Blake, Her Bad Bear: A Paranormal Bad Boy Romance (8 page)

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he said.

“Oh, I do,” Lily said, putting her hands behind her back and pointing her toes inward. “Heh, sorry, I can’t believe I said that out loud. Oh my god, I’m embarrassed. It’s just we don’t get many visitors up here. Heh, and none that are in uniform.”

The cop blushed again, and Lily resisted a grin. “Well, Miss, I’m flattered, but I’m only passing through—business, y’know,” he said.

“What kind of business?” Lily asked, trying to sound alarmed. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

The cop flinched and bobbed his head from side to side. “Well, I can’t talk about it too much, you understand,” he said, and Lily drew closer to him, pushing her cleavage toward him. Her breasts weren’t overly large, but the tank top she had chosen to wear was slack enough on her chest that the cop had no problem looking down her bosom. Absently, pretending not to notice, Lily drew her finger across her clavicle.

“Oh, I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Lily hummed. “I’m just concerned is all.”

“You live around here?” the cop gulped, not even making an effort to avoid staring at the small mounds of her breasts.

Lily licked her lips playfully. “My whole life,” she lied, hoping that the cop wouldn’t interrogate her further—judging by how she’d drawn his attention, that didn’t seem like a possibility at this point. She backed away, teasing him, and put her own hands in her pockets, which forced the top of her cargo pants further down. The lip of her black panties gleamed above the surface, and the zipper where she’d unbuttoned the top started to come undone. “Just a small town girl, that’s what everyone says. But one day, I’m gonna move to the city.”

“Well, it’s a uh, beautiful place here,” he stammered, and sniffed loudly.

“You sure there’s nothing to be concerned about? I know you all mean the best, but my old father sees a handful of police cruising down the street, he’s liable to have a heart attack—he hates trouble, y’know.”

“Well, nothing like that, nothing to be concerned about, Miss,” the sergeant coughed, “just uh, well it looks like there was a death, that’s all.”

“A death?!”

The cop raised both hands, as if to silence her down. “Well, keep it quiet, Miss. But yeah, some poor guy looks like he got attacked by a bear of some sort.”

“A bear?” Lily tried to hide her confusion. “Well, no offense, but if it was a bear—isn’t that under the jurisdiction of the ambulance service or a park ranger or something?” Her voice had suddenly lost its infantile ring, and the sergeant squinted at her.

“Normally, yes, but, uh, if there’s… other things involved, or if it was suspicious then,” he seemed to have remembered himself, and shook his head, as if shaking off the spell that Lily had cast on him, and his orderly demeanor reappeared. “Really can’t talk about it, sorry, Miss. I have to go, if you’ll excuse me.”

She let him pass and watched with her hands in his pockets as he left. The cruiser roared to life and pulled out, and she made a note of which direction it was headed before sliding back into the car and turning the ignition. Lily had learned from one of her old colleagues during university how to tail cars without drawing unwanted attention—and by the looks of him, the cop was a dilettante in all manners of espionage.
Probably a desk jockey, most days
, she thought, turning her own vehicle toward the road.

She had to drive a lot slower than she wanted to, but always kept the police cruiser in view, several hundred meters ahead. It wasn’t until they were nearly on the edge of town again that she sped up. The road became curvier, and if she wasn’t careful, she knew she’d lose him altogether—too fast, and she’d give herself away immediately. Her jaw clenched as she tried to time her approach. As she came around another bend in the road, hedged by the river, her stomach sunk. There was a long straightaway and no sign of the cruiser. Absently she slammed the brakes and skidded to the shoulder of the road.
Impossible
.

There was no way he could have just disappeared, and even if he’d sped up she would have seen him. Swearing, she pulled a U-turn, feeling the rubber peel off her tires, and headed back the way she came. Sure enough, right at the curve, almost hidden by the blind corner, was a small driveway that led back into the woods. The car growled impatiently as she maneuvered it down the dusty road, feeling it threaten to slide against the ditch as the tires tried to grip at the loose gravel.

“Where did you go?” she whispered out loud, and adjusted her glasses again. There was a faint stirring of pale dust ahead, no doubt coughed into the air by the cruiser. She slowed down again, nearly idling as the road moved through a small gap in the trees and opened up into another small valley.

Sure enough, several hundred meters down the road she saw an ambulance and a row of flashing lights, blue and red. Too many cops for a simple disturbance—maybe Samson’s intel had been correct about a murder after all. And if the sergeant had indicated anything, there was likely a suspicious nature to it. Temporarily diverted from the reason she had originally come to Beaver Creek, Lily quickly fumbled in the glove compartment as she maintained a consistent speed. A small baseball cap tumbled on the floor and she fit it quickly over her head, lowering the brim as she passed by the row of cruisers. A few officers looked up with bored expressions as she moved past.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that they were loading a stretcher into the ambulance, covered with a blue sheet. Blood had darkened the sheet in several areas and she felt sick and thrilled at the same time.
Murder
, she thought, and looked in her rear view. Still no evidence she’d been found out. She sighed and kept driving until the road branched off to the left against a grove and turned the engine off.

“Okay,” she murmured, grabbing her backpack. It was risky, but maybe she could gather more evidence on foot. If the cops found her—especially the portly sergeant—she’d have a hard time coming up with an excuse, but the risks far outweighed the cost. “Walking right into a crime scene,” she shook her head and stepped out, “maybe they’ll believe me if I tell them I was just out on a hike.”

It was unlikely. Normally, she would have just stopped and, regardless of consequences, tried to wean information from the cops, but a direct approach like that was more likely to get her even further away from the meat of the story.

Leaving the car by the side of the road, she bee-lined up the side of the hill and into the shade of the trees. The cops and ambulance had been positioned near a tall line of red cedar, and she tried to guesstimate her bearings as she entered the woods. The deep smell of chlorophyll and humus reached her like a dark green hand, clapping down on her senses, and she took in a deep breath.

She was, innately, the antithesis of what she’d pretended to be in front of the cop—a country girl. However, she found herself easily navigating the uneven terrain of fallen logs and slippery undergrowth, and her breath caught in her throat in a sort of ecstatic rhythm as she found herself half-jogging. What she was looking for, she didn’t know. Some clue, something overlooked by the forensics team. It didn’t dawn on her until she’d made it down a gulley that the sergeant had remarked on the death being attributed to a
bear.

The thought froze her in place and her eyes grew wide.
What the hell am I doing?
she thought, realizing how stupid it was to blindly dive into the woods. Especially with the possibility of a killer bear being on the loose. It was the notion that the death—the body she had glimpsed under the paramedic’s blue sheet—had been suspicious that had prompted her to take the investigation into her own hands.

Lily swore and leaned over, her hands on her thighs, panting.

I’m frazzled,
she realized. Not thinking clearly. Too many things were going on, and she was having a hard time organizing them coherently. Pregnancy, Blake, a mysterious death, bears. Christ, what a mess. She readjusted the straps on her backpack and considered heading back the way she’d come. It wasn’t worth it to risk being caught out here unawares. Reluctantly, she turned and backtracked the way she’d come.

She didn’t’ notice a pair of yellow eyes watching her from the thicket until it was too late.

*

It hadn’t taken Blake long to locate another member of the Ursas who was lingering at Jack’s. It took him a minute to remember the woman’s name, her short Mohawk puffed out in an imitation of Mr. T circa 1984 and her brows almost simian the way they covered her eyes with a permanent sort of darkened scowl. One of the newer novitiates, but she had gumption, and was strong enough to win an arm wrestle even among the men.
Sarah.

She’d been almost surprised to see him, as if she’d thought he was already dead and he’d somehow resurrected himself back to the living. Her blue eyes resisted looking at him until he inquired about Ogre, and then her eyes went dim.

“He’s dead, I just heard… Connor and the others spread the word, I guess you were probably the last to hear,” she said. “There’s a lot of talk, Blake. They said they found him out near the pastures, north of town. Don’t know what he was doing there.”

“That’s an unusual place for any of us to be,” he mused.

“I think an ambulance is already there—coroner and stuff, and the place has been wasped with cops, I don’t like it. I’m just minding my own business, Connor gave us all orders. I’m supposed to blow smoke up their asses if they come in here asking questions.”

“He’s certainly prepared,” Blake said, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.

Sarah reached for the glass of beer in her hand—he could tell even from here that it was lukewarm, and the carbonation had long ago disappeared. She’d probably been sitting here with it for an hour at least. She looked spooked. “You should be careful,” she said suddenly.

“Careful of what?” he’d demanded.

Maybe it was because she was new to the gang—Blake recalled that, in form, she was a smaller brown bear, a southern breed—and had only fallen in with them in the last year, but she lowered her eyes, as if afraid to cross some invisible line. “They’re saying that Ogre was killed by one of us,” she said. “No names are being dropped officially. That’s why the cops came, I guess. But it doesn’t look good—what with you attacking him before at the wake. I don’t think anyone forgot that.”

“Did someone say that?”

She shook her head, then nodded slowly. “No, not in so many words—just whispers. All rumors and stuff, shit like that, nothing concrete. You probably got nothing to worry about. I just… I thought you should know. Folks are talking.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with Ogre’s death,” Blake assured her, and saw a visible sign of relief flood her face—if she’d suspected him, it was only a casual fear that she had merely been waiting for him to dispel.
Another one of my side, I pray,
he thought.

“I know, I didn’t really believe it,” she said, “but the others, I don’t know.”

“Perfect,” he said, “some coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

Blake shut his mouth and frowned. “Nothing,” he murmured, remembering the mission he had just given Gavin back in the gravel pit—with any luck the kid was already hunting down clues. And hopefully keeping his head low. “Listen, Sarah, stay here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think something bigger is going on. Someone’s trying to tear us apart from the center out—and I’m not going to let that happen.”

“I don’t get it, Blake,” she admitted, and he held up his hand.

“Just do me a favor, yeah? Anyone asks about me, ‘specially Connor, you ain’t seen me.”

From Jack’s, he’d sped north, and nearly lost his balance when two cruisers had come around the corner, their sirens blaring. For half a second he thought he’d been made, before realizing that he wasn’t actually guilty of anything.
My conscience sure tells me otherwise
, he thought, watching with some relief in his mirror as the cops sped past on their way to Beaver Creek.

No one had actually pointed a finger at him, but he knew it was only a matter of time—his scuffle with Ogre was the perfect pretense for motive. For Ogre to wind up mauled two weeks later, it was inconceivable as an accident.
Someone’s trying to pin me down
, he realized, and the thought shook him to the core. It wasn’t just the idea that he was contending with an enemy, mostly likely within their own ranks, but the fact that someone—another shifter—would go so far as to murder one of their own.

He pulled off on a small back road that led toward the pastures—the ambulance had already arrived, according to Sarah. But there was a possibility that whoever had offed Ogre might still be around. It was a long shot. Hell, it was a dangerous shot; if someone was trying to use him as a scapegoat, him showing up at the murder scene could be conceived as a sign of guilt.
Have to risk it
he thought, cranking on the engine hard until he smelled it burning.

It didn’t take him long to come into the small open valley. He could make out the barest flicker of movement down the road and quickly turned right down the road to avoid running past them. So that’s where Ogre had bit it. He felt a sense of misery. Ogre may have been a brute, and could get out of control sometimes, but he hadn’t deserved to die. And whoever—whatever—had killed him would have had to have been formidable.