Which meant that if Colby was free, he always did the fugitive-hunting. He was too good on a trail for Martin to choose anyone else.
“This one’s yours,” Martin confirmed.
Gretchen sighed. “When is it going to come in handy that I’m human? Just asking.”
“You being you comes in handy all the time,” Colby said honestly.
Gretchen was an amazing Marshal: tough, fair, smart, funny, and dogged. Colby had no doubt she’d be the one elevated to the boss’s chair when Martin someday retired. But she had been surrounded by shifters her whole life, first with her lynx-shifter family and now with their team, and he knew that it sometimes wore on her to always be the odd girl out.
Colby had never asked her about the strange circular scar he’d noticed on her shoulder, but he knew what it was. At some point in her life, she’d persuaded some unscrupulous shifter to bite her in the hope of turning into what she’d somehow been robbed of being at birth. Whatever had happened, the transformation hadn’t taken. All she’d been left with was the scar—and a good, cheerful front that sometimes collapsed.
Colby had tried to get her to talk to him about it, but she always just blew him off. No big deal, she always said. It was just the way things were.
Now, Gretchen just smiled at him. “Thanks. You want some company on this one?”
“Fine by me.” Secretly, he never liked working on his own as much as working with a partner or, better still, a team. “Boss? Can I steal Gretchen?”
Martin was about to answer, but then his phone buzzed. When he looked down at it, a bemused grin crossed his face.
“No, you can’t, because I need her here. You too, Theo. It never rains but it pours.”
“What’s up?” Gretchen said.
“We’re getting a high-profile witness on our doorstep tomorrow afternoon, and he’s going to need a new identity and the whole works. It sounds like there’s an entire East Coast crime syndicate chasing after him, so we need to make his new life strong and we need to make it fast. And we need to keep a full-time guard on him while we do it. Colby, will you be okay on your own?”
“Sure.” He tried to inject enough cheerfulness into his voice.
He would be okay on his own. He just wished—
But his loneliness since his dad had died wasn’t even remotely his team’s problem. It wasn’t their fault that wolves were meant to have packs. Other shifters weren’t, and he had to respect that.
It had been a couple of years now. He was getting used to it.
Then he thought of a legitimate bright side.
“Besides,” he said, “it’ll give me a chance to get my favorite photographer’s autograph.”
“You have a favorite photographer,” Gretchen said. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Because I look cool, but you know I’m just a nerd like the rest of you?”
“Stay out of trouble,” Martin said.
Colby snorted. “Trouble is my middle name.”
“Your middle name is Ignatius,” Gretchen said.
“I regret telling you that.”
“I have a cousin named Ignatius,” Theo offered as consolation.
That didn’t help. Theo’s cousins all had weird draconian names like Romulus or Alistair the Undying. Colby knew Theo and Jillian were trying to get pregnant; he had his fingers crossed for them to have a son named Bob or a daughter named Sally. That would stick it to the hoity-toity side of Theo’s hometown.
“Once more without all the jokes,” Martin said. “Colby, don’t get into trouble.”
We will not get into trouble, Colby’s wolf growled. Its fur was standing on end, a spiky bristle that Colby could feel at the bottom of his subconscious. We will be the trouble. Find. Kill. Protect.
That was a little more savage than his wolf tended to get, but at the moment, Colby agreed.