Tessa didn’t know. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before.
The hostess passed out their menus and then left them with a bright smile and the promise of free breadsticks. At it, Tessa’s stomach rolled over and growled in her belly, something which made her face go warm with her embarrassment.
It took a great deal of energy to maintain two forms.
For a few minutes, their table was mostly silent, as they contemplated the menu. And by the time that the bread came, they were ready to order, something that seemed to discombobulate their server. Apparently, he had expected it to take them longer to decide.
For herself, Tessa went with the soup of the day as her appetizer, the mushroom risotto with braised pork shoulder for her main course, and iced tea, although she thought that she might order coffee when it came time for dessert. By then, she would probably need the caffeine just to make it home to her own bed – or Ajax’s couch, she was too tired to care which, especially now that the locks had been changed.
It had been a long, hard, incredibly stressful sort of day. There’d been the remnants of last night’s excitement to deal with, of course, and getting her apartment’s locks changed. Then she’d had to call her roommate, Madison, and explain that, to get into the apartment, she’d need to stop by the property manager’s office. Madison hadn’t been amused. And then she’d had most of a day of work to get through, and on very little sleep to boot. Now, she was exhausted. Given the choice, Tessa suspected that she would have zapped a hot pocket in the microwave and been in bed by seven, asleep by eight.
Just thinking of it, of curling up in her own snug, safe bed at home, filled Tessa with longing.
I can’t believe that it’s only Tuesday, thought Tessa, and her resolve momentarily faltered, as, before her mind’s eye, the rest of her work week stretched out before her into a small eternity. If things kept going as they had been, she was never going to make it through the rest of the week.
Never say never, thought Tessa grimly. She’d gotten through lots of unpleasant things that, at the time, she had never thought it possible to get through. And someday, this week might become just one more thing on that list.
Across the table, Ajax was ordering the soup of the day, carbonara, and some sort of fizzy Italian drink. As soon as the server left, hopefully to put their orders into the kitchen, Tessa leaned forward, across the table, to ask in an undertone “Well? Did you get anything?”
Ajax flashed her a wide smile, as pleased as the cat who got the canary.
“I got everything. Tomorrow, I’ll start looking into these people, and we’ll find out what kind of people owned your stuff before you did.”
“You will? Not both of us?” asked Tessa sharply, and Ajax looked surprised.
“Of course,” he said. “I’ve got to do something, while I’m at home recuperating.”
As opposed to actually just laying around and resting while she was at work. It was what she would have preferred that he do.
Tessa wondered if he knew just how badly off he had been, how waxy and dazed. And there had been so much blood. She had honestly thought that trying to save her might kill him.
His inability to sit still and recuperate definitely benefitted her, but Tessa still worried. What if he collapsed? What if he got hit in the head again? If he got hurt, it would be her fault.
I’m going to have to try to take care of him, she decided. Do my best to help him take it easy and try to keep him safe.
How she would do that, she had no idea, but one good turn definitely deserved another. Good turns didn’t happen often enough for them to be taken for granted, after all. Hopefully, something would come to her when she was less exhausted.
“So, what do you do when you’re not fixing cars or rummaging around junk shops?” asked Ajax, temporarily diverting Tessa from her worries.
“I’m in a band.”
“Yeah?” exclaimed Ajax, his expression brightening. “I was in a band in high school. We weren’t any good, but it was fun. What sort of stuff do you play?”
Not expecting him to have heard of any of it, Tessa nevertheless told him. But, to her surprise, he not only had heard of it, he loved it, and they spent the rest of the evening talking music and movies and bands. It was actually a lot of fun.
They ate cannoli for dessert, and then she took him home, although for reasons that were entirely his own, Ajax insisted on walking her back to her place.
“I’m pretty sure that’s my line,” said Tessa wryly.
“No way! I’m the man.”
“Yeah, the man with the grievous head injury,” deadpanned Tessa. “What if you use up all your energy seeing me to my place and collapse in the elevator?”
Ajax grimaced. “I’m hardly the energizer bunny. I can get back to my own apartment.”
“Or you could stay the night at my place. I’d let you sleep in my bed,” said Tessa, watching with pleasure as his eyes widened. A beat too late, she added “If you wanted, I’d take the couch.”
Ajax laughed. “It’s tempting, but Gabriela and Derek are probably still camped out in my spare room. If I didn’t make it home, they’d worry.”
“Call them from my place.”
“And tell them that I’m too tired to make it back up the stairs? That’d really make them worry. They’d probably cart me right back to the hospital.”
Tessa smiled. Feeling a bit wistful, she said “You have some really nice friends.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ajax. A beat of companionable silence, then he added “But Derek isn’t just a friend. He’s my partner.”
“Your partner, huh?” intoned Tessa suggestively, while waggling her eyebrows at him. It was ridiculous, but it made him laugh.
“Not like that! He has Gabriela for that. We fight crime together.”
“Which one of you is Batman and which one is Robin?” demanded Tessa.
Ajax blinked at her.
“It’s more of a Batman and Superman situation,” he ventured. “They’re equal partners, right? And, um, work together as partners in crime fighting too, right?”
“Too bad,” said Tessa breezily. “Robin was always my favorite.”
“That guy?”
“What can I say? Alliteration does it for me.”
Ajax’s expression faltered. Then he laughed. Sliding an arm around her waist, he pulled Tessa into his side, saying “Yeah? Well how’s this for alliteration for you: Can this Caped Crusader kiss you?”
It was so impossibly cheesy. He was so impossibly cheesy. And yet, Tessa’s heart fluttered in her chest.
“Well, if you put it like that…” she began, her mouth curving into a smile.
She was still smiling when Ajax kissed her.
He remained an exceedingly good kisser. So good, in fact, that when he tried to step back, Tessa reeled him in again for just one more kiss. That time, he was the one who got his smile kissed away.
When they finally parted, she felt floaty and flustered and really, really happy.
That happy feeling lasted precisely five seconds. That was about the amount of time that it took to unlock her apartment and flick on the lights.
Her place had been trashed; the plates broken and the couch tipped like a cow, its cushions strewn everywhere. Everything that had been in a closet was out on the floor, including all her tools, and there was a lot of red paint.
Her heart sunk.
“Aw, man,” groaned Tessa. “I just got the locks changed on this place. What are the chances that my apartment was hit by the world’s smallest hurricane?”
“Probably about as good as that arm belonging to a manikin,” said Ajax grimly, as he stepped past her.
“Manikin,” parroted Tessa, surprised. Turning, she looked in the direction in which he was moving. Past him, she saw an arm – a man’s arm. In her belly, her stomach twisted, and all that tasty Italian food that she’d so recently eaten scalded the back of her throat. Quietly, she cursed.
“You see if they
’re still alive,” directed Ajax. “I’ll make sure that the intruder or intruders aren’t still in the apartment.”
Tessa hadn’t even considered the possibility that they hadn’t left yet. Although now that the idea had been floated her way, Tessa couldn’t escape the mental image of a burglar with tummy troubles camped out in her bathroom, possibly cursing her toilet paper choices.
Should she leave rousing criminals with tummy troubles to the professional?
Tessa hesitated for a moment, torn. On the one hand, she was a dragon. She didn’t need anyone to protect her.
On the other, dragons weren’t made for tight spaces like apartments. If something went wrong, and she had to transform to protect herself, then she’d destroy everything, including the apartments beneath her own. Apartment floors weren’t generally reinforced enough to support a somewhat grown dragon’s weight.
If she accidentally collapsed the floor out from beneath her apartment, she definitely wouldn’t be getting her deposit back.
Smaller shifters – people who could shift into things like wolves, lions, tigers, and bears – definitely had it easier. They could shift almost anywhere, but their transformed forms weren’t nearly as cool as hers; or as overwhelmingly lethal, although that wasn’t nearly as useful in modern life as it likely had been once upon a time.
And on a third, borrowed hand, Ajax was recovering from a head injury. If he got hurt again or even got hurt worse, she would never forgive herself, and not just because she liked kissing him.
“I should go,” said Tessa.
“I’m the cop. This is my job.”
“One that you’re recovering from,” snapped Tessa. “I can handle this. I’m a dragon.”
She was also a strong, independent woman in possession of a large selection of wrenches. She could handle this.
Ajax’s expression went slack, his surprise evident on his face, and Tessa took advantage of his momentary astonishment to slide past him. Leaning down, she grabbed a wrench off of the floor – one of her bigger ones – as she passed it.
Past the tipped couch, Tessa stumbled, because there, her face bruised and her hair matted with blood, lay her roommate.
“Madison,” breathed Tessa.
Chapter 06 – Ajax
Madison.
He knew the name. Tessa had mentioned her from time to time during dinner. Madison was Tessa’s roommate.
Immediately forgetting what she had been about, Tessa dropped to her knees next to her roommate. The wrench landed next to her with a muffled thud. Reaching out with a shaking hand, Tessa tried to feel for a pulse.
Ajax left her to it.
Room by room, Ajax cleared the apartment. Finding it empty, he returned to Tessa and her roommate. Tessa was holding a compact up in front of her roommate’s mouth, her hand shaking badly; but not so badly that the mirror couldn’t mist with the unconscious woman’s breath.
Some awful tension went out of Tessa’s shoulders.
“Thank goodness,” Tessa breathed.
Ajax was less relieved; just because she was alive didn’t mean that Tessa’s roommate was going to come out of this okay, much less unscathed. Rather than saying any of that, though, he asked if she had called EMS yet.
“Not yet,” said Tessa, as she fished out her cell phone to call the police. “It took a few moments to find a mirror.”
While they were waited for an ambulance and a squad car to arrive, the police dispatcher kept Tessa on the line and chatting, likely using the conversation as a gauge to her situation. Ajax took advantage of the situation to call Derek and fill him in on the situation as he gave the apartment another once over.
Given the fact that Tessa’s initial complaint was that small, potentially overlooked things were missing or in the wrong place in their apartment, Ajax wasn’t certain that he would notice if something was specifically wrong or slightly out of place in their living space. The fact that one of the bedrooms – Tessa’s to be specific – and the living room were tossed made things easier. If Ajax had to guess, he would say that the victim had walked in on the perpetrator or perpetrators while they were tossing Tessa’s room, a fight had ensued, and she had lost, possibly badly.
The fire department arrived first, gently brushing Tessa aside as they moved to give first aid to her roommate. Tessa watched them, her gaze intent. She looked unspeakably relieved that people who knew what they were doing were seeing to Madison’s care.
The actual paramedics arrived next, and then the police. The detectives assigned to the case separated Ajax from Tessa before they began asking their questions. For himself, Ajax didn’t have anything useful to add to their understanding of the sequence of events. Ajax couldn’t see Tessa’s face from his angle but, from her body language, she seemed earnest and eager to help. Unfortunately, judging by Willis’ carefully moderated expression, Tessa wasn’t being particularly helpful either.
After Ajax’s very short interview, Willis went to speak with a couple of the uniforms, and Ajax moved to where he could discreetly eavesdrop on the tail end of Tessa’s interview with Judith.
“I hadn’t even known that Madison was going to come home today,” Tessa was saying. “When we talked this morning, she didn’t mention it. And she and Bobby weren’t supposed to be back until next week.”
“Bobby?” asked Judith. “Who’s that?”
“Her boyfriend, Robert Mann.”
Judith made a note in his pad. Ajax knew that, barring an amazingly good alibi, Robert Mann would be their most immediate suspect, along with Tessa herself. Under other circumstances, Ajax would have looked at them too. There were a lot of good reasons to at least glance in those directions, and no reason not to.
“And you talked to her this morning?” asked the other detective, his expression sharpening. “What about?”
“I had our locks changed this morning,” said Tessa, and then, at Judith’s prompting, Tessa explained about her ongoing problems, including the attack on Ajax. Judith listened very carefully, asking questions and making notes as appropriate.
Ajax listened just as carefully in case Tessa offered his colleague some detail that she had forgotten to mention to him when she had explained her situation to him earlier.
She didn’t.
Lists of petty complaints didn’t build into attempted kidnappings, home invasions, or violent assaults. They just didn’t. And yet, somehow, they had.
She has to be missing something, something important, thought Ajax, as he listened to Judith and Tessa finish up.
And whatever it was, he was missing it too.
When Judith finished up with her, Tessa came to stand with Ajax.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” said Tessa. She was very carefully not looking at him.
Ajax tensed. Trying to sound at ease, he said “Sure, shoot.”
“I feel terrible for her, but this isn’t related, right?” said Tessa, her voice wavering slightly. “This didn’t have anything to do with what happened to you. Or the fact that I’m probably a nitpicking nightmare to live with. This is just – This is probably all just a big –”
“Coincidence?” interjected Ajax. “No, I don’t think that it is. I don’t know how any of this is connected – truthfully, I can’t even imagine how any of this is connected – but somehow it is. And it’s only going to get worse until we get to the bottom of it.”
Because as much as he’d like to say ‘until I get to the bottom of it’ and leave pretty Tessa out of it, no one was going to get hurt over what she had told them so far. She had to know or be involved in something else – even if she didn’t know it yet.
Next to him, whatever inner spirit kept her upright, going, and hot, seemed to momentarily desert Tessa. She wavered and almost seemed to sag. Helpfully, Ajax slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her into his side. He tried not to waver, much less fall over, when she leaned into his side.
He tried to put a good face on it, even with himself, but he wasn’t exactly up to a
hundred – or even seventy – percent yet. But he was probably strong enough for this.
So long as she didn’t lean on him for too long.
This would probably be easier, Ajax thought, if I’d had the foresight to stand next to a wall.
But what was done was done. All he could do now was enjoy the moment: her scent, her warmth, her trust… the fact that they hadn’t fallen over yet.
Even thinking about it made Ajax’s strength waver, and he wobbled, just a little bit.
Tessa abruptly straightened. And then it was her arm around his waist holding him up.
She was surprisingly strong, even for a shifter.
Dragon, he remembered, feeling surprised all over again. He’d known that she was a shifter, all right. Appetite was one of the tells, and hers had been impossible to miss. But Tessa sure didn’t look or act like any dragon that he’d ever met.
“Sorry,” muttered Tessa.
“No, it was fine,” lied Ajax, and then realized that it really had been.
Now that he hadn’t fallen over (and then promptly died of embarrassment) in front of his colleagues, he realized that it had been kind of nice. And since Tessa was still just as close to him, but he wasn’t solely responsible for keeping both of them on their feet any more, it was better than kind of nice. Under other circumstances, it might have been really nice to have her lean into him like that, especially if Tessa was willing to throw some kisses into the mix. It was definitely something to aspire to once he was well and this case was thoroughly cracked.
In the meantime, though, Ajax let Tessa hold up some of his weight, and he was grateful for it. He’d only been up for a few hours, but it had been a really active afternoon. Ajax was ready to go home and rest – at least until tomorrow.
“They’re going to be at this for hours,” said Ajax. “But if Judith and Willis don’t mind, maybe we could go home to my place now.”
Tessa slanted a look up at him, and Ajax tried on his most charming smile for her. It felt a bit tired and strained around the edges. Still, he persevered.
To tempt her, he added “As far as I know, my couch is still free.”
Her Detective Wolf Page 7
