by Holley Trent
Gene huffed. “Cry me a river, why don’t ya?”
Marcella was instantly pissed on her behalf.
How dare he diminish the stress he’d caused Sarah’s family? How dare he be so cavalier about people unable to live average lives because of shit he’d set into motion?
Sarah had been right. Marcella did want to put a fist through his head, and they hadn’t even been in the room for five minutes yet.
Sarah, fortunately, seemed unfazed. She kept her hands to herself and her expression unchanged. “Want to see me cry? Don’t hold your breath. I lost my ability to easily shed many tears sometime during CarrHealth’s SHREW Study. You know what’s worse than people seeing you cry? Needing to cry and not being able to.”
She stepped away from his chair, only to give the rear legs a hard kick that made his hands jerk inside the shackles.
“Fuck,” he said.
“I hope that hurt. A part of me hopes that maybe you’ve dislocated something and that you’ll sit here in misery until we’re done with you.”
“See. You’re no better than me.”
“No. I am better than you and fuck you for wasting breath to insinuate otherwise. I shouldn’t have to explain this, Eugene. The difference between you and me is that I give a shit about other people. I know the world doesn’t revolve around me and that my life is improved and enriched when the people around me are happy. In your worldview, misery is the name of the game. You’re not happy unless everyone else is under your boot heel. You’re not happy unless everyone else is suffering.” She shook her head and retreated to her former spot near the door. “I don’t give a shit if you ever redeem yourself. I don’t believe there’s repentance in store for you, and I’m not Christian enough to urge you to seek salvation.” She shrugged. “Go to hell and burn for all I care.”
“But before you do,” Marcella said, cutting Sarah a rehearsed stunned look. For the moment, she’d be the good cop. “Perhaps you should tell us what you know about Wes. Where is he? What are his plans?”
Gene wrenched around in his seat to face Marcella and hocked.
Bad cop now.
She moved out of the way before the lob of spit left his mouth, but she only moved so far as to catch the left rear leg of the chair with the crook of her right foot. She kicked the support back.
His face hit the table, and she pressed a gloved hand to the back of his neck and closed her eyes.
She didn’t care if cops in the hall could see everything. If push came to shove, she’d make up some lie to explain why she’d done what she did, and they’d believe her because her magic was that good. She didn’t want to have to use it. She didn’t want to risk Sarah seeing how weak working magic made Marcella. Marcella could take care of herself, but the Shrews hadn’t seen what she could do. They’d assume she was more trouble than she was worth, and she’d never been the needy sort.
His body started to shake, and she’d barely done anything to him yet. If she’d been touching skin-to-skin, he would have been crying like an elementary school bully who still secretly wore Sesame Street Underoos and who’d been shamed by having his pants yanked down on the playground.
“Just a little nervous reaction,” she muttered for Sarah’s benefit. “Funny how everything in the body connects.”
She tightened her fingers around the back of his neck and, at the pungent scent of fresh urine, opened her mouth to breathe. “You had to know that one of these days you’d mess with someone with a power you don’t understand. Too bad we hadn’t met sooner, and maybe not so many people would have had to deal with your ignorant self.”
A bit tighter.
She took a deep breath and forced herself to loosen her grip a bit. Hurting Gene would have been too easy. In fact, she could have easily convinced him that he should hurt himself.
She didn’t want to carry that guilt. Guilt aggregated and multiplied over time, and she had enough to worry about already without having to fret about shit from the past, too.
“You can live out the rest of your sorry life in protective custody alone with no one to bother you, and that’s what we want, too. People like us, we want to be left alone. That’s all. So, tell us where he is, and this stops now.”
“I don’t know where the fu—”
“If I take off this glove,” Marcella said in a rushed whisper, “you will regret speaking that word to me. Try again. Where is he? You have to have some idea of how to find him. You have to know who his contacts are and where he’d go if he needed quick access to funds.”
The Shrews had already cut off access to the SHREW Study coordinator’s “official” accounts. The agency having well-placed friends in various industries who weren’t quite human had obvious perks. They weren’t so naive to believe, however, that Wes didn’t have under-the-table funding or people who were stupid enough to launder his cash.
She gave Gene’s neck another encouraging squeeze and immediately regretted attempting to breathe through her nose again.
“Don’t know, all right?” he squealed.
“Don’t know what?” she asked. “You don’t know where Wes is, or you don’t know where he might go?”
“Where he is.”
“What are his routines, then? Certainly, they’ve changed since he left CarrHealth. What are his habits? What might he be doing?”
Gene let out a breath and squirmed in his seat. He had to be very uncomfortable sitting in the wet filth of his making. “He had a place. Met him there sometimes for hand-offs.”
“Where?”
“At the other CarrHealth facility.”
“In Jersey?” Sarah asked. “Jersey said they don’t have shit to do with him anymore.”
“No.”
“Where, then? Don’t make us squeeze the information out of you drop by drop.”
Better that than the other things dripping out of him right now.
Marcella turned her head and pulled in another bolstering breath. “Where, Gene?”
“It’s in Georgia, south of Atlanta.”
“What else?”
He was holding back on something. Marcella could tell in the same way she could tell that rain was coming. She could feel the change of air pressure in her bones.
“There’s a…black Bear group down there. Been…” He clammed up before he could finish the thought.
“Don’t stop now.” She jostled his neck and made his forehead bounce against the tabletop. “Been what?”
“Made- or born-Bears, Gene?” Sarah asked.
“Made,” he said after too damned long. “Made-Bears.”
“Are you responsible? Did you send some of your lieutenants down there to claw them up?”
“No!” he shouted. “You’re not gonna pin me with shit I didn’t do.”
“Sure, so the bastard finally figured out the drug formula and mutated the folks? Is that seriously what you’re telling me?”
Gene had strong-armed his enforcers in the Ridge Bear group and forced them to infect enemies. Maria’s lover, Eric, was one of those made-Bears. He’d been jumped by two of Gene’s enforcers while handling business for his mountain lodge.
Marcella was starting to take the ordeal personally. She couldn’t help her investment. Before, she’d looked at the scenario as a gig that could have earned her permanent employment with the Shrews, but the perversion was hitting too close to home. Perhaps she hadn’t been in Maria’s life very long, but that didn’t matter. Marcella wasn’t going to tolerate anyone in her family getting run roughshod over. She’d never been able to stand for that, and she had no problems with calling people out for their bad behavior.
She needed to step away from him, or she was going to hurt him—not with magic, but with her fists and fingernails if need be.
Not yet.
She needed a little more.
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “And no. Both, I guess.”
Fucker.
“Where? What town? And who can we call for confirmation?”
He let out a sputtering breath and gulped audibly. “Name of the town is Quill. Keep heading south on 85 past Atlanta for an hour, and you’ll see the sign. There’s only one exit. You’ll have to find your own proof because I ain’t got shit else.”
Marcella opened her mouth to press, but Sarah put a hand on her forearm. Marcella looked up to see her shaking her head.
No?
Sarah shook it again.
So Marcella backed away from Gene. She’d accept Sarah’s guidance. She had the experience and the knowledge of Gene. All Marcella had was a lot of indignation and a hungry checking account. She didn’t have the history.
She followed Sarah out to the hall and shut the door.
Sarah peered through the two-way mirror into the room.
Gene had picked his head up and stared straight ahead, not at the door they’d just exited through. He had to know they were watching.
He didn’t care, or else maybe he’d finally found some shame.
“We got what we needed,” Sarah said. “You did good. You’ll get a better handle on what your stopping point should be in time.”
Grimacing, Marcella lifted her dense dreadlocks and swiped her hand across the back of her hot, sweating neck. “How do you know when to stop?”
“Experience. You’ll come to learn that there’s a point where nothing else a suspect says will matter because schemes change too quickly. Our case now isn’t one where specifics are going to do us a hell of a lot of good. We’re going to make a wide-spectrum attack. Speed and agility are what we need, not precision.”
“So basically, once you know where you’re headed, you don’t pry for more information.”
“Exactly.”
The advice sounded like the exact opposite thing to Marcella, but she’d read Sarah’s case files. Sarah almost always found her targets. They might have tried to run, but their freedom was always short-lived.
“Also helps to know who to call when you need a lead.” Sarah canted her head toward the front of the department, and Marcella started moving. “We’ve got a bunch of psychics in our contact list who are very good at tracking people for a fleeting moment if we give them the right clues. We need to be able to translate the leads they give us into a tactical advantage before circumstances change.”
“You always make that sound so much easier than it actually is,” came the familiar, broadly accented male voice Marcella had hoped she’d heard the last of.
She turned in the hall and mouthed, “Damn,” before righting herself and continuing past the man. She knew better than to make eye contact. Soren Ursu would consider a glance an invitation.
“Did you come to check our work?” Sarah asked him, cocking a hip daringly. “Or did someone bail you out five minutes ago?”
Marcella didn’t wait around to hear his answer. What he said didn’t matter. She stormed past the offices, past the waiting room, outside, and down the steps to the parking lot.
Fuck.
Sarah had the keys to the SUV, so Marcella decided she’d just walk. Shrew & Company was less than ten blocks away. The sun was starting to go down, but she didn’t care if anyone tried her. She could handle herself against most aggressors.
When it came to the man who insisted that she was his mate, she had no such courage. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d take “no” for an answer, and she wasn’t the kind of woman who could say “yes.”
Not without hurting someone.
Not without hurting herself.
CHAPTER TWO
Soren Ursu waited until the Shrew had signed out her weapons and tucked them away before confronting her. For some reason, Sarah was always far more reasonable when she was strapped. Maybe her guns were like her security blankets.
“Why the fuck does she keep doing that?” he asked her.
“Doing what?” Sarah tossed her keys from hand to hand and then tilted her head toward the department’s side door.
He opened it for her. “You know what. Every time she sees me, she hauls ass to the nearest exit. That is, when she’s not sneering at me in that perfectly ineffective way.”
That frustration routine Marcella pulled might have worked on other men, but whether she cared to believe it or not, she was stuck with him. She’d imprinted on him when he’d been in the midst of mating fever, and the mania was irreversible.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t have chosen her without the Bear goddess’s pulling kismet’s stings. He would have, if circumstances were right, and not only because she had an ass the Earth should have been revolving around and lips he couldn’t stop imagining around a particular arrow-shaped part of him, but because she was fucking fierce.
Growly women turned him on.
“Ugh.” He dragged a hand through his greasy hair and followed Sarah across the parking lot. “Not gonna answer me?”
“No. I’m trying to put some space between you and me. Where the hell have you been? You smell like rotted fish.”
“The less you know, the better.”
“Not a gig for the Shrews?”
“No. For my father.” His father the “diplomat,” with his diplomatic duties being a convenient cover-up for the mercenary shit he’d made the family business.
“I thought you and Peter decided not to pick up any of your papa’s random-ass assignments after the last one went sideways on you.” She waggled her eyebrows and leaned against the driver’s door of the company SUV. “That’s what Tamara said, anyway, but maybe I heard her wrong. When she starts ranting we do our best to keep up. I was pretty sure I caught the gist, though.”
That sounded exactly like something his baby sister would say. Tamara was the kind of woman who could find something to say about pretty much anything, no matter how trifling. He and their brother Peter were used to her rocket-fueled spiels about everything and nothing, but even having known her for the better part of five years, the Shrews were still in the Tam learning curve.
“I’d prefer not to do any more jobs for my father, but this was an easy one, and he promised not to get in touch again for at least a month.”
“Don’t tell me you buy that line of bullshit.”
“Of course I don’t, but at least I’ll get to remind him of the broken promise. That’s almost as good as currency.”
“Opportunist.”
“Naturally. Where are you heading now?” The question he really wanted to ask was, Where did Marcella go? but Tamara had screamed at him to “Stop being so fucking creepy!”—whatever that meant—and he would try, to the best of his mated-Bear ability.
“Back to the office to debrief with Dana about Gene, and then I’m heading home for dinner.”
Soren crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the truck hood. “And…”
Sarah narrowed her eyes in warning. “With Marcella.”
“Ah.” He grinned. “What’s on the menu?”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I thought maybe I’d run to Peter’s and get a shower.”
Certainly, his brother wouldn’t mind sparing Soren some soap and a change of clothes. After all, he’d done plenty of unmentionable jobs for their father, too. He probably wouldn’t even ask questions.
Sarah twisted her lips to one side of her face and chewed on her inner cheek, staring at him.
“You could invite me,” he said.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I could.”
“But?”
“I try to keep things from being awkward as much as I can.”
“Things would be a lot less awkward if you invited me over. We could clear the air, as the saying goes.”
“Uh-huh. Tam seems to think that you’re under the impression that by being in Marcella’s space for five minutes, you’ll will her over. You’re nice to look at and all, but come on, dude.”
“I’m an alpha Bear. I shouldn’t have to work so hard.”
She shrugged. “So prance your furry ass back to Romania and alpha up on some chick over there.”
; “I could, but I want Marcella.”
“We can’t always have what we want.”
Soren scoffed.
“What’s that scoff for?”
“All of you—you, Dana, Astrid, hell, even Maria—you all behave as if your men didn’t nag you into compliance. They didn’t give up on pursuing you because they knew you were right for them. I feel the same way, and I know the Big Bear doesn’t make mistakes.”
Sarah sighed, likely at the mention of the mysterious Bear goddess. She didn’t show herself or even hint that she was around very often, but she had a knack for shaking things up at the exact right times. Her handiwork was evident all throughout the Ridge Bear group. There was an unusually high number of fated pairs.
“How is what I’m doing any different than what your Felipe did?” he asked, hoping to score an “A-ha” moment.
She blinked. “Felipe is charming.”
“Charming.” Soren’s voice dripped with incredulity. Damned Spaniards.
“Well, you asked. I mean, you and Peter do okay when you have to. You’re good at making folks comfortable and getting folks to like you when you’re on the job, but Marcella’s not a job.”
It was his turn to blink dumbly.
She narrowed her eyes. “Have you ever actually been in a relationship? If you have, Tamara’s never said so, and she talks about you guys all the time.”
“Of course I have.”
“Good. When?”
“I—ugh.” Grumbling, he stalked toward his truck.
He could certainly remember who his last girlfriend was, but he’d dated her long enough ago that he didn’t think Sarah would find her a credible reference.
While he’d had plenty of “encounters” in the past ten years, he’d been too busy for relationships and had been moving around far too much to consider them, anyway.
“Uh-huh,” Sarah called to him. “Well, dinner is paella. There should be plenty.”
He stopped. Paella sounded good. Sounded like a treat, actually, compared to what he’d been eating while working for the past week. Ravioli had a certain disgusting piquancy when eaten straight from the can.