Shrew & Company Books 1-3

by Holley Trent

  “What makes you think I’m thinking?” He fixed his gaze back on the road.

  “You forgetting who I am?”

  He grinned and couldn’t help it. “As if I’d ever forget that. If I’m thinking too loud, just give me one of those bruising punches. Right on the arm.”

  “As if I’d need permission.”

  He winked his right eye at her and eased his foot onto the brake as they approached the quartermaster’s subdivision.

  The walkie-talkie crackled, and Tamara reached across the dash and plucked it down.

  “Give us a couple of blocks breathing room. I’ll let you know if you should move in closer. Over,” she said into it.

  Dana’s voice came in loud and clear from the other vehicle. “Got it. You take point on this one, Tam. This is your rodeo, and we’re just extra bodies for backup.”

  He glanced over in time to see Tamara’s wry grin before she drew it back in. Wouldn’t do for the Shrew to express actual glee, he supposed.

  Bryan passed the house at the posted speed limit, and everything seemed typical for an early Monday morning. A few neighboring houses were lit up as their inhabitants performed morning routines. Kids were getting ready for school, and adults prepared for work.

  Gene’s new SUV was parked in the quartermaster’s driveway. A downstairs light in the house shone through the filter of a curtain, and Bryan knew it had to be Gene carrying out his early-morning business before his quartermaster left for work. The quartermaster was a school bus driver, it turned out, although Bryan didn’t see the bus parked nearby. Must have had a larger space for it somewhere.

  Bryan circled around the block and parked around the corner, beside a fence and out of view of all the windows.

  Tamara said into the walkie-talkie, “We’re parked on Hyde Street. Give us about a block of space. Soren’s going to the door, and while he distracts them, Peter will watch the back. Bryan and I will flank from the sides.”

  “How many people are in the house?” Dana asked.

  “Don’t know. We’ll try to minimize collateral damage by luring Gene outside. Because this is a scheduled block of supplier meetings, he’ll think Soren is either a new business partner, or someone the quartermaster has already screened.”

  “If there are kids in there, abort.”

  “Copy that.”

  Tamara tucked the walkie-talkie into her jacket pocket and stabbed her seatbelt release. “All right, Soren.”

  “Right. Give me three minutes, and then come out.” He tipped his large body out of the small car and tucked a firearm into his waistband before closing the door.

  Bryan watched the dashboard clock.

  At two minutes and thirty seconds in, he cut the ignition.

  Fifteen seconds before they were due to get out, Soren appeared, holding his hands up and shaking his head emphatically.

  Bryan opened his door and asked, “What happened?”

  “Get Dana on that walkie-talkie and tell her we need someplace to bury a body.”

  “What? You didn’t—”

  “No, I absofuckinglutely did not.” He peeled off one leather glove, pulled a note from inside his jacket, and extended it to Bryan. “That was on the truck’s dashboard. I didn’t even make it to the door when I saw the woman in the driver’s seat. She was so small, I almost didn’t see her, but there she was, staring at me with her mouth open. I thought maybe she was afraid and would scream thinking I was an intruder, but then I realized she wasn’t moving. Someone broke her fucking neck. There’s no one in the house. Door was unlocked. They were kind enough to leave us a shovel and some trash bags.”

  “Fuckers.” Tamara brought her first down on the armrest. “What does the note say?”

  She depressed the walkie-talkie button and held the mic toward Bryan.

  Bryan read the note again and again, trying to make sense of the words, but his brain couldn’t process it. Gene had escalated the situation. Raised the stakes, and for what? Control?

  Peter leaned up through the middle of the seats and gingerly took the paper out of Bryan’s hand. “Says This is what happens to defectors. Bears should be loyal. Don’t you agree? I wonder whose blood this is on the bottom.”

  “It’s hers.” Bryan’s throat went tight. Swallowing seemed impossible, and breathing even more difficult.

  “Whose, Bryan?” Tamara set down the walkie-talkie when vehicle doors slammed shut behind them.

  Dana and Patrick on the way.

  “The woman from the alley. The secretary. Smell the metal in the blood? Smells just like she did.”

  Tamara nodded, and looked away.

  “She didn’t deserve this. This is…this is my fault. I shouldn’t have sent her—”

  Tamara grabbed his forearm and squeezed. “Stop it. If it weren’t her, it would have been someone else. One of your cousins, perhaps. Your parents.”

  Gene wasn’t that stupid. Elders were off-limits. Always had been. If he wanted to unleash the wrath of Hell on himself in the form of one pissed-off Bear, that’d be a sure-fire way to do it. Fucking with his parents would be a suicidal venture.

  Leaving Drea exposed had been a calculated risk for him, and one he didn’t intend to repeat without her cooperation. He had hoped Drea would get angry in his absence—for her sense of self-preservation to kick in, but she as was too tied into the group bond. She couldn’t rebel against her leader, and Bryan had been too locked into the mindset of If I can, she can, too to expect otherwise.

  She couldn’t. Not without a push from the rear. She’d done the best she could by calling the Shrews. Even that small act of rebellion was unusually bold for her.

  “We’ll have to figure out how to contact her family if she has any,” Dana said through the open window, always the pragmatist. “But first, lets get her out of there.”

  Tamara twined the fingers of her left hand through the ones on his right, and squeezed, drawing him out of his head into the present. “Not your fault.”

  “If I hadn’t waited so long to do something…”

  “You can’t do a job you haven’t yet been called to do. You want to fix this? Maybe it’s time to be less generous. You’re wired to do no harm, but Ursus are wired to avenge. We hold grudges. You let us do what you can’t.”

  “You’d do that for me?” he asked out loud as Peter opened his door. Bobbing his head toward the brothers congregating at the back tire, he added, “And them, too?”

  “Here’s your proof.” She leaned across him and said through the open window, “Soren, can you clear your schedule? Hang out here until the situation stabilizes?”

  Soren shifted his weight, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Will it get me off your shit list?”

  She shrugged.

  Good luck with that, buddy.

  “Peter?” Tamara called.

  Peter, whose back had been turned to them, spun around and held up a finger, asking them to wait. He was on the phone again. “Hello, Old Bear. You still in the area? We have a problem. Need you to pull some strings and get some more of our Bears here. I suspect some of the Blue Ridge Bears will need security very soon. Gene has been a naughty, naughty Bear. You know how I feel about Bears like him.”

  He said nothing for a long while, and they all waited enraptured for Joseph’s decision.

  Peter furrowed his brow. “Okay, I’ll tell them.” He ended the call and stuffed the phone into his pocket. “He’s going to round up as many Bears as he can, but he thought you should know, Bryan, that Gene is spreading the word amongst the other Alphas that you’re a troublemaker. Persona non grata. Most seem to know better, and won’t give you any problems…”

  “But there are a few who have much to gain from believing him,” Bryan finished.

  Peter nodded.

  Perfect. Just what I needed.

  Tamara squeezed his hand again.

  “Like I said before, baby. You can run whenever you want. This isn’t your fight, and I’d rather you be safe than ta
ke another bad risk.”

  Patrick and the Ursu men edged away, likely to deal with the dead Bear in Gene’s abandoned truck, and Dana walked toward her vehicle with her phone pressed to her ear, talking a mile a minute.

  “I told you, you buffoon. Shrews don’t run. Neither do Ursus. I guess that means you’re stuck with me.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, Tam.” He brought her hands to his lips, and kissed them. Pleading with her silently to run. He wanted her to run. To be afraid. To be like most of the other Bear women, maybe?

  No. That wasn’t the woman for him. He’d wanted her for all the things she wasn’t, and even if that meant she scared the hell out of him, he needed to listen to his bear. The bear always knew what the man didn’t.

  “I’m a mutant descended from sturdy Romanian stock,” she said, her green eyes twinkling. “And I’m scrappy. I used to fight for the sake of fighting, but now I have something to fight for. Don’t worry about me, Bryan. I’m where I want to be.”

  “Then I apologize in advance for everything I do that ends up on your list. You deserve better than me.”

  She shrugged, but her lips quirked up into that vixen grin. “Probably.”

  The walkie-talkie crackled, and Dana’s voice said, “My contact at the police department says the secretary has no one. No close family. No names listed as emergency contacts on her employment records. That’s probably why John turned her. We’ll bury her in the woods near Patrick’s cabin. My guy at the PD will take care of the paperwork and get the medical examiner to sign off on the death certificate.”

  “Copy that,” Tamara responded as Soren walked past them toward the Suburban, cradling the woman in his arms.

  “How do you all do that?” Bryan asked.

  “What?”

  “Get people to just do things for you without a bunch of paperwork and investigation.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged, and pulled her leg beneath her bottom. “They know which side we’re on. We’re never on the wrong side.”

  He knew that. That’s why there were right there in that car. Together.

  Felt good being on the right fucking side for a change, even if at the moment it was losing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Astrid sank onto the hard booth seat, and swapped her cell phone to her right ear. She plucked a few paper napkins from the dispenser and brushed crumbs off the laminate tabletop. Her inner germophobe hadn’t even bothered complaining this time. This had been the cleanest of all the South Dakota dives she’d supped in during her assignment. Her brain waged a constant battle with itself when it came to these sorts of things. Shrews didn’t get sick from sticky diner tables, but the vestiges of old non-mutant Astrid, still bubbling inside her head somewhere, wanted to lose her shit at the idea of unsanitary dining surfaces.

  Dana finally came on the line. “About time you checked in,” she said.

  Astrid bobbed her head in acknowledgement at the waitress delivering the pot of coffee she’d ordered even before sitting. “Cell phone connectivity out here is about as robust as you’d expect. I get no bars out near the Badlands, and had to drive back into Rapid City to touch base.”

  “And with you being who you are, I imagine you won’t go within a meter of a payphone.”

  “I’ll do it if I have to, but I’ll hate it. How’s Tam?”

  “Back to her usual self, but I haven’t seen much of her in the past few days.”

  “Bear stuff?”

  “Yeah. We had to bury one. Things aren’t looking so great on our end.”

  “You buried a Bear? Who? Not Dustin, I hope.”

  Dustin was annoying, but he had a good heart. Made her laugh, which tended to be a difficult feat for most. She wouldn’t want anything to happen to the guy just because he’d made some stupid decisions. His goofiness kind of reminded her of her brother Eric, minus all the cannabis.

  “No. Gene made an example of his lieutenant’s secretary. We don’t know where Gene is right now, but tensions are high, and Bears are angry because they don’t know what Bryan’s up to. The Ursus are trying to placate the born-Bears, but it’s taking some time to reach them all. Hopefully, Gene won’t escalate the situation before we can warn folks.”

  “He probably will.”

  “Thank you, Susie Sunshine. Can always count on you for a reality check. Any luck finding Fabian? We need you back here.”

  Astrid pulled the laminated menu closer and scanned the entrée column. “I think I’m getting close, but what’s made things difficult is that the circus troupe abandoned all their big vehicles and gear two states back. Swapped out license plates on the trucks and campers they’re using now, and they’re all split up. I did cross paths with one of those smaller groups, but as far as I could tell, Fabian wasn’t with them.”

  “Jacques would keep him close.”

  Astrid grunted her agreement. The circus master would. A free Fabian could cause a lot of problems for Jacques. Fabian knew all of Jacques’s dirt, and likely knew his boss of the past thirty-plus years was responsible for his mother’s death. Felipe knew now, because Jacques had confessed he’d ordered it done before he shot Sarah. Perhaps he’d confessed it to Fabian, too, and that’s why he’d had to hide the acrobat away.

  “If you stay longer, I’m going to have to send you some backup.”

  “Who? We’re fresh out of Shrews.”

  “No kidding. Listen, I’ve got a federal agent friend positioned out there. She’s working on a different case, but I’ve filled her in on the situation, and she’ll meet you where you specify. I’ll give you her number. Call her immediately.”

  “I will, but…does this agent know what we are?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she knows what Fabian is?”

  “I didn’t go into specifics about the troupe. I’d prefer it not be well known what Fabian and Felipe can do, but you’ll need her there to make arrests. The Feds have been building human trafficking and child labor cases against Jacques for about a decade, apparently because of information some insiders leaked. I don’t know if it was Fabian or someone else, but either way, Interpol is hip to Jacques and his henchmen, and want to grab them.”

  “And I’m certain Bryan and Drea would like to take big bites out of Jacques when they’re done digesting Gene.”

  “They would,” Dana said.

  Astrid tapped the picture of potato soup on the menu when the waitress came by, and the woman nodded.

  “I want you back here within a week,” Dana said. “Do what you can to find Fabian, and don’t worry if he slips through your fingers. We can always chase him later, but the Bear issue needs immediate resolution. Hate to do it, but we’re going to do what Bryan planned and bring this shit to a flash-bang finale. Tired of dragging it out.”

  “Got it.”

  “Check in when you can, and Astrid?”

  “Yes?”

  “Unless things have changed substantially in the past half-year, Fabian’s English is shit. If I remember correctly, you speak neither Spanish nor French. So…good luck, sunshine.”

  Dana disconnected.

  “Fuck,” Astrid said to the quiet phone.

  Dana hadn’t had to be explicit, but her implication was clear.

  To make Fabian understand her, Astrid would have to touch him.

  And, in her world, touching often preceded regret.

  She flagged the waitress. Astrid had lost her appetite.

  The End

  Turn the page for a sneak peek of Following Fabian – available February 2015.

  FOLLOWING FABIAN

  Believed to be kept under guard by his traveling circus’s owner, Fabian Castillo hasn’t been seen or heard from for more than seven months. Astrid Falk has one week to root him out. The private investigators at Shrew & Company always find their men, and Astrid is no exception.

  When Astrid pulls the bewitching acrobat from captivity, however, he refuses to cut and run. He’s got a score to settle with his former foster
father Jacques, and Astrid can’t leave Fabian on his own. He speaks no English, and she speaks no Spanish, but when they touch, they don’t need words. There are some perks to being psychic.

  Solitary Fabian wants Astrid to be more than just his translator, and she just might be on the market for a new partner. But, the last man she gave her heart to left her high and dry when she needed him most. Committing to Fabian would require a leap of faith she’s not sure she can muster, especially if there’s no net below to catch her if she falls.

  ___

  CHAPTER ONE

  Private investigator Astrid Falk dragged her sleeve across her damp forehead and rooted her feet against the ground, balancing her stance. She tightened her grip around her charge’s wrists and willed her muscles to cooperate.

  She needed to be quick, nimble, and silent in the near dark, but every step she took heightened her awareness of not only how heavy he was compared to her small frame, but also the feel of his skin.

  He was so cold. Clammy.

  If it weren’t for the fact that he’d expelled a long breath when she’d given that initial yank toward the tent opening, she might have thought he was dead. And if he were dead, his brother Felipe would likely set the entirety of South Dakota ablaze while exacting his revenge. Being who she was, Astrid couldn’t blame him. The ladies of Shrew & Company were known for their tempers as much as for their success rate.

  She stepped and pulled.

  Stepped and pulled, dragging Fabian Castillo’s heavy weight against the gritty earth, swearing under her breath until they’d both cleared the opening.

  Risking discovery, she turned on her flashlight and shone the beam onto his face.

  His cheeks were dirty and his jaw slack with sleep, but all the right chisels and planes were there. He had the same lips as his twin Felipe, same aristocratic nose—minus the jut from an improperly healed break—and same dark blond hair.

  One could say they’d made a living from being identical, but that would imply their boss—well, former boss—had actually paid them. Jacques hadn’t, but that wasn’t the reason Astrid was abducting the unconscious acrobat from Jacques’s encampment.