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“Thank you, Emmalise,” the sheriff said. I recognized him now. He was an occasional diner visitor. “You’ve really had a lot to take in today so I’ve been told.”
“Is it still even today? Isn’t it past midnight by now?” I couldn’t be this tired any earlier.
“Eleven thirty.” He shook his head. “Coffee would taste good.”
I went in the kitchen and put the percolator on the stove, the one thing of my mother’s not stuffed out in the garage, waiting her return. The percolator, not the stove. While I arranged mugs and cookies and sugar and cream and spoons on a tray, I tried to listen in to the conversation, but they were throwing out terms like alpha and pack and mate that didn’t seem to relate to the current crisis.
Hoping they would fill me in, I returned to the living room and set the tray down. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
The sheriff leaned back in the chair and ran a hand through his hair. “How much do you want to know?”
Everything? “I don’t even know where to ask you to begin. But it truly has been the strangest day. I met Tom this morning at the diner after I saw a cougar walk by that I now think might have been him? Because it couldn’t have been the mayor. He was sitting right at the table with his cronies and staring a me.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. “Do you think he was coming here to hit on me? He’s at least thirty years older than me. Maybe more.”
The sheriff shook his head. “A lot more, but that’s not why he was here. He didn’t come to hit on you but because someone took out a hit on you.”
“What?”
Tom held out his hand and drew me down to sit on the love seat next to him. “It’s a very long story and very complicated. Wouldn’t you rather get some rest and talk in the morning?”
“Like I could sleep with a body in my yard?” I shuddered. “I’m good to talk. What are we going to do about the corpse anyway? We can’t just leave him there, even if he’s a creep.”
“Oh, he’s gone.” The sheriff drank from his cup. “Good coffee.”
“Thank you. And what do you mean ‘he’s gone?’”
“I’m going to let Tom here explain most of it to you, but just know that we’ll make sure you’re safe. My deputies have taken care of the body, and there will be no more talk of it.”
“No more talk?” Of all the crazy stuff I’d heard today, this might be topping the list. “You can’t just get rid of a dead body, especially the mayor. Someone’s going to miss him.”
“We’ll get word to those who need to know, but to the general population, he’s going to have moved away, and there will be a paper trail. No worries.” The sheriff tipped his cup back and drank the rest of the coffee. “I’m going to go set everything up. Thanks for the coffee.” He scooped up a handful of cookies and started for the door. “Emmalise, if you still have questions after you and your ma—after you and Tom talk, call me anytime. I know you saw a lot of strange things today, but try to think of it as a learning experience. The world is a lot bigger and more interesting place than most people ever know.”
Tom walked him to the door, and they spoke a moment in low voices before the sheriff went out and climbed into the SUV. I listened to the motor start up and then get fainter as they drove away. “The body is in the car, isn’t it?”
“Yes, they will take it out and get rid of it.”
I closed my eyes. “I feel like I am going to wake up tomorrow and none of this will have happened. I live such a boring life. I work a lot, and that’s about it. And then out of nowhere, you show up and everything changes.”
“Do you wish it had stayed the same?” He draped an arm over my shoulders and hugged me. “Do you wish I’d never showed up at all?”
“How could I, but I don’t understand anything that happened today, so you’re going to have to start at the beginning, and go slow.”
“Well, to begin with, I know who your father is.”
ChapterSixteen
Tom
If Emmalise was sorry she’d met me, I couldn’t blame her, although I hoped she wasn’t. Her life had changed so dramatically within the past less-than-twenty-four hours, and judging by what I’d learned about that life, I had no reason to think she wanted things to be different.
“Okay.” I licked my dry lips. “I am a cougar shifter, a mountain lion.” I studied her expression for reaction, but she seemed calm. So I went on. “And so was the mayor. Just not exactly the same kind.”
“And the sheriff,” she said. “He’s one, too?”
“Well, he’s a shifter but not a lion. He’s a wolf. You might have heard him mention the local alpha. He’s a wolf. I didn’t know about the mayor, but I don’t belong to the local pack. It’s a mixed group, apparently. And I am part of my abuelo’s, my grandfather’s pack. Now that they know there is a problem, they will take it from here. Those council members who belong to their pack will be investigated to see if they have contacts in countries near your father’s.”
“You said you know who he is? I always thought he didn’t want anything to do with Mom and me,” she murmured. “I mean…I still think that. But why would…did you say his country?”
“Your father is a prince royal of a teensy European country. And he didn’t reject you, he only learned you exist very recently. You are his only child.” I stared directly into her gorgeous eyes. “And that makes you his heir and apparently very much disappointed a distant cousin of yours who expected to inherit the throne.”
