“So where are you based out of?” he asked. “Because you sure seem to move around a lot.”
Alyssa took another bite of donut, chewing slowly, then sipped her coffee. “I see you’ve been checking up on me. Should I be thrilled you’ve taken such a personal interest in my busy work schedule or pissed that you obviously don’t trust me?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t trust you?”
“Is there a reason so many of the bad guys you and your SWAT teammates go up against end up becoming some coyote’s chew toy?” she shot back.
He was glad Alyssa didn’t have a werewolf’s enhanced hearing because his heart immediately began pounding harder as the implications of her question hit him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, making his voice sound casual even though he was close to hyperventilating at the realization that the federal government had been snooping into his and his pack mates’ lives. Yeah, he’d been snooping into Alyssa’s, but that was different.
“Oh, nothing,” she said, sitting there opposite him looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “I know coyotes are smart animals, but the ones in Texas are clearly bold as well. How many times have those critters shown up at the scene after a SWAT-involved shooting and nibbled on the bodies? Three or four at least that I saw.” She sipped her coffee again. “Funny how I didn’t see any other reports about coyotes doing that to dead bodies at other crime scenes. Just the ones involving your team. If it didn’t sound ridiculous, someone might think those coyotes follow you guys around.”
Zane ground his jaw, forcing himself to keep it together as Alyssa looked him right in the eye and pretty much called BS on the biggest lie in Dallas—that wild coyotes were to blame for the mauled and mangled bodies that were the natural outcome of a pack of werewolves going up against a group of armed bad guys. No one in the police department had ever questioned the theory that coyotes had clawed and chewed on the bodies—not even the medical examiner—as absolutely implausible as the idea of coyotes going after dead bodies might be. But Alyssa and her FBI friends seemed to see the lie for what it was—a complete and utter fabrication.
How much did Alyssa really know? If the hints she was dropping were any indication, somehow, she was aware that Zane and his pack mates had torn those men apart. But did she know Zane and his teammates were werewolves?
For half a second, he considered telling her the truth—or at least confirming what she already seemed to know. He had no idea why he’d even contemplate doing something like that, especially when he realized the risk it would pose to his pack mates. Alyssa was more than a little dangerous if she could make him think about doing something like that. Cursing his own foolishness, he shoved the idea back into the darkest corner of his mind and told it to stay there.
What should he tell her then? Well, as he’d learned in the SAS, when you find yourself in an ambush, the best course of action is to figure out where the gunfire is coming from and go there.
“Speaking of dead bodies, I couldn’t help but notice that all those places you’ve been to over the past year seemed to have a lot of them,” he said. “Funny that no arrests were ever made. If it didn’t sound ridiculous, someone might think your whole purpose for going there was to make things disappear. No muss, no fuss. Just another example of Big Brother in action.”
When her heart rate spiked, he knew he’d struck a nerve.
“So we’re doing this again?” she said. “I ask a question. You ask a question. I ask another one, but neither one of us answers?”
Zane shrugged. He didn’t know why he felt so shitty about playing that game with her, but he did. “It’s obvious we both have things we can’t talk about. So, yeah. It seems that’s how this is going to go.”
As an uncomfortable silence filled the room, Zane finally gave in and bit into his cream-filled donut. It didn’t have enough cream for his liking. On top of that, his bloody tea was cold.
Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with two competing desires. One told him to get up and leave. The other wanted him to get up, pull Alyssa into his arms, and kiss her until she told him every secret she possessed. Or passed out from lack of oxygen. Bloody hell, maybe he’d just kiss her until her clothes fell off. How long could that take?
Zane finished that donut and reached into the box for another—cinnamon cake this time. As he chewed, he decided kissing her would be a very bad idea. He couldn’t walk away from Alyssa, because he needed her help to figure out what the hell Stefan was involved in and so his team could find Stefan’s uncle, but he wasn’t stupid enough to try and kiss her. She’d probably kick him in the balls.
He wasn’t thinking straight, that was the problem. He knew why, too. At least, he thought he did. There was the terrifying possibility Alyssa was that one-in-a-billion soul mate he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with and being near her was making him stupid. Or there was a chance he was having an adverse reaction to the latest batch of drugs the Pack’s doctor had sent him to help regrow the muscle in his injured arm. Saunders had been shipping him a different cocktail of experimental drugs every few days the whole time Zane had been in LA. None of them seemed to work and almost always came with unpleasant side effects. Maybe the latest combination was making him insane.
As unsettling as that thought was, Zane decided he still preferred that explanation to the first possibility.
“So, what happened with Stefan?” Alyssa suddenly asked. “Last night after your teammates followed him, I mean.”
Zane recognized an olive branch when he saw it. Alyssa was trying to move the conversation to safer ground. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
“Unfortunately, he went straight from the club to his fancy home in the Hollywood Hills, where he remained the rest of the night.” Zane helped himself to another donut. The cake kind with pink icing and sprinkles. “He wasn’t too happy when those muscle heads called and told him they lost the girls.”
Alyssa looked up from her donut in surprise. “How do you know that? Do you have his phone bugged?”
Zane shrugged. “The FBI isn’t the only one with high-tech toys.”
She made a face. “What did they tell him?”
“Oddly enough, they talked mostly in code, like they were worried someone was listening in. They told him there was ‘trouble with the product’ and that they ran into some ‘unknown players.’ Stefan immediately shut the conversation down and said the subject would be discussed during the next scheduled meeting.”
She did a double take. “That’s kind of weird. I assumed Stefan would be the type to get pissed and throw things when stuff didn’t go his way.”
“Oh, he was mad,” Zane said. “After he hung up, he cursed for a good five minutes. Then he threw things.”
She lifted a brow, her coffee cup halfway to her mouth. “You have his house bugged, too?”
