Felicity thought best in the shower, especially the steam shower. Over the sound of the water, she heard her cell ringing. It was the tone for random calls. She ignored it, trying to leech the wine smell out of her pores. She needed something solid to present to the lenders—let’s call it like it was. She wasn’t a money person, she was a planner, a schemer, a dreamer and she knew a good project when she saw one.
With a sigh, she shut off the water. It could well be that the whole blood vendetta and the chaos piling up over the apex challenge clouded her reasoning. Maybe Ripple was too far away for a profitable development.
Thoughts of Thorn suddenly stabbed her heart. Toweling off, she tried to sort out which was worse; the fact that he was cheating on her—a cat!—without her knowing, or the hole his absence created inside her. Her stupid cougar side still purred at thoughts of the big dumb Lumberjack. Angry as she was, fuck her sideways, she missed him.
Just as her lips trembled and her eyes stung, her phone rang again—the random tone. Throwing on her robe, she walked to the kitchen where she’d left it. The number looked familiar. Two messages. She played them.
Oscar León.
Without listening, she called him back. “You can drop the case, Oscar.”
“I warned you about los osos.” The private dick chuckled. “Él te puso lo cuernos, no?”
Felicity understood just enough Spanish to know Oscar was asking if the bear cheated on her. “Just send me the damn bill.”
“Uno momento, Felicity. I have something you need to know. Information that could solve all your problems. Meet me for lunch at the usual place.”
Before she could refuse, he disconnected. Shit. The usual place was Le Cheval Blanc. Her teeth ground together. Stupid ass bear. Could she dare show her face there again? Oscar sounded pretty confident in his evidence. It seemed she didn’t have much choice. She started working on her hair.
Half an hour later, she crossed the Ross Island Bridge and took 5 North. Parking was nearly impossible, the restaurant packed. Oscar sat at their regular table, waving.
“Ah, Mademoiselle Malkin, your party is waiting for you.” Pierre smiled and guided her past the waiting crowd. She expected to get the high hat from him in the way that only the French could manage. There was not a trace of derision as he handed her the menu. Letting out a breath, she sat across from Oscar.
“Mi Tesoro, always a pleasure. Estás precioso.” He smiled, teeth perfectly white against his black goatee and caramel skin. “Brings back the memories, no?”
A waiter promptly arrived and set a wide cup of latte in front of her. She sipped it gratefully. “Just give me what you have, Oscar. I don’t have time for memories.” Her head still hurt, her guts still churned. It would have been a simple ten second shift to cure the hangover. Felicity hadn’t done it. Partly, she needed an extra surly edge with the PI. Her cat side told her she was just punishing herself.
“Strait to business, then. Baby Boy; Thorn, he is not what he appears to be.”
She sipped the milky coffee with one hand, rolling the other for him to continue.
“I tracked his inheritance to a company in Kansas City. This took a great deal of time, as the actual holding company is buried in layers of shell companies. These two things add up to a single fact—the land was not an inheritance at all, but a clan trust.”
Felicity set down her cup. “How can that be? Thorn is turned, not a born shifter.”
“Very little is known about bear clans. They are even more secretive than cats. Like the beasts themselves, we usually see only tracks. In this case, Kansas City is historically the easternmost outpost of brown bear shifters. The obfuscation of the company itself is a very bear thing to do. However, the ownership of the land is based on five simple deeds. Whoever possesses them owns the land. The holder can do whatever he wishes, however, leaving the land in the trust means the trust pays the taxes. There are two thousand acres, worth millions of dollars. Your simple bear would find it most difficult to pay such a large tax bill every year, no?”
Felicity’s heart rose for a moment. But she wasn’t buying it. “How can he be clan? The newspaper stories, the foster care, the human woman he was placed with—the clan should have come for him.”
Oscar raised his brows at her. “Should they indeed? I know nothing of bear politics. But from what I’ve learned, there could be no blood vendetta against either Mathilda Sommers or Baby Boy: Thorn.”
“There has to be. The bear who took out the mother, who tried to kill Thorn…” Oh, no.
The detective’s face went grim. “I see you are putting it together.”
“It can’t be.”
“Mm. But it must be. The attack on young Baby Boy Thorn and his mother was not directed at the mother, but at the child.”
“Infanticide,” Felicity breathed.
It was unheard of in this day and age, at least among shifters. In the animal kingdom, it happened all the time, but the human halves of shifters put a stop to the practice long ago. The predator was trying to kill the child to force the mother bear into estrus, to dominate her by grief, loss and instinct. It was a monstrous practice. “If it’s true, and frankly, it’s a little too horrible to contemplate, what would the killer gain from coming after Thorn now?”
“As I say, bear politics is a mystery. But given the byzantine nature of los osos’ holding company, and the simplicity of the deeds themselves, I would say this murderous bear would gain the property by some archaic clan law. Or perhaps, he would simply force your novio into signing them over.” Oscar shrugged expansively as the appetizer arrived.
Felicity suddenly felt ravenous. Her mind furiously worked all the angles. Not only could she solve her problem with the asshole investors, she could keep dumb shit Thorn from getting killed. Pissed off as Felicity was, she didn’t want that.
“From the way you are attacking the French onion soup, may I assume that my work is done?’
She nodded, not stopping the shoveling of food into her mouth.
“Excelente.” He shoved a file folder across the table. “Here is the information. My bill is on the last page. You have my number, should you ever come to your senses.”
Felicity ignored him, putting away the soup, the entrée, and even considering dessert. She was going to need energy to pull this off. She paid the check and headed out. Pierre stood near the front door. She addressed him in her best French.
“I apologize for my friend at brunch yesterday.”
“Not necessary. The gratuity he left was more than generous. Besides, we have a spare. This is not the first time a guest has dropped the restroom key in the toilet.”
She paused, making sure she understood the maître d’ correctly. “Really?”
“Indeed. As they say, merde happens.”
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Chapter Twenty-One
“I don’t understand any of this. It’s so confusing. So weird!” Sally sat in Thorn’s passenger seat pressed all the way against the door.
Welcome to my world, he didn’t put voice to the words. “I promise I’ll do what I can to help you. But I’m not too good at it myself. Just ask The Vet.”
“She’s so creepy. How does she know all this stuff? What is a supernaturalist, anyway?”
Thorn had no clue. He drove on, the glow of dawn visible in the east. He had work today, and he hadn’t gotten any sleep. Life had gotten too insane for sleep.
“I didn’t mean to mess things up between you and that woman.” Sally kept her eyes glued to the passenger window.
“Not your fault.” It wasn’t, no matter how squirmy and naked she was in front of Felicity. How the hell was he going to explain this? He felt his spirits sink lower and lower with each mile.
“Why is this other werebear after you?”
“Don’t say werebear, say bear shifter.” Thorn sighed. “No idea. Sybil says it’s because I’m a shitty apex predator. I’m supposed to be king of the woods,
but I’m just a slacker.”
“So this other bear is going to fire you?”
Thorn was pretty sure the invading predator was going to do a lot worse. The dead animals, the vandalism, the damage done in town all pointed to this apex challenging Thorn to mortal combat. “Something like that.”
He pulled into the empty lot outside the Squirrels Nuts. Sally’s eyes were everywhere before she ran inside. Thorn tried not to catch sight of her ass as the shirt blew in the breeze. He did anyway. With the clock on his dash showing it was near seven, he barely had time to stop off at the trailer and grab his tools before work.
With no coffee, he headed toward Ripple. The Johnsons were adding an extension to the back of their house, but the trees too close. He pulled up to the job site late, and grabbed the chainsaw and climbing gear from the truck bed chest. A couple guys stood around looking up at the tree.
Thorn leaned on the trunk, stepping into a leather saddle and strapping spikes to his boots. “Anything special, or just take it down?”
“Just take it down. It’s too close to the addition we’re planning.” Steve Boyce was the general contractor Thorn worked for once in a while. Boyce was okay, and he paid in cash. Thorn liked that.
“You need the wood chopped and hauled?”
“Just chunked down and stacked in a cord. Bob here’ll use it for firewood next year.”
Bob Johnson was a little guy with big ears. “You ain’t gonna hurt my topiaries none?”
Thorn squinted at the shrubs inexpertly trimmed into crude animal shapes in every possible place to land parts of the dismantled tree. They were the trimmed shrub kind, not the ivy-growing-on-a-cage kind. “You don’t have to get rid of the topiaries to build the extension?”
“Nope. Just the tree.”
Shit. Thorn took in the yard, the tree. Up high, there were a few limbs that had to come down before chunking the trunk. The trunk stood only a few yards from the house, presumably in the way of a future exterior wall. He thought about running a zip line. The next closest trees were a hundred yards away on the other side of a fence. Thorn didn’t want to spend all day tying up a lowering system for five or six limbs.
He walked back to his truck, swung it around, and backed it into the side yard. He grabbed rope from the toolbox and tightly tied one end to his trailer hitch. The rest he carried in a loop on his belt opposite the chainsaw lanyard. It wasn’t the best idea, but neither was a topiary garden in a half-acre yard.
Thorn drew his strap around the trunk of the tree.
“You’re not gonna throw a rope up there?” Bob asked.
“Nope.” Pulling himself up with the strap, Thorn jabbed the spikes of his climbers deep into the wood and levered himself into the tree.
Bob gazed up at him. “Don’t seem safe without a rope.”
“I’m good.” Thorn did his best to climb out of earshot.
When he got a little more than halfway up, he tied the other end of his zip line around the trunk, hauling the carabiner tight. Limbs were just above them. He hooked up the first to the zip line, hauled the chainsaw from his saddle belt, and cut a wedge from the limb near the trunk.
He could’ve sent the limb sweeping a few feet from Bob and Steve, and watched them run screaming. Thorn’s heart just wasn’t in it. Felicity weighed heavily on his thoughts. It had only been a few hours, and he already missed her like crazy. How long before he saw her again? If ever?
Buzzing, the saw cut through the top of the limb, it was a clean cut. It swooshed down the zip line in an uninteresting way, crashing to the ground a few feet from his truck. He sighed. This was going to be boring.
Methodically, he tied each of the limbs to the zip line and cut them free. Zip, crash. Zip, crash. Yawn. How could he even get ahold of Felicity? He hadn’t gotten her phone number, and didn’t know where she lived, other than Portland. Portland was big. She was a cat, so he guessed she must live in one of the high rises downtown. Cats loved to be up high.
With his heightened senses, Thorn figured he could track her down eventually. It would take a lot of time. The city was a confusing mess of bridges, canyon-like streets, traffic and unfamiliar smells. There had to be a simpler way. He tied the last limb to the zip line and cut it free. There was now a big pile of leafy branches between him and the truck. He should probably take care of those first, but he didn’t want to spend all day up in this tree.
Estimating the distance from the secured line to the top of the tree and the distance between the slack in the line and the back of his truck, Thorn started chunking. He also had Sally to worry about. How could he be her mother? He wasn’t all that good at being a bear in the first place. Would she just inherit his bad habits?
Thorn cut a wedge in the trunk a foot above the line, connecting the trunk with a stout line wound around the stumps and small branches jutting from the bark. The bole was thick here, but not very far to the top. Thinking of Sally, he remembered she had Felicity’s card. He could call her at the office!
With that, he made a cut opposite the wedge. Hanging the saw, he gave the trunk a hard shove. Things got interesting. As the top let go, the part of the tree he was hanging on was plucked like the world’s largest guitar string. Thorn gripped the flat top of the cut with both hands to keep from getting vibrated to the ground.
When the tie to the zip line caught, what remained swayed back and forth. Grunting, he kept hold. The tree top hissed down the zip line like a rocket. The front of it swooped low, ripped through the fallen limbs before the back dug into the dirt. He heard the sound of metallic thunder.
Once Thorn felt he wasn’t going to fall to his death, he surveyed the damage. The top of the tree had plowed through his tailgate before denting in the toolbox and smashing the back window of the cab.
“Aw, man. Too tall.”
The job had become more interesting, but not in a positive way.
He spent the rest of the day on speaker phone with his insurance company in between sending smaller chunks of trunk down the zip line. Thorn then sawed the tree down to fireplace-sized pieces and stacked them near the house.
Near the end of the work day, Steve arrived on the site. He surveyed the folded tailgate and crumpled toolbox. “Well, at least you didn’t hurt the topiaries.”
With his cab full of leaves, branches and bark, the wind whistling through the broken back window, he drove off. When he speed dialed the Squirrels Nuts, Sally didn’t answer. While the bar was out of his way, he decided to swing by anyway. He could get the number off that card.
In the parking lot, he saw a sign hanging on the door: Closed due to illness. Sorry. Thorn knew she must be shaken up, because Monday Night Football was a big draw for the bar. He knocked for a while but got no answer.
Aw, man.
Now he had nothing to look forward to but a ride in his newly air conditioned truck to a busted-up trailer filled with debris and the stink of disinfectant. Slate-colored clouds filled the sky between the trees, and an annoying mist fell. Thorn’s mood turned surlier when he felt the light rain soak into the back of his shirt.
Thorn turned into his driveway, and nearly rear-ended the car parked there. An instant before pounding the steering wheel with one fist and the horn with the other, he recognized the vehicle. Felicity’s sporty little ride.
Unsure whether his day was about to get a whole lot better, or a whole lot worse, he parked on the street and jogged toward his house.
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Chapter Twenty-Two
Thorn burst in the front door, knocking it down. He frowned at the damaged hinges before facing her. “I fucking swear, I’m not boning Sally.” He then started and stared, as if he’d been slapped.
Felicity had planned this out. She sat on Thorn’s couch in her micro-mini skirt, stockings, and tight fitting T-top. Like a footrest, a case of beer sat under her high heels. For a moment, she thought Thorn’s eyes would pop out of his head and his jaw would fully unhinge like h
is busted front door.
“We’re going to table that for now.”
He kept staring. After a few heartbeats, he said, “Uh-huh.”
She patted the couch beside her with a manila folder. Obediently, Thorn strode over and sat. “I found out a few things about you, things you probably don’t know yourself.”
“Really, I am not boinking the bartender.”
Felicity frowned at him. Thorn shut up. She wanted to believe him so much, but her cat smelled Sally in the trailer. Hackles rose on her inner feline. Rationally, of course, the trailer should smell like Sally, because the little tramp was here not a few hours before. It still burned. Felicity had to remain focused.
“You weren’t turned.”
Thorn side-eyed her, but finally caught on that speaking was a bad idea.
“You’re clan, a born shifter. It’s where your land comes from. This invasive predator isn’t after you because you’re a shitty apex. He tried to kill you when you were a child, but your mother fought him off and died defending you. It’s something that bears do, and cats as well, but we don’t speak of it. Dominant males will often kill off another male’s offspring in order to mate with the female. In this case, this asshole would likely inherit your range.
“We—” She stopped herself. No reason to bring an old flame into this. The situation was complicated enough. “I can’t see any other reason that he would still be after you.”
A moment of silence passed. Thorn raised his hand, as if he were in school. Felicity rolled her eyes.
“So I’m not a shitty apex predator?”
She folded her arms. “I didn’t say that.”
He raised his brows and tilted his head in acceptance. “The Vet said he turned Sally because he wants a mate. He’s ready to take over.”
Her teeth clenched to the point of pain. If he said one more thing about that little hussy—
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