”

He sighed and shook his head. “No. You’ll have to use mine as long as you’re here anyway, unless you want to freeze to death. I’m merely trying to get your money back.”

She relaxed but still looked hesitant. “When I bought my stuff, the clerk was quite specific about the store’s return policy. No refunds or exchanges. He was adamant about that.”

Tanner clenched his jaw. “I bet he was.”

Getting out of the truck, Tanner grabbed her pack from the back where he’d tossed it on the off chance he could convince her to leave after they met with his brother. That hadn’t worked out so well.

They’d spent the past two hours working through the rest of the supplies on the shopping list Chad had given them. It wouldn’t have taken nearly as long if he and Zarina hadn’t spent most of the time arguing. When he hadn’t been harassing her about going back to DC, she’d been badgering him with endless questions about what had happened to put such a rift between him and his family and why he refused to consider taking her antiserum.

Neither conversation had gone very far, and in the end, they’d agreed to disagree. He didn’t intend to take her new wonder drug or run home to see his family anytime soon, and she wasn’t going to get on a plane back to DC in the foreseeable future.

He felt like crap for nagging at her about leaving, especially when being with her felt so damn right, but she wasn’t cut out for life up here. Or any life with him, for that matter. The sooner she figured that out, the better. But she was so damn stubborn, it was like talking to a brick wall. If he was lucky, maybe Lillie would tell Zarina the story about how Spencer had nearly killed her a while back, and Zarina would finally figure out what kind of price she might have to pay being around a hybrid like him. It was only a matter of time before he lost it and did the same thing to Zarina—or worse.

He was just as terrified that something equally bad was going to happen with the assholes who were attacking the preppers. But what the hell could he do? He might threaten to drag Zarina down to Seattle and stuff her on a plane, but she knew he would never actually do it. He only hoped he didn’t end up regretting his decision to let her stay.

Mouth tight, he pulled her sleeping bag and the cheap-ass flashlight out of the pack, then walked around to open Zarina’s door.

He could practically smell the second-rate quality of the merchandise the moment he stepped inside the store. He usually had a let-the-buyer-beware outlook on business and didn’t mind someone making a profit selling cheap crap to tourists who were simply going on a short hike along the trails. But the clerk had seen Zarina coming and ripped her off, knowing he was sending her into the wilderness with shit for gear. That pissed Tanner off. His inner hybrid wasn’t too happy about it, either.

Or maybe they were both still mad at Zarina and looking for someone to take it out on. That would work, too.

Zarina led him past racks of jerky, fishing poles, and brightly colored rain ponchos to the checkout counter, a big monstrosity of a thing made from local fir trees. A skeevy-looking middle-aged man stood behind the counter, flipping through a catalog and ignoring the half dozen customers wandering around the store looking at gear they clearly didn’t know the first thing about. He glanced up at their approach, eyeing Zarina with obvious interest before turning his attention to Tanner. The man straightened to his full height, which still made him a foot shorter than Tanner.

“I guess you found who you were looking for,” he said to Zarina.

“She did,” Tanner answered, tossing her sleeping bag and flashlight on the big wood counter.

The clerk frowned. “What’s that?”

“The camping equipment you sold me,” Zarina said politely. “I won’t need either of these and would like to return them.”

The man jerked a thumb at the poster on the wall behind him that said NO RETURNS! NO EXCHANGES! in big red letters along with paragraphs of fine print only a lawyer could love. “Like I told you yesterday, we have a strict no returns or exchanges policy, ma’am. No exceptions.”

Tanner bit back a snarl. They didn’t have time for this crap. They still hadn’t gotten any of the drugs and medical supplies, and he wanted to be back at the camp before dark in case those assholes with the automatic weapons decided to come back and hit the place again.

“Time for your first exception,” he told the clerk in a voice that was little more than a growl. “You sold cheap camping gear to a woman you knew had no experience in the mountains,” he said through gritted teeth. At least his fangs weren’t out—yet. “That sleeping bag you foisted off on her for ten times what it’s worth is so thin that if she’d been forced to depend on it last night, she probably would have died from hypothermia by morning.”

The clerk’s eyes narrowed. “Now, just a damn minute. I can’t be held responsible…”

Tanner stopped him with a glare. “Well, I am holding you responsible.”

When the man continued to glower right back, Tanner’s hybrid half itched to grab the man by the throat and jerk him out from behind the counter. Tanner might have done it, too, if Zarina hadn’t placed a hand on his arm while sliding the receipt across the counter.

“I’ve circled the items I’m returning.” She smiled at the clerk. “But I’m definitely keeping the pajamas. They’re very comfortable.”

The clerk seemed happy to hear that. Or maybe he was simply thrilled Tanner had stopped tearing gouges out of his countertop. Either way, he worked fast to apply a credit to Zarina’s card. A few minutes later, Tanner and Zarina walked out of the store with most of her money back. It was probably too much to hope she’d use it on that plane ticket he wanted her to buy.

“If I’d known you were so good at negotiating store returns, I would have taken you with me to the Galleria after the spring sales,” Zarina said. “I spent hours arguing about their store policies.”

Tanner snorted. “Yeah, I don’t see my technique working out nearly as well at the Galleria.”

“I see your point.” Zarina stopped and glanced back at the store they’d just left. “I wonder if I should have exchanged the sleeping bag and flashlight for more of those pajamas. They’re so comfortable. I could wear them around my apartment in DC in the winter.”

He stifled a groan as an image of Zarina and her pj’s flashed through his head. He immediately wished he hadn’t let his head go there, since it was damn tough walking with a boner. Shit. What the hell was it about her that got him hard at the drop of a hat?

Tanner was so focused on thinking about anything other than Zarina romping around a campfire in her pajamas that he nearly missed someone calling his name. When the man’s voice finally broke through, he was surprised to realize he recognized it. But he had to be wrong. He hadn’t heard that voice in years.

Sure he must be imagining things, Tanner stopped and turned around to see his old army buddy standing ten feet away from him on the sidewalk. His friend looked just as shocked as Tanner.

“Tanner, is that you?”

Tanner nodded. “Ryan?”

His friend still looked the same as he had when Tanner had last seen him the day he’d gotten out of the Rangers and walked away from his old life. Ryan’s blond hair was even cropped close enough to still pass army regulations. Only Ryan wasn’t in the military anymore. He’d been in the process of bailing at the same time as Tanner had.

But while Ryan might look the same on the outside, there was a scar on his jaw and lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. His nose looked like it had been broken a few times, then poorly set as well.

Tanner wasn’t sure which one of them moved first—or maybe they both moved forward at the same time—but the next thing he knew, they were pulling each other in for a man hug that made him wonder why he hadn’t worked harder to stay in touch with his friend.

“Damn, you look good,” Ryan said as he pulled away. “Are you bigger than you used to be? It looks like you’re four or five inches taller than you were the last I saw you.”

Since he’d never run into anyone who’d known him before those scientists had turned him into a hybrid, Tanner never had to explain how he’d added the extra inches and more than fifty pounds of muscle. Now he’d had to do it twice in one day. He laughed it off.

“I guess I was still growing when you knew me, so I might be a little bigger than you remember,” he said casually.

Ryan frowned and opened his mouth, no doubt to call BS on that. Time to change the subject.

“You look good, too, man,” Tanner said, interrupting whatever Ryan had been about to say. “It looks like you could do a fifteen-mile ruck march with no problem. Makes it even harder to believe you got out.”

“Yeah, I intended to do my twenty years and retire with full benefits,” his friend admitted. “That all changed after our last deployment to Afghanistan.”

Tanner couldn’t do anything but nod. Ryan was right. Being in the Rangers wasn’t the same after all those guys in their platoon had died. The battalion had arranged a solemn ceremony and handed out a lot of posthumous awards, then expected everyone to move on. But Tanner hadn’t been able to do that. So instead of reenlisting like he’d planned, he’d gotten out a few months after getting back from Afghanistan.

He’d honestly thought Ryan would stay in, though. While Ryan hadn’t been unaffected by their fellow soldiers’ deaths, he hadn’t seemed as traumatized as Tanner. But maybe Tanner had been wrong about that.

Beside Tanner, Zarina softly cleared her throat, reminding him of her presence. He cringed and gave her an apologetic look before making introductions.

“Ryan Westbrook, Zarina Sokolov,” he said, then stopped as he realized he had no idea how to introduce her. He obviously couldn’t say she was the Russian geneticist who’d attempted to keep a psychopath from turning him into a hybrid. But he also couldn’t say she was his girlfriend, because he had no idea if she’d ever want to be described that way. Camping buddy didn’t hit the right note either, though.

Finally, he punted the ball and finished with the most truthful answer he could come up with. “She’s a very important person in my life.”

Ryan’s gaze went from Tanner to Zarina and back again, as if he was envisioning them together in the biblical sense. Ryan had never been good at biting his tongue, but at least this once, his friend didn’t say anything stupid.

“Very important person, huh?” he murmured as he shook Zarina’s hand. “Something tells me there’s an interesting story there, but I’ll keep my curiosity to myself for now. Regardless, it’s nice to meet you.”

Zarina hit Ryan with the kind of smile that never failed to make Tanner weak in the knees. He was relieved to see it didn’t have the same effect on Ryan.

“Nice meeting you, too,” she said. “From the conversation the two of you just had, something tells me you and Tanner were in the army together.”

Ryan nodded. “Nearly seven years, all in the same Ranger squad. Which is rather remarkable, since the army likes to move people around just for the fun of it. Tanner and I did three tours in Iraq and another two in Afghanistan. Saw a lot of shit, pardon my French.”

Zarina laughed. “Your French is fine. I’m Russian. We use that kind of French all the time.”

“Russian, huh? I thought I detected an accent.” Ryan threw Tanner a sideways glance. “So, what’s the deal? Is there some kind of James Bond angle going on here, or did she just buy you on Craigslist?”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Tanner deadpanned.

Ryan chuckled. “Okay, okay. I get your point. At least throw me a bone. What have you been up to? You back in Seattle working security for Boeing or something?”

How the hell did he answer that? Especially since he hadn’t held a real job since getting out of the army. He’d never been good at lying. But it wasn’t like he could tell the truth either.

I’ve been working part time at a covert organization in Washington, DC, you’ve never heard of.

“Nah, nothing like that,” he finally said. “Actually, I’ve been between jobs for a while now. I get a little bit of money each month from the VA on account of all the times I got blown up. Head trauma and stuff, you know? I don’t have many bills, but what I get from the government takes care of them.”

Zarina’s eyes widened at the mention of head trauma and disability pay from the Veterans Administration, but Tanner pretended not to notice. He hadn’t told her about any of that, and he didn’t want to get into it now, especially with Ryan standing there.

“How about you? What are you doing for a living these days?” Tanner asked, mostly so his friend wouldn’t be tempted to dig any deeper.

Ryan regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, as if knowing Tanner was trying to change the topic. But he didn’t call Tanner on it.

“I own a club called The Cage outside of Redmond on Highway 203,” he said. “It’s a nice gig, and the money is way better than I ever could have imagined when I first started it.”

Tanner fought hard not to gape as Ryan told them about buying an old logging mill on the outskirts of town and repurposing it as a nightclub. He tried his best to picture his friend doing that kind of work and failed. When they were in the army, Ryan had spent a good portion of his free time in a hundred different clubs and bars scattered around the world. Hell, they both had. Tanner simply couldn’t wrap his head around Ryan owning a club and doing all the work that went with it now.

“Actually, that’s why I’m in Wenatchee today,” Ryan added. “I’m looking for a few new acquisitions for the place to entertain the customers.”

Tanner couldn’t help frowning at the odd word choice. “Like a band, you mean?”

“Not exactly,” Ryan said.

“Well, Redmond is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from here,” Tanner said. “Whoever you’re looking to hire must be damn good.”

Ryan’s mouth quirked. “My customers are always looking for something new and interesting. I’ve been lucky enough to find some of that out here, so I keep coming back. Never know when I’ll hit the jackpot.” He studied them thoughtfully. “You and Zarina should stop by sometime.”

Tanner cringed inwardly. He’d come out here to get away from people. Going to a crowded nightclub probably wasn’t the best idea. He couldn’t exactly explain that to Ryan, though. So he lied. Again.

“We might do that.” Tanner glanced at Zarina, then turned back to Ryan. “We’d better get moving if we’re going to get back up the mountain before dark.”

Ryan nodded. “Where are you two planning to set up?”

Tanner opened his mouth to tell Ryan about the prepper camp but then closed it again. Chad and his group had never hidden where they were, but for reasons Tanner couldn’t explain, he didn’t feel like advertising it to the world—or an old buddy. “We’re planning to set up around Crow Hill or Graham Mountain. Maybe even a little farther north of there.”

Ryan frowned. “You might not want to do that. A lot of crazy preppers have been hanging out near Graham Mountain, causing trouble.”

It was Tanner’s turn to frown. “Is that so? I didn’t know that. Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good,” Ryan said. “There are a lot of good campsites over to the southwest side of the forest. You should check out some of those.”

“We will,” Tanner said noncommittally.

He was glad now that he hadn’t mentioned staying with Chad and his group. He didn’t know where Ryan’s crap about the preppers was coming from. Maybe those events over in Afghanistan had changed his buddy more than he’d thought.

Ryan glanced at his watch. “I have to get out of here, too. It was good seeing you again, man. If you two come to the club, let me know so I can make sure I’m there. We can catch up on old times.”

“Will do,” Tanner said.

Ryan gave Zarina a nod. “Nice meeting you.”

“You, too.” She waited until Ryan was out of earshot, then turned to Tanner with a frown. “Okay, what was all that stuff about the preppers about?”

“I don’t know,” Tanner admitted, watching his friend walk down the street. “But something tells me Ryan and I won’t be getting back together to talk about the good old days anytime soon.”

* * *

Tate rubbed the back of his neck as he walked out of his motel room. He’d seen a coffeemaker on the counter beside the front desk when he’d checked in last night and prayed he’d still be able to get a cup. That crap they put in those little single serving pots in the rooms should be outlawed. Who the hell did they expect would drink the stuff?

As he headed toward the front of the building, he tried to work out the kink in his back from the too-soft mattress he’d slept on last night. The cold morning air didn’t help. Anytime it was below forty degrees, his lower spine got stiff. Getting shot in the back could do that to anybody. Though to be fair, he couldn’t entirely blame his nearly sleepless night on the poor mattress. That mostly had to do with the fact that he had spent much of his evening digging through databases and newspaper articles looking for anything and everything he could on McKinley Bell.

Unfortunately, the effort had been a waste. He’d found nothing of interest on the recently deceased doctor. If the man had ever been involved in anything remotely resembling hybrid research, it didn’t show up in his background history. By all appearances, Bell had been an honest, conscientious doctor from a well-off family in Boston. He’d been a leader in his field of genetic birth defects and had donated huge amounts of his time and money in the search for genetic therapy and cures for a list of childhood conditions that sounded pretty frigging horrible to Tate. The man had won a ton of prestigious awards from various research institutes around the country but had no apparent social life of any kind. From what Kendra could find out, the man had never dated, gone on a vacation, or had personal communications with anyone.

It was damn hard to imagine the guy being involved in hybrid research. But Tate had been fooled before, so he rarely took anyone or anything at face value. Besides, Bell had definitely been tortured by a shifter or hybrid, which meant he was involved in something. Hopefully, getting a look at the cabin where the man had been murdered would give him an idea what that something might be.

He rounded the corner leading to the motel lobby, already tasting coffee he hoped would be fresh, only to stop dead in his tracks when he saw Deputy Chase York leaning casually against the side of his patrol car in the parking lot, two large cups of coffee in his hands, a familiar-looking Dunkin’ Donuts box on the hood, and a knowing smile on his face.

Tate frowned and double-checked his watch. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at the coffee shop at eight? Did I get the time wrong?”

Chase’s smile broadened. “I thought I should show up here in case you forgot you were supposed to meet me before heading out to the cabin.”

“What makes you think I’d forget?” Tate asked, walking over to him.

Dodging the deputy had actually been his plan. It bruised his ego to know Chase had seen through him so easily. Maybe he’d gotten slow after all those years working on a team with people he trusted.

“Let’s just say I know how busy you federal types are.” Chase pushed away from the car and held one of the cups out to him. “I wouldn’t want you feeling bad if you ended up driving all the way to that cabin only to realize you’d forgotten to meet up with your temporary partner. That would be damn inconvenient.”

“I’m sure,” Tate said dryly, reaching out to snag the coffee. “Well, since you’re here, lead the way. I’ll follow.”

Chase’s mouth twitched. “Why don’t we go in my car? Just so there’s less chance of us getting separated. Some of the back roads on the way up to the cabin are twisty and confusing. It’d be easy to get turned around out there and lose each other.”

“I bet,” Tate muttered, impressed despite himself.

He sipped his coffee. Damn, it was good. Maybe teaming up with York might not be so bad after all.

“I figured you took it black with no sugar or cream,” Chase said as he motioned toward the passenger seat. “I’ve been a coffee addict long enough to know the signs.”

Tate scooped up the box of donuts as he walked around the front of the car. “Okay, you get extra points for knowing I like my coffee black, but if there are any chocolate-glazed cake donuts in here, then I’ll be seriously impressed.”

Chase chuckled as he opened the driver’s side door. “Please. What kind of cop do you take me for? Half the box is chocolate-glazed.”

Tate lifted a brow at that. Damn. Maybe he should get Landon to recruit this guy. For his knowledge of coffee and donuts if nothing else.

* * *

Shit, Chase drove fast. The fact that they made the forty-minute trip to the cabin in less than thirty was a sure sign of that. Tate had never been one to necessarily obey every traffic sign out there, but he assumed a few of them, like the one warning unsuspecting drivers that the road ahead was about to do a ninety-degree dogleg, could occasionally be useful.

“Where’d you learn to drive, Beirut?” Tate asked, gripping the handle on the passenger door as the deputy maneuvered the patrol car onto a gravel road at a silly rate of speed. Hopefully, the gravel meant they were almost at the cabin, because he wasn’t enjoying this tour of backwoods Maine as much as he would have thought.

“Close,” Chase said. “Baghdad and Mosul actually.”

That explained a lot. He glanced at the deputy. “Marines?”

Chase nodded. “Five years, three deployments. Never been able to drive within the speed limit since. How about you? You strike me as the kind of man who’s seen his fair share of firefights and car chases.”

Tate considered how to answer that, thinking about all the scraps he’d been in with his old team, then decided honesty probably wasn’t the best policy here. It was too much to get into with somebody he was going to have to majorly lie to at some point. Easier to fib a little now.

“Me?” He chuckled. “Nah, nothing like that. I spent a while in the U.S. Marshals chasing a few averagely mean bad guys, then moved over to Homeland, where I’ve pretty much hugged a desk ever since.”

The deputy glanced at him as he stopped at the end of the gravel road, his expression doubtful. “Sure, whatever you say.”

Tate stared out the windshield, stunned. After hearing where Bell had been found, he’d been expecting some kind of broken-down hovel with vines covering half of it. Instead, he got a neat, well-maintained, split-level log cabin with a wraparound deck and large windows overlooking a sloping yard and the picture-perfect pond just beyond it. The place looked like something on a postcard, for crying out loud. In fact, Tate could see himself burning up a few weeks of excess leave renting the place and catching up on all the reading he’d been putting off. Well, if a man hadn’t been murdered there.

“Not the kind of place you expected?” Chase asked as he opened his door and stepped out.

“Not really.”

As Tate headed for the front door of the cabin alongside the deputy, he glanced over his shoulder at the highway, confirming that somebody passing by would never even know the place was here.

“How did anybody realize there was something going on out here?” he asked. “There doesn’t seem to be a person close enough to hear anything.”

“The owners are an older couple who spend their winters down in Florida, so they pay a handyman to come out here every week and keep the place up,” Chase said. “When the guy came by the other day, he saw a couple of black bears pawing at the door and figured there was something in there attracting their attention. He chased them off, took one look inside, then called me.”

Tate did a double take. “He called you, not 911?”

Chase shrugged as he stepped onto the porch. “The Oxford County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t have a lot of deputies, so the people on our beats know each of us by name. The handyman has called me before when there’s been trouble, so it made sense for him to reach out to me when he peeked in the window and saw the body.”

Tate shook his head. He had a hard time imagining working in a place so small that people not only knew the deputies by name but had them on speed dial. Heck, he had a hard time remembering the names of half the people he worked with at the DCO. He probably only had phone numbers for a dozen of them.

Chase used a pocketknife to cut the crime scene tape on the door, then pushed it open. “We were planning to turn the house over to the cleaning crew this morning, but when Homeland contacted us, we put them on hold. Nothing has been touched since the coroner took the body out.”

Tate had barely stepped foot in the cabin when the acrid metallic scent of blood slapped him in the face. Thank God the weather was cool. He didn’t want to think about how bad the odor would be if it had been the middle of summer.

Breathing through his mouth so he wouldn’t yak, he moved through the small entryway, then across the living room with its wood-burning fireplace and leather couches, following the bloody footprints into the kitchen. One look at the knocked-over chairs, broken table, and big puddle of sticky, nearly dried blood was enough to tell him that this was definitely where all the action had occurred.

Besides the blood on the linoleum floor, there were some spatters decorating the far wall. Arterial spray from Bell’s slashed femoral, he guessed. At least a half dozen different shoe impressions had traipsed through the reddish-brown mess on the floor. Probably from the first responders who’d come in hoping there was a chance Bell was still alive. Some of the tracks likely belonged to the coroner’s team, too. Since Bell’s death had been declared an animal attack from the start, no one had seen the need to preserve the scene. It would have been nice to know if one of the shoe imprints belonged to the killer, but it was too late to do anything about it. Besides, his gut told him the person who did this was too good to leave behind any obvious evidence.

While there were undeniably a lot of footprints around the crime scene, the one thing he didn’t see were animal tracks. How the hell had the local cops explained that little detail?

Tate wandered around the room, carefully avoiding the blood that was still wet as he looked for anything that might give him an idea of how McKinley Bell had ended up in the middle of nowhere getting sliced up by a shifter or hybrid. But other than one of the kitchen chairs having some scuffs on the arms from the restraints used to hold Bell down, there was nothing.

He wished Declan was there. Having the bear shifter’s sensitive nose would have told him a lot, namely whether he was dealing with a shifter or hybrid, if the attacker had been working alone, maybe even if Bell had been drugged. Without Declan, Tate was swimming blind, hoping to stumble over a clue the police had missed. It made him wonder how he’d ever gotten anything done before having a shifter partner.

He crossed the room to check the dead bolt on the back door that led out of the kitchen and onto a walkway toward the pond. The bolt and doorframe were intact with no sign they’d been kicked in or even tampered with. When they’d first come in, Tate had glanced at the front door and noted that was in good shape, too.

“What’s the theory on how this all went down?” Tate asked, turning back to the deputy.

Chase was casually looking in the cabinets, like he was searching for a snack, which was crazy, considering how many donuts the guy had eaten. At Tate’s question, the deputy glanced his way, his face serious. “You want the narrative that’s in the final report?”

Tate frowned. Did Chase know the whole animal attack angle was BS regardless of what he’d said about the bobcat in front of his boss? “Yeah, the official party line would be good. Unless there’s another one you’d like to tell me about?”

Chase shrugged and closed the door of the cabinet. “Bell’s car was found out on the main highway about a half mile from here with the left front tire blown out. The official police report says he must have pulled over due to the flat and started walking along the road looking for help. Time of death was around two a.m., so there weren’t many people out there to see him. At some point, Bell realized he was being followed by an animal, and when he saw the cabin, he headed this way, either looking for a phone or just a place to get away from the thing behind him.”

The deputy paused, maybe to gauge whether Tate was buying any of this shit. Tate didn’t bother to point out that you couldn’t see the house from the road in the daylight. How Bell had supposedly seen it in the dark was beyond him.

“Any idea why the man would have been driving around here so late at night?” he asked. “He lived in Scarborough near the medical center, right?”

Chase shook his head. “No idea why he was up here. We’ve checked with the people at the hospital and his service. It wasn’t like he was making a house call or anything.” He wandered over to the next cabinet and opened it. “The handyman swears he always locks the door behind him, but since Bell got in without breaking any windows or locks, the assumption is that the handyman made a mistake and left the front door unlocked. Unfortunately, the bobcat, or whatever it was, followed him in before he could close the door. The animal chased Bell into the kitchen and attacked him, and the wind blew the door closed at some point after the animal left.”

Tate didn’t say anything, instead waiting to see if Chase was going to add anything else to the fantasy, but apparently, the man was done. With everything except digging through the cabinets.

“What the hell are you looking for in there?” Tate finally asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

Chase held open a cabinet door and pointed inside. “There’s food in at least half of these cabinets, yet the animal never bothered trying to get into them. I mean, there’s not even a scratch on them. A hungry bobcat might chase a person into a house and attack them, but if it did, it would sure as hell take a few nibbles. If it didn’t, it would at least dig around the house looking for something else to eat. This one didn’t. There are also no animal prints anywhere in the house. I saw Bell’s body after the attack. No way any animal tears into a man like that without leaving a single fucking paw print.”

Tate crossed his arms over his chest. “What are you trying to say? If an animal didn’t kill Bell, what do you think happened to him?”

Chase rested his hands on his gear belt and met his gaze. “I was hoping you’d tell me. And don’t bother trying to sell me that lame-ass pet mountain lion story, because we both know that was a load of shit.”

“You sure of that?” Tate asked.

“I don’t know what the hell to think or what I’m sure of. But I know there’s some strange crap going on with this case, and you know way more than you’re saying.”

Tate regarded the deputy for a moment. Chase was obviously sharp as hell. The kind of cop who saw things most officers made sure they didn’t and asked the questions other officers wouldn’t. Right now, he had that glint in his eyes that a man gets when he knows he’s involved with something big and wants to know exactly what it is.

Tate recognized that look and the insane urge that came with it. The one where you wanted to throw yourself into the far end of the pool just to see how deep the water really was. He’d felt that urge himself nearly a decade ago when he’d stumbled onto the existence of shifters and made a decision that changed his life. He’d never looked back, but every once in a while, he couldn’t help but wonder how his life would have been different if he hadn’t opened the door all those years ago. Or if someone had pushed it closed before he saw too much. Would he still be in the marshals? Would he be married with two-point-three kids, a house with a white picket fence, and a dog? He supposed he’d never know.

But this moment wasn’t about him. It was about a small-town cop from Oxford County, Maine, and whether Tate was going to open the door for him or push it closed.

“Maybe I’m not saying anything because you’re not ready to hear what I have to say,” he murmured.

“Why don’t you let me decide what I’m ready to hear?” Chase asked. “I think I can handle anything you throw at me.”

Tate almost laughed. Damn, this guy was so much like him when he was younger. So sure he had all the answers and could deal with anything.

He turned and looked around the kitchen again, doubting there was anything else to see here. Yeah, he could search the rest of the house, maybe even check out the yard. It would be nice to find some footprints or tire tracks that might tell him something about the person who’d killed McKinley Bell. But his gut told him he was wasting his time.

So instead, he focused on where to dig next for clues and how to deal with Deputy York. The first part was easy. The second, not so much. He knew for sure he wasn’t ready to tell Chase how Bell had died or that shifters existed. The guy wasn’t ready for that.

“You want to know what’s going on. I get that,” he told Chase. “But what we’re dealing with here is complicated and kind of tough to deal with all at once.”

Chase opened his mouth to say something, but Tate stopped him. “The one thing I can tell you is that Bell wasn’t chased in here by an animal. He was brought to this place to be tortured. I have no idea if he talked, but when the person who tortured him was done, he or she sliced open the man’s femoral artery and let him bleed out.”

“Why?” York asked.

Tate shook his head. “I don’t know yet. Which is why I’m going to dig a little deeper into the doctor’s background, his life, and the people who knew him. I could use your help with that, but you’re going to have to accept that until I’m ready to tell you the rest of the story, you’ll just have to trust me. Think you can handle that?”

Chase’s expression was half pissed, half amused. “Do I have a choice?”

“Sure,” Tate said. “You could drop me off at the motel, then go back to your office in Paris and tell the sheriff I’ve left already. Then you can go back to your normal everyday routine.”

Chase snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”