Mate Marked: Shifters of Silver Peak (10 page)

Mitch Rodgers sat at the kitchen table, looking Joyce up and down in a way that filled her with loathing and dread. She was standing by the stove, as far away from him as possible, rigid with anger and struggling to keep her expression neutral when all she wanted to do was grab a kitchen knife and bury it in his heart.

I have to stop him. I have to. But how?

She glanced at the boiling stew pot next to her. Could she dump it on his hand and scald him to death? She could, but then what would happen to her brothers?

“Lunch ready yet?” he demanded.

“Almost,” she said curtly, looking out the window.

“Don’t worry, this will all be over soon. I’ll have that land, and those shifters will be out of my hair.” He bared a big, snaggle-toothed grin. “And then finally you and I can get a chance to know each other better.”

the time he was speaking, her mind raced. She had to find a way to get out of this—a way that did not involve luring a shifter to his death, and lying down next to a man at least thirty years her senior who had kidnapped her family members.

She turned back to face him. “You know, you always got along great with the shifters in the past,” she pointed out. “Why are you turning against them now?”

“Of course I didn’t have a problem with them in the past. The shifters were some of my best customers.” He shrugged. “I don’t need them anymore. I just need their land. They should have given it up when I asked for it the first time. They’ve got thousands of acres—what’s a few hundred?”

She still wasn’t entirely sure what made him think their land was so valuable. He’d been hanging around her house for the last couple of days, ever since he kidnapped her brothers, and he’d taken a few phone calls while he was there. She’d eavesdropped on his phone conversations. He was talking to some developers from California, and she gathered that he planned to open up a hotel—half on her family’s property and half on the shifter pack’s property. He’d talked about some tests he’d run. Tests on what?

It didn’t make any sense to her. They were so far out in the wilderness, so remote. Who would come stay at a hotel here?

Whatever the reason, he’d really been working hard on it for a while. He’d captured a few wild wolves, used them to kill his own sheep and tried to pin it on the shifters, several times now. He’d stolen items of clothing and shoes from the shifters’ camp on one of the rare occasions they’d left it unguarded. He’d planted the items, along with shoe-prints from the stolen shifters, next to the dead sheep, but apparently her brothers had found the sheep first and had erased the shoe-prints and stolen the pieces of clothing from the site. They’d been trying to protect Roman’s pack.

That was why Mitch had been raging about the shifter investigator covering up for the pack—because he’d kept expecting there to be incriminating footprints and shreds of the pack’s clothing at the site of the sheep killings, and there never had been.

Why had her brothers done that, and why hadn’t they told her? Why were they trying to protect Roman’s pack? She desperately wished she could ask them.

They’d been doing it again a couple of days ago when he’d caught and kidnapped them. And now he was holding them hostage while he planned his next move.

He’d found out that Paul had a soft spot for her, apparently. Mitch was going to force her to lure Paul to the property, and then he’d kill Paul and plant his body next to more dead sheep. Mitch would claim that he’d caught Paul in the act of slaughtering the sheep and had no choice but to shoot him.

She’d managed to stall for the time being, saying she didn’t have Paul’s number and she’d have to get it from him when she ran into him at work. But she couldn’t stall much longer, she knew.

He slapped his hand down on the place setting in front of him on the table. “Where’s that stew?” he demanded. “I do like a woman who cooks for me.”

She swallowed hard and began ladling the stew into a bowl.

“I need to go find my grandmother,” she said, her hands shaking. Some of the stew splashed onto the counter. “She keeps going out to the mineral springs. She shouldn’t be alone in her condition.” For a senile old woman, her grandmother was amazingly good at sneaking off. If Joyce survived this, she swore she was going to put a damn bell on Edna.

He flashed an ugly smile as she set the bowl down in front of him. “I’ll go with you. Don’t like you wondering around out here by yourself. It’s not safe.”

The back door banged open, and Mitch started and reached for the gun he kept holstered at his side, but it was just Edna.

“What’s not safe?” Edna yelled. Apparently there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Her hair was dripping wet, and she wore a terrycloth bathrobe wrapped tightly around her as she walked in. Joyce thought that Edna seemed to be moving much more gracefully than she used to, so maybe the mineral springs were helping her a little bit.

“It’s not safe for you to go wandering off alone,” Joyce said, exasperated.

“Well, come with me next time, dear. Who’s this you’ve invited over for lunch? Shall I brew him some tea?” She moved towards the coffee pot.

“No!” Mitch barked, involuntarily flinching and fixing her with a steely glare.

“Listen,” Joyce said quickly, to distract him. “The thing you asked me to do. Calling Paul. I’m not going to do it unless you bring my brothers back here.”

His lip curled up in a sneer, but she rushed forward with her argument. “Don’t bother to threaten them again, because if you hurt them, you’ve got nothing to use to force me to cooperate. I will never sign the land over to you.”

“I’ve got your grandmother.”

“If you touch her, I’ll kill you with my bare hands or die trying.” She glared at him. “Getting this land is so important to you? Bring the boys back here, or you’ll get nothing from me.” She paused, swallowed hard and made her voice softer. “Besides. You keep saying that you want us to be friends. You want to get to know me better. Do you really think that will ever happen if you hurt my brothers? I can’t concentrate on anything until they’re back here. Then we can talk about the hotel and all the money you’re going to make from it. I do like a man with money.” She thought of how much she wanted to see her little brother’s faces again, and forced a smile. “Maybe we could talk about it over dinner.”

“Really?” His face lit up.

“Honest,” she lied through her teeth.

* * * * *

The sheriff’s office phone blared, startling Chelsea. She set down her coffee cup and grabbed it as Pepper waddled over next to the desk and settled into the little dog bed that Esther, the town’s seamstress, had made for her. The caller I.D. told her that it was Chief Tomlinson. With a sigh, she picked it up.

“Hello, Chief,” she said glumly.
Hello, Chief, I’m quitting my job today. Why? Kinda hard to explain…

“Chelsea, I’m glad you’re in. I ran that license plate number you gave me, and what I came up with was…interesting. I think it might explain what’s going on with the sheep. Porter, what is it?”

There was a pause, and she could hear a voice in the background.

Then Tomlinson came back to the phone. “Sorry, there’s been a robbery, gotta go. I’ll call you back,” he said.

“Hold on,” she said, but he was already gone.

She hoped he didn’t need her help, because she wasn’t going to be sheriff much longer.

And she had no idea what she was going to do for work now, but she clearly couldn’t carry on as sheriff. Not that she’d ever wanted the job in the first place. But to fail like this… Roman, who was already mated, had seduced her on purpose to get her to stop trying to arrest him. The thought was like a stab to the heart.

She’d let her new pack down and made an utter fool of herself.

“What did he want?” Erika asked.

“I don’t know—he got interrupted and said he’d call me back. Hopefully he doesn’t need my help with anything, because I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the pack to find a new sheriff.”

“Months. Don’t feel bad,” Erika said. “Nobody else was able to arrest Roman either. And for the record, I don’t think you should quit.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I feel really bad right now.”

“Sorry,” Chelsea said without thinking.

“Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault. Roman manipulated you, and Leland never even told me that Roman had a mate, and he knew Roman was flirting with you. Dickwad.”

Chelsea closed her eyes for a brief moment and concentrated hard on banishing her bad mood. She was still taking her medication, but when her emotions were too strong, they broke through. Within a few seconds, the meditation techniques were working and she’d tamped down on it.

She opened her eyes.

“The mayor’s coming now. Wow, he brought quite a crowd with him,” Erika said. There were around twenty pack members headed up the steps towards her office, arguing with each other and gesturing wildly. “I bet they’re going to beg you to stay.”

“They look pretty mad.” Chelsea was taken aback. “They’ve got to understand that I can’t keep a job I’m not suited for.”

“They've got nothing to be mad about,” Erika said indignantly. “They tricked you into taking this job in the first place.”

The front door banged open and Mayor Winkleman, Louise, Barbara, Lorena, Susan, Rosie, Esther and Mr. Castleberry, along with more than a dozen other shifters from the pack, barreled in.

“Calm down, everybody!” the mayor yelled at them in tones of distress.

Chelsea glanced at the crowd in confusion. Why so many? And why were they all so excited? “Mr. Mayor, I apologize, but I really do need to hand in my resignation, effective immediately,” Chelsea said uneasily.

“You think?” Mr. Castleberry snarled at her.

So they’d heard she was quitting? She was surprised by the venom in his voice, and by the way they were looking at her. With disgust and wariness.

An odd sensation prickled on the back of her neck.

“What exactly crawled up your ass?” Erika snapped at him.

He looked down his nose at her. “My daughter is right. You are crude and extremely unladylike.”

“So the fuck what? Being a lady’s overrated.” Erika shrugged. “I’m myself, which is good enough for me.”

“No wonder no wolf wants to mate you.” His nose wrinkled back.

“That’s it!” Louise barked abruptly, and everyone turned to stare at her in surprise. “Do not speak to my niece like that,” she said heatedly. “Since Chelsea has come to town, she’s happier than she ever was before, and she deserves to be. Forget trying to make her into someone’s perfect idea of how a girl should be. She’s a wonderful daughter to my brother, she’s a hard worker, and she’s got a good heart. Someday she will find a wolf who appreciates her for what she is.”

“A bulldog in a dress?” Castleberry looked Erika up and down in contempt.

“Cecil Castleberry?” Louise smacked him across the face with her purse, so hard that he yelped in surprise and pain. “Blow it out your ass.”

The entire crowd gasped and fell silent. They all turned to stare at Chelsea to see what she would do.

She gave a brisk round of applause.

“Hear, hear,” she said. “And no, I can’t arrest Miss Louise for assault, because I just resigned from my job.”

“If you hadn’t, we’d have run you out of town,” Castleberry sneered at her. “That new girl, Holly, contacted the mayor’s office this morning to file a complaint,” he said to the crowd of shifters. “She said that Chelsea has been having an affair with her mate.”

Several of the pack members made involuntary retching noises and clutched at their stomachs.

“She did not have an affair with anybody’s mate!” Rosie said, stepping forward. “If Roman was mated, she didn’t know about it. Nobody in town knew about it. He’s the one who takes the blame there!”

The room was dividing up. Half the pack was moving to one side, with Rosie and Louise and Erika, glaring at Mr. Castleberry. Barbara was snapping pictures. Erika was looking around with her fists clenched, deciding who she wanted to punch.

The rest of the pack was crowding arouhnd Cecil Castleberry, but they were starting to look doubtful. He saw that he was losing his audience.

“Anyway! That’s not all Holly had to say! She also did some research and found out some interesting things about Chelsea,” he continued haughtily, rubbing his injured cheek. “Things you didn’t tell us,” he added, addressing Chelsea directly. “Like the fact that your mother went feral and you’re a psychic.”

There was a collective gasp from the crowd.

Chelsea felt the blood draining from her face.

It was true. Her mother had gone feral.

Her mother had been psychic, but she’d been the opposite of Chelsea; she didn’t broadcast her emotions. Instead, she’d been bombarded by other people’s emotions all the time. Eventually it had driven her mad.

Her father hadn’t been able to handle having a crazy mate, and he’d run out on his family when they were young.

Chelsea’s mother had turned feral right in the middle of a grocery store and attacked several shoppers, gravely injuring them. She’d been taken out by a police officer’s silver bullets. Chelsea had been three at the time. She’d spent the rest of her childhood and teenage years in foster care; nobody had wanted to adopt a child with her history, and her powers, which most people didn’t understand.