Seeing Vanessa’s anguished expression, Jack tried to explain. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m no wolf,” he said, but he should have saved his breath, because he could tell by her expression that she’d heard “Yes, I’ll find your dad right away.” It was Hope Springs, after all.
He bent down toward the chair and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, but mostly got the candy-cane-scented evidence of the hordes of little kids who’d been there to whisper secret wishes into Santa’s ear. When he knelt down next to the blood pooled on the floor, though, he caught a pungent scent that he followed to an artificial Christmas tree propped up in the corner of the room next to a table with a menorah on it.
Someone had been standing behind the tree—recently.
“Wolf,” he told the sheriff, who’d followed him over. “Stood here for a while, too. Behind this tree, in the corner, where he wouldn’t be seen by people in the room.”
“He?” Vanessa said. “It was a male wolf?”
Jack nodded. “Male wolf shifter.”
He headed back to Santa’s chair and followed the scent of the wounded man to a side door, but the sheriff clearly could have done that, since the blood trail led there, too.
“The blood stops in the alley, but there’s plenty of tire tracks in the snow. People cut through that alley all the time. Either Ray got in a car on his own—”
“Or somebody put him in a car,” Jack completed the thought.
“Can you follow his scent even if he’s in a car?” Vanessa asked, her dark eyes huge in her pale face.
He shook his head. “No, but I’ll go outside anyway, just in case.”
But there was nothing. The faint scent of blood vanished a couple of feet outside the door, where tire tracks from many different kinds of cars were stamped into the snow. Vanessa, who’d come out with him, read the answer in his face, and she caught her breath in a hitching gasp. “Nothing at all?”
“I’m sorry. He got in a car, whether voluntarily or forced, and I have no way to know which one. If the sheriff finds a witness who saw something, that’s probably your best bet.”
She nodded sharply and then turned around and went back inside. Jack followed her, although there was nothing else he could do.
She made a beeline for the sheriff, who was talking into his radio. “What do we do now, Chuck?”
The sheriff ended his communication and rubbed his forehead. “I need to go talk to some people. My deputies are canvassing the area to see if we have any witnesses.”
“Do you have wolves around here, Sheriff… uh, I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your last name?” Jack asked the sheriff, who clearly understood that he didn’t mean the four-legged kind of wolves.
He figured he didn’t know the man well enough to call him Chuck.
“McConnell. And we have one pack not too far away, near the Idaho border. The Bear Lake pack. Rogues wander in and out of the area, though, according to our Division of Wildlife guy,” the sheriff said. “In fact, there’s a half dozen or so camping down by the river a little bit west of here. They’ve started a few fights in the bars, but I haven’t heard about any guns. Probably the place to start. The Bear Lake pack is a law-abiding sort.”
Vanessa clenched her fists at her sides again, but when she spoke, it was with deadly calm. “I need to find my father, now. If he’s bleeding—if that’s his blood, then we need to get him to a hospital right away. And his heart…”
Jack had been thinking about heading out, now that this was solidly in the realm of “police work that was none of his business,” but he froze at Vanessa’s words. “His heart?”
She nodded, and blinked her eyes rapidly, as if she were holding back tears.
Damn it. Jeremiah had had a heart condition, too. Probably what had killed him, not that the letter the lawyers had sent Jack had given him any details.
Jack couldn’t walk out on the woman and her dad now. The man played Santa Claus, for God’s sake.
“If you don’t mind, Sheriff, I’d be happy to run up to Bear Lake and talk to the pack. As you say, they’re probably not involved, but alphas usually keep track of rogues in their territory. He or she might be willing to give us some information,” Jack offered, wondering how and when he’d become an “us” with law enforcement again, but willing to take the afternoon to possibly help out. He had good rapport with the various shifter groups he’d worked with over the past decade, so he could give the Bear Lake alpha references. Shifters weren’t usually as forthcoming with human law enforcement as they might be with Jack.
“I’m going with him,” Vanessa told the sheriff, pointing at Jack. “Because the Bear Lake pack and Dad have had a few arguments over the past couple of years about hunting territory.”
She looked at Jack with those dark, dark eyes. “Our ranch borders on their territory in the Bear Lake Valley, and we’ve had a cow or two go missing. Maybe they decided to take revenge or get rid of the problem.”
Sheriff McConnell blew out a sigh. “Yeah, sure. But we also need to find Maya and the ten thousand dollars.”
“The what?” Vanessa said.
“Ten thousand dollars?” Jack said, at pretty much the same time. “I think you’ve got a motive there. But who’s Maya?”
“And where the hell is she?” Vanessa demanded of the sheriff, before turning to look at Jack. “Maya’s the damned elf.”