Bear The Heat (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 3) (10 page)

The sidelong glance that Rory gave her old friend told the whole story. “I think I’m crazy,” she said flatly. “I mean, I made out with him behind that house when I went to check and see if I could find any accelerant.”

“Did you?”

“Well yeah, I just said I made out wi—”

“Bad joke,” Monte said. “Sorry, I figured if you were busy making out with him, you probably didn’t find any chemicals in the carpet. Although if anyone could manage to do both those things at the same time, it’s you.”

“He got a tick.” Rory had a flat, almost defeated tone in her voice that Monte didn’t like one damn bit. “And I fell for him when he passed out. And also I didn’t find any chemicals in the carpet, but the fusebox outside was completely missing. Well I mean the box was there but the actual fuses were gone. And there were, you know, big claw marks on the wall like someone had torn them out.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Monte said. “The fusebox was what?

Please tell me you put in a report about that. I mean even if it was just some random thing, that’s still not exactly what you expect to see in a normal fuse box situation. Also, you’re gonna have to tell me that story some time,” he said. “You’re not crazy. You’re the smartest mink I know. That came out wrong, but you know what I mean.”

BEAR THE HEAT

Rory looked over at him for just a moment before glancing back at her toes. She wiggled them. “I feel like my brain is out of pace with the rest of me. As far as the fuse thing, yeah I put in a report, and even filed one of those things with the PD for them to go and re-check the scene.”

He sat for a moment, thinking and plucking at his chin whiskers. “Your brain is out front, or your heart is out front and you aren’t used to your brain not leading the charge?” He paused a moment to make sure she wasn’t going to respond. “I’m guessing from the haunting silence hanging in the air that either choice A – I’m right, or choice B – you’ve gone mute somehow.

Either that, or the improbability of
you
filing police paperwork without my hounding you has somehow broken your brain completely.”

Rory giggled softly, shaking her head. “You know, the whole thing is ridiculous. I’m the sciency girl without a clue in the world how emotions work. You remember that
Star Trek
episode where Data starts to tell jokes, and everyone’s really uncomfortable because he’s not supposed to laugh? That’s me.

Except I’m not as creepy as a laughing robot.”

“Android,” Monte corrected.

She looked at him. “Huh?”

“Android. Data was an android, not a robot. Er, although yeah, I guess you just sprung the nerd trap on me, right? I read that term on the internet. I hear that’s what kids are saying these days.”

She laid her head on Monte’s shoulder and hugged him.

“Thanks for listening to me yammer,” she said.

“I think you’re going to be just fine,” he said. “You always seem to figure out what you’re doing. And without telling you what to do, because I’m not your conscience, even if I feel like it sometimes, I’ll tell you this – a lot of times, our brain gets in the way. Sometimes the best thing you can do is stop thinking, and just feel.”

68

Rory stared at her hands for just a moment. “Put on that purple tie. We’ve got work to do.”

“Yes we do, young lady,” Monte said. “Let’s do it.” He paused, standing stock still like he wandered into a closed glass door at just the same time he got a static electrical jolt. “Don’t worry about things,” he said at a distance.

“What? What things?”

Monte shook his head. “Nothing much. I was just thinking about what you said there. About the family business, and wanting something you thought you’d never have and all that.

Just let things be the way they are, you know?”

“Not so much,” Rory said, even though from the tone of her voice it was completely obvious she did. “I try not to worry about things in general.”

Monte snorted a laugh. “Yeah, of course, how could I be so stupid as to think you were an anxious as all hell mink?”

She shook her head, smiling wistfully into the distance. It was one of those times she was looking at someone, but not really; her gaze was about thirty feet behind Monte’s head. “You think I’m crazy?”

“No,” he said quickly. “We—my wife and I—dated for about six weeks before we got hitched. Ran off to Vegas when she started getting panic attacks from wedding planning. A very nice Elvis whose name was—is, I guess—Roy, did the deed, and then we got a whole lot of free drinks and comped buffets. There’s a tip for you, if you ever go to Vegas, just tell everyone you were just married. They eat that shit up.”

“Really? Six weeks?”

“Yeah, and I fell in love with her after about twenty minutes.

We went to a
Rocky Horror Picture Show
production, of all things. I think that I sorta fell for her when she agreed to actually go out on a date with a guy wearing torn up fishnets and a really bad pancake makeup job.” When he noticed he was being watched with a bemused, sidelong glance, he added a little more.

BEAR THE HEAT

“Look, it was college, you know? Things were different back then. People were experimenting more with... uh, well just experimenting. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Yeah,” Rory chuckled softly. “Sounds like a deal. But seriously, you don’t think I’m crazy?”

“Oh shit, I
know
you’re crazy. But you’re the good kind of crazy. You have to be in order to solve the cases you do and root through all the shit you do without falling apart all over the place constantly.”

“That’s another thing,” she said. “This arson case. I went out there to check it out, and Breaker showed up a few seconds later.

He was looking for the fuse box, and when we found it, there wasn’t anything there. Well, except the claw marks trailing down the side of the house.”

A little work chat always got the two of them into a very
X-Files
mood. “What do you make of it? You’re the fire whisperer.

Have there ever been any other fires at that house? Or maybe some angry exchange that led to someone wanting to burn the house down? Ex-mate or something feeling crazy and getting drunk? I mean, that could explain the torn-up fusebox. You’d need to see the shifter registry for that though. It’d have to be a bear...”

“Or a lion,” Rory said. “Deep gouges, four of them. I don’t know, it’s hard to tell just from looking at some rips in the siding.” Rory shook her head. “I don’t know, but I can find out tomorrow. I might be able to get into the records office after hours, but somehow I don’t think breaking into a police precinct is the best idea. Even if I do work there.”

“Yeah, probably true,” Monte said. “And anyway, we both have other things to think about tonight.”

Rory smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. The case can wait.”

“And that,” Monte said, “is how I know you’re in love. You’ve
never
said that before.”

70

The thing about a fire is that it’s always going to burn out.

Eventually. At some point, it’ll go away and the only thing left will be ashes and, if you’re lucky, the shape of the thing that burned remains; just a charred, blackened version of the thing that once stood.

Breaker shook his head, wondering why on earth he was constantly thinking about a girl he’d just met instead of keeping his mind on work. Except maybe, he thought, it was because he
wasn’t
thinking about work in the first place. And after all, since when had he become a wannabe-CSI bear? Maybe, just maybe, it had more to do with her than Breaker was willing to admit to himself.

“Yo, you in there, Break?” it was Daniels, who had snuck up on Breaker as the big bear stared into a very large pot of uncooked ground beef. “I thought we talked about the safety hazard of serving raw ground beef from the Winn-Dixie bargain bin last time we did this.”

“Just thinkin’,” Breaker said with a smile on his face. “You know, lost in my own head.”

“You? Zoned out? You don’t say. But anyway, what the hell are you doing here tonight? You’re not back on shift until Friday.”

Breaker shrugged, still staring at the meat. “I just needed to give my head time to wrap around something.”

“This got anything to do with that girl? The CSI genius?

Mulder and Scully, you know, were always in love. They just never—”

“They never let themselves do anything about it because they were too professional. But, bright side of that is that I don’t think there’s anything in the White Creek bylaws that prevents firefighters and police department auxiliary employees from getting after it.”

BEAR THE HEAT

“Subtle, aren’t you, Yogi?” Daniels asked.

“Don’t start with the Yogi stuff.” Of all the obnoxious firefighter jokes that they all told almost constantly, the Yogi the Bear ones were the most irritating. It wasn’t because they hurt his feelings or anything – they just weren’t funny. And besides that, who made Yogi Bear references in this day and age? It just seemed strange. And, yeah, not funny. Breaker hadn’t ever once shanghaied a park ranger to steal a picnic basket. Who wanted picnic baskets anyway? Cold sandwiches, some soft apples and whatever else? No thanks, not for this bear.

“I didn’t mean to get to you,” Daniels said, apparently sensing the strange detour his friend’s brain had taken. “But you never did say what it was you were thinking about. This is your day off, after all, and I know you’re not the liveliest bear in the woods, but still, hanging around the firehouse on the day you usually sit at home and watch
Family Feud
reruns just ain’t like you, Break.”

The big bear snorted a laugh. He wasn’t giving up that easily though. He never did, not where the obnoxious inconvenience of his emotions was up for grabs. If there were a signpost pointing to open emotional discussion, Breaker’s would be about a thousand miles in the other direction.

“I think I want to open up to her,” he said out of nowhere.

Daniels stared at him with a slightly open mouth for a few seconds.

“You what?” he finally asked when he figured out what his friend had said. “This lab rat girl? Why? I mean, not to take anything away from her, but don’t you think you should get to know her first before you open up your heart and soul?”

Breaker stared at him silently for just a moment. Daniels had this way about him – whenever he was joking, he sucked his full bottom lip into his mouth, hiding it under his mustache. When he was earnest though, he sucked the mustache in so that the long whiskers poked out the corners of his mouth and his bottom
72

lip almost touched his nose. “I just mean... well, hell, just that you don’t even really know her. I mean, past the obvious.”

“That’s the thing though – I
do
know her. Look, I don’t believe in all this magical fate bullshit either, but all I can tell you is how it felt to see her in that office, and then to see her again behind that house.”

Daniels arched an eyebrow.

“I mean, behind the house that totally wasn’t an unsupervised search of a crime scene.”

The two exchanged brief smiles. It was Daniels who finally broke the silence. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand.” He let out a long, heavy sigh. “I just don’t want to see you getting hurt again. Last time that happened, you moped around here for a month and wouldn’t even eat. It was like I had adopted a sick old dog, except I couldn’t shoot you. At least, not without it being even more socially tricky than
Old Yeller
ing a dog.”

“I get the feeling there won’t be any moping this time.”

Breaker fished his phone from the front left of his jeans, where he always kept it with his keys.

“Don’t that thing get all scratched up?” Daniels asked. “You know you have more than one pocket in those pants.”

Breaker shrugged, his huge shoulders lifting into a mountain of muscle that touched his earlobes. “Still makes calls. And anyway, this way I don’t rack up another half-grand
Candy Crush
bill. And keep your damn mouth shut.”

He was already touching numbers, but paused for a moment.

He reconsidered what he was doing, and then continued. As Daniels watched his face, Breaker seemed to come to life. His cheeks lightened a shade, and his lips, normally drawn into a straight line, bowed up slightly on the corners. Before the big bear said anything, the furrow on his brow relaxed, and his pensive smile grew. Daniels thought he knew who the bear was calling – and it wasn’t the billing department at Lowe’s to pay off a washing machine.

BEAR THE HEAT

“Hello? Rory?” It was like the crease in Breaker’s forehead migrated southerly and transformed into a pair of lines framing his mouth. Like this, Daniels thought, he could actually start believing the bear had moved on from all the trouble he’d lived through. He almost believed his friend really
was
having one of those magical moments of transcendent soul-lifting you always hear about in inspirational pamphlets. Only it was on the phone with a woman, not anything more, not anything less.

“Listen, yeah, God it’s good to hear your voice,” the big bear said. “It’s been... almost two hours, huh?”