Page 10

Chapter 9

Smokey

LENNOX

G oing back into Paddington Inc. the second time is a completely different experience from our first.

As Greg buzzes us into the building, he stammers out, “Thanks… uh… thanks for your service. We appreciate it. Because of your quick work, no one was injured in the fire.”

I nod at him and we head to the elevators, pressing the button. I want to gather Charlie against me, feel her body against mine, reassure myself she’s safe. The way she flung herself at that fire took a few centuries off my life.

Charlie shifts her gaze to my face. “Firefighters wear a lot of protective gear when battling fires. You know that, right?”

“Of course.”

She sighs her exasperation. “Lennox, if I were too small, fragile or delicate, I would never have been able to become a firefighter. I’m tougher than I look and I know what I’m doing. I get that you’re a big scary shifter, but I’m not nobody. I was a good firefighter and I’m an even better investigator.” She drops her gaze and shuffles her feet, frowning at the floor. “I need you to stop stepping on me while we’re together. I need to know you trust me to do my job.” She lifts her gaze, stabbing me through the chest with her vulnerability.

Her thoughts infiltrate mine. He doesn’t trust me. He doesn’t think I can keep up with him. How are we supposed to be partners, let alone more, if he can’t trust me?

I’m flooded with shame. “I’m sorry, Charlie. You’re right. I’ve been an ass.”

When the elevator arrives, I wave her in, then step in behind her. Looking at her, I allow her to see my vulnerability, the way she showed me hers. “I just… can’t let anything happen to you.” It’s lame, not even an explanation, but it’s all I can give her.

She tilts her head to the side. “Why? We barely know each other.”

I’m saved from having to answer as the doors slide open, letting us out on the twelfth floor. A receptionist rushes around her desk to greet us. “Officer Wolven-North, Investigator Lopez. Right this way.” She waves us toward a glass-walled office where she drags open a heavy glass door, putting her weight into it. “Mr. Sharptooth will see you now.”

“Thank you, Ginny.” Duncan Sharptooth’s voice booms from his desk where he stands to greet us.

A gasp slips from Charlie’s lips and a shot of instinctive fear shoots through her as the man lumbers toward us, his form packed into a suit that had to have been specially tailored to fit his massive proportions. I edge in front of her just enough to protect her but not enough that she might perceive me as trying to protect her.

“Detective Wolven-North.” He grips my hand so tight I have to hold in a wince, pumping it energetically before turning to look at Charlie, his big, black eyes gleaming with speculation. “Investigator Lopez, I presume. An unexpectedly beautiful addition to our great city’s firefighting team.”

His joviality is at odds with our chilly reception before the bomb went off. He raises Charlie’s hand to his lips, but before he can kiss her, I shove myself between them with a growl. “Back off, bear.”

Duncan drops her hand and raises a brow at me.

Damn it. I’ve given myself away.

“I see how it is.” He lifts his hands in surrender, turning his gaze from Charlie who’s looking at me with a slight frown.

Did I just step on her toes again? I can’t tell. My mating instincts are driving me insane, but I know without a doubt, had Duncan kissed her there would’ve been bloodshed. Mine most likely. Bears are fierce fighters, victory usually a foregone conclusion, despite what I said to Charlie earlier.

The bears are just as insane as wolf shifters when it comes to mating, so I know he knows. His speculative stare is making me uncomfortably aware that I set myself up by letting the bear know I’ve found my mate.

I decide to fill the silence in my usual style. Business first. “Two of your establishments have been bombed within a few days of each other. What do you know about it?” Not the smoothest beginning, but I’m still irrationally pissed at him.

Duncan stares at me for a few long seconds before nodding. “Three, to be more accurate.”

Charlie gasps. “The warehouse! You own it?”

Though he doesn’t look directly at her, he nods again. “Yes, the warehouse belongs to Paddington.”

That explains why I was having trouble finding out who the numbered company was behind the warehouse purchase. The bears are incredibly secretive and will jump through hoops to protect their business interests from shifters and humans alike.

“Why are you telling us?” I ask suspiciously. Since when do the bears give up information this easily? I’ve lived on and off in New York for over a century and this is my first meeting.

Duncan crosses his arms over his massive chest and leans against his desk. “Since I lost the best plant I’ve managed to get into ASHRA.”

The bears had a spy? “Who?” I demand, but Charlie gets there first.

“Greystone Boulder-Wolf.”

At Duncan’s nod, she turns to me. “It makes sense that they would send in a shifter.”

“Why a wolf shifter?” There’s a growl to my voice. Though I try not to be speciesist, it pisses me off that one of my own was sent into a dangerous situation in my city and I wasn’t consulted.

Duncan looks pained. “I didn’t want to trust a wolf, but what choice did I have? Look at me.” He spreads his arms wide, covering a six-foot span. “Males don’t come in anything less than six feet, five inches, three hundred pounds. Even our females are too large to fit in easily. We needed a shifter who was tough, wily, willing, and could blend better than a bear.”

“So you chose a wolf,” Charlie says softly.

I edge in front of her. “Why and how?”

Duncan presses his lips together, his glittering eyes assessing me. We’ve lived in the same city long enough he should have my measure by now. Even though we’ve not met, he makes it his business to know everyone else’s.

He nods, saying, “I’ve given you this much, I may as well give you everything.” He waves us toward a massive brown leather couch and chair set. “This latest bomb… fire… whatever it was in my own damn building… well… it’s clear I can no longer protect my people without help.”

The admission is a shot to his pride, which tells me a lot about his situation. He’s worried about ASHRA in a big way.

Charlie and I take the couch while the chair creaks under Duncan’s weight as he settles with a grunt.

“Why would the bears need protection?” I ask. “You’re a fierce lot. Able to hold your own in most situations.”

He looks at me with scorn. “We don’t have a lovely large plot of land to retreat to the way the wolves do when the going gets tough. During the Human-Shifter war, our kind was pushed out of our settlements and forced to scatter. We have since come together, hiding the best we can among the humans, but we’re often seen as inherently violent.”

Charlie gives him a sympathetic look. “It must’ve been difficult if, as you say, the majority of you are very large.”

He nods, his chest puffing with pride. “Even our children are much larger than the largest humans. Hiding has become an art for us. Now, we’re finally ready to come out of the shadows and this group, this… this…” Anger chokes off the rest of his sentence.

“ASHRA,” I confirm.

“Vermin!” he snarls.

“Which is why you sent Boulder-Wolf in.” Charlie’s voice is soft, understanding.

I want to yank her into my side and insist she only speak to me that way.

“Indeed.” Duncan nods at her, his gaze warm. “He came to see me shortly after moving to the city, wanting to sell me information on ASHRA.”

“And you trusted him?” I say in disbelief.

He gives me a look. “Of course not. Do I look stupider than your average bear?” Charlie giggles, earning a wink from him and sending my jealousy, a trait I didn’t even know existed inside me, into the stratosphere. “We worked together for a year before I trusted him enough to agree to send him in.”

“It was his plan to go in?” I’m surprised by this news. Boulder-Wolf was involved in some of my brother Fallon’s worst schemes when he was king. He disappeared after Lock took over.

Duncan stares at me thoughtfully. “It was his plan, though both of us and a few other shifters were involved. He was fully committed. Even got a tattoo to help ease his entry, to prove to them they needed him. I can see your skepticism, and I can’t speak to who Boulder-Wolf was before he came into our fold, but when he was here planning with us, he had a passion for protecting the shifter community.”

Perhaps he came to regret his time with Fallon, harming fellow members of the wolf community. We may never know the answer to what motivated him. “How did he get in with ASHRA?”

“There are a few humans on the inside sympathetic to our cause. He was introduced as the boyfriend of one. They pretended to be a couple while gathering information and sending it my way.”

That explains the human female scent I found in the apartment where Boulder-Wolf was staying. “They were more than pretending. They were sexual partners.”

Unfazed, he says, “I suspected as much, but what they did privately made no difference to our cause. We still needed information about the anti-shifter movement happening under our noses.”

“Where is the female?” I ask, leaning forward. “I’d like to speak to her.”

Charlie jabs me in the side. “Woman.” I stare at her and she stares back. Finally, she says, a huff to her tone, “Human women prefer to be called women, not females.”

Duncan draws our attention when he says, “Missing.”

“What?” We both say at the same time.

“The fem… woman, Catherine Grant, is missing. We haven’t seen her since Boulder-Wolf turned up dead. Her phone is gone too and none of her family have seen her. I’ve had people searching for her all over this city.”

A knock on the door has us looking up. Ginny uses her weight to push the glass door open, popping her face around the side. “The mayor urgently wishes to speak with you, Mr. Sharptooth. He heard about the explosion.”

Duncan stands, prompting us to stand as well. To his secretary, he says, “Ginny, please give Detective Wolven-North and Investigator Lopez a copy of everything we’ve gathered on ASHRA.” He strides to his desk, snatching up a couple of cards, handing one to each of us. “This is my personal number. Call if you have any questions.” He shakes our hands, lingering over Charlie’s. “Call if you need anything at all, my dear,” he says to her. “You saved my building. I’m in your debt.”

My wolf can only take so much. I bare my teeth at Duncan over Charlie’s head and pull her away from him, hoping it looks less like I’m interfering with her job and more like I’m simply guiding her to the door.

We wait in the reception area while Ginny makes copies of the ASHRA file. While we wait, Charlie sips tea on another massive bear-sized sofa, chatting with Ginny about traffic and the weather.

I wander away from them, pulling up the contacts on my phone. Edie picks up after two rings. “If it isn’t my favourite detective. What can I do for you, darling?”

“I’m looking for someone, want to see if she’s come through your morgue.”

“There are eleven coroners in the city of New York, you know,” she says with a put-upon sigh.

“And you have access to a database.” Ignoring her irritable tone, I continue, “My possible victim’s name is Catherine Grant.”

Her silence stretches and for a moment I wonder if she knows something, but then she says in a distracted tone, “Hang on, I’m checking.” I hear the faint sound of her fingers hitting a keyboard. “What makes you think she’s come through here?”

“She disappeared around the same time as our other victim, Boulder-Wolf.”

“And you think the cases are connected?”

I pause, thinking about what to say. It’s not that I don’t trust Edie, but she’s not working the case with me and what we’ve uncovered at Paddington Inc. is privileged information. “Just looking into a possible lead,” I tell her. “They’re probably unrelated. You know how these things go. Gotta shake out every possibility.”

She doesn’t respond and another minute passes before she speaks again. “Nope, nothing on a Catherine Grant. Good news, right?”

Right. “Can you check for a Jane Doe?”

Another few seconds pass, then, “It’s been four weeks since we’ve had a Jane Doe. Do you want her file?”

Catherine hasn’t been missing that long.

“No,” I say shortly. “Thanks, Edie.”

EDIE

Lennox hangs up without saying goodbye.

Well, fuck.

Things are going exactly according to plan… but also not.

Though I suppose it was only a matter of time before Lennox found out there was a human woman involved. He’s not a stupid man.

I glance sideways across the room at the metal door nestled among rows of metal doors. It hides a secret, but what to do with that secret? Catherine was a mistake. Wasn’t meant to get caught in the crossfire. Humans are too fragile, too easily broken.

I don’t feel bad about it. She was fucking a male wolf shifter. These human bitches need to learn to stay away from our property. That’s not why she died though. Wrong time, wrong place.

I down the rest of my whiskey and set the glass on top of a mess of reports scattered on my desk. Striding across the room I tug on a pair of gloves, then open the metal door. Pulling out the drawer, my gaze falls to the grey face staring sightlessly up at me.

“You weren’t supposed to be there,” I say.

She doesn’t respond.

“What to do with you?”

Again, she freezes me out.

I trace a finger over her forehead, briefly touching her once rich auburn hair, now dull and limp against her skull. “You either need to disappear or make a splash. Which will it be, my beauty?”

I close the drawer. One more whiskey before I decide how to use sleeping beauty.