by Terra Wolf
Undercover Tiger: Sarge
Terra Wolf
Contents
Copyright
Undercover Tiger: Sarge
1. Giovanni
2. Natasha
3. Giovanni
4. Giovanni
5. Natasha
6. Natasha
7. Giovanni
8. Natasha
9. Giovanni
10. Natasha
11. Natasha
12. Natsha
Turn the page to read Meredith Clarke’s Second Chance Shifter book, A Promise to Bear
A Promise to Bear
1. Twilia
2. Jasper
3. Twila
4. Twila
5. Twila
6. Twila
7. Jasper
8. Twila
9. Twila
10. Jasper
11. Twila
Epilogue
SHAREBEAR Newsletter
Other books in the Second Chance Shifters Series
Next Undercover Bear Series
The End
From the Authors
About the Author - Terra Wolf
About the Author – Meredith Clarke
©2016 Terra Wolf
Sarge: Undercover Bears
All Rights Reserved worldwide.
No part of this book may be reproduced, uploaded to the Internet, or copied without permission from the author. The author respectfully asks that you please support artistic expression and help promote anti-piracy efforts by purchasing a copy of this book at the authorized online outlets.
This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences only. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Some may be used for parody purposes. Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
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Undercover Tiger: Sarge
1
Giovanni
I set my hands down on the table, feeling its wood grain beneath my fingertips.
“This is taking forever, guys,” I said, exasperated. We’d been looking at the same paperwork for hours. And this was the third time this week. There was nothing there, nothing that was going to help resolve this case anyway.
“We’ve got to find something; our captain is going to have our asses if we don't,” Shane said, looking just as frustrated as I felt.
“I gotta get back to my precinct soon, guys, I’ve already been here for two weeks. I can only imagine the damage that Harrison's been doing since I've been away.” I laughed, mostly to myself. The guys didn't know the shifters at the Seattle PD like I did. We ran our own unit, just the three of us, Gavin, Harrison, and myself. I was the highest ranking, as Sergeant. But I trusted Harrison enough to leave him in charge for the past couple weeks while we were working on this case together—money-laundering from some big company in Seattle that crossed over the state border into Portland. They were having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to fix their situation. I offered my assistance, but that was only when I thought I could help them. Instead, I felt like more of a hindrance, as I hadn't found out anything that they couldn’t have learned themselves. And after three days of doing nothing but looking at paperwork, I was starting to feel like my efforts would've been better spent at home. I needed to get my hands on a good murder case, away from all the math and numbers. I wasn't any good at them. I didn't have the patience.
“Listen, Gio, if you have somewhere better to be…” Shane said to me, raising an eyebrow.
“No, it's not that, guys, it's just I don't really feel like I'm being very helpful. You give me a body and then I can do some serious damage. Looking at all these facts and figures? That’s just not me. I mean, isn’t that what you guys have tech for?” If I was lead on this case, that’s exactly where all this paperwork would end up.
The men around the around the table nodded. “I'd like to say that’s what we have them for, but the captain doesn’t trust anybody but us. You know how some shifters are about humans. They just don't feel like they do as good of a job. We all have our skills, I guess.”
I forgot about that. Shane and his entire unit were just like mine. All shifters. But unlike me and my guys, they were all bears. Something about the Pacific Northwest really brought us together. I think it was the fact that the world was a little bit more open to us out here. Ever since they had passed the shifter registration legislation, we'd been out in the open. That didn't mean that everybody accepted us the same, though. Seattle and Portland were known for offering jobs for shifters specifically. They provided a catchall when no one else wanted us. I appreciated that about our little town.
Even though most of the detectives were just like me, and certainly all the guys around this table, sometimes we didn't trust humans as much as our own kind and vice versa. It wasn't about what anyone thought really, we were just two different types of people. But at the end of the day, we all had one thing in common on the force: catch the bad guy.
I thought about their captain and his distrust of humans. It probably came from somewhere. I remembered when I had decided to become a police officer. My mother had obviously known my entire life that I was a shifter, and when I was old enough to find out what had happened to my father, she explained everything to me.
Wolves had to turn with the moon or they would literally claw themselves out of their skin, and then you had the bears, who could sleep for days and not eat without noticing. Those men were larger, not quite as fast as wolves, but sometimes with better instincts. And they preferred to keep to themselves. For a short time when I was still in uniform, I worked with a pack of wolves. They knew their stuff, but they were pain in the ass to keep up with. That pack mentality was a very real thing. I definitely preferred working with bears.
Then there were people like me. The big cats. I was a tiger. Tigers were a bit different than other types of shifters. We could turn at will and hide our true nature pretty easily. My father had been a tiger as well. Unfortunately, that was why he was killed.
I was nine when my mother finally told me the truth about his death. About how a young girl had been slain. That was before the legislation had been passed, and shifters were blamed for everything. Just like in any other society, people followed the person who was the loudest, the biggest bully on the playground, even if he was wrong. The mayor of the tiny town that we lived in outside of Seattle had been one of those assholes, and he blamed shifters for every problem that our little town ever had. Everyone knew about my father, as he didn't hide our life like it was some secret. And so when the little girl died, they went on a hunt. Took the shotguns and acted like he was just some escaped tiger from the zoo, completely wild. But that was not the way shifters were at all. We still had our human stream of consciousness even as the animal. We were separate from them, but still the same. He had control.
They shot my father in cold blood in an alley when he became trapped. He was even shifting back into human, trying to explain his innocence, to make them listen. It was a tragedy that shook our community to the core. Only a few friends from our community came to his funeral, and a lot of the kids from school weren’t even allowed t
o attend. I was devastated. But that was what put me on the path to becoming a police officer. I wouldn't let any shifters or any innocent people ever get treated that way again. I would fight for what was right for all people, regardless of if they were like me or not. So that was what I decided to do. I graduated high school and got an associate’s degree in criminal justice and then went immediately into the force.
It was just me and Ma then. I didn’t make time for any other women in my life. I was fine that it was just me and her. I didn’t need anyone else. To be honest, tigers had a little bit of a type A personality. I was always striving to be perfect. I couldn't help it. And even though shifters were out in the open, it wasn't like I was going to find another tiger like me. We are the rarest shifters of all, and there were only a couple hundred of us in the entire United States. And just because I was out in public didn't mean that everyone was. My father and his life had taught me that that was okay. I couldn't blame people for not wanting to tell everyone their biggest secret. Something that people might go after them for. In this day and age, people didn’t need another reason. Not when you could be the villain in someone’s eyes for just living. Humans did that enough to each other, so why make it worse? Sometimes being a shifter wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.
While I was sitting and looking at the paperwork, I realized that this was probably the longest time I'd been away from my mother since I was a kid. I got to go to a summer camp once before my father died. That was it. We'd been together ever since. She was one of those great Italian mothers who always wanted to feed you and do nice things for your friends. She was amazing like that. I remembered when she knitted scarves for Gavin, Harrison, and I for Christmas last year. They wore them to work every single day for a month, just in case she saw them. Those guys didn't have family like I did, so I appreciated her. They understood that she was special.
I took a swig from my coffee and looked around me again; the group had fallen silent. I spent more time sighing and in silence in the past week than I had in my entire life. There was nothing here, and we just needed to admit it to ourselves.
“Guys, we've got to look at this from another angle. We’re getting nowhere here.”
“Yeah, I think you're right. Maybe you should just go back to Seattle, Gio. If we find something, we’ll be in touch.”
I ran my fingers through my dark hair. Finally, the escape I had been looking for. Just then, I saw Shane's eyes narrow as he turned toward the door. Someone was coming, but he wasn't happy with the news that they were bringing. His hearing was impeccable; I had never seen anything like it. He knew exactly what was going on before anything actually happened.
The door opened and the captain stood in front of us, holding a cell phone in his hands.
“Well, gentlemen, I think we got the break in the case we’d been looking for.”
Finally.
2
Natasha
I was standing in the break room, trying to grab another cup of coffee, when Lydia came in.
“Morning,” she said, looking cheerful as always. I, on the other hand, was hardly recognizable as a person before 10 AM and without three cups of coffee. I just read an article recently about how having to work before 10 AM was slowly torturing us all, and I swear to God, if I met the writer of that article, I would kiss him full on the lips.
I hated mornings.
“Morning,” I grumbled, milking the last few drips from the coffee pot.
“You know you're going to have to refill that, or everyone in the office is going to hate you again.”
I rolled my eyes but opened the cupboard above me and pulled out the grounds for a new pot. I had a reputation in the office as the girl who drank all the coffee, but never made any. But if they truly knew me, they would know that I made a horrible cup of coffee, and then they wouldn’t ask me again. Maybe making this pot would finally convince them of that.
“So what's on the agenda for today?” I asked her as I turned on the machine.
“Who the hell knows? Do you realize that we haven't had one of those conference meetings in two months? How do we go from literally having one every day to not having any?”
I shrugged. Come to think of it, she was right. I felt like the last couple months, we were just here to go through the motions. Not that working a financial investment firm was very exciting, but we'd definitely been busier last year than we had this quarter.
“You don't think people are going to lose their jobs, do you? I mean, haven’t we been picking up new accounts?”
She shook her head. “Not in my department. You know what I did hear, though? One of the partners is coming down here today. So maybe somebody is getting the boot.”
Fabulous. I hoped it was Steve; he was a total douche bag, and he had asked me out more times than I could count. I didn't like him at all. He just had a slimy feel about him. Maybe if I got lucky and it was him, I wouldn't have to bother filing the sexual harassment claim that Lydia kept insisting upon. I mean, deep down, I knew that she was right: you couldn't really let men treat you any way they wanted, but it was more hassle than I was willing to deal with. I heard some people quiet outside the door and realized that perhaps Mr. Berstein, one of the partners, had graced us with his presence. It was the first time in as long as I worked there. Maybe this was more than just firing Steve or somebody else. I wondered what it was.
“I guess we should get out there. Sounds like the troops are assembling.”
Lydia grabbed bottled water out of the fridge and then held the door open for me. I raised my mug to her and walked out before her.
About two hundred people worked in our department. Our floor was always buzzing, with phones ringing and people clacking on their computers. A lot of business was done up here, more than any other floor. There were tons of employees, but also interns. Lydia and I had each been offered one or two on occasion, but decided against it. She and I were better working on her own; besides, our shared office space was at the end of the building, and we could shut the door and ignore all the craziness happening in the cubicles. To bring someone else into our little circle just didn't seem like the way to go. I watched as every person on our floor walked toward the elevators, as there was a large gathering area there. A lot of people would still have to stand on their chairs in their cubicles to see, but it could hold about a hundred of us. Lydia and I moved closer, squeezing our way through the men in suits in order to stand with a couple of other friends from the firm. There were only about ten women on this floor, so we kind of stuck together.
“Any idea what this is about?” Lydia asked one of them, once we finally solidified our spots.
“No idea. Partner on the floor? That's either really good or really bad. You know me, I'm going with the latter.”
Courtney had a point, even though she was kind of a negative Nancy. Mr. Berstein got up on top of a platform so we could all see him better. I hadn’t noticed that before; he must've pulled it out especially for this meeting. Something sinister was definitely going on.
He stepped up onto the platform, looking older than he had the last time I'd seen him. Maybe that was at the company Christmas party? It certainly had been recently. He was a man of about fifty, balding but just barely. He had on a navy suit with a pink lapel; he always looks stylish. It grew quiet as he held his hand out for attention. He wasn't smiling.
“I'm sure you're wondering what you're doing here, as we certainly don't meet like this very often.” He let out a small laugh and a couple of the senior associates laughed with him. “I should do this more often. Get to know my people. But sadly, that's not what today is about. Today, you need to know that there's a threat among us.” A few gasps came from around the room. I thought they were being a bit dramatic.
“There are a couple clients who have created a group that are unhappy with our services. They most likely will be filing a lawsuit any day now.”
A lawsuit? What did that mean? Just as I was thinking that, Lydia
leaned down next to me and whispered, “So I guess we were right; some people are losing their jobs. I wonder who it could be.”
“I hope it's Steve.”
She laughed, hitting me on the arm playfully.
“Yes, I'm sorry to say that some of our colleagues have made some poor investments, and as a result, some people are no longer interested in working with Berstein Incorporated. This, of course, will create some changes among the staff and who is assigned to certain caseloads. Your senior associates will be meeting with each one of you directly in order to assign you to your new position. Others will sadly be shown the door. We need to pare down while the lawsuit is going on, but we can assure you that you will all be hired back as soon as things settle down. We are not at fault here, but we need to make it clear that we will not be intimidated by our clients. We never have before, and we won’t now.” I thought he expected thunderous applause or something, but instead, we just stood there dumbfounded. This wasn’t a political rally. Everyone had one thing on their minds: who was losing their job? How many of us would go home tonight not knowing when our next paycheck was coming? And if this lawsuit wasn't that big of a deal, why were they hiding people? I looked to Lydia, but her eyes were on the floor. She was never negative, the eternal optimist. Mr. Berstein’s speech had even freaked her out. We were totally screwed.
“I'll let your senior associates get in touch with you each individually. Have a great rest of your day.” Of course he would say that, not taking any personal responsibility. I guessed you would when you were the big boss.
He stepped down off the platform, and immediately, the vice presidents crowded around him like security. Was he expecting some sort of riot? Mostly, we were all a bunch of math geeks. We wouldn't know how to attack him or start a fight even if we wanted to. He was expecting a little bit more of us than he should have. Immediately, people started talking amongst themselves in small groups, breaking off. I eyed Lydia carefully.