Page 62 of Wolf Bound

Bertrand frowned. “How do you know that if Royce isn’t here?”

Whoops.

“They’ve done more than just trespass on private property,” Kira said.

“What?”

“It’s all under investigation,” Fisher said. “It’s nothing we can really discuss.”

“Do you want to file a missing person’s report for Royce?” Kira asked.

“You know what, the three of them have dropped the whole family and have lied to us about going to Alaska. If they’re involved in criminal acts, that’s on them. They’re not involving us in any of this. We don’t have any idea what they’ve been up to. I just want to make that clear,” Bertrand said.

“Thanks. We appreciate you talking with us,” Kira said.

Nobody had anything further to ask of him and so he shook everyone’s hands and left the building.

“I feel bad for him,” Bridget said. “From what I could read, his wife is Royce’s older sister, and she just had a baby. So that’s why Bertrand made the effort to see if her brother was here. When you were speaking to him, he immediately thought about Oscar saying that he, Reggie, and Royce had been trespassing on private property. Oscar didn’t know for sure, but he thought Royce might have been picked up and was in the jail here because he wasn’t answering his phone. Bertrand suspected that was the reason neither Oscar nor Reggie wanted to check with us because they were afraid that they would be incarcerated also for trespassing.”

“Bertrand thought he could bail him out,” Fisher said.

“Yeah, because the charge against Royce, Bertrand thought, couldn’t have been that bad,” Bridget said. “But when Kira said it was more than that, Bertrand realized he didn’t want any part of what the three men had been up to.”

“So do you think Oscar and Reggie are still in the area?” Kira asked.

“I do. I think once Bertrand had paid for Royce’s release, they would have picked Royce up from Bertrand and then might have decided it was time to go to Alaska,” Bridget said.

“Do you believe Oscar and Reggie will think we don’t have Royce?” Dan asked.

“They couldn’t find him. They would have smelled all our scents out there by the broken-down building,” Kira said. “I would say that when Bertrand tells Oscar that we don’t have Royce, he won’t believe we’re telling the truth. I believe we need to send Royce with Everett and Demetria to Houston. And then we’ll go back to searching for the other two.”

Then she got a call from Leyton and put it on speaker. “Hey, we learned at the bar that a woman who had left it had encountered trouble with three men. You could see them on the security video stalking her until she was at a point where no one could see anything,” Leyton said.

“Which is good because she shifted into her wolf,” Fisher said.

“Exactly. The woman’s name is Judi Jacobson. We tracked her down and she gave us the whole story—how they accosted her, tore at her clothes. She’d only had one drink, but the three of them were drunk. She tossed the rest of her clothes, which suited the three men fine, figuring they were going to get some willing action. And they did. Except not the kind they were expecting. She wasn’t from the area, didn’t know any wolves, was at a hotel, and just wanted to go out for a drink. What a mistake that had been. She bit two of the men who had come at her with a knife. Once they were in their car, they drove off, but she got their license plate number, and eventually caught up to them at a clinic where she had to receive treatment for a knife wound also. She followed them to Reggie’s house, she later learned. She knew she either had to take the two men under her wing and turn the other, or she had to kill them. Since they had tried to rape her, and then attempted to kill her, she knew her only real choice was to take them down—permanently.”

“But she didn’t kill them,” Kira said.

“She was planning to, but she wanted to make sure no would ever discover who had done it. Then the men all left, and she didn’t know where they had gone. So she prayed they wouldn’t cause problems for our kind. She’s a lone wolf, so she’s used to having to take care of herself, though she knows better than to leave men like that turned and not do something about it. She just didn’t have the resources to locate them,” Leyton said. “She is grateful that we’re on the case and she said if you wanted her to join you and eliminate these guys since it’s her mistake, she would gladly do it.”

“No. We’ll handle it. She has been through enough already,” Kira said.

Fisher was feeling the same way.

“Okay, we’ll let her know that and then we’re headed home.”

Kira told him about the relative coming to try and bail Royce out. “So we feel the other two men are still in the area.”

“We need to be there then if you need us.”

Then Leyton and Kira ended the call and Kira called Everett. “We’re ready for you to take Royce to Houston.” She told him about Bertrand. “We don’t want any family members—human types—to learn he truly is here and want to know what the real charges are for. We just need to get him out of here before word gets back to the rest of the family in Denver and they want to know what’s going on.”

“We’re on our way over. Demetria and I have been combing the area in search of Reggie’s vehicle. We couldn’t find any sign of it though. Tell Dan we’ll be there in a few minutes to take the wolf off his hands.”

“I will. Thanks, Everett.” Then they finished the call and Kira said, “Everett and Demetria are coming to pick up Royce. Fisher and I are going to ride as backup for a while.”

“My brothers and cousin can also, watching to see if anyone is coming for him,” Fisher said.

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