Code Wolf

She had to tell someone.

She couldn’t call her dad after what they had been through. There was no way she could mention the word werewolf to her father.

The western headquarters of the Seattle PD was housed in an old building north of the city’s hot spots. She found it easily, parked and turned off the engine. Above the roar of her pulse, Riley tried to remember the name of the officer who had spoken to her after the earlier incident, hoping that if she found him, he’d help her find Detective Miller.

And then what?

Was there any way to explain about what she had seen?

She didn’t get out of the car. Instead, Riley sat there, watching cruisers and cops come and go, comforted by the uniforms and the badges that were reminders of her family and of her home. The truth was that she was afraid to actually find Miller. She was now afraid to mention any of this to anyone at all.

After fifteen minutes had passed, she reached for the key, still in the ignition, ready to back out of what she had been about to do. Startled by a knock on her window, she glanced sideways to find one of the police she had been looking for. Officer Marshall, the cop who had hinted at knowing the men that had come to her aid during her attack.

Riley opened the car door. On legs that were astonishingly solid after the night she’d had, she got out and faced the young officer.

“Do you need help, Miss Price?” he asked politely.

“I’m wondering if you might help me find Detective Miller.”

“Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked.

“He came by my office to ask me some questions and I wasn’t in the mood to answer. I thought I’d make up for that now if he’s around.”

“On a night like this one, Miller seldom comes in.”

Riley met the officer’s dark-eyed gaze.

“When a full moon comes, all sorts of crazy things happen in this city,” he explained. “Most of the guys that work here have to put in some overtime to help curb all that. Miller and his crew are on the night shift tonight. They’ll be driving around, waiting for a call.”

Though Riley tried to smile, her lips wouldn’t comply. While she should have felt relieved about not having to face Miller with her story, there was no relief at all, just an inexplicable, deep-down feeling of being at a complete loss as to how to even begin to explain what she’d seen.

“Can you please tell him I came by? He knows where to find me,” she said.

Officer Marshall nodded. “Sure.” Then he waited, probably in case she had something else to say.

“Is Miller a good detective?” Riley asked.

“One of the best,” Marshall replied.

Riley glanced up at the officer and said the stupid thing that had been on the tip of her tongue for the last five minutes, then immediately regretted it.

“Does he always wear a shirt? On the job, I mean?”

The young officer smiled to placate her. “I would assume that he does. Is there a reason you asked? Maybe you’re thinking about the men who helped you tonight? You said they didn’t wear shirts, I believe?”

“Yes, well, the detective sort of looks like one of those guys, and I was just—”

“I doubt very much if our detectives who aren’t undercover run around half-naked,” the officer said. “I can’t account for all of them, of course, you understand. But it’s highly doubtful that your guy and Miller are one and the same. I will tell the detective you stopped by, though.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She got back into the car feeling a little foolish about bringing up the shirt detail, yet not nearly foolish enough to let it go. So she spoke again to Office Marshall in parting. “He’d probably look good without a shirt. But you don’t have to tell him I said that.”

Officer Marshall closed her car door. Though he remained sober-faced and professional, Riley was sure he was trying not to laugh.

Derek didn’t mean to ignore his inner chastisements, and didn’t actually realize his mind was elsewhere until Dale punched him in the shoulder hard enough to wake him up.

“It’s not a good sign,” Dale said. “If that thing in the alley actually is what you think it is, why would a vampire Prime show up now, after all this time? Why would she suddenly come out to confront us?”

Derek had no idea how to answer that.

“It could be the reason for the strange scent in the east,” Dale suggested. “The vamp queen brought it with her.”

“Right now I imagine it is,” Derek agreed, though he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around this new predicament. No one had seen or heard anything about that vampire queen for two years, so what had they done now to receive the honor of such a direct form of contact with the central villain of Seattle’s vampire hive?

“Her appearance might be connected to the woman we helped tonight,” he said to Dale, thinking out loud, rehashing everything that had happened and hoping something would eventually make sense.

What if was a game all cops played to try to reason things out. Events had to be studied from all angles, no matter how absurd they might seem. There was no way he was going to mention anything about a weakness for pretty psychologists, though, or the vampire’s remark about her, when Dale already knew about his interest in Riley Price.

Dale said, “You think our little victim might have caught the vampire’s eye, and that out of all the people in and around Seattle, a vamp queen could be interested in the one person we helped out of a jam? Why would that even occur to you?”

“The two things happened on the same night. And Riley showed up at the head of that alley where the monster confronted us, as if she had been summoned there.”

Dale appeared to mull that over. “Such a scenario could mean this heartless vampire bitch might be interested in our Miss Price because we helped her. But we help people all the time, so what’s so special about tonight?”

He added with a meaningful sideways glance at Derek, “Maybe the vampire is interested in Price because of who helped her. Her sudden interest could be in retaliation for us dusting some of her newbies tonight.”

“Then why didn’t she just go after us in the alley?” Derek said.

Dale shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Derek would never forget the problems they confronted the last time Damaris came out of hiding. If it hadn’t been for that renegade Blood Knight heading off the vamp queen, none of his pack would be around today.

“Our Miss Price showing up again near that alley could be a coincidence,” Dale suggested. “We have to consider that.”

“One hell of a coincidence,” Derek said.

Dale went on, “You’ve shown interest in Riley. Could that vampire actually be interested in you, Derek, rather than Riley Price?”

Derek had gone over those same questions fifty times since meeting with his pack an hour ago, and hadn’t yet gone to find Riley because of his fear of involving her further.

He could feel Riley out there, and couldn’t trust that sensation. They had no real connection. She wasn’t a Were, so they couldn’t have imprinted by gazing so intently into each other’s eyes.

The only serious relationships for his kind were Were-to-Were. A special look, a lingering kiss, or a roll in the grass without their clothes, and two Weres were as good as engaged if they were meant to be mated.

Imprinting was serious business. Some Weres used the word fate to describe the immediacy of such attractions. And though imprinting rarely happened between a Were and a human, Derek supposed it didn’t have to be impossible if the circumstances were right and the stars lined up. He just hadn’t heard of any such cases. Still, he couldn’t shake the thoughts that kept him tied to Riley.

Dale picked up on this unspoken thread, probably by reading Derek’s face. “If your sudden interest in Riley is the reason for the vamp’s interest, then you can’t go near her until we know for sure.”