“No,” he said emphatically.
“I’m going to stop in and see what they have.”
“I’d rather we did it together.”
“But they’d recognize you. I’m at my hotel. I’ll call back when I reach the grocery store and make sure I get what you want too. And then I’ll let you know when I’m at the shop. I’ll keep you on the line so you know I’m okay.”
She didn’t have to read minds to know he wasn’t happy with her going it alone, considering what had happened to him in the dead of night. But she would keep him posted, just in case. “I’ll be fine. I’m going in through the front lobby now.” She had planned on ending the call, but she sighed, deciding to let him know she was fine all the way back to her car. When she was in her room, she said, “No one’s been here other than a cleaning maid. I smelled her scent in the hallway so I know that’s just her. Well, and other scents, but they’re older. I’m going to take a shower, put on more hunter’s spray and change clothes.”
“Leave the phone on.”
She laughed. “Why? So you can hear me sudsing up?”
“So I can hear you yell out if anyone tries to grab you. But yeah, if you want to tell me all about the delectable parts your sudsing at the same time, that works for me.”
She chuckled. “All right. This is weird, but all right. But I’m not giving you a play by play.” She left her phone on the bathroom counter, locked the door, stripped, and showered. Then she dried off and sprayed hunter’s spray on both herself and her clothes before she dressed.
She packed her bag, grabbed her phone, and headed down to the lobby. “On my way to check out,” she told Travis.
“Thank you for humoring me,” Travis said. “I’ve just contacted the sheriff’s department in Yuma Town, all cougars, and they’re investigating the license plate now.”
“Wow, that’s fantastic.” She finished going over her bill and headed outside to her car, watching, making sure no one was following her. Then she used her GPS to locate grocery stores and drove to the nearest one.
“What are you driving?”
“Neon green Honda Fit.” Bridget smiled when he didn’t respond. “I know it’s not a great getaway car and it’s not inconspicuous, but when I bought it, I had no idea I’d be working for a secret cougar policing organization. So this is how I operate. Nobody would dream of me being a super special agent—cougar variety. Although, I will admit I didn’t want to use my car to rescue you. I was hoping the Durango out back was yours. I was afraid my car would have been way too recognizable and it doesn’t have a lot of power, so no get up and go.”
“You need something with a lot more power under the engine.”
“Maybe later.”
When she arrived at the grocery store, she picked up what he would like and what she wanted, and then made one last stop at the Christmas Tree Shoppe. “Okay, I’m at the shop. There are seven cars here now. I’ll keep talking to you while I’m in the shop, asking what you’d like for our tree.”
“If you have any trouble, you scream your head off and I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
“I can do that. Okay, honey,” she said, changing her tone from impersonal to something much more personal. “I just walked into the Christmas store, and I know you didn’t want to come with me, but since it’s our first Christmas together, can you tell me what you would like especially on our first tree?”
Nine women were shopping in the store, two with pre-school age children, and a blonde woman in her early twenties was at the checkout counter ringing someone’s purchases up. Bridget didn’t see any sign of the two men who had left their scent in the store. So maybe the black pickup truck out back belonged to the clerk.
“Oh, honey, I found just the ornaments for you and me. I’ll just leave it as a mystery. Can’t wait to show them to you.” She picked out a boy and girl naughty elf wood carved ornaments and then a couple of angels. She took them to the checkout counter and smiled at the clerk. “How long will you have the sale on for?” Bridget pulled out cash and paid for her purchase.
“Through New Year’s.”
“Thanks! I’ll be sure to come back.” Then Bridget left with the sack in hand, telling Travis he was going to just love the ornaments she got for him.
“Let me guess. Angels for me and naughty elves for you.”
She closed her gaping mouth. Did he have psychic abilities? Is that why she couldn’t read his thoughts? Then how could he read hers? “How did you know?”
He laughed. “Because that’s what I overhead the men talking about. Those two items were their bestsellers. I figured that they just said so to make it sound as though they had gotten over their disagreement, but in truth, they were planning to ambush me.”
“Oh. Well, yes, and no. That’s what I got, but I thought you’d get more of a kick out of the naughty elves. Somehow I don’t see you as being the angel type. Uh-oh, I’ve got a tail. I’m not going straight to your house.”
“I’m coming to you.”
“No, wait. I think…I think it’s Chet Kensington. Do you know him?”
“Yeah, darn good agent. What’s he doing here? Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yeah, incoming call from him. I have one more stop to make. I’ll let you go so I can talk to him.” She hung up on Travis and said, “Chet, so the director sent you?”
“Hey, Bridget, yeah. Are you going to Travis’s place? Boss said he was moving.”
“He had room for me.”
“I wonder if he has room for me.”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him. I thought the boss was telling you that Travis would work with me on the mission.”
“He did call, but I was already on my way here with only an hour or so to spare. I figured I’d drop in, see if I was needed, and if not, head on out.”
She hated to say so, but she really did think he was needed, what with the rogue cougars already identifying Travis. She figured they could talk about it over breakfast. She had one more errand to make before she headed for Travis’s place though.
“He’s got a carport around back. That’s where we always park when we use his place as a safe house.”
“All right. So you know him pretty well?”
“Yeah. We’ve teamed up on a few missions. He’s really good at his job.”
“Okay, good.” She picked up boxes being discarded at a stationary store, then continued on her way to Travis’s house. The homes were spacious and were situated on at least five-acre treed lots. She drove down the side driveway of Travis’s place and parked around back where the carport was, hidden from the street. He had a forest of trees behind his place, and she thought how perfect it was for a cougar family. Had he sold it to one? Or just plain humans? It would be a waste if it just went to humans, she thought.
Chet pulled up beside her and got out. She was glad that he didn’t grab his suitcase and assume that it was all right with Travis that he stay here too. And he was nice enough to help haul in the groceries.
Travis headed outside to help also, and slapped Chet on the shoulder. “Good to see you again.” Then he moved around to her trunk to grab a bunch of groceries.
She was pleased to see him act friendly toward Chet and not all alpha posturing over his territory. To her, that meant he was a true alpha, not needing to claim his territory, or prove anything to another alpha. And Chet was totally an alpha. She had to let him know several times that she could handle things on her own during the last assignment they’d been on together. Sure he was being protective of her because she was new on the job, but she suspected it also had to do with her being a woman.
Chet’s thoughts were all over the place too. From glad to see Travis, to wishing he hadn’t been here so he could do this mission alone with Bridget. He was really nice, and he was really interested in her, but she never felt any spark between them. She wondered if she had been groping in his pockets for a pair of keys or stripping him out of his clothes, would she have felt anything b
etween them? Maybe. But she didn’t think so.
“You got boxes too,” Travis said, sounding delighted.
She was glad she had made the extra stop now. “I can get you some other sizes, but I figured these would get you started. They’re from a stationary store that was getting ready to trash them. And lots less dangerous to take off their hands than the ones at the Christmas Tree Shoppe.”
“You can’t know how much that means to me.”
She could tell just from his cheerful expression.
“So,” Chet said to Travis as they hauled in all the groceries and started putting them away, “tell me to get lost if you can’t manage any more guests with packing or you really think you can handle this matter without me and I’ll be on my way.”
“Let’s discuss it over breakfast,” Bridget said.
Chet smiled. “That’ll work for me.”
Travis let out his breath. “They made me. It’s been killing me to know Bridget is out there on her own after the two men got the best of me and planned to eliminate me.”
She was surprised Travis had come out and spilled the beans about what had to have been an embarrassing situation for him. Yet, not once had he acted embarrassed about it. Just ready to take the criminals down.
Chet looked from Travis to Bridget and to Travis again, as if he couldn’t believe he wasn’t just joking. “I…take it you didn’t tell the boss. He didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“I haven’t talked to him. I’ve been on the phone all morning with Bridget, making sure she was okay.” Travis eyed the red and white snowflake bag and smiled. “Can I see the ornaments you got for us?”
She felt her face flush with heat. She hadn’t planned for Chet to be around to see them. “Sure.” She finished putting away the food that needed to go in the refrigerator, then began making breakfast. She was trying not to pay any attention to the men as Chet waited for Travis to unwrap the tissue paper around the Christmas ornaments.
Travis unwrapped one angel, then the other. Then he pulled out the next wrapped ornament and laughed. He unwrapped the second one and set them on the counter side by side. “These have to be mine.”
She smiled. “I thought you’d like them.”
They were primitives, round heads and oval bodies, stick legs and stick arms, round wooden noses, little red knit caps with tassels, but the female had round balls for breasts and the male had a woody between his legs.
Chet grinned. “I may have to get a couple of those myself.”
“That’s the shop we’re investigating.” Bridget started making French toast.
“Where they grabbed you, Travis?” Chet asked. “Did you learn anything?”
“Just that they’re paying someone protection money. They’re using the store as a front,” Travis said.
“The clerk was human. No sign of the two men who smelled like cougars. But now that they grabbed you and you got away, they might start using hunter’s spray,” Bridget said.
“Unless they believed I was just a cougar in the wrong place at the wrong time and they knew that I couldn’t turn them into the police.”
“True. But you had a gun on you.”
“Agreed.” Travis made a pot of coffee. “I got word back on the truck’s license plate number. It belongs to an Evie Lancaster. The interesting thing is I checked into a man named Rambo Lancaster a year ago. He shakes down businesses to offer them ‘protection.’ No Mob ties that we can tell. Just a low-life crook who makes big money off the little criminal entrepreneurs.”
“Wait, Rambo? That’s who they were talking about. No last name. Why don’t you take him out?” Bridget asked.
“We have to concentrate on cougar shifter-related crimes. Shifters can’t go to jail. That’s why we have to deal with them instead of the police. I checked to see if Evie Lancaster is related to Rambo and she is. She’s his daughter. So it looks like she knows how much they’re raking in with their legitimate business, maybe how much they are getting in their drug sales, and how much they would owe for protection,” Travis said.
“But the Lancasters are all human?” Bridget asked.
“Yeah.”
“Does that mean someone on the police force is on the take?”
“Probably. But I checked. No cougars work at the police station, so whoever they are must be human.”
She let out her breath in an annoyed way.
“Hey, I know how you feel. They all deserve to be taken down. But the regular police force needs to deal with it.” Travis set the table, feeling like Bridget—that all of the bad guys needed to go down. But they really didn’t have the manpower or resources to make it happen. “So if you had to kill someone, could you?” He still wasn’t sure about having a woman in the agency. She might be a great investigator and a great shot with a gun, but if she had to take down a male cougar while in her cougar form, she’d be at a strong disadvantage.
“I could. If those men had returned to the shop before I was able to get you out of there, I would have had to resort to taking them out to protect both of us. No one would have stopped me.”
“You could have left me there. You thought I was one of them, only I’d gotten myself in hot water with them and they were going to take care of me permanently.”
“True. I did have it in mind that you’d be so grateful for my help, you’d tell me all about the operation.”
“Disappointed?”
“Relieved. I would have broken my cover and if I’d let you go, then what? So I was glad you were one of the good guys.”
“How are you going to change your appearance so they don’t know you if you try to work this investigation? Hey, I know. You could wear a Santa suit,” Chet said.
Travis was going to say he would, if Chet went as his cute little elf’s helper, but Bridget spoke first, and gave Chet a quelling look. “Yeah, you could, Travis. But only if you go shirtless and show off your hot abs. You could wear the boots, Santa’s pants, a hat, and be one of those sexy Santas for grown-up parties.”
Travis laughed.
But then they got down to business—how they were going to handle the rogue cougars.
Chapter 3
“We need to canvas storage facilities,” Travis said. “They were going to get tools out of it to use to dispose of me.”
“Right. And we need to look for the location where they had their vehicle. A house nearby? And then they walked to the shop?” Bridget served up pancakes and pork sausages. “They weren’t gone for long from the time I saw them leave the shop to when they got their vehicle and returned.”
“They were going to go to the storage facility before they returned.” Travis took a bite of the blueberry pancake smothered in waffle syrup.
Chet was looking up something on his phone. “Three storage facilities are close to where the Christmas Tree Shoppe is located.”
“Good. Then we need to check out the homes in the area close by and see if we can pick up their scents. Same thing with the storage facilities. They haven’t been using hunter’s spray so we might be able to catch them.” Travis finished off his coffee and got a refill and filled up Chet’s cup too.
“Tonight?” Bridget sipped her hot cinnamon tea. “Dusk is at five this evening. Should we run as cougars?”
“I think one of us should be driving and riding shotgun. If we run into other trouble, the cat or cats can get into the car, and we’ll head home,” Chet said.
“Or the cats can run home. Probably be less noticeable than a car driving along the road.” Bridget buttered her pancakes, then poured maple syrup over them. “So what do we do in the meantime?”
“Do you want to take me to the shop and I’ll pick up a couple of those ornaments?” Chet asked.
“You’re kidding.” Bridget looked like she didn’t believe he really wanted some.
“No. We’ll use it as a cover so I can check out the place. And the people.”
“All right.”
Travis finished eating his breakfast
and offered to clean up the dishes. “I’ll start packing while you’re out. As soon as it’s dark, I’m out of here.” He wasn’t going to sit at home while they solved the case.
Bridget smiled at him. “Well take a drive around the storage facilities and check them out. Maybe we’ll get lucky and discover theirs and then return tonight to see what’s in it.”
“I just had a thought. If they do have some corrupt cops on the force, what if these guys have them run your license plate?” Chet asked.
“If they were going to do it, they probably would have come in the middle of the night to finish us off. They most likely don’t want to do anything that would involve the police. Just as we don’t want to get the police involved. Another thing—they might have assumed they were going to learn who you were before they got rid of you. They wouldn’t have suspected anyone would come along and rescue you,” Bridget said.
“What if they’re spooked and take off?” Travis had worried about that, wishing he hadn’t been so out of it, then he and Bridget could have waited for the men and taken them out when they returned to the shop.
“I wonder if the men only show their faces there late at night when the store is closed. Just set up more trees and such, do whatever other business they have to, but otherwise stay out of the public eye,” Bridget said. “So that’s their normal MO.”
“Or the incident with me last night has made them go into hiding like I’m doing.”
“Then if that’s the case, they’ll be on the prowl tonight too, searching for you possibly. They didn’t check your wallet, did they? See your driver’s license? Your home address?” Chet asked.
“My wallet and phone were in the car’s console. The alley was semi-dark, though as a cat I could see well. But as a precaution, when I left the vehicle I had my Glock on me and locked the car door before I went to get the boxes. The Durango was still locked when we went out to it.”
“That could be why they hadn’t moved it,” Bridge said. “Did you want us to get more boxes for you while we’re out?”
“Yeah. I’ll probably need quite a few more.”
“Okay, will do. Ready to go, Chet?” Bridget asked.
Alphas Unwrapped: 21 New Steamy Paranormal Tales of Shifters, Vampires, Werewolves, Dragons, Witches, Angels, Demons, Fey, and More Page 120