Charlie shrugged. “You know me; I’d always throw you one if you’re hard up.”
“How is that wife of yours?” I asked.
“Exhausted and satisfied,” grinned Charlie.
“Really? Who’s she been screwing?” I’d missed the banter of the workplace, borderline harassment though it was
Charlie laughed. “I’ve missed you. Always an answer. What can I do for you?”
“Who can I speak to about the murder in the rats’ nest?” The area which Dog had briefly called home was bottom end of werewolf habitation in MacKenzie territory. Which meant it was the bottom end of the whole city. It was home to people who could afford nothing more; multiple families crammed into one room, people sleeping in the corridors; it was one step up from the street, and not much of a step.
“Regan was first on the scene,” replied Charlie. “I guess he’d be best.”
“You guess?”
He shrugged. “Murder in the rats’ nest? If he hadn’t had to come back and write a report, he could have hung around there for the next one and saved himself some time.”
The Werewolf Squad was housed on the fourth floor, and stepping out of the elevator, I felt an unpleasant rush of sensation wash over me. Last time I had been here was to resign. It wasn’t that they made it hard for me, just the reverse; everyone had been so damn understanding. Who needs that? This place had been my home away from home since I left the academy. Seven years of my life. Good memories and bad, but right now all I could recall was the bad.
Thankfully, the place was pretty quiet when I entered – Werewolf Squad is always off busy somewhere – so I didn’t have to run too much of a gauntlet of ‘hellos’, ‘how ya doings’ and so on – like the prodigal son returning.
“Yo, Regan!”
A good-looking, dark-haired man looked up from his work and his handsome face broke into a smile as he saw me. “Fuck me.”
“If only I had the time.” Again, this was banter, but Regan and I had hooked up more than once back in the day. One drunken Christmas party had led to the discovery that we were both pretty good in the sack, and that had led to a few evenings of no-strings stress relief that had worked for both of us. There was no love between us, but enough affection to make it worthwhile, and enough respect to make sure that being fuck buddies didn’t affect our work. In this job you had to have something like that to make sure you didn’t go crazy, and civilians just didn’t understand. “You’re on Dog’s murder?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? That’s what Charlie said. Have things changed since I left? Everybody guesses their assignments?”
Regan rolled his eyes. “Come on, Marley, you haven’t been out for that long. A known thug is killed days after getting out of jail in a district where the murder rate is higher than the birth rate. What do you want from me? I can give you a list of people who might have wanted to hurt him – it’s the list of people he kicked the crap out of and it almost runs into triple figures. And that’s just the ones we know about.”
As I left a half hour later, little wiser than when I had gone in, I wondered how many people had come to me for an update on the death of their loved ones and gone away similarly dissatisfied. It’s shitty to see these things from the other side.
Not that Dog was a loved one. I had no ties to this case at all and no reason to care what happened to him.
So, naturally, my next step was to visit the prison where Dog had spent the last two years to talk to his cellmate and anyone else he was close to. But all I came away with was another list. Dog had anger issues.
The day had been a total bust and yet, I was frustratingly unable to think about anything else. Maybe it was the adrenalin of having a case again coursing through my bloodstream. Solving cases, the thrill of the chase, is like an addiction, and I’d been without my fix for too long. Or maybe it was still guilt over the sad life of Dog.
But the truth was that Regan was probably right. It would be very nice and neat if Dog’s murder tied in with his wrongful conviction, but in real life, policing seldom works like that. More likely, Dog got into a fight and was outnumbered or someone had a grudge. There were any number of ways you could get yourself killed in the rats’ nest, and one of them was just walking through it, minding your own business.
But as I was thinking these despondent thoughts, I noticed something in my rear view mirror – I was being followed.
Spotting that you’re being followed in a big city where everyone is going the same way anyway, is an art that I’d been taught at the academy, and I was damn certain that the green car, two back from me, was on my tail.
Okay then.
I pulled into a parking garage and headed out on foot, not bothering to make any concessions for my stalker – if he was good he’d stay on my tail, if he wasn’t then who cared? Sure enough, there he was, keeping his distance but unquestionably following me. I didn’t look too closely for fear of spooking him, but he was tall and blonde haired, and moved like a werewolf – if you live around them for long enough, you can spot the signs even when they’re in human form.
What now? I had a hunch that if I wanted to lose him then I could – if I could spot him then clearly I was better at this game than he was. But I didn’t really want to lose him. It could surely not be a coincidence that I was being followed now, the morning after my visit from Dog. I had suffered two disappointments this morning and right now, the only clear lead I had in moving forward with this investigation – which was how I was increasingly seeing this – was the man following me.
I decided to confront him head on, and headed for a coffee shop. I ordered myself a latte and took a window seat, watching my stalker from the corner of my eye. He sat down and pretended to read a paper. I drew a deep breath; confronting him in a public place was safer but this could still go bad. I got up and crossed the room to the man’s table.
“Is this seat taken?”
The man looked up at me and I tried to focus my mind beyond his sapphire blue eyes and extraordinarily handsome features – not what I had expected to see in a stalker. “No. Please.”
I sat down. “I thought this was the best way to do things.”
“I’m sorry?” the man asked, not much more of an actor than he was a stalker.
“You were following me. I’d like to know why.”
The man looked away, embarrassed and unable to meet my gaze. “Oh, this is… this is really embarrassing. Was I that obvious?”
“Well, I used to be a cop.”
“I don’t do this often,” the man explained. “I mean, ever. Except today, of course. First time.”
“It shows.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You still haven’t told me why.”
The man took a deep breath and collected his thoughts. He really was incredibly good-looking. His chiseled jawline dusted with stubble, his eyes a deeper blue than I had ever seen before. From what I could tell, he had an athlete’s body but it was frustratingly hidden beneath a check shirt, brown jacket and comfortably fitting jeans. I found myself focusing on the parts of his body I could see; the muscles of his neck as he turned his head; the large, strong hands. They were the hands of a workman and yet as supple as they were strong, and he used them with a dexterity that made me desperate to feel their touch.
What the hell was I doing getting turned on by a man’s hands? This wasn’t like me.
“I saw you in the street,” the man began. “And I found you… I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. So I followed you. I mean… I don’t think I had a plan – not like an end game or something – I just didn’t want to let you out of my sight.”
I nodded. I guess it would be fair to say that I am an attractive woman. I have dark hair and eyes, good skin and a decent figure, though a little on the athletic side – which is code for ‘not remotely curvy’. I would say I was sexier than I am beautiful, and men have told me that there is just ‘something about you’. None
of that, I would say, qualifies me for ‘most beautiful woman I’d ever seen’ but I guess everyone has his type, and if you’re chatting up a girl then you’re hardly going to tell her she’s the fifth most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. Was I beautiful enough for a man to follow me in the street? It hardly mattered since I had caught him in another lie.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Talbot. Yours?”
“You don’t know?”
“Should I?”
“You were following me.”
“But I explained…”
“You were following me in your car,” I interrupted. “Are you telling me that you saw me through my car window, thought I was the most beautiful woman you’d ever seen and tailed me?”
Talbot considered this a moment. “It doesn’t sound very plausible, does it?”
“No.”
“Can I buy you a drink, Miss…”
I couldn’t help smiling, he did have a way about him. “Philips. Marley Philips. As I suspect you already knew. And I’ll have a latte.”
I said yes to the drink because I needed to think. What was my next step? I wasn’t in a position to arrest him, I couldn’t drag him along to the station, and besides, the Werewolf Squad had already stated their lack of interest.
Talbot returned with my drink.
“You live around here?” he asked, politely.
“I think you were telling me why you were tailing me in a car.”
“How did you spot me?” he asked, his face looking even more attractive as it creased into a perplexed frown.
“You suck at it.”
“That’s not much of an answer.”
“It’s better than the ones you’re giving me.”
Talbot laughed and I could not suppress a zing of arousal at the sound. Some men’s laughs are just annoying, Talbot’s made him even more attractive. How hard up was I that I was getting turned on by hands and laughter? I really needed to get laid. But, irritatingly, this was probably not the man.
“You’re a werewolf?”
He nodded. “Most people are around here. You’re the odd one out.”
“That’s true. If I say the name ‘Dog’ to you; does that mean anything?”
“That’s a name?”
“Why were you following me?”
Talbot leaned in, his vivid blue eyes holding me and making me feel less like a hard-bitten ex-cop who could take down a werewolf, and more like a smitten schoolgirl with a crush. “You really are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s not why you were following me.”
“I didn’t say it was.” His voice had dropped a tone, soft and yet gravelly enough to set my pulse racing again.
“You think that flattering me is going to help?”
He gave a little shake of his head. “I think that pretty soon, you and I are going to go our separate ways, and when we meet again – and I think we both know that’s going to happen – I’d prefer you to recall the nice things I said about you. And that I meant them.” He sat back in his chair. “Until then, why don’t we drink our coffees and accept that there are some questions we each have about the other that are going to go unanswered. For now, at least.”
He was extraordinarily cool, yet I still felt like I had the upper hand because I had spotted him. “You had questions about me?”
Talbot finished his coffee. “They’ll keep. It was nice meeting you.”
He stood up and walked out of the coffee shop, with my eyes burning two holes in the ass of his jeans as he walked away. Would I have handled that differently if I hadn’t been so attracted to him? Yes, I probably would have. I’d forgotten all my training and acted like a lovesick teenager. On the other hand, I probably wouldn’t have gotten anything out of him either way.
In real terms, this meeting with Talbot hadn’t given me any more information than my trips to the police station or the prison. But it had told me that there was something going on with Dog’s death. There was no way I was letting up now.
Chapter 3
I took the long route back to my apartment, giving my brain time to unpick the knot into which it had tied itself. The thing about being out of the game for so long is that you have a whole bunch of crime-solving energy built up, and you start throwing everything at the problem. By the time I’d walked back to my car, I had nine different theories about who might have killed Dog and why and how Talbot was involved and who he was working for. The theories took on a life of their own, cross fertilizing in my head and forming new meta-theories, so that by the time I got home, I could have solved this case every which way but right.
But for all the buzzing in my head, that evening was the first in a long while that I didn’t find myself reaching for the bottle to silence the voices in my mind. I didn’t want them silent, I wanted them shouting as loud as they liked, hoping that somewhere in the ruckus was an answer that led someplace good.
The following morning I felt great, buoyed up with optimism for what the day might bring. Or perhaps I had just forgotten how good it felt to wake up without a hangover. Either way, I had a plan, and as soon as I was showered, dressed and had slugged back a cup of very black coffee, I was heading towards an even less salubrious district than the one I called home.
The rats’ nest was well named, not just for its appearance – a warren of narrow intersecting avenues burrowing between spindly, overcrowded buildings that were all broken windows and graffitied walls – but for its smell, the acrid pungency of which hit you when you were still a block away. The population was ninety percent werewolf, but the hunched, emaciated people who lived here, staring out at the world with dead, scared eyes, didn’t look like they could possibly transform into anything as strong as a wolf. Maybe a rat.
It was a world away from the rarified world of the Pack Lodges, where the Pack Leaders and their Pack Court made their home, away from the organized hunts and almost medieval pageantry of the wolf nobility.
The address Dog had given me took me to a building much like any other. I passed a group of ragged children seated on the steps, gazing at me like I was a walking pork chop. They knew what I was – even at that age, werewolves could smell a human – and I looked like lunch.
“Hey, you kids know Dog?” I asked, deciding that bribery might stop them from trying anything.
“He’s dead, lady,” said the eldest.
“I know. So, you knew him?”
“Sure.”
“He live here?”
“He don’t live no place, lady.”
I sighed. “Did he live here?”
“Sure.”
“Is his room still empty?” An empty room didn’t stay empty long in the rats’ nest – just turn the corpse out of the bed, spray some air freshener and usher in the next tenant.
“Till the cops is done with it.”
“What number?”
“No numbers, lady. Second floor. The one with the police tape on the door.”
“Thanks.” I gave each of the kids some money, even though only one had spoken, and they rushed off to spend it. That could be my good deed for the day. One was enough.
On the second floor, I found Dog’s room and ducked under the tape to enter. The tape remained because someone had been killed and to take it down would have announced that the police didn’t have the resources to care. So Regan had put up the tape, and eventually someone living in the nest would have the balls to take it down so the next person could move in. I doubted a cop would set foot in the place again.
Fine by me; I definitely wasn’t supposed to be here.
Closing the door behind me, I looked about the room. It was sparse and bare. Most of what I saw had probably come with the room, the relicts of old occupants. But on the table by the window, something caught my eye. A matchbook from The Silver Fox club. No surprise there but there was something written on the back in the same hand as the address written on my unpaid water bill.
‘Her b.day. M
+M base.’
What the hell did that mean?
Before I had a chance to think about it, the door behind me opened. A tall, ugly-looking man entered and froze as he saw me. For an instant, we both looked at each other, both knowing we shouldn’t be there and wondering what was going to happen next. In the next instant, the man dived at me, knocking me across the table and drawing back a fist to punch. I kicked him away and heard him snarl, deep in his throat. He was a wolf. Shit.
I made a grab for the gun in my shoulder holster, but as I pulled it out the man ran at me. He backhanded me across the face and, before I could recover, grabbed my arm and twisted. I cried out and my weapon clattered to the floor. The man went on twisting, intent on breaking my arm. Now he was in control, he preferred to cause pain rather than just finish me off. That was a mistake. I slammed my heel down on his foot and he howled in pain, letting me go. I staggered away, holding my wrenched shoulder, alert to another attack and just wanting to get the hell out.
“Time to die, bitch.” The man shifted, hair springing up across his body, his arms and torso swelling, splitting his clothes, his face elongating to a snout as curved yellow teeth burst forth in his mouth. He sprang at me...
And was taken out in mid-air.
The second wolf had moved so quickly I had barely even seen it, bursting out of the closet and knocking my attacker to the ground, claws bared. The pair rolled together on the floor, each trying to gain the upper hand. My attacker was big, thick-set and muscular; my savior seemed smaller but was more athletic, quicker and, it seemed, stronger. He was also – I tried to get a better look at him… I couldn’t be sure, and to humans this sort of identification was difficult, but this wolf looked like Talbot.
Realizing this was a fight he was not going to win, my attacker scrabbled free and ran for the door, whining as he went. As the second wolf set off in quick pursuit, I was left in no doubt.
“Talbot?”
The wolf skidded to a halt, looking back at me, confused and surprised to have been recognized, then he took off again on the trail of his prey.
I started after him, then remembered my gun and hurried back for it before racing back down the stairs. The children were back on the steps, staring in mild interest at the commotion – just another day in the rats’ nest.
Her Guardian Harem: Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance Page 2