Copyright © 2013 by Cassie Laurent.
Kindle Edition
v1.0
The Shifter's Conspiracy is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book or portions thereof may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form whatsoever without direct permission from the author.
This book is intended Only for Mature Audiences 18+. It contains mature themes, substantial sexually explicit scenes, and graphic language which may be considered offensive by some readers.
UUID: 6de3f6c3-f753-4bf6-9353-d9437d2a873e
Table of Contents
Cover
Title/Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
More from Cassie
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
———
—Tess—
Thump.
I heard the sound of about ten pounds of paper and manila folders hit my desk and looked up to see Lieutenant Jackson staring down at me, his face stern and impatient.
“If you’re done reading the paper, maybe you feel like scanning these,” he said sarcastically, turning his back and walking away before I even had a chance to respond.
I flipped through the files that had landed on my desk: just a bunch of cold cases, autopsy reports, even a few traffic citations thrown in the mix. Nothing in here was really very important and certainly not time-sensitive. I look a sip of my coffee and looked back down at the newspaper in my hands.
I was reading local news again, but who wasn’t these days? Three kidnappings in the last forty-eight hours; over twenty in the past month. Something was certainly going on and nobody had any clue what it was. Was it a serial killer? Organized crime? Mere coincidence?
All of the victims had been women ages eighteen to thirty-five. They were students, waitresses, a few legal assistants, even a stripper which the paper noted with a sense of intrigue. What did they all have in common? That’s what my department was trying to find out.
Notice that I said my department. While other detectives were out on the case, I was stuck inside scanning trivial documents as part of the Police Commissioner’s 2013 digitization effort. The goal was to have all previous records online and in a searchable database by January 1, 2014.
The Commissioner had promised city officials that this digitization project would make the department twice as efficient and save taxpayers millions of dollars each year. Because we’d spend less time doing paperwork and research, we’d have more time to actually be out fighting crime.
This sounded good, but it didn’t change the fact that I was bored out of my mind scanning and uploading documents all day long for months and months on end. No one else wanted to do the work and I was the youngest detective in the department, so I was the de facto leader of the initiative. Lucky me.
As I stood at the scanner, getting started on the day’s tedious task, I thought about the story in the paper and all those girls who had gone missing: Sara Nelson, Katie Harris, Eleanor Jaspers, Helen Jefferson… the list went on and on. Who were they? What were they like? I knew some details about them: occupation, what part of the city they lived in, where they had been spotted on the night they each disappeared, etc. That was stuff everyone knew; it was common knowledge readable in the daily paper. But what linked them together besides their sudden disappearances?
A few days ago I’d plotted out their locations, both residence and area where they were suspected of being kidnapped, on a map in the main conference room. They were scattered all throughout the city, mainly in Manhattan, but there had been at least two abductions in Queens and a few in both Harlem and Brooklyn. There was only one reported kidnapping in the Bronx. The locations didn’t yield any good leads; there appeared to be no pattern whatsoever.
I mulled this over as I scanned document after document, placing the hard copies back in their files to be sent to our permanent back-up storage center in upstate New York. When I was finished, I brought the files down to the basement where they would be kept before being loaded into the truck that was headed upstate the following week.
I caught the elevator upstairs. It stopped at the first floor lobby and in walked Frank Donnelly. He was a good guy, one of those old-school cops who was the last of a dying breed. He was smart and tough, but his methods seemed so outdated and anachronistic; he didn’t use a cellphone and rarely responded to e-mails. But he was smart as a whip and knew his way around the politics of the department. If there was ever anyone to ask for advice on how to get put on the abductions case, it was Frank. The problem was that I was just too shy to do it.
The elevator doors opened at my floor and I walked off quickly without saying a word. Dammit. Why hadn’t I spoken up? Not that it would have helped. Was I just going to ask to be put on the case? If I didn’t have any leads, I didn’t have any basis for convincing them I needed to be part of the team. You didn’t get put on cases just because you asked; you had to work for it.
I needed to prove to Lieutenant Jackson and the other detectives in the police department that I could be a valuable part of the team, more than just someone who ran out to pick up lunch orders and scan documents. So I went to the break room and poured myself a fresh cup of coffee and headed back to my desk. I’d have a few hours before the next files were dropped off; maybe I would do some of my own research and see what I could come up with.
I sat down at my computer and looked through the database, checking the name of each kidnapped woman against our records system. Most of them didn’t have a history; the only queries that came back with data were about traffic violations. None of these women appeared to be leading shady lives in the seedy underbelly of New York City. Even the stripper was what one might call a ‘good girl’; she was just stripping to put her way through law school at Fordham.
I wanted to talk to these girls’ families and friends. Maybe they knew something. Maybe they were having troubles that just didn’t show up in the official record. But I knew I couldn’t do this type of research without my Lieutenant’s permission. So I decided to do something a bit unorthodox.
I started searching the names of these women on the internet, compiling a file on each girl based on what I could find in publically available articles. Then I started to dive into social media, checking Facebook and Twitter, even a few Pinterest pages. I scrolled through photo after photo. It was a bit surreal, looking through these pictures. Here they were, laughing, smiling, joking around at a bar, celebrating holidays with family, a few graduation pictures here and there. And now they were gone. It was as if they disappeared into thin air.
Within a few hours I felt I was making some headway. It seemed that a lot of these girls tended to go out around the same places. I could cross reference their check-ins on Facebook and Yelp with the time of their disappearance and maybe learn some answers. Now that I had all the preliminary
work of verifying these were the correct profiles, I could really get into some analysis and see if any patterns emerged.
Thump.
Another pile of papers fell on my desk, this time dropped by Eric Carpenter, the second youngest detective in my department.
“Boss needs these scanned by end of day,” he said, with a slightly evil smirk on his face.
“Please, Eric, can you do it? I’m in the middle of something important,” I pleaded, hoping that for once he’d actually do me a favor.
“Really? What’s so important?”
“It’s related to the kidnappings. I think I might be onto a lead.”
“Yeah? What is it? I can let Lieutenant Jackson know.”
I mulled over the idea of telling him and then decided against it. He’d bring it to the Lieutenant and take all the credit for it. Besides, it’s not like I had anything really concrete yet, just a good avenue for proceeding that I was positive no one else in the department was pursuing. Who knew whether it would actually lead to anything?
“Whatever, I’ll scan the papers. Thanks for nothing.”
“Aww come on, you can tell me, Tess. I got your back. What’s the lead? Maybe I can help you out.”
His voice was full of fake sincerity. I knew he’d conned his way into getting put on the case in the first place; I wasn’t going to give him a lead to cement his position on the team. I grabbed the pile of papers off my desk and walked to the scanner down the hall. But first I logged out of my computer; I couldn’t jeopardize my work by letting Eric steal a glance when I walked away and he was just the type of self-serving loser who would stoop to that level.
Back at the scanner, I worked my way through the several-inch thick packet of papers; more unimportant legal forms and affidavits. But instead of daydreaming my mind was working furiously. If I could focus in on at least a few different bars and clubs that these girls had all been to, then maybe I would have a reason to go out and ask the owners and staff some questions.
By the time I was finished with the file, it was almost 8:00 PM, time to clock out so the night shift could come on. I wanted to stay later, but since I was junior staff I actually shared my desk with someone who worked the opposite shift, so I had to be out by eight o’clock sharp. I grabbed my personal things off of my desk and headed back to my apartment. Fortunately, the research I wanted to do could be done at home on my laptop.
I took the elevator downstairs and walked through the lobby of the police station. Outside the sky was dark as a heavy rain fell on a late October night. I thought about hailing a cab, but they were all occupied with the rain pouring down like it was. Having left my umbrella up at my desk, I sprinted the two blocks to the subway station.
I passed my MetroCard through the scanner and walked through the turnstile. Five minutes until the next 4 train. There was a local 6 train coming in three minutes, but that one would be much too slow. Impulsively, I pulled out my cell phone to check my texts, email, etc., but of course there was no service in the station. I tapped my feet as I waited around.
Then all the sudden I was aware of someone watching me, made aware as if by a sixth sense. Calmly and casually, I raised my eyes up and scanned the area. A man stood about twenty feet away from me, leaning against the tiles of the wall behind us. He was pretending to read the paper, but I could feel his eyes on me, hidden though they were behind his sunglasses. Why was he wearing sunglasses at night?
I kept an eye on him, being careful, however, not to look directly at him, not to let him know that I was on to him. Fortunately, it was still early in the night, and there were plenty of people in the subway station. I even saw a few Metro cops about fifty yards away by the turnstiles. I felt safe in a populated area, but nonetheless decided that I should get on the next train.
The local 6 train came by and I got on, taking note that the man had followed me, getting in at the far end of the subway car at the opposite door. I put my headphones in, pretending to be oblivious, but I didn’t turn any music on. I watched and listened, pretending to be playing around on my phone. At the next stop, I hopped out of the train, quickly getting lost in the crowd so he couldn’t follow me. Was he following me? I didn’t know for sure; maybe I was just being paranoid.
The rain had let up almost completely by the time I emerged onto the street. I was greeted by the pleasant cool air of fall. Even if it took a little while longer, it wouldn’t be so bad walking home. I liked this weather; it made me want to curl up with a glass of wine and a good book. But I knew I didn’t have time for that tonight. I stopped at a coffee shop on the way home and got a grande latte; I had a long night ahead and would need the caffeine.
At 5:00 AM I woke up on the couch to the TV blaring an infomercial. A partially eaten piece of pizza sat on a plate on my coffee table. It took a few seconds before I got my bearings, realizing that I’d fallen asleep on the couch in the middle of my research. Despite all my good ideas earlier in the day, my initial look into the social media profiles I’d found hadn’t yielded anything too promising.
I only had a few more hours to sleep before work tomorrow and decided it was best to brush my teeth and try to some solid hours of rest before I had to go into the station. After all, those files weren’t going to scan themselves, I thought to myself sarcastically.
CHAPTER 2
———
A few hours later, I scanned my clearance card and the doors opened into the police station. I took the elevator up to the eighth floor and sat down at my computer, turning on the monitors and letting it boot up while I went to grab a cup of coffee. I was a dedicated detective, and usually one of the first people in the office each morning. Hopefully, this would give me an hour or so before someone came by to pass off some mundane assignment on me; this would be my chance to follow up on some of the research I’d started yesterday.
I started scrolling through the check-ins on Yelp and Facebook for each girl, plotting out a timeline starting three weeks out from their individual disappearances. This gave me a fairly elaborate idea of what exactly they’d been up to during that time. If there were any commonalities, shared patterns of behavior, I stood a pretty good chance of finding them.
I’d finished a timeline for the first girl about an hour later. Hopefully, they wouldn’t all take this long, but that of course would depend on how frequently they used social media. Some of these girls seemed to tweet every five minutes, and that might make this a painstakingly slow process. But even if it went slowly, the more tweets, the more status updates, the more information I’d have at my fingertips. Even if I couldn’t find any patterns, perhaps our data analysts could. I would at the very least get credit for compiling all of the information, right?
For the time being, however, I’d get to consider this possibility while I ran files through the scanner. Eric had just come by and dropped the morning’s work on my desk, complete with his malicious, creepy sneer.
“Still too busy to do your job?” he asked, reaching in and playfully squeezing my shoulder. Or at least he thought it was playful.
“Don’t touch me,” I said coldly.
He wasn’t my friend and there was no point in pretending he was. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that he’d been put on the abductions case, period. He had no experience in the area and he was a bad, lazy detective. I knew he was just the yes-man of one of the senior officers and someone had pulled the strings for him.
“Oh, touchy, touchy,” he said, that stupid grin still plastered to his face.
“Listen, I know it’s my job to scan these, but I don’t have to like it. Please stop rubbing it in my face.”
“Well, chubs, maybe if you changed your attitude you wouldn’t have to do the grunt work. Have fun scanning, secretary.”
I decided I wouldn’t dignify his insult with a response. So, I got up and walked quickly past him with the file. I thought about giving him an elbow, but he probably would have thought I was flirting. What a fucking asshole. How could he be so call
ous? He knew he was on the case for all the wrong reasons, but he still felt the need to brag about it. And the comment about my weight? What the hell?
Small tears welled up in my eyes, but I forced them back. I’d never been anything but nice to him since I’d started working here. Initially, he had been nice to me, too. Things had changed, however, when I’d rejected his advances at a bar this past summer. Originally, we’d sort of been friends. We were the youngest people at this precinct and occasionally we’d go out to have a drink and talk about the department. Since a lot of the other officers were older, our age was at least one thing we had in common. But one time he was a bit drunk and tried to kiss me; I pulled my head out of the way and he ended up storming out of the bar pissed off and cursing loudly.
The next day I had tried to explain to him that it was unprofessional, that it could get us into trouble at work. Really, I just wasn’t interested in him like that. I knew he wasn’t truly interested, either; he just thought I was a quick and easy lay and he simply wanted some that night. But I’m not like that, I’ve never been that type of girl. And I wasn’t about to ruin my integrity just because he was pressuring me.
He’d been an asshole ever since. Did he think it was charming, or clever or something? I didn’t know for sure. Needless to say, we never went out for drinks anymore.
I didn’t want to let his insults get to me, but I found a few small tears streaking down my face over at the scanner. Brushing them away, I tried to concentrate on my work. Concentrate? It was just scanning stupid files. One didn’t need concentration for that. The fact was that even though I didn’t care about Eric, his insults still stung me deeply. I was self-conscious about my weight, and for him to point it out like that was about the meanest, most hurtful thing he could do. Did he not get that? Or was he deliberately trying to break my confidence?
The Shifter's Conspiracy (Paranormal BBW Werewolf Romance Novella) Page 1
