by Sky Winters
“What?”
“It’s nothing. There’s a car that keeps parking down the street. A man sits in it, maybe waiting for someone to come out. I don’t know. I’ve seen him before, but today he really scared me.”
“Scared you how?”
She relayed the incident to him and again told him it was likely nothing.
“I’m coming over there,” he said.
“No. Ryan. Please. I just need some rest and he’s gone now.”
“I’d just feel better,” he protested.
“I just need to get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Well, I’ll at least check with the station and see if they are doing surveillance on anyone down there. Chances are he might be a cop keeping an eye out for someone.”
“Okay, Ryan. I’m going to go now. I’ll talk to you later.”
He didn’t miss the fact that her “tomorrow” had become a vague “later” but he said nothing about it. Instead he said goodbye and ended the call, tossing his phone onto the counter in frustration. After a few minutes, he picked it back up and called the station, asking for a friend in the investigations unit and explaining that a friend had someone who might be undercover parked across from her house.
“I don’t need the details. I just need to know if you have anyone hanging out there or if I need to check into it further for her.”
“Give me the address.”
Ryan rattled off her address to him, but told him it could be any house within view of hers as she said the man was parked across and slightly down the street.
“Alright, I’ll check into it and get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Thanks,” Ryan told him, ending the call.
When he returned to the station the next day, there was a note on his desk with a cryptic message that simply read, “no surveillance in that area.”
Maybe she was right and it was nothing Ryan told himself, but he wasn’t certain and he didn’t like that. He logged onto his computer and pulled up the database of people listed on her street, selecting only those on her end of the street and checking each of them for records. Most of them were clean. As she had told him before, it was a mostly geriatric neighborhood, but there was one guy who had priors as a low level dealer. Though there were no open investigations, Ryan decided to pay him a visit himself after work.
“Charlie Downfield. There’s a blast from the past,” a voice said from behind him.
He turned to see Tate standing over his shoulder, looking at the screen. He quickly clicked off the old mugshot in the file and turned to sideways to look at his partner.
“Don’t creep up on people you sneaky old bastard,” he joked.
“Don’t steal the little joy I have left, kid,” Tate retorted. “What are you looking at ole’ Chuckles for? He roll over a baby or something?”
“What?” Ryan replied, not understanding the reference at all.
“Lost his legs to a train. Developed a habit of his own after all the drugs they pumped into him for the pain. He’s pretty much a vegetable these days. The state has to take care of him, sends someone in several times a day to make sure he eats some pureed food and to clean him up if he shits himself.”
Ryan nodded. It might even explain the man in the car outside if they were driving someone over to check on him and then just waiting for that person to come back out. If nothing else, it eliminated any reason for surveillance. So, either the man in the car was there to watch Lucy or to wait for someone else. He decided it might be in both their best interests to find out for certain.
“He lives in a friend’s neighborhood. I guess his help is getting dropped off and the man waiting on her creeped a few folks out,” he said, not wanting to admit it was just one person, the one he’d been seeing.
“Hardly anything that concerns us,” Tate replied.
“Just a favor for a friend sort of thing. Told them I’d check who lives there. It makes sense now.”
“Ah, okay. You ready to hit the road? I’m going to grab another cup of coffee and we’ll be on our way.”
“So, what are we up to today?” Ryan asked as they drove toward the east side to start their day.
“Just need to get out and about to see what we hear. Word is that the shit’s about to hit the fan over there. One of the girls said they’ve been servicing a new crew that has taken over everything in their hood. They like to party hard and they are pushing some heavy artillery out to their minions.”
“Guns?”
“Guns . . . and drugs. Intel from one of the informants is that it’s some real nasty shit. Cocaine and heroin cut with Fentanyl mostly. Addictive and deadly.”
Ryan was unable to speak for a moment. The mere mention of speed balling took him back to that place where he could overhear his parents talking in the kitchen. It was what had killed his brother, though it would be years before he understood what it meant. It was dangerous enough, but adding Fentanyl to the mix was just asking for overdose.
“Fuck. Who’s bringing that shit in here?”
“Don’t know yet, but everyone is terrified of them. One guy swears he saw them rip a guy apart. Claims they turned into some sort of animal, but he was tripping balls at the time and isn’t exactly a reliable witness to much of anything.”
Wolves? Oh God, were they wolves?
Ryan considered this for a moment. Could it possibly be related to his brother’s death? Ultimately, it had been Mark’s decision to take the drugs that had killed him, but one of the biggest reasons Ryan had joined the force was to take down the kinds of people who sold these death sentences. If he was looking at the people who had actually supplied his brother, it was a whole new ballgame. If they were wolves, taking them down wasn’t going to be easy or pretty.
The day revealed nothing further that might open up information. When he was done for the day, he went home, showered, and considered having a drink or twelve. Instead, he called to check on Lucy. He realized he felt tense as he waited for her to answer, not looking forward to getting the same ambivalence he had felt from her yesterday.
Instead, she sounded light hearted and upbeat. He felt relieved.
“You want to come over? Maybe spend the night with me for a change?”
“I’d love to. Let me throw together a bag and I’ll be there in a bit.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No. You want me to grab something on my way over?”
“No. I went grocery shopping today. I’ll make you dinner.”
“Sounds great,” he replied. “See you soon.”
“See you,” she said before ending the call.
CHAPTER NINE
Lucy
Lucy had woken up that morning feeling one hundred percent better than she had when she had gone to bed. She hadn’t realized just how tired and out of sorts she had been until she had last spoken to Ryan. True, she had been a bit annoyed by his over-protectiveness, but it was largely contributed to feeling out of sorts on a number of levels.
She was also happy that the car that had given her concerns appeared to be gone now. No doubt the whole thing was just her imagination playing up, including thinking anyone had been in the house. She had decided to put it all behind her and just try to act like a normal human being. She took her time putting together the ingredients for lasagna and popping it in the oven before throwing together a salad, putting it in the fridge and preparing rolls to brown once the lasagna was closer to done.
Glancing out the back window as she passed, she was sure she saw a pair of eyes watching her. They were big and yellow - the eyes of a wolf. She looked closer and they were gone.
“Get your shit together, Lucy,” she said aloud.
It was probably just a neighborhood dog, one of the larger ones from an adjoining street. She shook off her unease and helped herself to a glass of the chardonnay she had purchased and sat down on the sofa with her sketch pad and using a photo of Ryan from the Alpha Meets Omega app to begin drawing him. She lay
it aside when she heard a knock at the door, opening it to find him standing there with another bottle of wine in his hand and a pastry box.
“I brought wine and dessert, though I doubt it’s as good as whatever I smell cooking in here,” he said as she finished opening the door for him and he stepped in.
“Ooh, chocolate cake. Yummy.”
“It’s store bought. I can’t cook anything more complicated than whatever I can throw on a grill.”
“I’m sure it’s delicious. You want some wine? I’ve already opened a chardonnay to sip while the food cooks.”
“Sounds good. Want me to get it?”
“No. I’ve got it. The food won’t be ready for another twenty minutes or so. Just have a seat on the sofa and I’ll bring it over.”
Ryan did as she said, noting the sketch pad on the table and his likeness on the open page.
“You’re drawing me?”
“Yeah. I haven’t hand sketched in a while. I thought I’d give it a go.”
“It’s really good. I thought you said you were terrible at freehand.”
“I am, except faces. I am really good with drawing those.”
“I’ll say. You’re probably better at drawing other things too. We’re always our own worst critic.”
“Hey, can you draw me the face of the man who you thought was watching you?”
“Oh, come on. No. He wasn’t watching me. He was just checking on someone, or something.”
“Probably, but it couldn’t hurt.”
“He was wearing a cap. I couldn’t really see him.”
“Every time?”
“No, not every time. I think I . . . No, I did get a look at him once.”
“Draw him for me, just to be on the safe side.”
“Maybe after dinner. Okay?”
“Not maybe.”
“Okay. After dinner then.”
As if to end the subject, the timer went off and she stood up to put the rolls in the oven.
“These will be ready in a few minutes,” she told him, stuffing them in the oven and setting out their plates on the table.
He brought the bottle of wine and their glasses over and sat them down before pulling her to him and kissing her. She smiled up at him. Somehow, she still wasn’t sure she should be letting herself get so close to him, but she decided that maybe it was best to just go with her heart over her head for once. Being this close to him, it was hard to think any other way. His scent, all wolf and sandalwood, was intoxicating to her. The thought flagged something about the man in her mind and she blurted it out without thinking.
“He’s human.”
“What?”
“The man, the one that I thought was watching me. He’s human.”
“How do you know?”
“I can’t smell him. When I was running past and he got out of the car. I was still close. I would have smelled him if he were a shifter, wolf or otherwise.”
“Well, that’s something I guess. I checked into it a bit and found out one of your neighbors is pretty wrecked physically and has people coming in to check on him throughout the day. It may just be someone waiting on a caretaker to do his or her things and come back out.”
“I didn’t realize you’d done that.”
“Just making sure there’s nothing for you to worry about.”
The timer dinged again and the conversation fell to the wayside as she pulled rolls from the oven and began putting them in a bowl.
“You want to take the lasagna over while I put these and the salad on the table? There’s a pair of oven mitts laying on the counter right there,” she said, nodding to the right side of the stove.
Ryan retrieved the glass pan, still bubbling hot and sat it on the metal trivet while Lucy brought the rest of the food. They sat down to eat, not continuing the prior conversation about the mystery man. Lucy still wasn’t really thrilled with his snooping around too much. It seemed like a bit of an invasion of privacy - not only hers, but her neighbors. It was sweet that he wanted to take care of her, but she didn’t really need him to do that. She was beginning to feel uneasy about how close they were getting, despite having invited it. The bottom line was she felt like a confused flake.
“So, you said your father is alive, but you aren’t close. Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked as she helped herself to some salad and passed the bowl to him.
“No. I’m an only child.”
“That sounds unusual. Were your parents not Alphas?”
“No. My father was an Alpha, the Alpha of our pack, actually. Mom was an Omega, but there was an incident when she was pregnant with her first litter. A rival pack attacked and she got caught in the fray. She lost most of the litter, except me, but she wasn’t able to have any more children after that.”
“So, your father had no male heir. Sounds purposeful. Is he still the Alpha of the pack?”
“No. He, um, he did some stuff and was exiled by the pack.”
“That must have been hard for you.”
“Not really. It was after I was already gone, so it didn’t really affect me. I was already estranged from him by then.”
“Where is your father now?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay. It feels like ancient history now.”
He took a bite of his food and chewed it, looking at her thoughtfully. She could tell he wanted to ask more questions, but he seemed to sense it wasn’t a subject she was fond of and didn’t. Instead, he changed the subject.
The conversation turned toward less personal discussion, like her classes and his new beat with Tate, what he could tell her about it. They cleared plates away together and returned to the sofa with their wine. Ryan encouraged her to sketch the man she had seen on her street and she picked up her pad, quickly throwing together an image of the man she had seen while Ryan watched.
“You should consider joining the department as a sketch artist,” he laughed, looking at it.
“No thanks. I still prefer CGI.”
He looked puzzled.
“Computer generated images.”
“Of course. Do you mind if I take this with me?”
“Nope. It’s not like I’m going to hang it on my wall.”
“Are you going to hang that one on your wall?” he asked, nodding toward the one of him she had flipped back over to in the sketch book.
“I might, when I finish it,” she teased.
He sat down the sketch of the man and his wine on the table, inching closer to her and tangling his fingers in her hair, pulling her to him in a heated kiss. The conversation fell to the wayside as things got heated on the sofa. Soon, they abandoned their drinks and any thoughts as they became entangled in one another. They were both already mostly naked when he scooped her up in his arms and carried her down the hall toward her open bedroom.
It was impossible to think about anything but how she felt and tasted at that point.
CHAPTER TEN
Ryan
“What’s the date?” Ryan asked as he glanced at a printout of his work schedule.
“The 17th,” Deputy Carson replied from across the front desk. “Less than a month until Valentine’s Day. Did you find someone stupid enough to come with you?”
“I did. You gonna bring your Mom again this year?” he shot back.
“She’s only ten years older,” Carson muttered as he reached for the phone that had begun ringing beside him.
Ryan laughed and stepped away from the desk, holding the sketch Lucy in his hand. He took it over to Kate Samson, a rookie who always had some time on her hands and a thing for him that was in no way reciprocal. She was a good looking girl, but human and he’d never been much for dating outside his kind. His pack was relatively modern and had a number of mixed species couples. He was fine with that, but he just preferred someone who understood him a little better than a human ever could.
“Kate, are you busy?” he asked.
“Not if you need me not to be,” she purred.
He ignored the flirtation, handing her the drawing.
“Do you think you can scan that in to the facial recognition software and see if you get any hits on it?”
She looked at it and frowned.
“It’s a little harder from a sketch. A picture would be better, but I’m assuming you don’t have one.”
“You assume correctly.”
“Alright, but it might take a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“I don’t know. Hours. Days. Depends on how many faces match it. It’ll spit out similar ones and then they’ll have to be looked through manually to decide if they are the same. So, depends on how much there is to find and how much there is to go through by human eye. Might be inconclusive altogether if the computer can latch onto a good enough likeness.”
‘I see. Well, just do what you can with it.”
“Got a case number to go with it?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Hold on.”
Ryan pulled out his notebook and flipped back a few pages. He gave her a case number from one of the drug dealers he and Tate had been dealing with. His name had come up when he was checking out the druggie on Lucy’s street. It was a thin connection, but good enough to cover the fact that this little project had nothing to do with any of his active cases.
“Alright. I’ll let you know when and if I have something.”
“Thanks, Kate,” he replied.
She beamed back up toward him, apparently thrilled that he’d come to her for something. He was sure she saw it as some sort of in to get closer to him, which was okay. It worked in his favor. If she thought it might open up a chance for her to hook up with him, she’d work extra hard to get him what she thought he needed for a case. Some might consider him taking advantage of her, but it was just the way it worked around the department.
He had traffic court today, so was in uniform and not out on the beat with Tate. It was old stuff from before they had moved him to plain clothes. Luckily, most of the people he had ticketed or arrested pled out or had already paid their fines and he got out early. He called Lucy to see if she wanted to have lunch.
