Linda Johnston - Alaskan Wolf

Inside, Patrick ran up the steps to his second-floor unit without seeing any of the other guys. Not surprising. It was late. And most of the time, if he saw them at all here, it was when they gathered downstairs in the small kitchen for coffee or a beer.

He felt too wired to sleep. To even stay in one place.

Good thing Duke would require a short walk before bed.

Patrick used a key to open the door to his apartment. Duke was waiting right inside the door, having obviously heard his arrival.

“Hi, boy,” Patrick said, stooping to give his large, gray friend a rough hug. “How ya doing?” He considered Duke much more than a friend. The dog was part of his cover, so that if anyone happened to see Patrick in wolf form he could laugh and say they must have spotted Duke. But Duke was also his companion, apartment mate and buddy. Not to mention a trained canine military partner.

Now, Duke didn’t hold still long enough for Patrick to do more than touch his thick fur. He ran into the hall and barked.

“Hush!” Patrick said. He didn’t want the dog to wake the other guys this late, or he’d never hear the end of it.

Duke stopped outside Shaun’s unit, woofing softly and leaping against the door.

“What’s wrong, boy?” Patrick knocked on Shaun’s door. Hearing nothing from inside, he turned the knob.

The door opened. Odd. Though guys around here often failed to lock up during the day or night, that didn’t include Shaun.

Not with his valuable, government-issue computer equipment.

The sharp, ugly smells assaulted Patrick immediately. “Hey, Shaun,” he called warily into the darkness, even as Duke sped by and started making strange, keening noises.

With an eerie, sick sensation crawling up his back, Patrick turned on the light.

Shaun was at the small table at the side of the compact room that passed as multipurpose kitchenette, office and living room. Slumped over. Head on the table.

Blood pooled around him on the floor. Duke sat, howling softly nearby.

“Hell!” Patrick exclaimed. “Shaun?” He crossed the room, touched the neck of his friend and backup, hunting for a pulse. There was none. Shaun was dead.

And Patrick realized that the laptop computer that Shaun always worked on at that table was missing.

Shaun hadn’t changed clothes from their outing at Fiske’s and still had on his blue cotton shirt. He’d obviously been in a hurry to get back to work, since he usually wore only ratty jeans and T- shirts while on the computer. What had gotten him so jazzed?

Carefully, Patrick repositioned Shaun just a little so he could view his body, assess the wound that killed him.

Only then did Patrick realize how much blood now covered his own hand that had sought a pulse.

Shaun’s throat had been cut.

“Damn it, Shaun,” Patrick whispered angrily. “How could anyone have done that to you?”

Shaun had been a large, muscular guy. Trained in military hand-to-hand combat. He wouldn’t have gotten his throat slit easily.

Except by complete surprise.

Duke would have barked at the intruder. But Duke barked often when mushers entered the building, so Shaun wouldn’t have been concerned. Could it have been a fellow musher who killed him?

Almost wishing he was in wolf form so he could howl with Duke—who now sat near the door of the small room issuing low, plaintive keens—Patrick carefully inhaled, and realized he had all but held his breath after that first assault on his senses.

Which might have been a good idea to continue. The odor was horrible, and not just the usual scents involved with the death of a human being.

Something pungently sharp and bleachlike, overlain with the sweetness of some cleaning potion, filled the air. As if the killer had known there would be those with extraordinary senses of smell who might enter the crime scene.

Unsurprising, though, on a ranch where more than thirty dogs lived.

But that could also indicate that the dogs would otherwise have been able to recognize the killer from his—or her—scent.

Patrick needed to report this immediately to Alpha Force. A member of his unit—his pack—had been slain. But he couldn’t do anything that appeared suspicious, like making phone calls before notifying the authorities, or he could be accused of Shaun’s murder. Knowledge of his affiliation with the military couldn’t go any further than it already had, with Wes Dawes aware of it—although Wes knew nothing specific about Alpha Force.

So, first thing, Patrick called 9–1–1, after gingerly removing his cell phone from his pocket with his left hand, not wanting to smear any more blood on himself than he already had.

He explained the situation briefly to the operator, giving his location. Then he called the Daweses. They would need to know that the cops were coming. And why. And what had happened to one of their supposed employees.

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