Furever Always (Furever Series)

by Meredith Clarke

  “Shane, it’s different than that. It’s taken me longer to heal than it normally has in the past. Yes, I was shot, but I have been shot before, and my healing abilities kicked in and I was fine within a couple of days. It’s been several weeks now, and I still feel like I’m in pain.”

  That was strange. Our shifter abilities had helped everyone I know on the force heal quickly. It was unusual for Gio to still be in pain after several weeks.

  “You’re right, Gio. That’s not normal. I’ll see if there’s a way to look into it.”

  “Thanks, Shane. I mean, it might be nothing, but Natasha got a really bad feeling from the shifter hospital as well, and I just want you guys to make sure that they have good intentions.”

  Marco walked up to my desk. I quickly glanced up to him. He motioned for me to wrap up the call.

  “No prob, Gio. I’ll check it out.”

  “Thanks, man. Tell the rest of the guys hi for me.”

  I smiled as I hung up the phone.

  “What did Gio want?” Marco asked.

  “Gio thinks that something’s off with that shifter hospital.”

  Marco shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe there is, but that might have to wait. We got a meeting. A body has been found.”

  ***

  Our captain paced back and forth in the middle of the precinct. I looked around and noticed he had only grabbed our small squad of shifters: myself, Marco, and Logan. The captain was not a shifter himself, but he had brought us all together as one force. A lot of groups like ours were forming, including Gio’s unit in Seattle. The higher ups were finally realizing that we brought a special ability to the force. I smiled at the thought, knowing that shifters were creating their own places in society.

  The captain finally stopped pacing and turned toward us.

  “The body that was found was of another shifter.” Silence permeated the air around us. Our small unit never took any murder lightly, however, when it was one of our own kind it got personal for us. The continuous noise of calls and typing around the precinct suddenly ceased to exist. It was as if the whole squad room had gone quiet.

  “How do you know for sure it was a shifter?” Logan asked.

  “They already brought the body to the morgue, and once they started to run their normal autopsy procedures, it became pretty clear that our John Doe was not only human.”

  He must have been a big cat then. Bears tended to have fairly similar anatomy to humans. Shifters like big cats or wolves are where the differences started to become more apparent.

  “John Doe?” Marco asked. “So, there was no ID with the body?”

  The captain shook his head. “CSI units are investigating the area around the scene now, and hopefully they will find something. They are running his prints now; however, they are only partial ones.”

  “How are they only partial?” Logan asked.

  “Whoever did this, tried to burn them off.” All three of us let out a low growl.

  “Where should we start?” I asked.

  The captain looked me straight in the eyes. “Go to the morgue and try to figure out why all his blood was drained from his body.”

  Chapter 2

  Lydia

  I slammed my laptop shut with a harsh click, and shoved it away from me on the couch. I ran my fingers through my long honey colored hair and leaned my head back in frustration. It had been about three weeks since the company had closed its doors. I had been searching for a new job since then, and I had yet to find anything. I was always either too qualified for the position or expected to have twenty year’s experience. It was a complete joke. I needed to find something soon though, because the savings that I had worked so hard to put away were starting to dwindle.

  I grabbed my phone and scrolled to Natasha’s name. It had been a couple days since we had last spoken. In the few years, we had worked together we had become close friends. I pressed her number and waited to hear her voice.

  “Miss me already?” she asked.

  “You know I do. It’s not the same without you here.”

  Natasha let out a sigh. After being friends for so many years, I could easily tell when she was worried or upset. And right now, she was worried, and I knew it was about me.

  “Natasha, I’m fine,” I responded. “I’m just frustrated trying to find a new job.”

  “You could always move here to Seattle. I’m sure we could find you something.”

  The truth was, I actually thought about making the move to Seattle. Getting away from Portland might be the thing I needed to get away from the past. Deep down though, I knew I could never actually leave because of my family. They were a lot to deal with sometimes, but they were my blood and I couldn’t just move away from them. Besides, my older brother Marco wouldn’t have it. He was the definition of protective older brother.

  “Nah, you know I could never leave here. Just promise me you’ll come back out to visit soon.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  “How’s Gio doing?”

  There was a long pause on Natasha’s end. For a moment, I thought the call had dropped.

  “Natasha?”

  She cleared her throat. “Yeah sorry, I’m here. I was just walking out of the room Gio is in. He doesn’t want me to worry you, because he thinks you’ll try and take matters into your own hands.”

  I let out a loud laugh. “Now when have I ever done that?”

  Natasha let out a chuckle. “He’s still healing. He seems to have this lingering infection where they did surgery to remove the bullet. It’s as if his immune system is depleted somehow.”

  “Have you gone to another doctor in Seattle?”

  “After that hospital in Portland, he’s refusing to go. He keeps claiming that his healing abilities will kick in and help him, but it’s been several weeks now and he’s still fighting things off.”

  I bit my lip in thought. For a tiger, that was very strange. Gio should have been all healed by now. Maybe Natasha was right about that hospital not being all that it seemed.

  “I’ll mention something to Marco about it. He’ll probably yell at me for butting in, but you’re my friend and I want some answers.”

  “Thanks for having my back, Lydia.”

  “Anytime, love. Go back to that gorgeous man of yours and come back and visit soon.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  I smiled as I hung up the phone. Even though Natasha and I were co-workers, we had become really close. Within the first week of us working together we had become inseparable. With everything that had gone down at the company, it made me question who I could actually trust. We were both pretty blindsided by all the illegal stuff happening, and because of that we seemed to grow even closer. One thing I knew few sure was that Natasha would always have my back and I loved her for it.

  I shuddered at the thought of how close she came to getting hurt. Marco, of course, didn’t tell me until after the fact that she had helped go undercover. I was livid at him for putting her in danger like that. Natasha should have never been put in that position. A shifter like me should have.

  Like my brother Marco, I was also a bear shifter. It was just something that I never really admitted to anyone. Natasha knew, since she knew my brother. But other than that, I had never really told anyone else outside the family. Being a female shifter, especially in the bear community, was difficult. The males always went out of their way to protect us, which at times was flattering, but ultimately was extremely annoying. I was strong, just like Marco. I had the same brute strength that was passed down from our father and mother. I just happened to be a female, and I hated that they used that as an excuse to protect me.

  I supposed the reason Natasha had to be involved with the undercover operation was because she got herself into that mess in the first place. I had always guessed that something else was going on. That she may have been helping clients outside of the company. But I knew she was smart enough to not get herself into trouble. I figured that she woul
d tell me eventually when she was ready to. I also knew that if I needed to, I could step in and help her.

  But then everything got out of hand. Natasha got in too deep and worked with the wrong clients. I hated that I wasn’t able to see it all coming and protect her. My bear genes were forcing the protection instinct in me, and Natasha was practically family to me. No one was allowed to hurt my family.

  Even though several weeks had passed, I was still pissed at Marco for allowing Natasha to go undercover like she did. After the sting, Marco had called me and told me she was in the hospital. In that moment, I could have ripped off Marco’s head. I hated that I was kept in the dark for that long. There was certainly a lot of growling on my end, but once Marco explained why Natasha had to be the one to go undercover, I calmed down slightly. Thankfully, Natasha was fine and just needed her neck in a brace. As soon as she was better, I took her over to the shifter hospital to be with her as we waited for Gio.

  I stared at my closed laptop again and sighed in frustration. I grabbed my phone and contemplated if I should give Marco to see what he was working on, and if there was any way I could help. But I knew he would always say no. He would never let me work on the force with him, let alone do something like Natasha did. He claimed he didn’t want to put me in harms way, even though I could handle my own.

  My thoughts drifted back to Gio and his struggle to heal. There was something off at that hospital, and I was going to force Marco to believe me.

  Chapter 3

  Shane

  I felt my skin prickle as I walked in through the double doors. I fucking hated the morgue. The smell of formaldehyde permeated my senses. I shut my eyes to fight the sting of tears threatening to spill over my lashes. I shuddered as we continued to walk down the hallway. All the death surrounding me freaked me out a little bit, causing my bear to stand at high alert. Marco looked over at me and let out a chuckle.

  “Come on, man, it’s not like they’re going to jump out at you.”

  “Shifters exist, don’t they?”

  “Well, obviously…”

  “Then I’m not ready to count out zombies either.”

  Marco let out a loud laugh. “Touché.”

  The medical examiner was waiting for us at the end of the hall. He was a tall, skinny man who eerily looked like a ghost himself. His pale skin spread across his cheeks and I could easily imagine him as a stereotypical coroner from old horror films.

  “Hi boys,” Dr. Feingold said.

  We both nodded at him in response. Dr. Feingold pushed open the double doors for us as we walked into the examination room. I shuddered at the temperature drop. Dr. Feingold noticed and gave me a small smile.

  “The cold helps with the preservation process.”

  Lovely.

  We walked up to an examination table that held a body covered in a sheet. Dr. Feingold walked over and moved the sheet down, revealing the corpse’s face. The John Doe was young, probably somewhere in his twenties. He had a large frame, and by looking at him, I could easily tell that he was a tiger. He had the same frame that Gio had, and even though his eyes were shut I would bet money that they had a purple hue. Anger slowly bubbled up inside me.

  Dr. Feingold cleared his throat.

  “This is our John Doe. He was found in an alleyway downtown. At first we thought that he had died of natural causes.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because there were no markings or signs of a struggle anywhere on his body. It wasn’t until he was brought back here and placed on my table that I could tell what was going on. His entire body had been drained of his blood. I ran a toxicology screen on his tissues and the remnants of blood that I could find, and it all came back with several drugs in his system.”

  “I thought you said that there were no markings on him?” Marco asked.

  “Not to the naked eye there weren’t. Because he is a shifter, I suspect the needle marks healed fairly quickly, however when I looked closely on his arm, I saw a small indication of a puncture wound.” Dr. Feingold said.

  “Did the drugs in his system cause an overdose?” I asked.

  “No, these were not your normal recreational drugs. It was pentobarbital and thiopental.”

  “Um… in English, doc?” Marco asked.

  “They’re barbiturates, typically used to medically induce a coma. My guess is that his blood was drained once he was under.”

  My earlier conversation with Gio about the hospital crossed my mind. Could our John Doe be connected? I shook my head. That wasn’t possible. The shifter hospital’s whole purpose was to help shifters, not hurt them.

  “Any idea where this guy could have come from?”

  Dr. Feingold shook his head. “Last I heard, the CSI team was still canvassing the area for any other information about where he came from.”

  Marco and I both nodded. “Thanks for your help, Dr. Feingold. Once you’re finished with your full report, send it over to our office.”

  Dr. Feingold nodded. I turned and grabbed my cell phone from my pocket.

  “Who are you calling?” Marco asked.

  “CSI. We need to find some answers on where this guy came from.”

  ***

  I paced back and forth in the lobby at the police station. There had to be a logical explanation for all of this. It had to be a coincidence that Gio called about strange reactions to the shifter hospital, and we found our John Doe drained of his blood after being in a medically induced coma.

  Marco grabbed my shoulder to stop me from pacing.

  “What’s gotten into you, man?”

  I let out a long sigh and ran my fingers through my hair.

  “I’m starting to wonder if this is connected to Gio and the hospital.”

  “You mean him feeling like something is off there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You really think something is going on there? I mean they saved his life.”

  “I know. But apparently, he’s been having some difficulty healing.”

  Marco shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe it’s a tiger thing. They might take longer to heal than us strong bears.” Marco lightly punched me in the shoulder.

  “Yeah maybe, but Gio doesn’t seem to think so. He thinks something’s going on there. And now with the John Doe drained of blood and put in a medically induced coma, I’m not too sure what to think.”

  Marco’s jaw clenched. He was finally starting to see the connection. It was all becoming too coincidental. If the hospital was somehow involved in this, we needed to figure out why—and fast—before any other shifters got hurt.

  A female CSI tech walked out of the double doors and held a file tightly to her chest. “Officer McAbbot?”

  I turned to face her and nodded.

  “I’m Cheryl, one of the lead techs on the case. Why don’t we step into one of the lab rooms to discuss what we found.”

  Marco and I followed her through the double doors, down the hall, and into a small lab.

  Cheryl pushed the file toward me and I slowly opened it up. The first thing there was a picture of a hospital wristband. Anger bubbled up inside of my stomach.

  “It took our team a little while to find this, but we believe it was on our John Doe’s wrist. We found his DNA from skin cells on it.”

  I took a closer look at the picture. At the top of the band was the name of the hospital. United Hospital of Portland.

  Chapter 4

  Shane

  There was a lot of commotion surrounding our desks. Marco and I had just gotten back to the precinct and told the captain and Logan what we had found.

  “Do we have any other proof that something is going on at this hospital?” the captain asked.

  I cleared my throat and everyone went silent. “Gio called me this morning. He’s been having some trouble healing since he left the hospital.”

  “A tiger? Having trouble healing?” Logan asked and turned toward the captain. “Can we get ahold of his medical records from the hospita
l, and see everything that was done to him?”

  The captain shook his head. “Not without a warrant. Then the hospital would know right away that we were looking into them and they would start to either clean up their act or cover stuff up. It seems that they went to a lot of trouble to disassociate this body from them. His finger prints were burning and all of his personal belongings were taken. The coroner just confirmed that several of his teeth were removed in order to make dental records harder to use.”

  A low growl escaped my lips. Why would a hospital that had prided itself on shifter health go and hurt one of us? And why would they go to so much trouble to hide the identity of a body? There had to be some explanation as to why this was happening. Maybe we weren’t seeing the bigger picture.

  “Playing devil’s advocate here,” I said. “What if this John Doe was just an accident? I mean, do we really need to jump to the conclusion that there’s something going on at the hospital?”

  Marco let out a growl and started to stalk toward me. “How could you say that, Shane? Gio is having trouble healing. That does not make sense, unless something was purposefully done to him.”

  I rolled my shoulders back and glared down at Marco. He was the youngest of the team, and I asserted more clan power over him. “I’m just saying, I don’t want us to jump to conclusions and accuse a hospital that helps us as shifters. Maybe it is a serial killer trying to cover his tracks, and our John Doe just happened to have left the hospital.”

  I felt Logan’s hand land on my shoulder. “I get what you are saying, Shane. But what if this hospital has some ulterior motive? What serial killer uses medically induced comas and drains their victims of all of their blood? We have to consider that it is the hospital, or someone with access to it that is able to do those things.”