by Mandy Rosko
Alice shook the thought from her head. She had to get out of here. She had better things to being thinking about right now. Like surviving.
“Excuse me, I’m passing through here. Can you tell me if this woman stayed at your inn?”
Jake Christopher Redfield presented the photo, the only one he had of Alice. It was one of her mug shots, and it was one of those one-in-a-million shots that still made the woman in question look like a supermodel, despite the unflattering light and dreary look of annoyance on her face.
Because he was dressed in a suit and a tan trench coat, the universal symbol for a guy with authority over something, the girl behind the counter took a look at the picture. She couldn’t have been older than twenty, especially with that hoop in her nose. Her thin brows came together, and then they shot up. “Some other guy showed me a picture of this girl. Is she, like, a criminal or something?”
“This is an old photo. She’s not suspected of anything currently,” Jake said.
“Are you a cop?”
“Private detective, and it’s important that I find her.” The fact this girl had said someone else was also looking for her worried the ever-loving hell out of him. “What did the man look like who showed you the last picture?”
The girl straightened a little. Jake could sense the alarm in her, and the excitement. “He was tall, about your height, I think, but bigger. Giant scar on his face though.” She brought her hand up and made a circular motion against her right cheek, as though that would give him an impression of how bad it was.
Jake didn’t need to hear anything else. There was only one big, tall guy he knew who would have a giant scar on his face. Still, it was better to get all the details. “Older, steel grey hair, sort of a caveman brow?”
“Yeah, exactly,” the girl said, her eyes widening.
This couldn’t be good.
“Is he still here?”
“He’s got a room here. Is he a criminal?”
He was, but nothing had ever been able to stick for too long. Jake knew he should’ve stopped off at the sheriff’s office before coming here.
“No, he’s just some mean competition. You know how it is,” Jake said, partially whispering as he leaned in and smiled. The girl’s cheeks turned a bright pink, and she had trouble meeting his eyes as he flattered her, making her think he thought she was smart enough to know how things actually worked.
That was the point. Jake was good at manipulation, to the point where it was basically cheating.
Depending on the mind, he could make people react how he wanted them to. It was like the Force, only more fun, because it was real and not from a Sci-Fi flick.
There was rarely ever any competition between two private detectives. Not unless some guy had enough money to blow to hire two different firms and see which one produced results the fastest, or unless Jake was doing what he was doing now.
Which was working for free so he could find Alice.
“Don’t tell him I’m here, all right?” Jake asked. He hoped the stupid Rotty wouldn’t smell him, but that was unlikely. “Actually, if you can…” He pulled two hundred dollar bills from his wallet and handed them over, something he could barely afford to do. “One of those is for you, and the other is so you can give my scarred friend some booze. On the house, of course.”
“Of course,” the girl said, smiling and squirming pleasantly as she took the bills, her eyes never leaving Jake’s. “Whatever you say.”
“Good.”
“Before you go,” his new comrade said, “just so you know, I did recognize that girl from before. She’s got a room here.”
Something twitched and snapped inside of Jake’s brain. She was close. She was this close. She was here.
“Did you tell my friend this?”
The girl shook her head, and she scratched the side of her nose that had the hoop in it. “No. He gave me some weird bullshit story about her being his niece or something. I didn’t believe it. He wouldn’t have had such an old picture if she was his niece. At least you were honest.”
He was mostly honest about it.
Jake nodded. “See to it that he has a good time, all right? Try not to stick around him or his friends too much when they get tipsy.”
The girl nodded. “I used to work in the strip club outside of town. I know how to handle drunks.”
“Just stay out of their way, got it?” Jake asked, looking hard at the girl.
He didn’t think anything would happen to her, and there was a better chance that Bobby himself wouldn’t be doing any drinking, regardless of whether or not the booze was free, but Jake wasn’t about to take the risk and have a dead girl on his conscience.
The look in his eyes seemed to convey how serious he was, because his little comrade nodded. “O-okay.”
Jake nodded, satisfied. “Can you tell me what room she’s in?”
The girl told him. She even pointed.
As much as Jake didn’t want to be in the same building as Bobby, he needed to make sure she was all right.
Jake left the lobby and climbed the stairs. He briefly stopped in front of her room, pretending to be annoyed over something, and then pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
Nasty habit, but having a mild addiction gave him an excuse to carry a pack around with him, which also gave him an excuse to talk to people he was tailing and ask for lights, or let people he knew were fully addicted see him with his smokes so they would approach him.
It also gave him a perfectly acceptable reason to stop in front of someone’s room and stand there long enough to get a smell of what could be inside.
He opened his mouth and stuck one of his cigarettes inside. He really just needed the excuse to open his mouth.
As a man who could shift into a diamondback rattlesnake, Jake did a lot of his scent searching with his tongue. His nose was fairly strong, even in his snake shape, but he thought his tongue worked better for that.
Jake was the sort of guy who was too proud to be walking around with his mouth open. He hated the term mouth breather, and he would die before he let anyone call him that.
Through the taste of the cigarette, he couldn’t smell any blood. The cigarette covered things to a certain extent, but blood was something major he could always smell regardless of what was in his mouth. The fact that it was so damned silent in there was a problem, however.
Frowning, Jake pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and glared at it, like he was just remembering that he was in a smoke-free zone and it was somehow the cigarette’s fault. He leaned his hand against the handle of the door and tried to turn it while still looking at his smoke.
It wouldn’t turn. It was locked.
Not happy. This did not make him happy.
Alice had always been good at hiding her scent. She knew some of the people she was either working for or stealing from would be shifters, and she knew how to hide her scent from those people.
What she didn’t yet put together was that hiding her scent with ammonia didn’t guarantee jack shit. Ammonia still had a scent, and it was strong. Bobby was a Rottweiler shifter, not a bloodhound. He wasn’t trained or skilled in tracking, but he would smell the ammonia and know someone was hiding.
Jake could sure as hell smell it right now. Even if he didn’t know she was in there, he would know someone was, someone who wanted to hide their scent, which meant that person was hiding from something or somebody.
There was no way Bobby didn’t suspect she was in there.
There was nothing he could do. The door was locked, and if either of those two Mercedes that were outside belonged to Bobby—and he suspected both of them did—then it meant he was also outnumbered. He needed to get out of here. He needed to get to the chief of police and tell him there were a couple of guys in his town who were bad news.
Jake couldn’t just break down the door without making himself look like a complete psychopath or drawing the attention of all the wrong people, plus the staff.
Alice was a smart girl. She had to know Bobby was in the building.
He just had to hope she was going to stay put until he came back with the cops. Bobby hadn’t done anything illegal, yet, but if he knew the heat was on, that might force him to back off. At least, for now.
Jake quickly and quietly hurried down the stairs. It looked like the girl behind the counter was about to say something to him, and he didn’t want her calling out to him, drawing attention, so he moved faster toward the door, not giving her any eye contact.
He was out the door and on the move to his car, when a shadow flew above his head.
Usually he would think it was a bird, but ever since meeting her, he had a habit of looking up whenever something like that happened, regardless of how many times it always proved to be just another damned pigeon or robin.
Not either of those this time. Not even close.
At first, he thought it might be a bat, but the wings somehow looked…off.
Then he gave himself the chance to really see it wasn’t a bat at all, and that gliding shape moving into the trees was definitely not a bird either.
He’d looked into it before coming here. Flying squirrels were natural to the area, but not commonly seen. That, and they tended to come out during the night, when their predators would have a harder time hunting them.
Jake didn’t have the proper chance to get a good sniff of her, even though he was stupidly standing there with his mouth open, but his heart slammed violently against his ribs. People might be able to hear that sound from across town.
That had to be her. It just had to be.
He took off running after the shape, hoping he hadn’t lost her. He couldn’t have come all this way just to find her and lose her.
When he was safely in the trees, away from where he thought any human might accidentally see him, he let the change occur in his body.
Jake went down on his knees and gently landed on his chest when his arms melted into his sides, skin turning into scales. At six feet long, he was larger than what was common for a diamondback rattlesnake, but he was still able to move quickly when he got to this form. Jake flicked his tongue, searching for her scent amongst all the other things that assaulted him—the smell of manure, earth, dew, dying leaves, and moss on the tree bark.
He smelled a couple of other animals around, and that normally wouldn’t bother him, if some of those animals didn’t smell a whole lot like dogs.
Big dogs.
Jake moved quite a ways into the trees. She was clearly putting a whole lot of distance between herself and the inn, but where was she going?
Jake furiously flicked his tongue, and when he saw her leap from tree to tree, that was when he was able to relax a little, to finally breathe.
So long as he had her in his sight, it felt like he could protect her.
Hard to believe there was a time when watching her skitter and jump like that made him want to eat her.
He hoped it was her and not an actual squirrel, but it had to be her. Otherwise, he was sure the animal side of his mind would be craving a snack. What were the odds that she would’ve been in that motel, and a wild flying squirrel happened to jump from the building and glide into the trees?
When she stopped, he stopped.
He watched her. Her little nose twitched as she searched around. Did she know she was being followed? If she didn’t know, then at the very least, she suspected it. Her big, round black eyes seemed to be searching all over the place.
If she saw him, she might run. It had been years since they’d seen each other, and she might think he was here to bring her in. Or mistake him for a real snake. Alice had told him that she had more than one run-in with predators when she was in that form. It couldn’t always be fun shifting into a prey animal.
Jake flattened himself as much as he could in the brown, dry leaves. They made great cover for his dusty scales, and he blended right in. He definitely wasn’t about to rattle his tail either, despite how agitating this entire thing was.
She switched positions on the tree, looking off in the other direction. The white fur of her chest and belly seemed to rise and fall at great speeds. He was scaring her; she sensed something in the woods, but she couldn’t find it. Jake needed her to stop running, now that he had her. He could protect her.
The problem was if she thought she was being stalked by a snake or a bird, she might shift back into her human shape, which she wouldn’t be able to hide so easily from Bobby. The fact that she was taking the risk, staying in this form when she thought something might be out there, looking at her like she was breakfast, said a whole lot.
Jake watched and waited. He wasn’t sure how long it was, but it seemed like forever before he was satisfied Alice wouldn’t leap to another tree. It seemed like she was just going to hide out.
Whatever predator she thought was out here, it appeared she was going to wait until it was gone.
Jake moved to the tree trunk, and he slowly slithered up the textured surface of the tree bark, making his way to the branch where she huddled herself.
There was something in the tree with her. Holy shit. Alice’s tiny heart slammed around in her furry chest faster than it normally did. All her senses screamed at her that there was danger approaching, but she could hardly move.
It couldn’t be a cat. Cats were silent, sure, but Alice had practically mastered the art of listening for every leap they made, every tiny crunching noise that happened when their claws dug into tree bark.
Bobby might have better luck if he sent an army of cat shifters after her. At least they could climb trees, unlike the dogs.
What the hell was that noise? It was constant, barely there, and seemed to come in almost a familiar rhythmic…
Holy shit. It was a snake. There was a snake stalking her.
That was the absolute worst.
She’d been caught by snakes before, had a couple of close calls with some big motherfuckers in her time, and it was never fun feeling those scaly, rope-like bodies wrapping around her, trying to crush her into oblivion.
She’d always managed to shift with what she assumed was plenty of time before she passed out.
The three times it had happened before, one of which was a training session, had always left her gasping for breath.
Maybe it really was Jake?
She couldn't take that risk.
She knew it was coming, so that was a good thing. She wouldn’t be caught off guard.
But the branch she was on was nowhere near big enough to hold her weight when she became a hundred and twenty pounds worth of human female.
She would have to move to another spot. The branches up higher were smaller, so that wouldn’t work. The only thing she could do was go down lower. She needed to get to those thicker branches below. The problem? That was where the snake was. It would bring her close to the damned thing’s snapping jaws. Also, there was no cover down there. If Bobby and his dogs ran by, they’d see her in an instant.
Alice needed to get her furry ass down there, find the snake, get rid of it, and then shift again and get her butt back up the tree before that could happen.
Bobby’s voice howled in the distance.
“Alice! Alice!”
Oh, shit. He was looking for her. He was either scaring the hell out of the locals, or he’d made up a story to make it seem that screaming out a woman’s name wasn’t such a big deal.
“Come on, sweetheart. Time to come home.”
He’d definitely made up a story.
Time to move. She couldn’t wait anymore. Alice knew his dogs weren’t bloodhounds or anything, but the longer she stayed in her human form, the worse off she’d be.
She had to be quick.
Alice jumped.
*****
Jake watched her. What was she doing? She wasn’t changing trees; she was…climbing down here. Coming closer to where he was. He could sense the heat of her increase with his heat sensing pits as she approached. There was no mistak
ing her direction.
Maybe she was hoping to hide in the grooves of the larger tree branches. Maybe he’d been wrong before. She might not even know he was there. Or she could be hoping to hide from both, the natural predator hunting her and Bobby.
Well, he hoped she wouldn’t flip out when she saw him.
“Alice? Alice! I know you’re out here, honey.”
Fuck. He was getting closer.
At this rate, it might be a better idea to just let her hide and reveal himself then. There was too much risk involved in showing himself now.
But then Alice landed on a larger, thicker branch right across from him. It was only fifteen feet off the ground, and she shifted into her human shape.
Shit. No. Too close. That was way too damned close to the ground. The branch was low enough that she would be spotted. The only way Bobby or his dogs would miss her was if they were complete idiots.
His dogs, maybe, but not Bobby.
And Alice’s big grey-blue eyes scanned the tree, her pink lips parted slightly as her chest heaved for breath. A couple strands of her cream blonde hair fell in her face and across her mouth. She was searching…searching for what?
Then he got it. Him. She was looking for him. She was searching for the predator that had been hunting her. She thought she had to get rid of it in order to properly hide herself.
She wasn’t going to change back and risk getting eaten alive. He had to signal her.
Jake rattled his tail three times slowly, their code for each other.
Those eyes widened as they immediately landed on him.
Jake kept most of his body firmly attached to the tree, but he pulled his head back enough to really look at her, and to let her get a good look at him, at the pattern on his scales.
They stared at each other for what felt like the longest time. Probably only felt that way because it was dangerous as fuck to even be wasting so much time like this.
Come on. You know me. Recognize me already!
He’d normally just let his ability for suggestion take her over, but she had a weird resistance to that. It was like the goddamned Force. People with strong minds weren’t easily influenced, and it was harder to do when he couldn’t speak anyway.
