Chasing Thunderbird

by J. Leigh Bailey

  If anything, Ford’s ire ratcheted up a notch.

  Matthew nodded. “All right. If that’s what you want.” He rattled off his phone number for me.

  “Great,” I said after I’d typed the last digit. “I’ll get in touch with you.”

  After hesitating for a moment, Matthew gave one last glance at the still-scowling Ford and rolled up his window. A moment later he’d pulled out of the parking lot.

  “That was a little rude, don’t you think?”

  Ford snorted. “What’s his deal? Why’s he so clingy?”

  Clingy? “He offered me a ride, same as you. Does that mean you’re clingy?”

  “I’ve got a responsibility. He’s some random dude offering you a ride.”

  I decided to ignore the responsibility comment. “Do you know him? He’s a biology major.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  Ford sounded so certain, so absolute, I doubted my memory from Matthew’s and my first encounter. “How do you know?”

  “School’s not that big, and the department is even smaller. I know all the bio majors.”

  “He’s only been here a couple of weeks. Just enrolled.”

  “At his age?”

  “Yeah. He recently got out of the military. You probably just haven’t met him yet.”

  “Maybe.” Clearly not convinced, Ford nodded to the police officer who’d stepped out of his vehicle.

  The officer squatted at my tires the same way Ford had. He traced the same tear in the rubber. “Any ideas who’d want to do this to your car?” he asked.

  It didn’t take someone with my IQ to make the logical deduction. Probably the same guys who’d stolen my journal last night. It might be stretching coincidence too far to assume someone else was involved. I didn’t mention it to the campus cop, though. “I can’t think of anyone.”

  The officer didn’t look at me; he’d moved on to the other tire. “Probably some punk kids. A fraternity prank, or a student upset with his grades. You’re a professor here, right?”

  “Yeah, but we’re barely a week into the semester. I can’t imagine I’ve upset someone to this extent. I haven’t even given a quiz. There’s nothing for someone to be pissed about.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t take much.” He stood and pulled out a notebook. “Might even have been meant for someone else.”

  “It’s pretty obvious who the Jeep belongs to,” Ford said. He stood closer to me than he needed to, almost protectively, and his scowl was as fierce as it had been with Matthew.

  “How so?” The officer really looked at Ford for the first time.

  Ford pointed to my license plate. “Not many people would miss that.”

  I loved my plates, but not everyone would approve of BRD NERD. I snuck a glance at Ford to see if he was mocking me, but he seemed genuinely appreciative. The officer raised his brows but nodded. “Yeah, I guess it would be hard to make that mistake.”

  For the next few minutes, I froze my butt off and answered a string of questions for which I had no answers. Since I didn’t see anything and I didn’t know anyone—besides the pseudomilitary dudes from last night—who might want to do this, I wasn’t much help. During the futile interview, a tow truck arrived. While I continued to claim ignorance—something I was not accustomed to doing—Ford made arrangements with the tow truck driver to have my car taken to the garage to have new tires put on.

  I swear, the temperature had dropped another ten degrees before Ford and I were finally able to climb into his truck to head to my house.

  “It’s been a hell of a day.” I held my hands in front of the heater vents, hoping to thaw my frozen fingers.

  Ford turned the heat up. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and I found myself completely caught up in the motions of his bare fingers on the temperature dial. “Pretty Boy your type?”

  “Huh?” Not my most eloquent response, but I was distracted.

  Ford returned his hand to the steering wheel. “That Matthew guy. Is he your type?”

  “You think he’s pretty?”

  He pursed his lips. “He’s a walking fashion ad. What else would you call it?”

  I shrugged. “He’s good-looking, sure, but not really my type.”

  “Yeah? What is your type?”

  “Oh, um….” My tongue stumbled to a stop. I couldn’t tell Ford that he was my type. If I was put on the spot, words like brooding and mysterious would come to mind. Along with amazing shoulders and stunning, wide cheekbones. He watched me so closely, it took an excruciatingly awkward pause before I could come up with an appropriate and not-too-revealing answer. “You know. It’s not the looks, really. It’s more the attitude. And, um, intelligence, of course.” Then, before I could think better of it, I asked, “How about you?”

  “Not guys that pretty. Dude probably wears more product in his hair than Bethany.”

  Guys. Air left my lungs in a rush, even as my fingers itched to brush back my spiky—thanks to a suitable application of hair-styling products—bangs. Besides, was hair gel really the point? I’d suspected, though I had no real reason to, that Ford might be into guys. If I’d let myself think about it—and I’d tried really, really hard not to think about it—I’d figured it was wishful thinking, misplaced as it probably was.

  “Caught your fish and don’t know what to do with it, huh?”

  I wrestled my brain to bring it back where it belonged. “What?”

  “You were fishing, right? Wanting to know?”

  My cheeks burned. I wasn’t going to give him any more signs that I was embarrassed. “You started it.” While I didn’t turn to face him, I kept careful watch from the side of my eyes.

  The corner of his lips tilted up a bit. Not enough for a full-blown smile, but enough to know he acknowledged my comment.

  “Fair enough.” He tapped his thumb on the gear shift. “Fair enough.”

  Chapter Seven

  LINDA, the occupant of the other half of my duplex, paced our shared driveway when Ford pulled in.

  “This can’t be good.” As soon as the truck stopped, I released my seat belt and jumped out.

  “Oh thank goodness!” Linda shoved her phone into her pocket and rushed forward. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “What’s wrong?” I grabbed the hands she held out to me. They were shaking. “Linda? Is everything okay?” Behind me, I heard a truck door close and knew Ford was joining us.

  “Someone broke into your house.”

  “What?” I spun to look at my front door. Sure enough, it stood wide open. Since I always used the garage entrance into my place, there was no way I’d left it unlatched.

  Before I could rush in to investigate, Ford grabbed my arm. “Where are you going?”

  “To see what they did. To see if anything is missing.”

  “You don’t know if they’re still in there. You need to call the police.”

  “There’s no one in there anymore,” Linda said.

  “Are you sure?”

  Ford and Linda shared a long look. “Yeah,” she said.

  Yesterday I would have missed the significance of their byplay. But today, all sorts of things were clear. “Her too?” I lived next door to a shifter?

  Ford held up stalling palm. “Leave it.”

  Were there any nonshifters in this town? I was going to get answers—more answers—from Ford if I had to sit on him. My belly tightened at the thought. Later. I had more important things to focus on right now. Like the fact that someone broke into my house.

  I rushed up the walkway leading to my front door. Ford cursed behind me but didn’t stop me.

  I jerked to a halt at the sight that met me when I crossed the threshold. Someone hadn’t just broken into my house; they’d ransacked the place.

  My half of the duplex was small. A simple two-bedroom residence with a cozy living room, an eat-in kitchen, and a generic bathroom. There were no fancy electronics for someone to steal since I hadn’t gotten around to purchasing and hooking up a tel
evision, and my laptop had been with me at school. Honestly, I hadn’t had time to do more than purchase some very basic furniture pieces so I didn’t have to sleep or eat dinner on the floor. The exception was my collection of bookshelves. Every available wall surface was lined with white Ikea shelving units that I’d packed full of books. Textbooks. Fiction books. Heck, even my favorite children’s books had a home. But now each of the shelves was empty and my assortment of books lay in heaps on the floor.

  “Son of a bitch.” I knelt next to the closest pile, reaching for the worn field guide showcasing birds of North America that my grandfather had given me when I was eight. Though the pages had softened with time and use, and the top front corner of the cover was bent, the book had been in decent shape. Until now. Someone’s careless handling had broken the spine completely, and several pages in the middle had been ripped out.

  I reached for another guidebook and saw it had received the same treatment.

  I closed my eyes, trying to quell the prickling behind my sinuses. I would not cry. I couldn’t. It wasn’t sadness that tempted the tears. No. It was frustration and fury.

  “I’m tired of this shit. What the hell is going on here? What did I ever do to anyone that I have to deal with… with… this?” I gestured at the mess someone had made of my possessions. “These books are pieces of me, of my life, mementos of my family and education. And someone came into my home and ruined them. For what? What possible purpose could someone have for doing this?” I held up the golden-foiled spine of my favorite children’s book in my white-knuckled grip.

  Ford’s hand, larger and stronger than mine, covered my fist, grounding me. “Hey, we’ll figure it out.”

  He reached out and swiped his thumb along my cheekbones, which was when I realized the tears I’d wanted to keep at bay were trailing down my face. I couldn’t afford for him to be nice to me. It made the urge to cry that much stronger.

  I rose, the two mangled field manuals tucked to my chest. Ford’s hand ghosted along my side, making sure I didn’t sway or stumble. As much as everything inside me wanted his support, wanted to feel the comfort of his hands on me, I stepped away. I used the back of my wrist to wipe away the evidence of my weakness, probably looking like a toddler after a meltdown.

  “I… I don’t even know what to do next.” I scanned the chaos around me. “I guess… I guess I should call the cops.” The word again hung heavy in the air. Or at least in my mind. “I bet Officer Hudson would be just thrilled to see me again.”

  “Yeah, that’s something I wanted to talk about.”

  “Officer Hudson?”

  “No, the reason—or, more accurately, reasons—you’ve had to contact the police three times in the last twenty-four hours. I’m not buying it’s some kind of coincidence.”

  I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to subtly guide me to the only standing chair from my kitchen. Maybe it was the pressure of his hand at the small of my back. And now that I knew it was there, I couldn’t ignore the heat coming from his palm.

  He kept touching me. I didn’t how to handle it. It was messing with my emotional equilibrium. I wanted his hands, his arms, hell, his whole body constantly connected to me. I tried to remind myself he was a student and it would be inadvisable to pursue something more with him. But I knew better. Sure, it wasn’t really a good decision, but we hadn’t quite yet managed to capture that teacher-student dynamic.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to call the police, but there’s something I want to do first.” He hesitated, so either he was reluctant to bring up whatever he was going to suggest, or he figured I would be.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I’m going to call my roommate—my ex-roommate—to have a sniff around.”

  “This is the guy you said was a coyote shifter, right?”

  Ford nodded. “He’s got an excellent sense of smell. If I’d thought about it, I’d have him check out your car too. I think we can assume the same people who did this to your house slashed your tires, but we can confirm it.”

  When I’d first learned about shifters—damn, had it only been this morning?—I’d thought of the physiological implications. I hadn’t thought beyond that to the other benefits. “So, like a rescue dog looking for a lost hiker, you want him to get the scent markers and, what, follow them to the bad guys?”

  Ford shook his head. “I was thinking more along the lines of using it to confirm. Once we figure that out, maybe we can have him try to trail them. But he’s been through a lot. I don’t want to drag him into something that could be dangerous.”

  “You think this is dangerous?”

  “You were held at gunpoint. Yeah, I think this is dangerous.”

  I sagged in my seat. Yeah, I’d been trying to forget about the danger part of it. Anger was so much easier to deal with than anxiety.

  “And he’ll be willing to come over? Soon, I mean. I’d think the cops would be suspicious if I call them several hours after discovering my house had been ransacked.”

  “He’ll come.” His lips quirked. “Oh yeah, Donnie owes me. He’ll come.”

  “HOLY crapola!” Ford’s former roommate, Donnie—the sandy-haired, wiry guy I recognized from my visit to Buddy’s—spun in place, checking out the damage to my living room.

  Ford grunted. “You’re such a wordsmith.”

  “What can I say? It’s a gift.” He made another rotation, nostrils flaring.

  I forced the fascinated scientist back, but it was hard to do. This guy was seriously going to sniff out the bad guys. And since I was shutting away the scientist for the time being, I could absolutely get away with using melodramatic words like bad guys.

  Donnie squinted and took a couple of hesitant steps toward the wall of empty bookshelves. “There’s something there, familiar but not. Like I smelled their cousin or something.”

  “You can smell familial ties?” Fingers itching for my journal, I gaped at Donnie. Clearly turning off the scientist was a hit-or-miss endeavor. “Like something inherent to the biology or similarities due to proximity to family members?”

  Donnie opened his eyes to reply, but Ford cut him off with a slashing motion of his hand. “Now’s not the time, Simon.”

  I cringed because he was absolutely right. “Sorry.”

  “It’s too subtle to get a good gauge in this form. I’ll need to shift to get a good read.”

  I bit my tongue and held as still as I could while my insides jittered and sang. Please let me see the metamorphosis. Please let me see the metamorphosis.

  Ford and Donnie held some kind of silent conversation using only eye contact. Unless…. If shape-shifters existed, how far-fetched would it be for telepathy to exist? Maybe the two of them were actually having a real conversation.

  Finally Ford shrugged. “It’s your call.”

  Donnie bit his lip, eyeing me warily. Another glance at Ford, and then he nodded. “Can I use your bathroom? I need to change.”

  “Can’t you do it here?” Damn it, now I sounded more like a kid at a magic show than an academic.

  “I have to get naked. Can’t shift in my clothes.” Thankfully he didn’t seem all that put out by the idea. Clearly he wasn’t afraid that I’d try to turn him into some kind of experiment or test subject.

  “That’s fine!” I said, maybe a bit too eagerly.

  Ford snarled. He sent a narrow-eyed glare, not to me, but to Donnie.

  Was he… could he be jealous? Of Donnie?

  “Look,” I said, turning on Ford. “It’s not like I want to see Donnie naked.” I tilted my head toward the man in question. “No offense.”

  Donnie grinned. “None taken.”

  I swung my attention back to Ford. “But I may never get another chance to see someone shift. I’ve already promised not to talk to anyone about shifters, or to study them. But this—an opportunity to actually see someone change from human to animal…. Please don’t be a grump about this.”

  “Look at that, he already knows you s
o well.” Donnie smirked at Ford. “You’re in a perpetual state of grumpiness lately. Besides, I don’t care if he watches. He might as well get something out of this mess.” He gestured to the chaos that was my home.

  Jaw twitching, Ford finally nodded. “Fine. But you,” he said, pointing at Donnie, “take your clothes off in the bathroom and wrap a towel around your waist. No one needs to see you in all your naked glory.”

  “Not true.” Donnie waggled his eyebrows. “William loves seeing me in all my naked glory.”

  “Yeah, well, Buffalo Bill’s got other issues too.”

  “You know he hates it when you call him that,” Donnie said as he made his way to the short hallway leading to the bathroom.

  “Why do you think I do it?” Ford propped his fists at his hips, spreading his elbows away from his body, winglike. His face was turned away from me, and for a second I could have sworn I saw an overlay image of a totem-pole raven I’d seen on a trip to Alaska. I blinked and it was gone. Maybe Ford was a raven shifter?

  Ford grumbled under his breath while we waited for Donnie to come back. I envied them their relationship. I didn’t have any siblings, but I figured Ford and Donnie interacted the same way brothers would. At the very least, their friendship had lasted long enough that they were almost fraternal in their behavior. And the envy intensified. I’d never had close friends like that. When I was younger, I was the freak kid who was fascinated by birds. Then I was in college with students significantly older than myself. Even as I pursued my doctorate, and the age difference between me and the other students was less noticeable, my interest in cryptozoology and my infamous family history kept me from building a close relationship with anyone. Grandpa Coleman had essentially been my best and only friend.

  And didn’t I sound like a whiny brat.

  Donnie emerged a minute later, and I held my breath. Not that the sight of a fit man in a towel was so overwhelming. No, I held my breath in anticipation. Even though it had only been about twelve hours since I learned of the existence of shifters, it felt like I’d been waiting my whole life for this moment.

  Without drama or fanfare, Donnie changed.