Page 14 of Hoofin’ It

“So, before you get any bright ideas of trying to hook me up with a date, don’t. When I want a girlfriend, I’ll start looking around to find one.”

Dad’s partner smirked at me. “You’re a virgin.”

I smacked my forehead. “I’m the son of a werewolf. Of course I’m a virgin.”

Not playing the game often meant I won the game, and my ready acceptance of the truth, without any evidence it bothered me, stopped the quartet of cops in their tracks. They gaped at me.

“Consider my father. Now take a moment and consider my mother. What do you think would happen if I even thought of having a romp in the hay?”

Enlightenment hit all four at the same time. “Ooooh,” they chorused. “A wedding.”

I clapped for them. “Well done. You’ve demonstrated you know my parents. Now, what are you not going to do? Marshal, you’re probably the best one to answer this.”

My mother’s partner laughed. “We’re never going to speak a word of this to anyone, especially your mother, as she’ll want to start making wedding plans, and you might even get to contribute on some element of it. Unlikely, but possible.”

“Exactly. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I have no idea why anyone would have shot me and taken Sally. The vet said Sally wasn’t all that old, and while she does need to be sheared soon, her fleece isn’t that valuable. Not worth shooting an ex-cop for. The only thing I saw in New York was the body landing on that car and killing its occupants. If someone had tossed the body off the skyscraper’s rooftop, they would have had to use binoculars to get a good look at me. I didn’t see anyone suspicious, just a bunch of New Yorkers who didn’t want to have their day blown answering questions for law enforcement.”

“This would be a lot easier if you had a long list of enemies wanting revenge on you for landing them in prison, Shane,” my dad’s partner complained.

I pitied the other two cops in the room. They looked at the door and heaved a pained sigh.

“I can’t help that I went to work, got along with the riffraff, and didn’t cause trouble for hardly anyone. It’s not my fault.”

“For once in your life, I think you’re right.” Winston scowled and beat his tail against the floor while tapping the hospital’s polished tiles with his claws. “But why would anyone shoot you to steal an alpaca?”

Chapter Five

Why would someone shoot me to steal an alpaca?

Nothing made sense. I thought through every single case I’d ever dealt with in Chicago and had no idea who might want to come all the way to Nebraska to kill me. My inability to make sense of the situation kept me up all night, resulting in me resemble a demented raccoon when my mother and father walked into my room at exactly two minutes after eight in the morning.

“Right on time. Did you just happen to arrive, or were you standing out in the hallway waiting for the perfect moment? Eight sharp would have been fine, you know.”

“Why ruin a perfectly good tradition?” Mom stared down her nose at me and scowled. “Why do you look worse than you did right after surgery? Darling, I thought your blood was supposed to help, not give him raccoon eyes and rabies.”

Dad shot my mother a glare and hooked a chair with his ankle, dragging it to my bedside before sitting. “It seems I am the source of every one of life’s problems this morning. Got angsty because you couldn’t do anything productive?”

“Got angsty,” I confirmed. “I just don’t understand why someone would shoot me to steal my alpaca. I’ve gone over my cases in Chicago about a hundred times. I can’t think of a single person who would hunt me down in Nebraska to kill me. If they were after me, why take Sally? It would have been easier to shoot her, too.”

“That thought had crossed my mind. Seein’ it was right on the way home, your mom and I had a look at where you’d been shot. You left a lot of blood on the ground, son.” Disapproval deepened my father’s voice. “The shooter didn’t leave a scent marker for us, but your Sally sure did. She sure does like spittin’, doesn’t she?”

Mom stayed in the doorway, crossed her arms over her chest, and smiled.

Uh oh. When my mother smiled like that, she was preparing to cause a lot of trouble for someone. “I wouldn’t say she likes it. She makes the most disgusted little face after she spits, like she doesn’t understand why she’d do something so awful to herself.”

“Thanks to her spittin’ habit, I was able to find the direction the truck went. I’m thinkin’ your mom and I are gonna go on a ride later today.”

“On Hopper and Skunk?”

“No, son. Motorcycles. Our poor old horses wouldn’t like us taking them on a ride like that. Ain’t no one ridden them in years. Harold’s gonna watch over ‘em while we’re gone, and since you’ll be locked up here for a few days, I reckon you won’t miss us much, right?”

Mom and Dad teaming up for a hunt worried me. Dad pulling out his worst southern drawl meant he fully intended to cause trouble wherever he went. The police department kept them separated for a reason. Alone, either one of them could amass major property damage in a few minutes when left unsupervised. Dad did it with his bare hands. Mom did it with her guns.

Together, I feared for any building they went into. It always amazed me their house was still standing.

“Try not to get arrested. I can’t afford to bail you out, and even if I could, I won’t.” I took my time glaring at each of them. “That means if you find the shooter, you do not beat the daylights out of him. You call the cops in the appropriate jurisdiction and let them arrest him. ‘Arrest him’ is not a euphemism for ‘beat the daylights out of him.’ Am I understood?”

“If he tries to run, we will restrain him,” Dad growled.