It took only a few minutes for Cash to return, boots cracking dry leaves and hard grass across the trail, with Everett in his wake.

“The sheriff is content to let you investigate a homicide?” Connor asked, not bothering to hide his incredulity—or his suspicions.

“Did you not hear the part about the bear attack?” Everett’s tone was aggressive.

Connor didn’t spare him a glance. “I’m hearing a lot of things. Why did the sheriff walk away?”

“We have an arrangement,” Cash said. “As long as we mind our own, he doesn’t interfere. Helps that the county’s short-staffed. Makes it easier for him to pass the ball.”

Connor cocked his head to the side. “You aren’t trying to stonewall the investigation, are you?”

“You’d better remember where you are,” Everett said. “This isn’t Chicago.”

“Everett,” Cash said, but Everett shook his head.

“No, Cash. They think they can come up here and tell us what to do? They arrive, and trouble starts. I say that’s not a coincidence. I say we send them back home.”

“A good thing, then,” Connor said, “that you don’t run this particular show.” Then he turned his gaze back to Cash, as if Everett wasn’t worth even a moment’s time. “You got issues with the Apex’s leadership, you take them up with him. You have issues with me, I’m here, and I’m ready. But maybe, instead of arguing like children, we could concentrate on the member of your Pack who’s been murdered?”

Magic had risen with each word, each punctuated sentence. And by the time he was done, the other members of the clan were watching, listening.

Waiting.

“We don’t want humans in our business,” Cash said. “If we have problems, we prefer to solve them on our own. We take care of our own,” he said, each word a punch of power and magic. “And we make a nice donation to the sheriff’s campaign to ensure it stays that way.”

Apparently done with the explanation, Cash looked over his people. “Something attacked Loren. Maybe his luck ran out, and there was a wild animal. But I’ve yet to meet a shifter taken by a bear, so we are going to figure out what happened here.”

There were rumbles of agreement in the sizable crowd that had gathered.

“Everett, you coordinate getting Loren to Flanagan’s.”

The barrel-chested man nodded.

“John, you check Loren’s cabin,” Cash said to a dark-skinned man with dark hair and a thick beard. “See if there’s anything amiss there. Everyone else, either get back to the resort, keep an eye on the kids, or stay here to help us search. We’ll split into teams,” he said. “Look for scat, footprints. Anything that tells us what attacked Loren and where it went.”

“Elisa and I will take the woods to the east,” Connor said when shifters began to volunteer for assignments.

“No fucking way!” Everett, arms folded across his chest, shook his head.

“Excuse me?” Connor’s voice was low and threatening.

“Everett,” Cash said, a low warning, but the man shook his head.

“She’s a stranger, and a vampire, and this isn’t our property. For all we know, she was involved.”

I started forward, but made myself stay in place because of the hand Connor put out to stop me. He kept his gaze—cold and flat—on Everett’s. “You want to be very careful before you accuse friends of the Pack, of my family, of murder.”

“I didn’t say she actually killed him. Point is, we don’t know, do we? This is enough of a clusterfuck without involving strangers.”

“She’s no stranger to me or mine,” Connor said. “And her being a vampire isn’t a weakness—it’s a strength.”

Cash and Everett gave me head-to-toe appraisals. Cash’s gaze was at least considering; Everett just leered.

“How is she a help?” Cash asked.

“For starters,” Connor said dryly, “she’s a predator with night vision, and she’s been trained by Chicago’s Ombudsman. She’s exactly who you want looking for evidence. Refusing to let her assist doesn’t make you safer; it makes you look guilty. Elisa,” he said, shifting his gaze to me, “would you like to enlighten them with what you’ve noticed already?”

“For starters,” I repeated, looking at Cash, “he wasn’t killed here.” And I told them what was missing from the place where Loren’s body had been, for lack of a better word, dumped.

Cash watched me carefully. “You have had some training.”

I ignored the statement and asked a question. “Did everyone in the clan know about the initiation?”

“Yes. Everyone knew,” Cash said. “Why?”

“Because if they all knew it was happening here tonight,” Connor said, “leaving the body here wasn’t an accident.”

Cash worked his jaw, as if chewing over words. “Fine. Take the vampire if you want. She’s your responsibility. We’ve wasted enough time,” he said, irritated magic nipping at the air with needle-sharp teeth. “We find out who or what killed Loren, and then we deal with it. Get moving.”

The shifters were content to ignore me, light and magic flashing as they transformed, dropping clothing and exchanging bare skin for paws and fur. Moments later, a dozen wolves, a couple of coyotes, and the sleek, dark form of a panther dispersed to look for a murderer.

Connor glanced at Alexei. “You mind going back to the resort, staying with Georgia and the others? I’d feel better if you were there. And they’ll be working on dinner.”

“Incentive,” Alexei said, then gave a salute and headed wordlessly back to the trail.

“You mind?” Connor asked, pulling off his jacket.

“It’s your party,” I said, then winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. I know what you meant.”

“You want me to put the clothes on the bike?”

For the first time in hours, he smiled. “They’ll be fine where they fall. Take a step back, would you?”

I did, pulling my dagger in case anyone got brave while Connor was midshift.

“Good call,” he said, and clothing dropped to the ground.

I watched him, let my gaze linger on that dip at the bottom of his spine, just before the ripe curve of his gorgeously toned butt.

“I can feel you staring at me,” he said without turning around.

“Then you’re very perceptive. Can you understand me when you’re in wolf form? I mean, is your understanding the same as when you’re a human?”

“We pretty much just divide everyone into ‘food’ and ‘not food’ and go from there.”

I was sure he was joking. Well, mostly sure.

“I hear you, and I understand you,” he said. “But the understanding of human words is . . . different. Less like hearing the individual words than understanding the concept. The same applies when I’m human. I understand animal concepts—smells, sounds, instincts—differently than when I’m wolf.”

“What about scritches?”

He grinned. “Scritches are appreciated in any form. And here we go.”

Magic sparked, ignited, circled his body in shimmering waves. Light filled the air, bright as a camera flash, and put the trees and boulders in sharp relief. I shielded my eyes.

When the magic dissipated, I glanced back. A wolf stood where Connor had been. Large and strong, with silver fur and the blue eyes that were undeniably his, even in this form.

He padded toward me, moved by my side, just close enough for his haunch to graze my leg. I looked down, decided this wasn’t the time or place for scritches. A grimmer business was at hand. “You want to lead?”

He bolted.

“I guess that’s a yes,” I said with a grin, and ducking my head, pushed off to race after him.

* * *

* * *

That we were moving quickly made me feel better about being in hostile territory—and not just because we were going too fast to notice any slithery things on the ground. The trees and undergrowth were so tangled that I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me, or more than a dark sliver of sky above the canopy. All that flora smelled rich and green and a little funky—the commingled scents of decay and rebirth and traces of the animals that lived here.

The slope increased gradually until we reached the crest of a granite-pocked hill that overlooked the lake, the road ribboning a hundred feet beneath us, the lake a dark blanket at its edge.

We stopped to look over the pale break of waves, the single golden dot of a boat on the horizon moving south. Nose lifted, Connor scented the air, seeking the clue that would tell us who—or what—had hurt Loren. I glanced around, but saw nothing on the trail nearby, or strewn across the hard rock, that would mark a murderer.

Below us a lone wolf howled, its cry rising through the air to circle around the cliff. A second wolf answered it, then another, until the air was an orchestra of sound, a chorus of harmonized voices.

I doubted many vampires had borne witness to this, had been able to stand in the midst of the Pack and listen to its sonata. I closed my eyes, let the monster have its chance to hear as the howls rose and fell, wound around one another. Some carried the melody—the main portion of the song—while others sang or yipped around the edges, adding their own stories to the larger book. It was astoundingly beautiful and yet hauntingly sad, even though I knew it had a practical purpose.

“They’re checking everyone’s location, right? Making sure they’re all safe?” I looked down at Connor, and he lifted his gaze to me, but his eyes were unreadable.

“At the risk of insulting you, and I’ll apologize in advance for that, could we have some kind of signaling system when you’re in wolf form?”

He continued to stare at me. But it seemed chillier.

“One paw scratch for yes, two for no? And not like one of those counting horses,” I said, reading his expression perfectly. “I don’t want you to perform for me. I just want to be able to communicate with you.”