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“Legal?” I suggested.
“Yeah,” he said, looking embarrassed for a millisecond.
“Do you carry a gun?”
“No, I don’t get shot at very often.”
“And if that’s not an endorsement for a profession, I don’t know what is,” I said, slowly and deliberately reaching for my juice glass. It was a miracle of concentration that held my hand steady as I sipped. Over the rim of the glass, I kept my eyes trained on his face, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Nothing to fear. Nothing to send me running for the nearest exit.
“Normally, people don’t get the drop on me,” he said defensively. “I have a certain set of . . . skills, and they help me when I’m tracking a person. The people in my family have always been hunters. I just apply it in a different way.”
I snorted. He wasn’t kidding. Werewolves had supersensitive noses and ears, not to mention their intuitive ability to track whatever creature was unlucky enough to be targeted by an animal built for hunting.
But again, I was supposed to be playing dumb. Because if I blurted out, Yeah, I know about the whole werewolf thing that is supposed to be forbidden knowledge for a human such as myself, there would be a lot of awkward questions. More awkward than the ones currently being bandied across the table, anyway.
“I make a lot of money at something I’m good at. No questions asked, as long as someone is willing to pay me my fee. And sometimes all I have to do is get a little information and pass it along. I like those jobs. Easy money and less time spent rooting around in parking lots.”
His conversation with the guy who shot him made so much more sense now. This Marty guy had been afraid that Caleb was taking him in on money he owed, so he freaked out and started shooting. I did not need this. I did not need to hitch myself to any form of law enforcement, no matter how slipshod. Glenn had contacts in more places than I’d ever imagined—old college buddies, online gaming clubbers, and sketchy cousins I hadn’t been allowed to speak to at the wedding reception. And all it would take was a couple of opportune Google searches for Caleb to find the online message boards where Glenn had put out feelers for me.>What the hell just happened?
Now that I could get a good look at Caleb’s truck in the daylight, I could appreciate the serviceable vehicle. While the exterior red paint was pristine, the inside showed the wear and tear of a lot of time on the road. The passenger-side floorboard was littered with meat snack packets and foam coffee cups. And while Caleb had managed not to bleed on the cushy gray upholstery, the dash was covered in gas receipts and dust. I hadn’t noticed any of that the night before, but it’s amazing what you can overlook when someone has a bleeding gut wound.
After my nuzzle embargo, Caleb gave me a pretty roomy space bubble on the ride into town. The only time he even reached across the center line dividing the front seat was to hand me some peanut butter crackers he had stashed in the console.
“So, no bullshit, what’s your real name?”
I frowned at him and repeated myself. “Anne McCaffrey.”
“I said no bullshit.” My mouth dropped open, and he smirked. “Trust me, I’m familiar with faked names. Besides, you think you’re the only person who’s stepped inside a bookstore? Now, what’s your name?”
I sighed. There was no sense in trying to continue the lie. Frankly, it was embarrassing to be caught. Just my luck to have found the only male werewolf to have read The Dragonriders of Pern. It was worth a shot, but I’d gotten used to answering to Anna, anyway. “It is Anna.”
He pressed a little bit more. “Anna what?”
“All you need to know is that you should call me Anna,” I told him.
He frowned, looking more hurt than irritated, but obviously decided to drop the subject. “So you didn’t answer my questions before. Where you from?” he asked as I tried hard to refrain from shoving the crackers into my mouth like a carb-lover on her cheat day.
“Around,” I said, barely containing the cracker bits from spewing out of my mouth. I was, as Maggie was prone to saying, a delicate flower.
“Where?” he persisted.
“Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon.” Let’s just say it was a long and winding road from leaving my marriage to arriving in Alaska. “I don’t like to be tied down to one place for too long. I like to explore my options.”
“As a grocery checker?” He snorted.
I stared up at him. That was the second time he’d referred to my job at Emerson’s. How the hell did he know about that? It wasn’t as if I’d introduced myself to him as a grocery checker/impromptu medical professional. My hand crept along the door, fingers curling around the handle. Because doing a Charlie’s Angels roll out of a truck onto the highway was an awesome idea. And just then, my bloodied Emerson’s Dry Goods apron caught my eye.
Oh. Right. He was capable of picking up visual cues.
Feeling very foolish for my paranoia, I countered, “Grocery checker, dog shampooer, waitress. You got a problem with that?”
“I have no problem with grocery checkers or waitresses,” he assured me, smiling cheekily. “As long as they remember the ketchup.”
“I’m guessing you get your food spit in a lot.”
“I guess you were getting off of work last night, and that’s why you happened by my, uh, discussion with Marty?”
I nodded and glanced sideways at him. “So what are you?” His brow creased, and he stared at me, as if he was trying to find some hidden meaning in the question. “What do you do for a living? Given the number of jerky wrappers and to-go cups on the floorboards, I’m guessing you spend a lot of time in this truck.”
