Chasing the White Wolf [Skinwalkers 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Skinwalkers 2

  Chasing the White Wolf

  Olivia "Livi" Brackin is hired to take a photo of the elusive white wolf. To complete her assignment, she may have to turn against the three men she’s falling for. They want her to forget the white wolf and stay with them, but she’s not sure she can give up the life she’s worked so hard to obtain.

  Tony, Eric, and Nick Parker have found the woman Tony fell in love with five years earlier. When she unexpectedly shows up in their small mountain town, they’re ready to make her theirs, but a photo of the white wolf in a national magazine could expose skinwalkers as real. Trying to talk Livi out of using the photograph of them in their skinwalker forms is one thing. But keeping her alive is a whole lot harder.

  Will another woman, obsessed with having them as her own, take Livi away from them? Or will Livi be the one to destroy their chance at happiness?

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter, Vampires/Werewolves, Western/Cowboys

  Length: 59,277 words

  CHASING THE WHITE WOLF

  Skinwalkers 2

  Jane Jamison

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  CHASING THE WHITE WOLF

  Copyright © 2013 by Jane Jamison

  First E-book Publication: December 2013

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Chasing the White Wolf by Jane Jamison from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Jane Jamison’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Jamison’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  Hi, everyone!

  Thank you for choosing Chasing the White Wolf as your next book to read. This is the second book in my new Skinwalkers series. I hope you like it!

  Thanks,

  Jane Jamison

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  About the Author

  CHASING THE WHITE WOLF

  Skinwalkers 2

  JANE JAMISON

  Copyright © 2013

  Chapter One

  Olivia Brackin tugged the phone out of her back pocket, then cringed at the caller ID. Nonetheless, she accepted the call. “Hey, Noah, long time no hear.”

  It was a not-so-subtle hint to stop calling her, since he’d phoned her thirty minutes earlier. Which was an hour after his previous call and an hour and a half after the call before that. The duration between calls was growing shorter. Pretty soon he’d be bugging her to Skype with him.

  “Ha-ha. You know I’m going to keep bugging you until I change your mind. Get your ass back to L.A. right now.”

  “Ah, sweet words from my beloved brother. Is that your way of getting me to come home? If it is, it’s not going to work.”

  Olivia pulled her backpack into a better position between her shoulders, then kept walking down the dirt trail of the forest. Coming to the White Mountains of Arizona hadn’t been her idea. If Bradley, her god-awful editor with the rag of a magazine, Fact or Fiction, hadn’t insisted, she’d have spent last night staked out in front of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills hoping, like a dozen or more other photographers, to catch a glimpse and a quick click of the fastest rising pop star, Sela Reynolds. At least then she’d have had a decent cup of hot coffee and cheap takeout food.

  Instead, she’d slept—or tried to—in a rundown motel with no hot water or room service somewhere in between Los Angeles and the nowhere-to-be-found-on-a-map town called Lost Hills. How people could travel like that on a regular basis was beyond her, but if she didn’t wind up with a terrific photo of the elusive white wolf, then more crappy assignments and shabby hotels were in her future.

  “Livi, you need to find a different job. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  “Oh, sure. Why didn’t I think of that? Jobs for photographers are a dime a dozen. The problem is that most of them don’t pay enough to cover my car payment.”

  “You don’t have a car payment.”

  “My point exactly.”

  She’d earned enough to buy her older model Ford Explorer outright, but not enough to get it repaired every time it broke down. She’d had to max out her credit card to rent a car for the trip. That had made her even more upset that she’d been stuck with what she called a “Big Foot” assignment. Searching for a white wolf in a part of the country where there weren’t supposed to be any was the same as trying to have dinner with an alien. It just wasn’t happening.

  “Look, Noah, I appreciate your concern, but until you’re ready to bankroll a photography studio for me then I’m stuck doing ridiculous jobs for shitty magazines.” To make matters worse, she wasn’t even on the rag mag’s payroll. Instead, Bradley hired her as a
freelance photographer. He knew she couldn’t afford to turn down even the worst kind of job for a paycheck.

  “You know I would if I could.”

  Fact was, she did know it. Noah Brackin was a lot of things, including being a player and a half as far as women went, but as a brother he was solid gold. He wasn’t her full brother, although she always thought of him that way. After leaving his wife and getting full custody of their son, Noah’s father had dragged his sullen son along with him when he’d moved in with Olivia’s mother. At least the jerk had finally married her later on. They were far short of the Brady Bunch, but over time, Noah and she had grown as close as two siblings could get, sharing their lives and their dreams.

  The only thing they’d never discussed was his mother. She’d only asked Noah about her one time. After he’d given her complete silence as an answer, she’d let it drop and had never brought it up again.

  “Yeah, I know. You’d set me up big time if you could and I appreciate that. But until one of us wins the lottery, I’ve got to make a living.”

  “I get that. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that I should’ve come along with you. You’re not the outdoor type, and even if you were, going into the wilderness alone isn’t a smart thing to do.”

  “It’s hardly the wilderness.” And yet, as she glanced around the forest surrounding her, she had to admit that it was. She’d brought a pistol along with her, a gun she’d picked up before making the trip, but unless an animal was close enough to bite off her head, she wasn’t sure she could hit anything farther than five feet away. Especially not anything moving. But the gun was better than whipping out her mascara wand and threatening to give it a makeover.

  “You’re not exactly a mountain man, you know. Having to switch from wine to canned beer is the roughest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “You worry about me. I love you for it, but you shouldn’t. I’ll be fine.” She sloughed off the momentary irritation. Damn, how she hated it when her mother or step-father told her “everything will be fine.” That statement usually came right before things went straight into the crapper.

  “Okay. I guess there’s not much I can do about it now anyway.”

  “Now he sees the light.” She leaned against a large rock and eased her backpack to the ground. She’d made the mistake of dumping her bag without thinking once before on a trip to Las Vegas to scope out a rumor that a giant snake was running amok on The Strip. That careless move had cost her a camera lens.

  Damn snakes. She hated them.

  “Just call me if you need me and I’ll get there as fast as humanly possible.”

  Humanly possible? Why’d he have to go and put it like that? Didn’t she already have enough of that supernatural crap to deal with? Fact or Fiction was always on the lookout for stories involving vampires, aliens, and witches.

  “Thanks, bro. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” She clicked off before he could put a time on when she was supposed to check in. Sometimes he acted more like a worrisome mom than her real mom ever had.

  She pulled a hair scrunchie out of the side pocket of the pack and pulled back her hair. If there was one thing she was thankful for, it was that her parents had never allowed Noah to call her “Red.” She’d gotten enough of the nickname throughout school. It was silly how everyone thought she’d like being called that just because she had red hair. Did people with green eyes want to be called “Greenie”?

  She took a swig from her water bottle and gave the wolf assignment more thought. Bradley had insisted that she get a photograph of the white wolf after a rash of reports had come across his desk. As far as she was concerned, the campers were making the whole thing up. They’d most likely gotten drunk sitting by the campfire and had imagined seeing it. But after one of them had managed to record a cell phone video of the wolf, Bradley was gung ho for the project. Never mind that the video was grainy and only lasted a few short seconds. That hadn’t deterred Bradley. He wanted a picture that he could call his own.

  “Get out there, Brackin, and prove that it’s either Fact or Fiction.” The man could work the name of the magazine into almost any conversation.

  “Oh, come on. I’ll just be wasting my time and your money.”

  Nonetheless, Bradley had insisted that she go. She’d finally given in—after all, next month’s rent was looming—and had done her usual research to prepare for the trip.

  After studying the video, she’d gotten to work. White wolves weren’t native to Arizona. As far as she could learn, they were found only in the Canadian Artic and the islands, as well as parts of Alaska and the northern parts of Greenland. So either the wolf that the campers had seen was a freak, maybe an Albino gray wolf—if that was even possible—or it had traveled down from Canada into Arizona, which was almost as unlikely. That or the video was a fake. She’d bank on it being a hoax, but Bradley wanted “on-site confirmation or denial.”

  As far as she was concerned, the whole thing blew chunks.

  A few hours later with nothing to show for her efforts but a couple of blisters from her new hiking boots, she trudged back to the rented Jeep and climbed behind the wheel. GPS wasn’t reliable in the hills so she resorted to the old school method of using a paper map. She skimmed her finger over the dots that indicated towns, but still couldn’t find the name she’d seen on a small sign that was almost hidden behind bushes. As far as she was concerned, if Lost Hills wasn’t big enough to earn a place on a local map, it wasn’t big enough to warrant a visit. And yet, the presence of a sign meant that it was probably closer than any of the other towns listed on the map.

  “I’ll be happy if they have more than a shitty motel. Hell, even a shitty motel sounds good right now.”

  She maneuvered the vehicle back off the dirt road and onto the main road—if a pot-hole-ridden trail could be called a main road—then followed her instincts back to where she’d seen the road sign. Just as she was about to give up and backtrack to see where she’d gone wrong, she turned a corner and came onto the first signs of civilization.

  Whoever had named the town had done a bang-up job. Settled into the trees so that a person couldn’t see anything but the forest unless they looked really hard, Lost Hills might as well have been lost to the rest of the world. Buildings that had seen decades of wear and tear dotted the one street through the town. A Mayberry style barbershop with an old-time red-and-white striped pole had a couple of older men shooting the breeze as they rocked the time away. They stopped their chatter to watch her, and she wasn’t sure that their looks were all that friendly. More shops lined the street and people of various sizes strode along as though they had nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was the complete opposite of the hurried pace of L.A., and if she were honest with herself, it made her a little jumpy.

  Two men stumbled out of the swinging double doors of a bar called The Witches’ Brew, then yelled at someone inside, only to stumble back through the doors. A huge, burly man sporting a handlebar mustache and wearing a black vest and cream colored shirt hooked his thumbs in his jeans and scrutinized her. He looked like one of the characters out of the black-and-white westerns Noah had forced her to watch when they were children.

  When he saw her watching him, he lifted his hand in greeting. Again, she was struck with the impression that the greeting wasn’t as friendly a gesture as it appeared to be. She was still glancing at him in the side mirror when she heard the woman’s yell.

  “Stop!”

  Her head whipped back to the road. Letting out a curse, she slammed her foot on the brake. Her heart was in her throat when she threw the gearshift into park then jumped out of the Jeep.

  “Holy shit, are you all right?”

  The older woman, her arms crossed over her generous bosom, glared at her with eyes the color of silver bullets. Her gray hair was pulled back and streamed down her spine all the way to the rise of her large, round butt.

  “I’m fine. But what if I’d been a child? Wha
t would you have done then, girly?”

  Livi shook her head as she searched the woman for any signs of trauma. “I’m so sorry. I was looking at this man in the side mirror—”

  “I’m well aware of what you were doing. That’s why I jumped in front of you and stopped you.”

  “You jumped in front of me? On purpose?”

  “Well, someone had to make you take notice.”

  The woman was either incredibly brave or foolish. Livi didn’t know which to choose. “O-kay.” Arguing the merit of the woman putting her life in danger wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “I’m just glad you’re all right.”

  “You should watch what you’re doing. That means keeping your eyes on the road ahead of you.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re absolutely right. I swear I’ll be more careful.”

  “See that you are.” She slid the strange silver eyes up and down Livi. “Are you passing through? Not many people come through Lost Hills.”

  So she had made it to Lost Hills. “Yes, I am. Sort of.”

  The older woman’s demeanor lightened with a smile. “Well, girly, either you are or you aren’t. You can’t be doing both. So which is it?”

  “I was looking for Lost Hills, but I was afraid I’d missed it.”

  “Really? We don’t have call for many people to track us down. What are you here for?”

  She started to say, “To find the white wolf and prove it exists. Or the flip side to that,” then thought better of it. “I’m a nature photographer and I thought this would be a great place to catch some super pictures.” Since when had she ever used the word super?