“I had to chase Andy off a few times when he was ignoring Jana’s requests for time alone, but I don’t think he’d hurt her. This was done by someone with a lot more rage.”
“I heard him threatening you the night Jana was killed.” Jasmine shivered. “That sounded like a lot of rage.”
Eneko nodded, then his shoulders relaxed as he remembered something. “It wasn’t him. There were no bruises on his hands.”
Lori sucked on her teeth. “I agree with Hottie.”
Jasmine sighed.
“I found the nerd at a café earlier. Pulled out all the flirting stops and didn’t get a single response. He seemed really cut up. We still need to make sure it wasn’t him, but I think it’s safe to rule him out for now. So, who else had a beef with the victim? Any old boyfriends she cheated on or something?”
“Yeah.” Eneko sat down. “The so-called ‘witness’ that spoke up against me? He was Jana’s old boyfriend and she had a restraining order out on him.”
Both women’s heads jerked up. They stared at him with wide eyes and eventually Jasmine threw her hands into the air. “Of course! Here’s a man that the woman was clearly afraid of enough to get a restraining order out on, he must be telling the truth about who killed her. This makes me so sick. I am so tired of being told that I should be ashamed of what makes me me.”
Eneko squeezed her hand. He knew how she felt. Lori glanced between them and typed something into her computer. The clicking of the letters brought him back to the craziness they were attempting and he withdrew.
“So, what is this guy’s name?” Lori gazed at him, waiting.
“Jerimiah Wilder,” Eneko sighed. “And I don’t think it’ll be as easy to get information about him as it was with Andy.”
“Don’t worry.” Jasmine’s face was grim. “My sister isn’t going anywhere near that man.”
Chapter Eleven
Eneko didn’t know she was doing this.
After hearing more about Jeremiah and how he had treated Jana, Jasmine refused to allow Lori to get anywhere near him. So, the task of flirting information out of him fell to her. Now that she was in the bar, though, wearing a too-tight halter top that barely concealed her breasts from ogling men, and heels like spikes, Jasmine had to wonder if she had gone insane. Surely there had to be some way besides doing something so sexist and outdated to get his attention?
“You’re tall, curvy, and badass,” Lori had told her before sending her off to find him. “Just walk like you own the place and he’ll take notice.”
“It’s winter, why am I wearing clothing that would be too cold in summer?” she had demanded in return.
Lori had just rolled her eyes and reminded Jasmine they were after a killer. As if that was justification for the barely-there outfit.
Jerimiah sat at the bar, his glasses pushed high on his nose, sipping at a martini. He wore a black dress shirt and was in a typical stance of a man trying to prove he was in control. Arms spread wide, legs spread apart so that he was taking up room from the seats on either side of him. He stared at her breasts as she came to sit beside him.
“Hey, I know you,” she purred, trying to sound seductive. “You were on the news about that shifter case.”
“Yeah. I’m a witness,” he said eagerly to her breasts. She pushed them out a little more and he nearly started to drool. “I saw the whole thing. It was awful. Poor Jana. She and I were close, you know. We were going to get married. But that beast started to threaten me and I had to get away before he killed me. I wish I had tried harder to save her then, but the police didn’t believe me when I said he was holding her hostage. She was too afraid to leave him. Well. I guess now we know why.”
He licked his lips and put his hand on her knee. Jasmine barely repressed a shudder. The dude had no game, that was sure. He didn’t even offer her a drink. She’d met guys like this before, men who expected that they were so entitled to women that ‘females’ (and they always called women ‘females’, she had no idea why) should be throwing themselves at him.
She ordered a club soda and managed to force herself to smile at the repugnant man before her. “I heard that she was organizing protests against that clinic where she was found?”
“If by clinic you mean pimp den.” Jerimiah leaned forward, his eyes practically glowing. “That bear that runs it, he calls himself a doctor but he uses the drugs and stuff that he gets to pimp out the females to come to him. Think about it. Shifters don’t need medicines. They heal from anything. Nah, he’s stealing from us humans and forcing the female humans to be whores.”
What mushrooms was he smoking? Jasmine was unable to keep the repulsion from her face as she leaned back. She was just barely able to stop herself from pointing out that shifters were human, too. Genetically, there was no more difference between her and him as there was between him and any other woman at this bar.
“I heard that the clinic was mostly privately funded,” she said.
“More shifter lies.”
Did he really think this was the way to seduce a woman? He was looking more excited every passing minute, and licked his lips as he continued to ogle her. Which was just as well, because if he looked her in the face he’d see what she was thinking clearly written all over her face.
“I saw the bear kill Jana. My sweet, sweet Jana. He was huge, ferocious, with his long black fur and—"
Jasmine couldn’t stop herself. “But his fur is white.”
He tensed, and Jasmine knew that she had messed up. Her breath caught in her throat as his gaze jerked to her face for the first time. His nostrils flared and his lip curled back into a sneer.
“You’re too fat to be human.”
“What?”
“You’re one of them, aren’t you? One of those bears. What, did he send you here to silence me? To try to intimidate me?” He snorted. “You think you’re hot stuff, walking over here with everything on display? You’re nothing but a fat bear whore. I bet you’re all loose and saggy from all the men you’ve given yourself to.”
Jasmine was surprised that she didn’t feel angry at all. Nor was she embarrassed. Not this time. She rolled her eyes at him and turned up her nose. “Really? So just because you think I’m a shifter all of a sudden, I’m a fat whore? As if you haven’t been drooling from the moment you set eyes on me. For your information, I am not a bear. But that doesn’t matter. You’re nothing but a pathetic loser who couldn’t get a girl to sleep with him if he slathered himself in chocolate.”
She made to leave when his hand shot out. It clenched around her arm, pinching hard. “You know, I wish it was like the old days. When your kind were rounded up and we could hunt you. I’d love a bear pelt on my floor, where your stinking kind belong.”
Her hand whipped across his face. The resounding slap had everybody looking in her direction, but she didn’t care. Her stomach churned with a sudden onslaught of fear and she strode away as fast as the spikes on her heels allowed her.
She shook as she slipped into her car and locked the doors, then immediately started away. Freezing cold caused goosebumps to pop out of her arms, but it wasn’t because of the November snow. She should have kept her mouth shut. Let him have his false bravado and leave with her tail between her legs. What had she been thinking?
He could have killed her. If he was obsessed with Jana and she refused him, he could have killed her.
She quickly was on her way. The further she got from the bar, the calmer she began to feel. Thank God she had done this instead of letting Lori come. Maybe she had angered the target, but at least it wasn’t her sister whose face he knew.
As she drove through the green strip that separated the town into two halves, a car came up behind her. The high beams blinded her and she tapped on the breaks, just so she wouldn’t end up driving off the road. The next second, the car plowed into the back of hers. She veered wildly, slamming on the breaks. The cars jackknifed together, eventually coming to a stop in a mess of broken trees.
&nbs
p; Jerimiah Wilder stumbled out of the car that had crashed into her. Jasmine’s heart jumped to her throat and she kicked open her door. She yanked at the strappy heels, breaking them in her efforts to get them off. The madman swayed as he walked toward her, lips pulled back. His teeth gleamed in the darkness as he came at her.
“Filthy animal,” he hissed. “Disgusting creature. You thought that you could get away with it?”
Jasmine backed away, holding her hands out. “I’m not a shifter.”
“No human could get out of a crash like that and walk away from it!”
“You just did.”
Jerimiah paused a moment, then snarled again. “Think you’re so smart, huh? Think you’re gonna outsmart me? I’ll show you!”
Something glinted in his hand. Jasmine didn’t need to see it clearly to know it was a gun. She reacted on instinct. Adrenaline flooded her system as she charged at him. Her jaguar batted at her chest and she let it free. Her clothes burst off her body as her form shifted smoothly into that of a giant jaguar.
He let out a strangled shout as she came crashing down on him. Her paws wrapped around his head, her mouth closing around his hand, forcing the gun to be directed away from them. A shot rang out, kicking the adrenaline even higher. With a snarl she kicked into his belly with her back legs, making sure to keep her claws sheathed. She felt the fist unclench between her teeth and released him long enough to grab the gun.
Jerimiah stared up at her with terror in his eyes. For a brief moment she realized that he expected her to kill him. Kill him like he would have killed her in a heartbeat. The knowledge made her go cold. And if it weren’t for the fact that killing him would make Eneko seem guiltier, she might have been tempted.
But she wasn’t that kind of person.
Clutching the gun in her mouth, Jasmine bounded away. She left the car behind as she rushed through the trees, quickly getting back into the city.
Now what? She couldn’t stay out here in the cold and going to the police… well, she wasn’t going to show up at the station naked.
Her throat was dry as she ran towards Eneko’s house, pushing herself as hard as she could. This had been a bad idea. A bad, stupid idea. They never should have gotten involved in this. She should never have thought that she could be seductive and flirty and get information from someone so clearly unhinged.
Her whole body was seized up by the time she got to Eneko’s home. She slipped into the back and spat the gun onto the floor, the taste of gunpowder strong on her tongue as she shifted back to her human form. She lay on the floor, gasping for breath.
Moments later, Eneko and Lori appeared in the doorway. Lori shrieked, but Eneko immediately dropped to his knees beside her and began checking her over.
“Jasmine, can you hear me?” he asked, voice firm but soothing.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” She pushed herself to her elbows and finally glanced at herself. She was covered in blood. A sharp pain shot from her face, and she reached up to find a shard of glass embedded above her eye. “Oh. I was hurt worse than I realized…”
Lori knelt beside them. “What happened?”
Jasmine explained quickly, ignoring Eneko’s strangled protests as she told him what she had done. Once she was finished, Lori disappeared and came back with a blanket to cover her with, and Eneko set about cleaning up her wounds. He still made clucking noises as he gently extracted the glass but didn’t scold her further.
“We have to tell the police,” Lori said. She looked at the gun uneasily. “I know that we didn’t really want to do that, but in this case, I think it’s necessary.”
“Police don’t listen to shifters,” Jasmine replied. “They’ll just say that I provoked him or that he was defending himself. It won’t do any good.”
“Jazz, he came at you with a gun. We have to tell them.” Lori clung to her hand and shook her head. “If nothing else, it puts him in a more suspicious place, right? We can call that lawyer. Clifford, right?”
Her cheeks flushed and Jasmine stared. Was her sister seriously daydreaming about him?
Lori shook her head. “Eneko’s not supposed to have guns around him, and we have to give that to the police. So, they have to know and come get it.”
Jasmine sighed. She shrugged, still shivering from her ordeal. She already knew that calling the police wasn’t going to do any good, but then again, maybe they’d manage to find somebody who was actually concerned about shifters. There had been a lot of anti-shifter corruption found in the local police lately and the chief had stated his intentions to root it out. Plus, Clifford’s reputation was quite impressive.
Maybe, just maybe, they had a chance at this after all.
Chapter Twelve
Eneko wasn’t sure what he was angriest about.
Fury burned through him and his bear growled and huffed, slapping its paws into his ribs. It wanted to be free, it wanted to express its own anger. But he couldn’t allow it to take any sort of latitude. Not only did he have to remain in complete control, the ankle monitor was designed to stay on even if a shifter changed forms. In this case, since his bear was so much bigger than he was, he would injure himself trying to shift.
That didn’t mean he didn’t long to allow himself to change forms, to be covered with cream-colored fur as an insolation between him and the thought he didn’t want to be thinking.
He dabbed an alcohol wipe on the cut in Jasmine’s forehead. She winced, but it was already healing. It was only because of the glass in it that it had bled so much, covering her with blood. She was lucky that her skin didn’t just grow around the glass. That would have been far harder to get rid of. She bit her lip as she looked up at him, her big green eyes worried.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re safe.” Eneko sighed as he tossed the bloody wipe into the garbage. “You shouldn’t have done that, though.”
“You’re angry.”
He nodded, not bothering to deny it. He was angry that she would put herself in danger like this. He was angry that she didn’t tell him. He was angry that Jerimiah had hurt her. But mostly he was angry that he hadn’t been there to protect her.
He wiped the blood from her chin now. They had taken pictures to show the cops before Lori went off to make all the calls. Eneko was grateful for her presence. He had thought she was a rather flighty girl at first, but it seemed as though she had some of Jasmine’s good sense after all.
Although at the moment he was doubting if Jasmine had any good sense.
“I’m sorry,” Jasmine said again. “I know I should have—"
He cut her off with a gentle kiss. “You’re safe now. That’s enough. I’ll deal.”
Jasmine chewed her lower lip. “I didn’t realize that it would be like that. I didn’t realize that there were people like that, people with all that hatred inside of them. It was… it was terrifying. If I had given him the chance, I think he would have killed me.”
Eneko’s shoulders tensed, but he forced himself to relax. Right now, he had to be here for Jasmine, to reassure her and make sure that she was okay. It was his duty as a doctor and as the man that loved her. He finished wiping the blood from her face.
“Just don’t do that again, okay? I don’t want you to put yourself in danger for me.”
She swallowed. “I’m afraid that he’s going to come back. Maybe he was drunk, but I’ve never seen that much hatred before.”
He wished he could reassure her, but what could he say to that, that wasn’t a lie? He shook his head. “I don’t really know much about him. Jana was afraid of him, I know that.”
But if Jasmine really thought that Jerimiah was going to kill her, that was something they had to keep in mind, too. They couldn’t assume that this was going to be it. He had already gone after her once. Twice, actually. Crashing her car, and with a gun.
“I’ll protect you,” Eneko whispered. “I swear, I’ll protect you. I won’t let him hurt you.”
Jasmine nodded, tension easing out of her body.<
br />
“Well, that’s everyone.” Lori came back into the room. “I called the cops first so that they can’t demand to know why we called the lawyer first. Clifford says we should avoid handling the gun. I figure we leave it on the floor and then there’s no chance we get our prints on it.”
Eneko glanced at the weapon and nodded. None of them had touched it, and he had no plans to do so now. Instead, he helped Jasmine out of the room. They all went to the sitting room, where she sat on the couch with the blanket wrapped tight around her.
“I’ll get you some clothes.” He frowned as he realized he hadn’t even thought about offering her clothing before now. Well, with everything else happening, it wasn’t as though modesty was at the top of their minds.
He quickly found her something to wear and made her tea to make sure she stayed warm. Then he sat beside her and held her hand, keeping an eye on her scrapes. They were all healed by the time the cops arrived. Lori answered the door.
The two detectives that had arrested Eneko had been sent and he had to repress a sigh. Well, there went the possibility of them taking this seriously. Not much of one, but a bear had to hope.
“Evening,” one of them growled out. “We picked up Jerimiah Wilder earlier and he claims that he was attacked by Miss… Rowlands is it?”
Jasmine’s hand clenched in his as she nodded. “That’s not what happened. He attacked me.”
“That’s not what he’s saying.”
“Are you serious right now?” Lori put her hands on her hips and stood between the cops and shifters. “Are you freaking serious?”
The detective stared down at her. “Ma’am, I—"
“My sister was attacked and traumatized. That madman threatened her with a gun and you’re playing ‘oh, he said that she attacked him’? Who called you first? As a matter of fact, who is the one with a police record? Who is the one that’s been arrested for harassing and stalking women, and who doesn’t have even a freaking parking ticket on her records? Just who the hell do you think you are, to accuse my sister of lying about this?”
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