Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "What if we have to decorate a red cookie and don't have any red?" Fletcher countered.

  "That makes no actual sense."

  But the runaway cookie train had definitely left the station now. They left the grocery store laden with clinking bags.

  And in spite of the gloomy day, in spite of the clouds shrouding the city, Debi had a bounce in her step as they walked to the car.

  Chapter Ten

  It was the best weekend Debi remembered having in a very long time.

  They stayed inside all day Saturday. They made cookies and covered Fletcher's kitchen in colorful sprinkles and smears of icing. Since they had more cookies than they could ever hope to eat, Fletcher suggested taking trays of cookies to all the neighbors.

  "Would they like that?" Debi asked dubiously.

  "I know most of them from the condo association meetings, at least vaguely. Why not?"

  Roger, she thought, would have been utterly shocked to see her with her hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, patches of flour on her nice top and slacks, helping to shepherd a tiny girl holding out plates of misshapen cookies covered in dribbling icing to neighbors who were bemused, pleased, or startled in equal measure.

  And yet, no matter how people reacted when they first opened the door, they were usually smiling by the end. She, Fletcher, and Olivia received a half-dozen invitations to come in and have coffee or tea (they accepted the first time, but soon had to start deferring people so they didn't take the entire day to make it through the whole building). They were only turned away by one person, a lady on the ground floor who politely refused because her son was diabetic.

  "Next time we'll have some sugar-free ones too," Fletcher promised.

  Next time? Debi wanted to ask, but by this point Olivia was getting tired and whiny. They hurried through the last two ground-floor condos and took her back up to Fletcher's place, where he washed off the icing and put Olivia down for a nap.

  "Looks like it's just you and me now," he murmured as he closed the door to Olivia's bedroom, taking no chances with the child gate this time.

  "You, me, and a gigantic mess." Debi held up her hands, turning them over to inspect the streaks of color. "How does that stuff get on everything? I swear I washed my hands five times, and now I'm sticky again."

  "Maybe you didn't wash them well enough." Fletcher took one of her hands, raised it to his mouth, and ran his tongue lightly across a streak of blue on the back of her knuckles.

  "Mmm, well, if that's the case, I think you've got a smudge of icing right ... here ..." She leaned forward to lick gently at the corner of his mouth.

  His lips turned up in a smile and parted to receive her tongue.

  "Mmmm. You taste like sugar," she murmured, between kisses. "Sugar and sunshine."

  Fletcher laughed softly against her mouth. "What does sunshine taste like?"

  "You."

  They kissed their way into the bedroom, licking and nibbling, investigating traces of icing on fingertips and cheekbones and earlobes. ("I don't believe there's icing on my earlobe, Fletcher." "Well, not now.") Fletcher closed the bedroom door firmly, locked it to eliminate all possibility of curious four-year-olds, and they left a trail of shed clothing between the door and the bed. By the time they reached the bed, Debi was struggling frantically out of her panties, already wet and ready for him.

  "Tell me how you want it." Fletcher reached into the drawer of the nightstand and tore open a condom packet.

  "From you? Right now? Any way I can get it." She spread her legs and welcomed him into the eager heat of her entrance.

  He took her on the bed, took her sitting up against the bedframe, took her standing against the wall. They had to be quiet, stifling their gasps and cries, but somehow that made it hotter; without that release, all the pent-up intensity of their coupling was sublimated into their rhythmic thrusting. They were perfectly in sync as she writhed against him, her muscular body jerking back to meet each of his strokes.

  She came twice before they finally came together, Fletcher's rhythm stuttering into one last deep thrust that seemed to fill her with electric sparks.

  Debi's legs felt like noodles. Fletcher kissed her damp neck and dropped the used condom into the bedside trash. Sweat-soaked and exhausted, they flopped on the bed in a sated heap.

  As they relaxed together, a small, distant voice called plaintively, "Daaaaaaddy?"

  Fletcher snorted a laugh against her neck. "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but privacy is something you only get in small doses with Her Highness around."

  "It's okay." Debi stretched luxuriously, enjoying the feel of her skin sliding against his. "I come from a big family. It's ... nice, to have that again."

  "What, constant interruptions?" Fletcher sat up and started looking around for his underwear.

  "Yes." Debi propped her chin in her hand, watching him. "I like your daughter, Fletcher. I like ..."

  I like being with your family, she thought, but couldn't quite bring herself to say it.

  ***

  On Sunday, they slept in and then made the promised waffles, buried in frozen blueberries and strawberries from Fletcher's freezer. As she forked up the last bite of waffle and licked the maple syrup off her fork, Debi tried to remember when she'd last indulged herself like this—eaten whatever she wanted, slept as late as she wanted, and not even thought about having to hide the signs of indulgence and put herself all back together on Monday.

  I want to keep this, she thought, gazing across the kitchen island at Fletcher wiping syrup off a squirming, giggling Olivia. I like them. I like me when I'm with them. I think I'm starting to love—

  But she shied away from that thought.

  After breakfast they finally got down to business. While Olivia lay on the floor and scribbled with markers and colored pencils on a pad of paper, Fletcher and Debi spread out the files she'd brought from the office on the freshly cleaned kitchen counters and table. Fletcher was able to tell Debi which transactions he personally remembered signing off on, so they were dividing them up into "legitimate" and "possibly fraudulent" piles when Debi felt a tug at her leg.

  "My pencil is out!" Olivia complained, waving a fat, stubby colored pencil at her.

  "Say what, now?"

  "She means it needs to be sharpened." Fletcher grinned. "Things stop working when they run out of whatever made them work. In this case, it's out of point."

  "Oh, well, of course I'll sharpen it for you, sweetheart." Debi looked around for a sharpener.

  "In her bedroom. It's a big one shaped like Snoopy."

  "Ah."

  When she got back with the sharpened pencil, Fletcher looked up from the paperwork and pointed to her purse. "Your bag was buzzing. Someone tried to call."

  It turned out to be a text from Nia: Can we meet somewhere? I need to talk!

  Now? Debi texted back. Our regular meeting is tomorrow!

  I know, but it's about those questions you asked me. Our usual coffee shop?

  How about a different one. I'm not in the area. She did a quick search for a coffee shop near Fletcher's place and texted Nia the address, then looked over at Fletcher, who had gathered Olivia onto his lap and was helping her color. Sensing Debi watching, he glanced up and smiled at her.

  "Hey, I'm just about to put her down for her nap. You want to come read a book with us?"

  There was nothing she wanted more, looking at the two of them like this—Fletcher in his T-shirt, father and daughter with matching mops of tousled, curly hair. Getting a grip on herself, she waggled the phone meaningfully. "Sorry, I can't. I have to go out for a little while. It shouldn't take long."

  ***

  "Wow, a different coffee shop in a whole different part of town," Nia said when Debi sat down across from her with a triple shot mocha. "You're really mixing it up. This is nowhere near your apartment." She waggled her eyebrows. "Hot date?"

  "You can tell where I am every minute of the day," Debi said, not in the mood for chitchat a
fter being pulled away from the cozy domestic scene at Fletcher's.

  "I can't get access to that data without a specific reason. Honestly, I don't invade your privacy for fun." Nia put down the bagel she was eating, brushed off her fingers, and got out her phone. "Anyway, I've been looking into the things you asked me about. First of all, lawyers. I found you a couple of possibilities. Banerjee & Associates—"

  "That one won't work," Debi interrupted. "They're representing Fletcher's ex-wife."

  "Oh, well. See, this is the problem. There just aren't very many shifter lawyers in town. They would've been my first choice since they handle both civil and criminal cases, but going down the list ..." She read off her other two options, neither of whom Debi had a problem with, so Nia texted her their names and contact information.

  "You could've just emailed this to me. That desperate for my company, are you?"

  "No, it's just that this isn't the only thing I wanted to talk to you about." Nia's round face, made for smiling, turned serious. "The Sperlins, for one. They're serous bad news, Debi."

  "Oh?" Debi said with studied nonchalance.

  "Yeah, it turns out the SCB has a file on them already. They're not the subject of an active investigation right now, but if we had more manpower, they probably would be. Super shady."

  "I already knew that."

  "Yeah, maybe, but did you know we've been maintaining an open file on them for years because people around them have a habit of turning up dead of snake bite?"

  Debi slowly set her coffee cup down. "That's pretty shady, all right."

  "It's not the kind of thing that gets flagged as a regular murder. Who ever heard of murder by snake? Outside of a few murder mystery novels, I guess. Even the SCB wasn't too sure. Once could be an accident. But we have three different cases in the last ten years from the Seattle area. That's a whole lot of deaths in a part of the state that doesn't have any native poisonous snakes."

  "Venomous," Debi corrected.

  "What?"

  "Poisonous means the snake itself is poison, venomous means—never mind. In what way are the victims associated with the Sperlins?" People involved in a bitter custody battle that the Sperlins want to win, say?

  Nia scrolled down her phone with flicks of her finger. "The earliest chronologically, though not the first one we found out about, was a small-time gangster named Kevin Tran, pretty much a hired gun. His body turned up in the sound about a decade back. Cause of death was hard to determine because, well, ocean, but they found enough snake venom in his system to have killed him. But like I said, this wasn't one we would've flagged if some intern hadn't been assigned to comb the city's death records for anything to do with snakes. There's no specific connection to the Sperlins except that they both moved around in Seattle's underworld, so they may have known each other. It's the snake venom that makes it suspicious."

  "What were the others?"

  "The one that got the SCB interested was a city council member who died a couple of years ago. He'd been blocking a development project the Sperlins were trying to push through." She read on her phone for a minute. "Investigators found a tropical animal tank in his office with snakes in it, and some snake books in his office. Both his wife and secretary said it must have been pretty new. They didn't know he had a tropical animal hobby or owned pet snakes at all. And these were exotic snakes. Most people don't keep pois—er—venomous snakes for pets, you know. It wasn't obviously shifter-related, but it was both high profile enough and just downright weird enough to get chucked into our in-basket. I mean, who ever heard of a guy in a Seattle office tower dying in his office of snake bite?"

  Debi tried not to think about Fletcher, in his downtown high-rise office. She knew how engrossed in his work he could get, and how often he worked late, alone. Would he even notice if a small brown snake, a slightly larger version of Olivia, slithered under his door, up his pants leg ...?

  Would Chloe really kill him to keep the company?

  Nia flicked to a new screen on her phone. "Anyway, it might've never gone any farther if someone in the office hadn't said, hey, wasn't there something in the news a little while back about a mobster bitten by a snake? Seems that about four years earlier, a Seattle underworld boss called Joey Molina died when a snake bit him. Now this is the sort of thing you can see happening—someone's got a grudge against the guy, sticks a deadly snake in his bed or smuggles it in a pile of paperwork. It's nasty, but it's the right sort of nasty for that line of work. Where the Sperlin connection comes in is that the Molina family pulled out of the real estate business entirely after that. They turned their focus to gambling, drugs, parts of the trade that the Sperlins aren't interested in."

  "It's very circumstantial, isn't it?"

  "It's totally circumstantial. That's why they're not a priority for us right now. There's nothing to directly tie the Sperlins to any of the deaths. Really, the only thing that even implies their involvement is that most of them are some variety of venomous snake, which obviously isn't something the regular authorities would know about. And they have a motive for the last two, but in Molina's case, so do about forty other people, and in the latter one, it's just bizarre; who decides to settle a legal dispute by killing a member of the city council?"

  Hopefully not the same kind of person who would decide to settle a legal dispute by killing their ex-husband, Debi thought. "Thanks for telling me. I guess it's good to know. I don't know what I can do—"

  "Do?" Nia said. "Stay away from them, is what you can do. As much as possible, I mean. And if you see anything suspicious, report it to me and I'll take it to the SCB."

  "Suspicious like how? A note reading 'Dear Diary, today I turned into a snake and bit a mobster to death'?" A new thought occurred to her. "If I find evidence on the Sperlins, would that help me get off the monitor?"

  "No!" Nia said, horrified. "No amateur sleuthing! Absolutely not! I'm going out on a very precarious limb giving you this information at all, and the only reason why I'm doing it is to make sure you stay away from the Sperlins. Anyway, about the monitor ..." A slow smile spread across her face. "You want some good news for a change?"

  Debi sat up straight, her gloom forgotten. "Is there good news?"

  "Don't get too excited. It's not a sure thing. But they're willing to schedule a review of your case."

  Debi felt lightheaded. "When? Where? What do I need to bring?"

  "Hold on." Nia swiped on her phone, pulling up information. "It won't be easy, Debi. They're going to want to make sure that you can be integrated back into society without direct SCB supervision. Their requirements, let's see ... First of all, you need to have steady employment and a place to stay—"

  "Which you know I've got," Debi said impatiently. "We've only talked about it every week since they put this stupid thing on my ankle."

  "Yes, I know you do. And your record since your arrest is absolutely clean. You don't even have so much as a speeding ticket."

  "I know! I've been working hard, Veliz." Her voice cracked. She really, really had.

  "I know, and I'll testify under oath to that. Which is the other requirement. They're going to hold a hearing for you, and they want at least two character witnesses who are willing to go on the record and testify that you don't pose a threat to the community if you're released on your own recognizance. Sponsors, if you will."

  "Sponsors?" Her mind went blank. Who in the world did she know who would be willing to do that for her? "You—you said you would?"

  "I would." Nia gave her an encouraging smile. "Who else do you know who might?"

  "I ... I don't know." Her employers? But she doubted it. She'd been a mediocre employee, she had to admit. She was good at her job, but between her drinking and her lack of motivation, she'd never gotten exceptional performance reviews. At times, it was all she could do to skate by without getting fired. And she had never made friends at the firm where she worked. It was strictly a job.

  As for her old friends from her previous life—if
they couldn't even be bothered to come and see her after she'd fallen from grace, there wasn't a chance they'd be willing to put their own reputations on the line for her.

  There was only one person she could think of who might be willing.

  "Could it be a human?" she asked hesitantly.

  "Sure, as long as they know what they're promising." Nia's voice dropped to a whisper. "They'd need to know you're a shifter and what happened to get you the ..." She tilted her head down to indicate the anklet.

  "Oh." She tried to imagine telling Fletcher everything. He already knew some of it. He knew she was a shifter, he knew she'd done something illegal ...

  She pictured herself looking into his eyes and telling him that her siblings were murderers and she'd helped them kill people. It was my instincts, she imagined herself saying. It was the pride. There's nothing more important for a lion shifter than their pride. My alpha ordered me to. I didn't have a choice.

  A human wouldn't understand those things.

  No ...

  It wasn't about Fletcher being human, she thought, looking up and across the table into Nia's guileless eyes. It wasn't that Fletcher wouldn't understand, it was that he would understand all too well, as Debi herself was coming to understand, that what she and her pride had done was truly, unforgivably wrong.

  "Who are you thinking of?" Nia asked, and Debi jerked out of her reverie. "Is it Fletcher Briggs? It is, isn't it." She grinned. "He knows you're a shifter?"

  "Yeah," Debi muttered.

  "In less than a week? Wow. What about the monitor, did you ever tell him about it?"

  Debi nodded haltingly.

  "So you've already trusted him with your two biggest secrets. Debi, ask him."

  "Why would he go out on a limb to help me?" Debi snapped.

  She wasn't expecting Nia's face to crumple with sudden sorrow. "Because you're worth it. If he can't see that, then he's not the guy for you."

  "What is the matter with you?" Debi burst out. Nia blinked at her, wide-eyed with surprise. "You're my parole officer. You literally know every bad thing I've done. And yet you keep—you keep telling me I can change, and believing in me, and—I just want to know why. I've never given you any reason to like me or think I can change, and yet you do. Why?"