I had to admit the collapsible baton was cool. I supposed it was much more effective than my slapjack, not to mention having a better reach. And I rationalized that if I took it, he wouldn't be using it on unsuspecting hitchhikers. I palmed it and dropped it into my bag.
Slinging that bag over my shoulders, I glanced back at the diner window but didn't see Caleb. I backed away from the truck and-
"Ack!" I shouted, jumping out of my skin and cursing myself for not keeping the baton handy. No matter how much time I'd spent around them, it was always shocking to me that big, bulky werewolves could move so quietly.
While his tone was friendly, his posture was tense. He frowned down at me. "Just wanted to see what was taking so long. You OK?"
"I think this is a mistake," I said, my fingers frantically searching through my bag for the slapjack. I stepped away from him, putting the open truck door between us. His brow furrowed, and he took a step toward me. I stepped farther away, onto the sidewalk.
"What's a mistake?" he asked.
"This whole ‘riding together' idea. I'll be fine on my own, really. Thanks for getting me this far, though." I turned, taking brisk, long steps up the sidewalk. He stood, staring at me, perplexed. "Good luck . . . with your whole Ted Bundy thing," I muttered softly as I rushed away.
In a blink, Caleb was in front of me, holding my arms against my sides. "What did you mean by that?"
Great, I forgot that my new best friend had an advanced serial-killer kit and superhuman hearing. Oh, and healing powers. I was one lucky girl.
"What did you mean?" he demanded. His eyes followed mine back to the open truck door and the cuffs and zip ties lying out on his floorboards.
"What normal person rolls with this sort of thing in his backseat, Caleb?"
"There's a good explanation for this."
"I'm sure there is. I just don't care," I retorted.
"Look, come inside, have some breakfast with me, and I'll explain. If you still think I'm a serial killer afterward, I'll pay the check, and you can stay here at the motel until you figure out what you want to do."
I shrugged. "OK."
"Great, let's go inside," he said.
"I wasn't serious!" I exclaimed. "How stupid do you think I am?"
"Look, what's the harm in having breakfast?" he chided. And he added, "With plenty of witnesses."
I might have objected that I was fine, not hungry in the slightest. But then my traitorous empty stomach growled, as if on cue.
He smirked at me. "I bet this place has great pancakes."
I growled in frustration, my shoulders sagged, and I let him nudge me through the front door of the diner. There was a chubby middle-aged man cooking in the kitchen and a bored-looking teenage girl taking orders. Two burly men in plaid flannel sat at the counter, quietly eating steak and eggs. No one, including the teenager, bothered to look up when we walked in.
I might have been embarrassed by my nervous habit of cataloguing each new room's occupants, but Caleb was equally funny about the seating arrangements. He insisted on a booth by the front window, but he seemed uncomfortable sitting with his back to the door. His safety concerns didn't exactly increase my trust in him. And despite the fact that I needed the restroom with increasing urgency, I didn't want to leave him unattended around my food or drink. He was paying for my French toast, but that didn't entitle him to mickey my OJ.
The food arrived without fanfare from the apathetic teen queen. Caleb's breakfast consisted of six strips of bacon, sausage, a bloody steak, scrambled eggs, and three pancakes, which I watched him devour with a fascination I used to reserve for Shark Week.
"OK, we're eating, you're paying, now spill," I said around a mouthful of maple-soaked fried bread. "What's with the hardware?"
He looked a bit sheepish, chewing his pancake thoughtfully while he chose his words. "I'm a sort of bounty hunter," he said. "I track people down, people who don't want to be found. I take them in, collect the reward. Generally, they kick and spit and scream on the long drive home, so I have to restrain them. That's why I have the handcuffs and the bungee cords."
My fork practically clattered to the table as a cold weight settled into my belly. Well, that certainly explained why I hadn't seen him around the valley. He was out wandering the roads, ruining the lives of perfectly nice fugitives. A ripple of alarm skittered up my spine. I clutched the table's edge with my right hand to calm the slight tremor there. I swallowed carefully and wished I could reach for the juice without bobbling the glass. "Show me your ID."
His eyebrows rose. "What?"
"Bail bondsmen are required to carry ID with them when they make ‘citizen's arrests.' Show it to me."
He cleared his throat and washed down half a pancake with some coffee. "Well, some of my collars are not quite . . ."
"Legal?" I suggested.
"Yeah," he said, looking embarrassed for a millisecond.
"Do you carry a gun?"
"No, I don't get shot at very often."
"And if that's not an endorsement for a profession, I don't know what is," I said, slowly and deliberately reaching for my juice glass. It was a miracle of concentration that held my hand steady as I sipped. Over the rim of the glass, I kept my eyes trained on his face, as if I didn't have a care in the world. Nothing to fear. Nothing to send me running for the nearest exit.
"Normally, people don't get the drop on me," he said defensively. "I have a certain set of . . . skills, and they help me when I'm tracking a person. The people in my family have always been hunters. I just apply it in a different way."
I snorted. He wasn't kidding. Werewolves had supersensitive noses and ears, not to mention their intuitive ability to track whatever creature was unlucky enough to be targeted by an animal built for hunting.
But again, I was supposed to be playing dumb. Because if I blurted out, Yeah, I know about the whole werewolf thing that is supposed to be forbidden knowledge for a human such as myself, there would be a lot of awkward questions. More awkward than the ones currently being bandied across the table, anyway.
"I make a lot of money at something I'm good at. No questions asked, as long as someone is willing to pay me my fee. And sometimes all I have to do is get a little information and pass it along. I like those jobs. Easy money and less time spent rooting around in parking lots."
His conversation with the guy who shot him made so much more sense now. This Marty guy had been afraid that Caleb was taking him in on money he owed, so he freaked out and started shooting. I did not need this. I did not need to hitch myself to any form of law enforcement, no matter how slipshod. Glenn had contacts in more places than I'd ever imagined-old college buddies, online gaming clubbers, and sketchy cousins I hadn't been allowed to speak to at the wedding reception. And all it would take was a couple of opportune Google searches for Caleb to find the online message boards where Glenn had put out feelers for me.
I didn't think Caleb would have any qualms about handing me over to my ex, "no questions asked." Even the way he phrased it gave me chills. He sounded so cold, so calculated, so like-
Never mind! Get out! My brain screamed at me. Get away! The ladies' room was to the immediate left of the door, offset by a small hallway. So feigning a bladder issue and sneaking out the front wouldn't work. There was probably another exit in the back, through the kitchen, and a fire exit, but both were in Caleb's line of sight. I willed my face to relax, first my jaw and then my cheeks, so I could speak without looking tense. I took a casual bite of my bacon.
"How do you get your assignments? How do people know how to get ahold of you?" I asked. I leaned forward, resting my chin on my hand as if he had my rapt attention. I glanced behind him. Maybe there was another way out off of the restroom area. These places always had fire exits, but I couldn't risk setting off some alarm.
"A buddy of mine owns a bar about an hour outside Fairbanks. If people want to get ahold of me, they know to call me there. And I have contacts of my own in Anchorage, Portland, Seattle. Mostly PIs who don't want to make the trip up here. They get a finder's fee for hiring me," he said.
"And you just bounce around on the road?" I asked, swiping the last bite of French toast through the golden puddle of syrup on my plate. I savored the crisp edges of the fried bread, unsure when I'd be able to get another nice, hot meal.
"Sometimes I head home to see my family. But I haven't been there in a while. They live in the Crescent Valley near Grundy, very tight-knit."
That explained why I'd never met him. He hadn't been to the valley for years. I'd heard stories about a Caleb from Maggie, strange "stupid criminal" tales from her cousin the bounty hunter, who hadn't come back home since his dad, Artie, had died of stroke complications shortly before I was hired on. The funeral service had been held just after I'd arrived, while I was off restocking the clinic's medications and supplies. I was still so pale and shaky and skittish that Eli, the former pack leader, insisted on sending one of the distant pack cousins with me on the supply run. I only realized later that it was because he was afraid I would take off and not come back. I remembered now that Artie's son left town before I returned two days later, and that had upset some of the older aunties.