by Holley Trent
Having so much hair, she didn’t seem to notice. It had to be heavy, being so dense and practically mermaid length. Soren rubbed his thumb along the coil. It was like a rope made of dark cotton, firm, but soft against the pads of his fingers. He wondered what her hair would feel like without the dreadlocks right as he spotted a free wisp of hair at the nape of her neck.
“Apparently, you have no sense of self-preservation,” she warned.
He noted then that she was staring at him in the side-view mirror. “You’re not going to hurt me.” He let the hair fall back into place.
“You’re pushing your luck.”
“Perhaps, but why are you so bothered by my curiosity? I’ve been clear about what I want from you. I won’t harm you. I won’t make you uncomfortable. You can say what you like, but you can’t honestly say you’re uncomfortable. Your hormones would spike in a certain way, and I’m not smelling that surge right now.”
Her jaw hinges convulsed again.
He understood why she might have been annoyed. She probably thought there were no secrets she could keep from him, and as far as her body went, that was mostly true.
Her gaze flitted away from the mirror and back to the restaurant door. “There she is.” She reached for the door handle again.
“Not here.” Soren put his foot on the brake and pressed the ignition button.
“What?”
“Not here. Do you know why? Give me a guess.”
As she toyed with her seatbelt buckle, she furrowed her brow. “You want to know which car is hers.”
“And?”
“Where she lives. You want to follow her.”
“Yes. We don’t want to risk the woman getting suspicious and absconding before we’ve had a chance to get all the information we can. Observe, then approach.”
She let out some air. “How will I know, then, when to approach her?”
“When there’s nothing left to learn from observing, or when the situation begins to escalate too rapidly for you to control.”
“That makes sense,” she demurred.
“You truly have been working from instinct in all this time?”
She shrugged. “I did what made sense for me. I imagine your way may be deemed somewhat more…efficient, by the time all is said and done.”
“Your way isn’t wrong. I’m simply showing you how to look at an investigation as a long game rather than one play at a time.”
“That’ll take some adjustment.”
“I’m here to help you.”
She shot him a look.
“I am.”
“You’re looking at your long game, too. The personal one.”
He wasn’t going to deny that.
“Look,” she said, tipping her chin toward a late-eighties model station wagon backing out of a parking space by the trees. “There she is. I’ll write down the license plate number for Drea.”
“Make and model as well. We want to ensure the plates match the cars the system says they’re registered to. I believe that’s a Buick Roadmaster.”
“Yes, I’m familiar,” she said with a titter. “Surprisingly popular in my neighborhood when I was a little girl. I believe my father had one briefly.”
“Why briefly?”
“He’s never had a license to drive.” She muttered, “Not that laws could ever stop him from doing what he wanted.”
The cook pulled out onto the road. Soren held back, waiting until two cars had passed before he pulled out into traffic. He didn’t have to look to know that Marcella was glaring at him.
“Patience,” he said. “We won’t lose her. Even if she turns off, we’ll see her before she gets too far, assuming the road doesn’t have any obstructions.”
“And I imagine if we miss her today, we’ll catch up to her the next time she goes to work.”
“Exactly.” He shrugged. “Or we’ll encounter another Bear like her before then. We could probably brainstorm a pretty good list of places where local shifters may congregate, now that we know that most are women.”
“Bars would probably be out of the question.”
“Too much risk of conflict, so I’d agree.”
Watching the road, she grunted softly and drummed her fingertips atop her thighs.
His phone rang with a particular ringtone that made his stomach turn sideways as of late. “For fuck’s sake.”
Three shrill, bleating rings later, Marcella snatched the cell out of the cup holder. “I think that’s your mother.”
Most certainly is.
“Ignore her,” he murmured. “She’s calling because I didn’t respond to her email.” And he couldn’t talk, anyway. They were approaching an intersection, and their target appeared to be about to make a right turn. If one of the cars ahead of them didn’t turn right as well, Soren would have to drive suspiciously slowly to put some distance between him and the Bear.
Fortunately, the sedan right in front of him turned.
The phone rang again.
“What did she ask you to do in the email?” Marcella asked.
“The usual shit. Find some guy. Kill him.”
She dropped the phone into the cup holder as though it were a hot potato. “You’re joking!”
Grunting, Soren turned right and gradually accelerated to about five miles per hour under the speed limit. He almost wished he’d opted for a subtle vehicle—something that would blend in better in such a rural setting where most cars were at least five years old, and anything larger than a sedan was likely to be either a pickup truck or an eighteen-wheeler.
“Soren, tell me you’re joking,” she urged.
He shrugged. “Perhaps my mother didn’t explicitly say kill—”
“Not that she would ever use that word in an email. Paper trails are dangerous things, especially electronic ones.”
“True. I don’t see where I have much choice, though. My instructions were to neutralize a rogue contact, and there is a limited number of ways to do that.”
“Rogue in what way?”
“Accused a member of our clan of a crime, planted evidence to convince authorities his version of events was true, and then fled the country.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
He cut her a look.
She put up her hands. “Yes, yes. Guess, right?”
“Yes. Guess.”
“Instinct says he was a double agent of some sort.”
“Right on the nose.”
“Truly?”
Again, he grunted.
The Roadmaster ahead was slowing at the entrance of a trailer park. Given the dark, Soren couldn’t tell how large the property was from that distance, but he did a quick estimate of porch lights putting them at around ten, so he rounded up to twenty dwellings, firming up his figure as he passed.
The other car had turned in as well.
“You’ll circle back around once they’ve both parked,” she said.
“Exactly. Perhaps take a look at the map and see where the terminus of this road is and whether there are any turnoffs ahead.”
Without argument, she pulled the map from the door pocket and shook it open. Using her phone light, she homed in on their location, turning the page so north pointed down—the exact way they were driving. The woman knew how to orient. He’d give her that.
“Next turnoff is up left about a quarter of a mile. That artery loops back around to the road we turned in from.”
“Any turn-ins to the trailer park from the backside?”
“Can’t tell. The map doesn’t give information at that level. If you keep going straight on this road, you’ll eventually see a fork with one way going toward the state road. About five miles through a wooded area. We’re not even close to there.”
“Understood.” Soren took a left when the sign approached and eased up on the gas. If push came to shove, they could drive the loop a few times until they were certain the Bear had gone from her car to her home, but that was as risky as parking too soon. Their vehicle was recogni
zable. No one would remember if they’d passed once, but if they did more than that, people would start getting suspicious.
Fortunately, the trailer park did have a turn-in on the back road.
“I guess it’s not used much,” Marcella murmured. “No pavement. No gravel.”
“So damn dark back here. If I were the residents, I’d prefer to use the other two as well.” He killed his headlights to avoid shining them in the windows of the rearmost trailers. Then he cut the steering wheel to the right and parked parallel to the closest residence.
He killed the engine.
Marcella put the map away and turned on her phone’s flashlight. “You stay here.”
“No, and you know better than to ask.” He depressed the seatbelt button and was out of the SUV before she could finish saying, “Had to try.”
CHAPTER NINE
Marcella knew a little something about lurking in potentially hostile neighborhoods after dark. Normally, she let her witchy instincts guide her on which turns to avoid, which alleyways to stay out of.
Never before had she been guided forward under compulsion of a Were-bear who insisted on keeping one giant hand pressed to the small of her back.
“For goodness’ sake,” she spat in a whisper as they passed a trailer that appeared to be unoccupied. “I don’t need you to clutch me.”
“You do. How else will you learn my cues? If I hear or smell things I don’t like, I can inform you without saying anything.”
“You need to give me a chance to investigate this on my own.”
“You are. I’m simply guarding you.”
“Bullshit.”
Shrugging, he kept her moving.
The complaining was getting to be more tedious than the actual man, and she wondered if she should bother saying anything at all. Any new tactic would probably work better where Soren was concerned.
She stopped at the intersection between four trailers, did a quick scan of the area, and moved a couple of feet rightward at Soren’s nudge. She didn’t see the man carrying the garbage bag until several seconds later.
He shuffled toward the dumpster in a stained white undershirt that didn’t quite cover his protruding belly along with baggy pajama pants and shower shoes. A plume of smoke fogged the air behind him as he trod.
Marcella pinched her nose and sighed. She’d never get used to smoke. Didn’t matter whether it was cigarette or weed smoke, the fumes wrecked her sinuses the same way.
She leaned against the trailer near the electric meter, waiting for the man to move along. He’d apparently found a compatriot by the dumpster, and they were chatting about some sporting event Marcella couldn’t make heads or tails of.
She was so busy trying to catch scraps of the conversation that she didn’t notice that Soren was petting her. His hand moved idly down the back of her hair again and again.
“Soren,” she hissed.
“Hmm?” He didn’t look at her. He was looking at his phone.
“You’re petting me. Stop.”
“Hmm?” He glanced down at her somewhat wide-eyed as though she were a fish a wild bear had forgotten he was about to eat.
“Get that look off your face. I’m not supper.”
“I don’t understand your continual aversion to admitting what you are. Embrace your situation. You’ll be happier when you do.” Tucking his phone back into his pocket, he straightened up and hooked her arm around his. “Come. Be casual.”
She went along, figuring complying was a better plan than waiting in the dark for a couple of jaw-flappers to go back into their trailers. The men sounded like they were just getting started.
“Over there.” She crooked her thumb discreetly toward the station wagon.
The vehicle was parked next to a trailer on the front row of the development. The plot was one of the few with maintained grass, permanent steps, and flower boxes in the window.
“Huh,” she murmured, picking up her walking tempo.
“What are you thinking?” the Bear whispered.
“I’m wondering what it means that she looks like she’s sticking around for a while.”
“Guess.”
“I’d rather just ask her.”
“Go for it.”
“As if you could stop me.” Marcella bounded up the steps, pulled open the storm door, and knocked on the wooden door beyond it before Soren could make a retort.
“Who’s there?”
Marcella didn’t care what the “right” answer was. Instinct told her to go with truth and save her cunning for later. “Marcella Bailey.”
Stillness inside.
Then footsteps.
One, two, three.
The door creaked open, and the cook put her face to the crack. “I’m sorry. Who? I thought you said Mark Bane. He’s late on rent.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you. I’m here on behalf of a firm—”
Soren groaned from down at the base of the steps.
She ignored him. “And I believe there’s something special about who you are. If you don’t mind giving me five minutes, I’d like to find out what you know about someone we’re looking for.”
The woman blinked.
“It’s not you who we want to bother,” she said. “I’m trying to find a man who hurt my friends, and you may have encountered him.”
“And what the hell makes you think that?”
The question was a good one, and Marcella needed to come up with an equally good answer.
She pulled in a breath and grabbed the plackets of her jacket. She worked her thumbs over the zipper bumps and worried her lips as she pondered words. Words mattered, and she had a habit of always wanting to deploy the right ones on the first try. She got the feeling that her pause may have been construed as her gearing up to dissemble, and she never ignored her gut. She opened her mouth and prayed the right words would come out.
“To be perfectly honest,” she said, “we came to town looking specifically for Bears, and unless we pegged you wrong, you’re one.”
Soren murmured something that was definitely not English.
Marcella rolled her eyes.
After the sudden flooding of her cheeks with blood and a startled inward breath, the woman shook her head vigorously. “I’m sorry. Who are you again?”
“Marcella Bailey. Here.” She slid one of her business cards out of her inner pocket and placed it onto the woman’s outstretched hand. “I’m not here to make any trouble. We’re trying to clean some up, and hope you can give us some leads.”
“Trouble. I don’t know about that.” Hand shaking, she read the card. “Girl, what’s all this shit mean? Arcana and such.”
“Fancy word for mystical things. I can’t exactly say I’m a witch and that I work in an unregulated business. Someone would likely try to have me locked up.”
The Bear woman’s thick eyebrows flew up. “You’re a what?”
Marcella sighed. “Could we please have this conversation inside? I can’t promise my shadow back here won’t soil your carpet, but he’ll try to be on his best behavior.”
More foreign muttering erupted from the Romanian menace.
The woman looked from Marcella to Soren, then back to Marcella again. “You said five minutes?”
“That’s all. I don’t want to impose. All we need is some information to get started. We just got into the area today.”
“I don’t know if I have any information that you could use. Arcana? For crying out loud, I still don’t understand everything myself, but I’ve got five minutes.” She pulled the door open wider and stood back. “If you don’t mind, I want to move this along a bit. My daughter’s supposed to be home from work in fifteen minutes, and I swear, she’s nosy as sin. If y’all’re still here, she’ll be awake nagging me half the night and trying to get all up in my business.”
Marcella chuckled and stepped up into the trailer. “Children should only be concerned about childish things.”
“I know. That don’t seem to be t
he way it works no more, though.”
When the door had snapped shut behind Soren, the woman pulled out a chair from the kitchen table by the door and gestured to it.
Soren sat, cutting Marcella a side-eye as he did.
The woman perched on the arm of the sofa across the room.
Marcella took the other chair of the dinette table.
“How’d you know I was a Bear?” she asked in a whisper. “We don’t go ’round talkin’ ’bout that. That’s not somethin’ to tell folks.”
“We didn’t have to be told.” Marcella gestured to Soren. “He’s a Bear. He apparently possesses mysterious ways of identifying your kind.”
“Say what?” The lady shook her head and slid Marcella’s card onto the little table by the recliner. “A Bear how?”
“Born one,” he said.
“Born? What you mean?”
Soren’s lips parted, likely to make some crass statement about sperm meeting egg, but Marcella reached across the table and clapped her hand over his mouth.
He licked the back of her fingers, so she snatched her hand away.
Bastard.
Marcella wiped her hand on her pants and returned clasped it over Soren’s mouth again, just in case. “From what I know, there are far more born-Bears than there are made ones.”
“Huh? No way. Ain’t never heard of such a thing.”
Soren was working the tip of his tongue between her fingers in a most lascivious fashion, so Marcella pushed his face back, and then rubbed her palm on the leg of his jeans again.
Ass.
“Did you not know that the first made-Bears were infected by born-Bears?” Soren asked
Eying Soren with all the skepticism of a shopper peering at an expired pack of meat, the woman gave her head a slow shake. “They ain’t tell us nothin’ ’bout that.”
“Two questions. You said ‘us.’ Who is us? Also, who is ‘they’?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you need to know this?”
“Because we believe the people who made you what you are did medical experimentation on a group of women against their will.”
The woman’s dark eyes went round briefly, then she grimaced and pushed to standing. “I knew there had to be more to the story. I told ’em somethin’ weren’t right. They weren’t doin’ it out of the goodness of their hearts.”