CHAPTER 2

Josie slept poorly that night. Whether it was because she spent the time on a hastily inflated air mattress next to the Lupine’s cage, or because she couldn’t get her mind off her first real encounter with the local sheriff, she couldn’t quite decide.

Well, okay, she could decide, but that didn’t mean she was ready to admit to anything. Far from it, though what there was to admit to was another question. A slightly awkward encounter with a relative stranger? It wasn’t like that had never happened to her before.

A quick glance into the cage near her head assured her that the Lupine remained calm and furry, quite possibly because she was doped up on more pain meds than Josie had ever prescribed before—shifters metabolized drugs so fast that they required much larger doses than humans or animals in order to achieve the same levels of relief. Once Josie began to taper the dosages, hopefully her patient would regain the ability to answer some questions. Along with regaining her opposable thumbs.

With a groan, Josie rolled to her knees and then pushed herself reluctantly into a standing position. Somehow sleeping on an air mattress positioned on a linoleum-tile-covered concrete floor was a lot less comfortable at thirty-two than it had been at twenty-two. It hardly seemed fair. Nor did the amount of money she would have been willing to pay at this point for half an hour to herself with a cup of coffee and a very hot shower. Unfortunately, given that it was Sunday, the clinic was closed, and her staff had the day off, she’d be lucky to get her wish within the next four hours.

It was days like this when she began to seriously consider taking on an associate. Providing she could find an associate willing to work for beans and relocate to the most remote northwestern corner of Oregon.

Josie grimaced and forced herself to begin making the rounds of all of her currently hospitalized patients. In addition to the Lupine, she had George Carpenter’s Irish setter, Jenny, who had taken her pursuit of a grouse a little too seriously and broken her leg in a rabbit hole she hadn’t seen coming. The bone had been set on Saturday afternoon, but given Jenny’s age—eight on her last birthday—Josie had felt more comfortable keeping her overnight before sending her home.

Then there was Clovis, Mrs. Patterson’s cantankerous Siamese cat, who just couldn’t seem to keep his nose out of anything, including a spilled bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur. Clovis had been, to put it politely, three sheets to the wind when his owner had rushed him in yesterday convinced this his unsteady gate meant that he’d suffered a stroke and consequently would be permanently brain-damaged.

Josie had valiantly resisted the urge to observe that the brain damage might very well have preceded the alcohol poisoning.

Judging by the yowls currently emitting from Clovis’s cage, it sounded as if the activated charcoal and IV treatments had done their job overnight. Chalk up another victory for the good guys.

Still wishing violently for coffee, Josie grabbed a pen and began making notations in everyone’s charts until her brain woke up enough to begin her actual examinations. Without caffeine, that could take a few more minutes.

She was just reaching for the latch on Jenny’s cage when the door from the front office opened and a familiar figure bowled inside.

“Morning, Doc,” the young man said, looking much too cheerful for six thirty on a Sunday. “Andrea gave me the heads-up that we had a new patient as of last night, so I thought you might be able to use an extra hand this morning.”

“A blessing on your house, Benjamin Broder,” Josie said with feeling. “Remind me to pay you overtime for this.”

“You got it!” The youngest of her vet techs peered around her into the Lupine’s cage. “Is that her? Is she really a werewolf?”

“Yes, and don’t call her a werewolf. It’s considered insulting. She’s Lupine. Or a shifter.”

“Right. So right now, she looks like a wolf, but she’s actually human some of the time?”

“Yes.”

“So why’s she here and not over at Dr. Shad’s office? His practice sees humans and Others, doesn’t it?”

Josie didn’t mention how much she’d prefer to trade her patient with the local physician, but she thought about it. She’d actually been thinking about it for a good many hours now.

“Because it was an emergency, and the sheriff didn’t want to take the time to drive her all the way into Astoria to the hospital while she was bleeding pretty badly,” she explained, proud to hear that her work at sounding calm and reasonable seemed to be paying off. “Plus, it’s one of Dr. Shad’s ‘Gone Fishing’ weekends, so it wasn’t like he could have been called in on an emergency basis.”

“But are you even qualified to treat a huma—er, a humanish patient?”

Josie glared at her employee. “Does she look very human to you at the moment?”

“Okay, fair point.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Ben shrugged. “I didn’t mean to say you couldn’t treat a person, just that I wasn’t sure if you should, if you know what I mean. I mean, with liability and all that.”

“Please, do not mention that word in this clinic.” Josie shuddered. “Imagining the look in my insurance agent’s eye is enough to make me reconsider joining a convent.”

“Old Dr. Barrett would probably be all for that idea,” he teased.

Josie thought of her father, the one who had sold her his own veterinary practice when he’d decided it was time to retire, and of the way he still called her his baby girl and glared at her every time she mentioned a date. “Yeah, well, he’s already had to adjust to the idea that he doesn’t set my curfew anymore, so I’m sure he’ll be able to adjust to me shelving that idea again.”

Before Ben could start asking more questions, Josie piled the day’s patient charts into his arms and switched back to doctor mode. “Today we just have Jenny, Clovis, and the Lupine, knock wood,” she said briskly. “Jenny can go home if Mr. Carpenter comes by to pick her up. Just make sure he has the broken-bone aftercare sheet, and remind him to call if he has any concerns, or if she seems to be in pain. It was a simple closed fracture, and we got it aligned really well before we put the cast on, but I’ll give him a day or two worth of pain meds, even though she may not need them. Make sure you set him up with an appointment for four weeks from now, though, for follow-up.”

She went over Clovis’s situation briefly, then turned and frowned into the Lupine’s cage. “I’m going to call and leave a message for Dr. Shad in a minute, but until either she shifts or we hear from him, we’re just going to manage her condition instead of her species.” She outlined last night’s procedures for Ben and reviewed her chart notes. “You’ll need to check her incision and wound site and change the dressings, but other than that, at the moment we’re just monitoring her. The biggest worry, of course, is infection, but it’s also a little weird that she hadn’t fully regained consciousness or tried to shift yet.”

Ben hummed in agreement, his pen busy making notes of her instructions.

Josie pursed her lips. “Do me a favor and do a draw on her. I can run a CBC to check for any kind of underlying infection that might be compromising her system, and I’d like to double-check the concentration of her meds. I looked a dosage up online last night, but I’m a little paranoid about getting it right for her.”

“Got it.” Ben crossed a t, dotted an i, and looked up. “Anything else?”

“Nope, just the usual for the rest.”

“No problem. I’ve got it under control. And since that’s the case, why don’t you go upstairs and get a shower or some coffee or something? You look like you could use it.”

“Thanks, I will.” She turned toward the door, then paused. “I have to feed Bruce first, though. He slept in the file room last night. I think he was mad that he didn’t get the pizza I promised him.”

Ben waved her away. “I’ll take care of him. He’s still asleep at the moment. I heard him snoring when I came in.”

“Thanks, Ben. I really appreciate this. It’s been a crazy weekend so far, and I really—”

“Need a shower. You still smell like Betadine,” Ben finished for her, grinning.

Josie rolled her eyes, but she obediently made her way out the rear exit of the clinic and up the outdoor back stair to her apartment on the house’s top floor.

Stripping off her worn scrubs made an instantaneous difference in her attitude, but it wasn’t until she stepped under the steaming spray of her shower that she really began to feel something resembling normal again. She raised her face to the stream of water and slicked back her hair while her mind turned toward the next item on her agenda. Oddly enough, that item turned out to be not coffee, but the rather unexpected figure of Stone Creek’s newest sheriff.

Newest, of course, was a relative term. From what Josie knew, Eli Pace had moved to town a little more than three years ago in order to take up his current position in law enforcement. If the small-town gossip mill was correct, he’d previously lived and worked in Seattle, having served as a detective on that city’s police force. More than one resident of Stone Creek had wondered what would make a man in his thirties with a successful career in the big city move to their remote little corner of the Northwest, away from all the culture, nightlife, and eligible women a more metropolitan setting had to offer. A small betting pool had quickly been established, and word down at the tavern said the current odds favored a woman at the root of it, either divorce, death, or nasty breakup.

Personally, after last night, Josie felt she needed to lay her money on death, because she couldn’t possibly imagine what kind of lunatic would deliberately end a relationship with the man who’d carried an injured wolf into her clinic in the dead of night. Had she been blind not to realize how hot that man was?

Josie blinked hard, sending drops of water flying back toward their source.

Wow, that thought had certainly snuck up on her. Had she honestly developed a case of the hots for a man she’d never spoken to before last night?

Rinsing the last of the conditioner from her hair, Josie reached for the faucet and shut off the water. A few twists of cloth and she had both hair and body wrapped in terry toweling and a frown still on her face as she padded back into her bedroom to dress.

Admittedly, there was nothing odd about her finding the sheriff attractive. She, after all, was not blind, and she would have to be not to notice the very fine physical attributes of a well-built, six-foot-tall man when one stood right in front of her. Josie had definitely noticed, everything from a pair of ridiculously broad shoulders and a correspondingly wide chest to callused, long-fingered hands to long legs and slim hips that somehow looked even sexier when slung with a heavy utility belt and holster.

And then there had been those eyes, green and glittering and fringed with surprisingly black, thick lashes for a man with sun-streaked, toffee-colored hair. The memory of those eyes stayed with her. She could picture them now, intent and unreadable, seeming to follow her every move without revealing a single thought of his own. How in the world had she missed noticing those eyes before last night?

Josie snorted and yanked up the zipper on her jeans. It had probably been quite easy, she acknowledged, scuffing her feet into a pair of battered loafers and heading back to the bath to dry her hair. She had never seen him in his animal form, and Josie had never been the kind of girl to notice much that wasn’t covered in fur.

Whether it came from growing up in a rural community known for a population made up two-thirds of Others, or from growing up as the daughter of the only veterinarian for twenty miles, Josie couldn’t be sure. Either way, according to her mother her first word had been kitty and the first birthday or Christmas present she’d ever asked for had been her own puppy. And a stethoscope. No one had ever doubted what the youngest Barrett girl was going to be when she grew up, least of all Josie. Unfortunately, at the age of five, she hadn’t considered what a single-minded focus on her future career path would mean for her social life.

Or the lack thereof.

Bundling her mostly dry brown hair into its usual ponytail, Josie grabbed her keys and her wallet and left her apartment, thumping down the stairs to the small parking area at the back of the clinic. On the small patch of grass between the blacktop and the building, a familiar figure waited for her with inexhaustible patience.

“Morning, Bruce,” Josie greeted cautiously. “Does this mean that you’ve forgiven me for the pizza thing?”

Chocolatey brown eyes blinked at her from beneath grizzled gray eyebrows, but Bruce’s expression remained impassive.

“Oh, I get it. You’ve decided the only way I can atone for last night is to spring for breakfast this morning, is that it?”

Bruce’s plumy tail wagged in response.

“All right, then. Come on. I’m headed to the bakery anyway. We’ll see what Mark has on offer.”

With a satisfied grunt, Bruce pushed up from his sitting position and fell into step at his mistress’s side.

Josie rounded the corner of the clinic building and set off down the quiet, tree-lined side street toward the center of town. The walk would take less than five minutes, given the fact that Stone Creek didn’t consist of much town, but with her thoughts still jumbled, likely the exercise would do her good. And at the end of it, there would be coffee.

The center of Stone Creek remained quiet at not-quite-eight on a Sunday morning, and Josie and Bruce made their way down Main Street without running into more than two or three acquaintances. None of them, thankfully, stopped Josie to ask a question about their pets.

She couldn’t help casting a glance toward the historic brick building that housed both the town hall offices and the police station as she passed, but the nineteenth-century facade offered no clues as to what might be happening inside. Still, it took a concentrated effort to pull her gaze away and focus it back on the clapboard front of the Sweet Spot Bakery & Café. As soon as she opened the door, though, the small shop received all of her attention. The seductive scent of coffee, yeast, and cinnamon lured her inside like a magic spell.

A quick command had Bruce settling with disgruntled grace in front of the plate-glass window while Josie made her way inside.

“Mark Hennessey, I swear to God, if I didn’t love you with all my stomach, I’d report you to the Inquisition for practicing witchcraft.”

A shaggy, sandy-haired figure stepped through an open doorway behind the tall glass counters, wiping his hands on an already smeared white apron.

“If you’re referring to the Spanish Inquisition, it was formally disbanded in 1834. And the Roman one changed its name in 1908. But since I’m not Catholic, I don’t think either one really has any jurisdiction over my baked goods.”

Her eyes fixed on the trays full of gooey, doughy, sugar-laden treats already on display, Josie didn’t even bother to look up to catch the local baker’s smirk. She didn’t need to. Their morning routine had been established years ago. “So you don’t deny that you use unnatural means to create your confections.”

“Josephine, baby, if you knew how I created my confections, you’d never look at another man again.”

“What makes you think I look at any of them now?”

“You know, I had always assumed that you just performed de-sexing operations, not underwent them yourself. Then again, I could be wrong.”

“You can be the queen of England if you want, as long as you give me three of everything and an extra-large coffee with cream before you leave to take up your royal duties.”

Mark was already reaching for a stack of tall paper cups. “Nah. I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I haven’t considered it as a career change, but I’d look funny in those little veiled hats.”

“Not to mention the pantyhose.” Josie handed her old high school buddy a packet of raw sugar off the counter, then leaned her elbows on the polished wooden surface while he diluted her beverage with enough dairy product for any five people. “So what’s good this morning?”

He threw her a dirty look as he dumped in the sugar. “Have I ever made anything that wasn’t good?”

Josie thought for a moment. “There was that first loaf of rye bread you attempted. The thing could have served as a boat anchor.”

“I was thirteen. It was more than fifteen years ago. I think you need to move on. My breads have.”

“Yes, but your breads are more evolved than I am.”

The first sip Josie took had her eyes closing and her throat humming. No one made coffee like Mark. If she hadn’t remembered the way he’d looked in his Peter Pan costume during their sixth-grade play, she’d have proposed to him the minute she turned eighteen. And that would have really pissed off his wife.

When she managed to pry her lids back up, she tried again. “Okay, let me put it this way. What do you have today that will meet Sir Bruce’s exacting culinary standards?”

“And not get your license revoked by the state veterinary board? I’ve got naturally sweetened organic carrot muffins. He liked those last time.”

“Hm, give me two. He’s pretty pissed at me.”

Mark snapped open a folded sheet of parchment and reached for the tray of muffins. “What did you do this time?”

Josie made a face. “I reneged on pizza night. But it wasn’t my fault. I had an emergency.”

“As if that’s any kind of excuse. A woman’s word should be her bond.”

“So he’s made clear. I’m hoping this will at least get him to speak to me again.” Accepting the tray he handed her, Josie headed toward the door and her grudge-holding pet. “How about you warm me up a cinnamon roll while I go beg for forgiveness?”

A moment later she left Bruce on the sidewalk under the bakery window, happily feasting on the warm muffins and bowl of bottled springwater that Mark had provided. When she stepped back into the shop, her friend was busy transferring huge chocolate chip cookies from a sheet pan to a bright red plate in the glass display case.

A huge, frosted cinnamon roll sat on a smaller blue saucer on the counter beside her coffee.

“You are a saint,” she breathed, reaching for the roll with one hand and a stack of napkins with the other.

“Sarah tells me that all the time,” he agreed. “ ‘A saint among husbands’ is how she likes to put it.”

“I won’t go there, but I’ll totally vouch for a saint among bakers.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. Especially not when you’re eating the very thing you swore last week that you were going to give up for Lent.”

Josie swallowed a gulp of coffee and grinned. “I’m not Catholic, either. Besides, I deserve a cinnamon roll, darn it. I had to sleep in the clinic last night, and I swear you can feel how cold and hard that floor is even through the air mattress.”

“Busy night?”

She shrugged. “Just one emergency, but it was pretty serious. Had to go into surgery.”

“Anyone I know?”

Josie started to shake her head, then hesitated. In a town with fewer than three thousand residents, most everyone in Stone Creek knew most everyone else, including their pets, but a wolf wasn’t a pet so her initial reaction was to deny that Mark might know her patient. Then again, her patient wasn’t actually a wolf, was she? And since Josie still had no idea of the Lupine’s human identity, how did she really know if Mark knew her or not?

“We’re still waiting to contact the... owners,” she finally said, looking away and busying herself carrying her breakfast over to one of the three small tables in the corner of the shop. “I probably shouldn’t say anything until I’ve talked to them.”

Mark shrugged his agreement, but his brow quirked up as he repeated, “We? I thought you played the saint and gave your entire staff Sundays off so you could martyr yourself on the altar of overwork.”

“Funny. As it happens, Ben came in to help me out today, but I wasn’t talking about my staff. I meant me and the sheriff. He’s the one who found my patient and brought her in.”

“Eli brought you an injured animal?”

“Why not? Sheriffs are supposed to be like grown-up Boy Scouts, right?” Josie pulled off another chunk of soft, sticky dough and eyed her friend. “But when did you get to be on a first-name basis with the local fuzz?”

“This is the closest thing to a doughnut shop in thirty miles,” a new voice answered, and Mark and Josie both looked toward the door to where the man in question stood, wearing a crisp blue uniform and an amused expression. “Mark was the first local resident I introduced myself to.”

Gasping with a mouthful of cinnamon roll nearly caused Josie to choke. She grabbed quickly for her coffee and took a healthy swig to wash down the bite and used a napkin to wipe her eyes when they started to water.

“Dr. Barrett, are you all right?” the sheriff asked, focusing his bright green gaze on her. “Do you need some help?”

Josie waved a hand at him and shook her head. “No. Sorry.” She gasped for air. “You just startled me. I’m fine.”

“Oh, good,” Mark said mildly. “Deaths on the premises are really bad for business. For some reason, they seem to upset the customers.”

“Speaking of customers,” Eli broke in, “I was wondering if one of yours might belong to the fellow loitering out front.”

Josie wiped her fingers on a stack of napkins as she struggled to regain her composure. Why did she always seem to be at her least cool and collected in front of a good-looking man?

“Bruce is my dog, Sheriff,” she said, striving for a mild tone. “Is there a problem with him?”

Eli shook his head. “Not at all, Doctor. I was actually just going to compliment whoever had trained him to sit and wait like that without even tying him to anything. I’ve never seen a more well-behaved dog. You should be proud.”

Mark snorted. “It’s Bruce who should be proud. Josie had very little to do with it.”

Josie shot her friend a glare, but she shrugged when she turned back to the sheriff. “Mark is unfortunately right. I really haven’t done much training with Bruce at all. I think the reason he doesn’t wander has more to do with the fact that he’s one of the laziest animals on the face of the earth than that it’s what I told him to do.”

“Last year I watched him sleep through the entire July Fourth fireworks display,” Mark agreed. “And we were only sitting like fifty feet from where they were setting them off. Most people had to lock their dogs inside their houses. Bruce lay down on our blanket in Kirkland Field and snored through the whole thing.”

“And, trust me, his snores were almost louder than the explosions.”

Eli grinned. “That’s some dog. Where did you get him?”

“He got me,” Josie corrected, her fingers pulling idly on the rim of her coffee cup. “I was working late one night, running labs, and I heard a noise coming from the parking lot behind the clinic. When I opened to door to look out and see what it was, Bruce strolled in and made himself at home. He was only about four months old at that point, but he already had paws the size of dinner plates.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. What is he, do you think? Part Great Dane?”

Josie shrugged. “I usually go with mostly Irish wolfhound and mastiff, with maybe some Saint Bernard thrown in, but that’s purely a guess.”

“He does like brandy,” Mark agreed, “so it’s a good guess.” He dropped the sheet pan onto the counter behind him and smiled at the sheriff. “So what can I do for you, Eli? I don’t do doughnuts on Sundays, but I’ve got the cinnamon rolls, and I think the scones came out pretty well today.”

“I’ll take a bribery box to go,” Eli said. “And coffee for three. If I go back to the station empty-handed, I’ll end up locked in one of my own cells. But believe it or not, I didn’t actually come in here for pastries. I was just walking by when I looked through the window and saw Dr. Barrett. She’s the one I’ve been looking for.”

Exp. 10-1017.03

Log 03-00122

Unable to locate TS-0024. May be required to adjust staffing if performance does not improve.

New dosages to be administered immediately to new subjects. Goal includes TS-0025 through TS-0029. At least three new subjects required for sufficient data.

The early methodology will be adjusted. Clearly more than one subject will be required in order for sufficient levels of transmission to be achieved.

Looking into radio tracking equipment for Stage 4. Remain optimistic as to ultimate project success.

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