Shelter

by Rhyll Biest

  But what the new inspector really needed was a licence to carry and use a firearm, along with some kind of handheld radio. Possibly a cape and bat signal as well.

  He reached his car first. How could he warn her and what possible reason could she have to take over a job from an inspector who’d been murdered? What could possibly be worth risking Mark’s fate? Though with her, maybe the worst wouldn’t be getting gut-shot. Maybe it would be something else. The thought settled like mud in his gut.

  Never.

  He would never let that happen.

  Chapter 4

  Why the interrogation? What have I done?

  Or did he want to ask her the same questions she kept asking herself—what made you think you could do this job? She bit the side of her tongue to punish herself for such a no-hope thought.

  The sun struck hot and fierce after the cool of the waiting room. Her brain sizzled as she trailed him like a naughty schoolgirl being led to the principal’s office, though they’d hardly send a cop with a body built for special forces to deal with a kid.

  The brutal sun picked out a pale question mark of a scar on the back of his dark head where the hair hadn’t grown back as densely. Broken bottle? Fingernails? Whoever and whatever had attacked him had come up from behind. Had the attack been business, garnered on the job, or personal—a vengeful, spiteful attack by a scorned lover?

  His back, so big and broad, looked custom-made for feminine hands to clutch at and she suspected he fucked just like he walked—with purpose and precision. Until he lost control, that was, and maybe then he fucked like a wild animal, precision falling off him like a shed skin.

  Shit biscuits, why had her mind gone there? Too much sun?

  In the distance, cicadas shrieked in the heat. She searched for her car, was relieved to spot it right where she’d parked it.

  Officer Belovuk stopped in front of a black utility truck, the sort of V8 monster she associated with tradesmen and over-compensating jerks. Perhaps he was an over-compensating jerk, being a cop certainly didn’t disqualify him from that pool. She scanned his tall frame, lean hips and fridge-width shoulders as he leaned against his car. If he were a tree she’d say he had a solid trunk and wide branches.

  Ha-ha-ha. Galenka sneered. Pretending sexy man is tree.

  It was true, Kat wanted to bury her body’s interest. She couldn’t understand it given that she’d been so thoroughly inoculated against cops by her father. Perhaps her immunity was waning. Perhaps Officer Belovuk was her very own booster vaccination.

  He inspected her with eyes long abandoned by colour, until her skin tingled from the visual frisk. Wow, I think he forgot to read me my rights.

  She stilled but, truth to tell, her body was more than a little curious about what it might feel like to have his hands actually skim her contours, or his weight lean into her and physically control her as he searched her for contraband.

  Back it up, he’d told the deadbeat dad, and she wondered if he spoke that rough in bed.

  That was, assuming he was rough.

  He looked rough in his muddy clothes and construction boots but looks could deceive. And he was a cop. She had to keep that in mind. Fortunately, the way he was looking at her suggested he was unlikely to allow her to forget it any time soon.

  ‘You wanted to tell me something, Officer Belovuk?’

  He folded his arms over the chest that screamed ‘prison escapee’. ‘I don’t want to tell you how to do your job …’

  Galenka snarled.

  Kat raised her brows. ‘But you will anyway?’ She could push, test him a little, couldn’t she?

  His face said not. ‘You need to take care around here.’

  ‘Take care?’ Christ, how bossy was he? She baited him. ‘You mean when crossing the street and that sort of thing?’

  He gave her a full-on cop stare, the one that said he could lock her up for the rest of her life on just a whim.

  ‘No, that’s not what I mean. You heard about Mark Fairly, right?’

  She nodded, spit and words deserting her mouth at the murdered inspector’s name.

  ‘Good. Just remember, there’s a reason they set up an animal shelter and clinic out here. There are good parts of Walgarra, and then there are the parts full of broken people. These days, no one comes out here to live because they want to farm, or they like the peace and quiet. They live here because the housing’s cheap, or because they’ve got family in the nearby correctional facility. And there’s plenty of folk around here with three strikes against them—poverty, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a severe drug and alcohol problem. Don’t be fucking with them just to save a cat.’

  His eyes locked with hers, so flat, steady and colourless she had to fight the urge to look away.

  He doesn’t like me. He doesn’t want me to do my job. He doesn’t want me here. He’ll make trouble for me, the worst kind.

  Hot tar coated her lungs, made it hard to breathe. Only five minutes ago she’d been grateful for his help, but now a deep wariness flooded her.

  If he really wanted her gone, he could abuse his power, do all the sorts of things her dad had done as a cop. But she had to do her job. If she didn’t, what would she do? What would she be? This job was meant to redeem her, she had to fight for it.

  Galenka nodded in agreement.

  She assumed her impersonal face, the one she’d honed as a quarantine inspector. ‘I don’t plan to fuck with anybody, but I am going to do my job.’

  A deep silence descended as he assessed her, eyes reflecting nothing but the cloudless sky. ‘You may think I’m a bossy dick who should mind his own business but I’d rather be that than the guy who let you walk into things without any warning.’

  His admission eased her defensiveness a degree. ‘I appreciate your concern but I do have to do my job. No matter what happened to Mark Fairly.’

  He winced at the name, actually winced. ‘I’m not telling you not to do your job. I’m just telling you to pick your fights, be smart, be careful.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’

  He was silent and she felt rather than saw his gaze shift to her hair. ‘Don’t say it,’ she pre-empted. ‘Despite my hair colour I am well and truly capable of controlling my temper.’

  He almost smiled, she was sure of it.

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  He was nearly handsome when he nearly smiled. ‘So how come you’re such a bossy dick?’

  Oh, Galenka. That girl loved to push boundaries, to deliver a verbal chin check to see what people were made of, whether they were a real or an imaginary threat.

  Kat chose to interpret his soft huff as a laugh.

  ‘Guess I was born that way. And there was that school for bossy dicks I attended.’

  The quip pried a half-smirk from her. ‘I guess that answers that.’

  In the silence that fell, a memory of his hand on hers flitted by, along with the odd undercurrent of anticipation it prompted. She studied his rough-hewn features, the jaw like a box full of hammers, and questioned her body’s interest. Why him? Some kind of rescue fantasy because he’d psychologically trounced the deadbeat dad and sent him running out the door with his tail between his legs? Or just because he was one large chunk of very physical male?

  Or—her least favourite option—she was drawn to repeat the same mistakes as her mother. ‘If it makes you feel any better I’ll be accompanied by Evert for my first two days on the job.’

  His dark brows drew together. ‘Do me a favour and be more careful than him. Nick is a good friend but he likes to push the envelope, his face is proof enough of that. I don’t even want to think of something similar happening to someone like you.’

  ‘Someone like me? You mean,’ she lowered her voice to a theatrical whisper, ‘a woman?’

  ‘I do.’ Unimpressed by her taunt he turned his enormous back to her to get in his car.

  Unresolved issues with authority figures demanded that she lean in close to his car window and ge
t the last word. ‘Thanks for sharing your vote of confidence, and your high opinion of women’s abilities.’ Neanderthal.

  He rolled down the window. ‘I’d rather offend your feminist sensibilities than see you zipped up in a body bag.’

  The words quietly crept inside her shirt to nestle cold against her breast, and she felt a chill despite the heat. But she refused to let him think her cowed. ‘Those are my only options? Be lectured by you or meet a bad end?’

  He slung a massive forearm over the door as he looked up at her. ‘I’m not Willy Wonka, so I won’t sugar coat shit. Know what you’re up against. This town’s been taken over by ice and the bikers who sell it.’

  So? Galenka growled. I decimate armies, eat battleships and shit submarines, wear bullets in my braids.

  Shut up. ‘I don’t get any say in who I deal with. Someone in the office fields a call saying there’s a case of animal cruelty, they assign the case to me, and I go wherever I’m sent to investigate. That’s my job. Depending on what I find, I might ask a few questions, collect evidence for court, provide a warning or advice, or order the owner to take some action. But I don’t get to pick and choose my cases.’

  He studied her with a lethal calmness. ‘I know, but I’d sleep better at night if I knew you were going to be sensible and take precautions.’

  The intensity of his regard was more than a little unnerving. Why did she get the feeling that she had become ‘a person of interest’? ‘What kind of precautions?’

  ‘Do you have basic self-defence and de-escalation skills?’

  As a quarantine officer she’d had to learn how to be firm with passengers, from the hippie unwilling to part with organic yak butter massage oil to the trigger-happy executive clutching a big game trophy. But he was talking about something else, hand-to-hand type stuff. She’d had some training but airport security had always been close at hand. ‘I know how to point a can of pepper spray.’

  He moved his head in negation. ‘You really want to pepper spray some surly old lady who swung her Zimmer frame at you because she forgot to take her meds?’

  ‘I don’t know, is she on ice too?’

  ‘Could be.’ His grin, sudden and shocking, delivered a sucker-punch to her lady regions. Oh, dear. She could do without that.

  He drummed his fingers on the car door. ‘This town isn’t a bad place, but what I was going to say was that you want some options other than pepper spray, options that better suit particular situations. Verbal de-escalation skills, techniques for avoiding and repelling blows, ways to physically discourage movement. That sort of thing. There’s a range of interventions that will leave the people you’re dealing with a whole lot less pissed off than pepper spray.’

  He wanted to share the full palette of restraint methods with her. How sweet. She folded her arms. ‘I wasn’t really planning on spritzing everyone I meet with Mace.’

  ‘Good to know. So, what do you think about the idea of doing some training? Nick will be there. He’s a big guy, so it’s useful to demonstrate on him.’ He pulled his seatbelt on and muscles she hadn’t known existed leaped beneath his t-shirt.

  You’re a big guy too, do they demonstrate on you? It was impossible not to imagine him coming up from behind to grab her in a headlock with one meaty bicep.

  What if she enjoyed it a little too much?

  She turned his offer over, inspected it from all angles. ‘It sounds useful but what does it cost?’

  ‘How does free sound?’

  ‘Um, too good to be true?’ Like his helpfulness.

  A ghost of a smile. ‘We run workshops and practice sessions every weekend, as work permits.’

  ‘We?’ She narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Nick, myself and other volunteers from the station, and sometimes an accredited trainer from the company that originally trained us.’

  Ah, she’d known there had to be a catch and there it was, the prospect of getting roughed up by a team of law enforcement officers. ‘You’re not inviting me just so you can taser me in front of a room full of onlookers, are you?’

  A small, wry grin escaped him. ‘No electroshock devices, no chemical restraints, I promise.’

  Just you and a whole bunch of other big, sweaty men dying to get me in a headlock …

  ‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

  He raised an eyebrow, the one with the scar running through it, as he waited on her answer.

  There was no doubt she could use the skills, and the price was right. But …

  ‘Are you sure they’ll allow someone like me in? Someone who’s not a cop?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s a community course.’

  Because nothing said community like demonstrating headlocks.

  ‘Come on, I’ll show you my favourite prone floor hold and you won’t even have to buy me a drink first.’

  It took her a few seconds to absorb the come-hither tone wrapped in his gravelly voice.

  Shit, someone de-escalate my vagina, stat.

  ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’ She also couldn’t believe she was considering the idea, not for fun reasons but more practical ones. ‘Who usually takes the workshops?’

  ‘There’ll be a mix of people. Folk who work in old age homes, disability shelters, domestic violence shelters and special schools. Some correctional officers, some police.’

  Injury was not a worry, she knew from statistics that yoga or cycling could break bones or sprain limbs just as easily as a self-defence class. Still. She pictured herself wrestling a two-hundred-pound correctional officer or, worse, wrestling with this man. Her eyes went to the massive forearm resting on the car door and she couldn’t help picturing it hooked around her throat as Luka stood behind her applying a loving, therapeutic rear choke hold. A shockwave lurched through her, and it wasn’t fear. No, fear would have been too healthy, too normal for her.

  Shit biscuits.

  ‘Where do you do it?’ She caught the double entendre and hastened to correct her choice of words. ‘I mean, where’s it run?’ And if he said ‘my basement’ she would run.

  ‘The assembly hall of the local primary school. We usually start at nine and finish by one, before choir practice arrives.’

  The incongruity of that was not lost on her. ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to be all sweaty for choir practice.’

  ‘You won’t have enough energy for choir once I’m done with you.’

  The innuendo was unmistakable and yet when she glanced at his face it was devoid of so much as a whisper of a smirk or a grin. That gave her pause. This was a man with a talent for emotional camouflage. Except that instead of smearing his face with grease paint for combat, he smeared emotion away. Which for someone like herself who constantly monitored all signals for danger, including the facial expressions around her, was damn scary. He was way too much like the man that had been her mother’s mistake, a mistake she was determined never to repeat.

  He drummed the side of the door. ‘Okay, gotta go. Let me know if you’re interested.’ His lumberjack-sized arm disappeared inside his car.

  Oh, I’m interested alright, even though I know better. Well, her body was interested. In contrast, her brain was highly alarmed and wanted to leave town immediately. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  As he turned the engine, a part of her expected him to gun his V8 monster and peel out of the lot like it was on fire. Instead he crawled off slower than a three-year-old on a tricycle.

  It felt like a rebuke, one specially designed to refute all her hasty, determinedly unfair preconceptions about him.

  ***

  He’d tried. Had asked what training she had, had invited her to attend the de-escalation classes, had warned her about what happened to Mark. And she’d agreed to think about the classes. He’d gotten about as far with Mark, and look how that had ended.

  Shittily.

  He glanced at Mark’s cap resting on his passenger seat. It wasn’t ‘the’ cap found at the service station—that sat in an evidence r
oom. No, this was just one of Mark’s many vanity caps designed to hide his thinning hair. Luka should give it to his widow.

  A traffic light turned amber and he slowed for it. It was difficult to picture her wanting it but he couldn’t drive around with it in his car forever, and it felt wrong to just throw it away. Maybe he’d sleep on the decision. Or not sleep, as was usually the case these days.

  A car honked behind him.

  Crap, when had the lights changed colour?

  He drove off with an apologetic wave of his hand to the car behind, feeling like a dick. Perhaps he’d try that tryptophan stuff Sharon had recommended. It couldn’t hurt. And he’d make sure he talked to the new girl about de-escalation training again soon, and put Nick onto nagging her as well.

  ***

  Kat rolled her shoulders to shake off the tightness. That man was going to mess with her head if she didn’t watch herself. Hell, he already had.

  As the sound of his flatbed truck faded she pulled her ponytail tighter. On her way to the shelter office she glanced at her car. She’d better buy a steering wheel lock or car alarm of some sort.

  Inside, Evert crouched by the cat crate. ‘You don’t look too bad, fella, I think we can find you a new home.’

  It warmed her cockles—whatever and wherever the hell those were—to see such a big man caring about a cat. Why couldn’t her lady parts be having the feels for this guy, the animal lover, rather than the difficult-to-get-a-grip-on cop?

  Evert lifted the crate. ‘Did the owner say anything about why he was surrendering this one?’

  She shook her head, lowered her voice. ‘No, he was too busy telling everyone to go fuck themselves.’ She met the ginger cat’s wide-eyed stare through the wire mesh. ‘Actually, he claimed it was a stray but his kids looked awfully attached to it.’ In her mind’s eye, she reviewed the face of the daughter with the broken arm, her distant, zoned-out expression. She knew that girl, had been that girl. And yet she’d still failed her. Sour bile punched its way up her throat. If she saw either dad or daughter again, she’d do things right—get names, give them to the cops. Redeem herself.