Later, as he tenderly kissed the fresh Mate-Mark on her neck, soothing the bitten and bruised flesh with delicate brushes of his lips, she stroked the smooth skin of his back, heart full with the knowledge that for the first time in her life she’d found somewhere she truly belonged. With him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Something off about the death scene… The dried blood on the chief’s body, the congealed pool on the ground…
She knew how to prove she’d been set up.
Chelsea sat bolt upright, and the blanket fell off of her. Peering through the vines that covered the cave entrance, she could see that it was still dark out. The cave was dimly lit by a battery-operated lantern. Next to her, Roman stirred.
Her Mate Mark still tingled and ached. She reached up and stroked it lightly with her fingers, just to reassure herself that it was real.
“Morning,” Roman mumbled into his pillow.
“I just thought of something,” she said.
“How incredibly happy you are to be mated to me, the handsomest Alpha in the West?” Roman sat up too, yawning.
“Yeah, yeah, that too,” she said impatiently. Roman tossed the covers off himself, looking insulted.
“Is the honeymoon over already?” he asked with mock hurt.
She flashed him a brief smile and touched her Mate Mark again. “It will never be over. If we survive this, I plan to misbehave on a regular basis, which means you will be forced to think up ever more creative ways to punish me.”
“I’m down with that. How about right now? You just mildly offended your Alpha and your mate. That calls for at least a spanking.”
“Listen, this is important. Something just occurred to me. When I found the chief’s body last night, the blood around his body was mostly congealed. And the blood on his body was completely dried and crusted over. That would take a couple of hours, I’d think. Could you scent how long he’d been dead?”
“At least three or four hours.”
“Well, that’s interesting. He sent me a text about forty-five minutes before I arrived at the parking lot,” Chelsea said. “Or somebody did, using his phone.”
“There is absolutely no way he was alive when that text was sent.” Roman said, his tone going grim.
“Well,” Chelsea mused, “I spoke to the chief on the phone earlier in the day, and he was going to tell me something interesting about the license plate of a car that had been parked in Mitch Rodgers’ driveway. Before he could tell me, Officer Porter interrupted him. So we can’t talk to anybody in the Juniper police department.”
“Not like I’d trust the human police department anyway,” Roman said.
Chelsea frowned in thought. “The town of Juniper will already have the chief’s body back at their morgue. They might have accidentally, or deliberately, washed Porter’s scent off of his body before a shifter investigator could get to it…or they could try to claim that of course his scent was on the body, because they worked together. But they can’t conceal the time of death, and they can’t change the time that text was sent.”
“True. It’s just a matter of who we can trust to do a fair investigation.” Roman scowled. “I don’t place a lot of faith in human authorities.”
“If we can just tell someone about the text coming to me when the chief was already dead, we’ll be in the clear as soon as they verify it,” Chelsea said. “We just have to stay alive long enough to tell someone about it. Right now, the police don’t have any reason to investigate too much, because they’re pinning it on us. But if we contact the Council for Shifter Affairs and tell them about the text message, then a full investigation will be launched.”
“Unfortunately, yeah, that’s probably our best option. We need to find a safe place to go to call them, though. We can’t go into Silver Peak, or back to my pack,” Roman pointed out. “There will be law enforcement watching.”
“Hey,” Chelsea suggested. “We’re actually pretty close to Joyce’s house, and nobody would think of looking for us there. I bet she’d let us use her phone if we explained the situation to her. This pretty much points back to Mitch Rodgers, and I know she can’t stand him. She’d be glad to help get rid of him.”
They ate a hasty breakfast of granola bars and washed it down with bottled water.
Then they rolled up their clothing, stuffed it into a bag and shifted. Roman carried the bag in his jaws as they raced through the woods.
When they reached the Dudleys’ property, they changed into their clothes and strolled into the yard.