The Alpha Meets His Match

by Georgette St. Clair

  Now the trick was going to be getting to him before everybody else did.

  She’d find a way, no matter what it took.

  “So, I guess the theory is he went to San Francisco, ran into Oliver, saw how much Oliver looked like him, probably chatted with Oliver and realized that Oliver was new in town and estranged from his family…”Jax mused.

  “Exactly. Killed him, took over his identity, moved here to make a fresh start.”

  Jax glanced over at Bobbi. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She was struggling to maintain a calm demeanor, and she probably could have fooled most people, but Jax could read her moods. He was in tune with her in a way that nobody else was.

  “This guy…he’s hurt a lot of people. That’s all. Sometime the job gets to me.”

  Ugh. She was lying by omission, still. She hated to lie to Jax; it felt wrong and ugly.

  “Do you have any idea what happened with the second police detail that was supposed to be watching the back of the building?” she asked Captain Thorne, to change the subject.

  “I have my theories,” Captain Thorne said, brow wrinkling with anger. “I tried to inquire and was shut down immediately. You know the political pressure I’m under here. And you know how some people feel about this case.”

  Stanford Roosevelt. The name hovered unspoken in the air.

  “All right,” Bobbi said. “I appreciate everything that you’re doing for us. We’ll keep in touch.”

  * * *

  “So I’m fired?” Pixie crossed her arms indignantly. .

  “You are not listening to me. Did you see what that dead woman looked like? This case has gotten very dangerous. I don’t want you to end up looking like that.”

  “There’s still things I could do. I know drug dealers. I could ask them –“

  “Listen. I value your insight,” Bobbi said patiently. “I invited you here so you could brainstorm with us, but anything that involves you going out on your own and investigating…do you realize that it’s pure luck that you didn’t walk in on the people who killed Ashley? They’d have torn you apart.”

  “Fine. If you value my insight, ask me some questions.” Pixie looked disgruntled, but slightly mollified.

  They were sitting downstairs in Kenneth’s living room, which had the same astounding view of the ocean as his upstairs office. The living room was dominated by an l-shaped black leather sofa, and a big square matching ottoman. Abstract paintings adorned the walls. Tyler, Dominick, and Kenneth were there, with Dominick keeping a distrustful eye on Pixie.

  “Why are we meeting here, anyway?”

  “So we can pool all our resources, and because we can’t meet at my place because my apartment got trashed by a couple of psychopaths,” Jax said.

  Pixie’s eyes widened in alarm, and Bobbi added “By which he means, Jax and I.”

  “Wow!” Now she was staring at them with admiration. She turned to Jax. “Seriously. You must have some moves.” She turned back to Bobbi. “He might just be a keeper, if he stops drugging you and stealing your stuff, and let’s be real here, that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker if he’s that mackable. I mean, I’ve broken a bed before, but I’ve never trashed an entire apartment.”

  “Mackable? Don’t tell me! Get your mind out of the gutter. Seriously, what is wrong with you? It happened because we were arguing.” Bobbi felt her cheeks heating with embarrassment. Everyone in the room was looking at her and Jax now.

  “Of course it did.” Pixie raised an eyebrow. “So, are we going to get details?”

  “Actually I think you were just about to share your valuable insight as a member of the downwardly mobile, chemically enhanced, legally disenfranchised economic subset,” Bobbi said. “So. Imagine you’re Tony or whatever his name is, you’re a drug dealer who sold a bad batch of drugs and has to skip town. Soon cops are going to know your identity. Cops are going to be looking for you at every airport, every bus and train station. There’s a risk that all of your known associates, everywhere in the country. What do you do?”

  “As far as we know, he’s still got that batch of drugs, right? Those things that fetched him five hundred bucks a pop?” Pixie pointed out. “And nobody knows that sometimes, the drugs will make you crazy – at least none of his potential buyers know.”

  Bobbi nodded. “Okay. Good. He’s carrying around a potential fortune and he needs to get out of town fast. He could even give someone a sample and let them test it out. It would have to be something that heightens pleasure immediately, for Aurora to be able to be selling it at the club. And then it takes several days to make the users go rabid. So – he could give a buyer a sample, convince them to buy it, and then take the cash to go somewhere else and start over. He could buy himself a new face and a new identity.” Her stomach twisted at the thought. Tony couldn’t go free. “I’ll pass that on to the Enforcer’s council and the police.”

  “That was good,” Kenneth said. “So, now imagine that you’re Aurora.”

  “She’s lived in this area all her life,” Tyler jumped in. “I don’t think she’d go far. She’s not Tony, who’s a felon and a murderer, and who’s lived all over. She’s not sophisticated. She saw an opportunity to make some quick money, and she took it. She might even be booked in a hotel in town, waiting her next move.”

  “Well, she probably gets a lot of cash tips from the club. We can start checking around at hotels to see if anyone looking like her registered at the club…but if she’s in some fleabag motel paying with cash and using a fake name, maybe even a disguise…” Bobbi frowned. “There’s thousands of motels or hotels she could be staying at.”

  “We could just look for credit card and debit card use,” Tyler said, and began typing into his computer.

  “Come on, how stupid do you think she is?” Bobbi frowned.

  “Pretty stupid,” Jax said. “From personal experience.”

  “Really?” Bobbi speared him with a glance. “How personal was this experience?”

  He ran his fingers down her arm. “That was in the past.”

  Kenneth looked at Jax and raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not seeing anything,” Tyler said.

  “How about Ashley’s credit or debit cards?” Pixie asked. “Not that I’m an expert on using stolen cards or anything, but…if Aurora saw those guys coming for her, she could have grabbed Ashley’s purse and run out the door with it.”

  “And left her friend behind to die? Charming.” Bobbi winced at the thought.

  “Bingo,” Tyler said. “We have a winner. The dead Ashley Poncini apparently booked a hotel an hour ago on 453 Biltmoore Avenue.”

  Bobbi was already dialing the police. “Sweet!”

  After she talked to Captain Thorne, she stood up. “The police are going to pick up Aurora at the hotel. I have to make a phone call to my boss and run some errands, and I’ll call Captain Thorne later to see what they find out from Aurora. I’ll call you back in a few hours,” she said to Jax. She glanced at Pixie. “I’ll drop you off at your place.”

  Pixie had found a room to rent in a weekly hotel, with the money Bobbi was paying her to be an informant.

  Once Bobbi had dropped her off, she grabbed her phone to dial Renee’s number, but before she could, the phone rang. She grimaced; it was Vaughn.

  “Hello,” she answered reluctantly, picturing Pixie’s face.

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me up with the name of the chemist?”

  So he clearly, definitely, had an inside man at the police station.

  “I was about to,” she lied.

  “I get the feeling you’re lying to me, Bobbi. One word from me, and your brother’s guts are spilling out on the floor.” Vaughn’s voice crackled with rage.

  She heard an odd moaning, whimpering sound in the background. It sounded like a woman sobbing hopelessly. Her stomach twisted; if she could have crawled through the phone and ripped Vaughn’s throat out with her fangs, she would have.

/>   “If you kill my brother, you lose your only hold on me,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  “I bet the Enforcers would love to know that you’ve been a double agent for me, all this time,” he sneered.

  “If you do that, then you’d have to implicate yourself as well. I have to go, Vaughn. I will let you know when there are any new developments in the case.”

  She hung up quickly before she said anything that she’d regret, anything that might get Heath killed. She was so angry that her hands were shaking.

  * * *

  Kenneth turned to Jax. “So. You’re actually serious about this girl?”

  “Maybe,” Jax said defensively.

  “Hmmm.” Kenneth leaned back in his chair, smirking. “Maybe doesn’t sound so serious. I gather it’s all right for me to date her too, then?”

  The words had barely left his lips when Jax leaped across the room in wolf form, only to meet Kenneth’s panther. The two circled each other, snarling and snapping, before Kenneth abruptly turned human again, standing naked and laughing in his living room.

  Growling, Jax followed suit, becoming human again.

  Kenneth’s servant, Edgar, had been standing by. He looked at the naked shifters and their shredded clothing scattered across the floor. “I’ll fetch you some clothing, then,” he said in his disapproving Alfred-the-butler voice.

  “Thank you, Edgar. That doesn’t sound ‘maybe’ to me,” Kenneth said to Jax, laughing. “You’ve never been jealous of a woman before. If anything, you’ve offered to share your women with me, usually before I get a chance to ask. Would you like to rethink your story?”

  “Fine,” Jax gritted out. “If anyone comes near her, I’ll tear their face off with my teeth. She’s mine. I’ve asked her to stay with me.”

  “Your fated mate?” Dominick asked him.

  “Could be,” Jax admitted reluctantly.

  “Well, I’m glad to tell you that I didn’t find anything too bad in her history,” Kenneth said.

  “I forgot I asked you to investigate her. I should probably respect her privacy,” Jax said, although part of him was itching to know. He wanted it to come from her, though. He wanted her to want to share with him, to tell him everything. He wanted to be a part of her. And he was beginning to think he’d be willing to do the same with her, as painful as his past was.

  “It’s not a big deal. Only child. Parents were killed when she was 8. She apparently ran away from her foster home and an investigation showed that her foster father had attempted to abuse her. She didn’t resurface again until she was 14, when she was taken in by a new foster couple, and lived with them until she was 18. Minor scrapes with the law for a few years until she straightened her act out and became an Enforcer at age 21. Citations for bravery in the field, for saving a fellow Enforcer’s life. Never married, no children, no current known romantic entanglements.”

  An only child. Odd, he thought.

  “So…her foster parents, they had a bunch of other kids?” Jax asked.

  “Well, not at the time that she was living with them. It was her and one other younger sister. Why?”

  Jax frowned. It was strange that she’d lie to him about having five older brothers…and when he’d asked her about them, she’d tensed up and said they’d grown apart. Why would she make something like that up?

  “What?” Kenneth asked him.

  Jax shook his head, not wanting to betray Bobbi…but how well did he really know her?

  His heart told him that she was a good person, that she wasn’t deliberately lying to him about what mattered the most - that she wanted to be with him.

  But still…

  “Jax, I’m your friend. Before you become too deeply entangled with this woman, you should make sure she’s on the level with you,” Kenneth said. “What’s bothering you?”

  “It’s…It’s not a big deal. When I first met her, she mentioned that she had five older brothers,” Jax sad reluctantly. “Later, when I tried to ask her about them, she changed the subject. I don’t know. She doesn’t like to talk about her family.”

  A sudden low growl from Dominick, made Jax start. Jax turned to see that Dominick was scowling, his eyes glowing golden. “I could follow her for you,” he offered.

  “No, thank you,” Jax said, surprised at the offer. “For one thing, I guarantee you she’d spot you. She’s good that way. And besides, she’s staying with me now – I know where she is most of the time. And if what you’re suggesting is that she might be cheating on me, I’d scent any other man on her.”

  “I can look into it,” Kenneth said. “The thing about her brothers.”

  Jax shook his head vigorously. “Don’t. Maybe it’s just something she’s insecure about, having no family. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “All right then. If you decide that you want to find out more, you know who to call.”

  Jax nodded, and headed out, with a deep sense of unease rumbling through him.

  As he was walking to his motorcycle, his phone rang. He grimaced. It was Reginald Ven Der Mere.

  Sighing, he answered the phone.

  “Reginald. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” he said. “We’ve been making really good progress. I-“

  “Did you assault a man in a bar and bend his rifle, and then threaten him?” Reginald’s voice rose higher and higher with every word, until it ended on a squeak.

  “What? Are you referring to the man who went into the woods with illegal silver bullets and shot at me while I was in human form and in wolf form?”

  “Did you, or did you not?”

  “The man who’s now being held without bail on charges of attempted murder of a shifter?”

  “The fact that you’re afraid to answer my question tells me all that I need to know.”

  “Afraid? Did you just refer to me as afraid?” Jax roared, his face bristling with wolf fur and fangs thrusting threw his gums. “Come down here and say that to my face, you little bastard!”

  “You have violated two very important terms of your contract,” Reginald said primly. “You threatened me with violence, and you have threatened violence against a human in a public place, and this is part of a pattern of behavior, mind you. We have sufficient information from our contacts at the Enforcer council and know the identity of the culprit in the Shifter Rage cases. You are officially removed from this case, with cause, and your services will no longer be required at Hammersmith, Incorporated. Your letter of termination will arriving by Federal Express.”

  He clicked the phone off before Jax threw the phone down with a roar of rage and stomped it to pieces.

  As he did, he saw Kenneth open his front door and look out.

  “What’s going on?” Kenneth called.

  Kenneth had a very good camera system watching the exterior of his house.

  Jax took a deep breath to calm himself as Kenneth walked over. His voice shook with anger as he related what had just happened.

  “Ridiculous. I’ll have my lawyers on it immediately.”

  “I can’t ask that of you,” Jax protested, his heart pounding a million miles a minute.

  “I have lawyers on retainer, twiddling their thumbs, looking for work to do. Lawyers with teeth like sharks. Literally. I have actually found that shark shifters make the best lawyers.”

  Jax couldn’t help laughing at that. “Maybe. I’d owe you one.”

  “I guarantee you I’ll collect.”

  Jax tried to keep his temper in check as he headed to the cell phone store to buy a new phone – third one that month, he was one of their best customers – and then went back to his apartment to start cleaning.

  Bobbi got home later that evening, and he tried really hard not to quiz her on what she’d said to her boss, or why she never wanted him in the room when she was calling her boss.

  “New couch?” she said. “Wow, this place looks…less trashed then before.”

  “Yeah, once I replace the kitchen table and ch
airs, bookshelves, and repair the claw marks on the walls…”

  “Man. We have the temper from hell, don’t we?”

  “We certainly do,” he nodded. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, burying his face in her hair. Her sweet scent set his senses on fire. He felt himself growing hard as she leaned into him.

  A tiny, treacherous part of him had worried that he’d smell another man on her. He didn’t. But who had she talked to on the phone when she’d left him?

  Tyler had told him that her phone had sophisticated security software that wiped all her calls as soon as she made them. Tyler had also told him that was fairly standard issue for members of the Enforcers Council.

  Still, the fact that she’d told him that one little lie was nagging at him. It was swelling inside him. The lie didn’t feel so little any more. What else had she lied about?

  She nuzzled her lips against his neck and he let out a groan of pleasure, but the lie still tugged at his consciousness

  “What’s bothering you, babe?” she breathed into his ear.

  He took a deep breath. He knew he was tense, and she could clearly sense it.

  “ Hammersmith fired me from the investigation today, because of the incident with the hunter at the bar.” That was only part of the reason he was tense, and he hated that now he was keeping things from her as well.

  But the alternative would be to tell her that he’d asked Kenneth to run a background check on her, and that he knew she’d lied about having older brothers. What if she got up and walked out on him?

  He couldn’t risk that happening, he realized. And it made him ill.

  “What? That’s baloney! They can’t do that to you!” she was outraged. She began fishing in her pocketbook for her phone.

  “No, don’t worry about it. Kenneth said he has lawyers on retainer who will look into it. Shark shifters.”

  Bobbi let out an incredulous laugh, but then she quickly grew serious again. “I can call my contacts at Enforcer headquarters.”