Alex arched a brow. He couldn’t help but remember what his pack mate had said about not being responsible if the man resisted.
“What? I’m serious.” Remy gave him an indignant look. “He was so worried about me chasing him that he wasn’t watching where he was going. He smacked into a tree like some cartoon character, I swear. It was pure Wile E. Coyote stuff.”
Some werewolves in the Pack had the ability to sense when someone was lying to them—Alex wasn’t one of them. But he got the feeling Remy was telling the truth. The story was too crazy not to be true.
As they walked back toward the corner where the drug deal had been going down, he caught sight of Brooks and Max across the street, along with Vaughn, the female narcotics officer. As he and Remy approached, he couldn’t help but notice that Vaughn was staring at Brooks like he had horns sprouting from his head and a rainbow flying out his butt.
She opened her mouth to say something to Brooks, but then closed it again. After a moment, she shook her head and walked away, looking back over her shoulder at Brooks every other step. The attractive dark-skinned cop was eyeballing him so much she almost smacked into a parked patrol car.
“What the heck was that about?” Alex asked Max as Brooks hurried to catch up with her.
Max shrugged, his blue eyes following their pack mate. “Brooks tackled a car again. He hit that little Toyota so hard that both wheels came up off the street, and Vaughn saw it. I guess she’s trying hard as hell to convince herself that her eyes must have been playing tricks on her.”
Alex knew he shouldn’t be surprised. In a pack of really big alpha werewolves, Brooks was frigging huge. And with his football background, he had a bad habit of tackling anything that either tried to stand in his way or get away from him—including cars. He’d pay the price for it later in the form of bruises over half his body and broken bones that would take hours to heal. That had never stopped him before though and probably wouldn’t any time soon.
Then again, maybe he’d just been showing off for that narcotics cop. Vaughn was definitely cute, and Brooks was attracted to her. Alex had seen him putting the moves on the woman several times over the past couple of weeks.
“Maybe we should get him a tackling dummy for the compound,” Max suggested. “You know, so he can work out his aggression issues.”
“Or get him paired up with The One for him as fast as possible,” Remy suggested. “It’s bound to mellow him out. If we can find somebody big enough and rough enough to match him.”
Alex was thinking maybe Vaughn could be that match. Working narcotics, she certainly wasn’t a pushover. Beside him, Remy’s phone vibrated.
“That Vivian telling you to hurry up?” Alex asked.
Remy scowled as he read her text. “It’s Vivian telling me not to bother coming over. She found someone else to keep her bed warm for what’s left of the night.”
Max winced. “Dude, that’s harsh.”
“It’s just as well,” Alex said. “She would have been pissed when you told her you couldn’t make it because you’re going to be filling out paperwork for the next couple of hours.”
“I am?” Remy asked, clearly confused.
“Hell, yeah. And you’d better dot your i’s and cross your t’s, because something tells me Detective Coletti in IA is going to be looking at that report real hard.” Alex grinned. “I hope that charming accent of yours works on guys as well as it does on women, because I think he’s going to have a real hard time believing that drug dealer ran into a tree.”
Remy groaned and shoved his phone in his pocket.
Alex watched as the uniformed officers providing backup finished getting all the suspects safely tucked away in the back of police cruisers, including the undercover cop and the slim, frail-looking woman. Both of them looked equally despondent. Alex couldn’t blame them. One was heading to jail to gain street cred, and the other was going because she was addicted to a nasty drug that was slowly killing her.
At least in the case of the cop, spending a night or two in jail might be worth it if it ended up getting fireball—and whoever was making it—off the street.
* * *
Alex stifled a yawn as he stared at the TV mounted on the far wall of the waiting area in the veterinary clinic. He’d gotten thirty minutes of sleep this morning and was frigging exhausted. Several of the other guys in the Pack had offered to take Tuffie to her appointment so he could head home and crash, but he hadn’t taken any of them up on it. Taking Tuffie for her checkups wasn’t something he’d ever let anyone else do for him. So he’d showered off, changed into one of the fresh uniforms he kept in his locker at the SWAT compound, and headed out with the team’s mascot and community pet in tow.
He glanced at Tuffie sitting on the floor beside his chair and couldn’t help but smile. The girl was an absolute doll, even after the horrendous life she’d had. It was obvious from all the scars on her body that the pit bull mix had spent a portion of it in a dogfighting ring—something that pissed him off every time he thought about it. Thankfully, she’d been rescued by the owner of a local junkyard who’d given her a new life and taken good care of her. Unfortunately, that life had been cut short when the psycho ex-boyfriend of the Pack’s newest member, Khaki Blake, had shot Tuffie and killed her owner. Alex had stabilized her as well as he could, along with Trey Duncan, the team’s other medic, but the injuries had been severe, and she’d been in surgery for a long time. It was a miracle she’d survived at all.
So while it could sometimes be tricky getting her to the clinic for all her appointments, Alex made it a priority. Tuffie was a survivor. If she could find it in her to keep smiling and wagging her tail after everything she’d been through, he could certainly rearrange his schedule a little to get her there.
He was still sitting there watching the news an hour later when a dark-haired vet tech came out to apologize for the wait, saying they were down to one doctor and that everything was backed up.
“I can reschedule Tuffie for another day, if you want?” she offered.
Alex shook his head. “It’s okay. We’ll wait.”
He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, promising himself he’d just rest them for a second, when he heard the front door open. He opened his eyes to see a female DPD uniformed officer come in cradling a tiny malnourished-looking beagle mix in her arms. She checked in with the front desk, then took a seat next to Alex. The fragile-looking puppy curled into a ball and immediately fell asleep in the cop’s lap.
Tuffie opened her eyes and gave the puppy a once-over, then went back to sleep.
