Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(7)

Anna hung her guitar up, shaking her head with mock reproof. “That’s it. You might as well give up music altogether and go live on the top of a mountain, where you can wallow in your shame.”

Big arms wrapped around her, pulling her back against him. She gave an exaggerated oof as if he’d squeezed out all of her air.

“Only if you come with me,” he crooned. “Then I won’t get bored as I wallow.”

“What makes you think I could help you with boredom?” she asked in an innocent voice, pushing her hips back against him suggestively as one of his hands moved down, an iron bar across her belly, while the other moved up, pushing her hair aside to bare the side of her throat for him. “What is it you think we can do all alone—”

Upstairs, the doorbell rang.

They both froze. It was late for casual visitors.

“The door isn’t locked,” Charles growled.

“And anyone who is pack is likely to just walk in,” she agreed reluctantly.

He didn’t release her.

“Charles?” she asked.

He inhaled her scent. “I am second in the pack,” he said with obvious reluctance. “If someone is ringing our doorbell, I have to answer.”

She twisted in his arms and stood on tiptoe to kiss his chin, liking that she was going to smell like him for a while. Jeez, being a werewolf had changed her point of view on a lot of things, she mused, turning to climb up the stairs, Charles at her heels.

The phone rang—the landline that never rang but hung from the wall above the light switch like a tribute to the past. Charles stopped beside it.

“It’s Da,” he told her, then answered the phone.

Bran could make his voice heard in the minds of his wolves (and probably anyone else he cared to). He maintained that he could not hear responses—which was, Anna assumed, why he had decided to use the phone.

“Tell Anna to get the door,” Bran said. “You need to let the wolf greet them.” And then he left them with a dial tone.

Huh, she thought, meeting Charles’s eyes.

He shrugged. He didn’t know why Bran had bothered calling, either. Maybe just to make whoever was at the door wait a bit longer. Trying to work out the hows and whys of Bran’s actions tended to leave Anna with a headache and no wiser for the struggle.

Anna obeyed her orders, walking the twelve feet or so to the door and opening it. She was still trying to work out what Bran’s call had been about, so she blinked a little at the unexpected visitors.

The nearest, illuminated by the porch light, was a fortysomething black woman, looking athletic and smart in a white polo shirt with the FBI logo on one shoulder and dark blue trousers. Beside her was a short, fine-boned white man who could have been anywhere from his midfifties to midseventies. His hair, which had been dark, had been shaved completely off. His tan jacket and blue slacks fit him well and were free of wrinkles or creases. Still, he struck her as more fragile than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, and she wondered if he had been sick. He didn’t smell sick.

For a moment she felt an automatic smile of welcome flow up toward her face, borne of a genuine liking for Special Agent Leslie Fisher and a generally favorable impression of Special Agent Craig Goldstein.

But they weren’t supposed to know who she was now or where she and Charles lived. A wide streak of wariness shoved her smile aside as she contemplated the two FBI agents and wondered what this visit was about to change in their world.

“This is unexpected,” she said.

As the daughter of a lawyer, Anna had a natural inclination to respect the law. But the FBI had no real jurisdiction over her. They would not be permitted to question her or arrest her or take her to trial without a great deal of trouble—maybe not even then. They were all on pack territory now.

She wondered if they understood just how dangerous that was for them. She certainly understood how dangerous their presence here was for the werewolves. This was above her pay grade, she thought. But it would not help matters to let Charles take over.

Leslie looked at Goldstein. Anna remembered that he’d been the senior of the two when she’d first met them. It seemed that still held true.

“We have some information for you, Ms. Smith,” he said without apology. “We felt it was best delivered in person. We also felt that you were the best person to deliver it to.”

Goldstein knew very well Smith wasn’t her name—Anna didn’t like him rubbing her nose in it. She and Charles had made it plain that Smith had been a nom de nécessité, and not their own—for heaven’s sake, why else would they have used “Smith,” notorious in fact and fiction as a false name?

Goldstein’s words smacked of a power play—and Anna disliked politics intensely. Too bad her mate was only slightly more inclined to diplomacy than certain axe-wielding Vikings of her acquaintance. Which left the role of negotiator to her.

This, she thought ruefully, was bound to be a disaster.

Several years of being trapped in a pack where brutality was a fact of everyday life had given her some skills in negotiating with terrorists, however. She wasn’t quite ready to put Leslie Fisher in that category, but it was probably best to assume the worst.

First, show no fear. This was much easier to manage with Charles waiting behind her than it had been when she’d been alone, especially since the FBI had sent people she knew and liked. This was probably not a hostile move on their part. Not yet, anyway.