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  Caught Between Shifters

  Text Copyright © 2017 by Juniper Hart

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2017

  Publisher

  Secret Woods Books

  [email protected]

  www.SecretWoodsBooks.com

  Caught Between Shifters

  Birch Mountain Alphas

  By: Juniper Hart

  Table of Contents

  Caught Between Shifters

  Bonus Content

  Vampire Romances

  Caught Between Shifters

  Prologue

  “Ranger, here boy! Come here, Ranger!”

  The dog emitted a low growl and Gus pushed the brush aside, peering after his German Shepherd. The animal had paused by the edge of the canal, his brown ears flat against his head, obviously finding something that upset him.

  “Ranger, what have you got, buddy? You find a rabbit? Squirrel?”

  Ranger barked, and Gus could hear the high whine in his tone, causing a spike of prickles up his spine. How many times had the elderly hiker walked the shores of Little Wind River without incident, despite the fact he was on reservation land? Was that about to change?

  Not on my watch, Gus thought, touching his gun holster on his hip.

  He slowly moved toward the dog, his eyes straining to see what his companion saw.

  “Ranger?”

  A guttural sound filled the air and Ranger pawed at the ground, his demeanor agitated. Gus almost didn’t accept the sound as coming from his beloved pet, and he was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. He joined his dog and peered into the waterway.

  “What is it?” he asked aloud, as if he were expecting the canine to respond.

  Ranger whined and backed away, leaving his master to ponder what had spooked him so much.

  No, I don’t want any part of this, Gus thought, stifling the urge to run away from the banks, but he knew he could not escape what he was about to see. What if it was somebody that needed help.

  Four trash bags were floating at the surface, each one of them tightly closed with a knot, and Gus instinctively knew what they were. Grinding his teeth, he looked around for a stick, which he found nearby on the dusty ground.

  Ranger barked in protest, but Gus ignored him, reaching out with the branch to pull the bags toward him.

  As he opened the first one, Gus gasped when he saw a human hand fall out of the plastic. He was so startled that the stick fell from his hand, and Gus shakily fumbled for his cell phone. He watched as the stick floated back away from his spot, his trembling fingers dialing 9-1-1.

  “Riverton Sheriff’s Department,” a monotonous voice answered. “What’s your emergency?

  “I…” Gus swallowed. “I think I found a body,” he choked out.

  “Where are you, sir?”

  “Just—just below the Heritage Trail, on the—the reservation, in the water—”

  “How do you know it’s a body, sir?”

  “Just get someone out here!” Gus snapped furiously, still trembling and still stuttering out his words. “It’s a body. In pieces.” He hung up the phone before the dispatcher could speak again and slumped to the ground, shaking. Ranger drew near, nuzzling his head in Gus’ neck. The gesture was so intimate, as if Ranger were trying to comfort him, and the realization of what he had just seen hit the old man and made him start crying.

  Those goddamn monsters, he thought, tears falling from his bleary red eyes. They will never stop, never!

  Ranger poked at him with his snout, urging Gus to rise. Laboriously, Gus obeyed the dog’s subtle plea, rising to his feet.

  He wanted no part in this discovery.

  After all, it wasn’t the first dead body found in Riverton, and it likely wasn’t going to be the last, either. Not while those beasts still roamed the countryside.

  Chapter One

  Rose glanced up as the file hit her desk, casting her prim bob in a flutter of red about her forehead.

  “What’s this?” she asked, barely glancing at the manila folder before turning back to her computer.

  “A case.”

  Rose snorted derisively and rolled her steel green eyes up towards the ceiling, as if praying for mercy to the ever-unresponsive man in the sky.

  “Yeah. Not gonna happen,” she asserted, gesturing around the overflowing pile of papers before her.

  Jersey grinned and flopped into a chair, leaning forward to put her hands around her round cheeks.

  “I tried to warn you that you didn’t want to work here,” she said, “but you were so impressed with the name on the door.”

  Rose grimaced and sat back in her swivel chair and smiled at the woman, who was in her late twenties. Although they were only coworkers, Jersey was probably the closest thing Rose had to a friend.

  “You know, I went to law school for a reason, Jers. It’s not my fault there’s only one law firm worth a damn in Riverton.”

  “Well, you can’t complain then,” Jersey chuckled. “And Pawson is going to milk every billable hour from you.”

  “I can’t handle anything else right now, Jersey!” Rose exclaimed, lifting her hands in exasperation. She took the folder Jersey had dropped on her desk and started to open it. “I have six cases, three of which are going to trial. How the hell can he expect me to take on—” She trailed off as she glanced at the papers inside the folder. “A murder charge? What is this?”

  “Surely you’ve heard about this,” Jersey replied. “It was all over the news. Party gone bad. Twenty-one-year-old girl died—”

  “Ah yes, Derek Van Gould’s house.” Sighing, Rose studied the case more closely. “Which one of the defendants are we looking at?”

  “Chance Van Gould.”

  Rose scoffed slightly and shook her short red bob quickly. “No way,” she confirmed again. “With that name, I’m not inspired. Anyway, Senior can afford the best lawyers in Cheyenne. I’m sure he has half a dozen on retainer. Why would he want Peterson and Pawson to represent his boy?”

  Jersey shrugged her shoulders. “I’m just the messenger. Pawson told me to send this to you and I have done my duty. If you have any questions, I’m pretty sure you can find him on the golf course. Thanks to you, he has a lot more time for that these days.”

  Rose gritted her teeth and turned back to the research she was doing. “I’ll tell him myself, then,” she replied shortly.

  Jersey chuckled and rose from the chair. “Yeah, sure you will,” she taunted as she exited the tiny office.

  Rose opened her mouth to object, but the paralegal was already gone, leaving her to stew in the unfairness of her situation.

  Of course Jersey was right; it didn’t matter how many cases the managing partner threw at her, Rose knew she would find a way to handle all of them.

  She had been working for the upscale firm since graduating from the University of Wyoming College of Law two years earlier. At first, Rose had been flattered at the ready job offer. It had come immediately, sweeping her off her feet like a white knight on a plated horse.

  Ron Pawson had approached her upon her return home to Riverton and taken her to the only five-star restaurant in the small town.

  “Ours is not a huge firm obviously,” Pawson had told her, smiling warmly over their dinner on East
Pershing Avenue. “But there is room for advancement if you want it.”

  “I do!” Rose had blurted out. “I really do!” She would have been a fool not to entertain the offer.

  Still, at the time, it didn’t occur to her that Ron Pawson didn’t have much of a pool in which to fish from when it came to recruitment.

  Rose reasoned that Ron’s generous invitation had come through his friendship with her father, but to her surprise, Clive Bridgemont had been leery of the attorney’s job proposal.

  “Are you sure you want to stay in Riverton?” Clive had asked his daughter, shocking Rose. “Surely you would find better use for your talents in a bigger city.”

  “Dad, are you trying to get rid of me?” Rose had joked tersely, but her father hadn’t smiled. Things had been somewhat tense between father and daughter since Clive had remarried.

  “No,” he’d sighed. “I would never want to get rid of you, sweetheart.”

  Clive hadn’t elaborated on his cryptic question and Rose hadn’t pushed the issue. A part of her knew why he had said it, but it wasn’t something they had ever discussed.

  What Ron Pawson hadn’t mentioned was that he had intended to dump every case on her lap while he began the trek toward early retirement.

  One junior partner and three associates worked in the firm, but it seemed to Rose that as the newest recruit, she took the brunt of the work. They all seemed content to also drop their homework onto her, and Rose was far too ambitious to refuse the challenge.

  I need to put my foot down, Rose thought. I’m already putting in seventy hours a week here. I’m going to burn out before I get any real cases and earn my stripes.

  But Rose knew she would do no such thing. Until she dropped dead from exhaustion, she would keep taking the work as Jersey placed it on her desk, a place where she could not see the smooth wood finish.

  Chance Van Gould. Ugh.

  The mere sound of his name in her head made her cringe.

  The Van Goulds were the wealthiest family in Riverton. Derek Van Gould, the patriarch of the family, was a real estate mogul who had made his millions flipping properties before it had become trendy. He had two children: Chase, a twenty-five-year-old playboy, and Christiana, who was the same age as the woman who had died at the party two weeks earlier.

  While Rose didn’t know the specifics of the case, she had caught bits and pieces through the news outlets and on social media. The victim, an exchange student from Japan named Suki Makanora, had been staying with a host family and had gone along to one of the infamous Van Gould shindigs.

  What had happened next was a matter of speculation. Suki was found dismembered in Little Wind River, purportedly weighted down but someone had done an amateurish job.

  Maybe like a bunch of entitled assholes who put more value on shoes than a human life, Rose thought contemptuously.

  It had taken the investigators no time to figure out where Suki Makanora had last been, but the coroner had ruled her cause of death undetermined. Still, Chase Van Gould and three other men were being charged with the murder.

  “I guess a plea deal is going to be out of the question,” Rose muttered aloud. She pushed the information aside and turned to gaze out the window.

  I shouldn’t be touching this case, she thought, goosebumps covering her arms. I’m not experienced in murder cases and certainly not in one as high profile as this. Why is Pawson giving this to me? Why did Derek Van Gould hand this to him in the first place?

  Rose had a very good inkling as to why and she didn’t like it—not one bit.

  “Must be nice to have nothing to do,” someone quipped from the doorway. Rose turned her chair to look at the speaker and smirked.

  “Funny man,” she replied as Julian Morrow sauntered inside her office. He was just what Rose needed right now: a few minutes of witty remarks and a nice, relaxed conversation. “I was just planning my own funeral. I’m going for cheap but chic. What do you think? A piñata? Some beers?”

  “You won’t be that lucky,” Julian laughed. “I’ve been planning mine for five years. I wake up every morning thinking, ‘Yay! One day closer to death!’ And yet…”

  They smiled at one another. Julian was just a couple years older than her. Although he was attractive with his dark hair and muscular body, she had never seen him as more than a friend.

  “I heard Pawson dumped the Van Gould case on you,” Julian said, sliding into the chair that Jersey had just abandoned. “That’s interesting.”

  “It’s stupid,” Rose mumbled, her shiny eyes glancing up at the doorway, as if she feared being overhead. The house investigator chuckled.

  “That depends on how you look at it. Stupid for the prosecution.”

  She eyed him.

  “What do you want, Julian? You didn’t walk the ten steps to my office just to flatter me, did you?”

  He laughed and seemed embarrassed by the question. Rose was endeared by the blush touching his cheeks.

  “Ah, you know me so well, Rose. Actually, Pawson has instructed me to be at your disposal for the Van Gould case.”

  Rose’s auburn eyebrow shot up.

  “Really?”

  Julian nodded.

  “Yep. You can use me however you want,” he told her, and Rose nodded slowly, unsure if there was some sort of innuendo there.

  “Good to know,” said Rose, already feeling a little less frustrated with her amount of work. “I literally just got this, so I’m going to need some time to go over what we’re dealing with, but it doesn’t look too good for Chase or the other three men.”

  “They’re trying them together. He’s out on bail right now.”

  “How much?”

  “Two million.”

  Rose released a whistle from between her straight teeth.

  “It’s nice to have chump change like that rolling around, huh?” she commented sarcastically.

  “I’m sure that old man Van Gould will spare no expense when it comes to his baby boy.”

  “I’m not sure old man Van Gould is going to be able to buy his baby boy out of trouble this time,” said Rose. “This kid has a record longer than my shopping list. And trust me, that’s saying a lot. I hate going shopping. We’re going to have to consider a plea.”

  Julian crossed his arms over his chest. “Good luck convincing him of that. Anyway, the Japanese consulate and the Makanora family are not likely to accept those terms. And the Freemont County DA has a personal grudge against a Derek Van Gould. Something about Van Gould taking his parking spot at the club, I think. I’m sure whoever the prosecutor is will have carte blanche to use all the dirty tricks in the book.”

  Rose gritted her teeth together.

  If only Julian were joking. It probably was just as ridiculous as all that. It had nothing to do with justice—all politics, all the time.

  “Well, I really shouldn’t be saying anything until I talk to Chase, anyway,” she sighed. “Is he under house arrest?”

  “Nope,” Julian answered, “but he is on record as staying at the mansion.”

  “Having a party, no doubt,” Rose grunted, and Julian laughed, standing.

  “I’m heading over to Gina’s. You want a slice?”

  “Yes, please. Three… no, four slices,” Rose said as she reached for her purse and pulled out a twenty, but Julian waved it away, eyeing her appreciatively.

  “Nah, I got this one, boss. I love a woman who can eat.” He turned from the door and gave her a wink, his hazel eyes amused. “Something tells me this is going to be a fun ride.”

  Rose shrugged her slender shoulders. “Cross your fingers and hope for a plea bargain,” she replied, her attention already back on her computer screen.

  But as Julian left to get lunch, Rose had a feeling that he was right; they had their work cut out for them on that one.

  ***

  It was almost nine o’clock when Rose returned home to her two-bedroom house on Ash Street. Sadie, her Siamese cat, mewled in exasperation as she entered
the house.

  “I know, I know,” she told the animal. “I’m late again.” Sadie was not impressed with her half-apology and turned her cream-colored body away.

  Rose dropped her keys on the table by the front door and locked up behind herself before wandering after the cat. Sadie eyed her with wide, crossed eyes, as if to remind her that it was time for treats.

  “Mine first,” Rose told the feline, who meowed in protest as she poured herself a glass of chardonnay from the fridge. “Oh, you can wait. You didn’t have a shit day. You slept and shed all day. I don’t want to hear a word from you.”

  Taking a sip, Rose reached for the treat bag and laid out several snacks for the cat. Sadie purred happily and ate them, running to rub her sleek body against Rose’s legs.

  Rose was tired, but she knew her night was nowhere close to being done. She hadn’t even started looking at the Van Gould case, and she had a deposition in the morning for a slip and fall case against a grocery store.

  I can’t agree to the Van Gould case, she thought, flopping onto the sofa. What is Pawson thinking? Not only do I not have the time, if I drop the ball on this, I will never work in Riverton again. Hell, I may never even work in Wyoming again. Maybe Dad will get his wish and I’ll be exiled to some anonymous town where no one knows my name or my shame.

  Her pessimism was sometimes her best quality. She downed the rest of her wine and opened her laptop.

  I better prepare myself in case Pawson doesn’t come to his senses, she thought. Rose had a sneaking suspicion that Pawson was crazy but also smart. There had to be a method to his madness. And I’m not really in a place to argue with him, Rose considered. At least I have Julian on my team. I wonder if he’s giving me a paralegal to help as well.

  She opened a search engine, pulling the Van Gould case file from her attache case, and began to make notes on whatever she could find.

  As a criminal attorney, Rose often found herself thinking like a detective on the case. I start from the outside and work my way to the heart of the matter. It had served her well in the past, but she had never worked a murder case before.