Bear This Heat (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters) (5 page)

“More coffee, stud?” Her voice was deep and raspy, like she’d just smoked a hundred cigarettes in a single sitting.

Dylan ignored the question. “Why are there so many police officers around?”

“Sorry, darling?”

“Police officers. I went for a walk today, and couldn’t go two buildings without seeing one.”

“This is Salty Springs, darling,” the woman said didactically, as though that explained everything.

Dylan looked up at her. “Tell me about it.”

“About what?”

“Salty Springs. Come on, sit down. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

“Well aren’t you a fuckin’ gentleman,” the waitress sneered. But she sat down anyway. “What do you want to know?”

Dylan looked at her, confused for a moment. “Why all the policemen?” he asked again. Surely she’d heard him the first time.

“It’s Salty Springs.”

“You already said that. Tell me why this being Salty Springs explains all the police?”

“You new around here?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, I’ll tell you. This here, this town, it’s a sad place. Abuse, violence, drugs and alcohol.”

“Abuse?”

“Domestic.”

Dylan nodded. He’d heard about it before. “And?”

“The drugs are the worst. Kids hooked on meth. They smoke that filth. Got a few houses around here that cook it all up. Used to be real popular, back in the nineties, but then it died down for a while. Seen a resurgence lately, though.”

“Cook it up?”

“Yeah. There are meth houses everywhere.”

“For such a low population,” Dylan said. “Don’t you find that weird?”

“Officially, that number you see on the sign outside town is right. Unofficially, it’s wrong.”

“Why?”

“Lots of people coming here over the years, especially recently since the drugs started up again.”

“Yeah?”

“Real bad types, too. Tattoos and all.”

Dylan grinned “Tattoos, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks for the chat,” Dylan said.

“I’m billing you another cup of coffee,” she said, getting up with a grunt.

“That’s fine.” He smiled at her.

“And I thought you were going to ask me why this town was called Salty Springs.”

“What if I had?”

“I’d have told you to go down the tourist office and read a fuckin’ brochure.” She took a breath, and then paused, narrowing her eyes at him. “And don’t think that I’m too old that I don’t notice you’re a looker, either, young man.” She disappeared into the kitchen.

Dylan looked at the empty doorway for a while, before returning his thoughts to why he was in Salty Springs. He’d read about sightings of a wolf in the desert, and that was what had piqued his curiosity. It was as out of place as a bear in the desert, he mused. With the downtrodden town being the only place worth going for hundreds of miles in all directions, it was as safe a bet as any that this was where that wolf was heading.

But with all the police officers around, it meant that there were more eyes looking out for unusual things than he had expected. He’d have to be careful while he continued his search.

*

“Hi, Jenny.”

The sixty-something woman looked up, scowling, and Sasha found her eyes drawn to the inch-long fuzz that was growing on her chin.

“What are you having?” she barked.

“Give me a ham-and-egg, and a coffee, would you?”

“I saw your face in the free paper today,
Detective Inspector
.”

“Yeah, I saw that, too,” Sasha said. “I’m surprised it got out so fast.”

“So, how are you liking the promotion?”

“To be honest with you, I’m not. I got a case today…” she started, before her voice faded. She shouldn’t talk about it. The news hadn’t spread yet, though she was certain it would be in tomorrow morning’s edition of the Salty Sentinel, the free paper Sands ran.

“Already, huh? They keeping you busy, the big boys?”

“Yeah.”

“Figures. Salt?”

“Sorry?”

“In your sandwich.”

Sasha thought about it, but she knew that after a heavy night, she’d do best not to overdo it. “No, thank you.”

Sipping from her coffee, she regarded Jenny. The woman was a Salty Springs lifer, like her mother before her. Seeing how she was now, a woman whose personality was all tendon and gristle, Sasha had always harbored a curiosity as to what Jenny, the teenager, or the young woman, might have been like.

“So what’s new besides the promotion?” the woman croaked.

“Nothing much at all.”

“Still got plans to travel?”

Sasha grinned, remembering that she had once talked at length to Jenny about visiting Southeast Asia. “It’s on my to-do list.”

“Well, you’d better get a fuckin’ move on. You’re no spring chicken, darling.”

“Thanks, Jenny.”

“What about a man, Sasha?” The woman leaned forward, the corners of her lips plucked upward.

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Just because I come here all the time doesn’t mean that we have to get to know each other, Jenny.”

“I take it that’s a no.”

“Not yet.”

“Optimism. I like it. But you’ll want to hurry up with that, too.”

“Yeah,” Sasha murmured through a bite of her sandwich. “I’m no spring chicken, right?”

Jenny leaned forward then and pinched the fat on her upper arm. “It’s only going to get harder and harder to lose it.”

She pulled her arm away, feeling the scrape of Jenny’s calloused fingertips on her skin. “Okay, we are
definitely
not having this conversation anymore.”

But Jenny continued, unphased. “Get married, and you won’t have to worry anymore.”

Sasha laughed. “Your generation had some funny ideas about marriage, you know.”

The woman rapped her knuckles on the counter. “Did you see that new fella?”

“Lots of new fellas in town these days,” she replied, but her curiosity was piqued, especially in light of the circumstances. “But tell me about him.”

“Good looking young man. Big guy. Jawline like a fuckin’ axe. Black hair. Was in here not five minutes ago. Asking about police.”

Sasha was staring at Jenny by the time she had finished her description. “Big?”

“Yeah. Tall, too.”

“And black hair?”

“That’s what I said.”

Sasha put her sandwich back down on the plate. She turned her head and looked out of the windows. “And he was asking about the police?”

“Yep.”

“What did he ask?”

“Why there were so many of you.”

“Is that all?”

“Well I didn’t fuckin’ write it down, dear.”

“He was here five minutes ago?” Sasha turned and looked out the window into the street, but it was empty.

“That’s what I said.”

“Which way did he go?”

“He probably has a girlfriend, you know. He was very handsome. A real looker. Either that, or he’s gay. The good ones always are.”

“Seriously, Jenny. Which way?”

“Toward the gas station, I think. Why?” the woman asked, and her perpetual scowl evaporated, in its place narrowed eyes of nosiness. “Something going on?”

“No,” Sasha said. “I’ll be back for the sandwich later.” She walked out of the small restaurant, and looked down the street toward the gas station. There was nobody in sight. The road shimmered with heat waves, and the sun was severe.

“Shit,” Sasha said to herself. She set off down the road, jogging slightly, looking up and down each cross-street, each alley in between single-story buildings. She spotted the tall figure of a man, blurred in the distance down the space between two houses, and she ran back to her car, drove around the block with the intention of cutting him off at the other side.

Rounding the corner, she saw nothing. There was no sign of him. She stopped the car, climbed out, and looked up the small path between two bungalows. There was nobody there. Had he seen her? Had he run? Either that, or she’d missed him.

For the first time that morning, Sasha felt like she’d caught a break in the case. Maybe Mrs. Clark’s jogger was the real deal. Some new guy in town, asking about the police on the day there was a gruesome murder who just happened to fit the description given by a woman living next door to the victim? Unlikely to be a coincidence.

From the quick glimpse she’d gotten of him, she could see that he was well over six feet. He’d been big, too, with broad shoulders and a pronounced v-shaped back that his dark tight t-shirt had accentuated. And though it was only a quick look, distorted by the wavering air, she’d seen that his hair was dark, probably black. She went back to her car and radioed the station, asking for the superintendent.

“Sir,” she said. “Could I get a couple of uniforms?”

“Why?”

“I need help to locate a potential suspect.”

“Suspect?”

“For the murder of Charlie Kinnear.”

“Now wait a minute, Monroe. Are you sure about this?
Murder?
”

“He’s new in town, wearing jeans and a dark t-shirt, either black or brown. He’s tall, over six feet, and he’s a big guy. He matches the description Sally Clark gave to me pretty much completely. Also, he was asking Jenny at the restaurant about the police.”

“Asking about the police?”

“Yes. Asking why there were so many of us around.”

Superintendent O’Neill sighed, and Sasha could hear the heavy fog of breath over the receiver. “Alright, Monroe. Hold on, I’ll have a couple of uniforms roll over to you now. Where are you?”

“No need,” Sasha said. “Just have them radio me, and we’ll set up a grid. He stands out, and shouldn’t be hard to find, and he won’t be far from where I’m at now. He’s on foot, too.”

“Okay, got it. Good work, Monroe.”

“Thank you, sir.”

This was
definitely
no coincidence. Coincidences like that simply didn’t happen in real life.

Surprised that the case seemed to be coming together before her eyes so quickly, Sasha tempered her excitement with three slow, deep breaths. Though she might get lucky on her first case, she might also have it all completely wrong. Making an assumption either way would simply lead to mistakes.

And so, for now, she’d consider the man she’d seen a person of interest, rather than a full-blown suspect. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it right.

*

Dylan left the small restaurant, the acrid taste of coffee strong in his mouth. It was too dry for that, and so he popped into a store opposite the restaurant to buy some gum and a bottle of water. While standing at the till, he saw a woman jog past in what looked like a suit without the jacket, and he wondered how anybody could wear so much in this weather.

“Thanks,” he said, dropping a tip in the jar. He left the store and felt the blanket of heat slam into him. He’d never been in such extreme heat before, and it seemed to him that the temperature must have been teetering quite close to the limit of what the human body could reasonably endure long-term. Any hotter, and nobody would have settled here. It was a little foreign to him, the idea that people would deliberately choose to live in extreme heat or cold.

He took a turn between two houses just up the empty street. He had no lead on the wolf, and as a man, couldn’t detect any trace of a scent. If he shifted into a bear, though, he’d never make it through the day without being spotted, or succumbing to heat stroke.

For now, he’d just have to walk around, and see if he could spot anything. A hint, a clue, a thread. The fact that wolf sightings had been made on three separate occasions around the greater area cemented his confidence in the wolf being here. But why come to this town? Why travel across the country to a remote and troubled desert settlement?

Dylan grinned then, turning the question around. If somebody were tailing him, then it would seem odd that he was here, too, wouldn’t it?

He wondered about the rumors of the wolf. Two people had written letters to the local papers in a few towns bordering the desert. They’d apparently heard a wolf howling, seen its silhouette against the moon. That last part sounded like embellishment to Dylan, who had learned over the course of his search to sharpen his cynical edge. But the wolf howling? That wasn’t so implausible, given what he knew. Not much else howled in the area, in terms of wildlife, so any kind of howl was already a promising sign.

Another rumor had come on an online message board. Somebody had claimed they’d seen a yellow-eyed wolf, huge and hulking, stalking the streets of a mining town not too far away from Salty Springs. It had definitely snared Dylan’s attention.

For a decade he had been searching for another like him, another shapeshifter. He’d never found success, though. He’d never found another one. He followed every rumor he heard, every sighting of animals where they shouldn’t be, but had never come across anybody else like himself.

He wondered, idly, how many reports of bear sightings he’d left in places that bears weren’t native to.

But he wasn’t going to stop looking. Despite never finding success, he couldn’t think of what else to do with his life. He had exhausted his drive for lust and for wealth, had given up on love, and now sought truth. Why was he the way he was? There must be others, and surely one of them would have answers. Was it genetic? Hereditary? He’d seen no evidence of shapeshifting in his mother or father before they died. Had he been a chance birth? A strange alignment of mutated alleles?

And how long did shapeshifters live for? That particular question burned in his mind. He’d been alive for eighty years, and yet had the body and face of an athletic twenty five year old.

The sound of a man shouting snatched him out of reverie.

“Stop! Police!”

Dylan turned around to see a uniformed police officer pointing a finger at him, and walking quickly toward him, his hand on his holster.

“Don’t move!”

Dylan put up his hands, and turned his head to the side, lips curling into a semi-smile. The cop had a pale face, with large eyes and a sharp nose, and he looked very eager. That was a bad quality in a police officer. At least, Dylan thought, if that policeman was after you.

“Just stay where you are,” the policeman said with a hand held out, fingers outstretched.