Wolf Hills (21 page)

“Scent blockers. The whole area is lousy with them. They knew we’d hunt them. They know what we are. Which means, they know what they’ve caught. Lady help us.”

Chapter Ten

“I don’t know if this is good news or not, but they split up not far down the road.” Sally listened intently to the new song in the trees. “The white van stopped in the parking area at the base of a wooded hiking trail. Four men piled out. They argued. Two grabbed their rucksacks and stormed off. Two got back in the van and drove away at high speed.” She tried hard to focus on the picture the trees were painting. She’d never seen this much detail before. Then again, she’d never been in such a large, dense or magical forest before. “I think it was the younger two who took off on their own. Looks like they had a pickup truck parked in that lot. They took it and left, going in the opposite direction from the van. That’s where the trees end.”

“That’s more than I could have hoped for,” Jason said gratefully. She liked the note of praise in his tone though she hadn’t really contributed much. She wouldn’t be satisfied until they got the boy back in one piece and the perps had been dealt with.

Jason looked upward and only then did Sally realize the light was fading. They’d spent the early afternoon with Leonora and the rest of the day tracking. Night was falling. Which gave her an idea.

“Dmitri could help.” Sally guessed the vampire might have skills beyond theirs. He might be the answer to finding Jimmy alive.

Jason’s mouth thinned, but he punched the buttons on his cell phone. Sally wasn’t too surprised to find that Jason had the local Master Vampire on speed dial. Jason filled Dmitri in on the situation in a few short sentences. He didn’t look happy at whatever Dmitri said in reply. He hung up quickly and turned back to Sally.

“He’ll help, but he won’t leave home before Carly rises. Damn newlyweds.”

“Give me your cell number.” Sally was thinking fast, planning and figuring how to best utilize their capabilities. She took out her phone and was punching buttons to set Jason up on speed dial. He dictated the number and it was done. “I’m going to Carly’s. I can be of more use where I have computer access. Does anybody you know have a police scanner?”

“One of the cubs has one,” Jason said as he dialed another number. “I’ll have him bring it to you at Carly’s office.”

“Good. And leave me a few computer experts. I may need a hacker or two. I’ll call when I have news. I’m taking the SUV, okay?”

Jason smiled for the first time in an hour. “I don’t need it. Joanna will escort you back to the car. I’d take you myself, but I need to get these guys organized…” He looked around at the wolves, many of whom still had their noses to the ground.

“I understand.” And she truly did. She’d be safe enough in the forest. Even the wolf escort wasn’t quite necessary, but she’d take it if it made him more comfortable. The blonde wolf he’d called Joanna moved close to them, no doubt having heard her name. “Nice to meet you, Joanna. Ready to go?”

The wolf barked once and waited. Jason moved close to place a quick kiss on Sally’s lips, surprising her. “Be careful, sweetheart.”

“You too.” She set off without further delay, the wolf following along at her side. Sally ran, the wolf keeping pace easily.

Though she’d never spent any time in dense woods, Sally had no problem finding her way. The trees greeted her as she passed with a flutter of their leaves and a slight change in the pitch of their song. If she’d had time to enjoy the phenomenon she would have, but the circumstances were dire. A child had been abducted and because of the nature of both the child and the abduction, they couldn’t involve the human police. Not really. That went without saying.

But Sally might be able to utilize their resources. She’d try her best, at any rate. There were a lot more human cops out there on the roads in the cities and farmland. Maybe she could use that to her advantage.

The SUV came into sight and the wolf bounded ahead to sniff all around the vehicle before she’d let Sally pass. Good idea. The SUV had been left unattended for a while. Anybody could’ve come by and done anything to it while they’d been occupied elsewhere. The wolf barked the all clear while Sally asked the trees if anyone had been nearby. Both sources confirmed the vehicle was safe.

Sally climbed in and waited to see if the wolf would accompany her farther. When Joanna stayed on the ground, Sally shut the door, rolling down the window again so she could hear the forest song, if needed.

“Thanks, Joanna.” She waved to the wolf as she drove off, hearing the yip of acknowledgment as she sped away. She saw Joanna in the rearview mirror for a moment, watching her a bit before fading back into the woods.

Sally made good time back to Carly’s. By the time she pulled up in front of the big house, night had fallen fully and Carly was awake. Dmitri and she were waiting at the door for her arrival. Sally filled them in on the bare facts of Jimmy’s abduction and she could see from Dmitri’s expression that the man was torn. There was no question that he would help search for the boy, but the worried looks he kept throwing at Carly spoke volumes—even to a woman who couldn’t read his mind.

Sally put one hand on his arm, stilling him for one key moment.

“You should go. Don’t worry. I’ll look after Carly. I plan to put her to work with the contingent of wolves in the office. We’re going to hack into police databases and do some research.” Carly’s eyes lit up with excitement, as Sally knew they would. The girl was a geek through and through. “She’ll have a dozen werewolves and one very determined, and armed, cop watching over her. We’ll be okay. I promise.”

Dmitri regarded her steadily for a timeless moment. “Thank you,” he finally said, moving toward the door. Carly followed him and they shared a smoldering kiss before he disappeared into the night.

Sally didn’t hear a motor start. Her brows lowered in question as Carly turned back to her.

“Is the bat thing true, then?”

Carly laughed. “I suppose he could become a bat if he really wanted to.”

“He turns into other things?” Sally began walking toward the office part of the structure, Carly next to her.

“Yeah. It’s pretty awesome,” Carly admitted. “He can even do mythological creatures like dragons. It’s way cool.”

“I bet.” Sally would ponder that another time. For now, a missing boy occupied her thoughts. “Can you hack into the local police network?”

Carly made a rude noise. “Of course. Ask me something hard.”

They entered the office and a dozen eager faces popped up over cubicle dividers. Sally almost laughed, and would have if the situation wasn’t so dire. They looked like meerkats popping up out of their burrows. Or maybe prairie dogs, all looking to her, awaiting orders. Maybe there was something to this Alpha stuff after all. She kind of liked being in charge.

Sally wasted no time. She found the kid with the police scanner and had him set it up in Carly’s office. She needed a large desk to spread out on and the conference table at one end of Carly’s office would do. She set Carly and her favorite geeks to work on the hacking part in computer nirvana at the other end of the spacious office.

“As soon as you get into the network, let me know and I’ll take it from there.” Carly nodded at Sally’s directive.

She assigned tasks to each person. A few were asked to listen to the scanner and write down the calls, even if they didn’t know what they meant. One of the computer guys said he could get a list of police codes and Sally let him have at it. The locals might speak a slightly different language than the code Sally was used to. The list would be helpful.

“We’re in,” Carly reported a few minutes later. She backed away from the computer and let Sally have her seat.

At that point it was going to take some deductive reasoning and there were too many people hanging over her shoulder. She shooed out most of the wolves, asking a few to get some food for the rest of the staff. Sally had hardly eaten all day and her stomach was beginning to growl. They’d need the calories to continue the hunt.

“What are you looking for?” Carly asked quietly from Sally’s side. Carly’s presence was comforting rather than distracting, like some of the kids who worked for her.

“I’m not exactly sure,” Sally admitted, studying the screen. Her fingers whirled over the keys as report after report spilled onto the display.

“Dude,” Carly said. “You’ve really increased your computer skills since college.”

“When I made detective, a lot of my job turned to research and desk work. It was either keep up or lose out.” Sally didn’t stop typing her queries into the police system as she spoke. She’d also become a really great multi-tasker. “Ah. Here we go.”

Carly leaned in closer at her side and Sally was vaguely aware that one or two of the wolves were at her back, reading over her shoulder. She didn’t mind. As long as they kept quiet so she could think and start to see connections, they were okay.

“How many real estate agents in town?” Sally asked.

It was Seth who answered. “About a dozen different human firms. There’s also one shifter who helps us when we want to buy land.”

“Okay. One of you call the shifter and ask nicely if they’ve sold any property to a human in the past two or three weeks. The rest of you—get help from the guys outside.” She nodded toward the office proper where a half-dozen wolves waited for further orders. “Each of you take one real estate company and do your best to access their sales records for the past month. Print out a list of the new owners and former addresses if you can, then bring them to me.”

Scurrying behind her and out in the office told her the kids were on the case. Carly still sat at her side.

“What are you thinking?” Carly asked quietly.

“I’m thinking that if they abducted the kid instead of just killing him outright, they had to have a motive. I don’t think they’d run with him. It feels more personal than that. Like they want to make a point with the local wolves. Therefore, they’d need a place to take him. It would have to be someplace they wouldn’t easily be either seen or heard, so that means someplace outside of town most likely, or on the outskirts.”

Carly pulled out a laptop computer and fired it up. She didn’t speak further, concentrating on inputting commands. It was good to have Carly working on this with her. Sally was competent with computers, but Carly was a genius. She could hack any system but skirted away from doing anything illegal unless absolutely necessary. This was one of those times when the laws of man would prevent them from carrying out true justice. Sally knew she should feel more of a conflict, but after what she had seen over the years, she preferred to carry out justice when possible, even when the rule of law might not approve.

When this was all over, she would have to reexamine whether or not she could continue as a cop. Too often, her hands had been tied when it came to real justice. It had left her feeling frustrated and burnt out. This vacation was supposed to be a reprieve from all of that. Instead, this situation had brought the conflict within her into sharp focus. As soon as they saved Jimmy, she had some hard thinking to do.

“I think I found something,” Carly said from beside her while Sally was tracing known associates of the two men who had been arrested the day before.

Sally turned to the smaller screen Carly was working on. There were a few different windows open on a multitude of databases. Carly’s genius at work.

“What am I looking at?”

“This is a money transfer from an account Dmitri has been watching. He believes it belongs to a
Venifucus
agent in the local area named Alvin Sanders. Since I became aware of it, only small amounts have been coming and going from that account. Normal living expenses. But this one…” She pointed to an entry on the screen. “This is going into an escrow account at this law firm.” She tapped another window open to the side of the first. “This law firm held it for a few days and then transferred it to Hilltop Bank. Hilltop Bank transferred it to another escrow account at another law firm, and they transferred it to Bill Jeremy’s real estate agency.”

“Who’s looking at Bill Jeremy’s?” Sally yelled out to the office area. A blonde head popped up from behind a cubicle wall. Seth. Good boy.

“I just got into his system. What do you need?” he asked.

“Do you have a sale on the fourteenth? Or anything that week?” Sally shot back.

“Yeah. There were two on the fourteenth and nothing else that whole week.”

“Print out the details—anything you can find—on both transactions, and bring them over please.”

Seth nodded and popped back down into his cubicle. In the background, Sally heard a printer power up out in the office a few moments later. She turned back to her screen and pulled up what she could about the name on the bank account that had originated the transaction.

“Dmitri thinks this guy is part of that
Venifucus
group?” Sally asked Carly as she dug up what she could about him in the official law enforcement databases. She sent everything to the printer in Carly’s office. If nothing else, Dmitri could look through the information. Maybe it would help in some way.

“Yeah,” Carly answered, picking up the pages as they spit out from the printer. “He’s suspected based on information from the other Masters in North America and some from a few different were groups. This guy popped up on the radar in our area, so we’ve been keeping an eye on him and his business dealings as best we can. I think this police data will help us fill out the file we started. Thanks, Sal.”