Page 19 of Hoofin’ It

Her behavior around the cops made sense, as they’d been very open about what would happen to her. In her position, I would have been spitting angry over anyone casually discussing my murder.

“You look like you’ve swallowed a frog, Shane.”

“I thought she was rather clever for using the tub as a toilet in the hotels I took her to, and she was pretty cuddly—more so than I expected from an angry alpaca. But if she’s a transformed human, she likely realized I was her best bet and didn’t want to rock the boat, right?”

“That’s a possibility.”

“And then she watched O’Conners gun me down before being kidnapped again.”

“Had I known she was a probable sex trafficking victim, I would have ordered your father to use his sniffer and hunt her down. While we have plenty of werewolves on the force, his nose is particularly sensitive, and he’s familiar with her scent.”

“Well, they went on a joyride on a motorcycle to follow the spit trail.”

“Does she know your father’s a werewolf?”

“Definitely. He terrified the life out of her. She’s seen him in all three of his forms.” Groaning, I turned and banged my forehead into the refrigerator door. “I’ve probably traumatized the poor woman even more. Do we have any idea who she might be?”

“No clue in hell. New York has a lot of missing people. Their last count was over four hundred cases of missing women during the past six months. She could be any one of them. She might be someone whose disappearance hasn’t been reported yet, too. We have no way of knowing unless we find her and figure out a way to transform her back into a human. With the practitioner dead, Detective Steinburg isn’t even sure it can be done.”

I banged my head against the fridge a final time before pacing around the kitchen. “So it’s entirely possible I’m a target right along with her.”

“You were always a quick study. You’re more of the ‘kill him so he can’t talk’ type of target, but you are a werewolf’s son. You’d actually be a good addition to a sex trafficking operation. If you don’t become infected, you have many of the benefits of werewolf genetics without the risk of spreading the contagion. If they figure that out, they may want you alive.”

Decades on the force had obviously taken their toll on my godfather. “Why, exactly, do you think I’d be a good addition to a mafia’s sex trafficking operation?”

“Do I really have to explain this to you?”

I pointed at myself. “Twenty-seven year old virgin.”

“Damn it, Shane. How many times do I have to tell you that your mother isn’t going to actually make you marry the first woman you sleep with? You could be a slut if you want with no consequences.”

I laughed. Lewis had tried to impress on me—many times—my father’s one-woman policy didn’t have to apply to me. “I wasn’t ready to split my time between the force and a woman, Lewis. I was hoping to meet someone on the force, too, but it turns out Chicago’s pretty heavily prejudiced against lycanthropes.”

“I got the impression they were pretty disappointed you’d been exposed to the virus. I rather enjoyed singing your father’s praises—and yours, of course—to the detective I spoke to. I think I startled him.”

“They have token lycanthropes on the force, but they’re given the most dangerous jobs. Since I didn’t actually have the virus, I was usually sent out to deal with pissed off werewolves.”

Lewis wouldn’t understand my dubious relationship with Chicago’s vampire population—or their demonic friends, and he wasn’t going to hear about it from me.

“That was actually pretty smart of them. You’re still young enough most werewolves will view you as a puppy. It’s one thing to get into a fight with another werewolf, but another to pick a fight with a young cop who smells like some pack’s puppy. I bet using you limited injuries substantially. All you’d have to do was flinch to bring them in line.”

“Ex-cop,” I reminded him.

Lewis snorted. “You can take the cop out of the force, but you can’t take the cop out of the cop, Shane. You’ll be a cop until the day you die, even if you don’t ever wear a badge again. Don’t try to pull that shit with me. I know better. And so help me, if you start whining about it, you’ll never be too old for me to turn over my knee and give you a spanking you’ll remember.”

Laughing, I shook my head and thumped down onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Now that’s how you rile up a lycanthrope. You spank their kid. It’s a good way to have to clean blood off the walls for weeks. If it makes you feel better, I did tell Mom and Dad ‘arrest him’ wasn’t another word for ‘kill.’ I also reminded them it didn’t mean ‘beat.’ I thought they could use a reminder.”

“How is it they managed to produce someone like you? Are you a parasite? Did you siphon away your parents’ common sense and dignity while you were in the womb?”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“It would explain a lot.”

“All right, Lewis. You didn’t come all this way in plain clothes to tell me my alpaca is probably a victim of the sex trade. What are you up to?”

“Know how to ride a motorcycle?”

“Of course.”