The Alpha Meets His Match

by Georgette St. Clair

  Startled, the lion shifter leaped up with a roar, and shifted into lion form quicker than a flash. He swung to glare at Pixie with giant golden eyes.

  Hair trigger temper on that one, Bobbi thought, quickly moving between the lion and Pixie.

  .

  Bobbi couldn’t help but notice a black plastic bracelet with a blinking green light on the lion’s right hind ankle. The lion shifter was on supervised probation, for something. It looked strange and out of place on the lion’s furry ankle.

  Kenneth had sprouted a mouthful of fangs, and the color of his eyes was pure gold. His jacket split open as his shoulders broadened.

  Jax and Tyler jumped to their feet, startled.

  “You’re right,” Pixie said, flashing a self-satisfied smirk. “No luck at all. It’s skill, not luck.”

  The lion changed back to human form, standing up right, stark naked, glaring down at his shredded clothes. Bobbi barely even noticed that he was absolutely huge in certain important areas of the anatomy. Lion sized, even. Also he was definitely a natural blond.

  Looking around the room at their shocked expressions, Bobbi started laughing so hard that tears came to her eyes. They ran down her cheeks.

  Pixie joined her. The two women stood there and howled with laughter. “Come on,” Bobbi gasped, wiping at her face. “You have to admit that was hilarious. Your faces! Oh my God.”

  She turned to the lion shifter, who was standing there glowering at them, arms folded across his broad chest.

  “Sorry about your clothes. Not really. Every friend of Jax’s is on my shit list today.”

  “Dominick, do run along and get dressed. We’re not animals. Most of the time, anyway. You can find some clothes in any of my closets.” Kenneth’s jacket and shirt were split open, but he’d only partially shifted, so his pants were intact. He stripped off the jacket, removed his cuff links, and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  With a growl directed at Pixie, Dominick left the room.

  Kenneth turned to Pixie in exasperation. “So, what else of mine have you pilfered?”

  Pixie shrugged insolently. “Nothing you can’t afford to replace. Maybe nothing at all. You could try to search me, but I’d recommend against it.”

  “Life is never boring when you’re around, is it?” Kenneth said to Jax. He still looked more amused than angry, which was probably a good thing. He looked as if he could be lethal when he was angry.

  Jax had found the bug, with Tyler’s help. He pulled his wallet out, and fished out a tiny metal transmitter. He turned to Pixie, looking half outraged, half astonished.

  “You planted that in my wallet the day you stole it, didn’t you?”

  Pixie shrugged. “Ya think? Who knows? I can’t remember back that far.”

  “How could you have known to have a radio transmitter ready to plant on me? You didn’t even know I was following you that day,” Jax protested to Bobbi.

  “Didn’t I?” Bobbi smiled with no warmth whatsoever. “Keep telling yourself that. And give me back my phone.”

  Tyler handed it to her. If Jax had given him the phone, they’d already gone through it looking for information. Good luck with that, she thought. Kenneth was chuckling quietly. “Really. This is the most fun I’ve had in ages.” He glanced at Pixie. “Kindly don’t toss any more weapons around, though. Dominick is my bodyguard. He has a hair trigger temper and could easily have hurt you. He can’t always control himself when he’s in lion form.”

  Pixie sneered at Jax. “That’s what you get for drugging my friend, you pig. I don’t have many friends, and the few that I do have, it’s a really bad idea for anyone to mess with them.”

  Jax let out a low, irritable growl and then turned to Bobbi. “Fine. You found me. Let’s get down to business.”

  Chapter Ten

  “We’re going to have a hard time moving forward with this,” Bobbi said coldly. “Since I have certain trust issues with you now. I already told you I don’t want the damned reward. Why did you steal the USB?”

  Jax growled in exasperation. “I’m a control freak, and this case is very, very important to me. I don’t want to risk anything going wrong.”

  Bobbi settled on the couch, as Dominick came back in the room, wearing a silky oxford-style shirt, trousers, and a belt.

  “Well, now that I know I can’t trust you, I’m glad I didn’t tell you about the common denominator that I found between the three men.”

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  “Spill it,” Jax demanded. “You know how important this is.”

  “First give me the damned USB.”

  “You work for the Enforcer council, am I correct? I’ll email the information on the USB to them right now,” Tyler said.

  She gave him Renee’s email address and then watched as Tyler emailed the contents of the USB to her. Then she called Renee to make sure that she’d received it, and also told her about Jax’s conversation with Cedric.

  “You need to pass all of that information along to the police,” Renee said.

  “With Stanford breathing down their necks?” Bobbi protested.

  “I told you. Until he gives us a reason to file a complaint or take official action, we’ve got no legitimate reason not to cooperate,” Renee said. “We don’t like him any more than you do, but his campaign against shifters is all the more reason for us to be on the up and up with the police department and with this investigation. We don’t want to give him any room for complaint against the Enforcers.”

  “Fine,” Bobbi said, and hung up, frustration boiling inside her.

  “This bites,” she grumbled.

  A male servant who looked like a classic English butler, right down to the black suit with bow tie and tailcoat, came in, wheeling a silver tray laden with pastries, sandwiches, and hors d’oeuvres. Pixie’s eyes lit up.

  Kenneth nodded his thanks. “Thank you, Edgar,” he said to the servant. “I figure that might at least briefly distract our larcenous little friend here,” he added, as she quickly began loading food onto a plate.

  “Technically, that USB was mine,” Jax informed Bobbi, his tone aggrieved. “Remember, I gave it to you so you could hack into the club’s computer. So I wasn’t stealing. I was taking back my property.”

  “We were supposed to work together. Drugging me and then running off with the fruits of my labor is not working together.”

  “Fine. I’m sorry,” he bit out. He don’t look sorry. He looked irritated and defensive. “What’s the common denominator?”

  Bobbi took a deep breath and counted to ten.

  Despite her anger at Jax, she still needed him and his local connections – more than ever now that any information that they gave to the police would be immediately handed to Stanford Roosevelt.

  And underneath it all, as angry as she was at him, she still wanted to see him solve the case and get the reward. She couldn’t explain it, it made no sense, but she believed that on some level, a really, really well hidden level, he was basically a decent person…to say nothing of that whole fated mate connection.

  “First, let me explain something to you. I don’t want to have to work with a pigheaded, doublecrossing jerk who sabotages me, any more than you want to give up control of this investigation. But we’re stuck with each other, and we both have skills and resources that can help each other. Pixie, chew your food for God’s sake, your cheeks are bulging like a squirrel. You’re going to choke and then I’ll have to Heimlich you. So, where was I? Oh, yes. I will tell you what the common denominator is, but if you screw me over again, I will be forced to report back to your boss at Hammersmith.”

  Jax’s eyes flashed amber with rage, and his lips peeled back to reveal his fangs.

  “What did you expect?” Bobbi snapped. “That just because we had some mindblowing sex, I’d roll over and let you do whatever the hell you want? Fuck you. Give me your word that you won’t try to ditch me again, or I will call them and tell them what you pulled.”

 
Everyone in the room suddenly looked very interested at the mention of mindblowing sex. Pixie gave her thumbs up and said something with her mouth full, something that sounded like “you go, girl.” Crumbs fell out of her mouth on to the floor, and the servant grimaced and quickly picked them up with a napkin.

  “Sorry, Jeeves,” Pixie mumbled, spilling more crumbs.

  Jeeves. Bobbi had to give her credit. She was a well-read street rat.

  Jax was clearly furious, and struggling to stay calm. Bobbi didn’t care. She stood there glowering at him, arms folded across her chest, watching the bones in his face ripple as he fought to keep his wolf contained.

  God, it is pathetic how much I want him to bend me over his knee and spank me right this minute, she told herself. I need to invest in a very efficient vibrator.

  “Listen,” she continued. “Kenneth clearly has resources. I don’t know how much we can count on police assistance any more, now that Representative Roosevelt’s in the picture. We need to work together and pool all of our resources and skills, unless we want to see more Rage cases and have to face terrified human mobs everywhere we go.”

  “She’s right,” Kenneth said. “I’m willing to do whatever I can to help.”

  Jax nodded. She glanced around the room. “And I take it you trust everybody here with the information that I’m about to reveal.”

  “You’re questioning my trustworthiness?” the lion shifter snarled. “You brought a thief into my employer’s house.”

  “Pixie has my back. I trust her way more than I trust you,” Bobbi snapped at him. “And given that you’re a convicted felon, Mr. Ankle Bracelet, I’d say that’s pretty hypocritical coming from you.”

  “I’m on probation because I got in a bar fight. More than once. I have anger management issues, which you should keep in mind. I say the thief should wait outside the house, with-“

  Bobbi let out a snarl that ripped from her throat, and felt her fangs lengthening in her mouth.

  “Lay off the girl,” Tyler said calmly, pushing his chair back and standing up.

  “Or what?” Dominick sneered. “Go back to your desk or I’ll break your glasses, you little – argggh!”

  Tyler shifted so fast that he was a blur of motion, and the next thing Bobbi knew, Dominick was on his back on the ground, and Tyler was an utterly enormous gray wolf snapping at his throat.

  “Stop it! Both of you!” Kenneth snapped at them.

  Tyler shifted back to human form, his shredded clothes on the floor. Pixie was staring, jaw hanging open.

  “Wow, are shifters all huge like that?” she asked. “Because I’ve never done it with a shifter before, but oh. My. God. That is now on my to-do list.” She snickered. “Get it? Because I’m going to do a shifter.”

  “Yes, Pixie we get it, but thank you for explaining it to us,” Bobbi said patiently.

  “You’re welcome.” She went back to stuffing food in her mouth.

  Sighing, Tyler picked his glasses up off the floor and trotted out of the room to get clothing.

  Dominick stood up, feeling his throat and glaring. “I could have taken him. He just caught me off guard for a minute. Element of surprise,” he muttered, and scowled at Bobbi’s knowing smirA cell phone chimed melodiously, and Kenneth answered, and then appeared agitated.

  “Again?” he muttered. “How? Are we making any progress on this case yet?”

  A pause.

  “Fine. I’m a little tied up at the moment. I’ll call you back.”

  “Your thief struck again?” Jax asked him. “If you need me to kill anyone, let me know.”

  “It may come to that,” Kenneth said, his voice cold. Bobbi felt a little shiver run through her. She had a feeling that Kenneth would be a lethal enemy. Shifters of the feline species tended to toy with their prey before dispatching them.

  Tyler walked back in, wearing khaki slacks and a polo shirt. He’d had to cuff the bottom of the pants, because Kenneth was several inches taller than him. “He’s kind of hot, in a nerdy way,” Pixie said in a quiet voice to Bobbi. Tyler winked at her, sat down at Kenneth’s desk, and began typing away on the computer.

  “Shifters have freakishly good hearing,” Bobbi said to Pixie. “Especially the canine species.”

  Then she turned to Jax.

  “Aurora,” Bobbi said. “Your girlfriend Aurora is the common denominator.” That came out way more bitter than she meant it to.

  “What do you mean? And she’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Aurora went into a private room with every one of those guys who later went rabid – and in each case, a few days later, they suffered those rage attacks. But here’s the thing – she also went into that room with a lot of other guys, who didn’t go rabid. The other girls at the club are aware that she’s been with three guys who died within days after she was with them, but they only know about the judge being rabid. They think the doctor died in a hunting accident and the businessman died of a drug overdose…but they’re still talking about it. I don’t know if Aurora knows, but word will get to her soon – unless this is something that she’s doing deliberately, in which case of course she already knows.”

  Then he looked at Pixie. “Did she just eat a quarter of the food on that tray?”

  “Hey, if she’s eating, she’s not stealing. I think,” Bobbi shrugged. “Anyway, I know where Aurora lives.”

  “How?”

  “I called Velvet, got her talking. Pretended that I needed more reassurance that Aurora wasn’t interested in Jax. She mentioned that the two of them live downtown somewhere, with a room-mate named Ashley. I couldn’t come out and ask her for the exact address, but-”

  “

  “3062 Montgomery Avenue,” Tyler said. He’d been frantically tapping on the laptop keyboard as she spoke; Bobbi hadn’t even been aware he’d been following their conversation.

  “How?” Bobbi marveled.

  “The owner of Caged Heat had a list of all his employees, with their club names and their real names, and their contact information, on his laptop

  “Nice.” Bobbi nodded approvingly. “We need to run background checks on Aurora, her boyfriend, and her room-mate. Her boyfriend’s name is Oliver, and he works at Caged Heat. I’m going to have to pass this information on to the police, but I’d like to do some checking of our own first. Tyler, can you hack into the police department database without leaving a trace?”

  He laughed.

  “So you can, I take it,”Bobbi said.

  “Child’s play. However, Aurora is the only one whose name is on the lease. She’s lived there for three years,” Tyler said. “Her boyfriend’s full name is Oliver Ferguson, according to Caged Heat’s records. Give me a few minutes while I see what I can get from police records.”

  They waited while he tapped and clicked for several minutes.

  “Aurora’s been busted for shoplifting several times; apparently she’s got expensive tastes. She hasn’t been busted recently. Oliver Ferguson’s never been arrested. He grew up in Utah with a Mormon family, worked for his family’s bank there, was engaged to another Mormon, then eight months ago he moved to San Francisco by himself, lived there about two months working as a bus boy, then moved here six months ago. He was practically a choir boy before he left home. I’ll do some more research on him.”Bobbi nodded. So far, she was running into dead ends when it came to fulfilling her personal mission, the one nobody knew about…not even Vaughn. For a brief moment she’d hoped that perhaps Oliver was the Chemist, but clearly he wasn’t, not based on what Tyler was saying. None of what Tyler described matched up with the information she’d been able to unearth on The Chemist.

  “Send me in,” Pixie said suddenly.

  “What?” Bobbi was startled.

  “Let me go to the neighborhood and do some snooping around. I could get into their mailbox and jack their mail. Maybe something will be addressed to the room-mate,” Pixie said. “This woman has never seen me before.”

  “Depending what we’
re looking at here, this could be extremely dangerous,” Bobbi protested.

  Pixie made a face at her like a teenager who’d just been reminded to wear her seatbelt.

  “I’ve been living on my own since I was twelve. In squats. Under highway overpasses. I’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t trust her,” Dominick snapped. “She’s a thief. That’s the definition of untrustworthy.”

  Bobbi swung on him, eyes blazing, but before she could speak Kenneth interrupted her. “I do trust her.”

  Everyone turned to stare at him. Even Pixie looked shocked.

  “You do?” Pixie said suspiciously, as if he were about to make fun of her.

  “I didn’t achieve my success through good luck and good looks, although I do possess those in abundance. To succeed in the business world, you have to be able to read people. I trust her to do what she says. I don’t trust her to walk out of here without some of my belongings in her pockets, but if she says she’ll go in undercover, that’s what she’ll do. And she’ll be very good at it.”

  Pixie positively beamed at what he was saying.

  Bobbi nodded, impressed. She had to give Jax’s friend credit.

  Jax, on the other hand, got nothing.

  He was staring at her, and she felt a warm sensation sweep over her, and a tingling which started between her legs and spread up inside her. She scowled and turned her back on him, arms carefully folded over her stiffening nipples which were poking at the fabric of her shirt, like little beacons of betrayal.

  She didn’t care how difficult it was, she would never have sex with him again, and she was not going to let her attraction to him cloud her thinking.

  “Aurora will probably be working at the club tonight,” Jax told her. “We should go back. We need to see who she takes into private rooms, in case something ends up happening to them.”

  Bobbi considered it. “Fine,” she said, turning part way back to face him, but keeping her arms in place. “But we’re not doing another scene together. We can just go in and mingle. Go flirt with whoever you want to. I don’t care. We’ll hang out and keep an eye on Serena and see what she’s up to.”