“It sounds like me,” Cade pointed out. “If you looked, you could find my birth certificate and a few early years’ medical records, but before I left Alaska, my employers mostly paid me under the table. Even when they didn’t need plausible deniability, they didn’t want to pay the taxman.”
“Why did you leave Alaska?” Marlow asked.
Cade laughed, a low, rich sound, and took a drink of beer. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
Mind on the job, Marlow reminded himself.
“It could be described as running from something,” Cade admitted. “Mostly my dad. A little bit the chance of a moose encounter. Fair enough.”
“That could be the problem,” Marlow said. “If he moved here from somewhere else. Franklin moved here from San Francisco, and he nearly got fired a couple of years ago for insurance fraud when they couldn’t access his record of employment automatically. Shame it didn’t go through now, obviously, but public records aren’t set up to talk to each other because people don’t move much.”
Cade straightened up on the couch and looked thoughtful. “Wolves don’t,” he agreed. “Maybe from city to city, like Franklin, but not states. It didn’t bother me, I think the wolf hated Alaska as much as I did, but most people find it hard to leave their territory. Nulls?”
Marlow shrugged. “We can move,” he said. “Most don’t. Either they have wolf family and friends, or it just doesn’t occur to them since no one else does. The few who do… it’s usually because of a fixation that was too persistent for the usual techniques to cope with.”
“The same thing that got Barney Lyons killed?” Cade said. “That’s… not evidence, but it’s a theory.”
Marlow nodded. He chewed his lower lip absently as he thought the idea through. “It makes sense. If Victor Clemons had to leave his whole life behind once because a wolf wouldn’t leave him alone, and then it happened again… When we talked, he was angry, and he didn’t want to make any compromises or try anything to wean Lyons off his attachment. Maybe because he’d tried it before and it didn’t work? In that situation, he might decide to take things into his own hands.”
“Self-defense?” Cade said. “Why let you take the blame, then?”
“If he had silver bullets to hand,” Marlow said, “that’s premeditation. Even if he can prove he used them to save his own life, he’d still get a few years for that. And just owning silver is a federal crime. If I hadn’t set an extra patrol on the neighborhood, he would have probably come back in daylight and got rid of the body if wolves hadn’t taken care of the remains for him.”
Cade pulled a face. It probably wasn’t something he wanted to imagine, Marlow supposed. He needed to start to think before he spoke.
“I mean—” he stumbled over an attempt to retract what he’d said, and Cade waved it away.
“Valid theory,” he said, setting the bottle down by his feet before he stood up. “Still no evidence, though.”
Cade stretched, one arm folded behind his head as he tried to loosen a knot. His shirt was tight over his shoulders and snug across his chest, and it rode up at the sides as Cade twisted to reveal taut, tanned skin. Marlow’s mouth went dry.
“We need to talk to his first boss,” he said. “Find out anything he said about where he came from.”
Cade flashed a lazy grin. His teeth looked very sharp.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Unless you want to have to set me on fire again?”
“I’d rather not,” Marlow said in a dry voice. He stood up, awkward as he wondered what the etiquette was. When he’d been a kid, Gran had just kissed him goodnight, given him his dinner, and locked him in the safe room.
It didn’t seem entirely appropriate to this situation.
Cade stripped his shirt off over his head and dropped it onto the couch. He unbuttoned his jeans and had them halfway down his hips, thumbs hooked around the waistband, when it occurred to him to glance at Marlow.
“You know it’s rude to stare,” he said.
“Yeah,” Marlow said, “I know.”
That didn’t mean he was going to look away. Cade laughed, a throaty, satisfied sound, and stripped the rest of his clothes off. He looked just as good as Marlow remembered from the… start of the month. It seemed longer than that.
“You going to be okay?” Cade asked. “Not your usual full moon.”
Marlow glanced around and shrugged. “It’s weird to sit it out,” he admitted as he puffed out his cheeks on a sigh. “I might just get drunk and feel sorry for myself.”
“I can think of something else you could do,” Cade said as he idly scratched his jaw.
“What?”
Cade closed the distance between them in one stride and hooked his fingers into the waistband of Marlow’s jeans. He dragged him in close so Marlow could feel the heat of all that naked skin. Marlow caught his breath, harsh and hot in the back of his throat, as he grazed his hands up Cade’s bare, lean hips.
