The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf) Read online

  The Wolf at Bay

  By Charlie Adhara

  Going home digs up bad memories, so it’s something Bureau of Special Investigations agent Cooper Dayton tries to avoid. When he’s guilted into a visit, Cooper brings along Oliver Park, his hot new werewolf partner, in the hopes the trip will help clarify their status as a couple...or not.

  When Park’s keen shifter nose uncovers a body in the yard and Cooper’s father is the prime suspect, Cooper knows they’re on their own. Familial involvement means no sanctioned investigation. They’ll need to go rogue and solve the mystery quietly or risk seeing Cooper’s dad put behind bars.

  The case may be cold, but Park and Cooper’s relationship heats up as they work. And yet if Cooper can’t figure out what’s going on between them outside of the bedroom, he’ll lose someone he... Well, he can’t quite put into words how he feels about Park. He knows one thing for sure: he’s not ready to say goodbye, though with the real killer inching ever closer...he may not have a choice.

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  This book is approximately 84,000 words

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Mackenzie Walton

  Dedication

  For my parents.

  Thanks for the cracker factory. And everything else.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Excerpt from The Wolf at the Door by Charlie Adhara

  Also by Charlie Adhara

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “Birthday, anniversary, or apology?”

  Cooper Dayton looked up from pretending to check his phone while loitering under one of the young trees that lined Ann Arbor’s streets. A large older Black woman stood, leaning against the doorway of the shop behind him. How long had she been watching him? He felt a flare of annoyance with himself when he realized he had no idea. He was distracted today. Off his game. But then, when was the last time he’d been on his game?

  Cooper gave her his best confused look. “Sorry?”

  She smiled knowingly at him and tilted her head at Simpson’s across the busy street, her long, beaded braids clacking pleasantly. “You’ve been standing here staring at that flower shop for fifteen minutes. So is it for her birthday or anniversary, or are you making up for a fight? Because I’ve been married for thirty-two years, and believe me, there are different bouquets for different occasions.”

  Cooper smiled, relaxing slightly. “Yeah? How so?”

  “Anniversary has got to be something sexy. Roses. Roses are good. Classic. Hot. If you’re married and had flowers at the wedding, add some of those. She’ll be impressed by the thought.”

  “Not married.” He paused, then added, “And he’s a him.”

  She simply smiled and nodded. “All right. If it’s an apology, go with his favorite flower. A lot of them.”

  “I don’t know his favorite flower.” She sucked her teeth mock disapprovingly. “I’m not sure he even has one,” Cooper added defensively. “What about birthday?”

  “Something that goes with the gift you got him because you better not just be walking in with some lousy flowers. So which is it?”

  Cooper laughed. “What if I want to get him some flowers just because?”

  She raised an eyebrow and sniffed. “Uh-huh, right. You-fucked-up-flowers it is, then.”

  Cooper’s smile froze on his face and he gave a little reflexive jerk of his head. “No,” he said.

  Well. Maybe.

  There was, of course, that whole unwitting accomplice to a psychotic serial killer hell-bent on destroying the entire werewolf species thing four months ago. If anyone was keeping track, that definitely counted as a fuckup. But Cooper doubted there were enough flowers in the cramped corner shop across the street for an apology that size. And Sorry I almost got you killed just wouldn’t look right on one of those teensy tiny cards they stuck to bouquets.

  Besides, the incident was on the list of things he and Park Did Not Talk About.

  “Hmmm.” The woman eyed him knowingly. “Not an apology, you were saying?”

  “No, really. What kind of flowers for just because?”

  “That depends on just because what. Just because you love him?”

  Cooper coughed. “Oh, well. Let’s not get crazy. What are my other options?”

  She snorted. “Like that, is it? You sound like my second husband, Gary. He couldn’t handle looking like he cared either. A man like that gives daisies. Dead by the end of the work week. Don’t be a daisy man, friend.”

  “I thought you said you’ve been married for thirty-two years.”

  “And I was. Just not to the same man or for consecutive sentences.” She cackled. “Anyway, before you go sending messages, maybe you better figure out what it is you want to say. You better hurry up, though. Looks like they’re closing.”

  Cooper followed her gaze, and sure enough, Donny Simpson was pulling the outside display of autumnal arrangements back into his shop.

  “Damn it. Excuse me. Uh, thanks for the advice,” Cooper muttered.

  The woman waved him on. “Just tell him how you feel and the flowers won’t matter,” she called after him as Cooper crossed the street.

  Easier said than done. He wasn’t sure how he felt. He did, however, have a pretty good idea how Park was going to feel after this. Cooper checked his phone with a curse. Park was supposed to meet him here with the search warrant while Cooper made sure Donny Simpson stayed put. Only now Donny was closing shop forty-five minutes early and Park wasn’t back yet.

  “Don’t go in without me,” Park had said before they’d separated.

  “Then how am I supposed to intimidate and threaten innocent wolves into confessing while you’re not looking?” Cooper had replied. “I’m joking.” He’d put his hands up at Park’s grimace. If by joking he meant repeating verbatim the things his BSI colleagues said snidely about him behind his back. And to his face.

  Park’s sense of humor was apparently too refined for that. “I just don’t appreciate my partner confronting a dangerous suspect on his own. So wait for me outside, okay?”

  I can take care of myself. I was doing this job just fine before you. You should trust me. None of that true. Not now. But they didn’t talk about that either. “Fine. Understood.”

  Park had hesitated, looking uncharacteristically unsure, and began to say something else, but Cooper cut him off, gently grabbing his arm and rubbing his thumb over the crook of Park’s elbow, his sensitive spot. “I won’t go in without you. Ollie,” he added playfully, using Park’s childhood nickname.

  Park had snapped his mouth closed and blushed. Still, his expression was...troubled? Disbelieving? But thankfully he hadn’t pushed it.

  And now? Cooper walked into the flower shop and a cluster of bells announced his arrival, unnecessarily, as Simpson was standing right at the front window display, unplugging the neon open sign.

  “Hi there!” Cooper said brightly, and continued into the store without pause, s
canning the bouquets. Park didn’t want him confronting a dangerous suspect, fine. Cooper didn’t relish the idea either. He just needed to stop Simpson from closing in order to buy Park some time. What kind of small business owner would kick out a potential paying customer?

  He perused the store and made his way toward the back, letting himself imagine, just for a moment, that he really was here buying his boyfriend some just-because flowers. What would he get Park? No, what would he get Oliver? Ollie?

  He smiled slowly, remembering the night they’d spent together watching movies at his place right before getting called out to Michigan for this case.

  Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, will make man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees.

  Cooper had frowned at the TV, trying to follow the loopy language. “So basically he’s telling that naked kid to go get him a roofie?”

  Park had punched him lightly and readjusted on the couch so that his head was in Cooper’s lap facing the TV. “It’s not a roofie, it’s Cupid’s flower. Love-in-idleness.”

  “A flower that drugs you into thinking you’re in love. Uh-huh, right. So are there Athenian police in this forest or what?”

  “Shh, you’re going to miss the best part.”

  Cooper had shut up and run his fingers absently through Park’s hair, too relaxed to make another teasing comment. Usually a fairly hard-core movie fan—or obsessed according to a certain wolf—that night he couldn’t stop his attention from drifting away from the screen to watching Park instead, who was mouthing the occasional line along with the actors. He wondered if Park ever missed being a professor and teaching Lit classes. He was always bringing over books for Cooper to read and wanting to talk about them. Cooper hadn’t really been much of an English student, but watching Park explain them excitedly afterward and then having him listen so intently when Cooper ventured his own tentative opinion had recently given him a new appreciation for the subject.

  When Park had shown up with a literal tome of Shakespeare’s plays, though, Cooper had drawn the line and suggested a compromise.

  Park could pick a film adaptation of a Shakespeare play as long as he then sat through a real classic movie of Cooper’s choosing.

  Cooper had to admit some of them weren’t too bad. Unfortunately, the most interesting part of this 1930s A Midsummer’s Night Dream so far was a totally wild, full-body sparkle suit. “King of the fairies is right,” Cooper had crowed. That got him another punch, but it was weak and shaking with laughter.

  When the credits had finally rolled, though, Cooper was troubled. He tucked Park’s hair behind his ear, thinking. “If you knew the person you loved had fallen in love with you because of some psychedelic magic herb—” he asked hesitantly.

  “Cupid’s—”

  “Yeah, yeah, Cupid’s flower, oxlips, wild thyme, brier rose and eglantine, I got it. But if you knew they loved you ’cause of magic would you stay with them anyway? Keeping in mind you’re not the one who squirted Love Potion Number Nine in their eyes to begin with and curing them is not an option.”

  Park had gone very still in his lap and Cooper couldn’t see his expression at this angle. Not that it would have mattered. Park had a skill for keeping secrets behind that mask of his.

  “I don’t know,” Park said eventually. “I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But people are stupid in love.” Cooper snorted an agreement. “Lucky for me, magic doesn’t exist, so I don’t need to find out.”

  Cooper made a noncommittal noise. But to him, the existence of magic was in the eye of the beholder. And according to his own eye, looking down at an honest-to-god werewolf drooling on his jeans, magic was a lot closer to being real than it had been a mere year ago.

  Park twisted his head in Cooper’s lap so that he was looking up and wiggled his eyebrows. “Not that I need supernatural help to really appreciate a good ass.”

  “Idiot.” Cooper had spanked him playfully and the evening might have gotten interesting if Santiago hadn’t called moments later about a vicious werewolf attack in Michigan.

  In Simpson’s, Cooper ran his fingers gently over a bouquet of yellow roses. He wished he remembered what Cupid’s flower was actually supposed to be. Pansies, maybe? He could get some for Park. As a joke, of course. And obviously not in the middle of a brutal homicide investigation. Maybe when they got home. His home, not Park’s. Though more and more his DC apartment felt unbalanced without Park’s big body sprawled across the furniture...

  Stop that. Dangerous. Don’t go there.

  He let his fingers drop. He had to pay attention to the case or there was a real possibility he didn’t make it out of here at all, never mind home.

  It wasn’t a sound, but a familiar prickling low on the back of his neck that told him Simpson had finally followed him back into the store. Cooper threw his hands to his heart dramatically anyway when Simpson cleared his throat right behind him.

  “Oh, yikes. You startled me.”

  Simpson peered unapologetically at Cooper. His faded blue eyes shifting to gray as he stepped even closer, into a shaft of late afternoon sunlight filtering in through the flowers. “We were just about to close,” Simpson said, but even he seemed unsure.

  “Oh, please,” Cooper said loudly, injecting some whine into his voice. “I won’t be long—I’m on my way to my boyfriend’s house and I can’t show up without flowers. I fucked up big-time, you see, and I have it on good authority that apology flowers have to be big, and my baby deserves the biggest.” He winked at Simpson.

  Simpson stared back at him, no flicker of humor or even recognition in those blank eyes. Like social interactions were something he’d learned to wait out but did not care to participate in himself, which for a shop owner couldn’t have been too lucrative. No wonder the guy had gotten mixed up with money laundering. Allegedly.

  “So, uh, what kind of flowers do you recommend?”

  Without looking away from Cooper, Simpson reached to his right and grabbed a small bouquet of daisies dyed—or perhaps genetically modified—bright, unnatural fall colors. The thought of giving them to Park made Cooper snort.

  Don’t be a daisy man, friend.

  “Uh, actually I was thinking something a bit bigger and, uh, flashier. I want it to look expensive, you know what I mean?”

  Simpson studied him for a moment, then put the daisies back and walked past him toward the back of the store. Cooper trailed behind. Most of the overhead lights back here had already been shut off, and heavy plastic curtains had been rolled down, covering the coolers where the more delicate flowers were kept. Cooper noted an unmarked door tucked behind a display of ferns.

  He quickly checked that his Taser, modified to take down wolves, and his gun were available and hidden at his shoulder and hip. It would be bad enough when Park found out he’d broken his promise to not approach the suspect alone. To do so unprepared...well, maybe buying some big flashy flowers wouldn’t go amiss after all. Not that Park seemed like a flowers kind of guy, all jokes aside. Nor was he technically Cooper’s boyfriend. Possibly. That too was on the list of things they did not talk about. It was a long list.

  “Lilies are very popular amongst fighting couples,” Simpson said, pulling back a rubbery plastic sheet to show a couple dozen beautiful lilies.

  “I have a cat.” Cooper shrugged apologetically, and couldn’t help himself from glancing over Simpson’s shoulder toward the front door. Park, where the hell are you?

  “I thought these were for your boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, he, uh, lives with me. And my cat.”

  Simpson blinked once, slowly, looking almost like a cat himself. No, not a cat. But a predator was waking up behind his eyes. His face, however, remained eerily blank as he stepped directly into Cooper’s space, forcing him to back up against the plastic curtain. The hum of the flowe
r cooler drowned out the noise from the street, and the delicate fragrance of lilies became choking this close, like perfume in an elevator.

  “I thought you said you were on your way to your boyfriend’s place,” Simpson murmured. His hands quickly closed around Cooper’s wrists.

  Fuck, Cooper thought. He should have drawn his weapon before this. He shouldn’t have let Simpson get this close. Really, truly, he should have just gone with the fucking lilies.

  The four deep scars on Cooper’s belly pulled unpleasantly as his skin tightened to gooseflesh, a primitive awareness of danger kicking in too late, the memory of claws slicing flesh forever carved into his skin. He hunched in on his belly slightly as it cramped.

  “Who are you?” Simpson said.

  “Let go of me, man. What’s your problem?” Cooper tugged but Simpson’s grip on his wrists tightened. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t unnaturally strong yet, either. Simpson was still trying to hide what he was, which meant he didn’t suspect who Cooper was. Cooper could still fix this.

  “You lied to me. Why did you come here really?” Simpson said.

  “Look...” Cooper affected an embarrassed look. “I, uh, wasn’t lying about living with my boyfriend, but I’m on my way to see this, uh, other guy. And I was just being cheap and going to split the bouquet between them, get it?”

  Cooper was surprised to see a flicker of disapproval escape Simpson’s blank mask, but the grip on his wrists slowly loosened and then dropped away altogether.

  “Someone’s going to get hurt,” Simpson said finally.

  Cooper huffed. “Yeah, me.” He held up his wrists and tried to grin.

  Simpson turned and walked away toward the counter. Cooper could easily take out his Taser now. Disarm the suspect, cuff him, and wait here safely for Park to arrive with the warrant.

  But that wasn’t how the BSI did things, arrest first, investigate later. Not anymore, and that was a good thing. There was an order of due process to follow.

  Some pollen from a rare flower sold only in this shop had linked Simpson to the body of a man suspected of running a money-laundering scheme with an unknown partner. A partner who had torn his throat out rather than split the payday. A classic wolf kill. Simpson was a wolf. What’s more, a witness had placed Simpson’s car at the scene. That would have been more than enough to get him booked four months ago. Cooper’s last partner, Jefferson, would have Tasered and cuffed him before the bells above the door had stopped ringing.