Page 14 of Protected By Her Mate

I wait for more of a reaction from him, but there isn’t one. He just looks at me curiously, so I continue, “It’s the same brand our victim has.” Greystone Boulder-Wolf had the same brand many arsonists get. It’s like belonging to a secret society that only those in the know, know about.

Lennox and I grin at each other. Fire or police, there’s nothing like a clue falling into place to energize an investigation. “Where to next, partner?” I ask.

“My office,” he says, tugging my cuff down, his big, blunt fingers brushing my skin and sending a wave of tingles up my leg. “Now that we know Greystone may have been an arsonist, we’ll see if we can link him to other fires.”

He briefly cups my thigh and our eyes meet, then his phone dings with an incoming message. His hand falls away from me as he checks his phone and I put my feet back on the floor of the truck, an ache of emptiness filling my chest.

“Scratch that,” Lennox says, his urgent tone sending me reaching for the ignition. “We have an address for our victim.”

Chapter 5

Gumshoe

LENNOX

“Greystone Boulder-Wolf may have been many things, but tidy he was not.” Charlie stares around the tiny apartment, her nose wrinkling. “Is that…” She approaches a dusty bird cage and peers into it. “A dead canary.”

“Weird.” I follow her in, prepared to shift at any sign of a threat.

“You’re telling me,” Charlie replies, staring at the bird. “It’s been dead longer than its owner. Who leaves a dead bird in their apartment?”

Ignoring the bird, I step around piles of newspapers and books. “It’s weird because shifters don’t keep pets.” We’re wolves at heart and small animals set off our prey drive. We’re mostly civilized and can control those urges but why keep pets around to tempt us? “This place didn’t belong to him.”

Charlie looks up from where she was inspecting a notebook laying open on a desk. “I thought you said this was his address?”

I frown, sniffing the air. I can smell Greystone’s presence. He was here maybe three days ago, just before he was killed. “He was staying here but this place wasn’t his.” I sniff again. “Belongs to a human. A female.”

“A girlfriend?” Charlie places the notebook in an evidence bag and sets it by the door.

I make my way through the apartment, opening doors until I find the bedroom. Sniffing again, I say to Charlie, who’s followed me down the hall, “They had sex here recently.”

Charlie’s lips curl and her nose wrinkles. “That’s disgusting, Lennox! You can smell when someone’s had sex?”

Yup. I can also scent when a person is on their period, which Charlie is not. I can smell when a person is sick or near death. I know when another animal has invaded my territory.

But I don’t tell Charlie any of this. She’s my mate and I want her to look at me with… well… not disgust, no matter how cute the expression is on her.

I walk further into the bedroom, moving items on the floor with my shoe. Something crinkles and I go down to one knee, gingerly working a folded piece of paper from the pocket of a pair of men’s trousers.

Opening it, I see a handwritten scrawled note: 716 Olive.

“Address?” Charlie asks, reading over my shoulder.

“That’s my guess.”

She pulls out her phone and taps at the screen with the confidence only a human born of the last few generations can manage. “There are a handful of Olive Roads in this country, there are moreOliveraddresses, one in this state, but it’s in Buffalo.” She frowns and worries her lip between her front teeth, then snaps her fingers and taps her phone again.

“Aha!”

My head is swimming from her proximity, the mating hormones have me focusing solely on the shine of her lip where she bit it. I want to lick her there, to feel the satiny smooth…

“Lennox?”

I blink and try to shake the fuzz from my head. She’s frowning at me. “Yeah?”

Her brow smooths once she has my attention. “It’s a martini bar called Olive 716. The address is 716 West 23rdStreet. It’s not far from here. Should we go?” she asks, her tone eager.

I nod. Doubt niggles at the back of my mind, but I can’t hear my intuition over the blood rushing through my ears every time I breathe her in.

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