Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  SHREW & COMPANY

  BOOKS 1-3

  THE PROBLEM WITH PADDY

  FRAMING FELIPE

  BRYAN’S BETRAYAL

  By Holley Trent

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  The Shrew & Company series is my modern spin on superheroes. Instead of brawny men in capes in tights, I wanted to frame the worldbuilding around strong women who could save themselves.

  The ladies of the Shrew & Company private investigation agency all have genetic mutations caused by an unregulated clinical research study. Each lady has her own quirks and unique story to tell, and you’ll note the diversity of backgrounds and personalities as the series progresses.

  The series will conclude with book five—Maria’s book—which will be out in winter 2015/2016. Book four, which you’ll find a teaser of immediately after Bryan’s Betrayal, is available for preorder now. Buy it now and look for it in your e-reader on February 10.

  I hope you enjoy meeting Dana, Sarah, and Tamara.

  -Holley Trent

  THE PROBLEM WITH PADDY

  Dana Slade isn’t just Durham’s most tenacious private detective, but also an unwilling initiate into the mysterious paranormal world. After an unregulated research trial warped her DNA and turned her into an honest-to-goodness mutant, she lost her man and her job. Her spirit may have been broken, but she didn’t lose her edge.

  It turns out that Patrick O’Dwyer isn’t missing, but hiding, and he’s got something in common with Dana. He’s recently had an unwilling initiation into the supernatural domain of his own, and his secret could devastate the business he’s worked so hard to build. He needs a confidante for sure, but he sees in the fierce investigator the potential for so much more than that.

  The new were-cat could be the perfect partner Dana didn’t know she needed, but not if she can’t convince herself that another chance at love is worth the risks.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dana Slade fixated on the gap in the slob’s button-up shirt. Initially, she had thought he’d missed a button, but the longer she stared, the clearer it became that there wasn’t a button there at all.

  He’d started the morning with a safety pin holding the two plackets together in that space, but sometime between him getting dressed and the start of their meeting, it’d come loose.

  The slob hadn’t told her that. To Dana, it was as obvious as the fact he’d eaten onions with his lunch. She had eyes that could focus like microscope lenses, so of course she could see how the buttonhole’s threads had been yanked and molested by the pin, causing a slight rip at the bottom of the slit. On the other side—where the fastener’s metal tine had been pressed through—was a tiny hole, not much larger than a normal gap in the fabric weave.

  She could see it, though, even from six feet away.

  “So, how ’bout it? You gonna take the job?” His accent was an indistinguishable mumble. If he’d been on the phone and not sitting right in front of her, she might have assumed the man had mud in his mouth.

  Concentrate, chick.

  She closed her eyes to shut off the flow of distracting visual stimulus, and rolled her tight shoulders several times. It’d been one of those weeks, and it was only Tuesday.

  When she lifted her eyelids again and looked across her desk at her possible future client, her vision had normalized to a typically human twenty-twenty–not a lab rat’s super-vision. She would have preferred to be typical. Not just with her vision, but with all things. She couldn’t take back what had happened, though. All she could do was cope, and as her daddy had said, “Try to find a blessing in it.”

  Right, Daddy.

  She let out a quiet sigh as she concentrated on the big picture that was her client—not just the details. His bloated face. Red, watery eyes. Greasy salt-and-pepper hair. Careless shave.

  He coughed and ran a tongue over dry lips.

  She leaned her elbows onto the desk edge, and rested her chin atop her balled-up fists.

  Alcoholic. He’s got a bad job for it.

  He watched her, wide-eyed and seemingly expectant.

  She twined her fingers and twirled her thumbs, staring him down. She’d been told that she had a glower that could make a linebacker flinch, but he was unaffected.

  The guy was definitely drunk.

  Great.

  “Let’s get down it the rub, Mr. Drake. Your boss hasn’t been missing twenty-four hours yet. I’m not sure what you expect me to do. Even the police wouldn’t do anything.”

  Of all people, she would know. Up until she had been unceremoniously stripped of her badge and gun and given the boot from Durham PD, she had been one of those police officers whom had with hands bound by red tape.

  “You gotta understand, this isn’t like Paddy,” he said on a wheeze. “He’s a stickler for details. Wants to oversee everything that’s got his name’s on it, you know?” Mr. Drake gave his head a vigorous shake.

  Dana hoped he didn’t knock any more screws loose.

  “He didn’t say nothin’ to nobody, and nobody knows what to do. I’ve been in the pub’s kitchen for years, but I don’t know what goes into that Saint Paddy’s Day run. Only role I’ve ever had in it was to stick a tap in the kegs when the runners made it to the finish line. If he ain’t back, there ain’t gonna be no run.”

  A bead of sweat tracked down from his hairline, and Dana watched it make a path to his ear. His face, already florid to start with, flushed.

  Simon Drake was a man out of his element.

  She leaned back in her chair and drummed her fingers on the arms, assessing him, wondering how the man even managed to hold down a job. She wouldn’t have left him in charge of so much as a jukebox.

  “I can’t do that shit on my own. Don’t know how. Paddy’s got all the brains.”

  “I hope that’s true for his sake.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Drake.”

  She picked up her phone’s handset and stabbed the extension to her right-hand girl, Tamara.

  “Yes, voss?” Tamara said in that joking, singsong accent she always played up. Tam had been in the US for at least ten years, but overemphasized the Romanian accent because male clients seemed to like it. It’d become a bit of a running gag to the ladies at the Shrew & Company investigation agency.

  Dana twirled a length of her hair and studied the strands. She sighed at the new crop of split ends and dropped the lock.

  Way overdue for a trim.

  “What was the result of the coin toss, Tam?”

  “Tails. You lose.”

  Shit. “Thank you, baby Shrew.” Dana hung up the company’s youngest hire and turned to the man in front of her. “Looks like you’re in luck today. You won the coin toss, so I’ll take your case. This is me being charitable, in case you can’t tell. I had other stuff to do this morning. It’s technically my day off. First one in a year.”

  His face scrunched with confusion.

  “Be a little gracious. I said that I’ll take the job, Mr. Drake.”

  He slumped in the leather armchair and blew out the breath he’d been holding, renewing the miasma of onion in the room.

  Dana had never wished more for a window, or at least an air vent that wasn’t tied in to the Punjabi restaurant next door.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “Thank God later. Right now, I need access to Mr. O’Dwyer’s home and office.”

  Mr. Drake stood, and nodded too hard and too fast. “You got it. I got the keys to the pub, and he keeps a spare set of house keys in the safe.”

  She pushed back from the desk and grabbed her purse from the bottom drawer before standing. “Let’s go. I want to close this case in three hours or less. I’ve got a one o’clock ha
ir appointment, and I’ve already rescheduled twice.”

  “You can’t find a man in three hours.”

  She scoffed. “Sure, I can’t.”

  ___

  Patrick O’Dwyer’s office at the nouveau Irish pub he maintained on Durham’s Ninth Street was neat as a pin. Dana couldn’t help but to grunt her appreciation as she stepped inside. She’d expected the place to look as though a tornado had made its way through—perhaps littered with bottles and empty food containers—but apparently Mr. O’Dwyer liked being able to find shit. She found that to be an admirable trait in a man.

  Organization had been a bone of contention between Dana and her ex. As a police detective, she had appreciated orderliness, and her attention to detail was evident in her unbeatable track record. No one could find a missing person faster than Dana. As far as she knew, the department hadn’t hired an officer yet who could match her, not that she was really keeping tabs. Since the lawsuit she’d filed, and justifiably won, no one at the station talked to her. It hurt a little that the cops she’d watched the backs of so many times and had covered for time and time again found her just as disposable as a spent bullet casing.

  She rolled her eyes even thinking it. They had fired her after the clinical study her ex had enrolled her in went wrong, and her ex—that asshole—swept his involvement in the ordeal under the rug. No—he’d thrown her under the motherfucking bus and walked away whistling.

  He’d enrolled her in a clinical drug trial that she later learned had been unregulated. Worse than that, he’d lied to her. He’d said the researchers wanted to help her with her stress.

  No. He’d just wanted to change her.

  “I was only trying to help,” he’d said when she’d finally been let out of the hospital.

  But, he hadn’t help when she’d keeled over next to her desk at the police department, trying to force breath through lungs of decreasing capacity.

  He’d walked over and looked down at her, and it hadn’t fear for her she saw in his expression, but disappointment. Whether it had been disappointment in her or the study didn’t matter.

  She didn’t care anymore.

  Well, maybe a little. She just couldn’t let it get in the way of the present. She could deal with the past later. The future was about to be Mr. O’Dwyer’s cushy desk chair.

  She pulled it out and sank into it, purring. “I don’t even know him, but I love him for his chair.”

  “That’s a first.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he has many other noteworthy attributes, though I doubt any are as great as this chair.” She briefly harbored thoughts of appropriating it as payment should Mr. O’Dwyer not return, but knew with her on the case, that wasn’t happening.

  Pity. Her chair back at Shrew & Company had been purchased sold-as-is at a fire sale, and one of the adjustment knobs was missing.

  “I’ll be just a few minutes, Mr. Drake,” she said, swiveling the chair.

  He nodded and retreated into the pub proper, probably to avail himself of the hair of the dog that bit him.

  Now alone, she glanced at the items on the desktop without touching, memorizing the placement of everything. Even in disorganization, intent could sometimes be found. She’d always had a knack for seeing things other people overlooked. The mutations sparked during the drug trial had only intensified what was already there. Naturally, seeing and finding would be her superpower.

  She let her gaze flit to and fro over tchotchkes and paper piles in search of the item Mr. O’Dwyer would have last touched before leaving the office for a while. She was operating under the assumption that Mr. O’Dwyer had planned his absence, and until she had proof otherwise, she’d stick to that theory. After all, there were no signs of abduction, and she knew better than to ignore the trend.

  She’d recently tallied that in of all the missing cases she’d worked in the past two years, only about forty percent had actually needed her aid. The rest had simply needed a time-out from reality. That’s why she was generally hesitant to accept these kinds of cases. She understood people worrying about their loved ones, but if it hadn’t been for that coin toss…

  Well, perhaps she’d be at home drinking a cup of coffee before it turned cold for the first time in forever.

  A manila file folder perched in a wire rack kept pulling her attention, so she grabbed it and leafed through the contents.

  It contained a stack of vendor receipts, but not for typical pub fare. They were for special event rentals. Tents, banners, and chairs. Also, Mr. O’Dwyer had recently spent a heap on custom T-shirt printing and trophies.

  “It’s for the 5K run,” she mused.

  She’d heard of it, but had never run it. A couple of the other Shrews had, but Dana didn’t like crowds. Besides, her ex ran it every year without fail. While the idea of smoking him on the asphalt and leaving him coughing in her dust was more than a little appealing, it would be just her luck that she would get disqualified for her enhanced physical attributes. She was faster than the typical woman—hell, than the typical man—and had the increased lung capacity to go along with it.

  She could probably finish the run in less than fifteen minutes.

  In spike heels.

  She chuckled at the thought. Tam would probably do it on a dare, heels and lipstick and all. Or maybe Sarah. She’d run it in motorcycle boots and smacking gum all the way through.

  Dana let her fingers dance over the spidery scrawl on one particular receipt where someone, ostensibly Mr. O’Dwyer, had printed Arriving for setup at eleven a.m., 3/17.

  There were similar notations on all the statements—tidbits that probably could have been better served by being plugged into his phone reminders or written on a pub calendar. But, she suspected this wasn’t his usual means of time management.

  Maybe it was because she was a business owner herself, but what she saw was enough information there that a person—even an outsider who knew nothing about the pub’s operations—could coordinate the flow of bodies. She could probably do it, and she obviously wasn’t on his staff.

  “What else do we have here?” She returned the folder to its tray after sifting through the papers beneath it.

  It appeared Mr. O’Dwyer had doubled his usual food and alcohol orders for stock through March 17. The notes on the memo lines of the receipts all read Deliver in care of S. Drake per Patrick O’Dwyer. Resume usual order on 3/18.

  “Ah, Mr. O’Dwyer. Do you want to be found?”

  On a whim, she picked up the desk phone and dialed the cell phone number listed at the bottom of one of the invoices. Sometimes she got lucky and the missing person answered.

  “This is Patrick O’Dwyer. I’m not available to talk right now, but your message is important to me. I’ll return your call as soon as I can. If this is regarding Paddy’s or the 5K run, please call the pub during normal business hours.”

  “Really not my lucky day, I guess.” She disconnected before the beep and fanned herself with a nearby folder. “With a voice like that, thought, he’d better be ugly as shit, because otherwise that’s just cruel, Lord.”

  She’d always had a thing for accents, and she hadn’t considered that perhaps the owner of an Irish pub would be…well, Irish. Suddenly, Mr. Drake’s accent seemed less mysterious.

  “Are you talking to me?” As if drawn in by a psychic lasso, Mr. Drake stuck his head through the office door.

  She dropped the folder and stood without addressing his concern. “Get the house keys. I’ve seen all I need here.”

  And heard all I needed, too.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Patrick found shoving aside thoughts of his pub and the race to be a difficult feat, but he had to try. He couldn’t let himself obsess over small things when he had so many other more important things to worry about. The approaching full moon, for instance.

  If he’d been better organized, he would have had someone in place to be his backup in a contingency plan, but there was no way he could have expected this—getting bitte
n and scratched up by things he hadn’t even known existed.

  He did what he could to leave his affairs in order and hoped at the end, his choices wouldn’t come back and bite him in the ass like those catamounts had weeks ago.

  He put his feet on the cabin porch’s railing and took a long sip of his whiskey, welcoming the burn as it coated his throat and warmed his belly.

  Maybe just one call to let ’em know not to expect me.

  He shook his head. No, they’d ask too many questions and he wasn’t prepared to give them the answers they sought. He’d have to make up some kind of lie before he returned to work…whenever that would be.

  Family emergency? No, everyone knows I don’t have any other family besides my uncle. Scheduled surgery? No, they’d ask why I didn’t tell them beforehand.

  He shrugged and finished what was left of his drink. He hoped the crew could hold it together until his return, because the last thing he needed was for his faithful staff to stage an uprising in his absence. Uncle Simon did fine when Patrick was around. Uncle tended the bar and kept the kitchen staff on their toes, but when it came to making executive decisions, he froze up. He could hardly sign for UPS packages without breaking into a cold sweat.

  Patrick set his bare feet on the ground and pushed himself to standing position. He took one last, long look at the fir-covered mountains in the distance before pulling the screen door open. He cursed those mountains.

  Last year, he’d regretted buying the little cabin in the Smoky Mountains because he never really had a chance to avail himself of it. The pub was open six days out of seven every week, and after five years, he still hadn’t been able to tear himself away from the place. Maybe that was a problem of his own making, though. Maybe Uncle was a crutch Patrick had needed to not have a reason to stray too far.

  He didn’t want his business to fail. That pub was all he had left in the world, and if it went down, he didn’t want it to be because he didn’t try hard enough. He couldn’t prevent the occasional disaster, but he did his damnedest to run a respectable establishment.