"It’s about time you got here, Luke," Grim commented as soon as a stark-naked Luke entered the barn.

Grim Nathaniel was the current leader the of the Aspen Valley wolf scouts. He took orders from the Pack Alpha Dane Magnus and was put in charge of rounding up more than a dozen wolf scouts at any given time. With Nathaniel looking to retire in a couple years, Dane had already approached Luke a few times about stepping up in the role. Only that would add a third major responsibility to his current list with the twins and his business being a top priority.

"Thanks for waiting. I have a personal guest who was visiting me when I heard the call," Luke said.

On instinct, he moved toward a chest that held some extra clothes. He'd done some work here for Grim before, so he always kept clothes stashed here just in case he ever ruined his clothes during a shift. The barn was also the one place that the scouts could hold uninterrupted meetings as a group.

Luke fished out a t-shirt and pants and pulled them on. Looking around him, he realized that only eight scouts were present tonight. Their next regularly scheduled meeting wasn't until the following week so the call to meet had been a little unexpected.

"Well don't you always have guests?" Patrick, a fellow scout, inquired. He pushed off a wall, dropping his cigarette to the ground and squashing it with the toe of his boot.

"I'm still in business, but she's different. I'm looking after her for a friend."

"She?" Patrick grinned. "I get it now. I can tell when a man has got fresh pussy waiting on him. No wonder you were late."

"It's not like that," Luke grumbled. "Her brother is a good friend of mine."

"Uh-huh," Patrick replied, skeptically. "We all know where you'd rather be."

"Enough about me. That call was pretty sudden. What's going on?" Luke asked.

"More murders. We have reports of almost two or three shootings in almost every county east of Aspen Valley. At the rate this is going, and if it doesn't stop, these killers could wipe out a whole Pack if they wanted to," Grim said.

"What have the cops been saying about this?" Luke asked. "I presume nothing since the killer is still at large."

"They're saying the evidence doesn't add up and that none of the crimes can be linked. They claim these are random incidents. Even though the killer has been cornering stray, rogue wolves, we know better."

"Of course we do," a shifter named Frederic offered from across the barn. "This is another ploy to chase us out of the area…maybe even annihilate us all."

Grim pounded his fist down onto a makeshift table. "We won't stand for it. As a Pack, we're now taking matters into our own hands. A dozen other surrounding Packs are doing the same too. The Alpha and I had a long talk this afternoon and he's given us scouts the responsibility of bringing down anyone and anything threatening our livelihood. We can't wait for the police on this one or we'll all be shot dead when we least expect it. Our murders have been swept under the rug. Our coroner has two dead shifters at his station now. He found the cause of death to be gunshot wounds. However, the murderer tried to cover it up by throwing the carcass out onto busy highways where the bodies were rolled over a whole bunch of times. They were labeled roadkill until Coroner Jack picked them up."

As Grim continued to hash out the details and discuss strategies, Luke's mind kept drifting to Cassie and not just because she'd been the center of his attention since she arrived but because of the incident that drove her to seek the safety of the mountains. He had no doubt that the two crimes were linked even though the cops were saying these were random occurrences not necessarily carried out by one person or group.

What if Cassie really was onto something? What if she had gotten so close to finding out who was causing such fear among the wolf community that she'd rattled fear in the perpetrator himself?

It was possible that Cassie had encountered clues that no one else could…or perhaps, no one else dared to pursue. Before bringing the story to his fellow scouts, he had to be certain that the facts added up. But would Cassie be willing to revisit her research and share her findings? By doing so, would it trigger the bad memories that caused her to hide in the valley to begin with?