“I’ll get it for you,” he reassured her.
Debbie took hold of his arm. “You’re already suffering from hypothermia. Let someone else do it.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m already wet. We’ll get warm and dry real soon.” Their wolf pack didn’t have wolves working for the sheriff’s department, except for Paul and Allan as contracted divers. So they had to take care of their own. Not that he could let on to Debbie why that was so.
At the edge of the culvert, he dropped the blanket on top of the snow.
Despite already being soaking wet and chilled to the marrow of his bones, he felt even colder when he entered the water. But his faster wolf healing abilities would help him overcome this more quickly, than if any human responders had to deal with it.
He waded out, then dove into the submerged SUV, glad Debbie had returned to the hatchback to protect herself from the chilling wind. He pulled his flashlight out, just in case he needed it and to ensure no one would question how he could find the purse in the dark if anyone happened to be watching. He was certain Debbie would be, to ensure he would return safely.
He located the black leather bag resting on the roof of the upside-down SUV and pulled it out. Clutching the purse against his chest, fearful he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it in the fast-moving water, he waded through it until he reached the shore. On the shore, he grabbed up the blanket and wrapped it around himself, then trudged slowly up the slope to the waiting ambulance. He felt as if he were wearing wet cement shoes.
“Thank you,” Franny said, taking her sopping wet bag and holding it tightly to her body, as if it was her baby too.
With the ambulance doors now shut, but before the ambulance took off for the clinic, a bark came from inside. Then with its lights flashing and siren blaring, the ambulance headed for the clinic as some of the sheriff’s men arrived at the scene.
Debbie was staring at the ambulance as it drove away. “Did you hear a dog bark inside the ambulance?”
“No.” A wolf, yes. Dog? No.
“You should have let someone else get her bag, Allan. You’re not invincible,” she said, shaking hard as they sat inside the vehicle with the heat blasting, a cold north wind sweeping across the area as they waited to speak to the police officers who had arrived.
“Well,” said Rowdy Sanderson, a homicide detective, his blue eyes considering the two of them, “why don’t you get into something warm and dry before both of you need hospitalization too. I’ll handle this until you can file a report.”
“What the hell are you doing here? No dead bodies,” Allan said. He knew Rowdy was here because Debbie was.
“Could have been,” Rowdy said, glancing at Debbie.
“Thanks, we’re out of here,” Allan said. They had to get into dry clothes pronto.
Allan and Debbie were always on call if something came up. They had been finishing up some paperwork on a murder case—a car buried in water in one of the area lakes. The driver had contusions that were probably not due to the car accident. More likely, the victim had been beaten and the car accident had been staged. He and Debbie were just on their way to get some lunch when they had seen the SUV upside down in the culvert.
“I want to drop by the clinic as soon as we can change and get warmed up.” Debbie leaned down to pull off a boot, and then the other. She slid off a wet sock, dropping it on the floor, then struggled to get the other off.
“Agreed. I can drop you off at your place, let you get a hot shower, dry your hair, and dress. I’ll pick you up, and we’ll head on over there.”
The clinic took only lupus garous in for long-term care. In an emergency, they would provide care for humans, stabilizing the patient so they could be sent off to the hospital in Bigfork. That meant human visitors rarely came to the clinic. They would have to be on alert when Debbie dropped by to see Franny and her baby.
“Thanks, sounds like a good plan,” she said.
Debbie pulled off her sopping-wet sweater and dumped it on the floor. This was the first time in the four and a half months they’d worked together that they’d had a situation like this, where they needed to get warm and dry pronto, and were too far from anywhere to do it quickly. He hadn’t expected Debbie to start stripping though. It was a good idea, but he just hadn’t predicted it.
Next, came her black turtleneck. He was trying to concentrate on the ice and snow-covered road, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw that her bra was purple and white polka-dotted silk. He smiled a little, never figuring her for wearing bright and fanciful underwear.
She unfastened her bra and dropped it on the floor. He nearly missed his turn to the main road that would take him to Whitefish. He really was trying to be a gentleman, but, hell, he’d worked with her for months, and lots of times he’d envisioned what she would look like naked when she was wearing a skintight diving suit. Now she was stripping next to him?
Not that this wasn’t essential to their, well, her good health, but it was wreaking havoc with his libido, despite how cold and wet he was. He was a wolf, after all. But he was going to have a damn accident if he wasn’t careful.
She used one of the towels they kept in the car when they went diving to cover her waist and another to dry herself off.
Thankfully, she was concentrating on pulling on a dry turtleneck and then a sweater, too cold to notice him glance at her. They always kept a couple pairs of clothes in backpacks in the car for diving and emergencies. She struggled to get her jeans off next, and then wiggled out of her panties, which matched her bra.
As soon as she’d pulled on the rest of her dry clothes, zipped her parka up to her throat, and tugged her ski hat on, she said, “Pull over. You’ve got to get out of your wet things too.”
“I bet you say that to all the guys you dive with.” He pulled onto the shoulder and they switched places, the cold outdoors feeling even icier.
She laughed. “If I were diving with Lou Messer, probably not. His brand-new wife told the sheriff if he paired Lou up with me, he’d be leaving the police dive force.”
Allan smiled. “I heard she checks up on him all the time, wanting to know where he’s at, what he’s doing, is he safe. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with her. If I did, I’d probably say something and get myself into trouble.”
“Yeah, but everyone needs your expertise, so they’re stuck with you.”
He laughed. “Stuck with me, eh?”
“It can be a good thing. I still can’t believe you went back for Franny’s purse. They could have gotten it when they pulled her SUV out of the culvert.”
“You know how women are. She was probably afraid of losing her credit cards, cash, driver’s license, no telling what. Maybe a special keepsake she was afraid might be lost.”
Then it was Allan’s turn to remove his wet clothes. He moved the passenger seat as far back as he could to give himself more leg room, and began the tedious project, his fingers numb with cold, and the shivering impeding his progress.
“Well, it was sweet of you, but too risky.”
After he got a dry flannel shirt and wool sweater on and had yanked a wool ski hat over his head, he finally felt relief. Then he tugged at his boots, socks, and jeans. When he got down to his black boxers, Debbie said, “I figured you for white briefs.”
“I figured you’d wear white lacy bikini panties and bra.”
“You looked!” But she was smiling when she said it.
He chuckled and pulled on a pair of blue briefs, jeans, socks, and a pair of dry boots.
All dry now, he was feeling a hell of a lot better. His hair was cut short, but Debbie’s was long. He was certain her wet hair was making her cold still, but the hat she wore would keep the heat from escaping in the meantime.
He got a call on his cell and fumbled to get it out of the console, realizing then he was still feeling some of the effects of the hypothermia. The call was from Paul. He and the rest of the SEAL wolf team members still did contract missions together, but they’d put that part of their life mostly on hold while they raised families. The shared responsibility of raising lupus garou pups was all too important to a pack like theirs.