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Nate tucked his phone into his pocket, leaving it on so if they ended up in trouble, Peter would know about it. “Come on, Kayla,” Nate said.
But she handed him the sack of jewelry. “Take it,” she whispered. “I’ve got to shift.”
“No.”Not now!
“Yes, damn it. I can’t help it.” She sounded so frustrated he realized he’d made the mistake of thinking she was going to shift to protect them as a wolf.
She quickly stripped out of her clothes and shifted, and he bundled her clothes up around the torn sack of jewelry.
She ran off in the direction that she had heard the noise. He wanted to tell her to stay with him, but this could work out better. Whoever or whatever it was wouldn’t see her as well while the sun was going down, but he swore it was descending lower in the sky more slowly than usual. They needed the cover of darknessnowto give them the advantage! But in the light, they wouldn’t be together, and he would be more of a target, which was just what he wanted.
He was running for the cabin, which would bethe only real protection he had until whoever was out there couldn’t see him. Under normal circumstances, Kayla and Nate shouldn’t have disturbed the crime scene, but if someone was looking for the jewelry, he might have found it and taken it away from there. Then all the evidence would be gone anyway.
Nate just hoped Kayla was okay and didn’t get herself hurt. He had to hurry to secure the jewelry and come for her. Panting, he finally reached the cabin, sweating up a storm and worried about his mate. He unlocked the door, then locked it shut. After racing to the safe, he opened it, then slid the jewelry into it. He shut the safe door, locking it. Wanting to get back to Kayla pronto, he yanked off his clothes and shifted into his wolf and ran for the wolf door, then barged outside.
Kayla would probably stay in her wolf form for the duration, but he didn’t want to risk it if she turned into her human form. He didn’t want to take a chance leaving her out there if the man who had murdered Manning was searching for the jewelry.
He howled for her.
Way off in the distance, she howled back, and his heart skipped for joy to know she was still okay. But for how long?
Chapter 23
Kayla had found the man who had been coming for them, and he was someone her loving mate had been looking for—presumed dead but very much alive. Phil Peterson. She couldn’t believe it. But he looked just like the picture Nate had shared with everyone in the pack in case they found him.
Phil was wearing camo gear, making him blend in better with the woods, but his blond hair and white skin were perfectly visible.
Had Phil’s friends known he was alive? Had they been covering for him? Or had they thought he was dead all this time—that Manning had killed him and run off too? What if Phil had killed Manning and that’s why he had gone “missing,” but he really had gone into hiding? She wondered how Phil’s parents would take the news!
She heard her wolf calling for her, and she howled back. She knew Nate had to have secured the jewelry in the safe and was returning to protect her. But she wasn’t leaving just yet. She needed him to know she’d found Phil, and they needed to let Peter know it too. At least that mystery was solved.She was glad Phil was alive, and he might actually help to unravel the business of the armed robberies.
The sun had already set, and Phil was using a high-beam flashlight, swinging the light in her direction. She moved away from that area so he wouldn’t see and shoot her if he was afraid of her. She didn’t want to spook him into running away. They needed to catch him and prove he was not missing at all.
She wondered if the sheriff and his men would be at the cabin soon. If they were there, they would have heard their howls. The rest of the wolf pack must have been off doing other business or someone would have come to learn what the trouble was this time.
Nate howled again. He was getting closer. She suspected he was howling to let any of their wolves who could hear him know they had trouble out here. Yet again.
But this time, they weren’t running from the bad guys. Kayla and Nate were in charge.
“Hey, Phil, where the hell are you, man?” a man said from deeper in the woods, and she realized Phil wasn’t the only one out here looking for the jewelry—as she had suspected.
Great. That changed the game plan. That could mean lots more guns, more flashlights, just more trouble for Nate and her. So much for the wolves being in charge this time.
She heard the other guy stumbling through the brush. And then someone else was following him.
“Crap, Everest,” another man said. “I can’t believe we’re out here again in the dark. You know if we get caught trespassing out here again—”
“My dad will bail you out like the last time, Randy. We got to find the damn jewelry. We can’t leave it out here for someone else to stumble across. Not now that they’ve announced a damn reward for it for whoever finds it on top of everything else.”
“Like we can find it in the damn dark. Whose idea was it to come out here when the sun set again? I can’t see shit. And that one wolf was nearby.”
“So? You got a gun. If it attacks, shoot it.”
“That’s if I can see him. I mean, hell, we can’t locate the jewelry in the dark, and we can’t even find Phil now. What if Phil knows where the jewelry is and he’s heading right for the spot? Then he’s going to take off with it and leave us with nothing?” Randy asked.
“If he’d known that before, he would have already come out here and taken off with it and not told us where to meet him out here to search for the jewelry. He said he got into the safe deposit boxes Manning had and the jewelry wasn’t in them. Use your head,” Everest said.
“Well, Phil was the idiot who lost his head and killed Manning before learning where he hid the jewelry.” Randy scoffed. “I told you we shouldn’t have used Manning.”
