Tate held up his free hand in a placating gesture and holstered his weapon. Beside him, Chase lowered his gun but didn’t put it away.
Tate didn’t know Ashley well, but she was looking a little rough around the edges. Her long, curly dark hair fell wildly around her shoulders. The jeans and sweater she wore were scuffed and ragged in places, and her tennis shoes looked like they were about to fall apart. She seemed tired, too, like she’d been on the go for a while. It took a lot to wear out a shifter, so if she truly was exhausted, that meant she’d been pushing for a while. Maybe since escaping the mental institution.
On the bright side, she wasn’t soaked in Bell’s blood. She could have washed it off, he guessed. Then again, washing blood off her clothes didn’t seem like something Ashley would care about.
“It’s okay, Ashley,” he said softly. He needed to calm the coyote shifter before things went bad. “No one is going to hurt you.”
She tilted her head to the side and regarded him thoughtfully. “Where’s the doctor?”
“Bell or Mahsood?” Chase asked.
Ashley turned her gaze on the deputy, eyeing him like something she scraped off her shoe before letting out a low growl. Flashing fangs in public wasn’t something most shifters did very often, but apparently, she hadn’t gotten the memo.
“Mahsood,” she sneered. “Where is he?”
“We think he left a couple of hours ago,” Tate said. “We’re not sure where he is. Any chance he’s running from you?”
Tate wanted to keep her talking long enough in the hope that she’d retract her fangs. Then maybe they could think about capturing her somehow. But the moment he said they didn’t know where Mahsood was, Ashley’s interest in both of them flipped off like a light switch. One moment, she was standing tense and ready on the steps; the next, she was up the stairs and through the door that led to the kitchen.
Even though Tate knew there was no way in hell they could catch her, he raced after Ashley anyway, Chase at his heels.
“Holy crap,” Chase said breathlessly when they both pulled up after sprinting a few hundred yards through the trees, watching as Ashley bounded off silently into the darkness like a ghost on nitrous oxide. “How fast can these damn shifters run?”
Tate leaned over with his hands on his thighs, catching his breath. “Faster than we can, obviously. Makes me wish I still had my shifter partner. You’re worthless.”
Chase grunted, falling into step beside Tate as he started back toward the house. “I can definitely see how a shifter partner might come in handy. Makes me wonder what the hell you added to the team.”
Tate chuckled. “Me? I was the brains of the operation.”
The deputy shook his head. “I’m not doing anything with that one. It would be too easy. So, what’s the plan now that our best suspect left us staring at her butt as she ran us into the dirt?”
Tate let out another laugh. He seriously needed to get Landon to recruit Chase for the DCO, because he definitely wouldn’t mind working with the guy again. Considering the fact that the deputy was almost certainly going to get fired from the sheriff’s department, Chase would need it.
“First, we need to get all those photos we found scanned and sent out to an intel analyst back at my office,” Tate said. He considered taking pictures with his phone and emailing them, but there were way too damn many for that. “You know where there’s a FedEx or UPS store around here?”
Chase looked at him like he was crazy. “At this time of night? Are you kidding me? Nothing is going to be open.”
Tate scowled and climbed over a fallen tree. “I didn’t ask if they were open. I asked if you know where one is.”
Chase muttered something about losing his job for sure after tonight.
“Come on,” Tate cajoled. “How hard can it be? You’re wearing a uniform.”
“Yeah, I am,” Chase said. “Which will make it much easier to ID me in the lineup tomorrow.”
Chapter 11
Zarina was exhausted—mentally and physically—by the time she finished surgery on the three preppers a few hours later, but as she slowly walked toward the cabin she and Tanner shared, she knew the night wasn’t over. He would almost certainly be waiting for her, and when she walked in, the argument would start up all over again. She had only a vague idea what he’d been upset about, since he hadn’t bothered to tell her before announcing he was sending her home. She didn’t know whether it was the attack on the other camp, or the gun she’d been carrying, or the fact that one of the preppers who’d been injured was a woman. If she knew him, it was a combination of all three.
Fortunately, Zarina had been able to put thoughts of arguing with Tanner out of her mind long enough to deal with her patients. The two men who’d been shot would be on their feet in a matter of days, while the ones who’d been darted with tranquilizers would be up and moving by morning. The girl, on the other hand, was probably going to be flat on her back for at least a month. She’d nearly bled out from a small nick on the right thoracoacromial artery in her shoulder. If it wasn’t for the fact that there were three people in camp with O negative blood, which was compatible with all other blood types, the woman would have died.
Zarina stopped outside the door of the cabin, wondering if maybe she should sleep somewhere
