Mistakenly Mated by Sonnet O'Dell Page B

the joint with a raised eyebrow.
    Willard quickly twisted the tip of it, putting it out. He stuffed it into his pocket, wafting the strange smelling smoke away from them as he stood.
    “Hey, Willard. I need you help with something.”
    “With what? I don’t know anything,” he said defensively.
    Kerry pressed her hand to her side where her wound was slowly knitting together. “What do you know about this?”
    Willard looked like a spooked cat momentarily and then tried to act way too cool. He leaned against a display, knocking it over and sending boxes of turkey loads spilling across the floor. He scrambled to pick them up.
    “Absolutely nothing. Well, I heard a bit here and there. I’m sorry it happened,” he said while loading up his arms dropping the boxes on the counter. He wiped a palm across his forehead, flicking sweat onto the floor.
    Kerry smelled the rank stench of his nerves even over the dope. Willard had to know he sweated like a pig in a butchers shop. He was a wolf too—that was how they knew each other.
    “Yeah, me too. I came to you because my mate is pretty sure he knows who shot me. If I can just take a look at your book and see who you’ve sold a rifle to recently.”
    Willard grabbed the rest of the boxes, dumping them onto the counter. He shook his head. “Kerry you know I can’t just let you go looking at those. Daddy would kill me. It ain’t my shop yet.”
    Kerry strolled along the counter, stroking her finger over the wooden frame as she walked closer to him. Willard backed up spooked.
    “Your daddy would also kill you if he knew you were smoking that crap on his dime, wouldn’t he? You don’t have to help me but I think we ought to phone him and let him know you’re not fit to work right now.”
    Willard’s father was a bit of an old bully. Unfortunately for him, he had early onset arthritis pretty bad in all his joints. That meant he couldn’t stand for hours, minding the store. He certainly couldn’t shoot anymore. It would make him really mad to have to come down to the store because his son was strung out from smoking pot again.
    “K…Kerry, that’s not nice.”
    “Just a quick peek at your book to see if there is a name on it and we’re all good.”
    Willard stared at her with an intense and strange look of concentration on his face. “That’s blackmail. I don’t like that.”
    “Well, I didn’t particularly care for being shot and I want the son of a bitch that did it,” she said, letting a growl flow into her voice.
    Willard shook a little. His eyes darted around, as if deeply suspicious that someone listened to them. He nodded his head in the direction of a beaded curtain that led to the back of the store.
    She smiled at him, going underneath it and to the ledger where they kept of all purchases. Willard’s father was a stickler for knowing who bought what in his store. If a police investigation ever cropped up, which it could do considering some locals’ fondness for drinking and shooting, he wanted to be sure that the persons responsible could be tracked. He didn’t want his business getting shut down.
    It was all kept in a ledger because Willard and his father were both too poorly schooled about how to work a computer with any degree of skill. Willard had to rely on his cousin, who went all the way through school, to come over at the end of the week to check his figures.
    Kerry found the leather volume sitting open on the counter. She counted backwards a day or so after she and Caleb became mated. Kerry assumed it would have taken at least a day maybe two for whoever shot her to make a plan and purchase a gun Kerry focused on the numbers, names, and descriptions of the purchases.
    She heard Willard out in the store turn the lock on the door and flip the sign over from open to closed. Kerry looked up at a clock mounted on the wall. It was 12:00 p.m. From what she knew, the store always closed between twelve and one for lunch. Willard would let her out when