Chapter 6
Cole left early for work on Monday morning.
He needed to get out of the house and get to his desk, where he’d hopefully find a pile of work waiting for him.
He needed phone calls and emails, urgent paperwork, and requests from other departments.
It wasn’t that he ever wanted crime of any kind to happen in his town, but some harmless scandal could do him some good.
He noticed how white his knuckles were on the steering wheel and purposely loosened his grip.
He needed to relax, but the most relaxing place he knew used to be the packhouse.
It was his home. It was where he saw to the needs of his pack.
If there could be an architectural representation of who he was and what he did in the world, the packhouse was it.
But it was also far too close to Nia. If she were at Brianna’s, the temptation to slip through the woods and find a way to be near her was incredibly strong. It also felt incredibly wrong.
Then Brianna had brought her to the barbecue. That’d always been the plan, ever since Brianna had started talking about the two of them actually opening the bakery. In the moment, when he had yet to meet Nia, and she was only his daughter’s best friend, it’d sounded like a great idea.
Cole thought he could hold himself together. He was no actor, but he had plenty of self-control. A man simply couldn’t be an Alpha without it, or at least not a good one. He could be distant and polite, and no one would expect anything different from him.
His wolf had other ideas when she showed up, and it picked up on her tantalizing scent, with her dark eyes occasionally catching his.
Did she realize the way her hips swung when she walked?
As he’d stood at the grill, he’d felt their bond like an elastic band between them, constantly pulling on him.
How was he going to do this?
A call came through his cell phone. Travis’s name showed up on the ID.
Cole sneered and considered ignoring it.
This was one of his pack members, though, and Travis wasn’t the kind to just call and chit-chat.
Ignoring a call from the pack felt as bad as ignoring a call from Brianna, so he hit the button on the steering wheel. “Hey.”
“Hey. You sound like you could use a pot of coffee.” The whooshing of the wind threatened to overtake Travis’s voice through the speakers.
“Yeah, probably.” Did he sound a little more gruff than usual? If he did, he had the right to.
“Listen, I’m sorry to bother you,” Travis began, hesitating. “Um, I went for an early morning hike in the mountains. I found something I think you might want to see.”
“Like what?” Cole instantly switched into police chief mode, expecting Travis to tell him about a dead body. Guilt stabbed him as he remembered how much he thought he needed a work distraction. A deceased hiker wasn’t what he’d meant!
“Well, uh…” Travis trailed off again, and then it was only the sound of the wind for a few seconds. “Eggs?”
Cole let off the gas, sure that he’d heard wrong. “Eggs?”
“Yeah. Like, really big ones. I know it’s weird. There’s a blanket around them, which makes it extra weird. That’s why I called you directly. It’s not the sort of thing I really wanted to call into the station, you know?”
“Right.” Cole tried to understand exactly what this was.
Eggs in a blanket in the mountains? That couldn’t even be real, but he’d dealt with plenty of odd calls in his time as police chief.
People got scared and let their imaginations get the best of them.
Other times, he’d shown up, and the calls were just as strange as described.
Either way, he needed to find out. “What’s your location?”
Travis described the route he’d taken, one that branched off from a few hiking trails near the packhouse and led up into the mountains.
“I know the one,” Cole confirmed. “I’ll be up there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll stay here and wait for you.” Travis hesitated again. “Listen, about what I said the other night. I’m sorry. I was just joking, but I was out of line.”
“Don’t worry about it.” If he had things his way, it never would’ve been brought up again. “I was in a mood, that’s all.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’s fine.” Cole cut him off, not interested in hearing all the ways that Travis felt guilty. It would be better for all of them if they could just put this behind them and forget about it. “I’m not thinking about it anymore, so you shouldn’t be, either.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but he wanted it to be.
“All right. I’ll see you soon.”
As soon as they hung up, Cole dialed Morgan. “You up and in uniform yet?”
“Just about to head out the door,” Morgan confirmed.
“Stay where you are. I’m coming to get you.” Cole hit his turn signal and swung in on the next road. “I’ve got a special assignment, and you’re coming with me.”
Morgan drummed his fingers on the door of the squad car just below the window. “Why won’t you tell me what it is?”
Cole pulled his eyes from the curvy mountain road and studied his nephew for a moment.
He was fit and trim with youth, without yet having the years of late, stressful nights that always packed a few pounds onto most officers.
‘Experienced’ or ‘seasoned’ just meant seeing a lot of shit and getting a bit jaded about it.
It was nice to see someone still so fresh and eager.
“If I tell you, then it won’t be a surprise. ”
“Is this actually a call?” Morgan asked. “Or is this some practical joke? I always figured you were too serious for that, but maybe I’m wrong.”
“It’s a call,” Cole assured him, “and you’re right. I am too serious for that.”
“Then why won’t you tell me?” Morgan was squirming in his seat with impatience. “Shouldn’t an officer know everything he can before getting to the scene so he can be prepared and act appropriately?”
“You’re good at spitting out what they teach you at the academy,” Cole noted.
“It’s not always like that in the field.
What happens if the person making the call doesn’t understand what they’re seeing?
Or they’re paranoid? Or drunk? What if the call comes through so garbled that dispatch can’t understand it, and you have to go check it out anyway? You have to be prepared for anything.”
Morgan considered this for a long, silent moment. “Okay. That’s fair. I get it. But I’m guessing you do know exactly what this call is, which means you should be giving me the same information.”
“If I were anyone other than your uncle and your Alpha, then yes,” Cole agreed. “But I’m not going to do that today.”
“Are you just fucking with me?” Morgan finally asked.
Cole started to shake his head as he parked on the side of the road, having driven up as far as they could. Then he grinned. “Maybe a little.”
“Damn.” Morgan got out of the squad car and came around the back. “You should work for your uncle,” he said in a high-pitched voice that was supposed to imitate his mother. “It’ll be fun!”
“Come on. It might still be fun. You don’t know yet.” Cole made his way to the ridgetop, keeping an eye out for Travis.
“There are a lot of great things about this job,” Morgan said, walking solidly next to him up the steep incline, “but I don’t know if I’d call much of it fun.”
“Does your job have to be fun?” Cole asked.
When he was deciding what to do with his life, the idea of his career being fun hadn’t occurred to him at all.
Although, to be fair, the only thing that’d really ever occurred to him was to follow in the footsteps of the Montclair men who’d come before him.
Still, the conversation was making him wonder just how big the divide could be between people his age and those closer to Morgan’s.
Like Nia. She’d traveled halfway across the country to start up a business with her best friend. That wasn’t exactly serious, and there was even a good chance they wouldn’t make it. What must she think of him, heading down a well-worn path full of late nights and difficult conversations?
“I don’t know. I guess not,” Morgan replied.
“I don’t think it’s realistic to just ‘do what you love,’ as everyone likes to say.
But I think following a passion is a big part of it.
We can’t all just put on ties and suddenly transform into high-powered CEOs who are making so much money, they don’t know what to do with it. ”
“No, those days are mostly over. That’s probably for the best. None of those guys were ever happy, anyway.” They reached the ridge of the mountains, which dipped and rose like vertebrae studded with trees. Cole noted a flash of movement and color and lifted his arm. “Travis!”
He waved back, and they joined him a minute later.
“I’m glad you could come. I know you need to get into the office, but this was just so odd.
” Travis guided them between some trees to a place where two short peaks met, forming a sheltered spot within the rock.
Sure enough, just as he’d described over the phone, a group of five eggs had been left there.
A pale blue blanket created a circumference around them, rather like a nest. The pine needles and leaves between the eggs were packed too carefully and deliberately to have fallen there by accident.
Cole knelt next to the nest and gently touched the very tip of one of the eggs.
The pearlescent shell was hard and firm, with a bit of an iridescent sheen.
“What the hell are those?” Morgan asked over his shoulder, echoing Cole’s thoughts.
“Beats me. I’ve been looking up different kinds of eggs while I waited for you, but I haven’t found anything like these,” Travis answered. “Just look at them. They’re the size of cantaloupes!”
“I never did like cantaloupe,” Morgan mumbled. “What kind of animal could lay an egg like that? A hawk or an eagle or something?”
“That would have to be one big-ass eagle,” Travis commented. “These are bigger than ostrich eggs, and there aren’t any ostriches up here.”
“Are they real?” Morgan asked, kneeling next to Cole and touching one. “They’re like something out of Jurassic Park.”
“What I’d like to know is how you found this. It was pretty well hidden,” Cole noted. Looking back the way they’d come, he doubted anyone would just stumble upon the nest.
Travis flipped his palms up in the air. “I was in my wolf when I came up here, and the blanket smelled human. I pretty much never run into anyone out here. If I can smell someone and not see them, they’re either up to no good or they’re in trouble. I wanted to figure it out.”
“Fair enough,” Cole acknowledged. He turned to Morgan. “Well, here’s your scene. What do you make of it?”
Morgan’s brows shot up as he looked from the eggs to Cole and back again. “I don’t remember anything in the operating procedures about finding something like this.”
Cole resisted the urge to smile. It was a test, of sorts.
The men who’d trained him had been harsh.
Even a brand-new officer was expected to know procedure front and back without hesitation.
Knowing the statutes, codes, and procedures, however, was only part of the job.
The biggest part of it was figuring out how to apply those to real-life situations.
No matter how odd the call was, the police had to be able to do something about it. Cole gave Morgan a moment to think.
“Animal control,” Morgan decided. “We can call Patty. Maybe she knows what kind of beast laid these things.”
Just as Cole was about to respond, the three of them heard a distinct crack.
Cole swiveled his head, noticing that a thick line had appeared in the egg closest to him.
He knelt, listening carefully, bringing his wolf’s hearing to the front as much as he could without losing his human form.
Something was definitely moving inside there.
His heart picked up the pace. “Looks like we’re about to get some answers. ”
The egg vibrated slightly. The crack widened a little, a deepening black line that arced up one side, across the top, and down the other.
There was more jiggling, and Cole couldn’t take his eyes off the spectacle.
A baby chick could take hours to hatch, and he didn’t have that kind of time. But he had to know.
A new crack appeared, this one next to the first. Whatever was in there was working hard. A semicircular fissure formed, connecting with the initial crack. More force rocked the egg slightly on its side, and something dark shoved the separated piece of shell away. It hit another egg.
Cole leaned forward and looked inside. A bright yellow eye looked back out at him, surrounded by deep green scales. Maybe Jurassic Park wasn’t such a wild guess. “It’s a reptile of some kind.”
“Holy shit,” Morgan breathed. “A big one! We’d better get Patty on the horn right away!”
Cole held up a finger. “Patty is great. Our department wouldn’t function without her, but she’s on vacation right now. We’ve just got regular officers rotating her duty right now.”
“Oh, right.” Morgan sagged a little. “I guess that means we’re basically animal control.”
“Yes,” Cole agreed. “But here’s the other thing: Even if Patty were available, she’s equipped to handle dogs, cats, and maybe a stray potbelly pig or two, but not something like this.
” He couldn’t rip his eyes away from the egg, and he fought the urge to help the newborn creature get out of its shell so they could see it in its entirety.
Morgan tucked his lower lip into his upper one for a moment as he thought. “There’s supposed to be a cold snap tonight. I don’t know what these little guys are, but I remember when we hatched those chicken eggs in school. They need to be kept warm. What if we take them back to the packhouse?”
Cole smiled at him. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Yeah?” Morgan asked.
“Absolutely. If Travis or someone else had called this in through dispatch, we might have had to come up with something else. As it is, this isn’t official police business.
That gives us a little more freedom. Let’s figure out how to get them back to the car.
Travis, you can ride back with us if you’d like. ”
The three men carefully carried the eggs and the blanket back to the squad car, recreating the nest in the back floorboard so they wouldn’t jostle around too much on the drive to the packhouse.
They’d made the best decisions they could, but as Cole drove back down the mountain, he wondered what the hell they were going to do with these critters.