“I’ve got to call Mason, the owner of the bank. We need to put these in the safety deposit box tonight,” CJ said.

“They’ll open the bank for you?”

“Hell, yeah. It’s pack run and we do things for each other like that. Banker’s hours don’t count if we’ve got a real issue to deal with.”

“I love it.” As if the money didn’t mean anything, she grabbed for another drawer. This time so did CJ.

Thirty drawers. A mix of money—from one-hundred-dollar bills to piles of the granddaddy of them all, the ten-thousand-dollar green note. CJ stared at one of the big notes. “I wonder who Samuel P. Chase was.”

Laurel was busy counting the money, stacking the bills in like denominations, then counting the stacks.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

CJ shook his head. “Let me make this call and get this money to the bank, and then I’m taking you to bed.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“We’ve been mated how long and money is the priority?”

He smiled and took her in his arms. “You’d rather we made love first?”

“No. Really, just teasing. It would kill me if someone broke into the house and stole all that money. Go call and make the arrangements. I’m going to take a nice, warm bath and see you when you return.”

“If you go to sleep on me, I’m waking you.”

“Promises.” She kissed him, then hurried off to the bedroom.

He got on the phone, wishing he didn’t have to take care of this right now. “Hey, Mason? I need to make a nighttime deposit.”

“What’s going on?”

“Remember when my brothers and I found all that money Granddad hid in his old mattress? I just found more. But let’s keep this just between you and me—and my mate, of course.”

* * *

Before Laurel took a bath, she wondered if anything as simple as a magnet could locate false bottoms to the drawers in her aunt’s furniture. She called Ellie. “Ellie, I don’t think we have any, but we just found a secret hideaway in CJ’s grandfather’s old chest, using a magnet to lift the false drawer bottom.”

“Oh, cool. Um, I don’t think we have any magnets in the house. And I’m on a date right now.”

Shocked that her sister would start dating as soon as Laurel mated a wolf, she realized just how much her sisters had put their lives on hold because of her. “Who?”

“Brett. We’re at the tavern. I’ll see if he has a magnet, but we’re going for a moonlit run tonight first.”

“I’ll call Meghan.”

“Can you call her a little later?”

Suspicious, Laurel asked, “Why?”

“She’s got company.”

Laurel smiled. When the pack leader was away… “Who?”

“Peter.”

Laurel chuckled. “All right. I’ll check with her later.”

After that, she climbed into the warm water in the tub and had nearly dozed off when she heard her phone ringing in the bedroom. She groaned and climbed out of the tub. Seizing a towel, she wrapped it around herself, then hurried into the other room. When she grabbed the phone, she saw it was Meghan. “What’s wrong?”

“We just had a break-in.”

Laurel heard CJ in the living room and wondered when he’d gotten home from the bank.

“I just had to call and let you know that we were broken into. Peter had already left and said CJ was at the bank and was closer. CJ’s here now and wanted me to let you know we’re all right, and he’d be home soon.”

If CJ was with Meghan… Her heart racing to the moon and back, Laurel hurried to the bedroom door, shut it, and locked it. “Someone’s in the house,” she whispered. “I’m shifting.”

“Ohmigod,” was all Meghan said before Laurel dropped the phone on the bed, leaving the line open in the event something happened to her. Then her sister shouted, “CJ, someone’s broken into your house!”

Laurel had already shifted into her wolf form and had been staring at the door for a second when she heard footfalls headed toward the bedroom door. Her heart in her throat, she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know if CJ had another gun in the house, but she’d never used one anyway, so she figured her teeth were a better bet. Still, if someone in the house had a gun, she wouldn’t be any match for him.

She shifted back into her human form, ran to the window, unlocked it, and then slid it open, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t realize she was trying to escape that way.

The doorknob twisted. She shifted and leaped through the window as a wolf. She suspected many of CJ’s neighbors were wolves, but she didn’t know for sure.

Then she wondered why anyone would have broken into her sisters’ home and now CJ’s. What was the man—as she was certain it was a man—looking for?

But she figured running outside in the snow would be a safer bet, and she headed for the hotel, hoping she’d encounter CJ, who would be driving back here at once.

If the Wernicke brothers had been taken in for questioning, they’d be in jail, not out breaking into homes. Unless Darien had incarcerated only one of them. Yet, she wondered how the person had broken into the hotel’s guest house. They had an alarm set. Maybe it had gone off and that’s why they knew someone was breaking in.

She raced along the wide front yards of the homes in CJ’s development, the houses all looking cheerfully Christmas-like in their holiday finery, many of them having icicle lights that dripped off the eaves, simulating real icicles, though they all had some of those too.

She headed south through the treed area that had been set aside as a park with fountains and walking trails that were dark at night, perfect for the wolves living closer to town. The full moon was shining off the white snow collected on the fir branches and the path when she heard movement in the trees to her left.

Then she saw the green glow of eyes—wolf eyes. The wolf’s coat was white. A smaller female wolf, about Laurel’s size. And she instantly thought of Charity. What was she doing here? Still trying to catch the wolf who killed her brother? Or had Charity had something to do with it?

Laurel hesitated, not sure what to think, when she heard a van parking at the lot used for visitors to the park. She turned and listened. A door slid open. It sounded like a panel van, like the one the Wernicke brothers owned. If she’d been near when they had opened the door or had driven by her in that van, she would have recognized the sound of the vehicle.

Whoever it was, he was coming this way as a human, his boots crunching on the crusted snow.

Laurel glanced back at the wolf. She was gone. Laurel was just as glad because if the person following her was bad news, she didn’t want the older woman to be hurt. The problem was that if the man was a wolf, he could follow Laurel’s scent, shift if he wanted, and come after her.

“Laurel?” Jacob called out.

Their electrician? She frowned. Then she melted into the woods, wanting to go to him, but unsure about exposing herself.

“CJ said your house was broken into. I was over at your sisters’ place, trying to determine why the alarm hadn’t gone off, when we learned someone was at CJ’s house. CJ and I immediately headed for his place in separate vehicles. But then I saw you running as a wolf in the direction of the park. CJ was going to try to catch up to the men who had broken into his house. We figure it’s the same ones who broke into the other house. I headed in the direction you took off in since he has a gun and I don’t. I’ll take you home before anyone sees you running out here as a wolf.”

CJ wouldn’t have gone home to apprehend the house breaker. His priority would have to search for her and protect her.

“Shit!” Jacob cried out at the same time that a wolf’s vicious growls rent the air.

Laurel raced to the scene and saw Charity’s wolf teeth clamped on Jacob’s arm, clinging for dear life as Jacob tried to beat her off with his bare hands.

Laurel lunged at him, slamming her front paws into his chest and bringing him down hard against the crusted snow. She clamped her teeth on his left arm and bit hard enough to force him to hold still, praying that she hadn’t just injured an innocent man. But he had to have lied to her about CJ.