knew what was what. A few hours earlier, with Shaun keeping watch nearby, Patrick had drunk some of the highly classified and extremely potent Alpha Force elixir.
Combined with an artificial light he traveled with, the elixir allowed beings like him to shapeshift at will, not just under the full moon. Plus, it ensured that he kept all his human awareness and thinking abilities. Invaluable.
It had all but worn off now, but major alcohol consumption so close to that elixir wasn’t a great idea.
Still, a bottle of beer could be nursed for a while. And part of Patrick’s cover was to act like the itinerant drifter he was supposed to be. Someone in his position wouldn’t hesitate to have a beer. Or two.
And maybe get a little outspoken as a result …
“Aw, leave him alone,” Wes said. He had no knowledge of what Patrick really was. To him, Patrick was to be treated mostly as another hired musher, despite being on an undisclosed military mission.
Major Drew Connell had been right. Patrick did have a great cover here. He liked working for Wes and his dad, Toby. Even more, he enjoyed working with dogs and had brought his own—well, his cover dog, since theoretically Duke, one hell of a great shepherd-wolfhound mix and trained as a scent and security dog, belonged to Uncle Sam.
Once they had their beers, the guys elbowed their way from the bar again, Shaun in the lead. He was a good guy whose hobby happened to be wrestling, and he had the beefy, muscular physique of a winner.
They stopped at the edge of the crowd. Patrick took a stiff drink while pretending to look for an empty table—a useless task in this mass of people.
Instead, he was still listening. His senses, while he was in human form, were nearly as good as while he was wolfen, especially this soon after he’d changed. Despite the clinkety-clink piano music, the irritating yet soft sound of people stepping on peanut shells, the offkey singing, all the other background noise, he heard everything being said at Mariah’s table. Nothing especially useful yet, but he would continue to listen. And to keep an eye on her. Not a hardship.
It grew easier to hear when the music stopped. He glanced toward the piano and saw that the other woman from the table, Carrie Thaxton—daughter of the man who was Patrick’s objective tonight—approached the musician, handed him a tip. “Play ‘Jingle Bells’ for me,” she said.
“Gladly.” Soon an enthusiastic rendition of that song reverberated throughout the bar, sung not only by the pianist but by patrons in various stages of inebriation.
Great. This way, Patrick wouldn’t learn anything much since conversations wouldn’t flourish.
But he had an idea. As soon as the song was over, he picked up his beer bottle and went to the pianist himself.
The piano was an upright that had seen better days. Its light wood was scuffed. But it sounded all right. “Hey, your music is great,” he said to the guy who sat there. “I’m Patrick Worley. I’m new around here, work at the Great Glaciers Dogsled Ranch. What’s your name?”
“Andy Lemon.” He was pale, maybe late forties, and obviously pretty nearsighted, judging by the thickness of his small, black-framed glasses.
“You been playing here long?” Patrick asked.
“Not very, but it’s a great place.”
“Sure is. And right now, Andy Lemon, I’d love for you to play some nice, soft, romantic songs for the next ten minutes.” Patrick whipped out a twenty-dollar bill in emphasis. “There’s a woman here I really want to get to know, and I’d like to put her in the mood to get to know me, too. Okay?” He nudged the guy, who grinned, revealing a set of yellow teeth.
“You got it, Patrick. Good luck.” He played a few melodic riffs, then began a schmaltzy, low instrumental rendition of Elvis’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”
Motioning for Shaun and Wes to follow, Patrick approached the table where Mariah Garver sat with Emil Charteris and his family members.
“Hi,” he said, looking down at her. “Mind if we join you?”
“There’s not a lot of room,” she said, “but if you can find some chairs …” She looked around at the others she sat with, and none, fortunately, objected.
Shaun and Wes had already fulfilled the assignment she’d given, although Patrick wouldn’t ask how they’d managed to liberate three chairs so quickly. Soon, they were all seated at the table.
“This is Patrick Worley,” Mariah said, introducing him to the others. Lord, did she make him feel warm and uncomfortable in his sweater and jeans, just by looking at him with her luscious, luminous—and incisive—blue eyes. “Dr. Emil Charteris and the Thaxtons. I’m interviewing them for the article for Alaskan Nature Magazine I’m writing—the one I also need the dogsled ride for as research.”
She explained the scientific backgrounds of the three scientists.
Patrick in turn, introduced Mariah and her friends to his dogsled ranch companions.
“So what’s the scoop about the glaciers?” Patrick hoped his tone sounded entirely conversational. His ploy to finally talk to Emil Charteris seemed to be working, even though these people generally kept to themselves. “We got here only recently, Shaun and I, but from what we heard we may not be able to take people out on dogsled rides much longer, the way they’re melting.”
“Wish I knew what to tell you,” Emil Charteris said. “But that’s part of why we’re here—to see if there’s something even worse going on than global warming, which is usually bad enough.”
“I’m most concerned about how this trend may harm the wildlife around here,” Mariah said. “That’s Jeremy’s expertise.”
Patrick’s interest was focused almost entirely on the glaciers, not the wildlife. Still, he found himself listening to Mariah’s melodic voice, inhaling the surprisingly spicy scent she wore considering her down-to-earth demeanor… . Hell, he had to stop this. He had come over here hoping for information helpful to his investigation, and she was turning the discussion in a different direction.
“Do you know, Mariah said she saw a wolf on top of Kaley Glacier right after it calved?” interjected Carrie Thaxton. She gave Patrick the impression she didn’t like anyone else to be the center of attention, especially another woman. “I think that’s wild, don’t you?”
“Wolves do tend to be wild,” her husband said drily. The look Jeremy gave his wife was both condescending and caring. His scent suggested he used a lot of antiseptic hand cleanser.
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” She gave him a gentle shove.
“One interesting thing about the wolf was that it appeared to be alone,” Mariah said. Patrick had the impression she was trying to keep the peace at the table as much as get the discussion back on the topic of her interest.
“They’re usually pack animals, of course,” Jeremy confirmed, “but you only glimpsed that one. Could be the rest of his pack was somewhere you couldn’t see from the water.”
“We’ll check that out tomorrow when we take the dogsled onto the glaciers, right, Patrick?” Mariah asked.
