by Chant, Zoe
She turned away, moving toward the door – only to find her path blocked by a bulky figure. She looked up – and up – to find herself staring into the face of an older man, clearly a biker, who was looking at her with a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk on his face.
“So. American, eh?”
Myrtle nodded, looking past him and trying to signal how very uninterested she was in conversation by failing to maintain eye contact. “Yep.”
“Big spenders, you Yanks. Bet you’ve got quite a bit to throw around.”
Myrtle swallowed, still trying to edge toward the door. “Not really. And I’m just leaving.”
“Are you sure?” The man shifted slightly so he was standing right in front of her once more. “There isn’t anything I could help you with?”
“Nope,” Myrtle said, shaking her head firmly. It seemed like not only bikers, but also sleazebags were the same everywhere you went. “I’m fine. Just heading outside. Okay?”
To her surprise, the mountain of a man in front of her simply cocked his head slightly, before nodding. “All right. Outside. Got it.”
He moved to let her past and Myrtle gratefully slid past him, opening the door and stepping out into the heat of the night. Sweat broke out over her skin immediately – in the slightly cooler, air-conditioned atmosphere of the pub, she had almost forgotten just how hot it was outside.
Nothing a cool shower won’t fix, she told herself determinedly as she set off down the sidewalk, heading for her motel, shifting her bag on her sunburned shoulder.
“Hey!”
Myrtle groaned as the man’s voice rang out behind her. What the hell does he want?
Of course, she already knew the answer to that, and clearly, her hope that he’d got the message and backed off had been a futile one.
I’ll just keep walking, she decided. He’s not going to chase me down the street. Probably.
She’d only taken a few steps down the sidewalk, however, when she heard the man’s voice again, this time much closer.
“Hey, wait! We’re leaving in the morning, so if you wanna do this, it’s gotta be tonight.”
What the fuck?!
Myrtle had been on the receiving end of catcalls and lewd comments before, but this was ridiculous. Fury momentarily overrode her good sense, and she swung around, ready to give this pig a piece of her mind.
“Excuse me?!”
The man simply shook his head. “You wanna see the goods or not?”
Myrtle rolled her eyes. One thing she knew about men who got their kicks by hooting at women was that they often tended to shrink when their bluff was called. Fine. If that was the way this guy wanted it, she’d play along.
Fixing him with a glare, she crossed her arms over her chest. “All right, then. Whip it out. Show me what you got.”
Just as she suspected he would, the man hesitated. “Here? In the middle of the street?”
Curling her lip imperiously, Myrtle lifted her chin. “C’mon, you’re so desperate to do it, then go ahead.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Have it your way. Let’s just get this over with.” He gave her a quick once over. “At least you listened to us and didn’t come waltzing in here with your fancy suits and car. You woulda stuck out like a sore thumb.”
What the hell is that supposed to mean? Myrtle had time to think, before the man plunged one beefy hand into the bulky bag he was holding, pulling out a square, black box. Grasping it carefully in both hands, he held it out to her. She stared at it.
“What’s this?” she asked, too surprised to formulate any other response.
“It’s what we agreed on,” the man growled. “And two months earlier than scheduled, which means we get our bonus. Check it out if you don’t believe me, but it’s exactly what we told you about.”
This is a drug deal, Myrtle suddenly realized, her mouth popping open. And I’m an idiot.
The goods wasn’t the guy’s dick at all – it was probably crystal meth or coke or some other illicit substance. And he’d mistaken her for the buyer.
Not that a whole lot of drugs could fit in that one box, Myrtle thought as she looked down at it, trying to figure out how to extract herself from this stupid – and kind of dangerous – situation.
“Take a look, if you like,” the biker said, opening the box. “It’s genuine. But you can tell that just by touching it, right?”
“No, I –” Myrtle started, before actually catching a glimpse of the contents of the box.
No white powder, no blue crystals, or whatever real meth actually looked like.
It was an egg.
But it wasn’t like any egg Myrtle had ever seen before: it was bigger, for starters, bigger even than the ostrich or emu eggs she’d seen in museums. And it was colored differently too – a beautiful pale blue that shone with a faint luminescence in the bright orange streetlights. It was perfectly smooth, without even one single blemish or ridge on its oval surface.
It’s beautiful.
Myrtle couldn’t help but stare at it, her breath catching in her throat. She felt her fingers twitch with the desire to reach out and touch it – and then, without her conscious will, she was doing just that.
She gasped a little when her fingertips first brushed against it. To her surprise, the surface was quite warm, but she supposed that made sense – she knew animal smugglers had to keep the eggs of the exotic birds and lizards they trafficked warm so the baby that was growing inside them wouldn’t die.
Because that was definitely what was going on here.
The bikers were smuggling this egg, and they’d mistaken her for the buyer.
Biting her lip, she gently picked up the egg from where it rested in its foam casing.
She knew about the horrible world of animal smuggling – tiger cubs, exotic lizards, rhino horns and rare parrots – and it made her sick.
She’d loved animals all her life, and yes, while moths might not have been all that cute or the first thing that sprang into people’s minds when they thought of creatures that needed protecting, a lot of the animals that needed them as a food source were. With all her research on moth numbers and migration patterns, Myrtle was fighting for their future as well.
And anyone who tried to make money off smuggling poor defenseless creatures to sell them into a life of misery – well, they deserved everything they got.
“So. You know it’s the genuine article,” the biker said with an oily smile. “Put it down and get out the money. Just like we agreed on.”
Myrtle looked up, his voice shocking her back to reality. Well, she didn’t have any money. And nor did she intend to let this guy leave with his egg to go and find the person who did.
This creature wasn’t theirs to buy or sell.
No way I’m letting them get away with this.
So, she ran.
Ignoring the screaming blisters on her toes and the balls of her feet, Myrtle swung around and took off down the street, clutching the egg tightly to her chest.
She heard the man yelling behind her, but his voice was incoherent; she could barely hear a thing over the pounding of her heart in her ears anyway.
Where’s the police station, where’s the police station, where the fuck is the police station –
She’d seen it as she went past it on the bus yesterday afternoon, so it had to be around here somewhere. It wasn’t like there were many places it could be – Good Fortune only had one main street, and she was on it!
As she ran, she heard a clatter of footsteps behind her. Chancing a glance over her shoulder, Myrtle almost tripped over her own feet in shock. She’d figured the biker she’d swiped the egg from would chase after her – but she hadn’t expected that somehow, in the time it’d taken her to run thirty feet, he would have assembled the rest of his gang, and now what looked like an entire army of bikers was chasing her down the street, like a solid wall of gray beards and black tank tops charging toward her.
Oh, shit.
“Go ’round the back and cut her off,
” she heard one of them yelling, and, without taking a moment to think, Myrtle pivoted, changing directions on a dime and shooting across the street.
Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.
Myrtle knew she couldn’t have simply left the egg and whatever was growing inside it with the biker, but now that her brain had had time to catch up with her feet, she realized what a truly stupid thing she’d done. She didn’t know what Australian bikers did to people they figured were trying to rip them off, but she was willing to bet it wasn’t anything nice.
If I could just find the police station – !
She let out a small cry, clutching the egg tightly to her chest as a car suddenly roared out of the night in front of her, headlights blaring, dust spooling up from beneath its tires.
Fear knifed through her gut, her throat so tight she could barely breathe.
They’d caught up with her.
Myrtle was about to turn to sprint away again – though with the rest of the gang still chasing her down from the other direction, she had no idea where she thought she was going to go – when the door of the car in front of her swung open, and a man’s face, illuminated by the car’s ceiling light, appeared.
“Get in.”
Myrtle hesitated. One thing she knew was that you never got into a car with strangers. Not even handsome strangers like this, whose slightly curled golden-brown hair fell in waves over their forehead and into their deep brown eyes, or whose jawlines looked like they might have been sculpted from marble. And definitely not when their biceps clearly bulged under the rolled-up sleeves of their flannel shirts.
“Um,” Myrtle said.
“Get in – I mean, if you don’t want to end up as mincemeat,” the man said again, gesturing to her to jump in the passenger seat. “C’mon, chop chop. We haven’t got all day.”
Um, Myrtle was about to say again, when a shout from behind her made up her mind for her. It wasn’t really a choice, anyway: Option One was certain death at the hands of a bunch of really, really pissed off bikers. Option Two was maybe death at the hands of a total stranger in a car… but, well, maybe was better than certainly, at least where grisly death was concerned.
Taking a deep breath, she jumped in the car, slamming the door closed behind her.
“Good.” The man turned away, the dashboard lights catching on his high, perfect cheekbones. Not that Myrtle was staring or anything – it was just the kind of thing you noticed.
He slammed his foot down on the gas and sent the car roaring into the night.
Chapter 2
Three months. Three months of work, down the drain.
That was the only thought in Hector Richardson’s mind as he floored the accelerator, sending the car tearing down the dirt road.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Well, maybe not the only thought.
After a moment, he flicked the car’s headlights off. He didn’t need them to drive at night – his griffin’s powerful eagle’s vision picked out every bend in the road and every potential obstacle in its path, and driving dark would make them a lot harder to track by the meathead bikies he’d left on the road behind them.
Meathead bikies who nonetheless managed to get their hands on something extremely valuable, and meathead bikies I’ve been stalking for three months.
All of which work had now been entirely ruined by the woman sitting next to him.
“What’d you think you were playing at back there?” he asked, realizing his voice sounded harsh, but not really able to care just at this moment.
The woman turned to him, eyes wide. “Me? I wasn’t playing at anything. I got followed out of a pub, and the next thing I knew I was getting chased down the road by a bunch of bikers. And by the way, I really don’t think you should be driving without your headlights on.”
Oh, she’s American, Hector thought. Maybe that explained a few things. Though it didn’t explain how she’d come to be clutching an over-sized egg to her chest. Trying to steal from bikies generally wasn’t a smart idea, though he’d been under the impression everyone knew that.
“What do you mean, followed out of the pub?” he asked.
He ignored the remark about the headlights. He wasn’t about to explain to her why it wasn’t a problem. Not when she was clearly human. Later, he could give her the cover story he usually gave to humans if he absolutely had to – that he was a cop working on a case – and leave it at that.
The woman glanced at him, eyes narrowed. “I mean just what I said. That guy followed me out of the pub demanding that I let him show me the goods. I thought he meant… well, you know.”
Hector frowned. “What?”
The woman sighed, rolling her eyes. “I thought he meant his dick, obviously. Geeze. You can tell you’re not a woman.”
Okay, fine, I deserved that.
He glanced across at the woman again, taking her in for the first time. Blonde hair, blue-gray eyes that reminded him of the sky just before a storm for some reason. Freckles across her nose. Full lips, slightly parted. A pointed chin, and a jawline that some would probably call too square, but which he called ‘attractive as hell’ – he’d always liked women with strong features, who looked like they could hold their own in any situation. She’d have a nasty sunburn on those shoulders tomorrow, but at least she was dressed properly for the scrub: good sturdy hiking boots and shorts – no heels, no skirt to fly up in the wind.
Nice figure, too.
The thought popped into his head without him meaning it to, but he could hardly help but notice it: she was all soft edges and rounded curves, but it was obvious there was plenty of muscle in her thighs and calves. She clearly led an active life. She’d certainly outrun the bikies easily enough.
“All right, all right,” he said. “Point taken. So he offered to show you the goods, whatever definition of ‘goods’ you wanna use. What happened then?”
The woman turned in her seat to look at him, blue eyes still narrowed. “Any reason I’m getting the third degree here?” She glanced back down the road behind them. “And shouldn’t we be going to the cops?”
Time to roll out the cover story.
“It’s fine – I’m a cop.” He checked the rearview mirror. So far, no bikies.
The woman’s mouth popped open a little. “You’re a cop?”
It wasn’t technically true, Hector knew. He wasn’t a cop by the definition humans – or most shifters, actually – would use. What he was was an operative of a highly trained, highly specialized undercover law enforcement agency, designed entirely to take on some of the nastier criminals of the shifter world: assassins for hire, smugglers, mercenaries, and the like. The kind of people human organizations just couldn’t deal with. It was a bit hard to track an assassin who could turn into a tiger at will, after all, or a spy who did their spying as an eagle. Or find a wyvern who sold its venom on the black market as an untraceable and totally deadly weapon.
Well, unless you were another shifter, and even then, it was hard to find a shifter who was really determined not to be found.
They were a pretty secretive organization, even by shifter standards. Even Hector didn’t know which government department oversaw their operations, and wouldn’t have been able to name more than ten other agents. He had direct contact with exactly half that number.
Most people wouldn’t even know they existed, which was entirely the point of them. Blabbing out your business to anyone who asked was no way to run a top-secret law enforcement organization.
None of the bikies were shifters, but they’d somehow managed to get themselves involved in the shifter underworld, which was why Hector had been following them.
That’s all shot to hell now though, he thought dully. Fuck.
At least the woman was unharmed – which had been a close-run thing. She had some scrapes on her legs, but Hector’s shifter sense of smell could tell they weren’t new: the blood was hours old, and he could detect the sharp scent of antiseptic from where she’d patched herself u
p.
Lucky we were there, his griffin piped up. In another moment, we might have had an even worse problem on our hands.
That, at least, was true. He might not have found out who the buyer for the bikies’ egg was, and he may potentially have blown his cover completely. But the woman was safe. And that was the whole reason he’d gotten into this line of work in the first place: to protect people.
“Yeah, I’m a cop,” Hector said, though for some reason, the half-truth that usually came so easily to him tasted wrong in his mouth somehow. “And this is hardly the third degree.”
“What, so I should be grateful you didn’t throw me over your shoulder and toss me in the trunk?” the woman demanded. “And if you’re a cop, how about I see some ID?”
“I don’t have ID on me. I’m not that kind of cop.”
“A cop without ID,” the woman repeated. “Well, that’s convenient.”
He could hear the rising thread of fear in her voice. He couldn’t really say he blamed her. She was clearly far from home, she’d just escaped from a pack of bikies, and had jumped into the car of a man she didn’t know from Adam out of pure desperation.
A man who was now apparently refusing to show her any ID, and was driving her out through the scrub without his headlights on.
All right, fine.
Now that he’d gotten his head out of his arse and stopped sulking about all the lost work and time, he could see how all this might look a bit suss.
He saw a small movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head in time to see the woman’s fingers inching toward the car door handle.
“Wait, don’t do that,” he barked out. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. You won’t find your way back to town unless you can navigate by the stars. And you can’t tell me you really want to go back there, anyway? Those bikies’ll be on the lookout for you –”
“And what’s my other option?” she asked, her voice tight. “Stay here with you, the ‘cop’ without ID?”
He could practically hear the air quotes around ‘cop’.
“Hector Richardson,” he said, hearing the desperate note in his own voice. “My name’s Hector Richardson, and I’m working undercover. I was after those bikies. I have been after them for three months.”