Mate Marked(43)

“He can?” Erika cried.

“True story. I heard him when they were holding me prisoner one of the times I tried to arrest He Who Shall Not Be Named. A guy like that doesn’t come along every day.”

“That is very true. I mean, I can burp ’til ten, but that’s as high as I go. Wow.”

“If you guys had cubs, they could probably burp the entire constitution of the United States,” Chelsea pointed out. “How can you deprive the world of such talent?”

“True, true,” Erika mused. “All right, I’ll go talk to him on one condition. Come with me and talk to Roman. Look him in the eye. Ask him if he Mate-Marked that bitch. And if he did, for God’s sake, tell him he’s an assface or punch him or something. Get some closure.”

“Well.” Chelsea hesitated. Over the years, she’d gotten so used to moving on that she’d never even thought about fighting to stay somewhere she felt unwanted. But here she had people asking her to stay. And Erika was right—she shouldn’t let Roman get away with screwing her over. She wanted to look him in the eye and tell him how much his lies had hurt her. If he didn’t care, that was on him.

“I can’t come for at least a couple hours,” she said. “I have to go meet Chief Tomlinson behind the old dairy in Juniper in an hour, and tell him I’m quitting. Watch Pepper until I get back?”





Chapter Twenty




It was pitch black out. The night sky was dark and sullen, the moon hidden behind thick clouds. Chelsea had arrived fifteen minutes early, but the chief had arrived earlier still. His car was parked all the way at the back of the lot, by the woods.

As far as Chelsea could tell at a glance, his car was empty. She idled in her car, looking around the lot. Where was he?

Something felt wrong. A sensation of uneasiness rippled over her, sending icy chills shooting through her veins. She glided to a stop and parked by the road in case she needed to make a quick getaway.

A chilly breeze rushed through the air as she walked towards the police chief’s car. Then she paused.

She tipped her head back and sniffed. Her sense of smell was no better than a human’s, but she could still smell it, so the odor must be very strong—the breeze carried the coppery scent of blood.

“Chief?” she called out into the silence. “Are you all right?”

She stood still, listening hard.

Nothing but crickets chirping in the background.

She rushed around to the other side of the patrol car, and her blood froze at what she saw. Chief Tomlinson lay sprawled on the ground, his throat ripped out. His unseeing eyes were wide open.

Bloody shoe prints tracked away from the scene.

She knelt down next to him and placed her fingers on his neck in an attempt to find a pulse, but it was pointless and she knew it. His body was already cool to the touch. The blood around him was mostly congealed, and the blood on his throat was dry and crusted.

She stood, grabbed her phone from her pocket and tried to dial the Juniper Police Department. There was no cell phone signal.

Her stomach churned as she trotted back towards her car, debating what to do next. She was already on the outskirts of Juniper, so she should probably go there, but she wondered how the humans would react to her going into town to announce that their chief was dead. Would they blame her?

Off in the distance, she heard the sounds of approaching vehicles, then the sound of sirens. The dairy was on top of a hill, and she could see the road from town below. There were three police cars heading up towards the parking lot, lights flashing, sirens blaring. That was the entire Juniper police department headed her way.

Who had called the police? What had the police been told? Whoever had called them was most likely the killer, and this entire meeting had been a setup. Nobody else but the killer would have known so quickly that the police chief was dead, or sent them there at the perfect time, just when she was showing up.

She quickly shed her clothing, shifted and ran from the parking lot just as the police cars pulled up. She knew that leaving the scene would make her look as guilty as hell—and dear God, she had just walked through a pool of blood to get to him, making things look even worse. But she also remembered how the Juniper police had reacted when Mitch Rodgers had sicced them on her. Officer Porter in particular had looked as if he’d have been happier putting a bullet in her head than letting her go.

And now her car was parked in the same lot as the dead chief’s body—with all her stuff packed up as if she were fleeing town.

Panic and anger burned through her. Chief Tomlinson had been a good man, and his death had been brutal. Whoever had done this wouldn’t get away with it as long as she had breath in her body.