Reed saved the file and backed it up on a thumb drive. He tucked the drive in his pocket. The original was still on his computer.
He needed to take this to someone. He thought about the police. But he didn’t know how deep the corruption ran. He didn’t know who he could trust. Frank Dalton had been a public official. What if there was someone inside the police department involved in the conspiracy?
He thought about his family. His dad. His siblings. Their mates and their children. He couldn’t put them at risk.
He knew that Dominic Steel, of Steel Protection, had helped solve the Becca Matthews murder when he had been framed for her killing. The security company had a shop on Main Street. He’d passed the building many times since they’d moved in eighteen months ago. They’d come to Fate Mountain to protect the shifter community.
He had to be careful. His family had been targeted before. He couldn’t take this recording to the police yet. Instead, he would take it to Steel Protection.
Chapter
Four
Reed was barelyable to sleep all night. He stared at the ceiling for hours, the words on the recording playing on repeat in his head. When the gray morning light filtered through his blinds, he finally climbed out of bed.
After his morning routine, he went outside to his car. He drove down the familiar streets of Fate Mountain Village. People were walking dogs and shop owners were opening their doors. It was all so painfully ordinary. The thumb drive felt like a lead weight in his pocket.
He parked across the street from 247 Main Street. It was a two-story brick building on the corner with the Steel Protection sign above the door. Motorcycles were parked out front in a neat row.
Reed had driven past this building dozens of times since they’d opened, not really thinking very much of it, aside from what his brother Ash had told him about the Becca Matthews’ arson.
He sat in his car for a moment, staring at the front door. His hands were shaking slightly. He hadn’t eaten and had downed an entire pot of coffee on no sleep. He was runningon adrenaline, fear, and caffeine. And he felt like his bear was going to burst out from inside him. How had he gotten into this situation?
He was a folk musician and a computer engineer. He fixed networks and wrote songs about logging towns, fate, and family. He didn’t deal with murders and conspiracies and people who killed to keep secrets.
But he had the recording. He’d heard what he’d heard. And he couldn’t unhear it. And something told him Steel Protection was the better option than the police right now.
His inner grizzly stirred restlessly, still aching from the mate rejection. His mate was out there somewhere. She didn’t want him. And now he had to walk into a building full of strangers and hand them evidence of a murder.
His life had gotten really complicated really fast.
Reed stepped out of the car, jogged across the crosswalk and up to the front door of Steel Protection. He pushed inside and took in the space. For some reason, he had expected the kind of place a motorcycle club might keep, with leather and engine grease and intimidation. Instead, he found a professional open office space with desks arranged strategically, filing cabinets and computers.
It didn’t look that much different than where he worked at the Bright Institute. Valeria Reynolds-Steel sat at the front desk. She was the daughter of Police Chief Reynolds—one of his dad’s old friends.
Beside her, a five-month-old baby was sitting in a bouncy chair, bashing at the spinning mirrored toy and babbling. That was the last thing he’d expected to see in here.
“Can I help you?” she asked, before recognizing him. “Reed Bright, right? What can I do for you today?”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I need to speak with someone about a sensitive matter.”
Valeria looked concerned. “Sensitive how?” she asked.
“I have information.” Reed hesitated. Once he said it, there was no going back. Valeria had once been a beat cop with the Fate Mountain Police Department, and it made him hesitate, wondering if he should just bring this directly to them. He took a deep breath and let it out. In a whisper, “It’s about something that happened at the brewery this weekend on Sunday night, involving Carl Unger.”
Valeria’s eyes widened and she nodded, standing from the desk. “Keep an eye on Adrian. You know about babies, right? Your family’s got at least three of them.” She squeezed Reed’s shoulder and hurried out of the room.
The little boy chewed on his rubber bib and squealed at Reed. Something in his chest tightened, looking at the baby. When Holly’s son Jasper was that age, he’d always been so funny. A moment later, Valeria returned and thanked him for watching her son. She slid back into her spot at the front desk.
“Siren will be right with you.”
A back door opened, and he heard footsteps. He looked up and saw her. Her dark hair was long and wavy down her back. Her sharp eyes focused on him. She was wearing a leather jacket and moved with a controlled grace that spoke of deadly violence. Reed’s world stopped. His inner grizzly screamed.
Mate. Mate. Mate.
It was Reaper Wolf in all her dangerous glory.
He’d stared at her face on the phone screen for hours. The photo, her profile, he’d memorized the line of her jaw, the set of her shoulders, the way her eyes seemed to pierce whatever she was looking at.
