Loyal Wolf, page 14
Kathlene soon pulled her SUV into one of the spaces behind the sheriff’s department headquarters and got out. She wasn’t the only one arriving then, which wasn’t surprising. The daily meeting in the assembly room for those on duty during this regular shift would begin in—she checked her cell phone—ten minutes.
She still hadn’t decided how to achieve what she needed to do. But she knew she would figure it out.
She glanced around at the others who were also heading toward the rear entrance to the building. Her partner, Jimmy Korling, was among them, but she didn’t hurry to catch up with him. They’d have enough time together that day when they headed out on patrol.
She spied Deputy Betsy Alvers, one of the other few remaining female deputies. Kathlene usually went out of her way to avoid her overweight and irritatingly accommodating counterpart because Betsy’s way of dealing with the strife at the department was to simper and smile and act as if that was the way things should be.
Consequently, Sheriff Frawley and Undersheriff George Kerringston seemed utterly pleased that Betsy was one of their deputies—especially since she seemed thrilled to bring them coffee and agree with everything they said.
Unlike Kathlene.
But maybe Betsy was the ideal person for her to talk to now. Whatever she told the young and obnoxious deputy would undoubtedly be passed along to the brass.
She had to finesse this well, though. More often than not, Kathlene avoided talking to Betsy since it was so difficult not to show her scorn—and that would be highly inappropriate behavior for someone who wanted to keep her job around here.
So she would need to find a way to get Betsy to address her first. Then it would be impolite of her not to respond. All would look good then…she hoped.
She sped up a bit as she headed toward the door. She figured that spacey, controversy-avoiding Betsy might be best approached as if Kathlene was in the throes of sadness. She put her head down and turned her mouth into a sorrowful pout.
She met up with Betsy as they neared the door. “Hi,” Kathlene said, glancing up with a tiny smile that she intended to appear more mournful than false.
“Hi, Kathlene,” Betsy gushed in her usually enthusiastic tone. “How are you?” But before Kathlene could respond, Betsy got the gist of what she was faking. “Oh, is something wrong?”
“No,” Kathlene said hurriedly, reaching for the door handle. “Well…maybe.”
She held the door open so Betsy could enter first. Fortunately, there was a gap between them and the next group of deputies heading in their direction, and the lobby area into which they entered was already empty. Everyone must have headed to the assembly room right away.
“You want to talk about it?” Betsy’s dark brows were raised sympathetically over her small brown eyes. She wore too much makeup and her puffy rouged cheeks looked as if she had been in the sun too long. Her white-blond hair was pulled into a clip at the back of her head, as all female law-enforcement personnel were directed to do. The result almost made her look like a large, overdone doll. An overdone deputy doll, since she, too, wore a uniform—hers larger and more rounded out than Kathlene’s.
Kathlene felt a snap of conscience. The young woman was actually acting nice. And in fact, she usually did. The problem was with how she caved under the orders of the most chauvinistic men around here.
She might really make a good deputy, given a chance to prove herself besides exercising her waitress and secretarial skills.
The room they’d gone into was more of an entry that led to a variety of hallways within the building, including a stairway at one end. They’d need to scale it to reach the assembly room. But for the moment Kathlene moseyed in a way she hoped looked sorrowful toward a far corner.
“It’s really not much,” Kathlene said. “And I probably shouldn’t be talking about it at all.” Especially to you, she thought—except now, when she hoped to use the deputy who had good connections thanks to her submissive nature.
“Sometimes it helps to talk about things,” Betsy encouraged. Kathlene wondered how often others had caved in to the young woman’s sympathetic demeanor and revealed stuff they shouldn’t—and had it used against them.
She, at least, would only say things she wanted to get to the ears of their bosses.
“I guess. And really—well, it’s not so bad. I’m just feeling a little disappointed. One of my old-time friends is in town, a guy I’ve known since college. He brought another friend along with them, and the two of them told me that they plan to leave here sooner than they originally said.”
She looked up at Betsy’s face, hoping her expression showed both frustration and sadness.
“Did they tell you why?” Betsy asked. Good. Kathlene didn’t have to prompt her to ask that question.
“Well…yes. They live in Washington State and came to visit me before going on to visit Yellowstone. I didn’t know they’d had the idea of doing some hunting in Montana. Or maybe they hadn’t thought about it before. But they’re looking into the possibility. The thing is, they attended the county commissioners’ meeting yesterday out of curiosity and were…well, concerned about the issues being discussed that might outlaw hunting completely in this area. I told them that wasn’t the case, and even further limits were somewhat iffy, but they decided they’d only stay another couple of days, anyway.”
“But didn’t they understand that there’s a nice, solid faction here that is discouraging the commissioners from passing any more laws that would make it hard for people to hunt in this county?” Betsy peered at Kathlene. “Or are they mostly upset with you, since I gather that you’re in favor of that kind of law.”
Kathlene shrugged. “It could be partly that, I guess, even though I try not to get into my opinions with them too much. But no, they just think this area’s government may be too dictatorial. Or at least that’s what I assume.”
“What if someone talked to them, tried to convince them otherwise?”
Kathlene forbore from rolling her eyes, instead attempting to look happy and pleadingly into Betsy’s face. “Oh, would you?”
Betsy shrugged. “I’m probably not the best person. Maybe someone who’s a hunter, or who at least is in favor of allowing hunting, would be better.”
“Do you know someone who’d talk to them?” Kathlene hoped she appeared the picture of clueless innocence.
“I’ve got a couple of ideas,” Betsy said. “Let me ask around.”
“That would be wonderful,” Kathlene gushed. “My friends will be here in about half an hour. I told them to come so I could give them a quick tour after our assembly but before Jimmy and I go out on patrol. They were interested in seeing where I work and what the local sheriff’s station looks like.”
“Fine,” Betsy said. She glanced at a watch on her puffy wrist. “We’d better go upstairs. And I’m not sure I can get anyone to talk to them this soon, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks so much,” Kathlene said, and followed Betsy to the flight of stairs across the room.
*
Jock and Ralf entered the reception area at the front of the sheriff’s department building. They approached the desk and told a uniformed guy behind it who they were—at least who their undercover identities were—and that Deputy Kathlene Baylor was expecting them.
“I’ll let her know as soon as the meeting she’s in is over,” the smooth-faced deputy, who looked as if he still belonged in high school, told them.
“Thanks.”
Ralf and he sat down on chairs at the room’s perimeter. Jock picked up a couple of magazines and leafed through them—some on law enforcement and on the wonders and delights of Montana.
Two women sat across the room from them. A man and woman entered behind them and also approached the reception desk. “We want to file a complaint,” the man said. “One of our neighbors has a dog that he lets do his business in our front yard.”
“I’ll give you the paperwork to file a complaint,” the deputy told them.
Jock glanced at Ralf. “Sounds like this town has some nondog people,” he said with a rueful shrug.
“Yeah. Maybe we should get their address so you can leave a deposit in their yard sometime.” Ralf had kept his voice very low. His smile looked as if he was trying to appear diabolical but he failed.
Jock couldn’t help laughing back.
He looked up as other people in uniforms started entering the area both from the stairs and from the couple of doors into the room. “Guess the meeting’s over,” Jock said.
“Guess so,” Ralf agreed.
In a minute Kathlene hurried down the stairway toward them. How could she look so beautiful and sexy with her dark hair pulled starkly away from her face, and in a unisex gray uniform?
Maybe it was the beauty of her face. The way she filled out the uniform.
The way he could visualize, from experience, what was beneath it.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you ready for your tour?”
“We sure are. You ready to show us around?”
“Absolutely,” she said, loud enough for others to hear her. “I definitely want to show you where I work.” And then, more softly, she added, “I tried to initiate something that’ll get you an audience with one of the guys in charge—preferably Tisal. But we’ll just have to see whether it works.”
*
Jock played his role well, or at least he intended to.
Ralf and he had both dressed in button-down shirts and nice trousers as an ostensible show of respect while getting a tour of the sheriff’s department headquarters, Kathlene’s base of operations as a deputy. Dressing well wouldn’t guarantee them the meeting that they hoped for, but it probably wouldn’t hurt.
The three of them had discussed their approach before—definitely treating Kathlene as a member of their team.
She, in turn, was following through quite well. She was in uniform and acted utterly professional.
Now, leading them down hallways and into various rooms, Kathlene spoke loudly enough for anyone around them to hear what she was up to. She repeated often that she really couldn’t spend much time doing this since she and her partner were scheduled to go on patrol in less than half an hour.
In turn, Jock acted, in reaction to Kathlene’s cheerful prattle about what he was seeing, as if he appreciated what she said but wasn’t overly impressed. Ralf undoubtedly appeared to be the nicer of the two of them. Maybe that was actually the case.
After all, the man Jock was supposed to be at the moment was a potentially frustrated hunter who wasn’t particularly happy with this town that considered enacting further hunting restrictions.
A hunter who in fact wasn’t wild about towns or any other kind of government authority that attempted to tell its citizens what to do.
In other words, a budding anarchist.
Ralf? Well, his assumed character had similar values but perhaps wasn’t as vocal about them.
They’d reached the end of the second-floor hallway and Kathlene had just pointed out the assembly room where she and her fellow officers met daily for a general assessment of what was going on and what to look out for before being sent off on their assignments.
“Now let’s go up another couple of floors to the offices of the sheriff and his primary officers and staff,” Kathlene said with a wide, too-bright smile. “That will have to be the end of the tour, at least for now. I’ve got to go on patrol in just a few minutes.”
“Sounds good,” Ralf said. “I’m really enjoying this. How about you, Jock?” The guy certainly knew how to play his role well. All his Alpha Force roles.
There wasn’t any better aide to shifters than his was, and Jock knew it.
Especially since they’d also had a talk about Kathlene. Ralf wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going on. Was nonjudgmental. Only told Jock to be careful, which he was.
“Definitely,” Jock replied to Ralf. “But let’s hurry. I don’t want to hold you up any more, Kathlene.”
A couple of other people in uniform were standing nearby, conversing. If any of them eavesdropped, they’d most likely believe exactly as Jock wanted them to. All was well. His old buddy Kathlene was merely showing him and his friend around where she worked. Everything was aboveboard. No underlying issues or goals.
False.
They’d started out on the lower levels, where Kathlene had pointed out the rooms of emergency staff and others who responded to phone calls, as well as locker rooms, storage areas and places that were of great use but wouldn’t yield them the information they were after.
But that was part of the act. They really had to behave as if this was a genuine tour of the building—even though they were only just now about to dig into what was important here.
Rather than waiting for an elevator, Kathlene showed them up the couple of flights of steps to the upper echelons of this building.
They emerged into a hallway much wider and more brightly lit than those downstairs. The floor was gleaming wood. The walls between the numerous doors were covered with photos of faces of smiling men in uniforms, probably former sheriffs and their seconds in command.
“I don’t get up here very often,” Kathlene said. “The officers stationed up here mostly come downstairs if they want to interact with us. But—”
A door at the far end of the hall opened, and Sheriff Melton Frawley emerged. With him was a young uniformed deputy, a woman. Jock assumed she was the person Kathlene had said she would talk to about Ralf and him and their opinions about the town.
The woman who had Frawley’s ear because she did as he said and waited on him hand and foot, if what Kathlene had said was true. And Jock had no doubt that it was.
Frawley strode toward them. Kathlene smiled again in a way that struck Jock as nervous yet determined. Instinctively, he moved to her side and was glad to see Ralf do the same.
“Deputy Baylor,” the sheriff said, “what’re you doing on this floor?” To his credit, the guy wasn’t scowling at her, and his tone sounded more curious than angry or dictatorial.
Sheriff Melton Frawley struck Jock as being a tall stick of a man who’d fought his way into a job with power and would do anything to maintain it. When Jock had seen him the previous night at the old ranch, the guy had been in his uniform as he was now, maybe to assert himself as in charge, or maybe just because he hadn’t had time to change. In either event, he’d swaggered a bit while talking to Tisal and the others in charge of the supposed sportsmen.
“I was just giving my friends Jock and Ralf a tour of our headquarters, sir, but we’re done. I’m off to find Deputy Korling so we can go out on patrol.”
“You do that,” said Frawley. And then the man turned to Jock and Ralf. “Meantime, I’ll continue with your friends’ tour.” The man grinned, and Jock figured that the other lady deputy had done as Kathlene had hoped: told their story to this man.
And with luck, Ralf and he would get an invitation to meet the sportsmen in person. Tonight.
While Jock was still in human form.
Chapter 14
As the sheriff spoke, Betsy Alvers had remained just behind him, peeking around to aim a sympathetic smile toward Kathlene that said she’d done as Kathlene had anticipated and revealed to the boss the earlier conversation they’d had—whether or not Kathlene had expected some discretion from her.
But fortunately, Kathlene had expected exactly what had happened.
And the results? Well, now Sheriff Frawley must know how concerned Kathlene was that her dear long-term friend Jock and his buddy Ralf weren’t on the same page as Kathlene about hunting and hunting laws and maybe even about people who tried to restrict other people’s rights.
So as Kathlene hurried downstairs to meet up with her partner, she kept telling herself those results were perfect, just what she’d wanted: a probable conversation between the undercover Alpha Force guys and the sheriff, one that could lead to her team members learning a whole lot more about what was going on with the sportsmen and what they were up to.
So why did Kathlene feel so bummed out now?
As if she didn’t know.
What they were doing wouldn’t, couldn’t, include her.
At least not right now…
She reached the downstairs area where Jimmy waited for her, nearly alone since others in their shift had already hit the road.
“You ready to go, partner?” Jimmy asked, frowning in what she interpreted to be barely concealed irritation.
“I sure am. Let’s sign out and get on our way.”
They’d both officially gone on duty before the morning’s assembly, but now they followed the standard process to confirm that they were about to enter the patrol car assigned to them and get out there to protect the town and county.
“Let’s go,” Kathlene said a minute later when she had completed her entry on the department computer system, tossing a grim smile toward Jimmy. She strode determinedly through the doorway and down the concrete steps to the parking area, hearing him keeping up with her.
Today she had the keys. She would drive them around.
And would get nowhere near the old ranch unless there was a call out for assistance from law enforcement.
That wouldn’t happen.
Nor would she get back here, or anywhere else where Jock and Ralf were likely to be hanging out.
No, she would get an update from them later about how their ad hoc meeting with Sheriff Frawley went, and whether they would get a visit to the sportsmen’s camp out of it.
Kathlene would have to wait.
And Kathlene was not a patient person.
*
All had gone perfectly, as if Jock had whispered into the sheriff’s ear exactly what he wanted, and the guy had been nothing but an obedient servant—even while Frawley undoubtedly assumed he held all the cards in anyone’s pockets around this department and the county where he was in charge.
At the moment, Jock and Ralf were just ending their meeting in Frawley’s surprisingly small but neat, and expensively appointed, office.
