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Chapter 4

Derek had to leave the woman or risk being caught by the people he took such pains to his hide true identity from on a daily basis. Dale was already sprinting in the opposite direction in human form, racing from shadow to shadow. But though Derek had also downsized to a human shape, he hated to leave before further help arrived for the woman they had rescued from harm. That part of being a werewolf sucked.

The woman had howled. Sort of. And she had mentioned werewolves. That alone would have intrigued him, even if she hadn’t been so damn beautiful.

What did she know about his kind? Anything? Could it be that she was just having him on with the werewolf remark, with no real idea how close to his reality she had come? Or was she fully equipped with knowledge about his kind?

She was a fierce little thing. No wallflower when it came to protecting herself. He’d witnessed that kick she had given to the imbecile he and Dale had left unconscious and handcuffed to a drainpipe.

She’d handled herself the best way she could without succumbing to shock. That took courage and also meant that her girl-next-door, wholesome looks were somewhat deceiving.

Small and feisty would have been a turn-on for a big bad wolf if he had time for such things...and if she hadn’t been human. Add to that her pale oval face, big eyes and mass of shiny blond hair, and she became a real curiosity.

With so many battles to fight these days, it was best for him to ignore distractions. He hadn’t indulged in anything that could have been considered a relationship since his heart had been broken, and he was still picking up the pieces of that breakup. It was also possible he had been wallowing a bit too long in its aftermath.

The only reason he had risked a shift back to human form in this woman’s presence was because she hadn’t been in any kind of state to have recognized what was going on at the time. Only by shifting could he have offered assurance that she was going to be okay. Her eyes had barely focused. She had been confused.

Still, and again, she had howled and mentioned werewolves.

Dale was waiting for him around the next corner, at the edge of a dimly lit parking lot. He stood in the shadows of a large sign, just any old half-dressed human to an observer’s eye. Dale also was a big guy, and formidable. No one in their right mind would have moved closer for a better look, or questioned his shirtless state. Dale’s posture alone would have prevented that.

“Do you know her?” Dale asked as Derek pulled up beside him.

“Never saw her before,” Derek replied.

“You got sort of cozy back there.”

“I just had to make sure she was all right.”

Dale grinned. “Yeah. Well, you took a while to do that. And you shifted in the presence of a human.”

“She was half-unconscious at the time,” Derek pointed out. “And she’s unusual.”

“She’s no Were,” Dale said. “I’d have thought you had learned a lesson about human women.”

Derek nodded. “Learned it loud and clear, my friend. Have no fear about that.”

Dale’s gaze swept over the parking lot. “It’s quiet now.”

Derek didn’t want to jinx things by agreeing or mentioning unnecessarily that there usually were a few moments of calm before a storm. The moon had only been up for a few hours. There was more night ahead. He figured that when word got back to the vamp queen about two of her young fledglings being dusted, vamp activity would pick up. He had a special sense for that kind of thing.

“We’d better get back to it,” he said.

“Right,” Dale agreed with a big breath as he stepped into the moonlight and, to get Derek to laugh, pounded on his chest the way male apes did in the wild. Then he pinned another grin to his rapidly morphing features. Unlike Derek, Dale was a more frightening rendition of their werewolf species—wolfish body, wolfish face, fur follicles and all.

When the light hit Derek, he closed his eyes. With an internal rumble, the changes began. The expansion of his chest came first, followed by an icy burn in his hips and legs as the mysterious chemical reaction coded into him gave his system a bump.

In a quick lightning strike of pain, his arms and torso muscled up, stretching his skin and the bones beneath. Light brown hair, usually only a little too long for a detective in Seattle, lengthened, as if a year had gone by with no trim. Last to alter were the parts of his face that took on another look with a brief, sharp, short-lived sting.

Weres, early in their lifetimes, had to either learn to adapt to these physical changes or die. The first shape-shift often weeded out the weak. There was no escaping or hiding from the inner explosions that set off a shape-shift. Everyone supposed this was a survival-of-the-fittest sort of biological trick. But getting used to the art of a body’s physical rearrangement was a Were’s mission. Being Were was a serious game of species-imposed destiny.

Dale was waiting for him to acknowledge the job of alley sweeping ahead, and Derek nodded. More vampires would come out sooner or later, and he and Dale had to be ready.

“I suppose you’d like to drop by that place and make sure the woman and her assailant were picked up?” Dale messaged wryly.

“Do you think you can read minds now?” Derek returned.

“Not all minds. Just yours.”

Derek barked a laugh. It was true that he wanted to go back there. He wanted nothing more, in fact.

“Just to check on the perp,” he sent to Dale.

“You go right ahead and tell yourself that,” Dale messaged back.

Hell, maybe Dale really could read minds...

“It’s dangerous to retrace our steps,” Dale warned.

Derek shrugged his massive shoulders. “Dangerous for whom? The idiot that tried to attack a woman on a busy street, or us?”

“Well, you’ve got me there.”

Dale matched Derek’s confident stride across the parking lot as they turned to the east again with renewed purpose.

At the very least, Derek decided, he had to find out who that woman was, and what her remarks about werewolves meant. She would have been questioned by the officers who picked her up, so there would be paperwork filed. Her personal information would be on that paperwork.

Even better, with the attacker in custody, she’d have to be questioned further. And he knew just the right detective to help with that, even if doing so might mean treading on another detective’s casework.

“Smell that?” Dale asked.

“Hell yeah,” Derek returned.

They exchanged glances, growled in unison and took off in the direction of the latest ill wind.

Four cops arrived in Riley’s rescuer’s wake. She marshalled her strength, since she needed to make sure they took the guy who had caused all this chaos into custody.

The jerk was still unconscious and was handcuffed to a pipe near the entrance to the nearby alley. Cops were looking from her to him with unspoken questions on their faces.

“A couple of big guys came to my rescue,” she said. “Looks like this was my lucky night.”

“They did that? Cuffed him?” one of the officers asked, checking out the standard-issue cuffs she had seen a thousand times hanging from her father’s belt loops.

“Cops?” the officer continued.

“Possibly,” Riley replied. “Though they weren’t in uniform.”

The officer nodded. “Plainclothes guys, most likely. Are you hurt, ma’am? Are you in need of medical assistance?”

Riley thought about that. Actually, she was okay, except for the headache and the thought of having had a near brush with death.

“A ride would be nice,” she said. “To my car.”

“We’ll have to take a statement,” another officer pointed out.

Riley nodded. “I can give you that.”

She knew the drill about that, too. She could talk about the attempted abduction, but she couldn’t even begin to describe her rescuer in any way that wouldn’t make her sound crazy. Shirtless male? Rippling muscle that didn’t seem to be able to settle on his big frame? Volcanic heat? Eyes like laser beams?

Maybe since these guys assumed she’d been helped by plainclothes officers, they wouldn’t ask too many questions or press her for descriptions.

Should she mention those howls she had heard?

No way. Absolutely not. In doing so, she’d be putting her reputation on the line before she even had a reputation. Besides, the strange noises she’d heard had nothing to do with what had happened here. She had merely been in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

No longer dizzy or wobbly in the knees, Riley glanced up at the sky. Though clouds were moving in, the moon was on full display. After what had happened tonight, that moon suddenly seemed kind of sinister.

A young officer—the badge on his shirt said his name was Marshall—helped her to the cruiser parked at the curb with a steadying hand on her elbow. Silent and subdued, he waited until she sat down inside before making eye contact. Then he smiled knowingly, as if they were co-conspirators and shared a secret. Riley recognized the look.

“You know who my rescuers might have been?” she asked.

The officer shrugged.

“Will you thank them again for me?”

He nodded as two more cops walked up, and then Officer Marshall backed away without looking at her again. Whether or not he knew anything, she’d have liked a way to speak with that young cop again and get a line on finding out about the men who had quite possibly saved her life.

She owed them so much more than a beer.

Tucked into the cruiser, Riley answered each question she was asked to the best of her ability and with as much detail as she thought prudent under the circumstances.

Adrenaline still pumped through her body from the fight she had put up. In spite of regaining some strength, her shivering had doubled, leaving her longing for the kind of warmth she had been temporarily offered by the nameless, shirtless man who’d come to her rescue on a cold night.

A guardian angel was the way she’d think of her rescuer from now on...except maybe for the few seconds when his lips had traveled over her face. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Had he wanted a special kind of thank-you for helping her? Should that have left her feeling further abused and icky?

Used to looking inside events in search of deeper meaning, Riley wondered what the guy might have been searching for in such an intimate touch. It seemed to her at the time that he had been seeking a way under her skin to get a look at the real Riley Price, not the professional cover-up artist she had become. She didn’t need another shrink to try to analyze that idea because the absurdity wasn’t lost on her.

If she were to perform self-analysis, her interest in this rescuer had been caused by a latent sense of loneliness, of being alone in a big city, and so far from home. That, along with a healthy suspicion that she might actually have met a real live superhero tonight.

Unfortunately, as a mental health professional, she realized there was more to it than either of those things.

That man’s touch had left her feeling exposed and excited, and sorry there hadn’t been more excitement, all at the same time. She had wished for adventure and it had smacked her on the head a bit too hard.

One little kiss that wasn’t actually a real kiss at all, from an anonymous man, and the memory of how that had felt, was keeping her pulse on warp speed.

Nope. There was no way she could mention much about her rescuer to these cops and come out unscathed. Something in her voice would give away her interest if she mentioned him out loud. The creep who had attacked her was now in custody, she was okay, and that was that.

Statement, check.

Witness form, check.

Perhaps an interview at the police station would follow in the next day or two, and life would go on.

Crowds had gathered on the sidewalk and in the street, lured by the presence of cops like insects to a bright light. Riley tried to find the officer who’d seemed to know her rescuer as the cruiser pulled away from the curb, but had lost him in the throng of spectators. She told herself it didn’t really matter, anyway. Things were what they were, and all that mattered was that she was going back to her small, rented house in one piece.

Nevertheless, she peered out the back window of the cruiser and hoped for a glimpse of the broad shoulders that would now be the highlight of her dreams. And as the car wove expertly into traffic, Riley clutched the edge of the seat and gasped, thinking she just might have caught that glimpse.