Bear This Heat (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters)

by Grace, A. E.

Sasha glared at him. “D.I. James? I don’t need his help, sir.”

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “Fine. Don’t disappoint me, Monroe. Give me a reason to take away your promotion, and I will.”

  Sasha glowered at him. “I know… sir.”

  He waved her off. “Then go.”

  She went back out through the revolving door, trying not to let herself get angry. In the dusty, windswept parking lot of the police station, she saw the car she’d been given sitting out in the sun. She sighed. Blue five was the department’s worst car, dark, and equipped with a weak air-conditioner, and it meant she’d have to ride with the windows down if she wanted to stave off the heat.

  But it would have to do. If she was right about her hunch, then Dylan would be snooping around the crime scene, either to check for evidence he had left behind, or because somehow he was connected. Even if he checked out the scene out of mere curiosity, it would be a big enough violation that she could hold him for the rest for seventy-two hours. She reaffirmed to herself that she didn’t believe in coincidences, not of this magnitude. Dylan was definitely connected. Even if he didn’t kill Charlie Kinnear, he’d probably lead her to the person who did.

  And for now, it was all she had to go on.

  *

  He’s tall, dark, and handsome. A cliché rarely realized. His eyes smolder. His jaw cuts. There is always a space between his lips, as though ever inviting the kiss. That is how Sasha Monroe, retired Detective Inspector, describes him. She does so enthusiastically, as though the memory of the first time they properly ‘met’ is forever at the forefront of her mind.

  She also says that he’s got a quite a head on his shoulders, an intelligence that is unusual. She’s quick to temper the statement, though, by reminding me that he’s no genius. Her smile indicates she’s being playful, teasing. It is an unsurprising truth, however, and is no indictment.

  But the point is made. He was not an idiot stumbling in the dark. Sasha knows that he knew it was a trap, but she also knew that he was going to take the bait. When asked how she knew, she shrugs, and her eyes flicker sideways, breaking contact for just the briefest of moments. She cannot say for sure, and that bothers her more than she’s prepared to admit.

  Gut instinct, she says. A feeling, she says. But it is clear these are just words that are unable to convey the depth or complexity of her meaning. Instinct. Feeling. That special type of precognition that all animal species depend upon for survival. In humankind, the talent is dulled and smudged by technology and cognition.

  She elaborates a little. She says she always had it, and even in her youth, she learned to trust her gut instinct quickly, because she was mostly rewarded for doing so.

  It is quite clear from her recounting of the Salty Springs incident, in which she and Dylan first met, that her capacity for precognition, that sixth sense, was telling her something. But it was her mind, her reason, her logic, that distorted it. She admits to not being entirely convinced that Dylan Macready was the killer, though she pursued that path anyway.

  It so perfectly exemplified the dichotomy between reason and instinct. One could be honed, of course. But the other?

  Sasha would remain unaware that she was the just the type of person to make the leap. To cross that bridge.

  To return to animal.

  - Excerpt from Return to Animal: Unlocking Within by Circe Cole. Printed with expressed permission.

  *

  Dylan consulted his map again, and drained his small bottle of water in one sip. Chucking the plastic into a rubbish bin, he listened to it rattle in as he looked at the tacky town map. He wasn’t far from Lester Street. At least, that was the best he could glean from the ridiculously off-scale illustration of the town.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was nearly three in the afternoon, and yet the sun above was showing no signs of relenting. It beat down on him, the buildings, the tarmac, and the desert, with equal force. Nature was indiscriminate.

  He wondered what he would find when he got there. He wasn’t sure if he’d know it when he saw it. Possibilities raced through his mind. His greatest they seemed. He had already noticed a few uniforms who drove by, looking at him with hard eyes. But he was hope was that there had been a wolf sighting. But that wouldn’t explain why the police were as anxious as content with being a suspect if it got him closer to the wolf. They wouldn’t prove anything, one way or another, and so at most it would be an inconvenience. That was easily outweighed by the fact that it might lead him directly to what he sought. Risks were something he’d learned to shrug off. If experience was anything to go by, the bigger the risk, the bigger the payoff.

  Of course, the way Sasha had dropped that tip told him that something had definitely gone down. He was almost certain that a crime had been committed, Dylan wondered if it was serious. Breaking and entering? Theft? Robbery? Murder? He couldn’t know, at least not yet. A doubt flitted into his mind: what if this was completely unrelated to the wolf? What if he was just following an incorrect thread blindly? All this attention he’d received from the police could be gang-related. The waitress at the café had said there were meth houses popping up in the area.

  The possibilities were definitely diverse and numerous. He had to trust his instinct. Besides, it was his only lead. There was nothing else to go on. He’d been walking across town all morning, since before the sun was up, and hadn’t seen any signs of the wolf, hadn’t caught onto any odd, let alone canine, smells. And he certainly hadn’t seen any tracks, not that they’d stick around for long. The endless light breeze washed the desert town clean with sand.

  Arriving at Lester Street, Dylan began to walk its length, looking at each house, searching for any indication that something was wrong, that something was going on. He was a few houses down, when he saw that yellow police tape cordoning off an entire house, he knew he had found what he was looking for.

  He looked around, specifically for Monroe’s white car, but all the parked cars looked empty, so Dylan approached the taped-off house. Everything on the outside looked fine. There was no sign of forced entry; the door didn’t look like it had been busted open, and there were no broken windows.

  It was strange, though, that there wasn’t a police guard, especially as this must have happened earlier today. If it had happened earlier than today, it would have been in the paper he picked up and read, the free one which had a picture of D.I. Sasha Monroe on the front at her promotion ceremony.

  He thought about that article, remembering that he had read she had been meritoriously promoted. He wondered what exactly she had done to earn it. The details were sketchy at best. She was the first female Detective Inspector in the town, and only woman in her precinct, and so it must have been something pretty ballsy to force a higher-up’s hand with a political promotion, which was exactly what it smacked of. It aroused a strand of indignation in him to think that someone capable had been held down intentionally just because they lacked a set of testes.

  Then again, in the eighty years he’d lived, he’d seen much, much worse than a glass ceiling.

  Dylan thought about going into the taped-off house, but decided against it for now. He wanted a better idea of what had gone on, and so looked at the neighboring houses to the left and the right. All low bungalows with wide, slatted roofs, they were designed to keep the cool air in and the hot air out, and so were probably quite airtight. But if somebody had left a window open, a neighbor perhaps, they might have heard something.

  He went first to the house on the left, and knocked on the door. There was no answer, and so he tried again, this time banging harder. The door’s hinges were old, and he could hear the screws rattling.

  “Coming,” he heard, followed by a raspy cough. The door opened, and he saw a woman standing there, in her nightie, with a cup of coffee in her hand that smelled strongly of whiskey. “Well, aren’t you dashing!”

  “I’m with the police,” Dylan sa
id. “Actually, I just got off shift, but they’ve sent me down here to clarify your statement.”

  “Again?” the woman asked, tapping her feet. The smell of stale cigarette smoke wafted out from behind her.

  “I just wanted to clarify, you said that this morning you saw a…” Dylan let his voice trail off, hoping the woman would answer for him.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I mean, it’s just, the boys at the station were a little unclear,” Dylan continued, trying again. “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No, I keep my windows shut up tight and locked.” She sniffed. “That woman detective this morning felt the need to remind me to do so.”

  “So you really saw-” Dylan had been about to say ‘nothing’ when she cut him off.

  “Yes, I did. Nobody believes me, but it’s the truth. It was huge. Bigger than any dog I’ve seen ever before. Then again, I’ve never seen a Great Dane.”

  A smile broke over Dylan’s face. “I understand. Thank you very much, ma’am.”

  “Would you like to come in for some coffee?”

  Dylan looked at her cup, and then shook his head. “No, that’s quite alright. We, uh, can’t-”

  “That’s right,” she said, cutting him off. “Can’t take anything.”

  “That’s right, ma’am. Thank you again, you’ve been very helpful.”

  “Tell you the truth,” the woman added. “It looked a bit like a wolf. Crazy, right? In the desert. Believe that?” She shut the door, and Dylan heard the sounds of three latches locking. Excitement thrilled through him. His instincts had been right.

  He turned his gaze onto the crime scene. Just what the hell had the wolf shapeshifter done?

  Dylan stepped back from the door, and walked back to the pavement. He looked up and down again, and shoved his hands into his pockets, thinking. The possibility that she had seen a shadow and then embellished her tale loomed. But that seemed unlikely, even after her whiskey-laced coffee. She didn’t strike him as someone dishonest or prone to embellishment. Anyway, if she did see a wolf, or ‘big dog’, it would fit with all the clues he’d had to go on so far.

  Making his way to the cordoned-off house, he didn’t know what he expected to find, but he did realize that a part of him was holding back, stalling, because he didn’t want to discover that the wolf, the shapeshifter, the only other one of his kind that he had managed to track – possibly the only other one in existence – had done something horribly, horribly wrong.

  Sighing, he ducked under the tape, and tested the front door’s knob, hand wrapped in the bottom of his t-shirt. It was unlocked. He opened it and stepped inside.

  *

  Sasha drove quickly to Charlie Kinnear’s house, hoping that her hunch would prove fruitful. She pulled into the driveway of a house a block away. She knew who lived there, and they wouldn’t be home for a few hours yet. She reclined her backrest so that she could see past the passenger-side seat, and pulled a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment. It was standard issue for every unmarked police car.

  Peering up at old man Charlie’s house, she could see the bright yellow tape flapping loosely in the light breeze that there was. But the breeze wasn’t enough to keep her from sweating. Seated inside the car in an unsheltered driveway, it was sweltering. But she’d have to brave it, ignore it, if she wanted to catch Dylan Macready.

  Taking a large sip from her water bottle, she wiped strands of straight almond hair from her eyes, and parted the hair that was sticking to her forehead. She wiped her upper lip, felt it slick with beads of perspiration, and then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, thinking for a moment that if her sweat rolled down into her eyes, she was going to smudge her mascara and eyeliner.

  Nearly half an hour passed and there was still no sign of Dylan. She tried to calculate how long it would take him, with long strides, to get here from where they had last spoke. Not more than thirty minutes, she should think, unless he took a break somewhere.

  Or unless he wasn’t coming.

  She decided that she would wait for an hour, and if he still didn’t turn up, she’d cruise around in blue five and look for him. Perhaps the superintendent was right. Maybe she should have just brought him in and sat on him for twenty-four hours to see what happened. Maybe the doctor would turn up with something.

  But she couldn’t help keep doubts from creeping into her mind, infiltrating her senses. What if she had been too eager to guess as to what Dylan Macready would do? What if the bait she’d laid wasn’t nearly so tempting as she’d thought it was? But she couldn’t shake the feeling that he would. She was not entirely convinced of Dylan’s guilt, but she knew he was connected to the whole thing. That was for certain. And the old adage about returning to the scene of the crime? That was truer than most people knew.

  Either way, he couldn’t have gone far. She knew if she needed to get him again she could just call it out on the radio and a uniform would pick him up. It felt odd to her that she was giving orders now. Just two days ago, she had been in a khaki-green uniform herself, with black boots and in a squad car that said in big red lettering ‘POLICE’ on the side.

  Now she was ducked down in an unmarked car that was like an oven, with a pair of binoculars, looking at the house where a possible murder was committed. She wasn’t sure if she had really moved up in the world. At least she was getting paid more. Being on the job and in uniform was lower-middle hell.

  But, when nearly forty minutes had passed, and Dylan still hadn’t turned up, she started wondering if she should pack it in. Sasha had always been the impulsive type. She trusted her instincts and believed in herself. She didn’t get to where she was today by playing it safe and not taking risks.

  She reached for her radio, pressed down on the transmit button and took a breath to speak, and then she saw him, Dylan Macready, walking down the other end of Lester Street. She let go of the transmit button, heard the radio give off its static buzz, and then she trained her binoculars on the man.

  He was walking slowly, staring at each house as he walked by, neck turned to the side so that a thick vein was visible, as well as the tendons that disappeared into his muscular shoulders. He obviously lived in the gym, and she pulled the binoculars down his body, for a moment forgetting that he was a potential murder suspect. He had a rockin’ bod. There was really no other way to put it.

  Gathering herself, she looked again at his face, saw that hard handsomeness, the polar opposite to the kind of pretty boys she had used to like when she was younger. She couldn’t deny it to herself. If she wasn’t investigating him, she would definitely be interested.

  And he had seemed interested in her, too, from the way he had looked at her, seemed to devour up her lines and curves, had smiled at her, first with curiosity, then with something akin to interest. She knew that she wasn’t particularly good at reading faces, and reading eyes, but he had definitely given off some vibes.

  Sasha chided herself or letting her mind wander. Through the binoculars, she could see that Dylan had spotted the yellow tape now, and he was making a beeline straight for Charlie Kinnear’s house. He looked genuinely surprised, as though he hadn’t expected such a large crime scene, or any crime scene at all.

  “Gotcha,” she whispered to herself as he started to duck under the yellow tape. But then he didn’t. He stopped, and instead looked at either house flanking old man Charlie’s.

  “What are you doing?” Sasha murmured to herself. Dylan began to approach the house on the left, Sally Clark’s, the drunk’s.

  She saw him knock on the door, and it seemed like a good a time as any to get a little closer. Easing herself out of the car, and shutting the door as quietly as she could, she actually felt cooler outside in the sun, which was something to think about. Sasha crouched down low and crept toward the crime scene, keeping herself as hidden as possible behind fences and other parked cars. She knew she must look a little ridiculous, but this was police work. Looking cool wasn’t always part of
the package.

  Crouched low behind a car parked on the street, she peeked around the edge of the boot, and saw Dylan walking toward old man Charlie’s house. He dipped beneath the yellow tape, wrapped his hand in his t-shirt, and went inside the unlocked house.

  “I’ve got you now,” Sasha said to herself. But first, she’d pay Sally Clark a visit.

  *

  Dylan crept through the house, taking great care to touch nothing. Everything looked in order and undisturbed, and he was starting to wonder what the actual crime was. That wondering ceased when he entered the bedroom, and saw a pillow stained in blood. Shifting to the side of the bed, it was quite clear that whoever was hurt or died here was in bed at the time it happened. The pillow was still depressed, like a head had just been lying there, and that was no doubt due to the dried, clotted blood sticking the feathers together.

  A spray of muddy red shot up the wall above the bed, and Dylan took in the grim sight with teeth clenched. This was horrible. Judging from the amount of blood, it was unlikely that anybody could have survived what happened.

  What had happened? Who had lived here? He began to look around the room, searching for a photo frame that would hold some clue as to who all the blood belonged to, but he saw none. The man or woman who lived in this house was evidently not a fan of photographs.

  Dylan stalked through all the rooms of the low-ceilinged bungalow, having to duck through doorways. There wasn’t much around, and the person who had lived here seemed to have no sentimental collections, bits and bobs that accumulated over time. The furniture was equally spare, with only a few dusty, cushioned seats, a single coffee table, a single dining table, and a single pot hanging above the stove.

  Whoever lived here, and had possibly died here, led a frugal existence.

  With his suspicions aroused, Dylan began to remove his clothing. First he pulled off his t-shirt, his muscular body beneath it taut and ever-ready for action. This was all too much to be coincidence. A wolf sighting, and then a gruesome murder scene? Even if it wasn’t murder, even if the poor sap hadn’t died, it was still gruesome enough, so seemingly out-of-place, that Dylan was already circling the probable answer in his mind, unwilling, yet, to make a definitive judgment.