Big Bad Bite (6 page)

Rinsing off the last of the soap, she climbed
out of the shower and started to dry off. As she ran the brush
through her hair, she heard a beep coming from the direction of her
room. Opening the door, she walked over to her desk where her cell
phone sat. One new voicemail. Dialing into her mailbox, her breath
hitched when Kent’s voice came over the line.

“
Hi Jenna, this is Kent. Look I’m sorry
that Adam and I scared you last night. I promise you that we’re not
out to hurt you or anything. It’s just not normal for an unknown
shifter to pop up under our noses like that. We just want to talk
to you. Adam says he knows you’re a lone wolf, and he’s worried
about you. Please call me back. We’d like to meet you somewhere
just to talk. By the way, I got your duffel bag from the Captain
last night. So I need to return that to you as well. Call
me.”

Jenna bit her bottom lip in hesitation as she
deleted the message. Kent had already managed to get her number,
probably from the Wilmington Police Department’s Human Resources
Division. If he’d already gotten her phone number from the WPD,
then he probably had her Mama’s address as well. She was betting
they would be more than willing to track her down if she didn’t
call him back. So she could tell her Mama everything now, tuck her
tail between her legs and live on the run forever, or she could go
with option number three. Confront the two pains in her ass and
talk them into leaving her alone. Warm amber eyes flashed through
her mind, challenging her to back down and show submission. To run
and hide like a scared pup. Pushing her chin out in defiance, she
knew what she had to do. Option three it was.

After getting dressed in a pair of jeans and
a tank top, she repacked her bag to get ready to leave once her
room was straight again of course. It was seriously sad that a
grown woman could be afraid of her Mama’s temper tantrums. However,
most mothers couldn’t pick up a house and drop it on you without
breaking a sweat. Not that Mama would ever hurt her, but one
predator knew how to act when a bigger predator was in the
room.

She dialed Kent’s number. On the second ring,
he picked up.

“Hello?”

“Kent, you two can meet me in the bar parking
lot in an hour and a half. It’s seven thirty now so that means meet
there at nine. Got it?”

“Thank you, Jenna. See you then.” Kent hung
up.

She might be crazy enough to agree to meet
them, but she was going in armed. Pulling out her shoulder harness
from her closet, she slung it on and then pulled out two Sig Saur
.45 pistols from the shelf. These were also a graduation present
from her Uncle Owen. See, who said a girl couldn’t be sentimental
without candy and flowers?

Uncle Owen made sure to give her plenty of
boxes of normal ammunition, along with additional special
ammunition used to take down shifters, such as silver bullets.
Discharging the two ammunition clips from the guns, she threw them
in the overnight bag and dug for the box on the shelf in the back
of her closet. In it were two more clips already loaded with silver
bullets. Silver is lethal to shifters, poisonous to their blood
stream. It also burns the skin if they touch it. Somehow, with her
mixed background, Jenna was immune to the lethal effects of it. Not
only could she touch silver without burning, but it didn’t affect
her blood stream either. A little something Uncle Owen had learned
after he cut her hand with a silver knife to test his burgeoning
suspicions. After his discovery, he wanted her to be armed and
prepared in case she ever had to protect herself, or her mother,
against another shifter. Slapping the clips into place, she loaded
the weapons into her harness and shoved her badge into her jean’s
back pocket.

Grabbing the overnight bag, Jenna gave Mama a
hug and a kiss goodbye, explaining that work had called her in and
she had to leave right away. Mama’s blue eyes, identical to her
own, teared as she asked Jenna to stay safe before leading her to
the backdoor of the house. Standing on the top step, with her
platinum blond curls blowing in the wind, Mama watched as Jenna
climbed into her red Chevy pickup truck and drove away. Somehow,
she would make it safe for the two of them again and Mama never had
to know that someone had found her. Damn, why couldn’t those two
just take a long walk off a short pier into piranha infested
waters, and leave her the hell alone?

The drive felt abnormally long back to
Wilmington from River Bend. Her heart was nearly pounding out of
her chest with worry about whether they were going to let her live
alone in peace or not. Adam knew that she was a wolf. If she could
do damage control and let him only think that she was half wolf and
half human, neither of the two men would need to know the rest of
it. Stopping at a light two blocks over from the bar, Jenna hastily
pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Palming the familiar weight
of her two guns to make sure they were right where she wanted them,
she mentally psyched herself for the upcoming confrontation. The
light turned green and she turned into the parking lot minutes
later to see Kent and Adam standing next to her bike with casual
demeanors and their hands shoved in their pockets. Looks like it’s
show time.

Her inner wolf growled at the threat, begging
Jenna to set her free to defend them.

Who wants their ass kicked first?

Parking her truck across the lot from them,
she watched in the side mirror as she shut off the engine. While
making sure they hadn’t moved, she took a minute to put up some
strong mental barriers to keep out any possible psychic attempts by
Kent. Climbing out of the truck, she scanned the parking lot to see
that the bar was closed, the lot was empty, and the three of them
were alone. It suddenly felt like a bad attempt at a low grade
western shoot-out movie scene to her. Where was the tumbleweed to
blow across the space between them while they broodingly stared
each other down? Keeping her face schooled, she took a few steps
until she stopped just two feet past the bed of her truck.

Kent gave her an easy smile while taking a
few hesitant steps towards her and away from her bike. “Morning
there, Annie Oakley. I see you brought your guns.” Holding his
hands up in a placating manner he continued, “Promise you won’t
need them though, we’re just here to talk.”

Looking at the two men, she was inclined to
believe them. She didn’t see any visible weapons on them, and their
easy and relaxed postures didn’t indicate that they intended her
any harm. She was on alert just in case. “Well you know what I am.
So what do you want now?” Her eyes traveled back and forth between
the two.

Kent looked over at Adam’s quiet features and
sighed. “Jenna, I don’t want anything from you. Hell, I just came
to say that I was sorry for scaring you like that last night. You
have nothing to fear from me. In fact, if you’d like it, I can
request Capt. Nelson make us partners so you don’t have to worry
about one of the other guys catching on to anything abnormal about
you.”

Tipping her head to the side, she studied
Kent. He appeared to be showing signs of genuine remorse. The
question was, could she trust him? And did she actually want to?
“Why would you do that, Kent?”

“We’ve all got our secrets Jenna.” Boy was he
right about that, she thought to herself. “Whatever yours are, I
respect them. I hate to see you so scared of the world though.
Whatever you’ve got going on girl… maybe you should stand up to it.
Maybe I can help you.”

Adam took that opportunity to cut Kent off.
“You’re a wolf, Jenna. Where’s your pack?”

Her muscles tensed. It didn’t look as if Kent
was going to be her problem. If she had a problem, it was going to
come from the Alpha werewolf in front of her. Crossing her arms
over her chest and keeping steady eye contact with him, she
answered. “I have no pack.”

“I get that you don’t have a pack now, you’re
a lone wolf, or you wouldn’t be here. You’d be safe on pack lands.
What I mean is, what pack did you leave and why?” Adam’s amber eyes
blazed with curiosity.

“I’ve never had a pack.”

Surprise flit over both men’s faces, but just
then a scrape on the ground towards the street caught their
attentions. They stood there quietly as the sound came closer until
a hunched over wrinkled old man pushing a shopping cart filled with
odds and ends started slowly crossing the entrance of the parking
lot. The strong scent of unwashed body wafted over her nose. It
didn’t take a genius to figure the guy was homeless. Taking a quick
glance at Kent and Adam to make sure they hadn’t moved, Jenna
walked over to man, stopping him with a hand on his arm. Digging
into her back pocket, she pulled out a twenty and pushing it into
his hands, Jenna told him to go get a decent meal on her. A tear
slipped down his weathered cheek as he thanked her and started to
push his cart away again.

Turning back to the two men, she found them
watching her with rapt fascination. Adam took a slow step forward.
“Perhaps this is not the best place for this kind of discussion,
Jenna. Would you be willing to talk to me elsewhere? I promise you
that I have no intentions of harming you.”

Alone with Adam? Now why did that knot her
lower stomach muscles in all kinds of ways? His eyes twinkled with
challenge waiting to see if she’d be bold enough to agree to talk
with him where it wasn’t out in the open and safe. Her instincts
told her that she was safe with Kent, not that she thought Adam
would try to hurt her, but being in the vicinity of another wolf
was stirring up what she was guessing were instinctual hungers that
her inner wolf had managed to hold back all of these years. And her
wolf was practically begging to come out and play with the
dangerous Alpha now.

Not good.

Right?

These new feelings brought a painful
awareness to how lonely her life truly was. Perhaps it was time to
take a few gambles and pray for positive results.

“Kent, you said you got my duffel from the
Captain?” He nodded his head. “Good. How about you hand it over and
then the three of us can go somewhere and get some breakfast. I
suppose havin’ a little talk never killed anyone. But let’s get
something straight right now boys, if I even think that you guys
are trying to screw me over somehow, I’ll show you just how
accurate my aim actually is.” She said, giving pointed looks
towards their itty bits to make her threat clear.

Kent laughter boomed across the lot. “Alright
darlin’. Point taken.”

Adam snorted with amusement.

“Good. Now Kent, go get my damn bag. I feel
naked without my duty weapon. I’m going to get my bike into the
back of my truck, and then you can lead us to some place to
eat.”

Adam’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “How can
you feel naked when you have two guns already?”

Shooting him a
have-you-lost-your-flippin’-mind look, she retorted, “A girl can
never have enough guns. Never.”

He followed her as she rolled her bike across
the lot to the back of the truck, pulling the tailgate down for
her. Jenna watched him with curious eyes as he hopped up onto the
bed of her truck, spreading the all weather blankets out across the
bottom of it. Once he was done he held out his hands waiting. “Pass
her up. I’ll help you secure it.”

After lifting the back up to Adam, he then
gently laid it down on the blankets. Obviously, he figured out she
had them there so the bike wouldn’t get scratched during transit.
As they secured it down with cinch straps, Kent pulled up in his
dark blue Dodge Charger and parked it behind her truck. Getting
out, he handed over her bag then watched as she tossed it in the
passenger side of the truck, before shutting the door. The roar of
a motorcycle engine vibrated through the lot as Adam pulled close
to them and waited to move out.

As she hopped in behind the driver’s wheel,
her brain started questioning the sanity of this idea. Whether she
liked it or not, part of her had realized that she had reached a
point in life in which she was tired of hiding. Tired of being so
lonely. It didn’t mean she was ready to bare her soul to these two,
but she was ready to get to know some of the supernatural community
that she had stayed separate from for so long. Perhaps, if she
learned enough, then she could finally get answers about her father
that Mama would never give. Maybe even find Uncle Owen, who had not
contacted her in close to six years. And maybe… for once… she’d
find someone who understood.

*****

Walking into the Waffle House behind Kent and
Adam, Jenna’s stomach was doing flips. Actually, forget flips. Her
stomach was trying to impersonate Gabrielle Douglas’ floor routine
at the London Olympics. As they approached the most discreet table
in the place, she watched in silent horror as Kent sat on one side
of the booth and Adam sat on the other. In other words, no matter
where she sat it was going to be next to one of them. Great. Just
fan-flippin’-tabulous. The wolf made her nervous because of all of
the strange feelings and urges he provoked in her. But Kent had
started to cross a line last night that two co-workers should never
cross, not to mention two potential partners, and that was what he
was offering her so that she wouldn’t feel the need to quit SWAT.
So she needed to establish some distance between the two of them
again. Spotting a lone chair a few feet away, she snagged it,
placing it at the end of the table.

Adam cocked an eyebrow that seemed to say,
‘chicken much’?

Look at that, she was hiding yellow feathers
beneath her clothes. Who knew?

After the waitress walked away with their
orders she turned back and looked the two men dead in their eyes.
Kicking her feet up on the bench Adam was sitting on, she crossed
her arms over her chest to set the scene for her defensive
explanation. “Okay boys. You can ask, but I won’t guarantee that
I’ll answer. So, if I say pass, that means you move on. Got
it?”