by Amelia Jade
“Wasn’t that hard. You kind of told me where to go,” he joked.
Miss Jones smiled, a genuine look that made Ajax’s heart thump an extra time or two as it sought to reestablish its normal rhythm. Licking suddenly dry lips, he allowed himself to be distracted as Mel reemerged from behind the counter with a mug and plate on a tray. He set it down in front of the woman with a flourish.
“You know me too well Mel,” she said in what was clearly a well-used line.
“It’s always good to see you,” Mel replied, before bustling back into the kitchen in an obvious attempt to give them privacy.
“Nice guy,” Ajax said with a nod to the kitchen door.
“Mel’s great,” she agreed between mouthfuls of the donut on her plate. It disappeared quickly and she took a swig of her coffee. “Okay, I feel alive now.”
He arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“So, Ajax,” she said after a minute. “Why do you want to know about Benjamin?”
“I told you why. A mutual friend is concerned about his lack of response, and was unable to come check it out himself. I was going on vacation here anyway, so he asked me to go to a couple of places and look into his disappearance.”
“Mmm,” she replied. “And you’re a…bear shifter?”
He smiled. “And your name is?” he said in response, ignoring her question.
“Bear, wolf, whatever. No matter,” she said, pushing her glasses back up her nose as she all but examined him.
Ajax laughed. “Oh come on now, Miss Jones. Please, don’t make me call you that constantly. A first name isn’t going to divulge any more about you.”
She hesitated, thinking something over internally, before she finally answered. “Arianna.”
“Arianna,” he repeated slowly, letting it roll off his tongue.
“Don’t say it like that,” she said firmly.
He frowned. “Like what?”
“Like that. You know, slowly and softly like.”
Ajax looked around the shop, trying to understand what she meant. “Okay,” he said at last, admitting defeat. He hadn’t meant anything by repeating her name, but if it made her uncomfortable, he could humor her. “So, you’re done work now?” he asked instead of any of the number of other things he wished to ask.
She nodded, taking another sip of her coffee. “Yeah.”
“But you weren’t at work when we met earlier?”
“No,” she said, finishing her donut.
He sighed. “So what, exactly, were you doing there then?” he prompted when Arianna declined to go into detail.
“Following up a lead.”
Ajax waited for her to say more, but nothing came. He worked his jaw, trying to keep his temper down and remain calm.
“Why are you so reluctant to give me any details unless I all but pry them from you?” he asked, changing tactics.
Arianna looked at him for a moment, then her eyes focused out the window, canvassing the neighborhood. He thought about asking again, wondering if she had just ignored him. But before he could, her attention swiveled back to focus on him again.
“When you grow up around here,” she said with a wave of her hand out the window, “you quickly learn not to trust anyone, and that information can be a priceless thing.” Her ponytail swished with the movement, drawing his attention away as she readjusted her glasses.
“Does that ever get annoying?” he asked, motioning to her glasses. They had to be a size too big, which was why they kept falling down.
“A little,” she admitted sheepishly. “But I can’t afford a smaller size.”
“Ah.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, so he went back to the original topic. “So work, not work?” he prodded.
Arianna exhaled loudly. “Right. I was on my lunch break.”
“What exactly is it that you do?” he was still confused over the whole thing. Was she a friend of Benjamin, or...?
“I work for a website devoted to exposing the things the government doesn’t want you to know actually happened, or that they want you to think someone else caused, when it was actually them.”
“I see,” he said slowly. “So you’re a conspiracy theorist?”
She shrugged.
“What is the theory about Benjamin?” he asked, his eyes watching as she tightened her ponytail.
“Mine, or my boss’s?” she grumped.
“Yours,” he said gently. “You’re the one that seemed to care.”
“My boss doesn’t think it’s anything,” she explained. “That’s why I wasn’t supposed to be there, and why I had to take off on you in a rush. What I think happened is that he was abducted, taken, whatever you want to call it.”
“By whom?” Ajax wanted to be surprised, but the way Valen had approached him about this, he wasn’t.
“An organization. I don’t know if they’re government or independent—that one’s still up in the air. But in my line of work, I hear a lot of wacky stuff,” she said with an exasperation that told him she didn’t want to go into it. “Lately I’ve been hearing several rumors of a new group targeting a specific segment.”
“What segment is that?” he asked lazily, beginning to feel like he had gotten himself into some sort of nuthouse.
“Shifters,” she said, utterly serious.
That got his attention. Whether he wanted to believe or not, if someone was after shifters and could just make them disappear, that was news. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time the shifter community had heard of such a thing either. But nobody had any sort of proof. It was all just whispers.
“Do you have any proof of this?” he asked sharply, leaning in intently.
Arianna gave him a dry look. “If anything that I found or wrote about had proof, do you think I’d be living here or driving the piece of shit you helped fix earlier?”
Before he realized it, Ajax found himself laughing. She had spirit, this one. He liked that. Not willing to back down to anyone, not him, not her boss. If she thought she was on to something, she would go after it. He admired that. “Fair enough,” he acquiesced, getting himself under control. “But you must have something. How did you come to that conclusion?”
She shrugged. “There was a post on a conspiracy theorist forum that said this agency was moving into King City, setting up shop. Shifters started going missing.”
Ajax narrowed his eyes. “Plural?”
“Yes. So far I have four confirmed missing shifters in the span of two months.”
He sat back. “In a city this size? That doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I know,” she agreed. “But each of them just disappeared into thin air. No one knows where they went. No bodies have been recovered. Nothing. Usually there’s one of the two.”
“That seems a little farfetched, don’t you think?”
“I deal in farfetched,” she told him. “That’s how I make my living, meager as it may be.”
“Right.” Ajax sat back. What was he doing? This isn’t what he had signed up for. He was supposed to be relaxing, seeing the city, and generally living without worry for a few weeks. Yet here he was instead, getting himself neck-deep in some sort of conspiracy mystery about missing shifters and shadow organizations.
Which made the next words that came out of his mouth even more incredible. “So, what’s next? What else do you know? Any other leads?”
Arianna dipped her head in what looked like defeat. “No. The pub was my last lead.”
He frowned. He didn’t like seeing her like that. His hand dug into his pocket. “What about this?” he asked, unfolding the piece of paper and pushing it across to her. “Have you been to these places?”
She speared the paper with her index finger, then used her middle finger to spin the paper in place until it was oriented for her to read.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm what?” he asked more eagerly than planned. “Hmm good? Hmm bad?”
Whoa. Simmer down and relax. Ajax shook his head, tryi
ng to bring himself under control. This was not like him. He was usually much more in charge of his brain than this. Did he truly want to know what she was thinking? If he found out, it would mean he was drawing himself more and more into the middle of things.
He realized Arianna was looking at him as his attention focused back on the piece of paper between them.
“Hmm neither,” she said at last, giving him a weird glance. “More like, hmm weird.”
Instead of speaking, he gestured for her to continue.
“We both went to the pub. I’ve been here and here,” she said, pointing at two other names on the list. “They’re all dumps, like the pub. But this,” she said, tapping third line down. “This is interesting.”
The line simply read Route Fifty.
“Yeah, I was meaning to find out what the heck that was. I looked it up, and there is no Route Fifty anywhere near King City.”
Arianna smiled. “It’s not a road, silly. It’s a club. And that’s what’s so weird.”
“What?” He was confused, and she was dragging it out now, enjoying taunting him with the information.
She flashed him a grin, exposing her teeth. “It’s not a dive club,” she said at last, having teased him enough. “It’s the complete opposite. Upscale, high end, very swanky type of place. Where did you get this list again?” she asked.
“From the mutual friend who asked me to look for Benjamin. He said to try these places. I guess they were the ones that Benjamin mentioned in his communications. I’m not really sure; I hadn’t expected to get so involved in this, so I didn’t ask.” He frowned, angry at himself for letting his own personal desires get in the way of doing what was right. “Apparently I should have,” he finished.
Arianna shook him off. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
He nodded. “Okay, well, shall we head over there then?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “We?”
Ajax made a show of looking around the coffee shop, which clearly had nobody else in it. “Yep,” he said jovially after a moment.
“That is not a place for me,” she said, shaking her head constantly.
“It’s a lead!” His fist hit the table, causing her coffee cup to jump slightly. “Come on, we need to go check it out.”
Arianna bit her lip as she thought about it, her gaze focusing somewhere he couldn’t see. “Why don’t you just go and take a look?” she asked nervously.
“Because I don’t know this city, or the people in it,” he explained. “Come on, let’s go check out this fancy place, see if we can’t bring them down a notch.” By this point, he had no idea what he was saying. He was just doing it to try and make her smile.
It worked, but the grin faded quickly. “Even if I did go, we can’t go tonight.”
“Um, why not?”
“Because it’s not the weekend. The odds are against anyone being there tonight who is ‘in the know.’ They’ll be there Friday and Saturday for sure though. I’m not going twice,” she stated firmly. “So tomorrow.”
Ajax shrugged. “Okay, tomorrow it is.”
Arianna did not seem impressed, but she nodded her agreement, moving to get up from her seat.
“So, what do I do during the day tomorrow while I wait? Is there anywhere to see?”
He kept the smile from his face as Arianna paused her movement, then slid back into the chair and began to tell him about King City.
Chapter Four
Arianna
Stacks of paper and file folders rose up around her like the walls of a castle.
Or a jail cell.
She didn’t want to be there. Not that day. Instead, she wished to be out following up the leads on this missing shifter case. But Dan, her boss, had said no rather emphatically several times now. He didn’t think there was anything to it, and that she was making it up. He said she needed to find something else, and that she should search the conspiracy forums and boards they knew about.
Looking around her at the dreary office, Arianna had a hard time believing that this was what her life had come to. A 4.0 GPA and an Honor’s Degree in Journalism had led her to this. Living in a shithole, working in a shithole, and going absolutely nowhere in life. She was going to be thirty next year. Thirty.
It wasn’t that she was unhappy with her lot in life. She enjoyed digging for leads and compiling stories. That was fun. She didn’t like the rundown apartment, falling asleep to gunshots, or the constant vehicular breakdowns. Those she could do without. Closing her eyes, she leaned back as far as the rickety desk chair would allow, careful not to put too much weight on the back of the seat, lest it break and send her tumbling to the floor. Again.
In the corner behind her an old fan whirred noisily, slowly moving the soupy air around in an attempt to keep her and her co-worker comfortable. It was unbearably hot that day, and they had no air conditioner of course. Not even a window to open. It was just the three of them: her, Dan the boss, and James, the IT and website guy. That was it. They were crammed into the little office space. There was a two-foot pathway from the door outside, down between their desks, and ending at the other door that led to Dan’s office.
Glancing up, she eyed the drooping ceiling tile above her desk, wondering if today would be the day that it fell out. They had an office bet going on to see when it would fall. After it did, they would be at an even amount of ceiling tiles versus empty spaces. She knew. She had counted it. Six times. That morning.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, pushing back her chair and forcing her way between her desk and the wall behind her until she could bang on Dan’s door.
“What the fuck do you want?” came the harried response from inside.
Dan always sounded like that. He was well into his fifties, and this was his life legacy. She knew he was tired and frustrated with life, but that he didn’t know what to do about it. He kept hoping they would break with the story of the century and make a killing from it. That was never going to happen, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him. He was an ass, but to her and James, he was their ass. Sort of.
“I want to talk,” she said as soon as she opened the door.
“Listen, Ari, dear, this had better not be about that damn shifter guy again,” he said. “I need you to find me something else. What about that alien spotted on the yacht in the harbor yesterday?”
“What?” she asked dully. That was a new one.
“What the hell do I pay you for?” he asked, slamming the phone down.
She hadn’t even realized he was on the phone. Had he just been holding it there?
“You pay me to find stories. I’m telling you, I’ve found you a story,” she persisted.
“You have nothing,” he told her. “You’ve been after me for a week now to do this, and you haven’t turned up a single fucking thing, besides the fact that this guy is missing. Missing people happen. It’s nothing.”
Arianna crossed her arms angrily. “Oh, is that so?”
“Yes, Arianna. That is ‘so.’ Now go find me something printable. I’m tired of this shifter nonsense. That was so ten years ago. These days people want more. Do you understand me?”
Squaring her shoulders, she stood her ground. “No, Dan. They don’t know what it’s about. Especially if there’s something to it.”
“But there isn’t a damn thing to it!” he yelled, his voice filling the tiny room, bouncing off the metal filing cabinets that filled the back wall.
“Can you two keep it down in there?” James said through the open door. “I’m trying to get some work done here.”
Dan snatched the paperweight off his desk and threw it through the door as close to James’s direction as he could.
His eyes narrowed immediately. “What? What did you do?”
“What if I told you that someone else from out of town had come looking for him?”
“That’s it?” he said, his expression of interest fading immediately as he sat upright in his chair, dismissing her with a wave.
“He’s another shifter.” She wasn’t budging. Not this time.
Her boss considered her for a moment. “You really think you’re on to something?”
She nodded firmly.
“Two days. You have two days, Ari. Bring me something, or you’re making up for the time on your own dime.”
“Done.” She didn’t even flinch at the deal. If there was any truth to this, she would make a good chunk of change from the revenue the story would bring her company. That was no small consideration. She had rent to pay.
“So what else do you have, besides this other guy showing up? Have you talked to him yet?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Apparently his friend, who was this missing guy’s friend, asked him to come take a look since he was on vacation to begin with.”
“That’s it?” Dan looked rather skeptical.
“Mostly. He gave him a list of places to check out. Most of them are dives, which is to be expected.”
“Most of them?”
She held back a smile. Dan was in it now; he’d taken the bait. She knew he was seeing what she was seeing. They were on to something.
“Yeah. All but one. Route Fifty.”
Dan whistled. “That is a little different. When are you going there?”
“Tonight,” she said. “Once anyone who’s anyone will be there.”
The bad toupee seated atop Dan’s head bobbed slightly as he nodded his head in agreement. “Good work. Very good work.” His eyes looked her up and down. “You do have something better than that to wear, don’t you, Ari?”
She gritted her teeth. She didn’t mind being called Ari, but he always did it like he was talking down to her, and it drove her nuts.
“Something wrong with my outfit?” she asked, looking at the clothes she was wearing.
“You don’t go to a place like Route Fifty wearing a rumpled T-shirt, pants with stains on them, and whatever those things are,” he said with a wave at her sneakers.
“Sure I do,” she said. “I’m not dressing up for anyone.”
Rolling her eyes as Dan began to go on a tirade of dressing the part, she turned and left the office.
