He glanced at me, but didn’t slow down. “I’m not sure about anything,” Wade admitted. He’d worn a furrow between his brows over the last three days, and I hadn’t seen him this distraught since his parents died.
Especially since our wolves were pushing us to get her back.
Shelby had counseled us to reach out but give Caitlyn space, so we’d sent only one text each, one on Monday and one yesterday, offering our apologies and begging to talk to her. We didn’t call her, and we’d originally decided that showing up at her place would be too intrusive. But now that we were at her office, I was second-guessing our choice.
“Well, I guess we’ll find out.” We rounded the bend in the hallway and headed toward her lab. When we got there, though, the outer doors were locked. I peered through the glass window, but the lights in her office were also off. My wolf hearing didn’t detect any sound from inside. I picked up a hint of her scent, but only because she’d spent time in this space, not because she was present. It would have been much more potent.
Already on edge, something about finding her lab and office empty felt ominous to me. Like our mate had made some significant change or, fuck—what if she was too upset to come into work? Considering how much she loved her job, that would be awful.
And it was all our fault.
“Well, I guess that answers that,” Wade said with a sigh. “Let’s go to her place.”
We returned the way we came, passing a group of students who’d just gathered outside a classroom.
“Did you hear about Andrews?” one of them asked.
I slowed my pace, glancing at Wade to see if he’d heard as well. He gave me a nod. We paused and studied a bulletin board, although I had no idea what the posters were about. With our wolf hearing, it was easy for us to listen in.
“I heard he got fired, but I didn’t hear why,” a young woman answered.
“He’s not fired yet—it has to go up before the ethics committee, but I heard they’re having an emergency meeting to discuss it. Dr. Johanssen told me the whole scoop.”
“Tell me! I couldn’t get the whole story,” the gossiping young woman exclaimed.
We headed into the stairwell but paused, listening to the rest of the conversation, just as riveted.
“Johanssen said he’s on the ethics committee and if the story’s true, Andrews will certainly lose his position.”
“What story?”
“You know how Dr. Shriver has been collecting data on wolves?”
I went still, even holding my breath.
“No, but okay,” the student answered.
“Well, I guess she somehow found out that Andrews was using her trackers to sell the locations of wolves to hunters. It’s totally illegal to hunt them in this part of Wyoming!”
“Holy shit, that’s… evil,” someone replied.
“I know, right? I guess she’s headed out to find the wolves and remove the tags.”
What the fuck?
I met Wade’s gaze, both vindicated and anguished over this information. We’d heard enough.
We jogged down the steps and burst out of the building to talk.
“She did it,” Wade said. “She figured it out.”
I took my Stetson off, stabbed my fingers through my hair. “I know. I’m so damn proud of her, but it kills me that she had to do it alone. That we weren’t here to back her up, standing behind her all the way. And now she’s going to go out there and untag every wolf?”
Wade shrugged. “They’re all over this corner of the state. It’ll take her weeks, even using the trackers to lead her to the animals.”
“Alone,” I snapped. “She’s going to get her ass spanked for that.”
“When we find her,” Wade added. “But why would she come to any of us? Gib made her feel like she had to prove her innocence. Our mate is desperately trying to clear her name right now.”
Then an even more unsettling thought dropped into my head. “Or worse,” I said. “Maybe she’s not doing this for us at all. Like you said, what if she’s already written us off, and is doing what’s right by the wolves by getting Andrews fired? Saving the rest of the wolves she tagged?” Both scenarios gutted me, since she felt so alone not to come to us or get our help, but to do something dangerous like head back out into the wilderness solo. I started jogging toward my truck. “We’ve got to find her.”
“But where do we even fucking start?”
CAITLYN
My phone rang as I drove into West Springs. Seeing Landry’s name brought on a fresh stab of pain. I hit decline and turned the ringer off. Yes, they’d apologized, but I was still licking my wounds from our break-up. I knew I needed to talk to him and Wade, but first I needed to do right by their wolf-dog population.