Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(10)

They hadn’t mentioned the witches, Anna noted. Maybe they didn’t consider them an organized group.

“Before that,” said Goldstein, “we had always thought the wolves to be individual packs run by unaffiliated Alphas. As soon as we reconsidered, it wasn’t hard to look at certain events and see the wolves are highly organized. That they are able to act as a single unit if necessary.”

Anna controlled a snort. He made it sound like a business arrangement. Bran controlling the werewolves was more like shoving tigers around with cattle prods. Marginally effective, if potentially fatal to all involved.

“Is that person, the person in charge—is that you, Anna Cornick?” asked Goldstein.

She’d been stuck trying to make her tiger metaphor work. She had to blink at Goldstein for a minute to process what he’d said. She decided that was a good thing, because it wasn’t hard to keep her face blank while she thought about what to do with his question.

“Why do you ask?” she said, without letting any expression enter her voice or face. Her years surviving in a brutal pack had given her that ability. “You know who I am. Anna Latham, age twenty-six, college dropout.”

“Anna Latham, musical prodigy,” said Goldstein somberly. “Who disappeared after work one night and was never seen again. Oh, her father and brother both say that she is alive. But no one else who knew her has heard from her. No concerts have been scheduled, though she used to do them as an invited guest.”

She’d been working at reconnecting with her friends. Either the FBI had asked the wrong people or her friends thought she was in trouble and were trying to protect her. The concerts, though, were unlikely to happen. She missed performing to a big crowd.

“Werewolves are immortal,” said Leslie very quietly. And Anna remembered how worried Leslie had been when she’d first met Anna that someone as young as Anna had been married to Charles—who did not look young, no matter the lack of wrinkles or gray hair. No one with eyes as old as his could look young.

“Isaac, the Alpha of the Boston pack—” began Goldstein.

“Olde Towne Pack,” Anna corrected.

“Olde Towne Pack,” Goldstein repeated, and she bet he wouldn’t get it wrong again. “Isaac had no trouble following your orders.”

That they had seen, anyway.

“I thought at first you were playing front man to Charles,” Leslie said. “But he does your bidding, too.”

And they had added two and two and come up with twenty-two.

Anna opened her mouth to tell them they were wrong.

Wait. See what they have to say. Do not lie to them, that could come back and bite us. But for now, let them believe you are leading the packs. It was Bran’s voice in her head.

Aha. That was why Charles had had her invite the FBI in—so his da could listen from outside the house. It had taken her a long time to adjust to the difficulty of a private conversation with other werewolves around. The walls of her house were no match for wolf ears.

“I see,” Anna said, because she had been ready to tell them they were wrong, and she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“If there is someone in charge, if that is you, we—that is to say, my . . .” Goldstein faltered.

“Superiors?” suggested Anna.

Owners, growled Brother Wolf, unhappy with Bran for asking his mate to put herself in harm’s way like this.

“Colleagues,” said Leslie, watching Goldstein. “Equals.”

Goldstein had been with the bureau for more than twenty years, Anna recalled. He wasn’t subject to political whim because he wasn’t quite that far up in the bureaucracy, but Charles had told her Goldstein was right on the edge. He could have toppled into high office had he wished it. Leslie Fisher was on her way to doing exactly that.

“Our job,” Leslie said intensely, “the job of the FBI, is to protect the citizens of the United States. We can do that better through an alliance with the werewolves.”

“Who are citizens of the United States,” said Anna.

“Yes,” agreed Goldstein after a damning hesitation. “An alliance between the FBI and the werewolves will make everyone safer.”

Anna wondered if that was true.

“We know an alliance will take time,” Leslie said. “But today is a start.”

Goldstein pulled out another folder and set it beside the other two. “To that end, as a demonstration that you might find us as useful to you as you are to us, we have a mystery for you.”

“There’s a town missing,” said Leslie, pulling a folded-up USGS map out of the folder and laying it on the table. Someone had used a black marker to circle an area, then taped a slip of white paper next to the circle. Written in a neat hand in blue ink were the words Wild Sign.

Leslie tapped the marked space. “A group of people, as few as thirty or as many as forty as best we can tell, went up into the Marble Mountains in Northern California to live off-grid. The first of them set up about two or three years ago. Their settlement was illegal—the mountains are a mix of designated wilderness, federal lands, and tribal lands. Probably they thought they were on federal lands.”

Lots of snow in the Marbles, Brother Wolf told her. And Anna got something that was very nearly a visual from him.

“We have confirmation it was an active site this spring, when one of the Forest Service rangers stopped in to check on them. One of the community wrote to his daughter and gave her this map. It was his habit to write to her regularly, but his last letter was this April—a few days after the ranger stopped by, in fact. When the daughter received no further correspondence, she hiked in and found it abandoned. They were just gone.”