Mate’s Harvest: Bear Sheriff III

by Becca Fanning

  “She’s compiling a list of everything these people have ever done,” Angie said, amazed. “She’d never mentioned anything like this.”

  Marcus had picked up a few folders and quickly leafed through them. He looked disappointed.

  “Most of them are mostly empty,” he said, tossing the folders back onto the table in defeat. “They won’t help us at all.”

  Angie realized he was right. It was a start, but there simply wasn’t enough information here to help them at all.

  “Janey Finch,” Angie read, grabbing one of the envelopes at random. “Teacher of the Year Award, 2008, Appleton High.” She tossed it back just as Marcus had done. “How does this help us? There’s just not enough here.”

  But even that little information was better than some of the files on others in the town. Some didn’t even have a picture, just a piece of scratch paper with a name on it.

  “We need something more,” Marcus said. Angie leaned back and watched him. Now that he was on a case – doing what he loved – all self-doubt seemed to have faded away. She just hoped it would be enough for him to stay this way permanently. Angie watched him in silence for a few moments.

  “I’m going to go get us some coffee and breakfast,” Angie said, rising to her feet. She was tired – but some food would help them out. “We have a lot to think on and we need our energy.”

  “Be careful,” Marcus said, engrossed in the papers. He was flipping through them, reading them, and then picking up others. He looked up at her and kissed her on the lips, then he was back looking through pictures.

  This was the man I fell in love with. He’s still the same man – but it hasn’t been easy for him.

  She grabbed the keys to the car and headed outside. The sun was already blazing hot, yet the air was humid – she thought it might bring another storm. She knew it didn’t often rain in Arizona. Something felt ominous, as if her entire stay in Charming had brought nothing but bad luck.

  But it brought me Marcus. That’s the important thing. And it brought us a child.

  She climbed in the car and turned it on, yawning as she did so. She was tired. She’d slept well, but her and Marcus’s sexual escapades had lasted well into the night. She smiled and backed up, turning around in the driveway and driving off.

  She glanced in the mirror and screamed.

  There was someone in the back seat. He looked strangely familiar and he reached a hand up and clamped it around her mouth. She felt a knife at her throat. She had flashbacks to when the FBI Shifters had ran her off the road, drugged her, and kidnapped and tortured her.

  “Drive,” the voice ordered. Angie recognized a man’s voice – it sounded vaguely familiar, it was someone she’d met at some point in her time in Charming – and drove.

  But she wasn’t going to go down easy. She wasn’t going to drive to his hideout where he’d kill her or skin her or harm their baby.

  She floored the car, yanking the wheel hard left and aimed straight at the barn. The killer never had time to yell or drive the knife deeper. The car crashed into the barn with a roar of breaking wood, screeching metal, and her yells. The airbag deployed, blocking her vision, the barn fell around the car and darkness descended on them.

  She was alive.

  The killer was in the back seat but the knife was in the front seat. She reached down and grabbed it, turning around, but he was pushing the door open and running. Somehow he forced his way through the partially collapsed barn. Angie tried her door but found it blocked. She climbed over the seat, falling into the back seat, and went to pursue him. But when she finally stepped out of the rubble, the man was nowhere to be seen.

  She half expected to see Marcus sprinting somewhere, sprinting after him, but he was nowhere to be seen, either. She looked around. The killer was gone – but he hadn’t managed to kidnap her. She leaned up against the barn and breathed a sigh of relief. It groaned in protest, so she quickly made her way inside, limping ever so slightly.

  “Forget your money?” Marcus asked without taking his eyes off the paperwork.

  “He was here, Marcus,” Angie said. At those words, he looked towards her – horror dawning on his face.

  “Oh my God,” he yelled, leaping to his feet. The chair fell over as he rushed to her, running his hands all around her. “Angie, what happened?”

  “He was in the back seat, Marcus,” Angie said, shaking. “He put a knife to my throat and told me to drive. Sorry about your barn.”

  Marcus glanced out the window and saw his barn but turned his attention back to her. “But you’re okay?”

  “He ran, after I stopped him. Here’s his knife,” she said. She handed it over.

  He took it and looked at it carefully. “He’s gone?”

  “Gone.”

  They made their way outside to the barn. Marcus pulled some boards out of the way and leaned in to the car, surveying it. Angie watched, looking around them to make sure the killer wasn’t coming back. She had a feeling he wouldn’t be. He’d failed – possibly for the first time in his life – and he wouldn’t want to be caught again.

  Marcus came back to her. He looked more confused, more troubled than she’d ever seen him.

  “Marcus, what’s wrong?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What doesn’t?”

  He looked at her, unsure if he should tell her.

  “Marcus?” she asked, prodding him.

  “I can only pick up one person’s scent in the car,” he told her, shaking his head. “It was Branson. But that can’t be possible. He’s dead.”

  And Angie finally recognized the face she’d seen in the rearview mirror. It had been Branson she’d been looking at.

  “It’s who I saw in the mirror…” Angie said.

  But that doesn’t make sense. He’s dead. I saw his dead body. He can’t be back from the dead.

  Right?

  * * *

  “He skinned him and wore him,” Angie said. Her voice was as aghast as Marcus felt. They’d known the killer was sick, twisted, demented – but this was something else entirely. “Why? What could possess someone to do that?”

  Marcus didn’t have any answers.

  “I can go after him,” Marcus growled, turning from the destroyed barn, the crushed car, and Angie herself. He felt her hand on his arm. Turning slightly, he looked at her. She looked scared.

  “Marcus,” she said. “Don’t leave me again. Please.”

  He nodded. Every instinct to find the serial killer told him to run – chase the man down, catch Branson’s scent, find the man and kill him – but he’d be leaving Angie behind. He thought of all of the bad things that happened when he tried to do things himself.

  “We stick together,” he confirmed. “Let’s get you inside.”

  They made their way up to the house, Angie leaning heavily on Marcus. She was scared and tired. Marcus couldn’t blame her.

  “I’m going to go relax in the bath,” Angie told him. He nodded; he knew she needed to gain composure. She needed the peace and quiet. He kissed her lightly on the forehead.

  “I’ll be right out here,” he assured her. “All you have to do is yell.”

  Marcus watched Angie go into the living room, then he heard the familiar sound of the faucet running in the bathroom. He sat down heavily at the table. The papers he’d been searching through before the attack were still laid out in front of him.

  What’s he getting at? Attacking Angie like that? Is he after her, or is he trying to teach me a lesson?

  Or is it our child?

  That thought simultaneously chilled him to the bone and made his anger flare up inside of him unlike anything else he’d ever felt before.

  He looked back down at the notes he’d stolen from Joanna Rivers’s house.

  Joanna. She’s dead.

  He felt strangely hollow at that thought. He didn’t know if it was because he didn’t care any longer or that he simply didn’t have time. The killer was still out the
re. He couldn’t waste any time dwelling on what had already happened; the only thing that mattered was the future.

  Is that how you really think? Or will you just not let yourself feel any longer?

  Marcus grabbed the page that said Angie Campbell and crumbled it up in anger, then through it across the kitchen. He couldn’t believe that Joanna Rivers could conceivably think it was Angie who was doing these murders.

  Nothing felt right any longer. People were dying. He couldn’t stop it.

  And why don’t I mourn for these people? Joanna Rivers was a friend, an ally – no matter what happened. And I haven’t even batted any eye.

  But I can make sure her death wasn’t in vain.

  He looked down at the pages again, the words running together. He recognized most of the names. But the information listed was incomplete, the research barely begun. It was just the start of something he knew he could work: a case.

  Marcus didn’t know how Joanna had found all of this information, though he was thankful that she’d somehow gotten it.

  And I’ll make the most of it.

  There wasn’t much he could do now but wait. He wouldn’t abandon Angie again. So he sat for nearly half an hour, ruffling through pages, nothing popping out at him. He needed to get into the Sheriff’s Department database, though he had no way of doing that.

  He heard Angie walking through the house behind him, going to the bedroom. He went down the second hallway and caught her just as she was going into the bedroom, a towel wrapped tightly around her. She gave him an apprehensive look.

  “We need to break into the Sheriff’s Department,” he said.

  “What?” she asked, obviously dumbfounded. “You? That’s against the law.”

  She didn’t say it to reprimand him; she said it in a way that told him she truly was shocked.

  “We have to, Angie,” he said. They went into the bedroom. He sat her down at the bed and said, “We have to get in. I can go through the Sheriff’s database. It pulls files from everywhere. We can make heads or tails of this information that Joanna found. Pull rap sheets. Arrest records, warrants, any sort of mention to these people and where they’ve been or what they’ve done.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It is. The database isn’t perfect – but it’ll give us a start. We can begin clearing names, cross referencing data about these people. Then we’ll compare that information to what we know about the townspeople.”

  “That’s not what I was talking about. You think we can just break in to the Sheriff’s Department?”

  “West and the others did.”

  “West and the others are dead,” Angie said, getting to her feet and going to the closet. “And that was a different time.”

  “Different because I’m not around?”

  “Different because of what’s going on, Marcus! Things have changed! The murderer is out there. He’s working against us, against Nixon and the others. They’re not going to just sit back and relax while we do a little digging.”

  “So we’ll just have to make a distraction.”

  Angie dropped the towel and pulled on some clothes. Marcus hardly noticed; he was too busy trying to figure out just what kind of distraction they could make. If they could just get the officers to leave the building for ten or twenty minutes, he figured he could get in and search the database.

  “All we have to do is put in another call about a murder. You saw the turnout out at the old grain elevator,” Marcus said, talking fast. “There’s an old payphone down Main Street that’s still hooked up. We can use that to call it in.

  “There’s a few old farms south of town, far enough away from Charming that it’ll take them at least ten minutes to get out there. It’s too far from Haven, so they won’t get on the scene first. Another ten minutes to search the area and realize it’s a bust, ten to get back into town – maybe five, if they figure out what’s going on.

  “That list has maybe twenty people on it. Twenty people that we need to check out. I can print off everything we need about them and be out in twenty minutes, tops.”

  “Marcus, you can’t just login anymore. And you’re not a hacker – not that I know of.”

  “I have an idea,” Marcus said, grinning. “Just leave that to me.”

  Angie sighed and put a shirt over her head.

  “This is insane, Marcus.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And it’s not like you at all.”

  “I know.”

  She rubbed her eyes and said, “It’s dangerous. Do you know what will happen if they catch us. Catch you?”

  He nodded.

  “They’ll lock you up, Marcus. Throw away the key. It won’t matter that you’ve been a man of the law. They won’t see it that way. They won’t even care that the killer is still out there and you’re doing everything you can to stop it. They’re not going to see it that way.”

  “I know,” he repeated.

  “So we can’t get caught.”

  “We won’t.”

  “Fine,” she sighed again and threw up her hands. “I was hoping we could do this by the books, but there’s really no other way, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” Angie said and smiled. “I’m in. Though let it be noted – I don’t entirely agree with this, but if it’s what keeps us safe and stops this killer from hurting anyone else, then I’m in.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said, wrapping his big arms around her and pulling her close. It just felt good to have her this close, wrapped in his arms, agreeing with his plan.

  And it is insane. Have I changed? Or is it just the circumstances? Months ago – weeks ago, days ago maybe – I would never have considered breaking the law like this. Breaking into houses, threatening others. And now I’m going to go break into the Sheriff’s Department. I’m going to call in a fake crime, wasting valuable resources searching for the killer. I’m going to do things I never imagined I could bring myself to do.

  Let’s hope it’s all worth it. Because if it’s not… I’ll be changed forever. Irredeemable.

  What if I am, even if this does work? Will I have gone too far?

  They stood there for a few moments, time slowed down, almost as if they were on a precipice. If Marcus leaned one way, he felt they would fall. And if he leaned the other…

  “So. When are we doing this? Now?” Angie looked up at the dusty clock hanging on the wall. It wasn’t even noon yet.

  “We’d better wait until this evening. When most of the officers are either off duty or away from the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Looks like we have a little time to burn,” Angie said. “Maybe we could put it to good use.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Marcus asked, one eyebrow raised.

  Angie laughed lightly. There was something there, something carefree and happy – Marcus wasn’t sure just how she’d managed to summon that up with everything else going on – but he felt himself smile with her.

  “First,” Angie said, holding up one finger and backing away from Marcus. He felt like she was getting ready to tell him to do exactly what she wanted – and he felt he liked it. “First, you’re going to go hop in the shower. You’re going to take a nice, long, hot bath, and you’re going to relax.

  “Second, you’re going to come out here and find your best set of clothes – then you’re going to dress up in them.”

  “Oh, I am?”

  “You are, Mr. Stone,” she said with a smile. She held up three fingers. “Third, you’re going to take me out to a movie and dinner in Haven, and for a few hours we’re going to forget about everything that’s happening around here. We’re going to forget about the killer, we’re going to forget about all of the sadness and worry and everything wrong. We’re going to enjoy each other’s company. I’m going to enjoy a nice, expensive dinner and being treated like a princess.”

  Marcus didn’t know how Angie could think about all of this stuff now – but he found himself thinking that i
t was a good idea. When was the last time they’d just had time to themselves? Time to relax and enjoy their company together? Truthfully, he couldn’t remember a time where they were just happy.

  “Okay,” Marcus said. “I like the sound of that.”

  “And finally,” Angie said, holding up four fingers. “You’re going to bring me home, and you’re going to make love to me. Just like we both deserve. Then we’ll spend the night in each other’s arms until it’s time to go in and do what has to be done. But until then, we’ll be together, and we’ll be happy, and we won’t worry about anything.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said, leaning down and kissing her.

  “Now get out of here and hop in the shower,” Angie told him. “I’m already getting impatient.”

  Marcus smiled and felt her hands pushing against his chest, pushing him back out of the bedroom and across the living room and finally into the bathroom. He walked backwards the entire time, mesmerized by just how beautiful Angie truly was. Even in the worst of times, she somehow managed to pull him up. He didn’t know how she did it.

  But he loved it, and he loved her, and he loved everything about her.

  She kissed him on the lips again and then shut the door behind him. Marcus stood still for a few moments and then he decided to get ready for their date.

  Chapter 16

  “Well, that wasn’t that good,” Angie said. Marcus shook his head. “Nice theater, though. Too bad it’s all the way in Haven.”

  Marcus raised an eyebrow and said, “Don’t get any ideas. Charming doesn’t need a movie theater.”

  Angie and Marcus had just left the movie theater. They were walking across the parking lot, Angie’s hands wrapped tightly around Marcus’s arm, her head leaning on his shoulder.

  “I know, I know,” she assured him. “It was nice. Popcorn, gigantic drinks.”