This didn’t mark the end of his working day, though. Once he was done with all of the computer business, he’d head out into the Park itself. The sun would be setting by then—just barely, it was late these days, here in the middle of July—and he’d shift into his snow leopard form to do a long patrol of the major tourist areas.
He’d check on anywhere that had been a problem; today, that was that area of the lake where the waterweed was out of control, and ready to tangle up unwary swimmers. Then he’d finish up with a good run along some path that he’d been neglecting lately, refresh his understanding of what the landscape was doing. Finally, he’d head home to his cabin.
It was a satisfying way to spend a workday. Cal was aware that he was among the luckiest men he’d ever met. He’d come home from Iraq over ten years ago, sure that he was going to end up another out-of-work vet sitting around with his memories—good and bad.
Instead, Major Wilson Hanes, the best officer he’d ever served under, had called him up about five minutes after his feet touched American soil again, to tell him he had a job for him.
Major Hanes had set him up at Glacier. Knowing Cal was a shifter—Hanes was a snow leopard shifter himself, and involved in the top-secret military echelons who knew about shifters and used them to the best of their abilities—he’d found the place in America most likely to make a snow leopard feel at home.
Cal had never had the chance to express his gratitude. But someday he was going to find a way.
Now, he’d spent ten years working every day in the wild, rocky, endless natural expanse of Glacier National Park, and he wouldn’t give it up for anything.
Cal was brought out of his thoughts by a knock at his office door.
He indulged himself by playing one of his favorite guessing games. The knock was quick and confident, loud but not the echoing thump of a large fist—rather, the rap of a small one. Teri.
“Come,” he called.
Sure enough, the little blonde head that poked around the door belonged to Teri Lowell, his newest hire and the second-newest member of Glacier’s little cabal of snow leopards.
“Sorry to bother you,” Teri said. Cal could hear the sir that she’d almost tacked on to the end of that.
He wished he could police the silent “sirs” as thoroughly as he did the audible ones. No Marine gunnery sergeant wanted to be called “sir.” Cal worked for a living, after all.
“I need your help,” Teri was saying earnestly.
“Come on in, then,” Cal said, nodding to one of the chairs in front of his desk.
Teri stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She looked nervous, Cal noticed, which wasn’t like her. Normally she was one of the most confident, chipper employees he’d ever had. Something must have gone wrong.
“All right, out with it,” he said, mentally bracing himself for news of a missing tourist or an injury. Surely Teri would’ve learned by now that something of that nature needed to be reported right away, without any hesitation.
“It’s my sister,” Teri said in a rush. Then she bit her lip.
Cal frowned. That was unexpected. “Your sister’s at the Park?”
“No, no.” Teri shook her head. “Sorry. This isn’t Park business. It’s...pack business.”
Cal sat back in his chair, trying to look thoughtful, and not like he was possessed by a growing wariness.
Pack business. What was pack business? Cal had done his very best, as more leopards showed up at Glacier and clustered around him, to make it clear that he wasn’t running a kingdom or a dictatorship, and that they were all adults who could live their own lives just fine. And if they couldn’t, well, they probably needed help he couldn’t give them.
But now Teri, one of the most capable young women he knew, was coming to him with “pack business.”
“My sister’s in trouble,” Teri said, leaning forward so her elbows were on her knees. “There’s a shifter stalking her. A mountain lion.”
That stopped Cal’s thoughts in their tracks.
“A mountain lion,” he said slowly.
A mountain lion stalking a woman. A human woman? She must be: Teri had only been turned a few months ago, and Cal understood that there’d been some issues with her family not liking shifters.
It wasn’t his business at all, so he’d kept his nose out and his attention on Teri’s work, not her family life. But if her sister was human, and a shifter was stalking her—
“What do you mean, stalking?” Cal asked. “Just following her? Threatening her?”
“She said he’s shown up outside her job, following her car as she went home, showing up in the parking lot where she was shopping,” Teri said, twisting her fingers together. “She’s afraid. She doesn’t know what he wants, or what to do. I’m the only shifter she really knows, but I’ve only been a shifter for a few months, and I don’t know much about the community here. Zach really doesn’t either.”