No “sorry for lunch.” No “wish I could see Franny and the baby.” Debbie knew whatever it had to do with had to be bad news or Allan would have said something more. He was always good about that. And he was always conscientious about personally seeing victims they’d rescued to learn how they were faring.

She wished she could help in some way. She put in a call to the clinic as she headed over there, hoping when she saw Allan again, he’d feel comfortable sharing with her this time.

* * *

“We don’t know who she is?” Allan asked Paul, angered that a lupus garou had come into their territory, maybe looking for protection, and had been murdered.

His countenance stormy, Paul stared out the window of his cabin overlooking the lake, his arms folded across his chest. “No. Since she was naked and one of our kind, we presume she was trapped and killed as a wolf. Your sister and my mate were out running as wolves before dawn’s first light and came across her body in the woods near the cabin. Whoever did it caught her in an animal trap and shot her. The ladies saw burn marks on the bullet wounds. Though ballistics haven’t come back to confirm it yet, the rounds had to have been silver. The ladies smelled the sweet, subtle scent of pure silver. She had lots of defensive wounds where she was trying to get loose from the trap and bite at her attacker.”

“Did she bite him?”

“Yes.”

“What about DNA samples from his blood? Skin?” Allan considered the ramifications further. “What if her bites transferred the lupus garou genetics into his bloodstream and he turns into a wolf? He won’t have much control over it for some time. He won’t be able to shift for another week—not while it’s the phase of the new moon right now.”

“The forensics lab is testing the blood and tissue samples. But you know it takes a while for the lab work results to come in. If he hasn’t committed any crimes, or even if he has, he might not be in the database. An autopsy is being done as we speak. If we find the bastard soon, he’ll be wearing some hefty bite marks and scratches. But if he’s been turned, that’s another story. That means we have a week to catch him before the half moon appears. What’s worse is someone anonymously reported the murder. If he was a wolf, we’d have to handle it on our own. But now the police are involved.”

“The killer did?”

“Possibly.” Paul let out his breath. “Probably. Neither Lori nor Rose saw, smelled, or heard anyone. Rowdy Sanderson is the homicide detective in charge of the investigation. Because the killer used silver rounds, whoever murdered the wolf had to have known she was a lupus garou.”

“He didn’t try to remove her body to claim he’d killed a werewolf?”

“No. I’m declaring that no one in the pack shifts until we can learn who did this and take him down.”

“Good idea. Any clues?”

Paul shook his head. “I suspect the woman was coming here to meet with us so she could join the pack. I want you to check out the crime scene. I’ve got Everett trying to track down who she was. I’ve asked Lori’s grandma to discover if the woman had any contact with any member of our pack, asking to join, since Emma and your mother have been involved the most in asking single female wolves to join the pack.”

“Sounds like we have a werewolf hunter on our hands, don’t you agree?” In all the years of their existence, they had never had to deal with such an issue.

“It sure as hell sounds like it. On the other hand, what if it is a lupus garou, and he covered his tracks by making it look like a werewolf hunter was after her? If that’s the case, his victim wouldn’t have turned him.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking that too. And if he’s not recently turned, that can be good and bad. Good, because he won’t shift unexpectedly around humans and give our kind away. And bad because he’ll be harder to track down.”

“Either way, we have to stop him. But if he hasn’t been turned, we need the police to handle this.” Paul headed into the kitchen and got them both a bottled water. Then they moved to the living room and took a seat on the couches.

“Agreed.” Allan noticed Paul’s cane leaning next to the couch, but he wasn’t using it today. “How’s your leg?”

“It’s fine. If one more person asks…”

Allan nodded. He knew how much that had to bother Paul. “But you’re getting around without the cane, and I don’t see you limping.”

“Inside buildings, I’m fine. Plowing through snowdrifts or walking on ice…” Paul shook his head. “Besides, I get enough coddling from Lori, Mom, Rose, and Grandma. I don’t need it from you also.”

“Me coddle you? When have I ever done that? It’s not in my SEAL or wolf nature. Hell, any of us, broken leg or not, can have trouble on ice unless we’re in our wolf form and have better traction. It’ll get better.”

Paul grunted, then took a swig from his water bottle. “There was a lupus garou pack that had to deal with a werewolf hunter group. They successfully turned one of the men, and he works for the pack. The others had to be put down. They couldn’t have the men arrested and tried for murder—they had to deal with the threat permanently, because the men wouldn’t give up their quest to destroy the wolves and to convert new wolf hunters. They hadn’t even been looking for werewolves initially. They were searching for Bigfoot, but saw a lupus garou shift. The same could have happened with this case. I could be mistaken, but I suspect the shooter is someone who possibly had prior military service or is a hunter. I can’t imagine the average man would take up a gun to hunt werewolves.”

“All right, so that’s a possibility. That the hunter didn’t know about our kind until the woman shifted and he saw her. I would agree with you about being a hunter or prior military.” Allan set his bottle on the table.

“Here’s another thought, though it’s even more farfetched,” Paul said. “After seeing the murdered woman, Rose told Lori that she had looked into one of those live action role-playing game, LARP, groups in southern Montana: werewolf versus villager werewolf hunters. She wanted to see if it was just a game or if any of the players were real wolves while we were away on a mission.”

“Hell, Paul. Why would she even do that?”

“She had been corresponding with one of the players online, thinking he was one of us. She had no one to date in the area, and she had discovered his website where he talked about werewolves and being one.”

“Which should have clued her in that he wasn’t.”

“I agree. But no lupus garous had passed through our area in months, and she was lonely. When she began to talk to him, she had convinced herself he really was a lupus garou. So she went down to see him. This was a month before she met Everett. Which shows we were right to stay here and take over the pack.”

“Sounds like it.”

“When Rose arrived in Helena, she had lunch with the man, Guy Lamb, and discovered he really was a wolf.”

Allan’s jaw dropped, then he shook his head. “I never would have believed it. And by the name of Lamb?”

“Yeah, it was his parents’ idea. Everyone teased him about being a lamb when he was a kid, so he had fun with saying he was a werewolf on his website.”

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“Right. Anyway, he liked Rose, but once she met him, she wasn’t interested in getting to know him further. She said he was too weird for her. Loved horror stories, music she didn’t care for, books she wouldn’t read. He was such a big horror fan that he loved to act in plays of that nature and visit horror conventions. They just didn’t have anything in common. But she did want to check out the game for curiosity sake, in case one of the other players was a real wolf also. Someone she might connect with more. Rose did manage to meet with the group: eight werewolf hunters, one seer, and two wolves. Though who was playing which roles was a mystery. She said no one smelled like wolves. But when she and Lori came across the woman’s body, Rose was pretty rattled and told us about the group, just in case it had any bearing on this situation.”