Alphas on the Prowl (26 page)

Quick as a thought, he bounded up and turned on the lights.

She gasped.

“Ava!” Dr. Thayer scolded, as the whole party crowded into the entry to the solarium. “What in heavens name are you doing?”

“I—I—” the young woman stammered. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her hair stuck to her temples.

“She has your keys, and something else as well,” Mac announced darkly.

A murmur went through the crowd.

14

“What in the world are you talking about, J.D.? Ava would never steal from me,” Helen protested, marching across the room to pat her assistant’s arm.

“On the contrary, Dr. Thayer,” Mac said calmly. “She’s been waiting for an opportunity for a long time.”

“She’s had every
opportunity
. She sleeps here most nights,” Helen said.

“That’s quite true. More often now than in the past, I’ll bet,” Mac suggested.

“That’s none of your concern,” Ava spoke up for the first time.

“You’ve been staying here more nights than not. But you had to wait until tonight to take those keys. Because tonight there were guests in the house, and that gave you plausible deniability, right, Ava?” Mac asked.

She turned away from him, but he saw the color rise in her cheeks. His wolf raged at the insult to its intended mate. But Mac was in charge here. The girl was not his mate, after all. And wrongs had to be righted.

“What would Ava want with the keys anyway?” Dr. Thayer asked, more quietly.

“Ava has no interest in their historical value, Helen. She is interested in them, or in one of them, because of what it opens,” Mac explained gently.

“The old toolshed? The reading room at the Friends Historical Library?” Helen pleaded. But her devastated expression told Mac that she had already put it together.

“One of those keys, a very small one, had a swirl pattern on it, didn’t it?” Mac asked.

Dr. Thayer nodded forlornly.

“It matched the pattern on the decorative box on your desk at the college, is that what it opens?” Mac asked.

She nodded again.

“And what was in the box, Helen?” Mac made his voice as gentle as a mother’s caress. “Was it photographs?”

She shook her head.

“No, J.D.,” she sighed. “It was a flash drive. But it amounts to the same thing.”

“You must be in so much pain,” he replied softly. “But you didn’t know who?”

She shook her head.

“I told Ava that I paid a PI to follow him, and that they caught him with  someone at a hotel in Springton. But they never caught her face on camera…”

“Did you confront him?” Mac asked.

“No. But we have a prenup. Evidence was all I needed,” Helen answered.

Out of the corner of his eye, Mac saw Ava slide to the ground, her face in her hands.

“What the hell is going on?” Brad Lloyd-Thayer’s voice bounced off the glass walls of the solarium as he pushed through the crowd to get to his wife.

“You were fucking…
Ava
,” Helen’s voice broke on her assistant’s name.

“How could you have
possibly
known that from missing keys, MacGregor?” Brad demanded, turning furiously to Mac.

“When I was in the library tonight with Miss Everly, someone else was in there with us.”

From her place near the front of the crowd, Parker blushed at the thought.

“The person made a quick exit, hoping not to be seen. Then Ava began to pay a lot of attention to me. And when my guard was down, she disappeared with my pants,” Mac admitted less triumphantly.

Brad’s face went pale and he turned to face Ava.

“Is that true?” he asked, “Did you sleep with him?”

Ava buried her face in her hands again and began to sob.

Brad spun back to Mac, with an indescribable expression. “So what does this have to do with me?”

“I saw a brush in Ava’s room, and in the brush were long blond hairs.”

“Okay, okay,” Clive Warren pushed his way up to Mac. The sheriff looked mightily confused.

“Are you saying that
he
was having an affair with
her?
” Clive pointed to Brad and then to Ava.

“Yes,” Mac nodded.

“And she stole the keys?” Clive asked, pointing again to Ava.

“Yes,” Mac agreed. “Helen had likely confessed to her that she knew her husband was having an affair. And that the flash drive with the evidence was in the box.

When Ava realized that Helen hadn’t recognized her, she knew it was only a matter of time. She had to get the flash drive.

The box was locked. It is quite large, and a prized possession of Dr. Thayer’s. It would be too difficult to smuggle out unnoticed. And Ava knew that if the box went missing, Dr. Thayer might figure everything out.

The keys, on the other hand, are of interest to several people. They’re quite small, and easy to spirit away in a pocket.

Ava thought she would slip away from the party with the keys. In the excitement, perhaps no one would realize they were missing for a short time, and she could replace them once she had removed the drive from the box.

And if someone did notice that they were missing, there would be plenty of other suspects.

With the keys here at the house, and the box over at the office, it might be a long time before Helen Thayer ever bothered to open it again. And that would remove suspicion from Ava as well.

Did I get it right, Ava?” he asked, as solicitously as he could, under the circumstances.

The weeping girl looked up.

“I - I was going away, next week. Dr. Thayer found me an incredible position in D.C.. I just wanted to tie up loose ends. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I’m so ashamed,” she cried, burying her face in her hands again.

“J. D. MacGregor, I know you are trying to help but you’ve ruined
everything
,” Dr. Thayer suddenly exclaimed.

There was a collective gasp. Even Brad Lloyd-Thayer looked stunned.

“I knew darned well what was going on. But I love this girl like a daughter, and I have sympathy for my husband, hapless and stupid though he may have been for her… charms,” she paused.

Mac figured she might as well just have said “breasts” instead of charms.

“Anyway,” she continued, “when I told her about the flash drive, it was only to give her a way out. After we talked about the pictures, I offered her a wonderful internship opportunity in D.C.. I knew that if I offered her that chance and she took it, that the dalliance with Brad didn’t mean anything and we could still be like a family. I was so proud of her when she agreed immediately to go. I was sure that once she was there, she would meet a nice young man, and in a year or so she could bring him home and everything would be
fine
,” she sobbed out the last word and pulled the girl into her arms. They cried heartbrokenly together.

Brad stood over them, tearing at his hair and muttering angrily at himself.

“So, so what was on the flash drive?” Mac asked, at a complete loss.

“Nothing!” Helen cried.

“There was no PI?” Mac asked.

“Of course not,” Helen replied.

“So how did you know they were…” Mac’s question trailed off.

“I just
knew
,” she replied sadly. “But I
could
have convinced myself otherwise if it weren’t for your interference.”

Mac stood silently, at a complete loss.

“So, what you’re saying, ma’am, is that you’re not pressing charges?” Clive asked.

“No, of course not,” Dr. Thayer replied.

“All right then, everyone can go about their business. Have a good evening,” Clive said as he strode out of the solarium toward the front hall, shaking his head as if to pass judgment on the strange ways of the wealthy.

The crowd began to dissipate. Likely, no one wanted to invade further on the Lloyd-Thayers’ privacy.

On the way down the hall to the front door, Mac caught Parker’s elbow.

“Wait, Parker,” he whispered.

She stopped and turned back to him. Somehow there was still a twinkle in her cool gray eyes.

“I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I thought that you would take those keys,” he told her earnestly.

“That’s okay. To your credit it actually was really amusing. And I can’t believe you solved that mystery, Mr. MacGregor. You are one very talented man,” she smiled, poking him in the chest.

“Can I walk you home?” he asked.

Parker laughed.

“Not
that
talented,” she said lightly. “Take care. Call me if you’re ever going to one of these things again. You know, so I can witness the tragedy,” she added over her shoulder, as she slipped out the front door laughing.

Mac smiled back. He couldn’t exactly blame her.

“MacGregor!” Andrew Farthing’s reedy voice carried across the hall.

“Hey, Andrew,” Mac said. “Some night, huh?”

“Oh yeah, it was great! Thank you for clearing my name,” Andrew replied.

“Well, I think your name was already cleared before I botched everything,” Mac told him.

“That was amazing what you did, I love mysteries,” Andrew congratulated him.

“You do?” Mac asked incredulously.

“Oh yeah, yeah, that’s why Helen gave me the biggest part. Hey, I live near you, want to walk out together?” Andrew asked. “I can lend you my coat,” he added, looking doubtfully at Mac’s muddy sheepskin.

“Hell yes. It’s good to know that even after a night like this one,
someone
still wants to get this wolf out of sheep’s clothing,” Mac replied ruefully.

“What do you mean?” Andrew asked.

“Oh, nothing. So you do horticulture, right? I should ask you for advice about my garden.”

“You know, I’ve been wondering when you would ask,” Andrew replied seriously. “There’s a lot you need to know about pruning those roses in your front yard.”

It might end up being a boring walk.

But the temporary alpha of Tarker’s Hollow was glad to have a friend.

The End

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By Lashell Collins

Chapter One

She looked around and asked herself for about the millionth time what the hell she was doing here. How had she gotten herself so far away from where she really wanted to be? The beautiful voice coming out of the jukebox kept insisting that you could always go home, but Sarah knew that wasn’t really true. Sometimes home was simply not an option anymore. But as she looked around the crowded bar at the rowdy men and women, she knew in her heart that home was where she wanted to be.

How long had it been since she had laid eyes on her mother? Or on her only remaining brother? And that dweeb had actually gone and given her a nephew, a precious little boy named Brandon that she had never met. Was it selfish of her to stay away?

“You planning on moving that pretty little ass of yours tonight, or are you just going to stand there and look gorgeous?”

The lewd question came from Ty. He was the owner of this illustrious establishment, and therefore also her boss. She was a little put off by him at first, but it hadn’t taken her long to realize that he was harmless. She gave him half a smile.

“I’m on it,” she answered, tossing her long, light brown hair over her shoulder.

“Which part? The working or the looking gorgeous?”

She gave him a look with that one, but she didn’t answer as she grabbed the handles of two glass beer mugs in one hand and two shots in the other, and turned to deliver the drinks. When she had first walked into this place about eight months ago asking for a job, she knew immediately that Ty was attracted to her. She could see it on his face when his eyes roamed her body, and she could smell his arousal. He wasn’t bad to look at she supposed, but he was so far from being her type he wasn’t even the right species. Not that her kind and humans didn’t inter-mate. It actually happened quite often. But this guy just didn’t seem like the type of human who was good at keeping secrets, and living hidden in plain sight was like the Moon Hunter code of conduct. Besides, she could just imagine the look of sheer terror on Ty’s face the moment he caught his first glimpse of her fangs, claws and glowing brown eyes. She knew he couldn’t handle her.

She delivered the drinks to table five with a smile, but she swatted away the hand of a man who tried to thank her with a grope of her behind. She understood that the way-too-short shorts and the tight flannel shirt that was tied in front to bare her mid-drift invited the stares, and the hands, of the customers, but it was one part of her job that she didn’t enjoy. Still, she understood that it was a necessary evil if she wanted to keep making the great tips to pay her rent. And she knew that if any of them got too fresh, she could certainly put them in their places with very little effort.

“Oh, I didn’t mean no disrespect, darlin’. Just trying to show my appreciation.” The man smiled at her as he placed his hand just below her rump again, and she felt the tips of his fingers reaching dangerously close to a region he had no business in.

She reached out a hand and gently touched the full beard on the heavy man’s face.

“Do you like those fingers, Burt? You wanna keep ’em?” she purred.

The man let out a big hearty laugh as he lightly patted her tush, but the look in her eyes as he did gave him enough pause to wonder if she might just have the chutzpah to relieve him of those fingers if he wasn’t careful. He removed his hand and placed them both up in an “I surrender” pose. Sarah walked away, putting a little extra sway in her hips just for him. She didn’t want any of them pawing at her like animals, but they were more than welcome to look all they wanted.

As always, she worked her tail off as the night wore on. Was this really her life now? Was this all there was ever going to be? She looked around the place and couldn’t help but feel tired. Not physically tired really, just mentally tired. If she couldn’t go home again, the Pine Mountain area of Kentucky wasn’t a wretched place to end up. The people were friendly, and it had a laid back feel to it. Plus the hunting in the Kentucky Ridge State Forest wasn’t bad, once she had gotten over the whole hunting alone part.

She rolled her eyes at herself as she thought about it. Who was she kidding? It had been about eight months and she still wasn’t used to hunting alone. It was weird, and sometimes more than a little spooky, even for a wolf like her. And on her own she couldn’t take down the larger prey, like deer. She had gotten lucky a couple of times, but mostly it was a steady stream of rabbits and groundhogs. It was a little embarrassing. But basically, she just felt like an outcast hunting alone — even though leaving home had been her idea, her choice.

Her mind stayed occupied on it as she worked, thinking about Seth and wondering how he was faring. Her oldest brother had opted to stay, choosing to fight the stigma and humiliation that shrouded their family now. That was Seth though — strong, determined and proud. He wore his sense of duty like a badge. She knew that staying and fighting to restore their family’s honor was never a question in his mind, and Sarah had often wished that she could be more like him. The propensity toward deviousness and shady behavior had seemed to skip right over him, and she only hoped that it had missed her too. There was a time when she wouldn’t have even questioned that, knowing there was no way she could ever do the things her father and her other brother had done. But then, she never would have thought she would find herself working in a place like this either, wearing these skimpy outfits and flirting with men she had no intention of ever getting close to in order to pay her way in the world.

She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly as she let her eyes drift over the bar scene. It could be worse, she knew. She could be stripping the skimpy outfits off and working a pole, so she supposed she should just be thankful for the job.

o0o

Zach Mason stepped through the door of The Nowhere Bar and ran a hand through his dark blond, perpetually messy hair as he looked around and took it all in. There was another bar called The Nowhere back in Lunar Falls, Ohio, where he was from. Well, it was technically in Clemmons, the next town over, but he had frequented it enough in the past that if felt like home. He could instantly see that this place was different though. It had a whole different vibe.

He spotted an open table near the back and made his way over to it. The place seemed kind of busy and he wondered if it was always this packed.

“What can I get you, honey?”

He looked up at the female asking and smiled. She was wearing the shortest pair of shorts he thought he had ever seen, and she licked her lips and tucked a strand of her short red hair behind her ear when she noticed his gaze roaming over her body. She tilted her head and returned his smile.

“Just give me a beer. Whatever’s on tap and doesn’t have the word ‘light’ in it.”

“Coming right up.” She lingered a second longer than was necessary as she looked him over, and Zach got the feeling she was waiting on something. He cocked an eyebrow at her and she blushed and walked away. He smiled as he watched her go and appreciated the view.

He was used to women treating him like so much eye candy. Even the human ones, although they were never really his cup of tea. Sure, there were many he found attractive, but for him there was never anything sexier than a female of his own species, and as he watched the lovely human waitress sashay up to the bar for his beer he suddenly found himself wondering if he would ever see another female Moon Hunter again.

It was a pretty sobering thought, one that brought him even lower than he was already feeling. It had been nearly a year since he’d been run out of town. Banished. Exiled. Forced to flee for his life. No matter which word or turn-of-phrase was used, it meant that he was truly a lone wolf now, whether he wanted to be or not. He frowned as the waitress set his beer on the table in front of him and he realized with startling clarity that this was definitely not what he had wanted — being out here on his own, unable to ever go back home and see his father or his mom or his younger brother.

He took a swig of his beer and studied the table as he ran the events of that day over in his mind for the millionth time since leaving home. He remembered it like it was yesterday … what he’d done. The mistakes he had made. That one decision to throw his lot in with Silas was the single most destructive thing he had ever done in his life, and now he was paying for it. But, hell, at least he still had his life, right? If there was a silver lining in all of this mess, that had to be it. Still, he couldn’t help asking himself what kind of life it was if he was forced to live and walk and hunt alone. Forever. Was it even a life worth living?

He smirked to himself as he brought the bottle to his lips again and took another drink. How many times in the last few months had he asked himself that one? How many times had he wished the GrandAlpha had simply killed him instead of sparing his life and driving him from the pack? From his home and the people he loved. Living and hunting alone was no life for a Moon Hunter. Wolves were pack animals, and this exile was the cruelest form of torture Zach could think of. But the bitch of it all was that he knew he deserved it for what he’d done.

As a general rule, Moon Hunters tended to stick together. There were five distinct packs spread out across the state of Ohio, and as far as anyone knew they were the only five packs in existence. They had a strict hierarchy they all followed, so at times those five packs operated as if they were one large pack spread out across five regions, with each pack’s Alpha answering to one man. GrandAlpha Gabe Masters. Which is why what Zach had done — siding with the GrandAlpha’s uncle in an attempt to start a civil war — had been considered treason.

He placed a hand on his neck as he remembered how Gabe had grabbed him by the throat, preparing to rip his head from his shoulders. He could still feel Gabe’s claws digging into his flesh. Ironically, it was the man’s mate — the very woman they had kidnapped and used for bait — who had saved his life. She had begged Gabe not to kill him. Zach still didn’t understand why she had done that, why she cared. Silas certainly hadn’t fared so well. Gabe had given Zach one hour to get out of his territories, which meant the entire state of Ohio. He hadn’t even given Zach the option of attempting to join one of the other packs.

With barely enough time to throw some things into a bag and say goodbye to his parents and brother, Zach did the only thing he could do. He ran for his life. He could still hear his mother crying as he left their house in a panicked rush with no clue of where he was going or where he would end up. Since then he had traveled through Michigan and Indiana looking for a place to land, eventually finding himself in Kentucky. He didn’t know what he was looking for exactly. With no pack and no ties, one place was just as good as the other he supposed, and none of the places he had been felt like home.

Sometimes it angered him to think that he could never go home again, never see his family, never run with the pack under the moonlight. Other times he knew that this punishment was what he deserved for the act of treason he had committed. And he understood that Gabe had been angry at the time, but he knew the GrandAlpha to be a normally friendly, level-headed guy. Fair and just. Of course, that was before the man had taken a mate, and Zach knew that threatening a male Moon Hunter’s mate was the easiest way to spark a fight. And that went for any man, not just the pack Alpha. Still, sometimes he couldn’t help but entertain the thought that Gabe might forgive him one day. Okay, so “forgive” might be the wrong word, but Zach could dream.

He was mulling that fantasy over when he suddenly caught a whiff of the most enticing scent he had ever smelled and he looked around the crowded bar as he let his nose do the exploring. The scent was delicious, like warm honey and sex, and something else that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. His senses were going haywire as the noise level in the bar suddenly seemed to bombard his sensitive ears, and his mouth actually watered from the tang in the air. His vision blurred for a fraction of a second, and he blinked and shook his head in response to it.

A moment later he seemed to snap out of whatever strange trip he’d just taken and he looked around the place with a crinkled brow. And just as he thought he had imagined the whole thing, there it was again. The mouth-watering scent of … a woman. And not just any woman either. This was a female Moon Hunter. That was the something else he couldn’t place before. He was sure of it. It had been so long since he had smelled another of his kind, and her scent was now easy to detect among this crowd of humans, but he couldn’t pinpoint her. He looked around at the patrons with much more attention than he had given any of them before, attempting to discern who his fellow wolf might be.

This was crazy, right? He felt foolish. This couldn’t possibly be happening. He was only imagining that he had scented another Moon Hunter in this place because he was feeling so low and homesick. But even as he tried to tell himself that his mind was playing tricks on him, the scent suddenly got stronger, more powerful. It was the most enticing fragrance Zach had ever experienced, and he knew with certainty that this was much more than simply detecting a fellow wolf. This was something he didn’t even believe in, and yet … it was happening.

He felt his eyes burning and quickly shut them tight. The last thing he needed was for one of the patrons to catch his blue eyes glowing. When he was sure he had them under control, he opened them just in time to catch a glimpse of a girl walking from the bar over to the door.