his face that took on another look with a brief, sharp, short-lived sting.
Weres, early in their lifetimes, had to either learn to adapt to these physical changes or die. The first shape-shift often weeded out the weak. There was no escaping or hiding from the inner explosions that set off a shape-shift. Everyone supposed this was a survival-of-the-fittest sort of biological trick. But getting used to the art of a body’s physical rearrangement was a Were’s mission. Being Were was a serious game of species-imposed destiny.
Dale was waiting for him to acknowledge the job of alley sweeping ahead, and Derek nodded. More vampires would come out sooner or later, and he and Dale had to be ready.
“I suppose you’d like to drop by that place and make sure the woman and her assailant were picked up?” Dale messaged wryly.
“Do you think you can read minds now?” Derek returned.
“Not all minds. Just yours.”
Derek barked a laugh. It was true that he wanted to go back there. He wanted nothing more, in fact.
“Just to check on the perp,” he sent to Dale.
“You go right ahead and tell yourself that,” Dale messaged back.
Hell, maybe Dale really could read minds...
“It’s dangerous to retrace our steps,” Dale warned.
Derek shrugged his massive shoulders. “Dangerous for whom? The idiot that tried to attack a woman on a busy street, or us?”
“Well, you’ve got me there.”
Dale matched Derek’s confident stride across the parking lot as they turned to the east again with renewed purpose.
At the very least, Derek decided, he had to find out who that woman was, and what her remarks about werewolves meant. She would have been questioned by the officers who picked her up, so there would be paperwork filed. Her personal information would be on that paperwork.
Even better, with the attacker in custody, she’d have to be questioned further. And he knew just the right detective to help with that, even if doing so might mean treading on another detective’s casework.
“Smell that?” Dale asked.
“Hell yeah,” Derek returned.
They exchanged glances, growled in unison and took off in the direction of the latest ill wind.
Four cops arrived in Riley’s rescuer’s wake. She marshalled her strength, since she needed to make sure they took the guy who had caused all this chaos into custody.
The jerk was still unconscious and was handcuffed to a pipe near the entrance to the nearby alley. Cops were looking from her to him with unspoken questions on their faces.
“A couple of big guys came to my rescue,” she said. “Looks like this was my lucky night.”
“They did that? Cuffed him?” one of the officers asked, checking out the standard-issue cuffs she had seen a thousand times hanging from her father’s belt loops.
“Cops?” the officer continued.
“Possibly,” Riley replied. “Though they weren’t in uniform.”
The officer nodded. “Plainclothes guys, most likely. Are you hurt, ma’am? Are you in need of medical assistance?”
Riley thought about that. Actually, she was okay, except for the headache and the thought of having had a near brush with death.
“A ride would be nice,” she said. “To my car.”
“We’ll have to take a statement,” another officer pointed out.
Riley nodded. “I can give you that.”
She knew the drill about that, too. She could talk about the attempted abduction, but she couldn’t even begin to describe her rescuer in any way that wouldn’t make her sound crazy. Shirtless male? Rippling muscle that didn’t seem to be able to settle on his big frame? Volcanic heat? Eyes like laser beams?
Maybe since these guys assumed she’d been helped by plainclothes officers, they wouldn’t ask too many questions or press her for descriptions.
Should she mention those howls she had heard?
No way. Absolutely not. In doing so, she’d be putting her reputation on the line before she even had a reputation. Besides, the strange noises she’d heard had nothing to do with what had happened here. She had merely been in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
No longer dizzy or wobbly in the knees, Riley glanced up at the sky. Though clouds were moving in, the moon was on full display. After what had happened tonight, that moon suddenly seemed kind of sinister.
A young officer—the badge on his shirt said his name was Marshall—helped her to the cruiser parked at the curb with a steadying hand on her elbow. Silent and subdued, he waited until she sat down inside before making eye contact. Then he smiled knowingly, as if they were co-conspirators and shared a secret. Riley recognized the look.
“You know who my rescuers might have been?” she asked.
The officer shrugged.
“Will you thank them again for me?”
He nodded as two more cops walked up, and then Officer Marshall backed away without looking at her again. Whether or not he knew anything, she’d have liked a way to speak with that young cop again and get a line on finding out about the men who had quite possibly saved her life.
She owed them so much more than a beer.
Tucked into the cruiser, Riley answered each question she was asked to the best of her ability and with as much detail as she thought prudent under the circumstances.
Adrenaline still pumped through her body from the fight she had put up. In spite of regaining some strength, her shivering had doubled, leaving her longing for the kind of warmth she had been temporarily offered by the nameless, shirtless man who’d come to her rescue on a cold night.
A guardian angel was the way she’d think of her rescuer from now on...except maybe for the few seconds when his lips had traveled over her face. She wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Had he wanted a special kind of thank-you for helping her? Should that have left her feeling further abused and icky?
Used to looking inside events in search of deeper meaning, Riley wondered what the guy might have been searching for in such an intimate touch. It seemed to her at the time that he had been seeking a way under her skin to get a look at the real Riley Price, not the professional cover-up artist she had become. She didn’t need another shrink to try to analyze that idea because the absurdity wasn’t lost on her.
If she were to perform self-analysis, her interest in this rescuer had been caused by a latent sense of loneliness, of being alone in a big city, and so far from home. That, along with a healthy suspicion that she might actually have met a real live
