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Chapter Nineteen
Luther had experienced a difficult time at work over the past week. Everyone was upset by the death of Lewis, who was a good, capable man. He’d been a hard-working miner and one of the friendliest people Luther had ever met. Maybe it would have been worse if Lewis had been a family man, but he had been not married. Most of the miners were married or had partners, but Lewis seemed content with being on his own. That situation aside, Luther was convinced that whoever had attacked the two men would probably attack again, and he didn’t think that anyone’s family situation had a bearing on the murders.
It wasn’t much of a stretch to suspect the jacked-up cougar might be involved; but the trouble was that Luther didn’t have time to follow the hunch himself, and he didn’t think that simply approaching that bear shifter cop with what he knew was going to help, either. He knew well enough how all that clan stuff worked. He wasn’t one of them, and that meant they’d never listen if he tried to tell them what he knew.
He hated the fact that he hadn’t been able to see Espie all week, what with the increased workload that corporate had handed down right after they’d learned they were one man down. He would have thought they would have told the men to slow down so they could grieve, but that had never been the way Alder did business. For them, everything was about the bottom line, and it was only the miners themselves who did their best to ensure the environment didn’t suffer from their work.
Tomorrow was Luther’s day off, and they’d allowed him to leave the site around noon, so he was taking full advantage of the time he’d been given to spend it with his daughter. Sure, he also hoped he’d be able to spend some time with Espie, but until he managed to tell his fated mate that she wasn’t the only lady in his life, he was somewhat at a loss as to how he could share his spare time with each one of them.
The trouble was that Luther had no idea how Espie might accept the idea that he was a single father. He’d seen more than one of his friends who had started to date someone, but as soon as they’d told the woman about their child, it had been a deal breaker. Of course, those men had all been humans, and the whole fated mate dynamic has not been a factor; but still, there was no way he wanted to lose the woman with whom he was meant to spend the rest of his life. So he’d specifically left out the little part about his daughter until he was sure she was completely hooked.
Only now, he couldn’t figure out how to mention Violet to Espie without setting her off again. She was sure to think that not telling her was the worst thing he’d done in the long string of things that had already pissed her off. If only he’d known about her fiery temper before he’d chosen not to mention his child, it might have saved him from yet another week apart.
Luther had gone to the daycare about an hour earlier to pick up Violet, and the first order of business was a trip to the grocery store. As usual, the little girl was intense and talkative, offering up her opinions on what they should get for dinner and, of course, for dessert, and chattering away about Leah, the other shifter girl in her class.
Leah was the daughter of Paul’s fiancée, Genica, and it had been Genica who volunteered to pick up Violet from daycare whenever Luther couldn’t make the six o’clock deadline. When they’d first met a few months back and Paul had realized Genica was his fated mate, Luther couldn’t understand how his friend had fallen so fast and so hard, but after meeting Espie, all the confusion had cleared up immediately.
“You know, Daddy, Uncle Paul told me that Miss Genica is one of the good ones,” Violet said as he pushed her along in the grocery cart.
“Did he, now?” Luther answered with a smirk.
“Yes, and he also said that it won’t be long now before both Leah and her mom move into the house he picked out for them, and then they’re going to get married, and he’ll be Leah’s daddy forever,” she added. “How come you didn’t find one of the good ones so I can have a mommy?”
Luther laughed. “Oh, now, it’s not so easy to find a good one, you know. It takes a bit of searching first. But I’ll tell you what: when I’m sure I’ve found one I like, you’ll be the first to know. Now, is it mac and cheese again, or TV dinners?”
Violet giggled. “Genica actually knows how to make spaghetti. I hope when you find a good one, she can make spaghetti.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, okay?” Luther commented dryly. As he stood in the check-out line, his cell rang, and he saw that it was Espie. He quickly pressed the button to answer, wondering if he was about to get a scolding for not calling.
“Luther, we need to talk,” she said, her voice filled with urgency. “Where are you right now? I think we should meet right away.”
“I’m just buying some groceries,” he said, wondering what had her so upset. “Are you okay?”
“Stay there,” she told him, and the sound of an engine humming in the background told him she was already driving. “I can be there in five, alright?”
She didn’t even wait for a reply. Luther wheeled the food and his daughter out to his truck. He debated whether it would be a good time to tell Espie about Violet, but since she seemed so upset, he decided to strap her into the back seat in her car seat until he could determine what the trouble was all about.
“Sit quiet for a minute, babe, I’ve got to talk to somebody,” he said. “Do you want your teddy bear?”
“Yes, please.”
Espie pulled into the parking lot in her brother’s truck, but there was not room for her to park next to Luther. Instead, she parked about five spaces down and clambered quickly from her vehicle. Luther had just finished loading the groceries into the bed of his truck, and had slammed the rear end shut, dusting off his hands as he moved towards Espie to greet her.
“Hey, grizzly, what’s up? Are you ok?” he asked, his voice a little too gruff.
“I’m not okay,” she told him, answering the question he’d asked her before she’d hung up. She took a deep breath to calm herself and fixed him with a pointed look. “One, it’s common courtesy to try to make plans with your she-bear fated mate after you’ve bonded for the first time, but that’s not what I came here to talk about. And two,”she raised a hand to silence him because she could see he was about to interrupt; it was obvious that the first point was something that really pissed her off. “Apparently some of my clan scented you, and they’re all up in the woods right now trying to make you out to be a rogue bear bent on killing both resort workers and miners alike.”
“What?” Luther gasped. “Where did they get a crazy idea like that?”
“They’re just being stupid,” she growled. “They think that just because you’re clan less and also new in town, that you must be a troublemaker. And, I guess it really doesn’t help that you’re also a miner.”
“I get that I’m an outsider, Espie, but I can’t believe they’d turn me into a killer,” Luther complained as he crossed his arms over his chest. He stared down at her with a look of disgust that made her frown in response, and added, “Of course I didn’t have anything to do with all that. David Lewis was a good person who didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
“So was Ilya,” she said defensively. “My brother says that there were marks on each of the bodies that suggested animal predators, but they suspect them to have come from some sort of a shifter. And I guess, based on some weird logic I can’t quite figure out, that means the shifter in question must be someone who resides in Angel Fire. Since obviously none of the clansmen would have attacked either man, that means the job must have been done by an outsider; or, in other words – you.”
“I could never do something like that,” Luther hissed, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her closer to his truck as a family made their way across the parking lot, a baby in the shopping cart. “Nor do I appreciate being accused of it.”
“I didn’t say I agreed with them,” she pointed out as heat rose into her cheeks. “My brother called a meeting of the clan to discuss the deaths, and they all started throwing your name around. But since I refused to stick around and listen to them accusing a man not one of them has ever spoken to, I have no idea what they said afterwards.”
