Blood Trail

next line was his. "You don't think Barry did it,"
    he said at last.

    "I didn't say that." She rested her chin on her folded hands. "But I don't want to believe he did it and you're the best person to prove he didn't. For Chrissakes, Colin, start thinking like a cop, not a ... a sheepdog." He flinched. "Did he have the opportunity?"

    For a moment she wasn't sure he was going to answer her, then he mirrored her position on the edge of the bed and sighed. "Yeah. We were working days both times it happened. He knows the farm and he knows the conservation area. We got off at eleven last night and he could have easily come out here after shift and made those tracks."

    "Okay, that's one against, and we know he has the skill. ..."

    "He's going to the next Olympics, he's that good. But if he's casting silver bullets I couldn't find any evidence of it and, believe me, I looked."

    "Does he have a motive?"

    Colin shook his head. "How should I know? If he's doing it, maybe he's crazy."

    "Is he?"

    "Is he what?"

    "Crazy? You spend eight hours a day with the man. If he's crazy, you should have noticed something." She rolled her eyes at his bewildered expression and used her voice like a club.
    "Think, damn it! Use your training!"

    Colin's ears went back and his breathing sped up but he held himself in check and Vicki could actually see him thinking about it. She was impressed by his control. If a stranger had used that tone on her, she'd have probably done something stupid.

    After a moment, he frowned. "I wouldn't swear to this in court," he said slowly, "but I'd bet my life on his sanity."

    "You are betting your life on his sanity," Vicki pointed out dryly, "every time you walk out of the station with him. Now we've settled that, why don't we concentrate on proving he didn't do it."

    "But. ..."

    "But what?" Vicki snapped, getting a little tired of Colin's attitude. She recognized that he was in a terrible position, torn between his family and his partner, but that was no reason to shut off his brain. "Just tell me about the man."

    "We, uh, we were at the Police College together." He ran his hands through his hair, the cropped cut accentuating the point of both chin and ears. "I wouldn't even be a cop if it wasn't for Barry, and I guess he wouldn't be one if it wasn't for me. He was the only 'visible ethnic minority' cadet there and I was, well, what I am. We ended up together to survive. When we graduated, we managed to stay together - well, mostly, it's not like we're mated or anything. ..."

    Vicki wasn't surprised by Barry's philosophical reaction to his partner's actual race. In the "us against them" attitude that the job forced police officers to develop, finding out that one of
    "us" was a werewolf could be dealt with, at least on an individual basis. Can I depend on my partner to back me up ? was the crucial question, not, Does my partner bay at the moon? And now that she thought about it, Vicki had known a number of cops who bayed at the moon.

    "... and the night I got shot. ..."

    "Wait a minute, you what?"

    Colin shrugged it off."We surprised a couple of punks during a holdup. They came out shooting. I took a slug in the leg. It was nothing."

    "Wrong. Very wrong." Vicki grinned. "Barry was there?"

    "Course he was."

    "He saw you bleed?"

    "Yeah."

    "You probably talked later about dying, about how you thought you were going to be killed?"

    "Yeah, but. ..."

    "Why would Barry shoot at the wer with silver bullets - expensive rounds that he'd have to make himself, risking discovery - when he knows that good old lead will do the job?"

    "To throw us off his trail?"

    "Colin!" Vicki threw her hands up. "That would take a crazy person and you've already told me Barry is sane. Trust your instincts. At least when you've got enough facts to back them up."

    Colin opened his mouth, closed it, and then shuddered as if a great weight had been lifted off of him. He leapt to his feet, threw back his head, and howled.

    Vicki, who had pretty much forgotten that he was naked, found herself suddenly made very aware of it. The wer might react sexually to scent and therefore not react at all to humans, but humans had a visually based libido and Vicki's had just belted her in the crotch.

    Oh, lord, why me? she thought as huge black paws came down on her shoulders and a large pink tongue swept vigorously across her face.

    After Colin had galloped off to confront his pack leader - he needed Stuart's permission to finally