“But they would take orders from someone like me?” asked Anna, amused.
“They do take orders from you. I’ve seen it,” he said, as emotional as Anna had ever heard him.
Anna smiled. “I was Anna Latham the music student at Northwestern. I am twenty-six years old. I am married to the son of the Marrok—the Marrok who just left.”
She let the smile fall from her face, because this was important. She liked both FBI agents and didn’t want either of them to do something dangerously stupid—like underestimating Bran. “He is very good at blending in, my father-in-law. But don’t mistake him for anything but a ruthless bastard.”
Charles smiled, showing all of his teeth.
CHARLES SHOWERED FIRST, then dressed while Anna showered.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to go running in the mountains of California on a wild-goose chase. Brother Wolf, however, was eager—it had been a long time since they had hunted in those mountains. Werewolves tended to be territorial, and Brother Wolf was no exception, but he loved to go exploring, too. And he wanted to share all of the extraordinary places they had been with Anna.
There was a cave, he told Charles. Do you remember the cave?
Charles did. “The Marbles encompass a lot of ground,” he told Brother Wolf. He wasn’t sure the wolf could read maps. “That cave is maybe twenty miles from where we’re headed.” He considered. “We might manage the lake with the big trout, though—if it’s still there.”
The Klamath River, like most big rivers, had been dammed and its path forever changed. New lakes formed and others gone forever.
Anna came into the bedroom with a big red towel wrapped around herself and nothing else. Her reddish-brown hair was tied up on top of her head, and there was a drop of water on his favorite freckle.
They were all his favorite freckles.
“Stop that, you,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t really mean it by the heat in her eyes. “We have bigger problems. What was your da thinking, strolling in there like some meek little lamb? I don’t know if I managed to convince the FBI that he’s the Marrok.”
“That isn’t urgent,” Charles said. “He can convince them himself whenever he wants to. He came in to see the map—I think he knows something about what’s happened. And he came in to see if he needed to kill someone. It is a good thing the FBI sent Fisher and Goldstein. If they had sent someone more twisty, Da might have decided to kill them to send a message to their owners.” He used the term Brother Wolf had thrown out.
Anna grimaced. “I thought that might be it.” She looked at Charles. “I would have defended them.”
He knew that—and it would have been obvious to his da as well. That knowledge might have been the thing keeping both agents alive. He didn’t think it was because Bran was seriously considering an alliance.
“Unofficial offers from government officials are notoriously dangerous,” he observed. “Secret alliances were the powder keg that blew up into World War I.”
“That doesn’t mean friendly relations wouldn’t be useful,” Anna countered.
He nodded agreement. “Friendly, yes. But wherever such a relationship ends up, it will be far short of an us-against-them alliance of humans and werewolves against all comers.”
“Especially since Bran doesn’t really like mundane humans,” added Anna, wiping her cheek on the end of her towel.
Charles closed the distance between them. He put a finger over the towel where her breasts came together and formed a valley, but he left the towel where it was. He never touched her without her consent, and never would.
She smiled, and it was a wicked, hungry thing.
“Yes,” she said.
C H A P T E R
2
Charles spread the map that Goldstein had left with them on his da’s desk. He had taken a silver Sharpie and inked in the boundaries of Leah’s land before he’d left Anna sleeping in their bed and gone to find his da—as his da had requested before he’d left Anna and Charles to deal with the FBI.
Charles had known about the land, of course. He took care of all of the pack’s properties, and the personal properties owned by his family. Taxes, upkeep, and, when appropriate, renters or rental agencies were all under his aegis. It wasn’t the only section of land owned by the Cornick family, so he hadn’t been too curious about it.
He’d thought his da had bought the property for Leah sometime in the nineteen forties—during World War II. But if her name had been on the original deed … He couldn’t remember how that part of California had been settled. Had that been one of the areas settled by homesteading? That would mean Da had acquired that land a lot earlier than Charles had believed.
Bran studied the map for a minute and then shrugged. “I haven’t been there in a long time. I doubt I could find my way there without a map and a guide. Too much has changed—the entire course of the river, logging, trails, and towns.”
Charles nodded. He had the same problem. He’d traveled all over the west in the early nineteen hundreds. Some of that had been business for his da, and some of it had been to get away from his da. He’d been to most of the towns nearest to Leah’s land at one time or another. He didn’t remember much about many of them, and he doubted he’d recognize them.
“You are sending Anna and me to check out the missing people,” Charles said. It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t like to send you there,” his father replied, arms folded across his chest and an expression on his face so neutral that Charles knew Bran was very, very unhappy.
Since his da had sent him to some nasty situations over the years, Charles was intrigued.
“Do you know what could have happened to them?” he asked. “Is there something—someone dangerous?”
Bran frowned. “Yes. But I don’t know much more than that. The only one who might be able to tell us something is Sherwood Post, and he’s forgotten it all.”
His da’s voice held a growl that told Charles it was a good thing Sherwood was safely out of his da’s long reach at the moment. Da had always blamed Sherwood for the memory loss, though from the outside it had seemed grossly unfair. Doubtless Da had reason for it—he usually did—but he hadn’t shared it with Charles. At any rate, the old three-legged wolf was a member of Hauptman’s pack now—and the Columbia Basin Pack was the only pack in North America that did not owe fealty to Bran Cornick.
Charles waited.
“Leah’s been singing again,” Bran said in an apparent non sequitur.
“What do you mean, singing?” Leah didn’t sing. He hadn’t thought about it much; some people sang, some people didn’t.
Leah had used to sing, though, hadn’t she? He remembered her singing when he was a boy. But there had been something unsettling about her when she had.
“Do you mean like she used to sing?” he asked. “When you first brought her home? Brother Wolf used to make us leave when she was singing. He didn’t like it.”
“Nor do I,” admitted his da. The growl in his voice was almost subvocal, raising the hairs on the back of Charles’s neck in response.