And she was worried about him being a shaman? Her own sister could probably turn the world inside out at the crook of her finger!

Jack went utterly still. Holy hell. Was the dragon some old boyfriend who had broken a MacKeage girl’s heart?

Chapter Nineteen

J ack threw down his pen and rubbed his face with a frustrated sigh. He glanced at his watch, saw it was nearly midnight, and decided to give himself twenty more minutes before he set out on his rounds.

The snowmobile trip from hell—and a bit of heaven, too—had ended thirty-six hours ago, when Robbie and Greylen had finally dropped Jack off at his house. Megan had been nowhere in sight, but he hadn’t expected her to be. Most likely her parents would be keeping her within arm’s reach for a while, once Greylen told Grace how close they’d come to losing their daughter.

Megan and Camry had to stay at Gù Brath for a couple of days anyway, until Megan’s busted pipes were repaired. It seems both Pine Creek and Frog Cove had experienced a bit of a crime wave while Jack had been away. It would probably take Simon a week of Sundays to recover, and another week to finish writing all the reports. That’s why Jack had given him today and tomorrow off and was pulling double duty tonight. He wondered if he could get the selectmen to ante up for another patrolman.

He eyed the four yellow pads laid out on his desk, on which he’d been adding copious notes. The first pad, LITTLE BASTARDS, had certainly grown; the irony being that he’d been the target of their latest prank. He shook his head with a chuckle. He had to give them credit; they were getting damn creative.

They’d had the nerve, and apparently the tools, time, and stamina, to trick out his police cruiser with enough accessories to make a hot-rodder jealous. His brand-new SUV now sported a brush guard, air horns mounted on the roof, oversize mud flaps with chrome reclining lady emblems, a bug shield that had CHIEF written in bold letters across it, and a sun visor and rear roof spoiler. None of the additions were store-bought new, which meant either a local salvage yard or several personal vehicles had also been victimized. Jack was leaning toward the salvage yard, as no private citizens had reported anything missing yet.

And that was just the visible stuff. When he’d started his cruiser to come to work this morning, he’d nearly been deafened by the tuned exhaust pipes they’d installed. Heads had turned when he’d idled through town, and his ears were still ringing.

The hoodlums must have frozen their little brass balls, as they’d done the work right in Jack’s driveway on a night the temperature had dropped to minus two degrees. They sure seemed determined to thumb their noses at him, didn’t they?

He had six days left before he—or Kenzie Gregor—closed the book on the break-ins, so Jack figured he should able to finally burn his LITTLE BASTARDS pad by then, too. He’d made a few phone calls and quietly done some checking around this afternoon, and was pretty sure who the culprits were.

The solution he’d come up with involved his beautiful new sled, but he simply didn’t have the heart to see those kids taken from their single mother and placed in a foster home or detention hall. They were intelligent—at least the older boy was—and Jack wanted to redirect their creativity before the juvenile courts bled it out of them.

Now all he had to do was to talk Paul Dempsey into coming on board when he went to see him tomorrow morning.

So LITTLE BASTARDS was being dealt with, and hopefully THE BREAK-INS pad could also be burned at the end of the week—unless he had to hunt down the beast himself.

Which left MEGAN’s pad and the one titled MARK COLLINS.

And that’s where things started getting complicated. The reason Megan was having to get her pipes repaired was that someone had broken into her house the night they’d been stranded up the lake. Camry had been at Gù Brath with her worried mother, thank God, while Greylen had been out searching. With no one else living out on Frog Point in the winter, the burglar had had the entire place to himself.

Or he did until the little bastards had shown up to decorate their police chief’s cruiser. That’s what Jack speculated had happened; whoever had been searching Megan’s house had been forced to beat a hasty retreat out her bedroom door that led onto the deck facing the lake. Unfortunately, he hadn’t closed the door behind himself, and the bedroom heating pipes had frozen, burst, and spewed water everywhere.

This break-in had definitely been a professional job; the guy hadn’t made a blatant mess, and he’d been methodical in his search before he’d been interrupted. Jack’s gut tightened at the memory of walking through her house with Greylen and Robbie MacBain yesterday afternoon. The three of them had agreed Mark Collins had likely hired someone to look for what Jack had explained were DNA samples Megan had taken in Canada. Which meant the man had been lurking in town all this time, waiting for an opening.

The three of them had also agreed that he would probably try again, since he hadn’t completed the job. They had not agreed, however, on how to deal with the threat he posed. Greylen wanted to use the samples for bait and Robbie wanted to send them to the Canadian lab but not announce that fact so the man would try again. Jack wanted to send the samples in, then call Mark Collins directly and tell him what was going on so the bastard would redirect his energy to saving his sorry ass.

The samples had been overnighted to Canada this morning, and tonight MacBain was sleeping in Megan’s cold house. Jack had finally agreed to wait until he got word back from the lab as to what had killed those animals before he decided how to handle Collins.

These Scots were hands-on people who were in the habit of dealing with trouble their way, rather than waiting for someone—even law enforcement—to deal with it for them. Wanting to show he could fit into their little clans, Jack had decided to let them play cops and robbers if it made them feel better. All he cared about was that Megan was safe—which she certainly was, now that everyone was up to speed and she was sleeping in a fortress. If her family wanted to deal with Collins, that freed Jack up to deal with the hoodlums and Puff the Magic Dragon.

Jack gathered up his yellow pads and locked them in the bottom drawer of his desk, then stood up. He stretched out the kinks in his muscles and shut off his desk lamp, plunging his office into darkness. He had no compunction about killing a creature that shouldn’t exist, because he sure as hell knew it couldn’t be the results of good magic or anything else that served mankind.

His only reservation had to do with his future clansmen, and why they were protecting it.

“Nice ride,” Paul Dempsey drawled, looking out his showroom window at Jack’s cruiser.

“It’s sort of growing on me,” Jack said. “In fact, it’s the reason I’m here.”

Paul shook his head. “I don’t work on trucks. You need to take it to the dealer in Greenville. They have the equipment to fix that noisy exhaust.”

“But you have the equipment to fix my snowmobile. Since you’re swamped with work, I just want to borrow your shop and your tools in the evening, when you’re not open.”

Paul look surprised. “You’re going to fix it yourself? I had to explain the difference between a four- and two-stroke to you, the first time you came in here.”

“I have my own mechanic.”

“Who?” Paul asked with eager interest. “Is he for hire? If he knows four-strokes, I’ll put him to work immediately and put your sled first in line.”

This was turning out even better than he’d hoped. “I’d have to speak with him first, but I can almost guarantee he’d go to work for you. The problem is, he can only work afternoons. But he could stay after you close and help get you caught up.”