One of the officers bagged it for him.
The men began searching the area for others then and one said, “Found another!”
They combed through the area and found three more.
Adam was following his nose, searching trees for any more shell casings and hopefully a discharged bullet he could find. He was sniffing the area, smelling the pungent nitroglycerin after the ammo had been fired when he flashed his light on a tree and found a bullet lodged in the bark.
“Found a bullet!” Adam dug it out with a pen knife.
The terrain was rugged in this area, and they would be lucky if no one twisted an ankle as they moved forward, searching for any further evidence. Cell phone service wasn’t available in several remote areas, so Adam hoped he would hear from Sierra or Tori before he lost his cell service and that he was still tracking the shooters out here and that they hadn’t followed Sierra to his house instead. He couldn’t help worrying about both women.
He smelled his and Sierra’s wolf scents through this area. The shooters had been tracking them for a while as Adam and Sierra had run off, trying to avoid getting shot, and then the shooters had headed in a different direction. The man and woman must have lost sight of the wolves at that point, which Adam was grateful for. While Adam had been running, he had felt like the shooters could smell him and Sierra and had continued to track them all along and back to the house.
Adam tried his phone to see if he still had service. He didn’t. Damn it. Tori might have tried to get ahold of him to tell him everything was all right then. At least he hoped so.
One of the officers glanced at him, raising his brows as if he thought Adam should be finding more clues. Adam didn’t want to alienate any of the police officers by being arrogant about his abilities. Most of them were glad when he helped track someone down. Usually the skeptics were convinced after he located the culprits or the victims. But a couple of the officers gave him a hard time over it, wanting him to prove over and over again that his ability to locate people wasn’t just a fluke. Now, he suspected they did it just to rib him about it. And he had no problem with that either.
Then he got a text and quickly checked it, glad he had cell service again.
Tori had texted: I’m at your house with Sierra. No one seems to have followed her here.
He texted back: Good. I’m still tracking the shooters. They lost our trail, so I’m still searching for where they went next.
Tori: Good luck with that. Sierra’s taking a shower. I’m lying down on the couch.
He texted: Good show. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way back.
Adam had thought of calling Josh to come and help him search for the shooters, but Josh wasn’t with the bureau any longer and the park was closed for the night, though Adam was certain the police officers would welcome Josh’s help. Adam thought about Ethan too, though he was DEA. He was also a wolf so he could help track down people.
The shooters had circled back toward Carver’s house. They were still heading through the underbrush and not on any main path, then they finally broke through the brush and ended up on a main trail.
“They doubled back,” Adam said.
“To…?” the new cop who had questioned Adam before asked.
“Toward the house where Sierra and I were having a drink when we heard the couple shooting. I have no idea what they were shooting at, but hunting isn’t allowed in the park,” Adam said. “I suspect whatever they were after took off and they chased it all over the place.”
“And then back to where you first heard them,” the officer said.
“Most likely they had a vehicle parked nearby there.”
Adam and the officers finally reached Carver’s house and the back gate. He didn’t smell any sign of the man or woman. For that, he was thankful. Still, he was careful when he entered the backyard but didn’t smell either of the man’s or woman’s scents there either.
He locked the gate after the officers joined him. He let the other officers through the house, and then he set the alarm and locked the door.
He was disappointed they hadn’t located the shooters and arrested them, but he was eager to get home to relieve Tori of guard duty so she could return home and get some sleep and he could protect Sierra himself.
“Hey, can one of you guys give me a lift back to my place?” Adam asked the officers.
“I’ll take you,” the transferred investigative officer quickly said. “Roland Paulson.” He shook Adam’s hand.
“Thanks, Roland. Adam Holmes. You started just a couple of days ago, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I was working out of New York City and needed a change of pace. I broke up with my girlfriend, and it was time to move on.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Adam said, then waved good night to the other officers, and Roland drove him home. Adam texted Tori to let her know he was headed back to his house.
Tori texted: See you soon.
“I’m sorry we didn’t find the shooters. So how do you do it?” Roland asked Adam.
“Track them down?”
“Yeah, Evans was telling me you and Wilding, your former partner, could find the perps like you were a couple of bloodhounds on their trail.”
“Just lucky, I guess.” That was the problem with having the ability but not being able to share why they could do what they could do with others.
“Nah. I don’t believe in luck. You’ve got something special going on. My aunt always knew when someone was going to call her at home. She just had this really uncanny ability. She would look up at the phone and everyone else would glance in that direction and it would ring. Like clockwork. Of course, that was before cell phones. She wouldn’t own one of those. So how do you do it? The guys said you got some of your friends, who live out at a ranch, to help search for a missing six-year-old boy in Forest Park. That he’d gotten away from his parents on a hike and they couldn’t find him anywhere. Everyone was looking for him, search parties everywhere, but when you and your friends arrived, you all took off into some really rough terrain and in no time at all you found him.”
“Yeah, we were glad to. We had bad storms coming in and it was getting dark.”
“Do you sense things out of the ordinary? Like my aunt did with the phone calls?”
“No, nothing like that.” Adam appreciated that the officer didn’t have any qualms about believing in paranormal abilities, but he knew if he told him the truth that he was a lupus garou—which he would never do—that would be a little too much for the officer to handle.
“It was too dark to really see if plants were trampled off trail or branches or twigs were broken, like old-time trackers would use to follow someone. And then pure dumb luck that you saw the first shell casing.” The officer cast a glance in Adam’s direction, and Adam suspected he believed that he had psychic powers or something like that.