Marc (Bowen Boys, #4)(13)

“This is stupid. Tomorrow morning I’m going to kiss her and then that will be the end of this. Once I stop thinking about how she will taste, I can move on with my life and get some work done.” As he rolled over, he knew that he could no more go in and kiss her as he could stop working. He was going to have to do something and soon.





Chapter 5


“Have you found her yet?” Roy wasn’t sure why he was asking. He was pretty sure that they’d let him know if they had. But it had been almost a whole month and he had orders to fill so he could get inside the house. He looked at the ledger in front of him when Harris answered.

“Been no sign of her since she left here near about three weeks ago. I’m thinking she either left town with a stranger or she’s holed up somewhere with a friend.” Roy knew that wouldn’t happen. Jonny didn’t have any friends except for Anita.

“I have a request for nine panthers, and no panthers. I have f*cking wolves out my ass and a bear but not one f*cking panther.” He looked down at the numbers that had been coming in since she left. “I could make twice that with the amount of money the rich and stupid would pay for her. And she won’t play the game.”

Harris shook his head. “She’s a stubborn one, she is. When I think of all that money you offered her and she threw it back in your face? Makes me want to find her and beat her something good.”

An empty threat and they both knew it. She’d kill Harris as soon as he drew back his hand to hit her. She’d hurt him before, and the large scar on his cheek was the result of him trying to get her to shift to human when he’d been trying to get her to come out of the cage. She’d came out all right, all teeth and claws, and nearly tore Harris apart before she’d been darted four times to knock her out.

“I want her found. She’s going to play with us or I’ll just kill her. She’s costing me money every day that she’s loose, and she is going to repay every penny of it as soon as we find her. And we will find her, won’t we?” Harris nodded and stood up. “She has to be working somewhere. See if you can find someone to run her Social Security number and find her that way. If she doesn’t have a job by now, she’s either dead or getting paid under the table. Either way, I want to know.”

After Harris left, Roy picked up the ledger again. The bear had had a good week this week and the wolves were slowly catching on to the program. Just how hard did they think this job was?

He’d been a small time thief before he’d found his first shifter. Alex Spears had even come up with the idea of him going into houses as an exotic pet and stealing from them. Roy’s job had been to fence it for them. They’d split the money fifty-fifty. No one blamed the pet, and when the folks were about broke, they’d given him back his “pet.” They did this for over three years when they decided to bring in other animals, ones they could control. Bear Black, his actual name, had been the first. But he’d been sloppy and had been caught. When he’d killed the couple who had him, he’d been put down before he could shift and give up what he truly was. Alex had been so scared after that that he’d wanted out.

“You have to stop this before someone else gets killed,” he’d told him that night. “I can’t stand the fact that this has gotten someone murdered.”

“Murder is a very strong word for what happened there. And Bear is dead now and no one will ever know what we’re doing.” Alex was already shaking his head no. “We can slow down if it will make you feel better. Then when the news moves on to something else, we’ll pick up again. In the meantime, we can gather more shifters and train them…. What are you doing?”

Alex started clearing out his desk even before Roy could try to convince him to stay. “I’m done. You can do this if you want but I’m finished with this. It was a good run, but it’s over. You should get out too before it comes down on your head.”

The gun was in his hand before Roy could think about it. He held it on Alex and told him to sit. When he continued to pack up his desk, Roy thought to wound him, but he’d started to shift by then and the bullet tore through his brain. He looked up at his secretary when she came rushing into the room. Her smile was a little like seeing evil spread across one’s face. She looked like she was born to it.

“I guess this means you need a new partner.” She slithered in. There was no other word for how she moved into the room and towards him. “I’ve been working on a list of my own, you see. I have a few names of others like our poor stupid shifter here that we can recruit for jobs.”

She’d nearly raped him in the chair after that. He’d had her bent over his desk and f*cking her as hard as he could when she begged him to slap her. He’d hit her ass when she begged him for more. Suddenly she was standing in front of him slapping him. He backhanded her once, and when she hit the floor, she came up on her knees and took him into her mouth and swallowed him. He’d never come so hard in his life. And had been enjoying her form of sex since.

He looked back on it now and realized she’d been creating tension between him and Alex for months. She’d been just waiting for this to happen, he knew now. She would probably have taken either of them at that time but he’d been the last man standing, so to speak.

She walked into his office just as if he’d conjured her up. “I’ve been thinking about her. Jonny is probably trying to get to her mommy and daddy. We should probably send out a little welcoming party for her if she isn’t there already. They might even know where she’s at, or at least heard from her.”