by E A Price
“Surely that’s circumstantial.”
“I already have connections to all the victims, a lot of money in my bank account, and a murder weapon at my apartment. There’s too much to explain away.”
“You’ve been sewed up…”
“Stitched up.”
“You’ve been stitched up. Now, what?”
Cutter clenched and unclenched his fists. “Now I have to figure out who’s doing this.”
Lucie walked over to stand in front of him. He watched her closely. She placed a hand on his arm; his muscle flexed under her touch. “I won’t tell anyone you’re here; you can stay as long as you need.”
“Thank you,” he murmured. “I knew I could rely on you. I’ll leave as soon as…”
“No.”
Cutter raised his eyebrows quizzically. “No?”
“No, with your injuries, I want you to stay here so I can monitor you.” Plus, having him in her house brought her no end of personal satisfaction. She wasn’t ready to let him go just yet. She probably wouldn’t get another chance like this.
“I feel fine, a little achy, but fine. The bullets barely slowed me down. They haven't impeded anything if you catch my drift.” He waggled his eyebrows about and yes she understood what he meant - heck, she woke up with the 'evidence' that morning pressing against her leg. “I mean I can still fu…”
“Okay! But, sure, now you feel fine, but who’s to say that your leg won’t fall off in a couple of days time?” Lucie fixed him with a wide-eyed stare.
He let out a scoff of disbelief before his expression became much more uncomfortable. “Is that a possibility?”
Probably not, but she wasn’t about to admit that and let him run around the city being hunted. “Who knows? Not that many shifters survive silver bullets. You probably only survived out of stubbornness.”
“I don’t want to lose my leg. I guess I better stay here.”
He didn't say it very graciously, but she and her hedgehog were jumping for joy. They weren’t exactly the best circumstances but hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Right, I am going to get ready for work, and when I get home tonight, we are going to have a long conversation about just what the heck we are going to do.”
*
Cutter pounded his fist on the bathroom door. He knew Lucie could hear him. Even through the thick door and with the water running, she could hear him.
She told him she was going to work. He told her it wasn’t a good idea. She insisted she had to go. He forbade her from going. She became all prickly over his high-handedness. He told her he would tie her to the bed if he had to. She got in a huff and ran into the shower. Yep, he couldn’t see how he could have handled it any differently.
He was looking out for her; he was trying to take care of her, and she was just being downright willful. His wolf grumbled. If the beast had his way, they would have just tied her to the bed and completely skipped the argument. It would have saved time.
Lucie started singing in the shower. Cutter threw up his hands in defeat and stomped downstairs in search of food. Damn headstrong female who wouldn’t do as he told her.
He was on his third bowl of sugary cereal as Lucie bounced into the kitchen. She looked pink-cheeked and radiant in a pair of blue slacks and a pale blue shirt with daisies printed all over it. She beamed at him and his ire at her rigid resolve to go to work melted. He defied any man not to give in to her sunny smile. Not that they would have the chance, he had an enormous and disturbing urge to kill any man Lucie smiled at. Spending the night in her bed, surrounded by her scent and with her soft body pressed against his had only made his desire for her skyrocket.
He returned her smile, and a delighted blush bloomed over her cheeks.
“You’re not going to work,” he growled, roughly.
Her face fell, and she pursed her lips. “Yes, I am.”
“It may not be safe for you,” he reasoned as his wolf barked at him to look for some rope. “People know that you, uh, you know, that we...” He trailed off uncertainly.
“Exactly!”
“What?”
Lucie poured herself some coffee in a to-go cup as she patiently explained. “If they’re looking for you, and then I don’t turn up at work, won’t they be a little suspicious?”
Cutter snorted. “You’re giving Diaz an awful let of credit to put those two things together.”
“Besides, Rick has already seen me today. He knows I’m not sick.”
“Asshole,” he muttered under his breath. The fucking lion was determined to ruin his life. “I don’t like it. I’m telling you to stay here.”
Lucie scrunched up her face in displeasure. He really was concerned about her, and he wasn’t just riling her up to get her to throw one of her soft curse words at him again. Okay, maybe that factored into it a little. Those cutesy little curse words made him all hot and bothered for some reason.
“Son of a mother trucker!” she murmured and Cutter bit back a grin as his wolf panted. “Look, I’ll be surrounded by people; I won’t be in danger. And if anyone asks me about you I’ll… well, I’ll fudging think of something.”
“You said fudging on purpose to win me over.”
She looked at him through her eyelashes. “Is it working?”
“Yes,” he groaned.
“Excellent, now I want you to go lay down and relax. You’re still healing; you need all the rest you can get. And you should probably stay away from the windows. There are a lot of curtain twitchers in my neighborhood.” Lucie looked around the kitchen. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen a cat running around here, have you? He’s about the size of a small dog, has long white hair, and cute, smushy face.”
“Smushy, really? You’re wasting your time with a cat. They’re pets for ninety-year-old women or eleven-year-old girls.”
“Cat hater,” she teased.
“I saw him as I was coming in last night. I may have growled at him, and he may have run in the opposite direction.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry.” He wasn’t very sorry at the time. Cute, smushy face his ass! The beast saw him in his wolf form and growled – yes, actually growled – at him. Cutter almost had to take a bite out of the white, hairy monster before he skulked away.
Lucie didn’t seem overly concerned. “It’s fine. He’s a natural explorer. He has a chip. If he doesn’t come back by tonight I’ll track him.”
She picked up a banana and a granola bar for breakfast and started to leave. He stood up and pulled her to him, his hands rested on her shoulders. Damn, her nipples were hard and poked through her thin shirt, straining toward him. What he wouldn’t give to rip her shirt off and feast on her beautiful orbs. He leaned a little more heavily onto his injured leg than he should have; the agony dispelled his mounting lust.
“Be safe,” he told her. “Someone is out to get me; I’m sure of it. And if they killed Clayton and Marie Beauchamp, they wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you, too.”
“But I’ll be at the office and…”
“And I still suspect an SEA agent is involved,” he said, trying to hold back his fury.
Lucie paled and quieted. “I’ll be careful.”
“Unless I can persuade you to stay here,” he suggested hopefully. His wolf held his breath.
“You can’t.”
Cutter grunted. Yeah, he wasn’t really expecting that to work. He was loath to ask, but if she were mulishly insisting on going, then maybe she could help. “Can I ask you to do something for me then?”
“Yes,” she replied immediately. Her face lit up, and he almost told her to forget it in that instant. The last thing he needed was for her to get overexcited, but if the last twelve hours had taught him anything, Lucie was more than capable of dealing with anything that he threw at her.
“I need copies of some case files.”
“How do I get them?”
“Ask Jessie if she’ll provide them. I need copies of Clayton and Marie Beauchamp’s fi
les. Jessie is working the cases, and I reckon she might trust me enough to give them to you. If she doesn’t, and she tells everyone that you asked for them then tell them where I am and tell them that I forced you to do it.”
Lucie’s brow creased. “I’m not going to tell them that.”
Cutter shook his head; this point was non-negotiable. “Promise me you will, or I really won’t let you leave this house. I will pin you down - my wolf’s thrilled at the prospect.” The animal really was; he was almost drooling over it.
“Like to see you try,” she taunted.
“Would you?” He was genuinely interested; he wanted to know whether her ardor for him was still as strong as it was before all this mess started. And before she thought he was sleeping with a peacock shifter.
If she weren’t careful, he really would drag her to bed and remedy the ache that had been building up over the last year. In fact, who needed a bed? The kitchen counter looked perfectly adequate.
Sadly, Lucie relented. “Fine, I promise to turn you in if they catch me, does that make you happy?”
“A little.”
“Relax, and let yourself heal – I’ll be back as soon as I can, and then, we’ll try to figure something out.”
“We? Oh, no, you’re not getting involved in this.”
“I already am involved and since I don’t have enough time to argue about this further, let’s put a pin in it and argue about it when I get home.”
Reluctantly, he agreed and let go of her shoulders. “What am I supposed to do all day while you’re at work?”
Lucie smirked. “Read a book, take your mind off what’s happening, help yourself to my collection. They’re about moody alpha males who fall helplessly in love with perfect, sweet women who are far too good for them, and then refuse to admit it because they’re too repressed. You can probably relate.”
Cutter gave her a sour look, and she blew him a kiss as she made her way to the door.
“Either that or listen to music or surf the web on my iPad. There are some men’s clothes in the left-hand side of my closet and fresh towels in the bathroom – help yourself to both, and I’ll see you later.”
He grunted, and she escaped out the door before he really comprehended what she said. Men’s clothes? His wolf snarled. What the heck was she doing with men’s clothes?
Oh, his little hedgehog was going to have some explaining to do when she got home.
Chapter Thirteen
Lucie walked along the corridor toward Jessie’s office. She wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, but she felt as conspicuous as if she had a big neon sign over her head flashing the words ‘up to no good.’ Everyone seemed as friendly as usual, but was it her imagination, or were they looking at her a little funny?
She returned a hello to a penguin shifter from research. Yeah, it was probably her imagination. Or it could be the copious amount of perfume she was wearing. To cover Cutter’s scent, she practically sprayed an entire bottle all over herself. Rick almost choked when she popped by his office to say hello earlier. Perhaps it might repel him a little – that wasn’t a bad thing.
She felt like James Bond. Or maybe Don Smart might be more accurate. No, even he was a little too competent for her. What was the character from Spy Hard called? Oh, this was going to bug her all day.
Hopefully, she just wouldn’t run into Diaz or any of his team. She had turned the matter over and over in her head, and no matter what, she knew she had to help Cutter. She didn’t know Clayton, but she knew that Cutter had considered him a friend, and she saw that his death affected him. Cutter wouldn’t have hurt him. He may bend the rules every now and again, but he was a good guy. And she wanted to find whoever was trying to frame him - even her hedgehog was gung ho about that. He was her honey bunny, and whoever hurt him needed to pay!
A part of her tried to be logical and tried tell her that he needed to turn himself in, but the mushy, hopelessly devoted part - that would have gotten down on the ground and barked like a dog if he’d asked - scoffed at the idea. She seriously hoped he never did ask her to do the dog thing. She might be stubborn about some things with him, but ultimately, she loved him, and she wanted to help him. She just hoped that Jessie felt the same way. Not about the love thing, no freaking way, no, she just hoped Jessie wanted to help.
Lucie slipped into the squirrel shifter’s office and gave the redhead a wave.
“Hi!” she squeaked with fake brightness. “I brought you a cruller. How are you? How’s everything going? Strange weather we’re having, right?” She cringed as the words fell out of her mouth. She may have missed casual by a tiny little bit.
Jessie raised an eyebrow as she took the cruller. “You okay? You seem tense.”
Lucie’s eyes darted around the room nervously. “So do you, do you have cameras in this room?”
The squirrel looked at her curiously. “Only ones controlled by me and I always have the microphones switched off. Have you heard about Cutter?”
“Sort of.”
“Do you know where he is?” she asked, shrewdly.
“Perhaps.”
“People are going bananas about him, they reckon he’s a mole.”
Lucie sucked in a breath. “What do you think?”
Jessie scrunched her nose, pushing her glasses up her face. “I don’t think he’s a mole.”
She blew out a breath of relief.
“But I don’t think it’s a good idea for him to hide like this,” she added, reprovingly.
“He thinks he’s being framed,” Lucie blurted. “And when they came for him last night they shot him with silver bullets!”
Jessie blinked at her. “Are you sure?”
“I had to dig them out of him – I’m sure.” She shivered and her beast whimpered on remembering the pain etched into his stoic face.
“They shouldn’t have done that, that’s against SEA policy,” Jessie muttered half to herself. “What do you want from me?”
“Copies of the files, please,” said Lucie with a pleading look.
Jessie thought it over for a few beats. “Okay.”
“Thank you.”
Jessie downloaded them onto a memory drive and handed it to her, just as Diaz and Primrose strode into the room along with an unpleasant looking wolf shifter. She had just enough time to stash it in her bra. She didn’t really think they would, but if they asked her to empty out her pockets, they definitely wouldn’t find it there.
The wolf shifter gave her a dismissive look. She recalled doing his physical. He was a member of Internal Investigations and a cranky patootie to boot.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Primrose.
Diaz ignored the hyena shifter. “Hey Lucie, you okay?”
“Yes, absolutely, one hundred percent okay – terrible weather we’re having.” Her hedgehog huffed at her. Never mind Spy Hard, she was at the Abbot and Costello level of competence. Reel it in, she thought.
“Sure is,” agreed Diaz with an easy smile. “Have you seen Cutter recently?”
“I saw him at work yesterday. I heard he punched a hole in the wall of the janitor’s closet on level seven.”
She didn’t enjoy doing it, but throwing him under the bus for that minor thing might actually lead them to believe that she wasn’t willing to cover for Cutter. Aside from that, she knew he had been the one to create that huge hole. It was the janitor’s closet where they had their brief interlude – the odds were good that he did it.
“Not since then?” prompted Diaz.
“No, is everything okay?” she asked with ridiculously big, innocent eyes.
“Of course,” Diaz smiled.
Lord, he had a good poker face. Primrose just looked unimpressed and maybe it was because she was feeling guilty anyway, but she could have sworn the hyena shifter didn’t believe her.
The II agent stepped forward and fixed her with a frosty smile, and she shuddered involuntarily. There was something very odd about him. “You’d tell us if you ha
d, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes, is there a reason I wouldn’t? Is something going on?”
“That’s none of your concern,” snapped Primrose.
Lucie’s eyebrows shot up. Blistering barnacles, what had her panties in a twist? She was usually so calm and professional.
Diaz winked. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Well, I better go. Bye everyone.” She walked away uneasily, forcing herself not to look at Jessie. If a look passed between them, the others might be suspicious.
She didn’t realize her hands were shaking until she reached the elevator, and her fingers trembled over the button. There was no way she was going to admit it to Cutter, but both Primrose and that II agent freaked her out. If she said anything to him, she suspected that he really would try to tie her to the bed, and that definitely wasn’t her thing. Although, she could see the benefit of tying Cutter to the bed - that idea seemed like a lot of fun.
Her hedgehog huffed as she scented whiskey, stale beer, an abundance of body spray and lemon pledge for some reason. Dale.
“Hey Lacey, how’s it going.”
“Actually it’s…”
“Have you seen Cutter today?”
“No, have you?”
She noticed his eyes were bloodshot and roved up and down the corridor as he talked to her. He was another wolf shifter who creeped her out. He turned up in odd places at odd times. In particular, he kept showing up in the medical bay. She found him there again yesterday. He claimed he wanted to see Helga about a massage, but when the six-foot-two she-bear entered the room, he fled in the opposite direction.
“Nah, he seems to be AWOL. Tell him I’m looking for him if you see him, will you?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks, Lacey.”
“Actually it’s…”
Dale walked past her; his arm brushed against hers and – ugh – he sniffed her.
He gave her a look of interest that she hadn’t seen before. Or at least she hadn’t seen it aimed in her direction before.
“You know that color looks nice on you, brings out your eyes.” This was followed up with an unnerving, slightly leering look.
“Umm, thanks,” she mumbled pressing the elevator button again.