A Mate to Believe In (Dragons of Mount Aterna Book 2)

by Riley Storm

  Carla’s eyes burned a hole in the wall above the Sheriff’s head. What she wouldn’t give to just reach out and squeeze for a little too long.

  “Well, do you have an explanation for yourself?” he bellowed, slapping his hands on the flimsy wooden desk and rising to his feet.

  “I didn’t think—” Carla swore as Dunbar latched onto that word and went off again.

  “Of course you didn’t think, Frazer! You never think! That’s what’s the matter with you. All you do is not think. That’s why you’re still a Junior Deputy. It’s unbelievable that you’ve been with us for three years and still can’t get promoted! If you would just do your job properly, the way I’ve shown you how, maybe you would get ahead!”

  Carla’s teeth ground together as she kept her jaw firmly closed. The old sack of shit didn’t even know how long she’d been with the force. He didn’t know a damn thing about her!

  “That’s the problem with women in law enforcement. Or the military,” Dunbar was saying as he sat back down, shaking his head. “They always think they need to do things differently. With a woman’s touch. Good old policing hasn’t failed us yet, and it won’t now. So just do it the way you’re supposed to. Which includes following orders!”

  She suppressed the urge to pistol-whip the sonofabitch right there in the office, clocking him into next week with the butt of her service pistol. It would be so incredibly satisfying to drop him like a sack of potatoes.

  “Yes sir,” she said tightly.

  “You were expressly ordered not to go poking around the Aterna family,” Dunbar barked. “Did I, or did I not give that?”

  “But sir, I have—”

  “Answer the question, Junior Deputy Frazer.” Dunbar’s face was flushing red.

  If she kept provoking him, would he maybe have a heart attack? That couldn’t be pinned on her, right?

  “Yes sir, that was the order you gave sir,” she said.

  “Yet you didn’t obey it, did you?”

  Carla thought about backing down, about playing meek and just letting the whole issue drop. She could perhaps save some face, and get back to the other issues on her desk today.

  Or she could do her job. The way she had been trained. Which was not at all the way Dunbar expected her to do it. Because the man was a useless officer, and should have been fired years ago. But nobody in town ever ran against him for election for some reason.

  “I was in the process of doing just as you said, sir,” she replied. “I sought out the building owners, and was going to give them the information and leave it at that.”

  “But why didn’t you?” Dunbar growled, slapping the desk with a closed fist again. “Was it some of your women’s intuition?” he added with a slow sarcastic drawl, his florid cheeks turning up as he graced her with a mocking smile.

  “The building owners showed me footage of what happened inside,” she said, resolutely ignoring the bait.

  If I could ever just get footage of him saying things like this and put it on the internet, he would be done! Done!

  Dunbar seemed to relax a little when she said it wasn’t her actions. It was a bald-faced lie, and if he ever called up Pete or Melissa, she was done, but Carla doubted he would do that. That was work, and Dunbar abhorred working besides using his sirens or drawing his weapon. He was quite literally all that was wrong with police.

  “Video footage?” he asked with a sigh. “What’s your point?”

  “May I, sir?” she said, reaching for her phone. She’d transferred the video file to it so that she would always have a copy, in case someone accidentally deleted. It wouldn’t be the first time evidence had gone missing.

  “Sure, why not,” Dunbar said, sighing. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  She pulled up the video and let it play several times for him.

  “As you can see, sir, this clearly shows that there was a second person in that building. They were fighting one another.”

  Dunbar sat back, looked at her, then rubbed his temples.

  “Seriously, Frazer? You expect me to believe that grainy thing is real? It’s obviously some sort of fake, behind-the-scenes video from a movie. You saw the way the person flew across the screen. That’s not possible. Which means that the video is fake. Probably photo-doctored, or whatever.”

  Carla looked down at his desk in front of her. It was low, past her waist. But if she bent down far enough, she could probably slam her head against it.

  How could he be so stupid? Not to mention blind and uncaring. As if Carla would ever bring footage she couldn’t verify the accuracy of into a potential investigation! What a turd.

  “Sir, something is afoot. More happened there than Pace Aterna is letting on. He’s hiding something. I know he is.”

  “It’s a fake, Frazer. Destroy it and move on.” Dunbar crossed his arms.

  “Sir, that’s the inside of the store,” she said. “It’s not fake. I saw the damage, it lines up with this. There is something going on. Please, you have to let me investigate.”

  Dunbar glared at her when she kept talking. “What part of drop it, was unclear to you?”

  “Sir. Please. I can prove that there’s something happening here. You have to let me look into it. Dig a little deeper.”

  “Absolutely not, Frazer. It’s done. Close the case.”

  Carla went for the hail Mary pass. She’d hoped not to have to do this, but Dunbar was proving to be unusually reluctant, even for himself. “Let me investigate it, sir. If I can’t prove something else was afoot, then you can put me back to traffic duty.”

  Dunbar’s eyes glittered as she made her offer. It didn’t really make much of a difference in the grand scheme, of course. She would still be a Junior Deputy, but it was one pay grade lower, and essentially meant she would voluntarily give up any additional detective duties. She would patrol the streets of Five Peaks, and nothing more.

  It was something Dunbar had been trying to do to her for years, but she’d successfully played the system well enough to prevent him from doing so. Now Carla was giving him the option to do what he wanted, without her interfering.

  “Three days,” he said, not even bothering to negotiate. “You have three days to bring me incontrovertible proof that this man is a criminal, and can be charged for whatever his crime is. It must be an airtight, slam-dunk case, Deputy.” He grinned happily.

  Carla shook her head. “Seven days, sir. For a proper and fair investigation, I need more time.”

  “Concrete proof, Frazer,” Dunbar said gleefully. “Concrete proof. If you don’t have it, you’re done. And you won’t have it. Trust me.”

  She nodded. “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “Whatever. Get out of my office. I have work to do. Real policework.”

  Carla glanced at the desk. “Enjoy your donuts, sir,” she said primly.

  “Get out, Frazer!” he roared. “Before I change my mind!”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” she barked, turning sharply and marching out of his office, even as he raged at her back.

  The handful of others in the office looked up as she came out, but Carla didn’t care. She couldn’t keep the smile from her face as she marched back to her desk.

  She was on the case! It was time to get to work.

  After all, I only have seven days, or my career is toast. Damn. What have I gotten myself into?

  Chapter Eight

  Carla

  Day One

  Arriving back at the scene of the crime, Carla stepped out of her car and regarded the front of the building.

  Nothing else had been harmed. Just the glass doors in the entryway, and the damage from the fighting inside. Right? Neither Pete nor Melissa had noticed anything missing. They had said the only things present were construction tools, but all had been accounted for.

  “So is the building just a random coincidence then?” she said to herself as she walked up to the police tape. “No real connection to the crime itself, but purely by chance?”

  I
f her initial theory was right, that the two men had been fighting over something, then it was entirely possible that this was just the place where one had caught up to the other. That set off another string of questions in her mind. Which one of the men had been doing the chasing? Which one was the bad guy?

  She had so many questions, and precisely zero answers. Lifting up the police tape, she stepped inside. The sunlight dimmed but never left, but she could lift her sunglasses onto her head now, no longer needing them to see. Surveying the damage, her eyes, like always, went back to the support beam.

  “How did you do this?” she asked the empty room, walking over to the pole, trying to imagine the force it would take to bend it nearly in half and rip it from the ceiling. One of the four bolts was still attached to the floor, but it had clearly been warped and twisted as well.

  “We didn’t.”

  Carla spun around, hand going for her pistol as someone spoke from over her shoulder.

  “Easy Sheriff, easy,” the person said, arms up, palms facing her. “I’m not a threat.”

  She twitched nervously, the pistol halfway from the holster.

  “What the hell, Pace?” she snapped. “Why did you sneak up on me like that?”

  He frowned. “I didn’t? I walked across the floor making as much noise as a herd of elephants. You just never looked up.”

  “Uh huh. I’m pretty sure I would have heard you,” she growled, pushing the gun back down and taking a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. “You shouldn’t be here,” she added. “This is an active crime scene.”

  Pace looked around. “It doesn’t look very active to me.”

  Pressing her tongue to the roof of her mouth in anger, Carla forced herself to stay relaxed. “What are you doing here, Pace? Did you come back to cover up the evidence of your crime, perhaps? I should probably arrest you now, until I find out what you’ve done.”

  The big man frowned, then shrugged his shoulders before tugging the expensive suit back into place. “On the contrary, Sheriff. I’m here to help you out.”

  Carla took a long moment to process that. “You’re here to…help me? Help me with what?”

  “To give you all the assistance I can in tracking down the bad guy,” Pace said, as if she should have already known that.

  “Uh huh. Um. You are the bad guy,” she said slowly.

  “No, no, no. The other guy. He’s the bad guy,” Pace said. “The one I was fighting.”

  “So there was another person in here,” she said quietly. “The two of you were fighting?”

  “Yes, yes. We’ve moved past that. Try to keep up.”

  Carla rolled her eyes. “Shut up.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, shut up. I don’t need your help. I can track down this bad guy, if he really is that bad, all by myself.”

  Pace looked at her, eyes crinkling slightly with skepticism. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said hotly.

  “So who is the bad guy then? Where did he go? What did he do?” Pace asked. “Do you know any of the answers?” he continued when she didn’t immediately respond.

  Carla sighed. “Okay, fine. So I’m still puzzling it out. Tell me then, what do you know, Pace? What was it you lied to me about when I detained you the other day? The information you purposefully concealed from me?”

  Pace grinned. “Oh, I see what you’re trying to do. That’s not very nice, Sheriff.”

  “Deputy.”

  “What?”

  Carla shook her head. This was going to be painful. “It’s Deputy,” she said slowly. “I’m not a Sheriff. There’s only one Sheriff in town. That’s Dunbar, the man your family has likely paid off to ignore any incidents you people cause here in Five Peaks.”

  “You people?” Pace repeated. “I sense some anger there, Deputy.”

  “Yes, you people. Families from the five. You know who I mean. You all come traipsing into town, blowing stuff up, damaging stuff, and you wave your money around like it magically wipes it all away. As if people aren’t actually affected by you and your actions.”

  “I said I would offer to pay for the damages,” Pace said, looking around.

  “Right. See, you think it’s just that simple,” she snapped. “Well it isn’t. Your little escapade through here set Pete and Melissa back by weeks, I would say. That’s weeks where they don’t have a paycheck, weeks of extra rent on the property. Stress in trying to see what repairs can be done, and what has to be straight up replaced. You rich people don’t ever think about that. You just throw a bit of cash at it and think that it’s fine again.”

  To her surprise, Pace wasn’t waiting with a bored expression for her to finish. He was listening to her as she spoke.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I didn’t think of that. I will double the amount of the repairs, with the excess going to the owners to make up for the hardship caused here. Will that be enough, Deputy? Can we get on with the case now, or do you have still more grievances to air against someone you’ve never met before?”

  Carla wasn’t quite sure what to say now. He’d neatly trapped her, despite admitting that she was completely correct in her initial assessment of the situation.

  “Tell me what you know,” she said. “Who is the bad guy, what did he do?”

  Pace grimaced. “I wish I knew who he was. I barely even caught a glimpse of his face, it all happened so fast.”

  “I see. Not much help, but fine. What else can you tell me?”

  “He tried to rob me.”

  “Like, mug you?” she asked, starting to drop into what she called detective mode, where she tried to analyze everything and ask all the questions she could.

  “No. Not myself specifically either. He tried to electronically steal my, uh, family’s, money. We have several joint accounts. I entered the bank to check on them this week, and was told someone else had just been there trying to withdraw money, but had been stopped because I changed the passwords and such the week before. Otherwise he would have gotten it all.”

  The timing was so close, I caught up with him in the parking lot. Chased him up the street and got out here, tackled him. We went through the doors. Fought.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He got away,” Pace said with a shrug.

  “Not good enough. How did he get away, Pace? I need the details.”

  The big man slumped over. “He won.”

  Carla was mentally recreating everything in her head as he spoke. “Won what?”

  “The fight. Between us.”

  She snickered. “So he beat you up, is that what you’re saying?”

  Pace glared. “Did I look beaten up? No, he didn’t try for that. Just got the upper hand long enough to run out front, hop in my truck and steal it.”

  Carla gaped as his words registered home. “So he stole your truck, and you didn’t think to, oh I don’t know, mention that to the police officer who arrested you outside?!”

  He shrugged. “You got there so soon, I figured you must have seen the truck taking off.”

  Carla frowned. It was…a logical assumption. She replayed the scene in her mind.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “The bastard drove right past me. I just assumed he was fleeing the scene, like everyone else. Damn. Damn! Next time, mention this sort of thing Pace! Like, from the start.”

  Carla was starting to panic. She’d risked her entire career on there being something more going on. Yes, a car theft was a crime, but it wasn’t the exposure of an underground crime ring that she’d been half-expecting.

  Of course, you still don’t know if Pace here is telling the entire truth or not. It could pay off to get closer to him, get to know him while trying to solve who tried to rob him. After all, most regular people don’t have someone try to steal a family bank account. There is definitely still another layer here.

  Satisfied that there was still more to be learned, that something big was still being
hidden, Carla resolved to continue on with the case.

  “Okay, so attempted robbery, grand theft auto. I can work with that,” she said, nodding to herself. “Yeah, I can make that work.”

  Pace chewed his lip. “Well, Deputy, there’s more.”

  Chapter Nine

  Pace

  “There’s more?” She practically exploded in his face. “Just how much more is there, Pace? How much have you kept from me?”

  “Well I have no proof of this last one,” he said. “It’s just circumstantial, but I think it’s relevant.”

  The Deputy seemed to calm somewhat at this words. Pace wasn’t telling her about another crime that had happened while she was there, but something he believed was related to it.

  “Okay, what have you got then? Please, just spill everything so I don’t have to drag it out of you piece by piece,” she said, exasperated.

  Pace thought she looked rather cute when she got all worked up, but he decided not to string her out any longer. She was just trying to do a job, and he did need her help after all.

  “This might not be the first robbery,” he said quietly. “My, ah, brother, was robbed. Vast amount of stuff stolen.”

  Carla rubbed her head, blonde hair swaying slightly in its long braid. The rest of her uniform was thick and chunky, like most law enforcement officers. Tactical vest on top, festooned with pockets and gadgets and things that he was completely ignorant of. It gave her a squared-off look, though it couldn’t entirely hide the figure he knew was underneath.

  She was a little taller for a woman, perhaps only two inches under six feet. Pace didn’t have to crane his neck down to talk to her like he did most people, and it was a real relief. So often when he did that, he felt like was being condescending. Not with the Deputy though. It was almost like talking to an equal.

  Jade eyes glittered as she processed what he was saying. Pace had so far managed to avoid being drawn into a deep stare by those beautiful seas of green, but it was a real challenge, one he wasn’t sure he would be able to resist forever. They were mesmerizing.