Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  Other biggest difference? A modern computer that wasn’t running Windows XP.

  Also, I actually got shot at here. I went from practically growing up on the streets to doing a couple tours over in Iraq. There, I was shot at every couple of days or an IED would go off. You lived life with maybe not your finger actually on the trigger, but pretty damned close to it. In LA? I think I drew my gun twice in the years I was there.

  Here? Well, it seemed like every time one of my co-workers fell in love, we were all running around waving our guns in the air or flashing our fangs in our wolf form.

  As I was heading back into my office, I heard Frank a couple doors down, talking to someone on the phone. “And she was asking about some girl?” A pause. “Oh, that girl. You don’t say.”

  I stopped, my ears metaphorically perking up. In a big city, the chances of the girl they were talking about being Elise would have been infinitesimal. Here, though? This was Enchanted Rock. As few people as there were in the county, it wasn’t impossible. Still, though, I didn’t want to get caught eavesdropping, especially on a buddy.

  I ducked into my office and slid around my desk, pretending to start on paperwork that didn’t exist. If he wanted to come to me, he would.

  A few minutes later, Frank knocked on my door. “Hey, Jake, just got off the horn with Ashley. Friend of yours, name of Elise something or other, just went into the shop asking about her missing kin? Turns out, you got a lead of sorts. I threw her out a couple months ago for trying to walk with some merchandise.”

  I gave him a look. “Couple months, huh?”

  “Yeah. Stole some of that God awful silver jewelry they sell like hotcakes, and–”

  “How’d that go?” I jumped in.

  He frowned at the memory. “Come on, man, you know I had to have Ashley take it from her.”

  “Before or after you burned your hand?”

  “You recall when my hand was bandaged for a few days right around Christmas?”

  I laughed, the memory clear in my mind. Shifters have an “allergy” to silver. No telling what it comes from, but it’s like acid on our skin.

  “Reckon you’re finished yet?” he asked as my laugh began to quiet down.

  I nodded. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Well, timing on this stuff apparently doesn’t match up. Ashley said the girl knew you, so she wanted you to know what was going on, too.”

  “She could’ve called, you know.”

  “She still thinks you don’t like her, Jake.”

  “Practically helped save her life, Frank! What other signs of affection do I need to show her? You want me buying your girl flowers or some shit?”

  He shrugged. “If you didn’t try and do that whole ‘I’m a bad-ass LA detective’ shit, she probably wouldn’t mind.”

  “Look, man, I was doing a crime scene investigation. I just wanted the facts before I heard her story, okay?” I stopped, frowned. “Like I should have with Elise.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, her sister Eve, girl that’s gone missing. Elise never mentioned she was a little klepto, or that she had any run-ins with the law. Had me all convinced she was some innocent little lamb lost in the woods. Of course, maybe I convinced myself that.”

  “Reckon she maybe didn’t know?”

  I shook my head as I sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Matters that I don’t like being lied to, especially when I’m trying to help. Facts and evidence, though, don’t lie. They just lie there. That’s why I look for them first.”

  He nodded. “Yep, I hear ya, pardner. Well, didn’t wanna kick over a hornet’s nest or anything, but thought you should know.”

  “Yeah, thanks. I appreciate you bringing it to me.”

  Frank patted my door almost apologetically before he stepped out of my office and left me alone with my thoughts.

  Eve. Runaway girl. Maybe on the run from the law, maybe not, but she definitely had a shadier side to her life. That opened a whole range of possible things that could have happened to her—pill mill mule, cocaine, running car. In as big of a transit hub as Colorado, anything could happen. Hell, we’d pushed a statewide biker gang out of the area almost by accident the summer before.

  Depending on how far she was willing to go with her little life of crime, there was no telling what she could be up to. I just hoped it wasn’t too bad.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  Chapter Six - Elise

  “You’ve got some explaining to do, Ms. Moon.”

  I gritted my teeth at the sound of his cop voice. “What the hell do you mean I have some explaining to do?” I growled back.

  We were standing outside The Elk, right at our appointment time. Jake had driven up in his old clunker of a truck and parked in the lot, which was nearly deserted except for one old Honda that looked like it had seen better centuries.

  I’d spent the last couple hours going from business to business, checking with as many employees as I could to see if anyone recognized her. I knew she’d been here twice in the last three months, and that was something to go on.

  The Elk was about what you’d expect in a crappy dive bar in a small tourist trap of a town. One look at the cinder block building and you knew it was only the locals who showed up here. And you knew they were just there for the cheap drinks, and not the nice digs.

  And now here was Jake, glaring at me from beneath that dark brow of his. “So, about your sister. Ashley from the Curious Turtle called her boyfriend, my co-worker, about Eve’s sticky-hand-syndrome. Mind telling me why you didn’t inform me she was a little fucking hoodlum?”

  “Hoodlum? Fuck you, Jake.” I crossed my arms in front of me. “Did I ask you to help find my sister? No, you fucking white knighted yourself into this shit. You asked if she had any problems with the law, and I told you she didn’t have a record. And that’s the truth as far as I knew.”

  “It’s not exactly the spirit of the matter, though, is it? What else aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing. You asked and I told you.”

  He looked at me long and hard. Finally, he shook his head.

  I threw my hands up. “Fine, Jake. Fine. You know what? I didn’t ask you to fucking help. All I was looking for this morning was a bench to sit down and eat. You paid for my damn breakfast and you offered your services helping me to find my sister. I don’t why you did, but you did. So if this changes things so much that you can’t help anymore, that’s just fine. I’ll just do this shit on my own. I really don’t need you.” I turned on my heel and started to head inside The Elk.

  “Look, okay,” he said to my back. “I believe you, Elise. Wait up.”

  I sighed in frustration and turned around. “Jake, you’ve gotta understand. This is my sister we’re talking about. I don’t like cops, you already know that. But you seemed different. I know I should have told you the truth, but I was raised not to tell the cops anything unless I absolutely had to.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked away, a frown creasing his lips. “Well, I’m not a cop. And I do still want to help your sister.”

  “Even if she’s a fucking hoodlum?” I crossed my arms.

  He looked down. “All of us have made mistakes. I mean, I wasn’t ever perfect or anything when I was a kid. Part of it, I guess, is that I just don’t like having people mislead me when I’m investigating. People start misleading me, I start to think they’re hiding shit.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not hiding anything, I promise.”

  He gave me a look.

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, not anything else. Yeah, Elise had a little bit of a problem where she’d rip off some stores when we were teenagers. But we were dirt poor, and she wanted better clothes than Mom and Pops could afford, okay? It’s not like she was sticking up liquor stores. And, yeah, she smoked some weed. But that’s legal up here now, right? But she never got into the hard stuff. Do you need to know her life history, t
oo, or are you good?”

  Jaw clenched, he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. But if anything else like this comes up, that’s it—I’m out. Got it?”

  I nodded. “Fair. You act like any more of a dick, and I’m kicking you to the curb.”

  “A dick? Really, you think I’m acting like a dick?” He looked at me incredulously.

  I sighed, not wanting to waste time arguing anymore. “Just shut up, Jake. Let’s go see what these people know, okay?”

  Together, we went inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust the change in lighting. Outside it had been bright and sunny, and here it was more like a bear’s cave. The smell of old cigarettes and cheap, stale beer hung in the air. It was more or less a shotgun bar, the kind that had a long bar running down one side, with a little bit of seating down the other. Liquor was lined up behind the counter.

  “Damn, Jake,” called the bartender from the other end of the room as he pulled down the last of the bar stools, “you’re in early. What’s the special occasion? Your girl break up with you or some shit?”

  “Funny, Roy.”

  I followed Jake as he made his way down to the barman. I glanced up at the stuffed elk on the wall, at the flickering neon beer signs that covered nearly every inch of space.

  “In here looking for a girl, see if you might have seen her.”

  “A girl, huh?” Roy asked, scratching a thick lumberjack sideburn all the way down to his fur-covered chin. “What’s she look like?”

  I fished my phone from my pocket and showed him the photo.

  He scratched his sideburn again and clucked his tongue. “Man, I dunno. How long ago was this that she might’ve been in here?”

  “Last few months,” I replied.

  “She looks kind of familiar, I suppose. But you know how it is with this place, Jake. We get mostly locals in here. Not a lot of out-of-towners, especially not pretty ones. Got a name for her?”

  “Eve,” Jake said. “Eve Moon.”

  “Eve?” Roy asked, shaking his head. “Can’t say as I recognize the name.” A moment later, though, he spoke. “Ya know, Kevin down at The Nugget, heard he was running around with some new girl from out of town. Evelyn or Evie or something. Might wanna check with him.”

  “Got a last name for Kevin?” Jake asked in perfect cop form.

  I snorted. Clearly he’d fallen right back into the old rhythm without skipping a beat.

  Roy just gave him a look of disbelief, then glanced at me like Jake was crazy. “Dude, you fucking know Kevin. He works Thursday nights down there.”

  “Sorry,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Old habits.”

  “Uh-huh,” Roy grunted. “Well, y’all want a beer for the road or anything? Promise I won’t tell Peak if you don’t.”

  Jake shook his head. “Nah, Roy, we’re good. Thanks for the offer, though.”

  “Sure thing. Y’all be cool now, okay?”

  Jake and I both turned to leave. When we’d almost gotten to the bar, Roy called out and got our attention. “If I see her, what should I do?”

  “Tell her to call her sister,” I said.

  “Or you get in touch with me, Roy.”

  Roy nodded, then went back to work opening the bar.

  Together, Jake and I stepped out into the cold winter afternoon. The sun had come out, at least, but it still wasn’t doing much for the temperature.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Seem like something your sister might do? I know you mentioned her trying to run off with a boyfriend back when she was fifteen. Think she’d be the type to shack up with some bartender at a dive bar?”

  I snorted. “Eve? Jump into bed with some random stranger? Wouldn’t doubt it.”

  Jake just blinked.

  “Look, okay, we were raised by a hippy mom and an anarchist dad. Think she didn’t pick up a little bit of that free love philosophy while mom was dancing around a campfire skyclad?”

  He coughed. “Skyclad?”

  “Aren’t you from California? And you don’t know what Skyclad means?”

  “I’m from the rougher part of LA, not Topanga or Venice. Skyclad sounds like a bad 80s hair metal band. Somebody walking around my neighborhood talking about skyclad and chakras would probably get their ass whipped.”

  “It’s doing rituals naked,” I explained.

  “Ah. Yeah. Free love, that makes sense.”

  “Besides, she can sniff out the suckers from a mile away. If she thought this bartender Kevin had a place of his own for her to crash at, she’d be on him in a heartbeat.”

  “Don’t put much faith in your sister, do you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I have absolute faith in her. You’ve seen her picture. She can pretty much do what she wants when it comes to men.”

  “Well, tell you what,” Jake said, changing the subject. “Nugget’s on the other side of town. If we take my truck, we’ll make it in no time.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I replied. We both headed over to his truck and hopped in. It smelled like manly sweat and old upholstery. It was a standard and the shifter knob sprouted from the middle like a strange mechanical plant. Oddly, the look and smell of the interior reminded me of New Mexico and my parents’ little farm.

  “That what it was like most of the time?” I asked as he started up the pickup. “Back when you were a cop?”

  He shrugged, shifting the truck into first gear and pulling out of the lot before turning left onto the street. “More or less. Lot of asking questions, seeing if anybody knew anyone. See if they remembered anything out of the ordinary. It’s called canvasing the neighborhood.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ve seen plenty of cop shows, Jake. I know what canvasing is.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but what they never tell you is how fucking boring it is. We’re lucky we even got a bite of some sort on our first try.”

  I sagged in my seat. “This is a bite?”

  “It’s a nibble. Why do you think so many people disappear each year? People get lost out here in the mountains all the time, or get kidnapped by God knows who, Elise. How easy do you think it is for someone who ran away to not be found? Especially when they’re of legal age?”

  I frowned. On the one hand, he was kind of right. On the other, I wasn’t sure. Eve had sent that postcard a little while after she got here. At first, I think, maybe she did want me to drag her back. If Pops hadn’t asked me not to, I probably would have.

  Maybe that was what she had wanted. Someone to force her to stare into the abyss of her life. Why else would she have sent it? Just to say fuck you from Colorado?

  “Think we’ll find her?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know that I’m going to try, though.”

  I believed him, too. Something about the way he said the words, though, with some kind of contradictory nonchalant conviction, it just rang in my ears like the truth. This guy might not be a cop anymore, but he was definitely still a cop at heart. One of the good ones, the kind on television, who only caught bad guys and not guys like my Pops. The people who just appeared to be bad guys.

  I looked over at him from the corner of my eye.

  He seemed to take in everything in front of him. His emerald eyes flickered as they watched every approaching piece of ice and touch of snow. But somehow, they still stayed trained on their destination.

  “Well, thank you, Jake. I know I didn’t tell you everything right from the beginning. And, well, I’m sorry about that.”

  “No problem, Elise. It’s my pleasure.”

  I looked at him, thinking he must have been being sarcastic. I mean, I hadn’t detected any trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  But no, he was enjoying it. That was evident on his face.

  “Well,” I said. “Glad I could be of service, then.” The last part, though, came out as more a question than a statement.

  He just grinned.

  Next stop, The Nugget. And the guy my sister might have been shacked up with.


  Chapter Seven - Jake

  “What do you mean you haven’t seen him in over a week?”

  If The Elk was a dive, then The Nugget was a complete, week-long submersion. The floor was little more than a slab of scuffed up painted-blue concrete, with intermittent chunks gouged from its surface. In all my time coming here for the occasional beer, I’d never sat in a chair or at a table that didn’t wobble like LA during earthquake.

  But this place filled up regularly. Not right now, of course. Right now it was as dead as The Elk, but most nights you were hard-pressed to find a seat. The liquor was cheap, the beer even cheaper, and there was never a cover charge even for live music. How the owner kept it open was beyond me. Unless, of course, you listened to the rumors about how he was running un-taxed beer and liquor, as well as a few less savory things.

  Annie, the woman handling the bar for the afternoon shift, just shrugged with that kind of weariness you only saw in older service industry people who’d seen it all, and waited on worse. “Just like I said, Jake. Haven’t seen Kevin in a week or so.”

  I scratched my head. Wasn’t it kind of weird, even in a small town, to just drop off the grid without even a call?

  “Well, did he quit?” Elise asked from beside me. “Or no-call-no-show?”

  “Second one. Just stopped showing up, is all. You know how Kevin is, though. I’m sure he’ll come in here round rent time, begging and pleading with old Billy to get his spot back. And the ol’ softy will probably let him, as always.”

  “Anyone been by his house?” I asked. “Check to see if he’s alright?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of. I don’t think anyone much cared one way or another.”

  I scratched my chin, the bristles flowing over my fingers in an oddly soothing way. Guy must have been a real piece of work for them to not even go by. I turned and looked at Elise.

  “Well, maybe you can help us out anyways?” she asked hopefully. “I’m trying to find someone, a girl named Eve. Someone told us they thought Kevin might have started dating someone by that name.”