Dragon Mated: Paranormal Romance

by Amy Faye

"Thanks. I'll be avoiding Seventeenth, then."

  "Probably a good idea," she agreed. She wasn't going to be avoiding it, of course. But that didn't mean it wasn't a good idea. Hell, it was probably the best idea anyone had all day. "Do you have any idea what did it?"

  He pointed at some marks on his wrists. "See that bruising there?"

  She nodded and looked up at him. The less time that she looked at the body, the better. "What about it?"

  "Well, I mean, you look at the guy, right? Short of a gorilla, I can't think of anything that could do that without a rope, or a cable or… something."

  "Sure."

  "You didn't look that close, did you?"

  She braced herself and looked back down, turning the disembodied hand over to examine his wrists. "Those look like finger marks."

  "Suspicious, isn't it?"

  She frowned and let out a breath. "Thanks, Doc, I'll–" Brianna's phone rang. When she checked it, she recognized the number. "I gotta take this."

  She turned away before she took the call, stripping her now-bloody gloves off and dropping them in a bin on the way out the door. "You got something for me?"

  "Nick Roe's a ghost" were the first words out of the Officer's mouth, and Brianna's conversation didn't get better after that.

  Four

  There were two tacks she had to take. Two wasn't the number that she wanted to be dealing with right now, not when she was supposed to be chasing down a murderer. She wanted to have to be in a thousand places at once.

  She wanted to have to talk to the victim's family. No known family on record. They were all dead. Only child and an orphan. There was a second-cousin, if she were desperate, but he lived in Memphis and she suspected they probably didn't talk all that much. Hell, Brianna wasn't even sure if she'd ever met her own second-cousins.

  Then there was Nick Roe, who was not only a ghost, she found, but hard to get anyone to talk about. Oh, you could find him if you looked. But you had to find him. Nobody was going to tell you what you wanted to know unless you asked the man himself. That was word on the street, anyway.

  The other angle, the one that she wanted to follow least of all, was an off-hand comment the coroner had made. Like some kind of joke. The only thing able to do that to a man–a gorilla. The bigger the better.

  But it was the only answer that made sense. A guy on PCP could have beaten him to death with their bare hands. Could have torn the body up as bad as it was, in fact, torn up. But the flesh wasn't cut, it was torn. That was a little harder.

  That was sufficiently hard that she was pretty sure the coroner was right. She was pretty sure of it before she'd heard him make the assessment–no man could've done it, and without rope marks on the guy's arms, it was a big fucking mystery that she wanted to solve.

  After a short and ludicrous conversation with the zookeeper at the local zoo, she let out a long breath. That was what she'd expected. No missing gorillas. No word on the street about local black market gorillas. Why was she asking anyway? An absurd call, an absurd question, and an answer that wasn't absurd at all. More disappointing, it was useless, rather than absurd.

  If Magilla Gorilla had escaped from the zoo, it would have opened up her suspect list to one. As it stood now she had a person of interest, a photo full of men who were mysteries to her. All but one, who was a mystery except that he had a full name.

  She closed her eyes. Fine, then. There was one tack left. If you want to find the man, go find him. She looked at her watch. There were a few hours left in the day, and there were calls left to make. Worries left to have. But come evening, she'd be putting in a little overtime.

  The hours passed slowly. There was something exciting about a new case. This was no different, on the surface. There were questions that demanded answers, questions that she didn't have answers to, at least not yet. But they weren't coming along fast enough, and instead of being stretched thin, she was hardly stretching at all.

  Well, the stretching–that would come that evening. She got off work and prepared to stretch. Brianna Hunt had always considered herself a pretty normal girl. She was, she hoped. But there was reality to contend with, as well.

  Any time that she had to confront 'normal girls' she was reminded immediately that what she was was anything but normal. She was a hard-ass through and through, and about all she could do about it was to keep doing it and hope nobody noticed.

  That was her plan tonight, too. Go find Nick Roe, and pretend to be real thankful for saving her this morning. The quickest way to a man's heart is through the bedroom, and the quickest way there was to throw yourself right at him. The plan wasn't flawless–it was dangerous as hell.

  But she was going to do it anyway because she had to find some crack in the armor that seemed to surround Nick Roe and Jeff Wilde. Once she had a crack in the armor, she could hammer on it, and other cracks would appear. Cracks that pulled her a million different directions and told her where she ought to go next. Eventually, a likely suspect would appear. Maybe one already had.

  But until she could put a pin on him and say who the hell Nick Roe was, for all she knew the fifteen men made up Jeff Wilde's rugby team. Hell, they were built about right for it.

  She didn't dress up often, but that didn't mean she wasn't a woman, somewhere deep down. She'd taken a long time to realize that no matter how many clubbing outfits she owned, she wasn't going to go clubbing.

  Well, now that and her packrat instincts were paying off, at least a little bit. With a little makeup, a little hairstyling, and an outfit that showed a very generous amount of her breasts, she barely recognized herself. The big man would hardly know who he was talking to. Odds were he wouldn't realize the connection, at least.

  She had texted the uniform and asked what little he could get on Roe. That turned up one useful thing, at least. He wasn't a ghost, per se. As often as not he was at a bar, on the edge of town. More of a roadhouse, she thought as she drove up and parked. Even that wasn't totally accurate.

  It was more like a truck stop had stopped fueling trucks. And 'edge of town' wasn't totally right either. It was more like 'outside of town.' There'd been an exit on the highway that as far as she could tell led here and only here, though she knew if she went on another ten miles or so there was a township where she didn't have jurisdiction.

  Then again, she didn't have jurisdiction here, either. If she did, then she'd have pretended she didn't, because what she was about to do was definitely not on the list of her rights, and it could blow back hard on the department.

  But she needed the information and she needed it bad.

  Brianna stepped in and from the moment she walked through the door she could feel eyes on her. That was the dress, she hoped. Not because they'd all smelled cop on her the second she walked in, because this didn't seem like the kind of establishment where they took kindly to police poking around.

  She cast an eye around. They weren't empty by any means. Two dozen men or more were there, a few women as well. Not dressed like her, of course. They were dressed like she might have dressed if she rode a motorcycle and dealt drugs instead of caught the sort of people who rode motorcycles and dealt drugs. Hard and pointed and covered in thorns.

  He was in the corner, nursing a drink. The bottle looked tiny in his big hands, like a children's toy. Or like an 8-ounce bottle, at least. She made her way over quickly.

  "This seat taken?"

  She leaned forward to show him an even more generous view of her breasts, hoping that it would entice some response.

  "No," he said. He drank from the bottle and set it back down empty. "I was just leaving. Have a good time. Enjoy the seat. Kept it warm for you."

  Five

  Brianna frowned. This was getting her nowhere. She was out the door within a minute of hearing the sound of a vehicle kick up, loud and throaty, and then drive away. A waste of time and a waste of effort. She wasn't going to waste any more than necessary.

  Rubbing what makeup she could off at a red light was
easy. Getting out of her clothes wasn't. So she didn't, as much as she knew it would earn her strange looks at the station. They'd get over it. They'd all seen a woman's tits before. Not hers, but technically they still hadn't.

  She forced herself to ignore the looks she got as she stepped in. Broyles wasn't there, so that was at least one small favor. He wasn't an asshole, but he wasn't the hardest worker she'd met, either. He made his position because he was good at management, and he'd stayed there because that was all he was good at.

  She settled down in front of her computer terminal and tapped her toe as she waited for it to load. Nick Roe wasn't a ghost. Couldn't be. Not if he were in their system. It was just a matter of seeing what the department knew about him publicly, and then making a few calls. He wasn't really a suspect, so she probably shouldn't have gotten involved. But she was involved now, and she was going to do her job.

  The list of names wasn't much better than what she'd had before, but it was at least longer. Aside from Jeff Wilde, she didn't get to add any new details to the faces on her victim's photograph. The photograph he apparently cared enough about to carry with him in his wallet.

  There was something there, something that she hadn't put her finger on. But at least she had a few names now. More than one, at least. Ray Lewis. Another damn poet's name. She frowned. No good. This trend was well past frustrating her. Carl Collins. Bobby White. That one at least didn't approach the poet trend as well as the others, she thought sourly. That was something.

  Then came the searches for those names. Carl wasn't in the system, beyond that line on Nick Roe's sheet. He hadn't been picked up for anything, but someone was keeping an eye on him, and whoever that was, Brianna thought, she ought to buy him a drink.

  Bobby was in the system, on the other hand, for a drunk-and-disorderly a couple years ago. She had a face to go with the name, which she sent to the printer with a sigh. Photos were useful when they were attached to the crime you were investigating. When they weren't, their use was severely diminished. But this was the best she could do.

  Ray was in the system, too, though he hadn't been picked up for anything. No, Ray's landlord had filed a complaint that he'd been missing a week ago. That was a problem for him because rent was due nine days ago, and seven days ago he'd gone around to roust his bum tenant only to find the place abandoned in a hurry.

  He hadn't taken anything at all. His car was still in the parking lot, all his clothes still in the apartment. She frowned. That wasn't good at all. If Nick's friends were in the wind, then there was a reason for that.

  Eventually, that reason very well might catch up with Nick himself, and then he'd be in the wind, too, and there would be nothing to connect this case together but a name on the back of a photograph and a memory of a time that she'd felt a tingle in the back of her neck when she looked at a guy.

  Brianna tapped her foot again. There was an address on file for Bobby, at least. And she could get a phone number without too much trouble, she thought. She made the calls and a minute later she was writing the number down on a pad of post-it notes and stamped it on the front of her computer monitor with the name "Bobby White" written over it, just in case she might forget before he answered the phone.

  She punched the number into the desk phone and waited for it to start ringing. It didn't. Instead, a loud tone immediately fired in her ear. "We're sorry, but the number you have dialed has been disconnected. Please hang up and try again."

  She frowned. Disconnected? She wondered when that would have happened. The number was for his home phone, but then again, some people didn't have home phones any more. She could get a warrant for his cell number, maybe, if she were lucky and could put together solid proof that he was involved and would be useful to the case.

  Therein lied the problem, though–he wasn't useful to the case, as far as she knew. She was throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck, and that wasn't going to be enough for a judge to sign off on it. So instead she jumped in the car and headed out again. At least this time she wasn't dressed like she was going to bite someone's head off.

  Two wrong turns and twenty-five minutes later, Brianna Hunt stood in front of a house. It wasn't small, but it wasn't big, either. Two stories and what she guessed was probably two thousand square feet, maybe? Then, it had been a long time since she'd been in the market for a new place. And maybe it was a little bigger on the inside.

  She knocked on the door and tried not to look like a whore, which was a challenge at that time of night in those clothes. She'd be lucky if someone didn't get called on her, but it wasn't like she had a lot of time on her hands. If she didn't get this case turned into something real in the next… Twenty-seven hours, she thought, then it wasn't going to happen.

  The lights in the front room were on before she arrived, but she didn't hear any movement coming from inside after her knock. So she knocked again. No sound. Brianna frowned. There was a car in the drive. The front room was lit. She could faintly hear the sound of a television running inside.

  She knocked harder, more insistent. What the fuck was going on with this guy? She peeked her head inside. Empty. If he'd gone out for a pack of cigarettes, why not take the car?

  She went back to the car and laid her head against the headrest. Whatever the answer was, it would be answered eventually, even if she had to wait all night to see what the hell was up with 'Bobby White' and why he didn't answer his door.

  Six

  Brianna stayed outside for a long time. Her gut told her that she was at the end of this case, but that wasn't a choice she was supposed to be making right now. But without a solid lead, and with a victim like Jeff Wilde who nobody seemed to know, nobody seemed to give a shit about–well, she didn't like to think of things in those terms, but that was what it was.

  If there wasn't going to be something going on the she couldn't make that change no matter what she did.

  Her eyes drifted shut, but she forced them open again. Wondered if there was any coffee shop that would deliver to your car at three in the morning. No, not three, she saw. Five. Shit. Had she slept?

  No, she reminded herself. It was one when she got there. She'd been there four agonizing hours, checking the window every time that she hoped she saw something, but there wasn't anything to see. Sadly. Because Bobby White was pretty much her guy at this point. Bobby and Nick, at least.

  She closed her eyes again. There weren't many hours left before this trail had grown cold. If she wasn't in the middle of an active investigation by the day after tomorrow, it would be a big embarrassment. Maybe her career could sustain that one big embarrassment. She'd heard of people suffering worse defeats and coming back from them.

  She didn't assume she was one of those people. Nobody who assumed they were ever came back from it. You stay because you're hungry enough to work to make up for it. Well, there was nothing to this Wilde guy aside from a photo and a guy who didn't seem interested in talking.

  She let out a long breath and turned the radio up, waiting for the guy to come. Two more hours later, she was glad she hadn't gotten that coffee, because she'd have had to pee worse than she already did. With the sun up, nothing in the house stirred. She frowned. That was almost 8 hours without any movement, except a house with the front room lit and the television running.

  She turned the key in the ignition and started to drive. People were just getting up for work, now, and so it didn't look suspicious when she pulled out in the middle of a train of cars. After all, plenty of the locals pulled out, too. She was glad for that, because otherwise she might have to explain to someone why she was dressed the way she was, and sitting there outside someone's house for hours on end.

  The local McDonald's had coffee. Had bathrooms, too. She availed herself of both before heading back out to the car with a steaming cup. She looked over her shoulder at where the house was. No doubt it was empty, and if she left it behind then that was going to be the moment that someone came and answered all her questions about what was
going on with Bobby White.

  She satisfied herself with punching his home phone into her cellular. Still disconnected. But his cable worked, so that was strange, she supposed.

  He could wait a little longer, she decided. And she wasn't going to keep wearing these absurd clothes. She had a change in the locker room and she was going to use it. So a little more than forty minutes later she drove up in front of Bobby White's house and turned the car off again, except for the radio, which she let run.

  She had a feeling it was going to be a long day, but she needed answers, and if that meant waiting for someone who knew Nick Roe and might be able to work her into that little crack in the case, then that could be the break she needed. She didn't have a lot else, and she couldn't hold Nick without any suspicion at all.

  Brianna looked in the mirror to make sure her hair wasn't as bad as she knew it was. Trying to mat it down with her hands she happened to notice a brown Buick parked behind her a little ways. She thought it looked familiar. Brown was a strange color. Not a factory color for GM, as far as she knew. Not a factory color for anyone that she knew of. But the Buick was there, and it had been there when she'd pulled out that morning to go to McDonald's to relieve herself.

  Probably a coincidence, though. Coincidences weren't uncommon, especially when you were doing something strange. You start pushing on the universe, and the universe pushes back, sort of thing. That was what Brianna figured, anyway.

  The day passed as slowly as she'd expected, especially when she got spooked about the car battery running down and then had to sit there listening to the tinny music coming out of her cell. She tapped her foot on the accelerator as if it might make time go faster, but the car just allowed it without doing anything, as it would continue to do until she turned the key.

  By evening she had abandoned the idea. It was a bad one, in the first place. Nick Roe was a name to her. A name and a tough guy, sure, but he hadn't shown himself to be a murderer, and he hadn't given any indication that he could rip a man's arms off with his bare hands. Bobby White was another name on a list, except this wasn't even a list of people who knew Jeff Wilde. This was just a list of people who might know Nick Roe, and she'd wasted an entire day looking at him. With nothing to show for it, she added sourly.