“No,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound too eager. “That works fine. I’ll see you then?”
“Okay. See you this evening. Bye.”
“Bye.”
We hung up, and I sat down, eating my sandwich and feeling as giddy as a schoolboy.
By the timefive o’clock rolled around, I was stressed and excited. Stressed because I wanted to make sure this trip and my interaction with June went well, and excited because I couldn’t wait to see her again. The longer I was in town, the more I was drawn to her. I’d told Rainier I was here to do nothing but find Naphele’s incarnation, but as soon as I saw June again, the old feelings surged back powerfully.
I walked up as June was locking the door to the store.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Shit!” she yelped and spun around.
I held my hands up in surrender. “Whoa, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
She put a hand to her chest and heaved a sigh. “No. Sorry. Just been a little jumpy.”
Something in her tone piqued my interest. Eyeing her, I thought I could sense some internal stress that made her shoulders lift in tension, and her face appeared drawn and pinched as though she was worrying about something.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, taking a step toward her.
Instead of answering, she nodded toward a car parked on the curb. “That’s mine. Hop in.”
“Don’t you want to run?” I said, staring at the car with unadulterated disdain.
“It’s supposed to rain,” she said. “Plus, Black Creek is thirty miles away. I really don’t want to get home at midnight.”
“Fine,” I grumbled as I got into the car.
I’d never been a fan of cars. Back when I’d fled into the forests, most cars had been loud and slow rumbling machines. Over the years, and from a distance, I’d seen them become sleeker and faster. Sometimes I would even go out to a spot at the most western portion of my forest that overlooked the interstate and wonder at the big machines that flew by with wicked speed. Don’t even get me started on airplanes. I preferred the old-fashioned shifter way of getting around. Though, June was right that traveling on four legs would take longer than four tires.
June finally answered my question once she’d started the car and pulled away from the curb.
“I had dinner with Anders’s mom last night,” she said.
Just hearing that asshole’s name sent an irritated spike of jealousy through me.
“Oh, yeah?” I said.
“Yeah. I think we’re on to something here. With the murder case, I mean.”
That was not what I’d expected. I’d assumed she’d launch into some banal story about hanging out with her soon-to-be mother-in-law, but this sounded a bit more interesting.
“Did you find out anything?” I said, straightening in my seat.
“She started acting weird when I mentioned you and I were trying to solve Naphele’s murder. She warned me off it and even told me not to trust you. It was strange.”
“I wonder why. Neither she nor Anders has any skin in the game at this point.”
“That’s what I thought. She mentioned that old crimes tended to leave lasting wounds in shifter communities, which is true, but this felt stranger than that.”
“I guess we’ll see what we can find out on this trip. Maybe we should look into Rafe next,” I said.
“Yeah.”
Rafe. I still remembered the good times we’d shared when we were friends, before Naphele’s death. We used to hunt deer together in our wolf forms, sit on the bank of the river as we fished and drank moonshine. He’d stood beside me at my mating ceremony. The idea that he’d had something to do with Naphele’s murder made my heart ache miserably. Perhaps he’d known something and kept it quiet? He’d become the pack alpha after I’d run away. Could he have allowed that? Let everyone think I’d killed her, and hid the truth to take over the pack? That thought was almost as bad as him killing Naphele himself.
