by Tina Donahue
His arms were scraped and bleeding, face pale.
“Ty.”
He blinked slowly and winced, his face crumpling. “Shit.”
“Can you move your fingers?”
“What?”
“Can you move?” Fuck, he couldn’t be paralyzed.
After what seemed a lifetime, Ty finally lifted his arms and pulled his free leg up.
“Hold it.” Nick put out his hand. “Careful with your other leg, it broke through the ceiling.”
“What the fuck happened— Holy shit.” He brushed bugs away. “What are these?”
“Termites.”
“What? No. Impossible. We sprayed.”
That they had, only a few months ago. The wood had been fine then, the poison supposedly first rate, with an added bonus. It had no odor. No different from using nothing more than water.
Frowning, Nick crawled closer, stopping repeatedly to test the wood. “Can you pull your leg up?”
“I think.”
“Do so carefully then grab my hand.”
The process took forever, but at last he guided Ty down the ladder, the other pack members helping him to the floor. Other than Ty’s sprained ankle, bruises, and cuts, he seemed intact.
Joining them, Nick swatted his hair, brushed his shoulders, and smacked his clothes knocking off termites.
Portia crossed the room, cringing at the insects and sidestepping them as well as she could. “How did these get here? Didn’t anyone spray?”
“You bet we did.”
“The stuff didn’t work?”
“Apparently not.” In Florida’s hot-humid temperatures, the insects had a perfect climate to reproduce rapidly and destroy just as fast. The only good thing about this was no one could blame Portia for what had happened. She hadn’t been responsible for the treatment, nor had she purchased the chemicals. Another pack member had, with him spraying the cottages, too. Every single one. Which meant they were all possibly damaged or he’d missed this place somehow.
Nick wasn’t certain what to think. “We need to check the other buildings. See if termites screwed them up, too.”
Everyone agreed. Fran stood in the doorway, frowning at Portia.
The old crone had finally gotten on Nick’s last nerve. “What?”
She shot him a snotty look and left. He sensed another meeting coming up. Fuck. “Let’s go. We have a lot to check. Not you.” He stopped Ty before he could leave with them. “Portia, can you help him to your place? Give him the rest of my breakfast?”
“Absolutely. I can cook more. Whatever he needs.”
“How about a cane? My ankle hurts like hell.”
Nick directed a male pack member to help. With Ty’s arms around the guy’s shoulders and Portia’s, they brought him out to the porch. The others followed Nick to the next cottage to check for damage.
***
After Portia had cleaned Ty’s cuts and wrapped his ankle, he polished off half a dozen eggs, the remaining biscuits, and four ham slices.
He belched. “’Scuse me.”
“No problem. As an invalid, you’re entitled to be crude.”
“I gotta move in here. Please. I could get used to this.” He leaned back, balancing his chair on two legs.
Portia grabbed his tee, yanking him forward. “Careful, please. Speaking of which, did the termite spray come from Kent’s?”
“Probably. Wherever it came from, it sure as hell didn’t work.”
Like the faulty handle, and earlier, the pipe Portia knew for certain she’d fixed. “Maybe we should start buying our stuff from Amazon or at another store.”
“Same stuff there as at Kent’s. Never had a problem before.”
Yeah, weird. She sat next to Ty. “Do you think Fran’s doing this?”
“Doing what?”
“Causing the termite problem, the sink handle, the other stuff that’s gone wrong.”
“No. Why would she?”
“To get rid of me.”
He grew thoughtful then shook his head. “You work on plumbing, not pest control. If she did mess with the chemicals, she would have had to do that before you even got to the community, since we sprayed well before you joined us. Even if what you said is possible, the question is why? Especially with the roof. She doesn’t hate the shifter who lives in the cottage I was working on. Far as I know, they’re friends.”
“Would anyone else here want to sabotage the work or the community?”
“To what end?”
She had no idea, except this many accidents in such a short period simply didn’t make sense. Worse, the incidents were growing increasingly dangerous. If the ceiling hadn’t held, Ty could have crashed through to the floor, broken his neck, and died.
Who’d want him dead? Wait.
Everyone here knew Nick was doing roofs today. Maybe he’d been the real target because of her, which circled right back to Fran.
Portia stood, ready to strangle the woman. Just as quickly, she dropped back down. Fran was the proverbial witch, but she wasn’t psychic. She had no idea Portia would show up or live here.
Ty leaned in. “You okay?”
She wouldn’t be until Nick returned.
Took him a while to check the other cottages, including his and hers, but he’d only found one other place damaged. Unfortunately, it was Fran’s.
Despite their differences, Portia sympathized with the woman’s problems. “Karma’s a bitch.”
“No kidding.” He washed his hands at the kitchen sink. “Now, Ty and I have to fix her walls and floors.”
Ty rested his head on the table. Portia patted his shoulder in sympathy. “Will she be there while you guys do the work?”
“Not likely.” Nick grabbed a paper towel. “She’s staying with Olive.”
“Did the shifter who sprayed forget to do her place and the other one?”
“He swears he didn’t.”
“Were there any chemicals left?”
“No. He used everything then disposed of the containers.”
“Do you think this was an accident? Another one in a few short weeks?”
Nick’s expression darkened.
Rather than further discuss her misgivings in Ty’s presence, she coaxed him to the sofa. With a full belly, he fell asleep quickly, allowing her to pull Nick outside. “I don’t want to be paranoid, but unless Fran is doing this because she hates me and wants me gone, then someone else might be.”
“Who? Why?”
“The only one I can think of is Kent, since everything that’s screwed up here is from his store. As to the why…remember that pharmacist who diluted cancer drugs to make more money on them? Maybe Kent’s watering down bug spray or swapping out good merchandise with old stuff he’s found, cleaning it up, hoping no one notices and he can rake in extra cash.”
“Even if he is crazy or greedy enough to do that, why would all those tainted products end up in Moonlight suddenly? He’d have to be messing with everything he sells in order for us to get so many damaged things. If he did that, surely someone else would have noticed by now and he would have been shut down or sued.”
Yeah, averages. The numbers weren’t there for bad luck happening only in Moonlight. “Any reason he’d want this community gone? Do you know anything about his background? Where he grew up? The pack he came from?”
“I don’t think he has one. I’ve never seen him with another shifter. Hell, humans don’t like him either. He ran his partner off and several women. They were here one day, gone the next, never to be seen again.”
“They disappeared?”
“I don’t know. I just assumed they left town and stayed away because they hate him.”
Kent’s pasted-on smile and cold eyes might be one reason. He’d hit Portia wrong from the start, giving her an idea what she should do. “Be extra careful from now on, all right? Try to buy your materials from another store.”
“He’s the biggest in the area for specialized stuff. The pack’s store do
esn’t have a hundredth of what his does.”
“I know. But whatever you have from his place, check it out carefully before actually using it.”
Nick rested his hands on her shoulders. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She didn’t want to get into it until she’d checked out her growing suspicions. “That I love you and don’t want you hurt like Ty or Fran. Think you can do that for me?”
He pulled her into his arms. “I’ll be good, promise. Want to come and watch me work? I’d love an audience.”
“Let me take care of Ty first. Once I roast a cow and peel two or three sacks of potatoes for his lunch, I’ll catch up with you.”
He laughed. “You’d better.”
***
With Ty asleep and Nick away from the cottage, Portia fired up her computer and researched Kent, getting a zillion hits. Most dealt with his business. Once she’d established that Walt Lucas had been Kent’s partner, with Walt leaving the business quite suddenly, she searched his name. According to a people locater site, he’d relocated to Georgia.
On a whim, she called his number.
The line rang once. “Hello?”
She stilled, not knowing what to say. “Ah, hi.”
“Who is this?”
She’d blocked her number from being displayed.
“What are you selling?”
“Nothing. I’m Portia Danes. I went to Kent’s the other day and I have to say, I’m really disappointed. You were his business partner right?”
“If you’re thinking about suing me, you’re out of luck. Bastard screwed me out of every cent he owed.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to sue anyone. My mom and dad owned a plumbing service. Danes Speedy Repair. Ever hear of us?”
“Yeah. You guys do good work.”
“Did. My parents died and I had to close the place. I’m still in plumbing, but I’ve noticed the products Kent sells now are shoddier than they’d been before. Did you do the buying when you guys were partners?”
“Why?”
Good question. She couldn’t come right out with what she needed to say, preferring to dance around it, until Walt gave her an opening. “I was thinking that if you did, you could recommend a better store? Can you?”
“You called me for a recommendation? Don’t you have a computer, sweetie? You can check out Yelp or Angie’s List. Surely your folk’s business was listed there.”
She rubbed her forehead. “They were. Let’s just say I trust you more than online reviews. We all know they can be bought. Not that my parents ever were.”
He named two places. “Prices are slightly higher but you can trust them.”
“Thanks. How about Kent?”
“What about him?”
“Can I trust him?”
“To do what?”
God, this was going to take forever. Time to get real. “Do you consider Kent dangerous?”
“What? Wait. Did he threaten you when you complained?”
“No.”
“Then that only leaves you dating him. He finds most of his girlfriends by coming onto them when they need help with materials. Wish you would have called me before you decided to hook up with him.”
“I haven’t. Has he hurt his former girlfriends?”
“Why would you want to know that?”
“I’m worried about them. It’s not like I can ask him.”
“Why not ask them?
“Please answer me.”
He breathed hard. “If I were a woman, I’d call him Prince Alarming rather than Charming, you know?”
“Can you tell me their names, all the ones you know about? I’d really like to talk to them.”
“I don’t know…. How can I be sure he’s not behind this, using you in the hopes of suing me for slander?”
Poor guy was more paranoid than her. “Record me while I talk. That way he can get me for slander, too.”
“How’s that?”
“Because I’m saying I think he’s killed someone.”
Chapter Six
To Portia’s surprise, Walt didn’t gasp at her admission, call her crazy, or hang up. His calm acceptance spoke volumes. He must have believed Kent capable of murder.
She recalled the man’s icy stare and dead eyes. “Were there any domestic violence calls on him?”
“He’s too careful for that. I did see bruises on the girls. They acted intimidated, too, when I happened by them and him in the store or at restaurants. None of them would look at me. They stared at him like they were waiting to get the okay to breathe. As to physical injuries, it wasn’t like they were sporting black eyes, but there were marks on their arms; what they’d get if he’d squeezed them hard or maybe punched them. A couple of times, there were scratches and scrapes on their wrists.”
“Like he tied them up?”
“I suppose. Of course, it might have been them playing kinky sex games. Who knows? I wasn’t about to ask.”
“The women never confided in you?”
“God, no. They were meek, young, too, in their early twenties, easily conned and intimidated, if you get my drift. I would have loved to see him pulling his macho act on older women. They would have flattened him. Young girls without money are the best targets, especially when a father figure gives them attention. Boy oh boy, did he ever. Most of them had been in the store to get roach repellant. They all lived in pretty dicey places. He must have seemed like a godsend at first, showing so much concern for the shitty apartments and jobs they had, making up for that by taking them to nice restaurants, buying them clothes. I’m sure him telling them how to dress, act, and think probably got old after a while. That’s surely when the trouble started with him insisting and them resisting. Gotta happen, you know? As the years passed, he got cockier, not trying to hide his temper or possessiveness. He spent a lot of time in the office, tracking them by phone or monitoring GPS when he should have been working.”
“He put tracking devices on their cars?”
“Just like you see on cop shows. He wanted to know where they were at all times. My guess is they hadn’t a clue what he’d done.”
Her stomach cramped. “What happened to them? How’d he explain their absence?”
“He didn’t, at least not to me. He’d be in the office one day, fuming over what was on the tracking device or after he’d spoken to them by phone, and the next day they were gone, along with anything that reminded him of them. It was like he’d flicked some kind of internal switch to make them disappear from his memory. Within days, he’d start prowling the store again, getting friendly with the new babes. Not that he was faithful to the ones he controlled when they were still around. While he monitored their every move, he’d mess with other women, some of them becoming his next victims.”
“How many are we talking here?”
He made a pained sound. “There were dozens, sweetie. In and out of his web like it had a revolving door, though there were three that lasted the longest.”
“Do you know their names?”
“Sure. Spotted them enough when he spied on them on his computer. There was Trish Quinn, Marie Jacobs, and Brooke Kennedy.”
Portia keyed the info into her computer. “Who came first, middle, last?”
“Brooke and Marie then Trish. Things were going bad with Trish before I left. With him losing his grip on her, he tried his shit on me, nitpicking every single thing, telling me what I should and shouldn’t do. Right. I couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted out, which is probably what he was shooting for all along. Greedy prick. God knows how many women he’s been with since her…Trish. Don’t want to know and don’t care.”
“Did he act unusual during any of the breakups? Nervous, sad, anything out of the ordinary?”
“Hell no. He has frost in his veins, not blood. It was like they’d never existed to him.”
“Do you know where they lived?”
“You mean before they moved in with him? Those kids didn’t have enough dough
to go anywhere except the lousiest places in town. Real roach motels.” He gave her the names.
“No one ever came around looking for them?”
“Not to my knowledge. I don’t think the girls were connected with family like regular folks are. I heard from a checker at the store that Brooke had been in foster care most of her life, so her ties with relatives were most likely tenuous. If the SOB wanted to get rid of any or all of them, he wouldn’t have had much trouble. They weren’t the kind of people cops go looking for or parents mourn.”
Portia’s stomach rolled. “Thanks, you’ve been a great help.”
“Maybe. You know these girls? Is that what this is really about?”
“No. Never heard of them. I can’t tell you right now what started me on this. It’s simply a suspicion I have.”
“If you take it to the cops, let me know. I’d like to see how this ends.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“You bet.”
***
Armed with the information Walt had provided, Portia researched the women’s names, stopping only to grab some orange juice. To her surprise, Ty wasn’t on the sofa any longer or anywhere else in the cottage. It was also well past lunch with Nick not having returned.
Worried, she hurried outside, stopping on her front porch. He, Ty, and other pack members stood near the damaged cottage, the gaping hole Ty had fallen through covered with a bright-blue tarp. With Nick in the lead, they trekked to Fran’s house.
Portia ducked back inside to her computer, locating public utility records for Marie and Brooke. Marie had relocated to Fort Myers. The restaurant where she worked posted photos on their website, along with related articles profiling wait staff. The most recent one was from last month. Marie had escaped Kent’s grip alive. Given her cheery smile, she also looked happy and safe.
The same for Brooke. She lived in Naples now, working for a pet care service. Photos showed her shampooing dogs and cats, the pictures and accompanying pieces also having recent dates.